I received the following comment from Jay Jack on the topic of Paleo/Primal fueling for a 50K run:

I know this doesn’t really belong on this thread, but, I don’t know where else to put it, and I thought someone might like it. Well, this was a my experiment. I decided to do a Palro/Primal Ultra (50k on trails).
I ate dead strict Paleo (w butter and heavy cream) 100% for 3 months before the race. Prior to that it was not that strict.
I trained for this by doing Crossfitesque work (more like CF Football), in addition to my doing BJJ/Muay Thai/MMA as I own an academy.
I did only one long run (should be called a speed hike as I hike all the hills, I only run the downs, and jog the flats) per week. Kept my heart rate under 75% on all long runs. I was also in VFFS for all runs and conditioning.
I did all my training runs fasted and using only coconut water.
I built up to a 20 miler as my last training run.
Race Day: ate eggs scrambled in bacon grease. coffee with pastured heavy cream. During the race I ate only these little energy balls made from a recipe in the Thrive Diet book made of coconut oil, dates, lime juice, and I added guarana for some extra kick. Drank only coconut water and regular water. Wore VFF treks. Kept an average heart rate of 76% (1 damn % higher than I wanted). finished in 8:12 (50k). Not setting records, but I’ve never done any race before. Not a 5k, nothing. So this was a TOTAL experiment.
It is possible to do an ultra without breaking any Paleo/Primal lifestyle parameters. Just felt like proving it. Why… no idea. Just decided I wanted to. I know people might bag on it, but I thought somebody may enjoy hearing about the success of it.
Now onto some other off the wall goal.

First, I wanted to thank Jay for sharing this. My best material is generated in response to questions and commentary from you folks so I am truly grateful when you share experiences and questions. I want to look at a few items that I emphasized above (underlined).

1-One long run per week.

Now, if you look at Jay’s schedule it’s pretty damn active: sprinting, lifting, short met-cons, MMA-Jits. I’m guessing he had 3-4 “running” sessions per week with the sprint work and met-cons, but then just 1 long run.

2-Kept my heart rate under 75% on all long runs.

This is an important issue for several reasons, but the main one being SPECIFICITY. Runs of this duration are NOT sprints. Can sprint work aid these efforts? Absolutely, but you MUST train how you want to PERFORM!! I really like Richard Gibbens ideas at Power Running. Basic ideas: Lift weights, sprint and run your race distance AT YOUR RACE PACE. Running 5K’s? If you want to be good, run’em fast & hard. Running 50K’s? If you want to FINISH you better game play that scenario (run some distance, figure out your pacing) and it might be helpful to show up rested and not overtrained.

3-I built up to a 20 Miler as my last training run.

Just more of the above. Race distance, race pace. Practice the specifics of YOUR event.

4-Kept my Heart rate at 76%.

Not only did he practice for a specific output, he actually DID that! Many people scrap the plan when game day arrives due to nerves and EGO. This is particularly important as we consider the next piece.

5- I’ve never done any race before. Not a 5k, nothing. So this was a TOTAL experiment.

BALSY! But not unreasonable. He had a plan, made things reasonable and stuck to to it. Now, I’ve focussed mainly on the training element, Jay tackled this more from the fueling perspective. The big concern for most folks attempting a long endurance event is how to do it “paleo/primal”. Well, you find the most concentrated food sources you can (in this case coconut oil and dates, some coconut water). I’d likely throw in some kind of jerky just to make sure branched chain amino acids are propped up, I might also throw in some extra sodium ( just a bit of sea salt) to make sure we do not get a hypo-natremic situation.

Follow-up questions:

1-Is this the BEST way to tackle the event? I don’t know. I really like products like Cytomax, they work great. But folks have simply asked the question “can you do events like this with ancestral foods?” and the answer is clearly, Yes, paleo foods work just fine.

2-Will Paleo produce ELEEEEEET performance? Uh…it will likely help, but as Floyd Landis has hopefully made clear, Eaton, Cordain and Lindeberg will have little influence on elite athletics compared to Upjohn, Merc and Phizer. Want to be a champion? Pick your parents wisely, get a solid pharmaceutical plan and train your fanny off. Paleo nutrition may indeed improve recovery enough to make a difference in the whole picture, but I’d tend to lean towards EPO and T-Gel as possibly more important!

Ok, off to the gym, I have  some serious work to do to catch up with these guys:

Hey folks, I have an internet connection so I wanted to let you know my interview with Jimmy More of Living La Vida Low Carb will go up May 24th. A huge thank you to Jimmy for the great interview, it was a huge honor to be a guest on one of the best known podcasts around.

Intermittent Fasting This is a pretty solid interview with EC on the topic of IF. Some folks have asked about some of the actual metabolic changes and mechanisms involved with IF, but my site is not allowed over there, so here is a link to the Intermittent Fasting collection I did several years ago. The first piece was published in July of 2005 and lays out the science behind IF, including the potential of increased lifespan, improved nutrient partitioning (calories go to muscle, not fat) and an enhanced neuro-endocrine response to exercise. The second piece expands on the science introduced in the original work and looks at some applications of IF, I believe Kurtis Bowler is featured in this.

After more than 7 years of thinking about and tinkering with IF it seems that it’s at best a good fit for 50% of folks. Any kind of sleep deficit or excessive stress will make IF ineffectual, possibly even detrimental. If you use the search function on this site you can find more commentary on the topic.

Hey there! In an effort to get more information out to folks I paid someone to mine the CrossFit Message board and the Performance Mneu message board for old threads I’ve participated in. It’s a boat load of information and I think will help to answer a lot of the questions that pop up for folks. I’ll also have these linked out of the FAQ.

Robb Wolf CrossFit Compilation

Robb Wolf Performance Menu Compilation

Thank you to everyone who came out for all the fun yesterday!! Thanks in particular to Jeremy Thiel and his crew for having us out. Crossfit Central is a great facility and we are looking forward to coming back! Next stop: Catalyst Athletics in Sunnyvale CA!!

I Just received this email, thought I’d pass it along. A key feature I;d like to point out is that Mike got his food quality squared away, made sleep a priority and used intermittent fasting in measured, smart doses. The result? Better performance and health. This is BTW, the order of opperations in how to implement this stuff, food quality, lifestyle THEN play with IF. IF is not a fix-all for a shitty lifestyle.

CrossFit Rockwall 

Book Update: Chapter 1 is due to my editor tomorrow. Lasix has slowed that process down a bit but just so y’all know, I have scheduled deadlines. The book is moving forward.

Sarena sent me some interesting numbers from some old and current blood work. They beautifully illustrate what happens when we control insulin levels and emulate our ancestral diet.

Here is what Sarena sent me:

This was from about a month before starting IFing.

Just thought this may be of use to you!

Oct 27, 2006
chol total 168
HDL 54
Chol/HDL ratioo 3.1
LDL
102
Triglycerides 61
HA1C 6.0

Oct 19, 2007
Chol total 156
HDL 63
Chol/HDL ratio 2.5
LDL 85
Triglycerides 41
HA1C 5.9

I think the numbers speak for themselves. This was the

addition of CF, a return to eating meat, after 14 years

of being vegetarian, and going Paleo with Zone

macronutrients and the addition of Omega 3s. I cut out

all the grains that were supposed to be good for me and
started life over as a carnivore!!

So, we have about one year elapsed in which Sarena adopted a paleo

diet and she started playing with intermittent fasting. The results

are pretty striking: HDL’s are up, LDL’s are down along with triglycerides.

We see a little shift in the HA1C which is good since Sarena is a type

1 diabetic. HA1C is a measure of how much sugar is sticking to red blood

cells and is a function of average blood sugar levels. I’d like to see that

come down more, but all things considered, this is a fantastic shift.

Let’s put this in a bit of context: Sarena cut out bread, rice, pasta

and all the Food Pyramid-Scheme crap we are told to eat. She replaced

these worthless items with nutrient dense lean proteins, veggies, a

little fruit and good fats from olive oil, nuts and avocado. Not even the

clueless Dr. McDougal could argue with the shifts in blood lipids.

A big thank you to Sarena for sending these numbers and letting me share them.

Well…today is the first day back in the gym training folks in almost 2 weeks. We took the past 11 days off due to the holidays and upwards of 50% of my time off was spent sleeping! Left to my own devices I will sleep for 9hrs per night and I think that creeps up closer to 10hrs during the winter, especially if I am training hard. Our normal schedule however allows for 7-8hrs of sleep most nights and the mere knowledge that I have an alarm set for 5 or 6 am the following day is enough to make that already too-short-sleep lower quality. This leads to a chronic sleep debt that I realize after some time off, really decreases my quality of life, productivity, happiness and health.

Over the past 11 days I naturally followed an intermittent fasting schedule of 16-20 hrs and I felt GREAT. My training was solid, digestion good, mental outlook fantastic. On my normal sleep deprived schedule intermittent fasting tends to make me feel like ass. I drop it in on the weekends a bit but as I get more and more tired the duration of fasting I can TOLERATE tends to get shorter. The key point there is tolerate…once I am sleep deprived I’m not so sure that fasting is helping all that much if at all, whereas if I am rested I have no doubts that the episodic periods of fasting improve my health and well-being.

If you are familiar with the book Lights Out! Sleep, Sugar and Survival you will likely understand the importance of not only adequate sleep but also periods of fasting (ketosis) and living in a accordance with our genetics if you want to avoid fun stuff like premature aging, cancer and insulin resistance. Some people like Lights Out, others hate it but the information Wiley and Formby presented continues to be validated and occasionally implemented. A quick google search of Sleep+ Cancer yields some interesting finds. Recently shift work was added to the list of “probable cancer causes” along side smoking, car exhaust and UV radiation.

Perhaps I’m naive, but I find it interesting that some of the most potent anti-cancer “interventions” known include sleep, ketosis, intermittent fasting and…happiness. I find it interesting because this seems to be our default mode. Loads of sleep, episodes of ketosis and fasting among an extended network of friends and family. Now I’m NOT saying our ancestors had a perfect paradise and I don’t want to overly romanticize what was obviously a hard and dangerous way to live, but if we can take the best elements of our understanding of evolutionary medicine and graft that onto our 21st century technology we have some amazing potential. The most important element of this understanding may involve retro-engineering disease. Pick a disease, figure out what lifestyle elements may be at odds with our genetics, then fix it! This could be an amazingly powerful tool, but it does have heavy implications for how we live our modern lives.

So back to sleep and intermittent fasting. A great question is “how do I implement intermittent fasting?” to which I would respond: Implement it to the degree it makes you feel better and improves your life. Two things you MUST do: remove refined carbs from your diet AND get adequate sleep. If you let one slide you really need to tighten up the other. I’ve thought about which one to prioritize but this is a bit like asking if you want your heart or lungs to work. Screw one or the other up and you will have very serious problems.

Once you have food and sleep dialed, get your stress under control. Find ways to minimize bull-shit in your life.

Get some exercise. Do CrossFit, swing a Kettle bell, take a walk. Do some yoga if you want to, just don’t turn into a hippy.

Got all that fixed? NOW you might think about dropping in a few days of intermittent fasting. You want your stressors to be pulsatile and FAVORABLE as a whole. Dropping intermittent fasting onto a sleep-deprived-bad-diet-life willed with conflict is not a good idea!

I’m going to go take a nap before my next client gets here.

Apologies for the spotty posting the past month. The gym has been very busy which is great but it has really cut into my writing time. Add some CrossFit related travel, the holidays and some other fun and things have thoroughly ground to a halt!

I want to thank Shaf and Brad for sending some pdf’s I needed. I will link to the abstracts or full text article as available.

Hot topics in nutritional research are the interrelated concepts of meal frequency (intermittent fasting) and caloric restriction. Oddly, there is little debate on the topic of caloric restriction and it’s ability to reduce the frequency of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s and a host of other ailments. I say oddly because nutritional “science” seems unable to get out of its own way when ferreting out what does and does not constitute healthy eating. Someday nutrition texts or 101 courses may begin with the premise “…H. Sapiens evolved over the Millennia as Hunter Gatherers utilizing an economic strategy of foraging and food sharing that served our species remarkably well until the advent of agriculture…” Not bloody likely I know but worth a hope!

If you recall, caloric restriction has been shown to slow aging in everything from fruit flies to rodents and primates. This is interesting stuff and it offers enticing potential for extending human life except for the fact that most people cannot cope with the constant hunger that accompanies caloric restriction. Intermittent fasting offers a tool that is perhaps more livable than caloric restriction AND may work better, especially when one maintains a normal body weight and activity level with intermittent fasting.

Recent research looks at a few variables, such as a single meal per day and an alternating schedule of ad libitum eating followed by a day of calorie restriction. Both protocols show promise however there are some blind spots we still need to consider in future research.

The first paper I want to look at studies the effect of 3 meals per day (TMPD) vs. 1 meal per day (OMPD) on glucose regulation while keeping calories and macronutrients the same between the two groups. The findings are somewhat confusing and a bit of a let-down for fans (like me) of intermittent fasting:

Impaired morning glucose tolerance test, Impaired insulin release (insulin resistance) and from a related study I will get to in a moment, increased HDL’s's and LDL’s's (no particle size specified) and decreased triglycerides, all in the OMPD folks. One additional confounder is that the OMPD people lost body fat while maintaining their weight, which indicated an increase in fat-free mass. The OMPD protocol appears to improve some elements of insulin sensitivity such as decreased triglycerides, although this is far from clear when we see things like impaired glucose tolerance and sluggish insulin response. The authors cover their bases quite well in the discussion and they mention that one may still be processing the large meal from the previous day when the morning tests are taken, however no one is considering the composition of the meals consumed. This is one of the difficulties of nutrition research in that one must alter as few variables as possible to avoid confounders. This makes ones starting point all the more important. In this situation we find that the macronutrient composition for the two studies are as follows:

Protein-14.5%

Fat-35.6%

Carbohydrate-49.8%

Fiber-17g

The caloric intake was set at ~2364kcal for the OMPD subjects and to decrease the volume of the meal, energy dense (refined) food sources were chosen. So what does this mean in terms of meal size for the OMPD folks?

Protein-87g

Fat-93g

Carb-298g

The study authors wanted to take a standard American diet and compare the TMPD vs. OMPD approach. What we find is a modest decrease in fat mass (14.2 vs. 16.3) and increase in fat free mass in the OMPD vs. TMPD (50.9 vs. 49.4). This is fairly impressive to me considering the subjects consumed a large meal with nearly 300g of dense, refined carbohydrate in addition to a sizable chunk of fat and protein. As I mentioned earlier, the OMPD approach resulted in improved blood lipid markers such as increased HDL and decreased triglycerides, but the ambiguous increase of LDL’s, with no report on the particle size. With the decrease in triglycerides we might assume an increase in LDL particle size and consequently a decrease in atherogenic potential…but that is only a guess without lab verification.

What if macronutrient ratios were shifted towards ancestral levels? What if we saw less mixed meals and divisions along protein/fat meals and carbohydrate only meals, with AVERAGE caloric intake remaining the same? What if carbohydrate sources were not refined? We see marked improvements in blood lipid profiles with a shift towards an ancestral diet (low carb), so it would be interesting to use this as a baseline for future investigations.

Another paper I want to look at studies the effects of one day of ad libitum eating followed by a day of 80% calorie restriction on markers of oxidative stress and asthma in overweight adults. This alternate day caloric restriction (ADCR) approach is interesting for several reasons. We see marked improvements in inflammatory markers, systemic oxidative load, blood lipids, and a decrease in severity and frequency of asthma symptoms. At the end of 8 weeks we see an almost 10% decrease in bodyweight and improvements in subjective reports of hunger. If you recall, alternate day fasts in humans have historically fared poorly due to poor compliance due to the extreme hunger of the subjects. In this case however the small (~300kcal) meal on the CR day appears to be enough to stave off hunger and allow for fairly good compliance.

A few things come to mind when I consider these studies:

1-How much of the difficulty people face on either caloric restriction or intermittent fasting is due to the relatively high amounts of refined carbohydrate and the consequent effects this may have on insulin signaling. In Good Calories, Bad Calories Taubes mentions a study in which the individuals were feed up to 10,000kcals per day, far beyond their caloric needs, yet they remained ravenously hungry. Taubes mentions other studies in which individuals are maintained on low carb, calorie restricted diets with virtually no hunger. This is SUCH in interesting and important point that needs wider airplay.

2-What if we START our investigations with a diet that emulates that of our ancestors, then study the effects of meal spacing or caloric content? I think it’s telling that mild caloric restriction or intermittent fasting can mitigate the effects of a high carb diet, but why not start from a better position? One of the key metabolites studied in the asthma paper above was beta-hydroxy butyrate, a ketone. Ketones appears to confer some advantage both from a perspective of redox potential but also from oxidative stress attenuated via hormesis…why not START with a ketogenic or near ketogenic diet? If intermittent fasting improves insulin sensitivity as it appears to we may be able to alter the range of carbohydrate intake and still maintain therapeutic levels of ketosis. If nothing else one way start at a ketogenic level, add intermittent fasting or caloric restriction, and then titrate carbohydrate up until we see an increase in inflammatory markers and oxidative stress. The list of potential ailments that might benefit from this type of intervention includes cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, asthma, a plethora of autoimmune diseases…we hear barely a whisper about this as a research topic yet therapeutic potential is stunning.

I received the following email from Xuan Mai who works out at Crossfit NYC. She emailed me a few months ago asking a few questions pertaining to paleo eating and intermittent fasting. Here is what Xuan Mai had to say:

Hi Robb,
I thought I would give you an update after my first month of Intermittent Fasting especially after the article by you that I read recently on Art Devany’s blog.
The first week of IF’ing was difficult but it has gotten better. My fasts are typically between 16-19 hours and I am consuming a predominantly Paleo diet (no grains, no dairy but I do drink caffeinated tea and the once a week espresso). My activity consists of 4 Crossfit workouts per week. I’ve been at the Crossfit here in NYC since the first week of July 2007. When I started Crossfit, I had no push ups and no pull ups. Also, I could barely squat the 45 lb bar. I typically Crossfit at 7:00 am during my fast. I also study martial arts twice a week. Other than that, I work as an IT professional.
On to my results:
Weight is down to 126-128 lbs.
I got my first pull up last week and have since been able to bang out 15 singles over the course of the day. I can now do two in a row as well.
I increased the number of reps of full push ups I can do from 2 in a row to 5 in a row.
My body seems to have shrunk significantly in size even though I only dropped 5 lbs.
I tend to run a bit cold when I am at the end of the fast.
I seem to be more alert during my fast now that I have gotten used to fasting.
A few things that I noticed during all this:
I’m better off breaking my fast with low-glycemic vegetables, protein and fat then with a higher-glycemic fruits, protein and fat. A couple of days, I broke my fast with protein, fat, an apple and dates. This was a recipe for disaster because I ended up feeling very, very sleepy afterwards. Also, breaking the fast with a smaller meal tends to be better than breaking the fast with a larger meal.

I feel great working out in the middle of my fast. I don’t feel great working out after I’ve broken my fast.
I did perform a roughly 9-10 day experiment in the middle of all this. I decided to try to incorporate the Zone blocks in with the IF timing with Paleo foods. I calculated that I need 11 blocks and just broke up the the macro-nutrient ratios accordingly.
This move ended up being a disaster. I did lose additional weight (went down to 123 lbs), however, I was completely miserable measuring food, entering it into an online nutritional calculator, was hungry all the time and had fuzzy and muddled thinking. I also ended up cheating more and fantasizing about food like pizza that on a typical calorically unrestricted Paleo diet, I would have no cravings for. I went back to IF with a calorically unrestricted Paleo diet today and immediately felt better.
I really like IF/Paleo. It feels natural to me now. Actually, I feel very free with food and feel that I have tons of time. I no longer obsess about food all day like I used to (recording food intake really messes with me).
Anyway, thanks for the great information on the PM forums. I’m glued to them!

Regards,
Xuan Mai

One final observation on restricting calories using the 11 Zone blocks:
I am still trying to shake the sense of deprivation that occurred when trying to uber-control macro-nutrients and calories. There really is just something natural and pleasurable about eating in the Paleo fashion.

I really appreciate the reader feedback about tinkering with paleo/lowcarb/intermittent fasting. If folks are willing to give it a shot they usually like the results.

I think it is also worth pointing out that we have seen the food freak-out Xuan Mai described when we push a weighed/measured Zone diet on folks. A few disciplined and motivated people really like the precision the Zone offers. For other folks it can dredge up or initiate some wacky and compulsive eating. I think for many people the Zone is too many carbs too often. Obviously many top level Crossfiters use the weighed/measured Zone successfully. It’s good to have options and the Zone is not the only kid on the block.

Reading Good Calories, Bad Calories has been a good slap to the noggin for me because we have observed folks changing food composition to paleo, eating to satiety, and experiencing no hunger or neurosis. Does a calorie restricted paleo/Zone work better than ad-libitum paleo eating for shedding fat? Yes, if you can keep people on it. If we cut the carbs in half (possibly more, and sub those calories with fat) then folks do not experience the hunger and lightheadedness common with the Zone.