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I am already not posting on here as much as I would like! Grr!

Carb loading when on a low-carb diet is an odd concept, after all everything is driven by the ketones obtained from fats right? Well in theory yes but in practice this doesn’t seem to work for all of us and doctors have indicated that I may be getting hypoglycemic when running hard over distances longer than 10km. I can see that this might happen if I am pushing, when pushing my body may well be reverting to using glucose and either I don’t eat enough carbs to fill up my glycogen stores or my body is rubbish at accessing them. Whatever the cause when running hard and long I have had the symptoms of hypoglycemia for around 6 months now and having recently bought I blood glucose monitor I seemed to have confirm this diagnosis with my blood sugar levels considered low when having the symptoms and improving once taking on some carbs.

I was wondering how to get round this as I was not keen on the doctor's suggestion of oats and bananas. The bananas in particular are likely to spike my insulin levels and therefore could cause a drop out of ketosis. So we decided to increase some of the other fruits in my diet, mainly pears and apples. The choice was tough but there are readily available and not too high in carbs, especially when taking into account fibre content, but they do have a higher fructose content than I would like.

Since starting to regularly eat one or two pieces of fruit a day I have not had the symptoms of hypoglycemia nor have I had a low blood sugar reading, to be honest though my miles have also increased so I haven’t been able to push hard. If I still get problems when pushing hard then I am going to have to considering making my own kind of gels as the ones that I have seen recommended but Ben Greenfield are not available in the UK and the nut butter pouches cause your mouth to stick together which is not much fun when you are also slightly dehydrated.

It will be interesting to see how things continue. When I was writing this I was reminded by a comment from my GP that runners have lower life expectancy than (healthy?) non-runners and I am wondering whether this is down to things like carb loading where they stuff their faces with sugar. 

Also for my Ledderhose blog I have been looking at the impact of low carb on inflammation etc. and it is proving to be interesting. 

Carb counting

Counting carbs is not something I have ever really done, when we started the diet we just avoided all foods that might be high in carbs or anything that was heavily processed. I think that when we started we were, at most, on 20g or so of carbs a day. Nowadays with running 40+ miles most weeks I do allow myself a bit more leeway but it is mostly in the form of fruit. I know many people count carbs which is fair enough however I do feel that with the right food supplies you shouldn’t need to. Avoid everything you should and in theory you should remain in ketosis.

Breakfast:

Almond flour bread - bacon sandwich <5g carbs

Lunch:

Greek Yoghurt, nuts and fruit (today pear) - At most 20g, mostly in pear, which I would avoid early on or when not exercising.

Dinner:

Mexican Chilli and cauliflower mash - < 10g

Pudding (if done 7 mile run):

Yoghurt and berries <5g

So in total you are looking at around 40g at the top end and that is a “bad” day because of having the pudding as I went for an evening run and having the pear in my lunch is again because I am running and because of the issues I have had with what might be hypoglycemia. Cut out the fruit from my day and replace with one of the many other low carb options and you are back to around 20g. I feel the above is pack with nutrition as there is some fruit and loads of vegetables in the dinner, we sometimes swap the bread in breakfast for egg or leek and mushrooms but at the moment we are experimenting with it a little bit to save time.

Speaking of time, the bread was made at the weekend un under 40 minutes (most of that is cooking time used to cook the bacon), the lunch is just sticking bits in a box and going and dinner was all cooked at the weekend in about an hour. Total cooking time was a couple of hours and I have enough food for most of the week.

Low carb run - 21/05/2017 - 7am

This morning I went for a fasted run low carb run which is fairly normal for me. During low carb marathon training we would regularly do 18 mile long runs on nothing. Recently I have been building my miles back up after getting the all clear on my heart from the cardiologist. I have found it really hard so actually ended up splitting my run into two. I sill have the second half to go. 

I did also find that my knee was playing up a little bit so I am going to rest it for the day, put some ice on it and also wear different trainers when I go out later and see if that makes a difference. 

Not sure where this will go.

This is a new blog that I am starting because I want to document this for me and for my daughter. At the moment I am a runner and given my background (more on that in the future) that is something for me to be proud of. One of the complications I have over traditional runners is that I live a low-carb lifestyle. Some may say this is a choice but really it isn’t 19 stone on carbs, 12-13 stone without them. The desire to start this was driven after a cardiologist’s appointment where I was told my heart looked good, again more background to come in future posts. They also said that the cause of my problems could be hypoglycaemia and I should try carb loading (as if) though I will try something and document that here.

Basically I am a runner, I am low carb and I want to post about it. I have tried blogs before and only one is successful, the key is that I feel passionate about it and I feel I have something to offer. So in this case I feel like I am keeping a training log and that might help others out there and maybe inspire my daughter. To actually try and keep on top of this I aim to keep posts small and use pictures in there. So for example on the left could be my food for the day, on the right a picture of my watch summarising my run followed by (when I have time) the trace from Garmin. Hopefully in time I can add reviews and more details of the training that I am doing, can’t imagine a few pictures will attract much attention but then it doesn’t need to.

Long term I want to build a tool that will help low carbers plan their meals and make life easier, after all low carb often requires planning.