Carbs and exercise

Some people on forums are unable to exercise because of other problems . Have a few ideas why some others ignore and occasionally even deride the possible benefits of exercise(but I'll keep those to myself).

Don't know why exercise isn't stressed as part of the package by some doctors in the UK (not all I'm sure)
I live elsewhere and the efficacy of exercise is really emphasised together with a balanced diet. The diabetes education room at the hospital has a poster with a three legged stool to represent the 3 elements; diet/exercise/ medication.(almost all T2s who go to the hospital will be at least on metformin) The diabetes courses I've been on include some practical exercise (sessions with a physio, and longish walks). People on T2 courses have similar sessions. As they are in patient courses they also provide some exercise bikes for people to use in the evenings.

As to some of the reasons why it works, specifically in T2 I posted a short video the other day on this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=27850

I do 8+ hours exercise per week, pool, gym and walking[cross country with hills!] I'm very low carb for several years and have no probs with exercise. I assume I've adapted

Hana

I do a lot of hill walking, but most definitely need to fuel them with some carbs. It does depend on the hills. I think mine are a bit steeper than most :lol:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=aveyro ... 80&bih=713

Karlm said:

<snip>
My question is this whilst training I was on a low carb diet and I felt very unwell. I was told that I needed to increase my carb's and sugars in my diet due to the amount of running and training I am doing. Since then I have increased my carb intake to around 200g per day and everything seems fine. My bs levels are good at 6.2 (drastically down from 7.9 pre exercise) why is there so much conflicting information out there? If I was newly diagnosed some of the information would drive my to confusion. Why is that exercise and increased carb intake are better for you than just a low carab diet?

Any ideas. Thx

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Discussions elsewhere suggest that 6.2 may be better than 7.9 but lower values are even better.
I assume that you mean that you test at 7.9 before exercise and at 6.2 afterwards.
There are some suggestions that you should try never to go over 7.8 but many (myself included) find this hard.
What were your readings when you were on lower carb intake and feeling unwell?
Getting down to the low 5s or high 4s after exercise should be a good result.

You might consider cutting back on your carbs a bit and seeing if you can get your BG down into the 5s.

You may have been entering "false hypo" territory where you experience some of the symptoms of a hypo even though your BG is still in the normal range.

If so, you can probably overcome this if you reduce your BG gently in stages.

Cheers

LGC

Karlm said:

Hello everyone

I am new to this site (been a member for while, this is my first post!) and just wanted to find out if others are the same as me. I am T2 have been for around 3 years, I am totally comfortable with it and adjusted my lifestyle accordingly. I gave up drinking, smoking and ditched the usual culprits; white bread, pasta, potato's and recently I have taken up running and a lot of gym work.

My question is this whilst training I was on a low carb diet and I felt very unwell. I was told that I needed to increase my carb's and sugars in my diet due to the amount of running and training I am doing. Since then I have increased my carb intake to around 200g per day and everything seems fine. My bs levels are good at 6.2 (drastically down from 7.9 pre exercise) why is there so much conflicting information out there? If I was newly diagnosed some of the information would drive my to confusion. Why is that exercise and increased carb intake are better for you than just a low carab diet?

Any ideas. Thx

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I'm not sure it is conflicting, although I understand why it might seem confusing. I think all of us understand the benefits of exercise, and there are a lot of discussions on here about it. I play golf, and use an exercise machine in the evenings. Lots of people use running or walking. Most people find that exercise isn't enough on it's own to keep BGs where they want them, so with exercise being a given, a lot of talk turns to diet and reducing carbs until the right level of BG (with exercise) is achieved. Most of us who regularly give advice tell people to test, and only adjust carbs to a level where acceptable levels of BG are achieved. We also then talk about exercise. With my level of exercise, not as rigorous as yours (but I'm old and retired!) I find that I eat a level of 150 to 180 grams of carbs a day to get to my HbA1c of 5.9. Others on here (who exercise more than me) have the same sort of A1c but are on 50 grams of carbs a day to get there. They are ok with exercise at that level - a lot depends on the state of your Pancreas and your insulin resistance as a type 2. So the messages aren't conflicting - it's exercise, eat, test and adjust to get the right results. Or take more or stronger drugs, which most of us don't want to do.

Reiterate what the others are saying it depends on the mix and risks you want to take. For me exercise is walk the dogs for an hour most nights but I hate non normal BG levels so want mine between 4 & 6 at all times so take a bit of Metformin and low carb at around 60g / day to achieve those levels. If I exercised more then I could eat more carbs if I wanted to. Each to his own and all that.

Hello Karlm,

Hope you are well.

I like yourself have found that I needed to increase my carbs , else while training I would hit a wall, where I was just gone with the wind, that I could not lift any weight at all.

My training constits of 3 x per week on the weights, only 2 muscle groups per time and they get hammered, then some cardio which could be 1 of the following running (10mins), rowing (1000 to 1500meters) or 10mins on the bike.

Then on non-weight days, I do some extra cardio if I get time, which at the moment I am finding the time.

Sat and Sun are rest days.

In the last 2 weeks I have started to take 3 protien shakes per day on training day and 2per day on non training day and on the weekend 1 per day.

All week weather its 3,2,1 per day, one of them is always in the morning, so could class that as breakfast ect.. Which is working a treat for me, no hitting the wall, so to say.

BUT, I would try and reduce carbs further, as your BS levels do seem a touch high to me and your HBA1C is at 7.5%, which does seem a little high.

I know its a pain to test all the time, as I have weeks were I am always testing and I have weeks where I may only test 2 or 3 times per day and somtimes I dont test for week or so.

BUT testing is Key here, as I from the last 2 weeks I try and always aim to get my BS down to under 6.5mmol 2 hours after eating and I sometimes test at 1 hour as well, where I try to keep it below 7.5mmol. The lower the better. I have worked out that my max amount of carbs per meal I can do is about 25/30grams top.

As that should drop my own HBA1C further, as its currently 6.3%, which to me is OK, but does not make me happy, it need to be lower, a LOT lower..

My aim for HBA1C its low mid 5% range in a perfect world would be 4.0% 4.2%... But I guess its one step at a time.

You said when you were on Low(er) carbs, you felt funny while training (some one called it a false Hypo), well if you were to test when you felt funny your BS (i recon) would be fine, as I sometimes feel this, but you just have to concentrat and push threw, as the body will dump sugar into your blood stream, when it needs (for Type2 not on Meds).

As training wise am trying (trying being the KEY word) to bulk up, as if I can increase my muscle mass, that may help with burning of the sweet stuff from my blood, well thats my thought anyway, with regards to body-fat, before I started I was 24% fat, currently I am between 18 to 20%, so its coming off, slowly, but still got my belly to loose, once thats gone, I will be happy, may be able to see my abs again.. lol lol lol.. Stop laughing every1.. lol lol lol..

Then hopefully I may be able to take more carbs (well a little more) and things should start to get a little more back to normal..

OMG I have gone on there, sorry..

I was only going to ask you, how to you make Low-carb sauce for curry's, as in Profile, you say you like low carb curries...

Anyway take care and keep up the training.

Cheers
Simply_h

Grazer
I too am pretty old and retired.
I eat very low carb[ about 30 -50 carbs per day] and simply don't need extra for my exercise. Not only do I do the 8 hours or so of formal exercise per week, but I take care of very small grandchildren and walk almost everywhere, and I have dogs.
I'm of the opinion that we can get as much energy as we need from fats. carbs are only for sudden bursts of activity and we can make as much glucose as we need from proteins..
The traditional diet of the Inuit people was almost carb free and yet they hunted over frozen landscape at sub-zero temperatures, using loads of energy just to keep warm. Until recently in history the Inuit ate mostly fish and fatty meat and were generally free from heart disease and diabetes, both of which came in with grain based foods like MacDonalds buns and Pizza.
the key to successful VLC diets is that they need to be high fat.
Hana

I guess there are 2 approaches Hanadr. You don't NEED the carbs for your exercise, and are obviously happy VLC, whereas I see my exercise as a way of being ABLE to eat more carbs because I like them! People like Karim who do high intensity work obviously NEED the quick acting energy you can get from carbs. So it's each to their own, and a choice/balance between need and want.

Welcome Karlm.

Karlm said:

My question is this whilst training I was on a low carb diet and I felt very unwell. I was told that I needed to increase my carb's and sugars in my diet due to the amount of running and training I am doing.

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Who told you that you needed to increase the carbs in your diet? How long were you low-carbing for (and at what level) before you exercised and felt unwell?

It takes between two to four weeks to properly adapt to a ketogenic diet. Once you have become "keto-adapted" (and become a fat burner rather than a sugar burner) then your physical endurance should not be in anyway impaired compared to someone on a "traditional" high-carb diet, as long as your diet contains high amounts of fat. This works because, although you can force your muscles to take up more glycogen through carbo-loading, the rate of glycogen depletion is much lower in a fat adapted athlete during sub-maximal exercise.

http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/2

This is only true for endurance sports such as distance running or cycling. If you are participating in high-intensity (anaerobic) exercises such as weight lifting, then you will need to increase your carbohydrate intake to prevent glycogen depletion in your muscle (which will ultimately limit your performance due to fatigue).

I'm not really interested in weight lifting, and don't have much experience with high-intensity exercise. However, I do run 5k races every weekend at >90% max effort on a <<30g a day ketogenic diet. Since my BG after the race is often much higher than at the start of the race, I clearly have a liver dump somewhere on the course. I can only say that I've never felt it impeding my performance in any way.

Karlm said:

Since then I have increased my carb intake to around 200g per day and everything seems fine. Why is that exercise and increased carb intake are better for you than just a low carab diet?

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200g seems a lot dude, how much exercise are you doing in each session? It's fairly easy to estimate how much carb you are burning by during an exercise session.

Karlm said:

why is there so much conflicting information out there? If I was newly diagnosed some of the information would drive my to confusion. Why is that exercise and increased carb intake are better for you than just a low carab diet?

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The conflicting advice is due to the fact that this is at the very edge of sports nutrition. I am not convinced that increasing your carb intake pre-exercise is necessary for runners or cyclists.

Karim's methods seem to be working for him . His blood glucose levels are falling and he seems to have found a way of life that is working for him at the moment. It is clear that when he tried it very low carb wasn't.

In low carb trials not all subjects do well on a low carb diet. This from Cassandra Forsythe supports Karims experience of low carbing
it is part of a very long thread on the JP fitness forum. http://www.jpfitness.com/showthread.php?t=39280&page=5 Cassandra was one of the researchers in Jeff Voleks Lab. The studies she was involved in were on low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets compared to low-fat weight loss diets for treatment of obesity, dyslipidemia and endothelial dysfunction in individuals with metabolic syndrome.

We had subjects do terribly on ketogenic low-carb, and others do fantastically. But, when you're writing your results, you're stating the average results, and on average, in the study population we researched (while I was in the lab), most responded more favorably to keto low-carb vs low-fat

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...........

Low-carb does have it's advantages for some people, but usually it's those that are not very active and have a lot of body fat to lose. When they lose the fat and become more active, they can increase their carbs (while keeping protein constant), drop their fat intake and be very successful still

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.

For those that are more active, the extreme low-carb diet also does not appear to be as useful or beneficial. Depends on the activity though (and the person), if it's just lifting with no aerobic component, extreme low-carb can be very effective (think power-lifter who gets winded climbing the stairs). But, I think most people are in the mixed activity segment and don't want to get tired just walking around the mall or cleaning their house. However, there are some people that live a very low-carb life and are very fit -aerobically (Dr Stephen Phinney is one of these people).

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Dr Sheri Colberg (from the video I cited earlier says this about low carb diets: It is quite balanced (in my opinion)
http://www.shericolberg.com/exercise-columns16.asp

Not being an exercise freak, (golf and ten mins high impact in the evening as BGs peak is enough for old rams), I don't have great experience here. However, it occurs to me that the ones who do well on Phoenix's post whilst on a ketogenic diet could be the ones that allow time to adapt that Borofergie talks about. It also seems to me that there is an "in between" from the VLC diet to the 200 grams/day that Karim had leapt to. With a 6.2 HbA1c, as Karim has, it might be better surely to find a balance that allows his exercise to get him sub 6

phoenix said:

We had subjects do terribly on ketogenic low-carb, and others do fantastically. But, when you're writing your results, you're stating the average results, and on average, in the study population we researched (while I was in the lab), most responded more favorably to keto low-carb vs low-fat

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That's kind of missing the point though isn't it?

As athletes with T2 diabetes the question is not usually "what dietry approach will allow me to achieve my peak athletic performance" but instead "what diet will allow me to perform at a good level while not endangering my health."

Let's be honest, there isn't exactly a stream of top-class athletes dumping the carbs for a high-fat diet is there? (although there are some...). I don't know if I could improve my 10k PB by scoffing a load of carbs before the start, and I don't really care. I'd choose a decent HbA1c over a slightly better PB any time.

Not even Phinney is suggesting that low-carb is better than high-carb for athletic performance: "Both observational and prospectively designed studies support the conclusion that submaximal endurance performance can be sustained despite the virtual exclusion of carbohydrate from the human diet.". His point is that a low-carb diet offers the best compromise between health and athletic performance - particularly for a T2 diabetic.

But anyway Phoenix, this is all blah, blah, blah, coming from a fat 10k runner to a marathon veteran. Let's see how anti-carbohydrate I am after I get a half-marathon or two under my belt...

Karlm said:

I have never run before, just running for 10 seconds put me in a terrible state and then I came across the C25K, which I did by the end of January and it was a great sense of achievement. Whilst doing this running programme I was (and still am) losing weight. But I started to get real problems with dizzyness, breathing problems and a general sense of something not right. After speaking to my personal trainer he suggested increasing my carbs, which I did. I found an immense sense of well being and superb levels of energy, my stamina increased so much that I now run around 5-7k per run.

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That's an incredible effort. Well done! I did something very similar with the Nike+ 5k beginners programme.

Have you tried doing a parkrun yet? They are a great (free) way of getting your 5k PB down, and making all that training pay off.

Karlm said:

I am now training 4-6 days a week with an increased focus on loose weights. I alternate my days off and I feel very good. My BS levels that I mentioned before were prior to taking up exercise (7.9) after I took up exercise they dropped to 6.2, although when I was low carbs and exercise my BS levels were down to 3.6, which I know is too low, now with an increase in carbs and my rate of exercising I am at 5.8 -6.2, which is high or low depending on your point of view.

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Sounds like you're doing brilliantly and have worked out exactly how to balance your exercise with your carb intake. It's all in the BG. With great numbers like that, you shouldn't consider trying anything else.

Karlm said:

There is however an conflict of viewpoints regarding carb consumption. I know many people see an exceptionally low rate of consumption as a good thing but I have found that with exercise, you actually need a higher rate of carbs. Now we can spend all day defining 'a rate of exercise', but in my experience I think any exercise that raises the heart rate to 80% of its maximum for a prolonged period of time requires a different approach. Also if you are doing weights/resistance/endurance training, then the muscles need sugars/carbs within 1 hour of training. As diabetics we have problems in this area. Exercise helps reduce abnormal blood glucose by using it from the blood and muscle as fuel and by making insulin more sensitive and efficient at storing glucose in a form called glycogen in muscle and liver.

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I disagree with this a little bit though. I ran a (comeback PB) 5k @91% of my max heartrate on Saturday, and a hilly 10k @80% yesterday, both without any extra carbs (above and beyond my 30g a day diet). I tested my BG after the 10k run and it was @5.5mg/l. Maybe the trick is that you have to be in ketosis and "keto-adapted" first. I don't know.

I also don't know how sustainable this is much beyond 10k (I felt like I could have gone for longer yesterday), or if allowing my liver to dump is any different than scoffing carbs myself anyway.

My point is not that anyone should do what I'm doing, but so far, I have managed to perform athletically on a VLCarb diet.

Karlm said:

Once I finish the training I will be looking at reducing the runs and gym sessions and tweak the diet to a more moderate level.

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Why bother? What you are doing is working...

Karlm said:

If anyone is thinking of exercising start by looking up C25K, it will change your life if you stick with it.

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+100 :thumbup:

Not sure that anyone is interested but I ran 8 miles and 9 miles on almost zero carbs this week, both times without any ill effect (apart from sore ankles and shredded nipples).

I gobbled up Phinney and Volek's "Art and Science of Low Carb Performance" this week and they reckon that, once ketosis-adapted, you should be able to perform endurance athletics without ever "bonking" or hitting the wall.