Before we discuss the research showing why low-carb diets are a really, really stupid idea for athletes, I want you to imagine the following post-training conversation between a coach and a star football player whose performance has recently gone to hell in a hand basket:
“Joey, come over here, I need to talk to you”
“Sure, what’s up coach?”
Joey, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Waddya mean coach?”
“At the start of the year, you were tearing up the field, now you’re playing like a fairy. My elderly mother-in-law could run rings around you. What the hell is going on? You got women problems again?”
“Nah coach, I haven’t touched any underage girls since the player counseling program last year”.
“OK, that’s good. So what’s wrong then? You been drinking? Taking drugs? Family problems? Money trouble? Talk to me Joey, talk to me.”
“Nothing like that, coach.”
“Joey, for the last 3 weeks, you’ve been dragging your butt around like a tired old man. I gotta know why…the sponsors are freaking out, the newspapers and radio shows are having a field day, team management is breaking my balls…think, Joey, think…what happened 3 weeks ago that could’ve caused all this?”
“Well coach, I did change my diet a bit.”
“What do you mean ‘a bit’?”
“Well, a month ago my diabetic Grandma visited from Rockhampton and she was telling us how she lost 5 kilos and felt so much better after following the Dukan Diet and -”
“The WHAT diet?”
“The Dukan Diet. It’s by some French bloke who reckons you should eat lots of protein and ******-all carbs for weight loss. So I went on the Internet and found this website called Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb, which I think is Mexican for a crazy person on a low-carbohydrate diet or something, but anyway, it was saying that these low-carb diets are wikkid for athletes and he even did a podcast with some athlete from one of those countries way up North where the sheilas all have blond hair and pigtails who reckons he felt so much better after starting a low-carb diet, so then I Googled some more and found this article by a bloke called Groves who said that a guy named Momo performed the fastest ever marathon time in Olympic history, and it was because he was from Ethiopia and everyone knows that in Ethiopia everyone eats like the Masai warriors who eat nothing but fatty milk and meat and Zebu cow blood and-“
“Joey!”
“Yeah coach?”
“You know that banned list we give all you players at the start of the year?”
“You mean the one with prohibited stuff we’re s’posed to avoid, like 15 year-old groupies, strip clubs, Hong Kong taxi-cab roofs, and alcohol on airplanes?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. You remember what was at the top of the list? What’s at number one on the list of things to avoid?”
“Can’t remember coach…”
“Fad diets, Joey, fad diets! For chrissakes, we pay big money for a professional sports nutritionist to dial in your eating programs, right down to the very last calorie, and we can’t afford to have you guys stuffing it up by following every half-baked diet scam you come across on the Internet!”
“Sorry coach.”
[The story has a happy ending: Joey met with the team nutritionist, got back on a high-carb diet, religiously took his post-workout carbs, started dating a girl over 18 years of age, and went on to have an awesome season].