22/02/2020
It’s time we had this conversation.
LCHF and fasting for female athletes are being criticized of late, and I feel we’ve lost perspective. Please consider:
1. It’s not unhealthy or dangerous to eat more plants, high quality protein and healthy fats. These are the most nutrient dense options there are.
2. It’s not unhealthy or dangerous to swap refined carbohydrates for whole food carbohydrates. I hope this is obvious.
3. It’s not unhealthy or dangerous to check in with the volume of fruit or starch you eat, in fact if you don’t, you often end up under-eating greens, protein and healthy fats.
4. It’s not unhealthy or dangerous to simply eat breakfast when you are hungry, rather than the minute you wake up. Everybody fasts. We’re not talking about water or dry fasts here.
5. It’s not unhealthy or dangerous to exercise at a light to moderate intensity before breakfast. I almost always recommend an MCT Coffee prior, which provides ~250 calories and still counts as fasted training for the purpose of this discussion. We do need more research on fasted training in female athletes and an important definition will be between those who are fat adapted and those who are not. We simply can’t study a sugar burning metabolism and extrapolate the results to every female athlete.
6. LCHF is not keto. For female athletes, 75, 100 or 150g of carbohydrates per day from wholefoods is not unhealthy or dangerous.
Like everything in life, it’s relative. So if you are of menstrual cycle age, use your cycle as your monthly report card. And change things if you are not getting an A+ each month.
What do you think?
