Wheat Belly for athletes

Many people have fallen into the trap of believing that carbohydrates are necessary for exercise. This is why you see marathoners and triathletes hosting pasta dinners the night before an event, while sponsors of high-sugar sports drinks and energy bars line up to tell them that their products enhance performance. But carb loading or carbs during exercise are not only unnecessary, they have harmful effects that eventually catch up with you—-despite years of engaging in the healthy practice of exercise. It all started about 50 years ago when exercise researchers noted that, when athletes following an unrestricted diet were deprived of carbohydrates, exercise performance during the first week dropped: lower time to peak exhaustion, longer times to complete a specific biking, running, swimming or other task. This was corroborated many times and led to the belief that loading up on carbs before and during exercise improved performance because of the observations of reduced first week performance. What those early studies failed to recognize is that, if carbohydrates are sharply restricted, but then 3,4, or more weeks are allowed to pass, then athletic performance recovers and can can even exceed the level of performance present before the carb restriction (though true mostly in non-athletes). Even trained athletes maintaining a no-carb, ketotic state do not suffer impaired performance. Carb loading and exercise carbs are therefore used to restore muscle and liver glycogen as ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle exercise gluten physical performance grains low-carb Source Type: blogs