Plant-based diet for cycling - tips and tricks?

[gurk700]

I'm 40. Been vegan 8 years and counting. 0 negative impact on my cycling performance. I haven't PR'ed or gotten better in 2022 and this year but that was purely life circumstances and not being able to train as much. (Moving back and forth overseas, losing family, high work stress, quitting job and getting into a new job where I work 16 hours a day etc etc)

Up until 2021, where I stuck with my training and ate purely vegan since 2015, I've broken my PR's every year, had the best w/kg and felt amazing.

People are extremely uninformed about veganism / nutrition so best to try and do your own thing and experiment. I do absolutely ZERO special about "watching my protein" cause regular vegan food I eat day in and day out have as much if not more protein than when I used to eat meat and dairy. Usually people equate vegan diet to eating veggies all day but that's a fast track to malnutrition and underperforming. Don't forget your seeds, legumes and fruit along with your veggies and you'll never, ever need protein powders and all that crap people think is necessary for a vegan diet.

[flying]

People are extremely uninformed about veganism / nutrition so best to try and do your own thing and experiment. I do absolutely ZERO special about "watching my protein" cause regular vegan food I eat day in and day out have as much if not more protein than when I used to eat meat and dairy. Usually people equate vegan diet to eating veggies all day but that's a fast track to malnutrition and underperforming. Don't forget your seeds, legumes and fruit along with your veggies and you'll never, ever need protein powders and all that crap people think is necessary for a vegan diet.

I am the exact same & your right

[Conza]

LCHF. Carnivore here (for all the reasons vegan claim to be vegan).

Tips? Possibly better than SAD ('standard American diet') you were likely on before... doesn't mean it's optimal though.

Tricks: "very unhealthy cholesterol levels"

On what type of diet? https://carnivoremd.com/dave-feldman-th ... olesterol/

Nothing wrong with LCHF if that floats your boat. Can be a perfectly healthy way to eat (though potentially not optimal for endurance athletes).

But Saladino et al are peddlers of some of the worst pseudoscience around. Chery picked, misconstrued, misrepresented, misunderstood tripe. Avoid at all costs.

Incredibly optimal for endurance athletes. I became bonk proof. Fat adapted.

Did an Ironman on 3 boiled eggs, water, and salt.

Phinney and Volek if you can't stomach Saladino.

Have fun staying metabolically poor.

[warthog101]

I'm 40. Been vegan 8 years and counting. 0 negative impact on my cycling performance. I haven't PR'ed or gotten better in 2022 and this year but that was purely life circumstances and not being able to train as much. (Moving back and forth overseas, losing family, high work stress, quitting job and getting into a new job where I work 16 hours a day etc etc)

Up until 2021, where I stuck with my training and ate purely vegan since 2015, I've broken my PR's every year, had the best w/kg and felt amazing.

People are extremely uninformed about veganism / nutrition so best to try and do your own thing and experiment. I do absolutely ZERO special about "watching my protein" cause regular vegan food I eat day in and day out have as much if not more protein than when I used to eat meat and dairy. Usually people equate vegan diet to eating veggies all day but that's a fast track to malnutrition and underperforming. Don't forget your seeds, legumes and fruit along with your veggies and you'll never, ever need protein powders and all that crap people think is necessary for a vegan diet.

That sounds good.
I had a half baked effort a few years back and was basically in calorie deficit I believe.
Anyway, I am interested in learning more, as for long term health there are significant advantages. Do you have any sources where I can find more info on plant based fueling for athletic performance?

[gurk700]

I'm 40. Been vegan 8 years and counting. 0 negative impact on my cycling performance. I haven't PR'ed or gotten better in 2022 and this year but that was purely life circumstances and not being able to train as much. (Moving back and forth overseas, losing family, high work stress, quitting job and getting into a new job where I work 16 hours a day etc etc)

Up until 2021, where I stuck with my training and ate purely vegan since 2015, I've broken my PR's every year, had the best w/kg and felt amazing.

People are extremely uninformed about veganism / nutrition so best to try and do your own thing and experiment. I do absolutely ZERO special about "watching my protein" cause regular vegan food I eat day in and day out have as much if not more protein than when I used to eat meat and dairy. Usually people equate vegan diet to eating veggies all day but that's a fast track to malnutrition and underperforming. Don't forget your seeds, legumes and fruit along with your veggies and you'll never, ever need protein powders and all that crap people think is necessary for a vegan diet.

That sounds good.
I had a half baked effort a few years back and was basically in calorie deficit I believe.
Anyway, I am interested in learning more, as for long term health there are significant advantages. Do you have any sources where I can find more info on plant based fueling for athletic performance?

I really don't as I don't think it requires anything special. What I would suggest (and what I found most successful) is getting one of those free nutritional tracking apps.
I basically spent a couple weeks adjusting my meals to a point where every nutrition / vitamin / mineral I need is as close to 100% daily intake as possible.
To do that, I had to slowly diversify my eating habits into getting in more fruits / legumes to support what I already get from veggies.
Not just by going vegan but also paying attention to that nutritional balance and well roundedness, I felt great, lost bunch of weight (was down to 142lbs from where I was stuck at 154lbs for years) and beat all my PR's that were stagnant for years.

[warthog101]

I really don't as I don't think it requires anything special. What I would suggest (and what I found most successful) is getting one of those free nutritional tracking apps.
I basically spent a couple weeks adjusting my meals to a point where every nutrition / vitamin / mineral I need is as close to 100% daily intake as possible.
To do that, I had to slowly diversify my eating habits into getting in more fruits / legumes to support what I already get from veggies.
Not just by going vegan but also paying attention to that nutritional balance and well roundedness, I felt great, lost bunch of weight (was down to 142lbs from where I was stuck at 154lbs for years) and beat all my PR's that were stagnant for years.

I didn't do much in the way of legumes or nuts to supplement. I'll have a look thanks.

[wooger]

LCHF. Carnivore here (for all the reasons vegan claim to be vegan).

Tips? Possibly better than SAD ('standard American diet') you were likely on before... doesn't mean it's optimal though.

Tricks: "very unhealthy cholesterol levels"

On what type of diet? https://carnivoremd.com/dave-feldman-th ... olesterol/

Nothing wrong with LCHF if that floats your boat. Can be a perfectly healthy way to eat (though potentially not optimal for endurance athletes).

But Saladino et al are peddlers of some of the worst pseudoscience around. Chery picked, misconstrued, misrepresented, misunderstood tripe. Avoid at all costs.

Incredibly optimal for endurance athletes. I became bonk proof. Fat adapted.

Did an Ironman on 3 boiled eggs, water, and salt.

Phinney and Volek if you can't stomach Saladino.

Have fun staying metabolically poor.

Bonk proof... by being perma-bonked. There's simply no way you can output power in higher zones and go fast while 'running on fat'.

Most people are training to go faster, not crawl round on minimal food.

[AJS914]

Plant based is great and healthy depending on the plants. Greger though is definitely a quack. He's not the worst of the quacks but he cherry picks info and studies to promote veganism. Also the claims that you can cure cancer with a vegan diet is dangerous.

https://sigmanutrition.com/episode401/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nutritionfacts-org/

Even DurianRider (pro vegan youtuber) has a problem with him:

https://youtu.be/xksUqWQ9Egc?si=vOT9OesVYA0xKUUo

[AJS914]

This is the paper where Greger shows that leucine is bad for you. Leucine is an essential amino acid. And this paper proves nothing in humans.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23216249/

Abstract

DR (dietary restriction), or reduced food intake without malnutrition, is associated with extended longevity, improved metabolic fitness and increased stress resistance in a wide range of organisms. DR is often referred to as calorie restriction, implying that reduced energy intake is responsible for its widespread and evolutionarily conserved benefits. However, recent data indicate dietary amino acid restriction as a key mediator of DR benefits. In fruitflies, an imbalance in essential amino acid intake is thought to underlie longevity benefits of DR. In mammals, reduced dietary protein or essential amino acid intake can extend longevity, improve metabolic fitness and increase stress resistance. In the present paper we review two evolutionarily conserved signal transduction pathways responsible for sensing amino acid levels. The eIF2α (eukaryotic initiation factor 2α) kinase GCN2 (general amino acid control non-derepressible 2) senses the absence of one or more amino acids by virtue of direct binding to uncharged cognate tRNAs. The presence of certain amino acids, such as leucine, permits activation of the master growth regulating kinase TOR (target of rapamycin). These two signal transduction pathways react to amino acid deprivation by inhibiting general protein translation while at the same time increasing translation of specific mRNAs involved in restoring homoeostasis. Together, these pathways may contribute to the regulation of longevity, metabolic fitness and stress resistance.

[Conza]

LCHF. Carnivore here (for all the reasons vegan claim to be vegan).

Tips? Possibly better than SAD ('standard American diet') you were likely on before... doesn't mean it's optimal though.

Tricks: "very unhealthy cholesterol levels"

On what type of diet? https://carnivoremd.com/dave-feldman-th ... olesterol/

Nothing wrong with LCHF if that floats your boat. Can be a perfectly healthy way to eat (though potentially not optimal for endurance athletes).

But Saladino et al are peddlers of some of the worst pseudoscience around. Chery picked, misconstrued, misrepresented, misunderstood tripe. Avoid at all costs.

Incredibly optimal for endurance athletes. I became bonk proof. Fat adapted.

Did an Ironman on 3 boiled eggs, water, and salt.

Phinney and Volek if you can't stomach Saladino.

Have fun staying metabolically poor.

Bonk proof... by being perma-bonked. There's simply no way you can output power in higher zones and go fast while 'running on fat'.

Most people are training to go faster, not crawl round on minimal food.

Nope. You have no idea what gluconeogenesis is and it shows. tHErEs S1MplY nO WaY MaN!1

*cough* https://www.endureiq.com/blog/jan-van-b ... Fat%20Diet
Fresh off the plane from Zurich, I’m still on a high after seeing my good friend and athlete Jan van Berkel finished on top of the podium at the last ever Zurich-hosted Ironman Switzerland last weekend in a blistering time of 8:17:04.

A really important part of the approach I have taken, and continue to take with Jan, is the inclusion of specific higher-intensity, interval-type workouts within his training programme. Inclusion of these high-quality sessions is critical for all long-distance triathletes, especially those transitioning to a LCHF diet. One of the main concerns people have about transitioning to LCHF is the loss of their “top-end”, or their ability to produce and sustain power outputs at and above lactate threshold, since this requires the ability to rapidly access and metabolise carbohydrate energy stores. However, in my experience as both an athlete and a coach, I feel that with a little perseverance, these concerns can be alleviated provided that high-intensity training is maintained. There is an initial drop in “top-end” performance, but, crucially, it does bounce-back. It just takes a few weeks on LCHF for the required adaptations to take place and to allow those high-intensity sessions be nailed as they had been previously.

In fact, this is actually something I recently investigated with some colleagues in the Czech Republic in a study that has just been published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology. Here, we transitioned a group of volunteers to a LCHF diet for 12 weeks and studied the changes in their performance. An initial decline in high-intensity performance was observed, but we also observed a bounce-back in their top-end performance. That is, after sufficient time for adaptation, high-intensity performance improved. I’m going record a video on the results of this study specifically, so stay tuned for that.

Then read the simple data. Cope all you want & have fun staying metabolically poor. No way right?!

[mrlobber]

Nope. You have no idea what gluconeogenesis is and it shows. tHErEs S1MplY nO WaY MaN!1

*cough* https://www.endureiq.com/blog/jan-van-b ... Fat%20Diet
Fresh off the plane from Zurich, I’m still on a high after seeing my good friend and athlete Jan van Berkel finished on top of the podium at the last ever Zurich-hosted Ironman Switzerland last weekend in a blistering time of 8:17:04.

Then read the simple data. Cope all you want & have fun staying metabolically poor. No way right?!

Could you tell us what's your own super-metabolically-rich fat oxidation rate in g/h?

The funny thing is, nothing of what you wrote/quoted actually says that LCHF is superior to other diets.

The fact that elite Ironman performance demands high fat oxidation rates, is no secret. In that sense, van Berkel is no special guy, and I bet you could take any other top Ironman performer and obtain similar fat oxidation numbers. The point that he used LCHF to get there is fine, but obviously there are other paths to similar fat oxidation performance. And nowhere does the blogpost you quoted say how many gels he actually ate through that performance, to the contrary, it mentions they calculated "appropriate carbohydrate fuelling during racing".

FWIW, from that chart I see my own fat oxidation rates at fatmax rival those of van Berkels at 2016, and I'm just an average amateur who has never been close to any LCHF, lol.

[Conza]

Nope. You have no idea what gluconeogenesis is and it shows. tHErEs S1MplY nO WaY MaN!1

*cough* https://www.endureiq.com/blog/jan-van-b ... Fat%20Diet
Fresh off the plane from Zurich, I’m still on a high after seeing my good friend and athlete Jan van Berkel finished on top of the podium at the last ever Zurich-hosted Ironman Switzerland last weekend in a blistering time of 8:17:04.

Then read the simple data. Cope all you want & have fun staying metabolically poor. No way right?!

Could you tell us what's your own super-metabolically-rich fat oxidation rate in g/h?

The funny thing is, nothing of what you wrote/quoted actually says that LCHF is superior to other diets.

The fact that elite Ironman performance demands high fat oxidation rates, is no secret. In that sense, van Berkel is no special guy, and I bet you could take any other top Ironman performer and obtain similar fat oxidation numbers. The point that he used LCHF to get there is fine, but obviously there are other paths to similar fat oxidation performance. And nowhere does the blogpost you quoted say how many gels he actually ate through that performance, to the contrary, it mentions they calculated "appropriate carbohydrate fuelling during racing".

FWIW, from that chart I see my own fat oxidation rates at fatmax rival those of van Berkels at 2016, and I'm just an average amateur who has never been close to any LCHF, lol.

look at the cope and goal posts moving...

"There's simply no way you can output power in higher zones and go fast while 'running on fat'."

* Shows the exact opposite *

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 3.1150265/

Second, substantially higher FATMAX values (>1.5 g/min) can be measured in athletes adapted to the LCHF diet. Third, endurance athletes exercising at >85%VO2max, whilst performing 6 × 800 m running intervals, measured the highest rates of fat oxidation yet reported in humans. Peak fat oxidation rates measured at 86.4 ± 6.2%VO2max were 1.58 ± 0.33 g/min with 30% of subjects achieving >1.85 g/min. These studies challenge the prevailing doctrine that carbohydrates are the predominant oxidized fuel during high-intensity exercise. We recently found that 30% of middle-aged competitive athletes presented with pre-diabetic glycemic values while on an HCLF diet, which was reversed on LCHF. We speculate that these rapid changes between diet, insulin, glucose homeostasis, and fat oxidation might be linked by diet-induced changes in mitochondrial function and insulin action. Together, we demonstrate evidence that challenges the current crossover concept and demonstrate evidence that a LCHF diet may also reverse features of pre-diabetes and future metabolic disease risk, demonstrating the impact of dietary choice has extended beyond physical performance even in athletic populations.

Absolutely shattered. But seriously , go suck on 30 gels the next time you do anything endurance related

[wooger]

Absolutely shattered. But seriously , go suck on 30 gels the next time you do anything endurance related

Ironman, the ultimate long distance steady state endurance sport, is not a good example of supreme high zone cardio performance.

Go look for a more dynamic sport like football or bike racing.

In any case, the example of this specific Triathlete seems misleading, reminds me of the 'Gamechangers' documentary on Netflix, where 100% of the athletes you've heard of that they mention aren't in fact vegans at all. He doesn't follow a low carb diet and pounds sugar during the races like everyone else.