Recovery and Diet

Personal experience and Global Cycling News programming often disagree as they have speaking about Ketone diets.

As it turns out, a weight loss diet and their idea of a Ketone dirt are more or less the same thing. Protein and Fats and no carbohydrates.

Since my wife has been trying to lose weight (and has been successful) I've ended up eating GCN's sort of Ketone Diet.

It hasn't have any positive effect on my performance and I can tell you that. Yet when I stop on a ride and have a coffee and a sugar roll, I get not only a boost in performance but I feel a lot better after the ride without the need to fall asleep in the lounge chair before I can even put the bike away.

Now what this is telling me is that if you are on the Ketone Diet your (or perhaps only my) liver simply cannot metabolize fat fast enough to maintain a performance level, but the speed with which I can metabolize carbohydrates is enough to hold my performance levels (which, granted are only around 200 Watts on a good day) for my normal rides of around 40-60 miles with a lot of climbing.

Now if we are talking a scant 10K I have generated as much as 400 watts over that distance a couple of times this year.