Latest / Callum Walker | Figuring It Out / #96: [KETO Marathon Diaries Day 1] - Why I'm Running A Marathon Ketogenic

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#96: [KETO Marathon Diaries Day 1] - Why I'm Running A Marathon Ketogenic · Callum Walker | Figuring It Out

• 0:03
  Callum Walker: If fear is the only thing stopping us from achieving our dreams and we only fear what we don't understand, then the antidote to fear is knowledge. All we have to do is find out who has the knowledge that we need to conquer our fears and achieve our entrepreneurial dreams. My name is Callum Walker, and welcome to the podcast that will help you figure it out and conquer this lonely entrepreneurial journey. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the podcast, and welcome to the first entry of the carb free marathon diary. So yesterday, I started the first step of the nine week challenge to prepare myself and get myself in the physiological position and place to be able to do a marathon without any form of carbohydrates.
• 0:57
  Now, you might be asking, one, is that possible? And two, why on earth would you do that? Well, I think the first thing is I'm gonna answer the why. The why to begin with is I stumbled across low carbohydrate diets back in February. And for some strange reason, low carb diets have been put in the the category of fad diets as if they are a fad.
• 1:31
  Now if we almost kind of look at what a fad is, it's hard to almost kind of like give a specific definition around what a fad diet is, so to speak. But when I think of a fad diet, I think of something like, the cabbage soup diet where the only thing you do is eat cabbage soup, or the potato diet where the only thing you do is eat potatoes, or the Cambridge diet where the only thing you do is eat products that are centered around, those that are sold by the Cambridge weight loss company. Those things I put in the category of a fad diet. Now if we look at most fad diets and I think where the, you know, the shame really kind of comes that a low carb diet is put in that category is most of those diets have no real kind of nutritional benefit to the individual. The only thing that they're really doing is extremely restricting their overall caloric intake, which then causes the body to shed weight.
• 2:34
  Whereas when you look at a low carb diet, a low carb diet is not a fad diet. And the reason for that is that if you look at most fad diets, the cabbage soup diet as an example, I don't know how long I'd be able to just eat cabbage soup for. Whereas if I look at myself, I've been low carb for the past ten years. So on average, I've probably consumed around 50 grams of carbohydrate per day for the past ten years. So for someone to almost kinda say that that's a fad diet doesn't quite make sense to me because I almost kind of see a fad diet as a radical change in behavior that only has a short term lifespan.
• 3:20
  But then the other thing is with a low carb diet is that when you drastically restrict your carbohydrate consumption, it's not just about caloric restriction. That can happen, but it's actually about you metabolically changing the body. Like, the body legitimately changes and flicks over from being carbohydrate dominant to being fat dominant, where you get to a place where effectively if you go through the adaptation phase of a low carb diet, the body can basically get to a place where almost a 100% of the body's energy is going to run on fat. So whether that's muscles, whether that's the heart, whether that's the lungs, they will get to a place where pretty much a 100% of their fuel will come from fat. It can legitimately double or even triple your ability to utilize fat.
• 4:10
  Now the question then comes down to, well, you know, why would you, like, put a podcast together, which is I'm doing a carb free marathon? Like, why is that a big deal? Well, if you look at within the sports nutrition world, the main, like, the main way in which endurance runners are advised to eat is to consume a shit ton of carbohydrates. And the reason for that is that what happens is that when you are carb adapted, and this kind of brings me to an important point that we have two physical states. You're either someone who is carb adapted or someone who is fat adapted.
• 4:52
  So effectively, all your food is is an instruction to the body what you want it to use as a source of fuel. You pump the body full of carbohydrates. It's gonna run on carbohydrates. But if you want the body to run on fat, you give it a high amount of fat. So the body's like a car that can run on petrol or can run on diesel.
• 5:07
  Whatever you pump it full of, it's gonna run on. If I pump that car full of petrol, it's going to run on petrol. But if I want it to run on diesel, I've gotta give it diesel. And effectively, that's what happens when you go through a state of fat adaptation. By exposing the body to low carbohydrate conditions for a long enough period of time and giving it the fat that it requires, then the body can start to learn to be able to use fat at a higher intensity, and you can effectively switch away from being exclusively running on carbohydrates to now being able to run on fat.
• 5:43
  Now, in the sports nutrition world, it's very much pumped that to perform any form of high intensity exercise, you've got to consume a shit ton of carbs, which, again, I agree if you're carb adapted. And here's where the the research really kind of falls short because the majority of research that is taken up in the sports nutrition world is done in carb adapted individuals. So when you have someone who's carb adapted and don't give them carbs, like, they're battered. Why? Because you've got a car that runs on petrol and you've removed the petrol from it, and then you go and say, like, go and drive 200 miles, but it's like, but I haven't got any petrol.
• 6:22
  Whereas if that car had a long enough period of time to adapt and to become a car that can utilize diesel, then you don't need to worry about putting petrol in the car because it can run on diesel. And that's effectively how the body works. So to keep it really simple, you have something in endurance exercise, which is referred to as hitting the wall, and that's where effectively the body has ran out of energy, so to speak. But actually, it's where the body's ran out of energy that it can use. And if you're a carb adapted individual, the body's reliant on muscle glycogen.
• 6:56
  So the carbohydrates stored away within your muscles. And typically, you only have about two hours worth of fuel on average in the form of muscle glycogen, which is stored carbohydrate, which means that if you're running a marathon, let's say if your average person is around four, four and a half hours, you're going to exhaust that two hour exercise tank, which means that you need to make sure you can keep topping up that tank because otherwise, if that tank goes empty, the brain starts to panic. And when you're in a carb adapted state, the brain is the only organ in the body that has to get a 100% of its energy from carbohydrates. So effectively, it's not a tank for the body. It's actually a tank for the brain.
• 7:40
  So if you go and do some form of exercise for more than two hours and fully deplete and empty out that tank, the brain then doesn't have any fuel, and then the body will literally die because without the brain, the body dies. So that's where it's like it's heavily pushed. You need to make sure that you are pumping the body full of carbohydrates to ensure that you have enough fuel available to the brain, which is why people take squeezy gels. It's why people have carbohydrates during their run to make sure that the brain has got enough fuel. However, what happens is that when you get fat adapted, that starts to change because the brain can then actually start to get two thirds of its energy from fat in the form of ketone bodies.
• 8:29
  So when you go through a state of fat adaptation, the only thing that actually really causes someone to hit the wall is actually just running out of glucose available to the brain. And that's only a problem if the brain is a glucose dependent organ that has to have 100 of its energy come from carbohydrates. Whereas if you can flick over and go through a state of adaptation, which is known as the keto adaptation process, then what happens is that the brain can then actually get up to two thirds of its energy in the form of ketones, and it can effectively use two thirds of its energy from fat, which effectively means that the brain goes away from being reliant on a two hour energy tank of stored carbohydrates towards actually a, you know, if we look at how much fat we have stored, whereas we have two hours worth of carbohydrates stored, we have typically between fifty, sixty, and seventy days worth of energy stored away as fatty acids, which means that effectively you can give the brain a consistent supply of energy. Now that then brings me to the question of, well, why are you doing that, Callum?
• 9:38
  Like, why not just go and nail a load of carp? Well, I think the first thing is that if I look at the longest distance that I've ran, it's a half marathon. That's the longest that I've ran personally. So I think, first of all, I've ran a half marathon, without any form of carbohydrates. So I have run it in a fat adapted state.
• 9:58
  And for the moment, everything that I've just articulated to you in my own experience is just theory. You know, I know that there are multiple individuals that I know of who have completed ultra endurance activities in a fat adapted state without carbohydrates. I know of them, but I haven't done it myself. So I think the first thing is to almost kinda see, like, is it possible? Now the problem we have is that the consequences of just seeing if that thing is possible are I could be fucked.
• 10:28
  I could find myself in a bit of a pickle. But I trust the science and I trust my knowledge. And I also think that, like, just in general, I think something that I get very tired of is, you know, just the way in which the world works, which is, well, that's how things are and that's how we've always done things. So that's how things need to be done. And I just really, really dislike a lack of challenging of the status quo.
• 10:52
  Just because someone said for the past fifty years that you have to nail a load of carbohydrates to go and exercise doesn't necessarily make it true. And there is so much research coming out that showcases that this necessarily isn't actually the case. Because, again, I remember one of the studies that I came across in 2016 was done by a guy called Jeff Volek. I believe he was at Ohio State University at the time, which is where he got 10 fat adapted runners, people who've been on a low carb ketogenic diet for a long period of time and compared them against carbohydrate based runners. And they were perfectly fine.
• 11:28
  And I think they were running for, like, four or five hours. So, yes, I think the first thing is to really kinda, like, see whether this is possible. Also, to really actually kind of test my own knowledge and my own research that I've gone through. And, if you don't know, I was accepted to do a PhD in, 2021 researching ketogenic diets and athletic performance. And I really like to almost kind of use myself as a bit of a human guinea pig to actually like document the whole process and the journey of what it's like to be a fat adapted individual and see what it's like to go and run a marathon without any form of carbs.
• 12:07
  So it's just a bit of a cool thing to do. So, so yes, well, I'll keep you posted throughout the whole time in which I'm doing this. It's day one right now. I'm going to record another episode just to almost kind of articulate what I did. Sorry, I'm at day two, but I want to kind of share with you what I did at day one, and I'm going to share that in the next episode.
• 12:27
  So there you go. Never forget. For every one of your clients gave you just one new client, you've dodged business. Have you got a client who isn't losing weight right now and you have absolutely no idea why? And maybe you're worrying that if nothing changes, they could drop off at any moment?
• 12:43
  Well, I've got a free nutrition masterclass for you where I reveal the secret nutrition strategy that guarantees that that stuck client loses two to four pounds in the next seven days without lowering their calories, upping their cardio, or even tracking macros. Click the link in the description to get access to the free elite nutrition secrets masterclass and get your client moving in the right direction, stopping them dropping off today.