2023-12-18 22:01:37
Carbohydrates, basic allies
Carbohydrates, and more precisely glucose, are the preferred source of energy for all cells in the body. On a daily basis, the sports eater can use a wide range of foods with interesting “sugars”. They are found in cereals (wheat, rice, corn, etc.) but also in legumes (lentils, dried beans, broad beans, etc.), potatoes, fruits, vegetables and dairy products.
To be usable, carbohydrates are cut up and/or transformed into glucose units during the time of digestion and passage through the body. Not used immediately, they are stored “repaired” in long chains in the liver and muscles, in the form of hepatic and muscle glycogen.
During physical exercise, your muscles rarely use only one source of energy at a time. In the short, intense effortsthe body uses glycogen to supply muscle fibers with glucose.
If the efforts are prolonged with a lower intensity, fats take a progressively more important role as glycogenic reserves are depleted. But, they remain less effective in the absence of carbohydrates.
Variants
Sufficient availability of carbohydrates, snacks during exercise, recovery rations and/or meals helps reduce the limits of muscular and cerebral fatigue. Carbohydrates are and remain a fuel of choice for athletes’ muscles!
What happens for endurance athletes focused on performance, with more or less long phases of carbohydrate avoidance?
Here are some examples of deprivation linked to training models:
- Frequent twice-daily workouts with low carbs between sessions.
- Fasted training (Example: morning fasted training): muscle glycogen is normal, but liver glycogen is low.
- Absence of carbohydrate replenishment during prolonged efforts lasting more than 90 minutes.
- Limited recovery in carbohydrates (Example: no ingestion of carbohydrates following a sporting effort emptying glycogen sources, [trail ou cyclosportive longue distance])
- High-fat, low-carbohydrate diet (HFLC) or extreme form of “low carb” with the ketogenic diet (almost absent carbohydrates and majority lipids, use of ketone bodies, compounds from fats, for energy)
The goal of all these variations is to train your metabolism to be more flexible: to make your muscles more efficient in the use of lipids when there are no carbohydrates during sports practice.
The complement to this rule is the ketogenic diet. The intention is to encourage the body to draw all of its daily energy from fat, with the corollary “weight” loss.
Depriving the body of its usual natural source, carbohydrates, forces it to cope differently. It then turns to lipids as fuel.
This exclusive metabolic pathway of fatty acid degradation (ketosis), to meet caloric needs, is not the most appropriate or convenient. This is why it takes an adaptation period of a few days to reorient the energy pathways.
So, which diet should you choose to optimize your performance?
Serious studies in the scientific literature that have examined the performance of athletes with prolonged carbohydrate restriction have not shown sufficiently good results. Sample sizes are too small (n = 5 to 10 individuals) and/or short duration (< 3 weeks) to draw conclusions applicable to most endurance athletes and active people.
The best evidence available to date recommends consuming some carbohydrate foods before, during and following intense and/or long-term exercise to ensure sufficient glycogen stores for exercise and their subsequent replenishment.
If you prefer to limit foods rich in carbohydrates, do not hesitate to seek advice from a sports nutritionist to know when and how to do so so as not to compromise your training by failing to optimize your times.
Further reading
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5407976/
file:///D:/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9chargements/Practical%20Guide%20to%20Nutrition.pdf
Dominique POULAIN, Dietician Sports Nutritionist
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