LCHF – part 2

Today I got a question about LCHF-diet and high altitude (see LCHF – scam or miracle?). The question really raised my interest of how training, hard training, high altitude and LCHF would and could work in co-existence. Do we really need carbohydrates for energy-intensive challenges? I am currently still in the scientific mudslinging jungle and in an experiment with myself as lab rat.

I have to start this post (again) making it clear that my LCHF campaign does not have anything to do weight loss or diet-hysteria. The background for me trying LCHF emerges from the fact that I’ve had so many inflammations in my body, hurting joints, I’ve been unfathomable tired etc. I have nominated (after much reading) sugar to be the culprit.

Thus, I must stop with sugar to see if it changes anything. Said and done! That made it become equal to LCHF – That’s why!

Now I’m on the 4th week. So how do I feel then? And how does it work in practice? The answer is that I feel relatively good. I’ve been (and am) feeling quite weary and tired, in a not sleepy kind of way. The food I eat is really, really good and I don’t really miss sugar at all, I miss the carbs less and less often.

When I ran the midnight run last weekend, I can not really recall when I felt so strong recently. (If it’s because of LCHF or because of the low speed is still under dispute though:-)) I had no carbs at all before the race and very, very little afterwards. It felt great!

I don’t feel stronger in general sense of way. I have not had any hallelujah moment yet. Here I am at 6 A:M feeling more alert than ever. No, that hasn’t happened (yet?).

I have lost a bit more weight – which is not at all necessary. I need to reallocate some of my middle-part kilos – I do not need to erase them. Well, I’ll come to terms with that through more training (I hope 🙂 ) So far I don’t manage to eat enough protein – fat is going just fine. Protein, that’s the one I need to work on. I have long since passed the age where I’ll just slam down a can of tuna in the evening – no way!

So, how was it then with training, hard training, high altitude and LCHF? Well, I know, not yet. :-/ (Talk about being ripped on the answer to the main question.) But I’ve found some interesting links and books that I enclose with this post. Everything so far indicates that it should work just fine. In just under two weeks I will go on a short climbing trip a push it up to high altitude. By then I hopefully will have had time for some hard training too:-) So I will get back with any answers after that.

Then I’ll try to answer the question from my own experience of high altitude and LCHF.

Finally, Mark Twight has written two books that seem to be very interesting;

Training for the New Alpinism (med Steve House and Scott Johnston) and Extreme Alpinism. And this interesting article by and with Mark Twight.

Also search for Jeff Volek on YouTube or Google and you’ll find lots of interesting material on the hard training and low carb diets.

Finally, some general Qs and As about LCHF (In Swedish).