Originally Posted by
bbbean
If you were torturing yourself, maybe you weren't taking a well balanced approach to cutting carbs. The OP asked about cutting down on carbs, he didn't say anything about going on a draconian torture diet. I opined that whatever you did, you were going to need to give your body longer than two weeks to adapt and really see how it was going to impact your weight, health, and/or performance.
Was this a suggestion? Did I miss a post?
I remember reading about some Kenyan named Froome who managed to do OK on a few climbs around France and Italy.
I'm not sure what the reference to poor nutrition was about.
I merely reduced carbs, exactly the OP. That meant I didn't have my normal recovery carbs, nor my normal 400 carb-calorie breakfasts, no fruit juice with lunch, smaller carb portions at dinner. Over 2 weeks, that was enough to leave me with insufficient glycogen, both liver and muscle, to do a pass climb, especially on the tandem. It's a climb I do every year and will do again on the tandem in 2 weeks, first pass of the year. My assessment was that it negatively impacted my performance. My weight and health have never been issues.
The low-carber BS that Froome rode low-carb is in fact, just that. Here's what the head of nutrition at Team Sky had to say:
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That's reduced carbs 2 days/week when doing base. That's not low-carb. And 400g of rice for breakfast? Phenomenal.
In fact, Froome did pretty normal base training. Team Sky uses a high-carb beverage of maltodextrin and sucrose which allows him to process up to 360 calories/hour, also phenomenal. I base train too, and can comfortably ride for ~3 hours without eating or drinking anything as long as it's not too warm. Lance could ride for 6 hours on only water.
"Poor nutrition" referred to common low-carb strategies which vary from the cardiologist's nutrition ideas in the link I posted. Like drinking a cup of cream for breakfast, replacing carbs with meat and saturated fats, that kind of thing, the stuff low-carb posters on BF brag about along with their low cholesterol numbers.