Ataylor

Have any of you been on the carnivore “diet” for longer rides? I'm planning on trying it and also plan to ride at the same time, but I know that carbs and electrolytes are needed. Was curious to see if anyone was either on the diet alone for longer rides or if having some level of carbs (whether bananas or whatever else) gave you the needed energy to ride for longer distance but still maintained the benefits of the diet.

79pmooney

One thing to consider: the carnivore diet is more work for the body to digest than simple plant foods. Digestion; a process that requires oxygen. The body tends to funnel oxygen-rich blood to the stomach to clear foods in good time. To the stomach and away from the legs.

On a long tour, either as a pro bike racer or on a loaded bike, enough waking hours are spent on the bike that real food needs to be eaten whole riding. The oxygen deviation to the stomach has to be dealt with. But in a 3 hour ride? (I quit eating meat in my racing days primarily for better muscle recovery at night. Never regretted it.)

Jughed

Keto diet here, going on 5 years… many times I’m eating “carnivore”.

I have plenty of experience riding all sorts of distances, intensity levels…

The only way I can do long rides on the diet is to keep a fairly low intensity level, steady pace and no harder efforts. Harder efforts require carbs and you will bonk out after a few efforts. Even short efforts.

I supplement my long rides with 30-50 grams of carbs per hour. This way I can ride freely, do some harder pulls or push a bit on the climbs/in the wind.

Even shorter rides with hard efforts may require some carbs.

But strict zone 2, especially when on my trainer where I can really control my output- endless energy.

OH, it took me the better part of a year to figure it all out.

Ataylor

Not an expert and the science is too head-heavy for me to wrap my head around it, which is why I wanted to hear about people’s personal experience.

I’ve heard people share different experiences than yours, though. Wasn't many, just one cyclist so far that claimed that he did well on this diet. I also remember hearing on Lex Friedman’s podcast about runners who ran 50-100 miles and that they’d figured out a way to fuel their body with fat. Perhaps the same logic Jughed brought up applies. Slow pace? Who knows.

Either way, I guess as mentioned I’m just trying to figure out what everyone’s personal experience is and try to gather as much information as I can and just take it from there.

Ataylor

Yea’, though there’s a lot of overlap on the positive aspects of the CD, it doesn’t seem as though anyone really knows for sure what will totally work for the next person. So that’s good that you figured out what works for you. And I appreciate you sharing it with me. Thank you.

If you don’t mind, can I ask you two questions?

First, if you don’t mind sharing, what do you eat for those longer rides?

Also, how do you feel after taking in those carbs? Do you notice a change in your energy throughout the day? The next day maybe? Do you feel sluggish at all or do you feel the same and not notice any difference?

Jughed

Food:
What I eat will depend on what I am doing.
-Shorter rides 40-60 miles, I will eat a banana, Clif bar, maybe add a 50/50 mix of water and sports drink.
-For a century, where energy is the last thing I want to think about, I will start off the morning with a bagel and some eggs. Eat bananas, energy bars, sports drinks, PB&J sandwiches. And I will recover with a full blown meal of protein, meat, carbs and fat.
-For the mountain days, I will start carbing up the night before. Add some whole grains or high quality carbs with dinner. Nothing overboard.
-My charity rides - all bets are off. I'm in the cookies, cakes and all of the other goodies they have.

And as mentioned above - I'm not fueling these rides with a heavy meal of meats. If you are in ketosis, your body will produce all the energy you need from stored fat. For lower intensity efforts that is... you don't need to fuel up with more fats, you have plenty in storage.

How do I feel - typically great. Carbs give you more energy on the bike. I can feel the power increase when I ride, my legs feel energized. I don't overdo (except on the charity rides) and I burn off all of the excess carbs on the ride, or my muscles soak up all of the recovery carbs. I feel fine the next day.

I have to say this - Keto, Carnivore... not the best diet for cyclists. I do it to treat a disease but wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. It's not easy in any way. Your recovery is time is hampered, your legs can feel like lead weights, the diet is very difficult to maintain...

Iride01 

I'm not sure what you are really asking. Are you just wanting to know if anyone exclusively eats meat while cycling? Or are you wanting to know what others that have meat as a majority of their overall diet do while they are on their bikes? Which is probably different things just like the rest of us.

If you are amenable to eating bananas for your diet, then they have a lot going for them. Before I started using other things for energy replacement I use to cut bananas into pieces and put them in a plastic bag that I could easily fish the pieces out of while riding. Popped one in my mouth every 15 minutes and from what I remember, the energy replacement and curve for how long I felt the boost was about as good as what I use now.

Ataylor

Very helpful information. Probably gained more by reading your post than I have researching this topic the past few weeks. So thank you once again. I very much appreciate your detailed reply.

Ataylor

Both. I want to know the experience of those who have been strictly on a carnivore diet and those who have held to a less strict version of the diet.

And was meat the majority of your diet when you did that?

terrymorse 

Why try the "carnivore diet"? It's an unhealthy way of eating.

Iride01 

No this was back when meat was still a large part of my diet. However since shortly after that I was ovo-pescatarian for over two years. Now I'm back to my previous diet that includes any meat. But probably less than half the amounts I did prior to be ovo-pescatarian.

However in all of those situations and now currently, I feel that your diet is all about what you normally eat. However what you eat and drink while on the bike is fuel and exclusive of your diet. So the decision on the bike should be only what substances fuel you the best. And typically for mid to high effort rides that will be carbohydrate in some form. Some carbohydrates consumed while riding get absorbed and used quickly to give you a brief burst of energy. Others might give you longer boost of energy that is also reasonably quick after consumption. I found bananas to be in the latter category.

Today I just put maltodextrin in my bottles along with some flavoring and a little sugar or stevia to take the dry edge off of the maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is a complex carb and it also seems to give that more sustained energy boost than fructose or sucrose. But not by much. If you aren't continually taking a gulp or bite of carbs every 10 - 15 minutes, then energy levels might go up and down or get drained too much to recover well during a hard ride.

If you are just doing Z3 rides or rides of short duration, then plain water and your bodies supply of energy stores is enough. IMO and along with some other if's and's or but's.

Ataylor

I have my reasons, which I won’t disclose here. But there are very many people who would disagree with you, including doctors, who believe that what you believe is a “myth.” I don’t know if it’s a myth or not, but I do know that very reliable people like Jordan Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila have been on the diet and have spoken very highly about it. Check their Youtube clips. What they’ve shared is honestly very interesting. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but just do the research and see for yourself.

People have been on it and have noticed significant changes. So significant that many of them claim that all of their symptoms went away. Depression, diabetes and many other autoimmune issues, their blood sugar levels stabilized, weight loss, improved skin, better mental clarity, no more joint pain, increased energy (i.e. people didn’t experience a “crash” midway - they either maintained the same energy or had way more energy than they’ve felt since childhood and that lasted throughout the entire day), etc.

This is not just one or two people. Everyone is saying this. Not just random "nobodies" either, but also very reliable people. I’ll echo what Joe Rogan said, that you rarely if ever hear anyone speaking negatively about this diet. There are people who have been on the diet for 5+ years as far as I know (maybe more) and they are in great shape, their blood work is great (in fact, in some cases, way, way better than it was before they went on the diet) and so personally I see no signs of it being “unhealthy.” It seems as though it may be the case that we’ve only been told that it’s “unhealthy.” I can't say for sure, but it seems that way.

Now I don’t want to get too conspiratorial here, because the topic is probably incredibly complex and there may be way more variables at play that simply just the food itself (i.e. living a more sedentary lifestyle, portion sizes, etc), but it’s really difficult not to feel as though we’ve been fed (no pun) a lie. Both science and many other fields seem to be a bought and sold commodity. Rogan pulled up a study on one of his podcasts where he said that the, “…sugar industry paid scientists to lie about the source of heart disease and connect it to saturated fats. It was really just bribery.”

Think about how people looked PRIOR to the 50’s and how they look now. Google image search some pictures and see for yourself. There's an unmistakable and stark contrast between then and now. So something happened. I don’t know what that thing is and so I don’t want to speak boldly about it, but we can all agree that something definitively happened in the last 50 years or so that would cause obesity rates to TRIPLE during that relatively short period of time.

Science.org said the following:

“Over the past 50 years, worldwide obesity rates have tripled, creating a public health crisis so widespread and damaging that it is sometimes referred to as an epidemic.”

Now everyone could be wrong about the long-term effects on the body. I’m totally open to that. But what we cannot deny is what people are experiencing on this diet now and over the course of a few years. It is an absolute fact of reality that people are feeling better and their symptoms have disappeared and that can’t be questioned. Many people have commented on how their blood work shocked the doctors based on how good it was.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but despite me not being an expert, I just wanted to lay out my reasons for not wanting to dismiss something based simply on what we’ve been told “healthy” really is. Especially when we’ve been carnivores since the dawn of time itself. Everyone is fat and sick and this just wasn’t the case not too long ago, so if people are losing weight, not being sick and their in good overall health according to their doctors, then I don’t think we should discard and dismiss the results of this "diet" so easily.

terrymorse 

Jordan Peterson, YouTube, Joe Rogan. “Everyone”

No need to read further.

Ataylor

Thanks for the background. I appreciate it.

So the reason for seeking personal experience rather than opinions from those who haven’t been on the diet (though your thoughts are also very welcome) is that this diet is very specific. So if you’re not following it the way it’s supposed to be followed, then it’s not a 1:1 comparison. In other words, someone in your position getting their carbs from bananas might not be the whole story, as the piece or two of pizza or whatever other carb you ate the night before might give you that boost you needed for your morning ride and the protein from the meat and cheese can help with muscle recovery.

So I guess what I’m saying is that you’re going to be affected differently if you incorporated bread and other carbs into your diet, even though meat may have been a large portion of that diet, compared to someone who is pretty much strictly meat-based. You’re going to have energy reserves stored up from sources that people on this diet are told to stay away from.

Right. But what I’m trying to focus in on here is people who were specifically on this diet who rode 50+ miles and how many and what kinds of carbs they consumed to sustain their energy for those rides.

For instance, Jughed explained his method. He had a cliffbar, which is not a carnivore food, but it worked for him and he didn’t feel the negative side effects of going “off” of the diet. That’s what I’m interested in hearing. For the centuries he added both carbs and sugars, which are "forbidden", but it’s something that sustained a person following a very specific diet on a very, very long ride and that was helpful information for him to share with me.

Ataylor

I take it that "meat bad" was something I should have taken seriously?

Jughed

you can’t simply paint broad strokes and say this or that diet is “bad”.

People have all sorts of genetic differences and react differently to food intake.

My family is of Viking heritage. We are all prone to T2, high cholesterol, high BP and metabolic disease. Me and both of my sisters are T2, two of us were diagnosed with A1Cs over 11 (to use a technical term, that’s hella bad). Add to that my BP and cholesterol were off the charts bad.

What did Vikings eat? Not a moderate or high carb diet…

My T2 started when I was a young fit cyclists, consuming cyclists level of carbs.


A clean Keto/Whole Foods/close to carnivore diet has me off all medicine, all of my numbers are in the “excellent”range, my T2 has been in complete remission for 4+ years…

If I add carbs back in any level close to what is considered normal - that entire situation explodes.

What part of that, for me(and many like me) is unhealthy? How is it unhealthy? How is eating another diet better? When any other diet takes medication to counteract the effects?

It’s not black and white.

RH Clark

I have experimented with carnivore, keto, and even vegan diets over the last 6 years. Personally, I did it to lose weight. 6 years ago, I started dieting and cycling at the same time. I was 50 years old and weighed 360 pounds. I bought an old MTB and couldn't ride it out of sight on my first attempt. After 2 years I had settled in on my preferred diet, was cycling an average of 100 miles a week and reduced my weight to 170 lbs. by nothing except diet and exercise. BTW I am 6'2" so 170lbs is quite thin.

Carnivore didn't work for me because of constipation and slow digestion issues, possibly because I have had my gallbladder removed. Today, I practice a 20-4 intermittent fasting eating schedule, consuming all my calories in a 4-6 hour window. I have kept all the weight off.

If you are a carb burner, you have to become fat adapted before you have any energy on a keto diet. You need to stay in ketosis, which can be checked by a breath monitor, long enough for your cells to change their mitochondria for fat burning. You have to consume enough fat in your diet for fuel. It takes about 3 months in ketosis to become fat adapted. When you become fat adapted you could eat fat for fuel and do just fine on a 50-mile ride. I have done it personally. I don't ride with a group though and I wasn't trying to beat my last time. I have bonked when I was vegan after 30 miles.

Andrew Huberman has some great material on IM fasting and keto.

You will bonk if you aren't completely fat adapted,consumiing enough fat in your diet, and running exclusively on ketones. I highly recommend testing either by breath or urine.

RH Clark

I'm not sure carnivore is a completely healthy diet. I am sure that a high sugar, highly processed diet, consumed by many cyclists is unhealthy over the long term. Personally, I consume only whole foods, as organic as possible and IM fast. I have intensively studied diets over the last 6 years and come to believe this is the healthiest way for humans to eat.

Jughed

And my company, that typically gives us nothing extra, provides Virta health services for free. They work with people on how to eat, typically ultra low carb/keto.

Why would they do this? To lower insurance claims and costs.

Follow the money.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, everyone is different. You has to figure out what works for you. The tricky word there is "works." My fave thing has been long hilly rides, ridden as fast as I'm capable. My diet for the past 50 years or so has been an ovo-lacto-pesco version of the Med diet. I.e. I eat an organic, natural foods Med diet, lots of vegetables but no dinosaurs or mammals. That's worked really well for me. On the bike however, I now consume almost nothing except pure carbs, rocker fuel, i.e. maltodextrin with a little whey protein. If you don't care how fast you go, hey, you can eat anything, simply doesn't matter as far as performance goes. Has my diet been healthy? Evidently not as healthy as possible or maybe it's just my genetics. I've acquired/ 3 stents and a pacemaker in the past 2 years. Feeling good now, back at it and have some solid training ahead of me. Gonna get it back. As it is said, it's hard to know the future.

A little anecdote about figuring stuff out: I started riding again at 50 and was slowly building mileage. The first time I rode over 50 miles, at about that point I started feeling weird. I stopped and sat in a ditch while the world spun around me. So I pulled out a Clif Bar, ate it, and felt OK again. Got back on the bike and finished the ride no problem. That was the first thing I'd eaten since starting - I had low blood sugar. When one increases mileage and elevation gain, every ride can have a lesson. My longest day ride has been 250 miles and 13,000', in my early 60s. Felt great at the end. .

terrymorse 

For some diets, yeah, you can say they are "bad". With data to back it up.

A very high protein diet that excludes other nutrients, over long-term, is bad.

PeteHski

Here’s a take on the Jordan Peterson diet:-

https://amp.theguardian.com/food/201...-peterson-beef

On Day 6 of this diet he speaks to an actual qualified nutritionist and it is fair to say that she isn’t very impressed!

Your logic about obesity seems a bit weird too. Just because the average couch potato probably eats way too much processed sugar, that doesn’t mean switching to a 100% carnivore diet is the solution.

Anyway, your body, your choice. But extreme diets are not my thing. This one looks ridiculous! Let us know how it works out for you.

Ataylor

I mean honestly, this just seems like common sense. If it works for you, you feel amazing, your numbers are amazing, like you said, why is it unhealthy? Because you said it is? And especially when the opposite was the case prior to you having started that diet?

I mean it’s easy to outright dismiss something, but not so easy to lay out your reasons for why you believe what you believe or why the other side is somehow objectively wrong about what they believe. I think some people tend to put complete faith in the sciences and act as though it’s an unchangeable and objective fact of reality that what they’ve been told is true, despite science being an ever-evolving process. They tightly hold to these ideas that they’ve heard since childhood because it’s comfortable, but these ideas are not absolute and more than that they may have caused complete and utter chaos to the human population in a relatively short period of time. How could we possibly not question them?

But yea’, what you just shared is all I ever read. Over and over and over again from “regular” people. If that doesn’t make you at least consider that this may be a healthy alternative at least for some people, then I would imagine that your stance is probably a byproduct of an unwillingness or even stubbornness to branch away from your comfort zone and genuinely consider other diverse perspectives and it doesn’t really have anything to do with truth.

Either way, continue riding in good health, my friend. And thank you once again for sharing your experience. I appreciate it.

Ataylor

I don’t think that we could justify your view simply by posting a quote from a single source, because you know that I can do the same. In fact, here are three different articles (and I’m sure there are more) from nutritionists and doctors that promote the diet:

https://thecarnivorenutritionist.com/about-1

https://www.nutritionwithjudy.com/

https://www.doctorkiltz.com/carnivore-diet/

In the third link you’ll find a medically reviewed and certified statement that says the same exact thing I’ve heard at least 70% of the people who are on the diet say. Which is this:

“But if you’re jumping into the carnivore diet straight from a diet high in carbohydrates and sugar, there’s a good chance you’re going to feel crummy before you feel better.”

And:

“But the good news is, this transition period typically only lasts anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks. Once your body calibrates to your new and improved diet, you’ll start experiencing all of the positive benefits associated with an all-meat diet.”

How long? Up to 2 weeks. I’ve never heard anyone say that it only took a few days (though it could be the case for some), but everyone I’ve heard speaks about going through what that guy went through for about 2 weeks and up to a month or more until they finally feel the benefits.

How long did the guy do it for? A week. Then he gave up and came to his conclusion. He said:

“I tried it for a week, and let me tell you: it was truly, punishingly awful”

He didn’t give it a chance. He then brought what seemed to be a seemingly biased nutritionist into the equation to share her views.

Let me ask you this. Do you really want to treat the advice of a woman who boldly claims that when pain and depression subsides, that it was a “placebo effect?” That sounds so painfully ignorant to me. On what grounds could she possibly even make or substantiate such a claim? Even if you can get past such a baseless claim, I don’t even think it’s possible to definitively prove that what everyone is experiencing is a placebo.

Nothing helps these people, they get on the diet and now all of a sudden the placebo kicks in for all of them? Really? That’s a wildly bold, unfounded and unscientific assertion. One that she did not even attempt to substantiate in that article.

Now I don’t say this to be disrespectful, but she honestly sounds like she shoots from the hip and has a very lazy, assertions-without-evidence based approach. Impulsively making claims without careful consideration. Which, unfortunately, is not uncommon.

She also said:

“It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Sasson says. “The claims that are made are preposterous.”

But why? Every single person has a truck load of assertions, but no one ever tells us why. So we’re supposed to accept her version of “meat bad” simply because she said it?

If pushed to provide evidence, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised that every source of information she would provided could easily be rebutted by another nutritionist. Just an assumption on my part, I know, but everyone seems right about what they boldly speak about until they’re confronted by other knowledgable people in their field and then you realize that they don’t have the foggiest idea as to what they’re talking about.

This is a very complex topic and there’s a boatload of bias all around. All I’m trying to do is find the truth. That’s it. I’m not promoting the diet. At all. Especially not for everyone. All I’m saying is that if it works for you, your lab work is good, you feel good, your autoimmune issues are gone, why in heavens name would you go back? Because some overly-emotional nutritionist called it “ridiculous?”

What are you talking about? Which part specifically? I never said that it’s for everyone. Do you mean when I mentioned a sedentary lifestyle? If so, it was simply an assumption (not an absolute truth claim) about possible reasons of many that could be contributing to obesity.

PeteHski

What conventional science based nutritional advice do you think is leading to this utter chaos?