Metabolic Efficiency Training: Is it the secret to burning fat as a fuel source more efficiently

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finma Lansen, and this is the run to the top podcast. The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. We are created and produced by the expert team coaches at runnersconnect.net, where you can find the best running information on the internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner in every budget. If you've been listening to our podcast for long enough, you know one of the main principles we believe in when it comes to marathon training is improving your body's ability to burn fat as a fuel source while running especially while at marathon pace. So how exactly do we do this? And what does some of the latest research say? The research in question revolves around the 2 concepts of nutrition periodization and metabolic efficiency training. Together, they increase the body's ability to use fat as fuel during exercise and thus optimize both body composition and performance. Joining us in this episode is Bob Cboe r, the creator of these 2 concepts. Bob is a registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, NSCA certified strength and conditioning specialist USA triathlon level 3 elite coach, and he also traveled to the 2008 summer Olympic games as a sport dietitian for the US Olympic team and the personal sport dietitian slash exercise physiologist for the Olympic triathlon team. In this episode, Bob walks us through his findings on dietary efficiency and shed some light on how best to achieve both the body composition and race day results you're after. So Let's get started. If you train in the mornings in struggle to get motivated and focused those first few hours at work, then you'll love quality of mind from neurohacker, a researched backed neutropic designed to help improve daily mental performance. I'll tell you more about them later, but you can go to neurohacker.comforward/rttt for a $100 off and use code Rtt to save an extra 15%. Timeline nutrition has developed a groundbreaking product called Mydopur that revitalizes your mitochondria, which creates energy in nearly every cell in your body. Head to timeline nutrition.com to learn more. Hi, Bob. Welcome to the show. To get us started, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself?

Guest [00:02:51]: So my name is Bob Sibahar. I wear quite a different, I, I wear a lot of hats, very different than a lot of my, my colleagues. So I actually started in, as an exercise physiologist, and have, have 3 college degrees, 2 in exercise physiology, 1 in food science and human nutrition. So I, I went a little words than most registered dietitians do. So I did a lot of exercise science, strength and conditioning, coaching first, and then I kinda molded or blended the registered diet and the food science in later. So currently, I am, I'm the owner of energy performance. I am a registered dietitian. I'm a board certified specialists in sports dietetics. There's, there's a few of us out there, also an exercise physiologist. So I do a lot of physiological testing on Indurance athletes, any type of athlete, or just anyone who's active, what I would call a fitness enthusiast. And I'm also a strength coach and I coach endurance athletes. So triathletes of all ages, ultra runners, spartan racers, obstacle course racers, love coaching kids. I've got a junior triathlon team here at home. So I I've got a lot of balls in the year.

Finn Melanson [00:03:56]: So, obviously, the topics we're gonna focus on today are nutrition periodization and metabolic efficiency. can you describe what these 2 concepts are starting with nutrition periodization and then rolling into, metabolic efficiency training and sort of connecting the dots on how they're related.

Guest [00:04:17]: Absolutely. It's interesting because nutrition periodization, let's see,

Finn Melanson [00:04:22]: 2002,

Guest [00:04:23]: I think it was, 2002 or 2003. I was meeting with a lot of athletes in practice. I was working at a Sport Medicine Clinic, and I was noticing that, that these endurance athletes who were coming to me kept complaining about GI distress, so gastrointestinal distress. And that could be nausea, vomiting, bloating, diarrhea, you name it. And, and it was interesting. I was scratching my head like, wow, why are all these endurance athletes complaining of this? And I'm an endurance athlete, and, and I complained of it too, but not this frequently. So I started just thinking about that, and I knew that most of them were coming to me, not only to get rid of GI distress, but also for weight loss, body composition changes, I started asking the question. This, I put my coaching head on, and I said, well, this is interesting. And I started asking some coaching questions to him. So I would ask him, you know, what training cycle are you in? Are you doing a lot of volume, a lot of intensity? Are you in off season? And I started to get these answers in what I realized was that these athletes weren't aligning their training, their physical training that they were doing with their coach or their group, with their nutrition plan. again, I started scratching my head, and I'm thinking, Why aren't they aligning their nutrition with their training? So the the term nutrition and periodization was born in my head because nutrition and periodization, just in a basic snippet, is aligning your nutrition to support physical training. That's really all it is. So when you're in high times or low times of training, that could be volume or intensity or both, that your nutrition should be high or low in terms of how a person, how a runner schedules their, their macronutrients. So their carbohydrate, their protein, and their fat intake should go up or down based on how their training goes up or down. So the nutrition periodization concept was born, oh, it's it's about 14 or 15 years ago, just as a concern that athletes weren't aligning the 2, instead of making them fight, now they're they're trying to promote the the, kind of the blending of nutrition and training both in 1.

Finn Melanson [00:06:21]: So how should runners alter their diets depending on where they are in their training cycle, particularly for a marathon build out.

Guest [00:06:30]: Right. That's perfect question. So there are 3 specific mesocycles. We call it training cycles, basically, that runners, any athlete will go through They may not know they're going through it, but they are going through it. So the first mesocycle, and these mesocycles usually last anywhere between 4 4 weeks and about 12 weeks depends on, on the runner, right, and in preparation, as your example, says, in, in a marathon training, right, can be 6 to 9, 8 or 9 months. So the first cycle is called preparation. Right? So that's, that's kind of preparing the body. It's doing low miles, low intensity, maybe some strength training, maybe some, some yoga, some flexibility, just kinda, you know, I think of it as January, right? It's it's building the body up. It's not doing anything crazy. that's a great time to not consume a lot of food because and, and unfortunately, a lot of runners do because they think while I'm training again, I'm putting in whatever 15, 20, 30 miles a week, probably not yet. but, but they think they need to eat a lot. And, and it's actually quite the opposite. So that's the time of the year where we say, watch your carbohydrate intake because you probably don't need as many carbohydrates as you think you do, make sure you get enough protein, make sure you get enough fat to support proper blood sugar control. unfortunately, this is the time of the year where a lot of runners will overeat, and they'll actually gain weight. And I'm sure you've heard of it. A lot of the listeners have heard of it, be an end of maybe even experience weight gain when they start training for a marathon. And it's not normal. It it shouldn't be that way. It's simply a cause that they are eating too much to not support the lower volume of training. So that's the 1st cycle, right? So then a few months later, they start building. So this cycle is called either the build cycle or the competition cycle, a lot of different names for it, right? This is where they start adding more miles in more intensity. So they might be doing some hill repeat workouts, some track intervals, they're getting a little bit more aggressive, but they're also burning more calories because their energy expenditure or the amount of calories that they're burning through running is is increased. This is the time of the year where we say, because your, your energy expenditure is high, your training is higher, you may need to feed yourself more carbohydrate, excuse me, certainly not a high carb diet. I'll talk about that a little bit later. Right? They don't need to follow a high carb low fat diet. Right? They just need to add strategic carbohydrates in during their long run days or during, what I call, quality days. So their speed or and or their volume days. right? And keep the protein the same. The fat usually will go down a little bit if carbohydrates goes up. And I like to think of that just on a tangent as I've made up these macronutrient teeter totters I call them, right? So if you imagine a teeter totter where, you know, you just kind of go up and down, the full crumb, the the base of it is protein. Once you find the amount of protein you you should have in your comfortable with, protein won't move around a lot. What moves is carbohydrate and fat. Right? So if if it's base training, early season training, if you decrease your carbs, you have to increase your fat a little bit, so you stay full. Right? And same thing with with more intensity training, if you increase your carbs, you may have to decrease your fat, not low fat, but just decrease it slightly. Right? So that will set runners up great for training for a marathon, preparing for a marathon. It's also a great time of the year to learn what you're going to do with race day nutrition. because those are those are the few months where you do intensity, where you test out the body's ability to digest different dietary strategies, different products, sport nutrition products, and different timing strategies, and then come race day, there's no secrets, and there's no surprises. Right? So that will get them through the season. A lot of times they don't recognize that the after a race, that is actually a qualified training cycle, if you will, it's called the transition cycle or off season, if, if they're done training, right? So that should be recognized because that's typically when running volume goes down, they may start cross training, they may start lifting weights against things like that. But the goal or the point is that volume goes down, intensity goes down of training, So then we've got to manipulate our teeter toddlers again, right? That's a great time of the year to reduce your carbohydrates, to increase fat again, because you just carbohydrates are great, and everyone's making out carbohydrates to be like the bad guy of the world. They're not the bad guy. They're the bad guy when you overeat them at the wrong times. Right? That's when we start seeing the the the detrimental effects of carbohydrates.

Finn Melanson [00:11:00]: Moving forward through the training cycle, how should runners eat during their taper phase to set themselves up for optimal performance and avoiding weight gain?

Guest [00:11:10]: Yeah. That's, you know, I almost think of the taper phase sometimes as a transition or an off season cycle, even it's, it's not, but I think the mentality is there. So with a traditional taper, it's usually a stepwise decrease of volume and intensity. Right? So with that, it doesn't need to be a very abrupt change in new in their daily nutrition, it just needs to support their, their stepwise, their decrease in, in volume. So the biggest thing runners can do, the biggest support mechanism they can do for nutrition is to not overeat during the taper because this is times where in the, in all runners will do this at one time in their career, they'll gain £3 to £5 during the taper, and that is not right. Right? It's it's not necessary, and it's simply not right. what's happening is they're eating the same that they did before the taper and now say, you know, say it's it's Sunday, and then Monday I start my taper for my marathon, that, that training switch happens pretty quickly. Like Monday, I can say, great. I'm in taper, but psychologically, it is very difficult to change nutrition in a day. Right? So it actually takes a couple weeks to a few weeks to change the behavior modification of changing your daily nutrition plan. So my point being is, runners shouldn't get down on themselves because they, they simply need time to restructure their nutrition plan. best thing to do though, and, and I, I kid you not is, again, the teeter totter, right, reduce carbohydrates, not low carb high fat, but reduce them keep your protein good and then increase fat a little bit because that will keep you fuller longer, and it won't play it won't play tree on your brain in terms of always needing carbohydrates, like you might have needed a couple weeks ago when you were really in a high peak phase of, of training.

Finn Melanson [00:12:55]: So does that mean that it's beneficial to do a fat loading phase followed by a carb loading phase while tapering for a marathon?

Guest [00:13:04]: Yes. Yeah. So that's interesting. So you're basically talking about daily nutrition manipulations. Right? So dropping, and let me just get this right, dropping the carbohydrates way low, increasing the fat pretty high, keeping protein the same. Right? So they'll go through phases or cycles of that to try to teach their body to burn more fat, and appropriately store or preserve more glycogen, which is stored carbohydrate, right? There's actually some research to say that is okay for some people but not all, right? So so say for example, if you were to do this for a couple weeks, this quote unquote fat loading, and so it's higher fat lower carbohydrate, and then a few days to a week before the marathon, you kind of switch and then you start to high you start to increase carbohydrates and reduce fat. there's some research to to indicate that that enzymatically in your body and from a cellular level, that will be beneficial for performance However, what people don't understand is that adaptation takes longer than a few weeks, right? It actually can take months to even years to fully adapt this, for lack of a better term fat burning process. And I'll talk more about that when we talk about metabolic efficiency, but I think a lot of people are getting this from the and they're they're they're reading into it a little bit too much and not really looking at the big picture, right? we knew back in the days, here's a great example that way back in the days in sport nutrition, we used to recommend 5 to 7 day carbohydrate loading phases, right? And not even recently, maybe 8, 9 years, 10 years ago, the research indicated that that wasn't necessarily needed in, in terms of improving because you could do about a 1 to 2 day carbohydrate loading, and it would be the same effect. So my my point being is research is changing quite a bit. as you talk about fat loading and carbohydrate loading, specifically fat loading, there is so much we don't know yet, on ketogenic, on low carb high fats, We've got experimental data, and those are typically the athletes in the field who says, Hey, it works for me, but then you talk to someone else. And they're like, nope, doesn't work for me. there's also a genetic component to how your body processes fat and carbohydrate. And if you're more predisposed to I don't want to say storing, but, I guess the proper word would be storing 1 or the other. So I think a lot of people don't account for the genetic component. And the only way to to do that is to get a genomics, test, which will show you if you have specific gene spelling errors, if you will, on carbohydrate or fat metabolism pathways. And, you know, a lot of the research and, in elites, so we know in research elite runners and elite athletes are very different than recreational runners and recreational athletes. So sometimes in in when we read this research, we have to know who the subjects are because you're you're exactly right. It our bodies function differently at an elite level versus a recreational level. I would probably argue the elites Since they've been at it for so many years, they know their body so well that they know what a little change will do versus, versus maybe a recreational athlete who says, I don't know. I've never tried that before, but they don't know what's gonna happen to their body.

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Guest [00:18:53]: So this was kinda back in 2002, 2003. Also, I was I was in in in hopes to to get rid of GI distress in all athletes, you know, provide that cure, so to speak, which there's no cure, really. there's just different dietary strategies. So I I I was scratching my head once again, looking at research and looking at all my graduate study work, all the XFIS books, biochemistry, metabolism, nutrition, you name it. And I was just wondering, I was thinking, And if the body stores fat and carbohydrate, which we know it stores, right, and, and very well for fat and not so well with carbohydrate, so the average runner can store about 80,000 or more calories as fats, which is quite a bit, right? And the average runner, depending on gender and size, muscle mass, really, can store anywhere between about 1200 for small petite runners, female runners, to maybe 2000 calories with carbohydrate with your bigger, bigger runners, your bigger male runners. So with that, and that's that's just published physiological data. You can go to any physiology book and and learn that. And and so I took that, and I said, well, if our body stores so much fat versus carbohydrate and we're burning through carbohydrate, our bodies are actually made to burn through carbohydrate pretty quick. So the, the amount of carbohydrates you have stored in your body will only give you about 2 to 3 hours worth of running at moderate intensity. Right? Okay. So we know this. So scratching my head thinking, is there a way we could maybe tap into those fat stores better? And, yes, I mean, behold the metabolic efficiency training, but so early on metabolic efficiency training, I really devised it to get rid of GI distress. and let me tell you really quickly how that's done. So once you partition the amounts or, I'm sorry, the type of food that you eat in your body, no supplements, but just the type of food you eat in your body, you affect your blood sugar, which affects your hormones. Right? Now, I'll get into this a little bit later. by doing that, you teach your body to kind of turn on its fat burning. You, you keep your carbohydrate burning at bay, so you're preserving your carbohydrates What that does is it makes your body rely more on fat as energy, even at higher intensities, and I'll debunk some myths a little bit later. But what that does is as a runner is running, because they're relying more on fat as energy, they don't have to eat as many carbohydrate calories during their training or during their rates. That's where the GI distress story comes into play because whenever you introduce calories during a run, your digestive system doesn't like that, right? Because it has to process it needs blood to process those calories. So you either stop So all the blood from your muscles comes back to your gut to digest those calories, or you slow down, or you push what I call the reset button. So you throw everything up. and then you continue on. Obviously, that's not a good thing. So so this metabolic efficiency was great. It was, it was providing this opportunity to get rid of GI distress for runners and traffic. and cyclists and you name it. And that was great. I thought, wow. It's, it's done. I'm, I'm done with this. And then the athletes were coming back to me and they say, they, they kept saying, Wow, I'm losing weights. I'm, I'm leaning out. I'm like, oh, it must be your training. You know, you're training a lot, whatever. And they're like, no, we're not, like, we're in an off season. How is this happening? I started to scratch my head. I'm like, oh, this is this is really interesting. I looked at the science a little bit more. I looked at the science of controlling blood sugar and insulin levels specifically. So a huge benefit of metabolic efficiency training is the stabilization of blood sugar through food that will create an environment in your body that will kind of, if you will, rev up your fat burning metabolism and preserve your carbohydrate stores. So not only are we seeing the decrease or elimination of GI distress, but we're seeing weight loss, we're seeing, lean muscle, body fat loss, But, and then another another thing is coming, athletes started showing me their blood work, right? So people with high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and they're looking, they're showing it to me, And then, you know, we, we partition their, their nutrition plan to be more metabolically efficient. And I'm noticing the good numbers going up and the bad numbers going down. And again, I'm scratching my head. I'm like, this is amazing. It all comes down to controlling blood sugar. So that's really what metabolic efficiency is about is the foundation is setting it on how do we best control blood sugar, not only to prevent GI distress, of which, you know, maybe maybe 20% of runners may have, right? But then now we're looking at health markers like body weight loss, body fat loss, improved lipid profile, which is if you can improve some of these lipids and even some of these precursors to, to, disease states, you may be able to prevent chronic diseases, depending on your genetics and in your medical health history. So there's a whole flood of health and performance benefits now that we're seeing with metabolic efficiency.

Finn Melanson [00:23:36]: Can you explain further how metabolic efficiency training allows the body to use macronutrients more efficiently to ultimately use fat as

Guest [00:23:45]: fuel. it it's all based on controlling blood sugar. Right? So I think of this as a roller coaster, a very aggressive roller coaster. So when you eat a carbohydrate rich food, so So I'll, I'll pick on a banana. Nothing wrong with the banana, but when you eat a banana about 20 to 30 minutes later, if not a little bit sooner, your blood sugar will start to go up, right? perfect. Your body in a non disease state, which means a non prediabetic state or or diabetic state, your body will handle that. once your blood sugar increases, your, your pancreas gets the knock on the door saying, Hey, our blood sugar is high. We need some insulin to come in, do its job, lower our blood sugar. So that's our, our bodies are made to do that. But if you do that continually, like, if you eat banana after banana after banana, because a banana only has carbohydrate and no protein and no fat, it continually sends you up and down this roller coaster. So the, the first point to this is the more your pancreas gets overworked secreting insulin, the more become resistant, or as as some people have heard insulin resistance, right, which is a precursor to diabetes. So that's the first thing. We don't want our insulin to overwork throughout time, especially as we age, we get in our forties, our fifties, our sixties, we definitely don't want this, this organ overworked. So so that's the first thing. the second thing is looking at what happens with this roller coaster. Whenever our blood sugar is high, insulin comes in, right? So I said that blood sugar is high, insulin is high, that there is a process, a biochemical process in the body that says when, in, when insulin is high, it actually decreases our body's ability to burn fats. And there's there's biochemistry behind this. This, I I should have said this before. Metabolic efficiency training is all based on science. Like, it's not nothing wacko. There's nothing made up. It is all based on biochemistry and metabolism, which is totally cool. Right? But when when blood sugar is high, insulin is high, it turns off fat burning, which means if it's turning off 1 nutrients, opportunity to, to burn fat, it's going to accelerate another nutrient opportunity to burn, which is carbohydrate. So if you constantly are a state of flux of this roller coaster, going high blood sugar, low blood sugar, high blood sugar, low blood sugar, you're, you're not giving your body's ability. you're, you're not giving your body a chance to increase its ability to burn fat. All you're doing is burning through carbs. which is going to increase body weight. It's going to sometimes decrease performance, definitely decrease recovery, and it could actually be increased susceptibility chronic disease states. So your question is how do you, you know, what what is it? How do we do this? It's all through food. And I love it when I give presentations on this because people are like, Oh my, you build it up, and you build it up. And they're like, what's the secret? What's the magic pill? And I say, Oh, it's carbohydrate protein and fat. And they're like, can't believe that really because they're they're wanting like this magic pill. What we've done in our society is is continue to improve this roller coaster, right? We're we're getting the highs, we're getting the lows, but we're not stabilizing it. So the easiest way to do this metabolic efficiency training from there, there are actually 2 prongs to metabolic efficiency training, the nutrition piece and the exercise piece, right? We'll talk nutrition first, right? That is as easy as controlling blood sugar through getting the right amounts of carbohydrate protein and fat. Those are the 3 key nutrients the 3 macronutrients that are necessary to control, blood sugar. You control blood sugar. You control insulin. You control insulin. if your insulin level is low, you will always teach your body to burn fats, right, at higher intensities. And this is I'm I'm trying to partition the story and and, you know, only let so much out of the bag, right, and during this particular story or this time of the interview, But I want to let you know that, the easiest way to do it, and I'll teach you this right now, is by using your hands. Right? So one hand, is protein, right? And the hand is from your wrist to your fingertips, right? So when you eat a meal, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, that's the amount of protein you need. And I know it's it's very easy for for animal, animal lovers out there, right? Not animal lovers, I'm sorry, non vegetarian who actually eat animal sources of protein, very easy for them, and we may or may not talk about vegetarianism or veganism. But, you know, you that's the size of, of a piece of chicken, a piece of fish, a steak, whatever it is, right? The other hand is fiber. It's color, right? So fiber is found in carbohydrates, color, which is carbohydrate driven, that's your hand of vegetables, and or fruits and or whole grains. So this is what we know from research and diabetes. If you have that much protein and that much, carbohydrate, put them on a plate, right? That's your that's your amount. That's your volume. That will stabilize blood sugar the best. And that comes from research and people with diabetes, right? this nutrition periodization, I know you didn't ask, but I'm going into this nutrition periodization. Remember what cycle of training you're in. If you're in a high training cycle, you might need 2 hands of carbohydrate to one hand of protein, right? If you're doing a lot of intervals, a lot of miles, well, like I said earlier, your body at some point may need more carbohydrate unless you're trying to do this ketogenic super low carb high fat thing, right? But we're not talking about that right now. Right? So what I'm saying is, as a runner, you're gonna tissue between this 1 to 1 carb to protein or 1 to, I'm sorry, 2 to 1, 2 carbs to one hand a protein, depending on your training cycle. That so what I didn't mention was fat, and a lot of people are like, well, where's the fat? fat is usually found in protein rich foods. So chicken has fat, beef has fat. I mean, so many protein sources will have fat. that unless you're following a high fat diet, you don't necessarily need to add a lot more fats, right, unless that's your strategy that you're trying to do. But on the basic nutrition periodization, metabolic efficiency plan, it's really as easy as looking at carb protein fat using your hands as a model and saying at most meals, right, 90% of your meals, I'm gonna try and get this right. You know, 10% of the time, you do what you need to do. Like, we're all human. We have birthdays. We have so engagement, we travel, right? It's just part of being, being, you know, human, really.

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Guest [00:31:46]: So a a backstory about glycemic index. So glycemic index isn't really the whole story. It's it's really about glycemic load. you've got a factor in the quantity of of that food also. Right? But but as an as an example, I usually don't do a lot with glycemic index unless someone is very like, if they have a high fasting blood sugar or they're pre diabetic or diabetic, very sensitive to that because the glycemic index is influenced by the type of food, the cooking method, even the ripeness of food. So like a banana, right? If a banana is is green or really yellow, it has less sugar. But as it develops those brown spots, it has more sugar. So glycemic indexes all over the place. What, in, in, in addition to that, what we are also teaching people, especially through metabolic efficiency, is not, if you're going to have a banana, don't have it by itself, right? Add some nut butter to it. right, because nut butter has protein and fat. So the the big picture is the easy answer to your question is, yes, from a health perspective, low glycemic load, low, like, low glycemic index foods is fantastic. The small picture is saying, we don't really want you to just eat a single food most of the time you want to pair it with protein and fat, and that actually reduces that glycemic load on your body. Even if you were to have a really ripe banana with nut butter, it would still that, that protein and fiber, in fact, from the, nut butter will actually reduce the load of that really ripe banana.

Finn Melanson [00:33:11]: Okay. So we've discussed how to improve metabolic efficiency through diet. How about exercise?

Guest [00:33:19]: Yes. Absolutely. So so a little background too, because, I know one thing that that some people, if they're privy to exercise physiology, if they've done some reading, there's this thing out there that that in exercise physiology, decades, decades old that I learned in undergrad. It's called the crossover concepts, right, the crossover concept basically is the relationship of fats and carbohydrate burning or oxidation, depends on how you want to say it, over a series of intensities. Right? So, so, you know, as we're sitting here right now, we should be burning more fat because it's low intensity. We're, we're just sitting, right? But if we got up and started doing aerobic run, now our body says, okay, we're still burning fat, but, you know, we're starting to want a little bit more carbohydrate. If we go into intervals or a full out sprint, our body says, wow, we need a lot more carbs, and now fat burning goes down. So basically, the crossover concept said at a certain point of intensity, exercise intensity, your body will burn more carbohydrate than fats. So so fat burning goes down, carbohydrate burning goes up, right? What they defined in research was that point happens between

Finn Melanson [00:34:24]: 63.65

Guest [00:34:25]: percent of max intensity. That could be heart rate max or that could be VO2 max. So I I took that piece of data years ago when I developed metabolic efficiency training and challenged it. And I said, you know, I looked into the research, and I found that they only did exercise interventions. There was no nutrition intervention at all. There was no changing blood sugar. There was no adding carbs, decreasing carbs, whatever it was. So I question it, and I always ask the question of why. So I actually developed the protocol to measure metabolic efficiency in terms of nutrition. So my point being is, to improve your body's ability to burn fat, to be more metabolically efficient,

Finn Melanson [00:35:02]: 75%

Guest [00:35:03]: of the game of the equation is nutrition related. 25% is exercise related, which I'll talk about now, but I wanna bring up this. I have shown, as others have shown around the country, in actually a very good research paper just came out literally this year, showing that that crossover point, that pointed with the body switches from fat to carbohydrate metabolism more so. can be anywhere between

Finn Melanson [00:35:25]: 23 89%.

Guest [00:35:28]: It's a huge range, and I've actually tested athletes who've had it at 0%. They haven't crossed at all because they were such carbohydrate burners because they were on high carb diets, right? So it it goes to show that range is huge, which is why I'm I'm I'm on this huge bandwagon to try to get athletes to test right, get metabolically efficient, or get metabolic efficiency testing. It's just like blood work. Right? The more you know about your body, the more you can do to help it or to change it. Right? So from an exercise standpoint, the point at which your body switches from burning carbon, fat to carbohydrate everything below that intensity. That is described or is how I describe it as your metabolic efficiency training zone, if you will. Right? So so as an example, maybe that point happened for you at 65% of your maximum heart rate. So if you were to train exercise run at less than 60 percent of your max heart rate, you would actually, improve that 25% of the, the equation to burning more fat. And that happens. That's actually been known for so many years. It happens at this cellular level. It teaches the body enzymatically. It improves your mitochondrial's ability to burn fats. So exercise is great, but a lot of times runners, they're not honest with themselves, right? So I, I believe firmly in using heart rate monitors to monitor our progress but I believe that we need to use them not to know how fast we should go, but to know how much we should back off to be in that proper, if you will, I hit using this term, but fat burning zone, right? But a good, a good point is we don't know unless we test it. So I can, I can say I want you to go under 65%, but maybe you're someone with, with that metabolic efficiency point at 30%. So now you're, you're going over your prescribed fat burning zone, and you're really not helping yourself. So the, the point is this, we know aerobic training will improve your body's ability to burn fat. So depending on the runners training, method, and I I help runners all the time with this, when I test them, I'll look at their training program and say, okay, if you're running 4 days a week and look at your quality sessions first, this is this is a take home message. Where's your long run? Where's your speed or tempo day, right? The other 2 should be more aerobic depending on your training cycle. Those are the 2, the 1 or 2 runs that you should maintain a low intensity low enough to teach your body to burn fat at the cellular level. in, in addition to helping, you know, kind of changing your nutrition, because nutrition is the 3 quarters of the equation, whereas exercise is only 20 is only a quarter. You know what? There's there's a lot of equations out there. And even if I may bring up, like, the Maffetone method, Phil Maffetone was ahead his days years ago when he developed this, and I and I and I and I loved that he did this, I've actually, there, so there is some truth there, but the fact of the matter is, like, with metabolic efficiency testing, it's it's exercise physiology testing. Like, someone runs on a treadmill we're analyzing the amount of oxygen they're consuming versus carbon dioxide they're producing, I have found that metabolic efficiency point and the math method can be anywhere between 10:20 beats, for tuck in heart rate off. So so, you know, I think a great place to start if if runners can't get tested is you have to use the math method, but if you can get tested, it will be so much more accurate because maybe you're out there doing an 8 minute pace you know, and and you should be doing an 845 pace because that's what your body needs to improve fat burning more.

Finn Melanson [00:38:56]: Where can runners get tested to determine their metabolic efficiency point?

Guest [00:39:01]: It's so the, the equipment is quite expensive. So not a lot of people around the country do this, but, there's a great website. It's called metabolicefficiency. orgmetabolic efficiency.org, there's actually a list of certified metabolic efficiency training specialists So in 2012, I actually developed the certification to teach fitness professionals, coaches, medical, and, and health and nutrition professionals, how to use this, this concept, this metabolic efficiency training concept. There are a few of them who actually have centers, performance, centers, or labs, with this technology to have it measured. So I think there's we we've got, you know, people stationed, if you will, around the US at least, from coast to coast, there's a few more popping up that actually can produce or can provide this testing for athletes. And it's not it's not overly expensive. And it's actually nothing like if your runners, if if you guys are listening, it's not like a VO 2 max test. It's the exact opposite protocol. So we actually start you at a ridiculously slow pace because we're looking at that point where your body, if it does, crossover, when and if it does, we rarely even take runners up to their threshold. It's just not necessary. So go to metabolicefficiency.org. They can, they can click on certified professionals, look for their state because it's it's based on their state, and then they can basically just start contacting these people and saying, Hey, do you offer the testing? It's a great place to start.

Finn Melanson [00:40:27]: Can you improve your metabolic efficiency point through dietary intervention?

Guest [00:40:32]: Yeah. So that was a question I had early on. So I used myself and other athletes as guinea pigs, because I I wanted to ask the question, if people did this in the past through exercise, right, through that crossover constant, what could I do just through nutrition? So I tried to keep new, training stable, right? No in no increases, no decreases, just completely stable, and only manipulate the the daily nutrition plan with these people and including myself, what I have found, and this is gonna knock this access off of some people, it can take as little as 1 week to change your metabolic efficiency, your body's ability to burn fat and preserve carbohydrates It totals 1 week just by changing your daily nutrition plan. Now, I'll say that in, in confidence, knowing that not many people can do that because changing nutrition is a behavior change, right? That usually requires about 3 to 4 weeks. So what I recommend most runners do most most athletes do is allow themselves between 4 to 8 weeks to engage in this behavior change to fully allow those adaptations to happen. But physiologically, it can happen. It might even be able to happen in a few days. I just haven't tested that, that, small time increment yet, but definitely in a week, I've shown a significant profound increases in fat burning. Now you should ask the opposite question how how often or how long would it take to lose it after a race. We're like, hey, let's go crazy, it can take the same amount of time, if not sooner. So it's it's testament. So once you find a nutrition plan works for you, not a diet, not a diet. Like metabolic efficiency is all about a lifestyle change. It's it's manipulating carbohydrate protein and fat based on your training cycle, based on your health and performance goals. But once you find a good program, you should stay on that, right? But you should never follow a diet because a diet is it usually eliminates things. It usually puts the handcuffs on you. You don't enjoy food anymore. You're really a slave to food. Instead, we wanna create a healthy relationship with food by creating more of this metabolic efficiency lifestyle plan.

Finn Melanson [00:42:32]: Okay. To finish things off, do you have any more tips for our listeners?

Guest [00:42:37]: You know, I think it would be a a significant discussion on top of this one, but but I would just I would warn people to, against going to the extremes for a long amount of time, period of time, right? So so we know what high carbohydrate low fat diets have done for, for people in the past. Some good, some bad, but I feel that that's an extreme, we're just starting to learn more about the low carb, high fat ketogenic craze, but that's an extreme, right? I, I feel that when when athletes try extremes, they can't follow them that long. They may see significant results early on, but I've always heard the stories I'm sure you have also of that rebound effect Right? So I would just maybe provide that small bit of warning and just be careful of the extremes somewhere in the middle. You know, I, I use bulk efficiency in, in term, or I relate it in terms of a bell shaped curve, right? So 90 to 95% of, of your lifestyle should be varying your nutrition, right, your carbs, protein, and fat based on your training and your health goals, and leave those outliers for times where you just want to experiment, but you don't want it to be a significant

Finn Melanson [00:43:58]: Thanks for listening to the run to the top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Malanson, as always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner team at Runners Connect, also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple podcast players. And lastly, if you of the show and want bonus content behind the scenes experiences with our guests and premier access to contests and giveaways, and subscribe to our newsletter by going to runners connect dot backslash podcast. Until next time, happy trading.