 Hey what's up everyone welcome to another video my name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at CTS and today we're going to be talking about diet specifically the low carb diet of professional mountain biker Emily Batty. Could her new diet be the reason for her lack of success at the world cup level in 2019? I'll respond to her video and then go into the science on high carb versus low carb for cycling performance and hopefully by the end of the video you'll get a better idea of what your diet should look like to maximize your own cycling performance. If you're new to this channel I make weekly training, racing and gear related videos going over tips and tricks that I've learned in my 12 years of racing and training experience that have gotten me to the top of the ultra endurance mountain bike game in the US and as a cycling coach at CTS. If you want to learn how to get faster or just more about the science of training in general then be sure to subscribe and if you have a training question or a topic you'd like to see me cover in a future video be sure to leave it down in the comments section below. I do my best to get to all the questions in the comments. In this video I'll be addressing the video that Emily made about her cyclic keto diet but first I want to say that this video is in no way meant to bash Emily. I actually love watching her race and get results and if she happens to see this video I hope she takes it more as advice and not criticism. If anything I hope this video helps her. I'd love to see Emily return to the podium where she belongs. Bro who are you to criticize Emily baddie? Last I checked you never even raced a world cup so I'm pretty sure you have no idea what you're talking about. Clearly it's working for her. Actually it very well may not be working for her. After a third place in the world cup overall last year and a bronze medal at the world championships I think Emily would agree that her results in 2019 have been somewhat disappointing. After all she's yet to crack a podium. If you head over to her Instagram you can get a read on the frustration she's reasonably had throughout the season. Despite my bad results this season not the result I wanted at Val de Sol usually I excel in the mud but for some reason I couldn't find my rhythm on that course. Last year third at Andorra in this year 26 really haven't felt like myself all year so far. Now obviously there are ton of factors that influence performance so we can't draw the conclusion that her bad results are due to her diet change but there is a lot of science to suggest that the diet she's following or at least the one she's following in the video we're about to review is not optimal for performance. Without further ado let's jump into her video and of course the science. I never really thought I was a carbohydrate and sugar-driven person I never really thought about it I just ate what I ate and when I looked at the macronutrients I was kind of devastated at how much carbohydrate intake I was actually consuming so I really wanted to get away from that. She clearly seems to think there's something wrong with fueling yourself with carbohydrates or being dependent on carbohydrates which is odd given the science on carbohydrate consumption and endurance sports performance. This study on carbohydrate feeding and one hour time trial performance took 19 endurance train cyclists and had them perform a 60-minute time trial after consuming a carbohydrate solution and a placebo on separate occasions. The results were a 2.3 percent performance increase in the carb fed group over the placebo. Another study on four-hour pre-exercise carbohydrate feeding on cycling performance looked at carbohydrate consumption four hours before a 95-minute interval session using 10 participants. When subjects consumed a high carb meal four hours before the session performance increased 15% over not consuming carbs. These are just individual studies but they represent the consensus on carbohydrates and performance pretty well. If we take a step back and look at the results of many studies which was done in this 2011 meta analysis that looked at 88 randomized crossover studies on carbohydrate consumption and endurance performance the conclusion is that carbohydrates do show a large benefit. There's really no disputing it eat carbs and you'll ride faster however these studies looked at carbohydrate consumption on carbohydrate dependent individuals. What if your whole diet is low carb? Will that have a benefit as Emily suggests? In this study on low carb diets on elite race walker performance they took 19 elite race walkers and put them on a standard high carb diet, a periodized carb diet, or a low carb high fat diet. When testing their 10k race performance before and after they found that the high carb and periodized carb group improved their time while the high fat group did not. All right that's race walkers but this next one is a little bit more applicable because it was actually done on mountain bikers. The study looked at the ketogenic diets influence on performance and experienced off-road cyclists and took eight subjects and had them perform a continuous exercise protocol after consuming a ketogenic diet and a standard diet for four weeks. They found that the subjects had a significantly higher max workload and lactate threshold with the standard diet and the study concluded that ketogenic diets decrease the ability to perform high intensity work. However according to the title of her video Emily follows cyclic keto meaning that she has high carb days. It's gonna vary with ratio and quantities based on what I'm doing for workouts that day if I had a gym session in the morning or if I have a five hour endurance ride versus a shorter interval day. Some have speculated that following a low carb diet but then loading up on carbs right before an event would give you the best of both worlds. This method was put to the test in this study which took eight well-trained cyclists and had them consume a normal carb rich diet or a high fat diet for six days followed by one day of carb loading. They found that the high fat diet did increase fat oxidation and there was no significant difference in 100k time trial performance however times were three minutes and 44 seconds slower when subjects were fed the high fat diet. Subjects also performed significantly worse in 1k sprints after eating the high fat diet and these results are echoed throughout the scientific literature. In one particularly critical review on carbohydrate dependence in endurance athletes they concluded that despite renewed popular interest in high fat low carb diets for endurance sports fat rich diets do not spare carbohydrates or improve training capacity and performance but instead directly impair rates of muscle glycogenalysis and energy flux. The review also looked at what elite athletes actually eat. They stated that if a high fat diet was an advantage then the best athletes would be doing it but they're not. Kenyan distance runners and tort de France cyclists have been reported to consume 7 to 12 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight per day pretty much the exact opposite of a ketogenic diet. So low carb diets for performance aren't looking all that good even if you refeed with carbohydrates on race day. The thing is there are good carbs and bad carbs but Emily seems to classify all carbohydrates as something to be avoided. Sugar, candy, white bread these are highly processed carbohydrates that you generally want to avoid. However here she's talking about whole fruit like it's the plague. She acted like eating three bananas a day was the equivalent to going to Dunkin Donuts and scarfing down half a dozen donuts by yourself. The fact is fruits are one of the healthiest foods that you can eat. From protecting against cardiovascular disease to reducing risk of cancer and diabetes, improving bone health, weight loss and the list goes on. And on top of these health benefits fruit consumption has been shown to significantly improve recovery. Cherry juice has been shown to increase antioxidant capacity after a marathon leading to aided recovery and in another study reduced symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage. That study showed that strength loss after eccentric exercise was 22% with a placebo but only 4% when subjects consume cherry juice. Blueberries which Emily mentions having a problem with have also been shown to reduce inflammation after two and a half hours of running. And there you have it guys those are my sardine sandwiches. I put one cup of vanilla almond milk and then for protein I now these products are sponsors guys but I do I do like this Garden of Life whey protein it's um it's grass fed apparently um but I've really enjoyed this one it's not super high in calories or carbohydrates but it does have 24 grams of protein so I'm getting 18 grams protein with my sardines and I'm getting another 24 grams protein with my protein powder. Definitely uh prefer my smoothie with a banana it just makes it sweet with the almond milk. This is Emily's post-workout recovery smoothie and she has the same misconception that a lot of cyclists have which is that after a workout you need to smash in the protein. However evidence would suggest otherwise. A systematic review on the effects of protein supplements for recovery found that high quality and consistent data demonstrated there is no apparent relationship between recovery of muscle function and ratings of muscle soreness and surrogate markers of muscle damage when protein supplements are consumed prior to during or after a bout of endurance or resistance exercise. While protein consumption is important in general it turns out carbohydrates are way more important post-workout to improve your recovery. The use of a carbon protein mixture became popular after studies like this that had subjects consume just carbs just protein or carbs and protein together after a two hour ride. What they found was that the glycogen resynthesis was fastest when carbs and protein were combined then when subjects consume carbs only and consuming protein only performed significantly worse. The glaringly obvious problem with this study and other studies like it is that they weren't using equal calories. The carb group in the study ingested 112 grams of carbs and the carb plus protein group ingested 112 grams of carbs plus an additional 40 grams of protein. So that's roughly 450 calories versus 600 calories. When you equalize the calories though it's a different story. In this study on carbohydrate and protein intake during recovery they had three groups one that consumed carbs and protein one that consumed the same amount of carbs as the first group but without protein and one that consumed just carbs but matched the calories of the first group. Following recovery subjects ran to exhaustion at 70% of maximal uptake and here's what they found. Just like with the previous study carbs plus protein performed better than the same amount of carbs without protein however when they equalized the calories the carb only mixture actually performed the best. The study concluded that the inclusion of protein in the solution was no more beneficial than when ingesting a more concentrated carbohydrate solution of equal energy content and further research confirms these findings. Now she does have some carbs like those corn thins and that one banana however as we just saw from the research a bigger focus on carbohydrates would probably be even better and the way she talks about these ingredients it's almost like they're an afterthought and she says you don't even have to include them if you don't want to. Definitely uh prefer my smoothie with the banana it just makes it sweet with the almond milk um you don't have to but it is another added bit of carbohydrates post workout so just like the flavor of bananas I can eat like three of these critters I try to I've been good I've been trying to limit this past I don't know two months uh my my banana intake I've tried to really cut back and the fact that she seems guilty about putting that banana in her smoothie still blows my mind. Now to be fair Emily does a lot of things right her diet is loaded with whole foods and she uses high antioxidant foods in her recovery smoothie which have been shown to boost recovery and fight inflammation however she clearly has an aversion to carbohydrates and avoids them as much as possible as I said there's a difference between unprocessed and processed carbs and she seems to know this polenta this will be my source of complex carbohydrates. Emily could very well not be meeting her potential by avoiding carbohydrates even if she consumes more carbs before a race she seems to be avoiding carbs even on her high intensity interval days after all this low carb day of eating was on one of her interval days. Okay I am finally ready to ride I do have those intervals to get done today so it'll be a productive workout. This will likely impair her recovery and those high intensity workouts won't be as high quality as they could be. You may have heard about world tour riders manipulating carbohydrate intake to improve performance and choosing to train low carb or fasted sometimes and while this is true in many cases one thing that they certainly do not do is eat a low carb diet when racing or performing high intensity workouts GCN just did a video on the ketogenic diet and to quote Ollie and further to this having spoken to coaches and riders I can tell you that no one is competing and racing in the Tour de France on a ketogenic diet. Moreover Emily is not a world tour roadie she's a cross-country mountain biker if you spend hours day after day racing your bike then you could make the argument that being well fat adapted would be an advantage and prevent things like bonking for example however this is far less of a concern when your races last 20 minutes to an hour and a half like Emily's do running out of glycogen isn't the primary concern when you're doing a short track or cross-country mountain bike race and for more anecdotal evidence for what it's worth I've coached athletes who have tried a low carb or ketogenic diet only to find that they performed better when including carbohydrates by far the biggest complaint from low carbers anytime someone refutes the diet is that they didn't do it right look you need to be keto for at least a month and consume no more than 30 grams of carbohydrates not 50 not 40 but 30 grams also she's eating way too much protein to be considered keto and I never even saw her pray to the great ketoist maximus to give her hashtag fat strength should you go full keto or just low carb should you do carbohydrate refeeds how many carbohydrates actually constitutes a low carb diet and does fruit matter there isn't a clear consensus but as far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant given the lack of evidence that any of it improves your performance and on the other side the overwhelming evidence that carbohydrates do improve your performance before I wrap up the video I just want to say again that I'm not trying to attack or discredit Emily here I more just wanted to use her video as a learning opportunity because this is a topic that I've been meaning to talk about and that a lot of people need to hear I hope that diet or otherwise Emily gets things sorted out and starts putting up the results that we know she's capable of I left the link for her video and her channel in the description be sure to go over there and check it out there's some great videos that give you some insight into the daily life of one of the world's fastest mountain bikers thanks for watching and I hope you guys found this information helpful if you like this video be sure to give it a like share it with a friend and subscribe and if you want to see more training and racing content be sure to follow me on instagram twitter and facebook and if you want to check out my own personal training be sure to check me out in Strava if you're interested in getting a coach if you sign up their cts be sure to use my code ctsdj to save $40 by waiving the registration fee details are down in the description