So, yesterday I was talking about Long Slow Distance (LSD) as the traditional, and effective, way to teach your body to go back to using fat as an energy source. I hinted that there are other ways to do this, involving timing, type and intensity of exercise and food intake. By stimulating the ‘right’ hormones, and suppressing the ‘wrong’ ones, those of us with limited training time budgets can achieve a similar effect to that induced by LSD. It does, however, take discipline!

1. Nutrition – follow some base rules: Cut traditional carbo intake by 1400 hours. Your tea might then be lean meat or fish, with a side salad and green beans and broccoli. No potatoes, no pasta, no rice, no bread. No food within 3 hours of racing, training or bed. Only have traditional carbos as described above after long sessions (over an hour and a half). Drink more water. No – more than that, even. Try and keep your food to quality lean meat and fish, seeds, fruits, salad and vegetables including root vegetables, and avoid dairy product, grass product (wheat, corn, rice), sugar and fermented items. (Incidentally, sticking rigidly to this will cure you of pretty much everything – obesity, asthma, eczyma, spots, arthritis, depression, old age and ugliness to name but a few. Clearly I’m not sticking rigidly to the plan!) Increase your protein intake as you remove traditional carbs sources. You have to keep your food calories about the same, so you have to get them from somewhere else. Due to the low calorific density of most of the recommended foods here, you can actually eat more. 5 meals a day is quite sensible.

Try a breakfast omelette, as you’re not having toast, porridge or Muesli. At elevenses, have half a cup of mixed nuts and seeds, and a piece of fruit. Lunch can be meat or fish and salad, with more nuts, more fruit. Mid-afternoon would be nice for an apple and an orange, and tea could be lean meat or fish with salad and vegetables followed by whatever bright coloured berries you can find. Finish by 8pm.

2. Workouts – in order to fit in the nutritional requirements above, most of your training must be done in the morning. Train hard and short, before breakfast, and refuel as necessary within half an hour of finishing to get optimal energy replacement. Leave it 20 minutes more to gain a better fat loss effect. Intense exercise stimulates the release of Human Growth Hormone, and this is what makes you lean. If you eat loads of sugar, Insulin cuts in. This is fine, but it suppresses HGH. Thus, whenever you over-fuel with sugar, the excess goes to fat. Use the weekend to do your longer workouts, and try to fuel these with water. Carry emergency gels and so on, but only use if essential.

Next, we’ll talk about what to do if evening workouts are unavoidable. Its great, as it involves drug-taking, so don’t go away…….