Episode 165 - Fat adaptation and metabolic flexibility: Should you train your body to burn more fat?

Fat adaptation and metabolic flexibility: Should you train your body to burn more fat?

We're back with part two of my conversation with Sam Shepard, a researcher and fellow nutrition enthusiast, about the science of energy production.

Last week we went in depth on carbohydrates, so make sure you’ve listened to that one, but today we’re talking about the benefits (and drawbacks) of fat adaptation. So what exactly is fat adaptation?

Fat adaptation is when your body uses fat as its main energy source rather than carbohydrates. This can be extremely beneficial for low-intensity exercise, but causes issues when you’re doing high-intensity session. For this reason, our goal should be metabolic flexibility, where our body can switch between fuels based on exercise intensity. This not only boosts endurance but also ensures that you're not overly reliant on carbohydrate intake during your races.

 

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Episode Transcription

Episode 165: Fat adaptation and metabolic flexibility: Should you train your body to burn more fat?

Welcome to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. The show designed to serve you up evidence-based sports nutrition advice from the experts. Hi, I'm your host Taryn, Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Advanced Sports Dietitian and founder of Dietitian Approved. Listen as I break down the latest evidence to give you practical, easy-to-digest strategies to train hard, recover faster and perform at your best. You have so much potential, and I want to help you unlock that with the power of nutrition. Let's get into it.

[00:00:00] Taryn: Welcome back for part two of my chat with Sam Shepard, resident sports nutritionist and researcher nerd all the way from the UK, where part one, we dove into carbohydrate oxidation and how it applies to you specifically as a triathlete.

And today in part two, we're going to dive deeper. Little bit deeper down the fat oxidation and fat adaptation rabbit holes. So thank you for coming back Sam

[00:00:46] Sam: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:48] Taryn: So let's dive straight in then. We finished off our first conversation talking about, you know, where triathlete should dabble in a fat adapted strategy or play with low carb, high fat. But what actually does fat adaptation mean?

[00:01:02] Sam: yeah, it's an interesting one. theoretically, it's just when the body uses fat as the main fuel rather than carbohydrate. That's, if you like, some level of the definition. I mean, we can dig into that a little bit more when we're, trying to be fat adapted.

Part of that is to enter this state of ketosis or polyketosis, so always being in this state of ketosis. And we define that as having ketone levels sort of higher than 0. 5 millimoles per liter in the blood. So that's two ways in which you could define fat adapted. And I think we'll come onto this, but for me, if you are fat adapted, then you are able to use fat as a fuel.

At the appropriate time, I would add as a caveat or an extra point to that first point, because using fat all the time might not be sufficient for what we are aiming to do as an athlete, if we're aiming to do high intensity work, for example,

[00:01:57] Taryn: Yeah. So is that the concept of metabolic flexibility that is really sexy at the moment is being able to draw on that.

[00:02:03] Sam: yeah, so metabolic flexibility really is the idea that you can switch between the fuels that you're using relative to the intensity of exercise that you're doing. Nutritional changes and do that without, I suppose, ultimately harming performance is probably the, again, that caveat that we want to add to that point.

[00:02:24] Taryn: Yeah. So why then a triathlete's a little bit obsessed with doing this?

[00:02:28] Sam: I had to think about this from a practical perspective, and again, watching Kona at the weekend was probably quite a few good examples there one being that if you lose a bottle early on on the bike that's got all your nutrition in or a large part of your nutrition in, if you aren't metabolically flexible and able to maybe dial back the intensity of the ride that you're doing slightly, but still maintain a relatively high output then you're a bit too carbohydrate dependent and you're not, your body's not able to then go, actually, we're not getting the carbs we need here to, sustain this intensity.

Maybe we need to switch to using a little bit more fat and if you can do that efficiently without harming performance Output then that's the ideal scenario really being able to switch between those fuels if you are Very highly dependent on carbohydrate as a fuel and highly dependent on having exogenous as we kind of talked about in first So the carbohydrate you ingest If your body's not getting that and it just starts to go, oh, hang on and panic and you know, you're overstressed, let's say, and it doesn't switch to fat as a fuel effectively, then that will start to decrease your level of performance.

So, you know, your, bike power will go down, your running speed will go down. Quite quickly, so we're trying to avoid that scenario where we're not overly dependent probably on carbohydrate as a fuel we recognize that it's an important fuel that we're going to need to use at appropriate times and the rest of the time we can rely on fat as the dominant fuel source, essentially.

[00:03:58] Taryn: Everyone listening is like, that sounds wicked. Now how do I then do that?

[00:04:02] Sam: Yeah, so we want to ultimately have the highest fat oxidative capacity available to us. And we kind of touched on in the first time we spoke about 0. 5 grams per minute of fat being, you know, a good or sort of average number for someone who's recreationally obese.

Somewhat well trained in terms of fat oxidation or fat max, ideally, you know, we push that up to closer to one or maybe even beyond that 1. 2 grams per minute. And then you'll get a greater proportion of your energy from fat at the same intensity or same power or speed So that's great, but if we go a little bit too far with that, Then we will suppress our ability to use carbohydrate as a fuel, which we know is really important when we come to do the high intensity stuff that's ultimately you know, relies on carbohydrate as the energy to enable us to do that.

So You want the highest available for oxidation capacity without harming your ability to use carbohydrate as a fuel. Which sounds amazing, and it's not an easy place to get to, of course you know, we can look at a number of factors that will influence that.

The main one is 2 or time in zone 2. So, you know, there's been a lot of talk in, uh, cycling and particularly, we'd look back at, uh, Pogacar, he talks a lot about the zone 2 training and that's incredibly important because as a result of doing that type of exercise and that intensity where we're using fat as a dominant fuel source, our body will adapt to that over time.

And the more we do of that, then the greater adaptation that will occur. And that will also drive up our fat oxidation capacity. Now, that's great if you've got all the time in the world to do that type of training and 30 hours a week. But at the same time many of us don't and so we might be down at maybe 10 hours a week.

So faster training might be one approach that we might consider with the caveat being that we need to make sure that we refuel appropriately afterwards. I would always say that We can also think about, and this is probably the sexy thing in the moment, is like periodizing our carbohydrate intake around the training that we're doing.

So. Again, back when I was working at Liverpool John Moores University, so I was lucky enough to work with James Morton, who's one of the kind of world leaders in this area alongside Louise Burke and he coined the phrase like fuel for the work requires, and that's essentially what it is. It's, you know, you're giving yourself carbohydrate at the appropriate times.

So for the harder sessions, so that might be before, during, and after in terms of refueling, and then the rest of the time, We can try to push our body to use fat as a fuel. So, for example, you know, if I've gone out for an easy hour run this morning, I would probably get up and do that fasted. I know I can run fairly easy for an hour.

I'd make sure I didn't suddenly start sprinting up a hill or something like that, that I came to. I take it easy and go up that nice and easy. So fat was the dominant source of energy. And not only is it, I'm burning fat through that session, which is great. But as a result of that, my body will adapt to do that more effectively.

You know, after several weeks of doing that type of training. Equally, you know, I might have a threshold session to do. Tomorrow morning. In fact, I have got a threshold session to do tomorrow morning. It's just you reminded me I'm clearly, you know, that's clearly going to be carbohydrate dependent.

So tonight for dinner, it might be that I would increase my carbohydrate content my dinner and then certainly in the morning, even if I get up and get on the bike before having had any food or any fuel, I will definitely start fueling that session almost, you know, By the end of the warm up and into that session.

So I will be giving my body carbohydrate to support the execution of a quality session there. And that really is the fundamentals of this fuel for the work requires concepts is that, yeah, you're giving the body or asking the body to use the correct fuel at the correct time relative to the session that you're trying to do.

it makes sense really to encourage your body to be metabolically flexible and adapt in that way Because ultimately you're saying right use carbohydrate when this is hard and use fat when it's easy at the very basic level That's what we're trying to teach ourselves to do.

[00:08:20] Taryn: I feel like that is one of the biggest rocks for triathlon nutrition is understanding how to do periodization. like in practice, it's hard in theory, it's hard. And it is something that I work with my athletes to do, but it is a long, long game. It's not something that can click for somebody in a

Eat better for those bigger, harder, heavier days and eat differently for lighter days. But then the actual practice of implementing that as a busy age group triathlete who works and, you know, has to do all this training in a week, it is, yeah, one of the hardest things in practice I find to maintain and get right.

Do you know, or are you across any of the female research in this space? Cause there's some, a few loud noisy voices that. Reach asked in Australia about females should never do faster training it drives me up the wall a little bit. Are you across any of that female research?

[00:09:14] Sam: Not in detail my partner actually is so I should you to speak to 

her. if I'm working with an individual, then I would look at their life. It goes back to their lifestyle, really, I think. Yes, there's some noise about this idea of females not doing fast food training. I don't necessarily agree because it ultimately, it's got to fit into their lifestyle. So if their only opportunity to train is in the morning before the kids are up or before they go to work, I would much rather they do that training and we adjust what that training looks like to enable them to do it rather than having to get up two hours early thinking I need to eat before I do this session or foregoing the session completely because they're not going to fit it in at another time in the day.

So kind of got a way up. What was you're actually trying to achieve a lot of the time. And take that approach with it. You know, also thinking about, is there periods of life which are stressful, or is it a busy week at work, or, and again, saying that it all falls on the female to look after the kids, but that's often the setup, if you like, for most families.

you know, there's an extra level of stress an extra burden there and under those Scenarios, maybe yeah faster training might not be appropriate when you're already under a certain level of stress anyway so yeah, that's a bit of surface level answer, but I think it goes back to understanding the individual that we're working with and what it is that they're trying to achieve and what their aims are and what their life looks like at that moment in time as well, to then make that decision about, okay, how are we going to get you to do the training?

And that alongside having a healthy lifestyle as well.

[00:10:54] Taryn: so we talked about in part one the influence of your day to day diet and nutrition on your ability to oxidize fat and carbohydrate. Is there any other particular dietary strategies other than fasted training that we can lean on to enhance our fat oxidation pathways?

[00:11:11] Sam: Yeah, so I mean, it is mainly dietary. we spoke about that study in the first first time we spoke. We showed that was one of the key determinants. Faster training. We can also, you know, talk about this idea of glycogen depleted training or carbohydrate restricted training as well might be another way to increase your fat oxidation capacity.

We obviously have to implement that very carefully alongside, maintaining energy balance. So it comes back to that periodization of carbohydrate as well to try and support that. But those are the main things, you know, we can go to a supermarket or look online, and there's certain supplements that claim to increase our ability to burn fat.

Probably L carnitine is one of the ones that we would recommend. look at. In fact, you know, there was a nice study from Paul Greenhoff back in 2011 that probably one of the first studies that did this really well to show that if you supplement with carnitine this was in people doing it for six months, so they had carnitine twice a day, then they could increase their ability to use that's slightly as a fuel at low intensity exercise, but it didn't actually harm their ability to do higher intensity work either.

So that's maybe the trade off that we're looking for. But the relative change. Using carnitine is always going to be much, much smaller than what we might achieve with dietary periodization of carbohydrates as well. So, yes, it's significant and it looks great, but is it meaningful the grand scheme of things for people? And again, it comes back to the dietary strategies really, which will promote that metabolic flexibility that we're looking for.

[00:12:49] Taryn: you just gave us two strategies that I don't want anyone to try unless you have sports dietitian input because triathletes love to add to cart and oh, there are so many things that you need to get right and get guidance on if you're looking at implementing both of those things. Okay. Top, top of the pyramid type strategies there.

[00:13:13] Sam: Absolutely. Yeah,

[00:13:13] Taryn: are there any specific scenarios or races or particular people that are going to benefit from doing some fat oxidation, fat adaptation type strategies in their training program or life? 

[00:13:29] Sam: I would say anyone who has ambitions to do an endurance event is going to benefit from implementing some strategies in their life. The easiest one is fasted training. But really, I would still argue that that's somewhat periodized and it comes back to periodized carbohydrate intake as well.

We can look at professionals, and we said how important Zone 2 training was and that's the same for everyone, the professionals just have a lot more time to do that, but they will also undertake a lot of sessions with low carbohydrate, not necessarily through design, mainly through the number of hours that they're doing in a week or a day, so, you know, they might be trying to fit three sessions in in a day, they're going to struggle to complete all of those sessions with high carbohydrate stores, just because they're not going to refuel appropriately and quickly enough after you know, one session and then another.

So naturally they will be doing some lower carbohydrate or carbohydrate restricted training, not by design, but as an age grouper, we can definitely do that by design. And that may be where it holds, a benefit for the time restricted athletes and age groupers. So you start to implement some of those strategies.

I think you're right. It's a difficult process to undertake and definitely you need to, try and do that working with a sports nutritionist or dietitian because they will help not only implement that, but help you understand why as well.

That's the one thing that I try and tackle. The people I work with, it's like I can tell you exactly what to do, but I also want you to understand why you're doing it because session suddenly changes and I'm not at the end of the phone to suddenly tell you, oh, no, you need to go and eat some carbs now or not, then you need to be able to react accordingly because our lives are a little bit unpredictable.

So, yeah, I think those are the main tips there. And yeah, it goes back to, you know, Ultimately, what you're trying to achieve as an athlete as well, and how much time you have to put into training, but then also into, dietary strategies around your training as well. I firmly believe there's a big payoff.

If you can incorporate the relevant dietary strategies that will promote not only your fat oxidation, but your metabolic flexibilities, we can't keep going back to, but it's not as sexy as a disc wheel or, you know, some snazzy carbon pair of shoes. So, you know, the Instagram post that people like to share after they purchase something isn't that sexy.

I periodised my carbohydrate successfully today. yeah, there you go.

[00:16:02] Taryn: Oh, that's so funny. I love that you teach your athletes why as well. It's one of the key things that I like to do with my athletes because well, like I'm not on speed tile. You will have a much better performance in training and racing if you have the ability to adapt to nutrition on the fly.

You know, like life throws you curveballs constantly. Maybe you get sick, maybe you get injured, maybe you got a meeting thrown into your lunch break where you were going to do a run, like all these sorts of things will happen. The more you understand, why you're doing something with your nutrition and then how to specifically do that for yourself is so much more valuable than being dictated a plan that you have no idea how it works or why it's set up that way and then how to change it if you know you end up not doing a training session or you do an extra training session.

So I love that you work that way as well. It's so much more valuable and it kind of sets athletes up for success long term not just a quick fix.

[00:16:58] Sam: Absolutely. think people can often get a bit disappointed if they don't, you know, follow something. So the letter or, 

[00:17:04] Taryn: Triathletes in particular.

[00:17:06] Sam: thing that I would always say to people, like, if you can get You know, 80 percent of the week is good, then that's fine. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect all the time.

I know we're always looking for perfection, But it doesn't have to be perfection and it can still be effective. And that's probably the other key point to stress there as well.

[00:17:22] Taryn: Yeah. Yep. what are the big rocks then for metabolic flexibility? Doing some, you know, faster training sometimes, big rock is periodization and understanding how to, you know, fuel for the work required, but pulling on all those different levers to eat what you need on a daily basis that should change and evolve on a daily basis as your training evolves.

Is there anything else that are big things to work towards The golden metabolic flexibility.

[00:17:50] Sam: I think those are the two key things. And it's just remembering why as well, we're trying to have this flexibility. Yes, it's a performance benefit, but we can also think about it from a health perspective as well. Again, going back to those conditions, like obesity and type 2 diabetes, a lack of metabolic flexibility is often underpinning those leading to those conditions.

So, even outside of an athletic perspective, yes, we're all interested in performance and Being as good as we can as an athlete, but really it goes back to like, let's think about this as a lifestyle as well. And we're not going to be triathletes forever. I mean, arguably, you know, you see 75, 75 year olds completing Kona and things, which is unbelievable. But it's a very small age group. So there's clearly not that many people doing it. And, you know, we need to look beyond what we're doing as an athlete and think. Yes, this is a lifestyle approach as well. And so there's follow through there, you know, from an exercise perspective, it's great, but also from a dietary perspective, understanding that carbohydrate periodization and things like that can also follow through into making sure we are healthy outside of our athletic life as well.

[00:19:00] Taryn: We've never spoken before, and Sam's just busted out all the things that I try and like bang into people, and I love that. Yeah. We should hang out more, though the time zone's not particularly conducive to chatting on the regular basis.

So Sam, Can I ask you about ketones? Because so many triathletes take them, and they're expensive, and They think it's doing things, and I would love to get your perspective on ketones. What do you reckon? 

[00:19:30] Sam: these triathletes have got an unbelievable budget if they think that they can use key terms regularly. They're getting paid much more than I am. If you've got the budget to use them, then fantastic.

From what I understand. research isn't so supportive. It seems to be more from a recovery tool than anything else at the moment, and that's why you see the likes of INEOS, LisaBike, the Peloton, and these ProTor cycling teams using them. Firstly, they've got the budget which is great, but they're also trying to do multi day events.

They're trying to recover very quickly from training. And that seems to be where most of the research,

[00:20:08] Taryn: And they're also elite athletes.

[00:20:10] Sam: and they're also really athletes, so there's maybe a necessity for those guys, but I think for your average person, and not even an average person, you know, someone at the high end of an age group, for example, I still think there's more benefit from looking at your diet as a start point.

And then, you know, all the little things around that to support your training which will have much more of a benefit to your performance than, you know, Than taking ketones. Again, it just, it's just easy to use ketones. It's a little bit sexy. You can put it on Instagram that you've had your ketone shot as all the pros do. I think realistically trying to fit that into, yeah, everything else that you're trying to do there's more benefit from a dietary perspective to support your training than, absolutely using the ketones at least at the moment. And I think That's probably what the research is telling us as well. At the moment as well.

[00:21:04] Taryn: Thank you for that. I know that that was like putting needles in your eyes answering that question, but I think that was a nice, well rounded answer.

[00:21:12] Sam: it's an interesting one. I I listened to a podcast the other day and they talked a lot more around, you know ketones for cognitive function and Recovery from like traumatic brain injury and things like that. So there might well be a role for them in that space It's not something that I'm across really but particularly in, you know, contact sports, maybe there is a role for, ketones there.

But going back to the endurance world, I think there's more benefit to be had from looking at day to day diet and supporting training appropriately.

[00:21:40] Taryn: Yeah, interesting. Thank you. So looking ahead, oxidation and fat adaptation? Like what is emerging in the research? You've got your fingers on the pulse. And what sort of things should in particular age group triathletes be looking out for?

[00:21:57] Sam: that message of we want to improve our fat oxidation to the highest capacity, while to not. suppressing our ability to use carbohydrate when appropriate is still going to hold through. From a research perspective, it's worth saying that that idea of periodizing carbohydrate has only really been done in as I recall, athletes up to around 10 to 12 hours per week.

So if we go a little bit higher than that, does it still need to be implemented? We talked a little bit about the professionals and just As a function of the training volume that they're doing and the number of sessions they're doing, they will naturally be doing some sessions with restricted carbohydrate intake anyway.

So maybe there's a sweet spot. where we can implement these periodized carbohydrate dietary strategies to support training. It might be, you know, maybe it's 15, 20 hours a week, and then if you go beyond that, it might not really need to be so important. And so the other thing that's important consider at the moment is this idea of, and it's kind of not related to fat, although it will have an impact on fat oxidation, is exogenous carbohydrate. Great. And, are we going to see people pushing this up even higher than, you know, 120 grams an hour?

And probably also looking at this, there's a little bit of research that's come out recently looking at this idea of how body weight might influence carbohydrate oxidation rates. So if you are a bigger, I'd say male athlete and probably Magnus Ditlev is a really good example that I can think of from the weekend.

He was reportedly having 180 grams of carbs an hour. theoretically that, is completely over the top. But maybe for him, he has a, you know, he's a bigger guy, therefore has a bigger, you know, guts essentially you know, longer intestines, things like that.

There's a greater capacity for absorption. So maybe it's appropriate for him to be able to do that compared to you know, a 50 kilo Female athlete who's much smaller. So maybe she requires a little less carbohydrate doesn't need to be quite so high so I think there's going to be more work in that area over the next few years.

There's a there was a nice paper recently from Gareth wallace and javier gonzalez over in the uk that started to address that it was a quite a small study they only fed glucose so it wasn't a glucose fructose combination So there's definitely work to do in that area to understand that relationship and that's useful, for us as age group athletes we can say, okay i'm 75 kilos, you know, maybe my optimum is 100 grams an hour So we can start to understand that and implement that from a practical perspective for people as well Probably the other thing related to that is then again, just looking at that ratio of glucose to fructose as well.

There's some, people starting to think that maybe even a one to one ratio might be beneficial. There's not really any clear evidence to support that yet, but that may well materialize in the next few years. So I think there's a few things there. You mentioned it, I think before as well Taryn, the gut microbiome and what role that will play.

In our, ability to absorb carbohydrates. So understanding the gut microbiome, what factors will influence the gut microbiome and then how that influences performance and what impact that will have on our ability to perform or absorb carbohydrate at a very high rate.

That's probably going to be the key areas. And then think there's going to be a lot of effort and there is being a lot of effort made to get to this point where we think there's going to be female specific nutrition guidelines. And I'm not sure that's really going to be true. We might understand that there might be some slight differences based on menstrual phase or perimenopause, something like that. ultimately it's going to come down to individuals. And this is why, you know, the work you do is so important, working with individuals to understand them, and then you can work out what their needs are on an individual basis. Yeah, I think that research is going to evolve and be important, but We still need to think about the individual when we come back to that.

[00:25:57] Taryn: Yeah. I agree. You honestly are like the male version of me. I don't see us having really detailed female specific guidelines because it is going to come down to the individual. And I always say that to people because even the elite ultra marathon runners, if you can drill down into that paper and had a look at the athletes that actually made it to the finish line of that run, chewing through 120 grams of carbs now, not many of them did it, more than 50 percent bombed out with massive gut issues and things like that.

So yeah, you're right. I always say to my athletes, N equals one. Like you are your own experiment and we have, you know, evidence based scientific guidelines, but it's about understanding what's going to work for you. having the ability to, troubleshoot and tweak and finesse things constantly is super valuable. And you can only do that when you understand like why you're doing particular strategies and then how to manipulate them over time.

[00:26:51] Sam: and probably Leon Chevalier, again, he came forth at Kona at the weekend, but we've got 10 at least 10 different case studies from various races that he's done. And we can show how he's evolved his nutrition strategy over time.

So these things are evolving and they will, there's always iterations and tweaks and changes that you make you know, after every race, but having that capacity to reflect and refine what you're doing is really important. And that doesn't have to just be because you're a professional and you've maybe got some additional support to do that. We can do that on an individual level.

[00:27:23] Taryn: The other thing I think from what you said before may be coming is gels and sports drinks that have probiotics in them. I reckon the next thing. You wait, you watch, in like three years time there's gonna be probiotics in all of our sports nutrition.

[00:27:37] Sam: And sodium bicarb and creatine. maybe we don't need to go down that route of all these different supplements being pushed in But yeah, I mean, it's probably another good one Actually, there's more and more people in the endurance world using sodium bicarb also using creatine as well and the research years ago around that was largely based on like the high intensity work that people were doing the shorter stuff but it seems to have benefit when we translate or use that in an endurance environment as well, which is interesting. So I think that's going to continue to grow in the next few years.

[00:28:08] Taryn: Okay, maybe we'll get you back on to talk about that in, you know, a year or two time when there's more research in that space.

[00:28:13] Sam: Absolutely. 

[00:28:14] Taryn: Well, thank you so much for joining me, Sam. It is so late here, but I am so excited after our deep chat on fat oxidation and fat adaptation and just getting nerdy on the disco muscle stuff like that is so cool and it's really nice to talk to somebody that has a similar sort of ethos and methodology around working with, athletes on their nutrition.

So that is super cool. good luck in your new role at Precision Fuel and Hydration and I'm sure I will be calling you soon to get some updates on the research that you guys are doing.

[00:28:46] Sam: Thank you Taryn. more nerdy stuff in the future.

[00:28:49] Taryn: Yeah! Thanks Sam!

 

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or want to share with me what you've learned, email me at [email protected]. You can also spread the word by leaving me a review and taking a screenshot of you listening to the show. Don't forget to tag me on social media, @dietitian.approved, so I can give you a shout out, too. If you want to learn more about what we do, head to dietitianapproved.com. And if you want to learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to helping you smashed in the fourth leg - nutrition!