Anne, I understand your dilemma. I don't have a good answer for you yet, aside from speculating that if your metabolism is now in the fat burning mode, you probably wouldn't deplete your muscle and liver glycogen (carb) reserves like you do now (and bonk), and therefore, eating foods that provide the high fat, high protein, low carb ratio would allow your body to continue converting them into fat and burning them.
I'm no expert in long or super long rides (I've only done one century and several metric centuries a few years ago) but I do know you're supposed to do long rides at 70-80% of HR max intensity, which means that you should be able to continue to use your new optimized and reawakened fat burning metabolism, reserving the glycogen for any emergency quick energy need. That is what I infer from what I've read and the study Westerman quoted. One point that Taubes makes very emphatically is that it's animal fats that in addition to helping with the weight loss, help improve all the health markers (LDL, HDL, etc.) He quoted a study where eating vegetable fats, while still achieving the weight loss due to the reduced carb intake, did not improve the markers. He also makes a point that there are no bad animal fats, that we believe so because it's been repeated for so long by the high carb eating paradigm people. But we should stay away from processed vegetable fats as they are harmful. When I did my first century with Team in Training back in 2005, and then my subsequent seasons with them, I found that the only way for me to finish the rides was by eating carbs throughout the whole route. They would provide the energy boost, but at the same time I would finish each ride feeling terribly and painfully bloated. I didn't lose any weight during these seasons and even in my state of ignorance at the time, I could tell that this was no formula for success. At the time I thought that what I needed was more training, but now I understand what was happening to me. I'll be more than happy to share my experiences during 2011 on the subject. René -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
