What Does It Mean to Be a Fat-Burning Beast?by
Mark Sisson Recently by Mark Sisson: Smart Spice: Cinnamon
It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading! My wife Cynthia and I embarked on a six month journey and discovered what it means to be Fat-Burning Beasts. We have been intrigued with discovering answers to questions like “what is the protocol, how would we know if we have achieved Fat-Burning Beast status, what is the body’s response, and ultimately, how far can one push the limits of a Fat-Burning Beast? On our journey in answering these questions, we lost weight…our percent body fat dipping by 7 points, we improved sleep, seasonal allergies all but disappeared and we improved our mental acuity. But the greatest gift of all has been passing on the keys to better health and ultimately happiness to family, friends, and co-workers who we have inspired enough to explore for themselves the Primal Blueprint.
Before we begin, a short introduction of our Primal journey to date is in order. Cynthia and I consider ourselves triathletes. Mind you not to the stature of Mark Sisson’s trophy room, but accomplished in our own right with a combined 35 years experience culminating in 25 Ironmans combined with the last two of these scheduled for later this summer. Over the years, we have come to center our lifestyle to compete at multiple distances with a typical gearing up in early spring, racing through October and taking off two months to enjoy the holidays (or season of gluttony). Interestingly enough, every year it has been the two short months of November and December which have caused us greatest concern in reflection. Pre-Primal we would indulge ourselves with all of the grain-laden, sugary-coated treats packing on 15 to 25 pounds each only to find ourselves feeling miserable by January and looking for ways to drop the weight. It was this past January where we once again found ourselves struggling in miserable physical condition and embarking on a new year of training. We were again researching for ways to best lose the effortlessly gained weight. Yes, effortlessly gained. After hours of internet searching through all of the so called diets, we ultimately landed on Mark’s Daily Apple. Cynthia and I are trained scientists who were completely amazed by the information we were reading about The Primal Blueprint. It all seemed to make sense biologically, and besides, who doesn’t like bacon? We were hooked from the beginning. We even traveled to PrimalCon 2012 traveling across the country where we could meet the Guru Mark himself along with so many other amazing individuals seeking (and finding) good health with an ancestral approach to eating and playing. As it turns out, this conference changed our beliefs for living and has further solidified this new (old) lifestyle we were adopting. Skipping ahead in our story, we have been Primal for 6 strong months and have found our race focus changing for this year. We no longer focus on a PR, but more so on how to do a race Primally, with clean energy, and to get in touch with our inner spiritual selves, ultimately accomplishing the same distances with less training and more fun time. Who wouldn’t like that? Our bodies, as many of you have discovered for yourselves, have changed in so many ways. Of course we lost our effortlessly gained holiday weight, but we also realized more advantages. As I said, our percent body fat dipping by 7 points, improved sleep, seasonal allergies all but eradicated, more motivated, and improved mental acuity (we think…).
So let’s talk about being keto-adapted. Our first opportunity to test and see if we achieved Fat-Burning Beast status arrived late April in the form of a marathon. Up to this point, many of our longer training runs consisted of fueling with a typical low-carb (50 g or under) Primal meal the evening prior and training the following morning in a fasted state (no breakfast and no gels/bars to fuel during). We learned very early on in our Ironman training the importance of maintaining electrolyte balance to avoid cramping or even worse, hyponatremia). We found running on coconut water (VitaCoco) contained the perfect balance of hydration and electrolytes…yes we know it is low in sodium so we carried salt/electrolyte tabs just in case. But how would we fuel on race day? Our next struggle was to answer this question as our marathon quickly approached. From our readings and discussions with others online, we decided to add additional carbs the few nights leading into the event with acceptable starchy tubers such as sweet potatoes to fill our muscle glycogen stores. We also decided we would use gels and drink the offered course “sports” beverage (Gator…you-know-what) to fuel during the event. We struggled with accepting our decided meal plan and fueling because ultimately we did not feel we were remaining Primal. As it turns out, our plan was a big mistake! We both found ourselves “bloated” at the start line by having rapidly increased our daily carb count with sweet potatoes. Our bodies simply were not adapted to the unexpected surge. The gels and on-course sports beverages were equally a poor choice. Coincidentally, we both were bonking by mile 15. This was unexpected and not experienced in our low-carb training for the race. Even worse, for days following we both felt horrible with a distended bloating feeling in our guts. We simply had shifted our metabolisms to a keto-adapted low-carb state and confused our bodies by asking them to process the added sugars/starches. Listen to Lew's recent podcast with Mark Sisson June 25, 2012 Copyright © 2012 Mark's Daily Apple
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