How do you get energy to train?

Just about every book or magazine that has anything to do with exercise will recommend that athletes get 60-70 per cent of their energy from carbohydrate (CHO), and something like 15 per cent each from fat and protein.

Like everyone else, I tried this for many years and not always with success. I found that I could often suffer in the latter stages of long runs, really running out of energy and being reduced to a slow jog.

Strangely, I then found when I went home that my body wanted food containing fat, more than large doses of CHO. So I did a bit of reading to find out what was going on.

I found some researchers at the University of Buffalo, New York, who put runners on a low fat (16 per cent) or medium fat (31 per cent) diet. They also put other runners on a high fat (44 per cent) diet.

They did this for four weeks with the following results: runners on a low fat diet ate 19 per cent fewer calories than those on the other diets. The researchers found that the runners did not wish to eat more due to the relatively bland food.

No matter what the diet, it was found that body weight, body fat per cent, VO2max and anaerobic power were not affected by level of dietary fat. In other words, nobody got fatter, or less fit due to their diet.

Now for the good stuff: endurance time increased from the low fat to medium fat diet by 14 per cent (runners could go further without running out of energy). Those on the high fat diet even had reduced lactate levels (39 per cent lower) after an endurance run (suggesting they had been relying more on burning fat in their aerobic system).

Conclusion: runners on a low-fat diet consume fewer calories and have reduced endurance performance than on a medium or high fat diet.

Now some of you will probably grab a handful of waistline fat right now and believe you have enough fat already, thank you very much, and that you do not need more.

Wrong thinking. For best energy, you want the fat stored in the muscle cells, or available in the bloodstream. Think of it like a millionaire walking into a shop to buy something and finding no money in his pocket.

No good telling the shopowner how much he has in the bank, he is unable to use it at this exact moment. The shopowner wants to see the money right now in his hand. Adipose fat (the stuff round your waistline) is like that money in the bank. It is not easy to access and use for running because it takes too long to reconvert and use for energy.

Another study in Louisiana State University found that the fat stores in a runner's leg muscles had fallen by 25 per cent during a two-hour treadmill run.

These stores were replaced within 22 hours by a 35 per cent fat diet. But were not replaced, even after 70 hours by a 10 per cent fat diet.

Energy store

This tells us that these runners will still find it tough to run even up to three days later, because they have not replenished their energy store completely. Think of it like driving around in the car all day and not filling up the fuel tank afterwards. The car's not going to go very far the next day, is it?

To increase the fat percentage in my own diet, I started nibbling peanuts (or almonds), making sure I chewed them really well, and know of others who added more cheese to their diet. We all found we had more energy and could run further.

Think about trying it for yourself if you are finding your long runs a struggle.