Dr. Namrita Brooke is a full-time endurance sport coach and sport nutritionist advising active individuals and amateurs to professional athletes. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Movement Sciences and Health at University of West Florida.
The ketogenic diet has been popular for several years now, as its hailed for limiting carbohydrates and upping fat intake, mostly in the name of weight loss. When it comes to running, though, nutrition is just as important as the work you put in at the gym, and when you’re out racking up miles.
If you’re interested in changing up your eating habits this year, you may be wondering if the keto diet is right for you—and can it help your run performance?What is the keto diet all about?The ketogenic diet sets very strict guidelines on how to break down your macronutrient intake. Those following keto consume 80 percent of their calories from fat, 15 percent from protein, and 5 percent of calories from carbohydrates—the fuel source your body and brain prefer to tap first as it’s the fastest and most easily accessible for providing energy. Staples of the keto diet include fish, meat, eggs, dairy, oils, and green veggies. Even healthy, complex carbs such as whole-wheat pasta, rice, potatoes, and fruit are off-limits. Here’s how the keto diet works: When your body no longer has access to fuel from carbohydrates—either because they’ve been cut from your diet or you haven’t eaten in a long time—it goes into a state called ketosis. That means, your body looks for the next best fuel source: fat. And it uses the available fatty acids to produce a compound called ketones, which is why people who are in ketosis and eating more fat will start to burn more fat.The ketogenic diet is not to be confused with simply a low-carb high-fat diet, which is similar. The difference is the keto diet aims to increase the ketone levels in your blood, causing your body to enter ketosis. Can runners benefit from following a keto diet? While our bodies prefer to feed on carbohydrates, ketones can actually fuel the brain and body, says Lizzie Kasparek, RD, a sports dietitian with the Sanford Sports Science Institute. So you’re not necessarily depleting your body in a dangerous way. “Being in ketosis does not imply reduced muscle glycogen levels. Over time, the keto-adapted athlete may improve his or her ability to burn fat for fuel and still have glycogen available,” says Kenneth Ford, PhD, director and CEO of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Whether runners, specifically, should put their bodies in a state of ketosis depends on your goals—and the verdict is still out on whether it really helps with performance. Most studies on keto and athletes involve only a small number of participants and most researchers say we need more studies on the topic. For example, one small study of five endurance athletes, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, showed that a 10-week keto diet improved the athletes’ body composition and well-being but not their performance. In fact, the athletes initially experienced reduced energy levels and an inability to undertake high-intensity bouts of exercise. Another small study of eight trained male endurance athletes, published in the journal Medicine Science in Sports Exercise, looked at the effects of the keto diet on exercise efficiency. After following the diet, the athletes saw a decline in running speed and power—running speed at VO2 max declined by 5 percent. Other research, including one review published by Sports Health, evaluated the effects of keto diets and ketone supplements on the aerobic performance of male runners . It included 12 studies and found no advantages or disadvantages of keto diets on aerobic performance of endurance runners, as measured by race time, time to exhaustion, rate of perceived exertion, and VO2 max. Another review of seven articles on the subject says that there’s limited findings on the benefits of keto for endurance athletes and results are mixed when it comes to VO2 max and other performance outcomes. What are the downsides of the keto diet?“There isn’t really a lot of good research that shows those people can perform better, and that’s really what runners care about,” Kasparek says. Ford also points out that in the studies looking at ketosis and performance with negative results, the athletes are not often sufficiently fat-adapted or even in ketosis, making it hard to truly gauge whether the diet is effective when it comes to performance. Also, performance generally involves an athlete exercising at a relatively high intensity, which requires carbohydrates as the main fuel source. Runners who may benefit from fat adaptation are those running long, long distances, like ultramarathons. Once you hit those later miles, your body relies on fat for energy production. For everyone else, carbs are still probably your best bet, especially if you’re running at higher intensities than you would be when running 50 miles. When you’re running at a lower intensity, your body is able to burn fat as fuel, Kasparek explains. “But because carbs are the main source of fuel at higher intensities, you may be sacrificing key workouts or your race to follow a certain diet,” she says.What should you know before you try the keto diet? The bottom line is: If done right, runners who need to be able to tap into fat stores over long distances may benefit from occasionally eating fewer carbs and relatively more fat around longer, less intense training sessions. A runner does not necessarily need to be in ketosis to follow this type of “carbohydrate periodization.”Runners who do speed workouts or who enjoy shorter distances at faster paces or who incorporate high-intensity workouts into their training are still better off eating a healthy, balanced diet that includes carbs.For weight-loss goals, Kasparek says, it’s possible to lose weight by tweaking a regular diet, say, by adding more healthy fat or cutting out processed foods. But there’s more than one way to lose weight, and one banana isn’t going to set you back—we promise.
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