Can you outrun a bad diet?

[andyswarbs]

An article runnersworld.com/nutrition-... aimed at runners reports on how many people who run feel, because they feel healthy they also feel they can eat whatever they like. If you read it in detail as well as its main import - you can't outrun athersclerosis, the end piece focuses on a study that showed how diet had no effect. The problem with the study was it was done over weeks, a short term study. The message is that such dietary effects come in the long term and you simply cannot rely on how you feel today as a guideline on your long term inner health.

[Rignold Keto]

I used to be a distance runner, and funnily enough at that time was more or less vegan and my diet was very high carb: I was doing loads of mileage every week with an eye to building up to doing hundred milers. My guru at the time was Scott Jurek, the legendary ultra runner, author of Eat and Run, and passionate advocate of plant based eating.

I considered my diet very healthy: I ate an enormous amount of fresh and raw vegetables, but the bulk of the fuel for my miles was pasta and rice (wholegrain of course).

It later transpired that the running was actually doing me no good at all: I have an unusual form of calcified pericarditis caused by scarring from TB as a child, that went undetected for most of my life. Lots of low intensity steady state cardio exercise for extended periods id just what the doctor did not order.

Conversely short bursts of high intensity exercise are very good for me, and since I switched to doing Crossfit and powerlifting type exercise, I do not have constant atrial fibrillation and am generally much healthier.

My diet has gone pretty much equally to the opposite extreme: I still eat mountians of fresh and raw (and fermented) veg but almost all the pasta and rice have been replaced with meat and fish. As a runner I was a carb burning machine, now I am fuelled by protien and fat.

My medical issues aside, I would confidently say I am healthier now. Obviously I have much better muscle tone etc, being a runner is skinny fat all the way, but my skin, my hair, ny eyesight, my sleep etc are all far better than they were previously.

[deejames]

I do know a lot of people who work on the offsetting theory where doing lots of exercise means the junk food, chocolate or alcohol consumed will be negated by the exercise.

Its better of course than a bad diet without exercise but quite a dangerous game to play.

[TheAwfulToad in reply to deejames]

Personally, I blame the gubmint for this. Sports physiologists have long been aware that you can't just "burn off" junk food, but The Establishment have popularized the idea that you can do exactly that. If it weren't true, then by definition "a calorie is a calorie" is also not true, and that's just not acceptable to the Ministry of Truth.

"It's OK to have a Mars Bar as long as you do another 20 minutes on the treadmill" is the malformed offspring of government think-tanks and food-supplement journalists.