Why Keto, high fat and mainstream fat loss diets fall short for older cyclists. Part 1.

As you get older your physiology changes so you need to eat differently to support your training, maintain lean muscle, promote better recovery and help mitigate against age related decline.

My hope is this blog will get you to think more about what, how and why you need to eat differently from the mainstream diet paradigms such as fasting, Keto, high fat or just thinking about your diet as a fat loss diet   

At the bottom of this post, I’ll put some links to studies and evidence based articles so you know I’m not just plucking this from thin air. 

So, let’s get into it.

Today I’m going to talk about calories and protein and in the 2nd part of this blog, I’ll talk about fat and carbohydrate. 

First off let’s talk about some basics which are critical to maintain energy and help control weight.

Calories:

I suggest that you hit your calorie needs to maintain energy and if you need to change weight work off a modest calorie deficit - I don’t suggest a hard or fast calorie deficit if you are training hard and I don’t recommend fasting to any great degree.

Think about it, energy restriction such as fasting for long periods means you are getting less quality nutrition throughout the day, less energy which will be poor for energy output and training, less protein, which will stunt lean muscle gain and slow down your rate of recovery.

There are plenty of studies to show that training in a fed state gives better quality training results and that fasting is not superior for fat loss than any other diet that has similar calorie deficits. Indeed training fasted can be detrimental to maintaining lean muscle.

Yes, I know what you are thinking, I’ve been told fasting helps improve health?

In my understanding that’s been highly overplayed in its effectiveness. There are some negative sides to fasting especially for older athletes and women because it can affect immune function. I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole today. Let’s keep the topic of fasting for another blog. 

Instead, I want you to think about this.

For my mind, hitting your daily calories by eating a quality, mainly whole food diet, rich in vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotic fibre and getting the right amount of protein, carbohydrate and fats is pretty much the best “health hack” you can ever have. Plus you’ll have bags of energy to train hard and enough nutrients and macros to recover fast.

Given that, as you age you develop anabolic resistance within the muscle and recovery times take longer cutting out food seems a bit backward to me.

Let’s talk about macros and kick off with protein.

This is an important macronutrient for older cyclists as it helps create antibodies, that bolster your immune function.

When it comes to performance it increases mitochondrial capacity by increasing aerobic enzymes.

Critically it helps older athletes fight age related anabolic resistance which we start to develop in our muscles as we get older. Basically, that means our muscles become resistant to protein and we need to eat more quality protein to drive a strong muscle protein synthesis response.

Anyone over 40 will know what I’m talking about when it comes to recovering from harder training. We know that we can’t smash it daily like we used to be able to.

I remember listening to a “We Do Science” podcast from the Institute of Performance Nutrition who discussed that older athletes can recover at the same level as our younger counterparts it just takes us 24 hours longer to do so. So, it makes sense that we eat in a way that fully supports our training and that means hitting your protein intake daily. 

So, how much protein should you be aiming for? 

0.8g per KG of body weight is the RDA to prevent deficiency. That’s minimal for health and is aimed at sedentary individuals.

For older cyclists, I recommend between 1.6 to 1.8g per kg of body weight and as much as 2g per kg of bodyweight spread across the day over 3 to 4 meals with a focus on high quality protein rich in the essential amino acid Leucine.

If you want a per meal grams to focus on aim for 0.4g of high quality protein with 2.5g of Leucine. 

Interestingly studies are coming to light that show eating as much as 6g of Leucine per meal will drive a stronger muscle protein synthesis. 

Let’s talk about weight and fat loss. 

In weight loss studies high fat low protein diets have been shown that you lose a fraction more weight. However, higher protein diets help you retain more lean muscle and gave positive changes to body composition. Basically, when aiming for fat loss low protein high fat diets mean you will lose weight but you carry less lean muscle mass and more body fat.

To round off with then. If you want to lose weight then reducing calories and not caring about food composition will help you reach that goal. 

For older cyclists who want to hold on to lean muscle, keep or gain strength, train and ride hills fast, recover quicker and look leaner the standard weight loss advice doesn’t cut it.

This is why I’m not keen on diets that promote huge calorie deficits, long fasting windows or low protein. Eating that way just doesn’t make sense and expect to reattain or build lean muscle and low protein is going to affect recovery times and our training outcomes. 

I think we must make sure we sit protein at the top table especially if you want to build strength, have a leaner body composition, be able to consistently train well and recover optimally. 

In part 2 of this blog, I’ll talk about fat and carbohydrates and why these two macronutrients are important to ensure you don’t go below certain levels for health, performance, how they can help mitigate age related decline and give you recommendations on what’s optimal and what’s not. 

Thanks for reading 

Simon

Performance & Nutrition Director
2 X Winner of Gym Based PT, and founder of VPCC