William was really helpful when I emailed to quiz him on it and he sent me information on a book that I really should read, concerning performance on a low carb diet. William has done this since 2012, so he knows what he's talking about and he runs extremely well on a high fat diet... I mean, look at all of the records he continues to get...
So, armed with the book (which came on Saturday morning), I was astonished to read I needed to go as low as 50g of carbs a day. When I looked at my current diet (which for the previous week had all been very low GI carbs) I realised there's bloody loads of carbs in everything. How the hell was I going to do this?
To cut a long story short, throughout the week I have got better and better at sourcing the correct ingredients for food. I bought Ketone urine strips to test if I had gone into ketosis and on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday it was negative. I was just at that point of getting sick of not knowing what to eat and wondered if there was any point to all of this when Monday night showed I had gone into ketosis already. I wasn't expecting it... I thought it would take at least 1 to 2 weeks!!! It gave me a huge boost and a level of determination that maybe this was the right thing for me!
Training in those first few days was a bit hit and miss and I felt extremely dizzy after a certain length of time of running or weight lifting. I realised this was a sodium imbalance so took extra which definitely helped. I've also felt very fuzzy at times... even to the point my eyes don't seem to focus properly, but I've also had moments of feeling amazing and completely wide awake. I've slept really well during the night and apart from the first 3 or 4 days I haven't felt hungry. I'm the sort of person who can't go without a meal. I HAVE to book a lunchtime in at work because I feel very sick and dizzy if I don't eat every so often. I'm hoping this will all be a thing of the past once I'm fat adapted... and, well, running should be much better. Maybe the "sickly" episodes I get won't come as often... maybe they won't come at all???
Yesterday I received my blood ketone meter and test strips (which are far more accurate than the urine strips and aren't affected by over or under hydration like the urine strips are), and although I want to have a full day of testing at certain intervals (first thing in the morning, after training, before dinner and before bed), I was itching to find out what my ketone levels were after 6.5 days on a low carb high fat diet. It basically has to be above 0.5 millimolar to be in ketosis, so I was absolutely chuffed to see it was already at 3.9 millimolar (which apparently is fairly high). Maybe this really is the way I should eat? Graeme is also doing the same diet and his levels were 1.2 millimolar. When I asked Shaun about this, he said it's probably because I'm exhausting my glucose levels during training and Graeme is currently inactive due to his operation. So far I have lost about 6lBs (which I am aware will be only water at this stage) but both Graeme and myself both feel very "thin" all of a sudden. Don't get me wrong, I'm doing this for training purposes and not really anything to do with body composition (although I wouldn't turn my nose up at looking sculpted). I know one thing... people think I'm random for being a vegan, but I'm TRULY random being a low carb high fat vegan.
In other news, my training is changing again and I now have a new focus on Saturdays' session with fast downhill running. I'm looking forward to giving that a go. I think other stuff is going to be changed in my training programme too... so, we'll have to wait and see what that is all about!
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