By Amanda Regnier, MSc. Strength & Conditioning
If you have been following our TCR Instagram account, you may have noticed a few posts on our metabolism study! We often recommend our clients to focus on having foods high in protein/ fat and low in carbohydrates in the morning, to prolong fat burning. To verify our theory, we have been testing some common breakfast foods (eggs, oatmeal, coffee) to see if fat metabolism is increased, decreased, or unaffected. The final results from our group of test subjects will be released in the fall!
In the meantime, you might be curious as to how we are able to determine how different food affects resting fat metabolism. First we look at what fuel source your body relies on more at rest – carbohydrates or fats. Ideally, we would like to see efficient fat burning at rest and low carbohydrate usage. This is because your body can store about 72,000kcal from fat stores, but only about 2500 kcal from muscle and liver glycogen (stored sugar). If you can efficiently tap into some of that stored fat fuel during your long rides and run, you will likely be able to delay consuming your bars/ gels until later in your workout, reducing overall sugar consumption during training, without sacrificing energy.
Once we determine your fasting fat/ carbohydrate usage, you eat one of our test foods (eggs, oatmeal + berries, or an espresso) or your own breakfast, and repeat the resting test. Following the second test, we can see if your fat/ carbohydrate metabolism changed, and whether or not the food consumed promoted or inhibited fat burning.