Fat Adaptation With Louise Burke, PhD

My guest today is Louise Burke, PhD Dr. Burke is Head of Discipline in Sports Nutrition for the Australian Institute of Sport. She is also Chair in Sports Nutrition, Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University. She served as Team dietitian for the Australian Olympic team for the past 5 Olympics ( specifically in: 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012). Her long list of peer-reviewed publications have been cited nearly 4,000 times. She is the author of the books Practical Sports Nutrition and Clinical Sports Nutrition. She is one of the top sports nutrition experts on the planet and she is a world leading expert on today’s topic of fat adaptation in endurance sport training and performance.   How much hype and hyperbole have you heard on the topic of fat adaptation in endurance performance? How often have you wanted the rigorous answers to specific questions on whether the science truly bears out this approach? Within the ultra marathon community, the idea of adapting substrate sources to prefer fat is a very popular topic. The idea is that a higher percentage use of fat will spare glycogen and thereby improve performance in an endurance event. Basically, the intent is to delay running out of internal stores of carbohydrate because it may be challenging to ingest and absorb carbohydrates at a rate that can keep up with use in an ultra marathon.   Today, Dr. Burke helps us understand the history of this topic and cuts straight to the unbiased exploration of the currently available data. Note that this idea has been around for a long time and it’s current popularity is a renaissance of previous waves of enthusiasm. What’s the real skinny on fat adaptation? This episode covers it all, including best practice guidelines for your top performance.   Our wrap-up action items today are the answers to:

1. What are the most common mistakes Dr. Burke sees ultra endurance athletes making with their overall nutrition? And, what should you be doing?
2. What would she say to an ultra endurance athlete interested in training and performing at their best today, regarding fat adapting diets?