Attention Athletes: Fat Slows You Down! Lose the Fat or Lose!

Posted: 28th June 2010 by Michael in Peak Running Performance

The biggest factor in athletic performance is body composition.

If you are in a sport that requires agility, speed, endurance, reaction time – if your body fat is more than 5% as a male or 10% as a female – you are never going to reach your peak performances. The greatest runners of all times, the greatest Olympians of all time – they all reached their peak performances when they were at their lowest body fat.  Period.

There are 2 ways to achieve low body fat:


1) You can calorie restrict – where you eat less calories than you expend, so that you lose weight. And then when you get to a low body fat – you try to eat just as many calories as you expend so you don't put the fat back on. But this is very hard to do.


2) You can eat diet comprised of all 100% raw fruits and vegetables. You can eat as much watermelon as you want, or as many oranges as you want, and your body can’t store it as body fat or has a very hard time storing it as fat.

I’ve tried both approaches. I’ve tried calorie restriction diets, which will make you feel miserable being hungry all the time. Calorie restriction diets work, but they suck, and they are not sustainable in my opinion.  You will be mentally, emotionally and physically very aggravated. It’s very hard to stop eating.

And I’ve tried fruitarianism which has worked very very well for me.

I eat so many calories from fruits and vegetables and I don’t every put on more than 5% body fat, no matter how much I eat.

The training is in the kitchen, guys!




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  1. James says:
    August 16, 2010 at 5:04 pm

    So if I read this correctly, you don't count calories?  I run 50ish miles a week.  I hate counting calories.  This would be wonderful.  Curious why you say the body cannot store the calories – are you implying storage of fructose is more "difficult" than sucrose, etc?
    Appreciate your insight.

  2. ebrunner says:
    January 24, 2011 at 12:04 am

    Also interested in the mechanics why fruitarianism works regardless of calories.  I always that while muscles absorb glucose,  fructose is only absorbed by the liver and beyond that excess fructose gets converted to bodyfat.  Most fruit is (ROUGH average) 50/50 glucose/fructose, so for the purposes of refilling muscle glycgogen, it seems that fruit may be inefficient.  I've also been under the assumption that protein is the macronutrient least likely to get converted to bodyfat, as up to 30% of protein calories are burned off in the process of digestion (vs. ~10%-20% for carbs).    
    BTW, what were your PRs as a high school runner?  Just trying to get a sense as to the genetics vs. diet aspects of your performance and what numbers one may expect to put up as a fruitarian.

  3. Jasmin says:
    February 7, 2011 at 7:16 pm

    Hey Michael!
    I appreciate your post and agree that you need to have a very low body fat percentage in order to succeed in sports like running.
    I also thought that I couldn't get fat on raw fruit – but I did. I did train during that time, but not nearly as intense as you train. I think you can eat all you care for because you train so much and thus burn a hell of a lot of calories! You are my idol when it comes to sports (and diet).
    (I'll have my first running event in years in 2 weeks; only 7km! haha, but I need to start somewhere, right?)

    I was scared to continue the fruity path and switched to a mostly raw, whole foods vegan diet (very much like Eat to Live) and watched my calories. Now that I lost some weight, I'm ready to give fruitarianism another chance, for I feel it's the right path for me.

    I have still quite a bit of weight/fat to lose, so I guess I'll concentrate on lower cal fruits and watch my cals a bit. I wanna be fast and lean. :)
     
    Thanks!
    Jasmin