Is the importance of diet exaggerated? I think so

British Guy wrote:

…

Ever since that visit I've pretty much abandoned my diet, which used to be pretty healthy, and this past weekend I improved my 4-month old 5K PB by a fairly large margain, even breaking 15 for the first time in my life, despite eating far far worse than I was eating 4 months ago.

This whole experience has shown me that diet can't make much difference at all, it makes me realise that anyone short of olympic level shouldn't really care about their diet as the gains from it are so margainal. Training and genetics are what matter.

Some “facts” (aka the closest to truth we know):

1) Your performance almost certainly improved despite your diet, not because of it. Science says so.

2) How science works: Your “whole experience has shown” bollocks because it’s anecdotal, rather the way science works (pardon my condescension) is via peer reviewed studies of larger groups of users with control and placebo subgroups as appropriate, and decades of nutrition science developed in this manner shows both the importance of a balanced diet as well as the micro-advantages or lack thereof of small optimizations (like after a workout, is only protein, or only carbs, or a combination of the two is best for recovery and how much better; do you know the answer without reading that paper?).

Science is far from perfect in that sometimes the findings are statistically weak especially when the study group is small, and are sometimes not reproducible or even controverted, but it’s worked really well for the most part for society. Are you really going to ignore that knowledge and, say, happily consume trans fats over a lifetime?

3) Injury risk: Your anecdotal observation is not surprising and even “correct” in the sense that the impact of diet on performance is small below sub-elite levels, more so when you are younger, but see how you feel after 10 years though when the body becomes more prone to injury.

The way risk works is insidious, with everything seeming like milk and honey until it’s dark slime around you all of a sudden. Not enough calcium and vitamin D? Your bones will complain one day. Not enough protein? Your connective tissue won’t heal as quickly. Electrolyte imbalance can even be fatal.

4) ”Bad” isn’t actually bad most of the time:

- Pizza is delicious and healthy (just wheat, cheese, and some vegetable or meat toppings), not junk food.

- Ice cream is the same deal, it’s almost just milk and sugar, which your body can put to good use.

- Sugary drinks are just empty calories and I hate them, not because they are unhealthy, which they are not if you need the calories and burn them off, but because I feel cheated out of the opportunity to eat something tastier with my limited appetite.

- Fries are tasty and not unhealthy at all as they are just potatoes, oil, and salt.

- Alcohol in moderation has little harm, but again you better really enjoy the taste or the buzz as it’s empty calories and you have a limited appetite.

Some things are or may be bad (until proven good) irrespective of balance: trans fats, processed foods with too many unrecognizable chemical ingredients, rancid oil in low quality commercial kitchens, etc, but absolute “villain foods” are indeed few and far and are usually not foods in the natural sense (i.e., coming from plants or animals as opposed to an industrial plant).

4) Balance of nutrition is important given that appetite is limited. The thing however is the human body is amazing at getting your taste buds and cravings go for what it lacks, so if you are reasonably privileged and can act on your impulses (“I feel like spicy Indian food today”), you can likely eat without care as long as you are burning off excess calories, still in your twenties, and not at high risk for diabetes, hypertension, etc. because of family history. But if you are eating unhealthy not by choice, say eating ramen noodles because you are too busy/stressed/poor/allergic to go find better food, you will damage your body over time. “Over time” meaning it can take several years, again because the body is amazing at adapting to what it’s given but it does have its limits.

.."Dollars to donuts," you'll never catch an East African Runner eating at a local McDonald's! "I'll take Diet Matters." Alex for $10 grand and the win! LOL!!!

U. Raynuss wrote:

Maybe that "sub-4" guy could have ran a second faster, that's an eternity in a mile race at that level of competition.

*have run

So from all the abject nitwittery around here, you choose to call out a grammatical error?

Irregardless of your motive, I could care less, but thanks anyway.

dietrocious wrote:

4) ”Bad” isn’t actually bad most of the time:

Well, exactly. 99% percent of the time a runner says they're eating like garbage and performing well, it means they're eating burgers, pizza, ice cream. And not that they have a 0 protein, 0 calcium diet.

Hell, a 5'10" man who weighs 127lbs could probably use a mountain dew or two.

Are your mates shredded?

I think body composition is a big deal and overall carbs. You said you were eating chocolate and beer? Chocolate has a lot of magnesium, zinc, copper, phenols. Beer has a banana’s potassium 4 cans, fibre, plenty of hops compounds (phenols, iso-alpha acids), and 3 times as much boron as apple juice.

Healthy diet is situation dependent. If you’re running off 6k calories per week, you can’t be eating just a head of lettuce and a bag of spinach and a few tomatoes to make up the difference.

1500/5Kfan wrote:

doesnt matter what fuel you use if the engine is burnin hot enough

Over the short term.

Long term it’s unsustainable to keep the engine hot enough and a poor diet will catch up with you:

+1, there are a lot of negative health impacts related to eating bad food and they add up over a long period of time. Excessive simple carbs when you’re young often don’t have an impact until your middle aged and insulin resistant.

Eating a little chocolate every day when running high mileage doesn't make a big difference. Eating only chocolate makes a big difference. I doubt anyone here eats only chocolate.

Also, eating only vegetables is bad for performance (and lots of other things as well, imo).

Eating only salad because it is "healthy" probably equates to disordered eating and a wish to not gain weight.

Pizza is not the perfect food but not detrimental for runners in any way. I would say it is a good meal for runners if combined with vegetables and salads - spinach for instance. Make your own pizza and it's happy days.

Bekele

Hurno wrote:

America really is fat and stupid. Our healthcare system can't cope with the magnitude of stupidity.

Firstly, I'd like to point out that my username is literally 'British Guy' and therefore question the reading abilities of this 'Hurno' guy, but anyway...

I think the point of this post has been missed. I'm not of the belief that eating complete crap has absolutely no effect on long-term performance whatsoever. I just believe that the effect is so extrememly minimal that for 99.99% of us it's not worth the sacrifice.

To me, religiously eating healthy foods and avoiding unhealthy foods & alcohol is a MASSIVE sacrifice. It affects your social life, your dating life etc. In general I just don't believe it's worth the sacrifice. If you're a 15:00 runner with a poor diet, improving your diet might knock you down to a 14:55, but it definitely won't know you down to a 14:30. The benefit is so ridiculously minimal, and the sacrifice is so enormous that I just don't believe it's justifiable and to be honest it's almost pointless.

If you can't date or go out without drinking alcohol; you might have some other issues you need to address...

Of course it is exaggerated. Not that many areas awash with snake-oil more than diet. That said:

Your friends, while good, are hardly exceptional. Anyone involved in the sport for a while knows several equivalent quality runners, at the 14min (or to a lesser extent 4min milers) level, and a few of these individuals that party hard in all ways, and eat trash. It can be done (as others have said) while young. It still does not matter to these guys. So what if living like a saint gets you 13:55 or 3:58. Now, if they were 13:10 or 3:50, as their coach I would be having them on good diets - it matters a tiny bit.

Of course, if you keep eating junk, it catches up with you eventually, so nearly all are starting to watch what they eat by 30 at the latest. The older you get, the more it matters up to maybe 70+ or something!

I feel that it's important to separate different components of 'diet' in this discussion.

OP mentioned high caliber runners eating a bunch of junk food. I honestly don't feel that, in a vacuum, eating junk food will have a major impact on performance. Eating exclusively junk food without achieving adequate protein intake and energy intake most definitely will impact performance. Constant obsession with carbohydrate quality just doesn't seem overly important as long as overall needs are met. Elite runners are probably expending so much energy that meeting their needs through only 'nutrient-dense' foods would probably take a lot of work.

Alcohol intake is probably an entirely different conversation. Occasional drinks here and there are probably fine, but there's a huge body of science to suggest that 'binge drinking' is extremely detrimental to recovery and can erase a significant amount of the training effect.

Diet? Yes. Weight? No.

British Guy wrote:

To me, religiously eating healthy foods and avoiding unhealthy foods & alcohol is a MASSIVE sacrifice. It affects your social life, your dating life etc. In general I just don't believe it's worth the sacrifice. If you're a 15:00 runner with a poor diet, improving your diet might knock you down to a 14:55, but it definitely won't know you down to a 14:30. The benefit is so ridiculously minimal, and the sacrifice is so enormous that I just don't believe it's justifiable and to be honest it's almost pointless.

There is zero sacrifice involved. You don't need to eat "religiously" healthy food. Just eat healthy and drink alcohol in moderation. Some junk food will not hurt you. It's just important that overall your diet is healthy.

Stop eating and see what happens. If diet isn't important, you'll be fine.

Metabolism doesn't slow until much later than most of us think.

dietrocious wrote:

- Pizza is delicious and healthy (just wheat, cheese, and some vegetable or meat toppings), not junk food.

- Ice cream is the same deal, it’s almost just milk and sugar, which your body can put to good use.

- Sugary drinks are just empty calories and I hate them, not because they are unhealthy, which they are not if you need the calories and burn them off, but because I feel cheated out of the opportunity to eat something tastier with my limited appetite.

- Fries are tasty and not unhealthy at all as they are just potatoes, oil, and salt.

- Alcohol in moderation has little harm, but again you better really enjoy the taste or the buzz as it’s empty calories and you have a limited appetite.

Finally someone reasonable. Non-processed foods are not "unhealthy" they are just not as nutrient rich. Eating a bowl of ice cream isn't bad for you, it just means you might not go eat some broccoli and get more vitamins.