I spent this week in Park City, Utah snowboarding with a good friend of mine. I was interested to see how nutritional ketosis affected my performance on the slopes! I’d characterize my self as a beginning intermediate level snowboarder. I can heel and toe edge on the board pretty comfortably but I still get nervous at high speeds and I don’t do any jumps or tricks. I’m content just going up and down and taking in the scenery. Until this trip, I hadn’t boarded in about 2 years so I was definitely rusty.
Because of my gas out while doing BJJ the prior week, I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen to me again so that I could maximize my time on the slopes (lift tickets are pretty damn expensive). I bought some bouillon cubes from Whole Foods that contain around 900 mg of sodium per cube, and made sure I drank some before and after snowboarding. I also started taking the magnesium supplements (Slow-Mag
After each day of riding, we ended the day by soaking in the hot tub (this should be the way to end every day), and I topped it off with a bit of foam rolling (yes I brought a foam roller with me).
Compared to how I felt when I last snowboarded over 2 years ago, I could tell a big difference. I felt less sore and had more stamina on the slopes. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t call myself Shaun White or anything, but I wasn’t plagued with the total body soreness I used to experience that would make it hard to just walk around and do simple things like go to the bathroom (I remember getting up from a seated position was excruciating since my quads would be so beat up). During this trip I actually didn’t experience much soreness at all.
On the slopes, I rarely got hungry and didn’t suffer from the effects of hypoglycemia or bonking. I felt like I had enough energy to keep going all day long or at least until the slopes got too crowded and I stopped having as much fun.
By the last day I will admit that I was fatigued and we ended up cutting the day short, but compared to my past trips, I was much less fatigued and much less sore.
If I were to approach this experience like an actual experiment I don’t think I could draw any real conclusions since so many variables were changed. My control group would have to be my prior self, during my last snowboarding trip 2 years ago.
In the interval 2 years a lot has changed including:
- Overall weight loss
- Improved conditioning with more regular BJJ and Crossfit
- Over 60 days of nutritional ketosis
Along with the changes I made just for this trip:
- Bouillon cubes
- Magnesium supplements
- Daily hot tub soaks
- Daily foam rolling
- Usage of compression gear
So while it probably isn’t accurate for me to attribute my improved performance on the slopes to my diet, I still feel comfortable at least attributing my steady energy level and lack of hunger to being in nutritional ketosis. I also feel pretty good about knowing what to do for my next ski trip, and it’ll include all of the above!
Despite my ketones only measuring greater than 0.5 mmol 4 of the 8 days, I’m still pretty happy with the results, considering the fact that we ate out for every meal. It was surprisingly easy to eat a ketogenic diet on this trip, I’d simply order a burger, add some avocados, and hold the bun. Sometimes I’d add an egg or bacon.
My ketones dropped down to 0.4 mmol for a 2 consecutive days and which I think might’ve had something to do with the cabernet sauvignon I indulged in the previous evenings. Also my ketones dropped down to 0.2 mmol on the last day because I had a slice of chocolate cake the night before (it was included with my steak dinner and I just couldn’t let it go to waste! I valiantly tried to substitute it for vegetables and when they wouldn’t let me sub it, I gave in…)
My weight was essentially unchanged with a slight gain of 0.8 lbs, but I did briefly reach a new low!
My blood glucose was sub 85 the entire time (except for the last day where I went up to 90 thanks to the chocolate cake) and averaged 81.75.
