On this New Year edition of The Ask Prof Noakes Podcast we get right into a success story and we chat to Prof. Tim Noakes about how to provide the right food for a 3 day fitness test when you are being fed by the army. Would it hurt to eat carbs during that period?

We get the New Year off on the Podcast with a question from Elaine in the UK. She has successfully converted her 22 year old son to the Banting or LCHF diet, he has no sugar and no grain in that diet.

He is very happy on the Banting Diet and is feeling strong on it. He had no weight to lose and although he is no marathon runner, he does run and he lifts weights, He also does body weight exercises like pull-ups and sit-ups.

She says he is taking part in a 3 day fitness test to join the British Royal Marines for which he is well prepared for.

Unfortunately, he failed the test six months ago due to a combination of mental and physical fitness. He is by no means weak, the test is just an absolute killer.

She says her question is this – the food available is likely to be high carbohydrate laden junk food at the test. Although there is no restriction on the amount you can eat, would it hurt for him to eat carbs during those three days?

Elaine has told him that he needs to grab as much bacon and eggs as he can in the morning and leave the toast, beans and hash browns. But they may offer them Mars Bar chocolates and orange juice during the day to get through the tougher test and the evening meals are also generally pasta laden dishes and those sort of things.

Will the carbs hinder his new fit fat adapted performances?

Will eating carbs hinder you if you are fat adapted on the LCHF Diet?

Prof Tim Noakes: You know, it is a real issue. I would think that if it is a 3 day event, the more fat that you eat during the event, the better you will do and eating carbs will just adapt him again, his body will not know what to do with it because it is so fat adapted.

So I quite agree with Elaine’s idea, he needs to take fat with him and if there was one food that is simple and what the British Army use when they came to Africa to fight the Boer war, was Pemmican which is a mix of protein and fat. You can live for months and months and months on Pemmican.

What he needs to do is to find some Pemmican, somewhere in Britain but it must be only fat and only protein. You see Pemmican was made by the plains Indians in North America. They lived on it. It was made from bison because bison was the animal they lived on and when they killed the bison and animals then disappeared in winter, they would live off the Pemmican.

They discovered that it was a perfect combination of fat from inside the body and meat. So they would cut up the meat into small little flakes and then they would pack it around with the fat and that would then last forever.

It was the food that everyone used when they went to the South Pole or the North Pole and as I have indicated, it was the war ration right up to the Second World War.

The British Army needs to understand that Pemmican is what these guys should be using for their three day events and the closest you can come, would be salami probably or eggs and bacon and so maybe he could try some salami if he cannot get hold of Pemmican.