Remember the puzzling health stats I shared few weeks ago? Borderline pre-diabetes, high LDL, high HDL and low triglycerides. I went into a rabbit hole to find reason for this puzzle and here’s the theory that could explain it, based on dozens of journal articles and two books on diabetes.
Healthy endurance athlete seems to be more likely to experience high blood sugar, more insulin resistant than normal adults, and more circulating lipid. Why? Because endurance athletes are more fat adapted. We are more metabolically flexible to use fat as fuel instead of glucose. During extended endurance event, we convert more lipid into energy, thus more circulating LDL. Secondly, we store more lipid in muscle so they can be used quickly during endurance event, blocking insulin to allow muscles to take up glucose, making us insulin resistant. The fact that we have muscle with more lipid droplet, the same way as obese people who are insulin resistant, is called athlete paradox.
What’s the solution? stop running is definitely not. In fact, endurance athletes have better overall metabolic health and lower all-cause mortality, ceteris paribus.
One possible solution is to remove all saturated fat from the diet, meaning following plant based vegan diet with minimal fat/oil. I was vegan between 2018-2021, and really liked how I felt at the time. At the time, my LDL was below 100, fasting glucose in upper 80s. Then I quit in 2021 mainly because it was inconvenient to travel in Asia being vegan, and I didn’t like the fact that when dining with others, people get anxious as they aren’t sure what I could eat. Since then, I’ve incorporated eggs, chicken, fish, and occasionally beef. My diet is still mainly plant based but I do have animal fat/protein in a regular basis now. I am not sure those amounts could still drive my LDL, something to be tested.
I finished this book last night (2am when jet lagged), after listening to many podcasts around this way of dealing with diabetes, fixing the root cause of insulin resistance, not just avoiding carb to tame the glucose response to food. I will give it a try. I will go vegan for few months and re-test both lipid panel and glucose levels.
It will coincide with my training cycle for the half marathon in early October, so it will be interesting to see how plant based vegan diet impact training performance. In principle, it should help as it will help with recovery, removing animal products help to reduce inflammation.
I will go with open minded, and ready to change my view after the 3 months test. If it does work, then I’ll stick to it.
I hope to try new vegan recipes to make the experience more interesting. I will need to be more prepared when traveling and eating out, but it’s definitely doable. Wish me luck!
I know Jenny and Nicole are both vegan, please share your insights and tips.
Our New Journey 
Good luck, Coco!
I know exactly what you mean about eating out with others. I really hate when the spotlight is on me, and everyone fusses about what I’m eating. I know it’s meant as a kindness but I really hate it. I usually will just quietly figure out what I’m going to eat, and then inevitably someone comes and makes a fuss over me – and I know it’s meant kindly! But sometimes I just want to quietly eat my side dishes, you know?
I used to be a food blogger for the YMC website, and I have all my recipes listed on my blog, including the ones that are marked vegan, as opposed to vegetarian. Maybe this will help? Keep in mind this was before food blogging was a huge business so some of the photos aren’t great. https://girlinaboyhouse.com/recipe-index/
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That’s great! Thanks for sharing Nicole.
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I am so interested to see how this experiment goes, Coco! All the best!
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I am sure Drew will be excited too 🙂 I am pretty sure I would gain significant weight personally if I were vegan as I struggle with satiety on pure vegan sources but I don’t think you will have this issue, so may be a good fit! (My LDL is not high despite endurance activity, I continue to believe lipid metabolism is so much more genetic than it is environment but of course you can alter things with environment as well)
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Yes Drew is excited to see how it will impact my training. I am naturally satiated with carbs more than protein or fat, so going low carb would be harder for me than going vegan. The LDL reaction, the athlete paradox, is not certain, it depends on individuals, so makes sense that your LDL remains low. I do believe it’s genetic to some extent, and could be managed by certain dietary choices. Well… a theory to be tested.
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Interesting, esp the part where you mention fixing the root cause vs. taming the glucose reaction. I will be very interested to see what you do, and what you eat. Will you be limiting carbs as well? Vegan low carb sounds REALLY hard. My husband is borderline diabetic and tries really hard to manage it with diet and exercise. He’s not as thin as you, but he’s not heavy, it just runs in his family. He really likes his animal proteins, though, not sure this would work for him. But keep us posted for sure!
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No, I won’t be going low carb. The theory says that by removing animal protein and fat, it will fix the root cause of insulin resistance, thus it’s not the carb the problem but the body ability to absorb and use the glucose for energy. Will try to do a weekly post about it. What I need, how I feel with my running, and glucose fluctuations as I’m using a CGM now.
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I think lots of folks will be interested, thank you!
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Interesting!! I have zero, like ZERO, desire to ever be vegan… that sounds so horrible to me!! But I will be interested to see what results you get, though I’m sure it may be hard to figure out a direct causation from just a short experiment potentially with other variables.
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I think the experiment works for me because that would be the only variable I’ll change for 3 months. Will report back.
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Best of luck, Coco!! I’mm be sure following along. How interesting re: athletes paradox… I never would have thought that. In my ignorant mind, the runners are the most healthiest people, like, ever. I tried vegetarianism (no veganism) and only lasted 3 days. I would want to add more veggies into my diet, that’s for sure. But what I really need to do is cut the sugary snacks and bagels.
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I used to follow a dairy free diet years ago as it seemed to help my acne. My derm was not supportive but I saw significant results. But being gluten and dairy free was a pain. Eating out was especially hard! So now I eat dairy again. But I followed a lot of vegan blogs to come up with meal ideas and there were some great recipes, like lentil enchiladas for example. I would get daiya brand vegan cheese which I don’t mind. My husband would not be on board with that, though! I will be curious to see what your labs show in 3 months. I have very low cholesterol and low LDL levels and always have, even when I was a marathon runner, so I don’t seem genetically predisposed to that issue luckily. But I have plenty other complex things to manage!!
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