YouSaid · the spoken record

Zach Bitter

lines on the record: 227
first: 2021-07-29
most recent: 2021-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah. Just to kind of start to weed out where are the potential problems. So let's say I do a two or three day simulation where I'm averaging 70 miles a day. And I find out at the end of three days, there's a really weak spot here. I need to address that or I need to find a way to make that not a weak spot. I think that's the only way to really get as close as you can to avoid injury.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's where I'm putting a lot of my focus. I think just being running fit is going to be, like generally speaking, is going to be important. I'm going to, I think just from a lifetime of running is going to be a huge advantage. A lot of these kind of like mechanical movements are going to be very established. It's just going to be about can I tolerate that volume of it. I think that I'm doing more strength work. I think this is something where it's like, you know, maybe adding five pounds of lower body muscle is going to be an advantage versus a disadvantage when you're looking at power weight ratio because I just don't really never need to be running a 648 mile for this adventure. And so I'm looking at I'm doing a lot more of that stuff focusing on that. The training is changing a fair bit where it's more polarizing versus kind of being, I mean, I've always had some polarization in my training, but this is even to an extreme where like I'm going to do some simulations where”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's probably like from the first step to the last step, it'll probably be somewhere around, say, 14 hours, 13 hours or something like that would be a pretty good estimate.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the way I'm looking at this is it's much less about performance from the traditional sense where I need to be able to be X fit. I think I need to be injury proof. That's what's going to be a detriment. If you think about it, like if I manage to average nine minute mile pace for a day, that would be 80 miles in a 12-hour time frame. So I'll easily have 12 hours of moving time per day. Nine minute pace, I think, is slow enough. That is not an unreasonable clip. So, I mean, obviously there's things that slow you down or I'll probably take walking breaks, you know, stopping breaks. You got to stay on top of nutrition. That's the other big thing too. I'm, you know, probably eating like anywhere between 10,000 to 15,000 calories a day, which is, you know, I can probably count on my hand a couple occasions where I've eaten that much in my life. So now I got to do that for six plus weeks in a row”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't say I'm worried about it. I mean, I think there's probably remote enough spots along the way where you'll get some alone time more likely. necessarily mind if people want to jump in there'll be some people that will definitely want to do that and and they can come in but the reality is like it's probably not going to be a scenario where there's like you know 40 people following me at all times”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm going to go out with the, I'm going to structure the process in a way that leaves that door open is the way I would describe it. I'm going to try not to do anything that would potentially put it in a situation where that becomes the primary goal just because I want to make sure that the reason I decided to do in the first place was for the Forgotten. So I want to make sure that I don't end up two-thirds of the way across the country with a broken leg and I'm like, hey guys, I guess the donation button's turned off.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I'll be documenting everything because my hope is that I'm doing it primarily to raise awareness for Fight for the Forgotten Justin Wren's charity. But with that said, I think I am capable of, if I have a good experience chasing the record or going after the record or at least getting close to it. Oh, sure.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stop and the people that can dedicate that much time to an activity like that, there's a lot of moving parts even before you start the adventure itself.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's just so many variables that are uncontrollable on this type of an experience just because, I mean, you go over the Sierra's, maybe you hit a storm. You know, you try to time it. Most people do it in start in September so you can get over the mountain passes without a big storm coming through, but then also get to the east coast before it's like the middle of winter. So like September, early September start is kind of ideal. But you can. Pete was very fortunate from a weather standpoint. I think he made one big mistake. We were a little too aggressive in the beginning. Had to take a full day off. So he actually averaged from a moving day standpoint closer to 75 miles per day. But yeah, I mean, there's going to be things that I can't prepare for, won't know. It's going to happen. You know, a lot of that will get a lot of the logistical stuff will get leaned on with the crew. I mean, that's the hardest part right now is just like getting all that put together where it's like, okay, I need to have the RV ready. I need to have all the stuff. We need to have the places figured out where we're going.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the record is by a guy named Pete Kostlick, who averaged just over 72 miles a day, finished in 42 days, six hours and 30 minutes. And I mean, just like 72 miles, 73 miles. And then like next day again, next day again, just knowing every day when you finish, you spend a whole day running and then know, okay, I'm going to go to bed. I'm going to wake up in the morning. I'm going to have to do this again. And then have that happen for six weeks. And that's if it goes very well.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Process of trying to make sure you can get up the next day and do again, which did the day before, which is going to be the biggest difference. So for me, I've done all single day ultramarathons where you're going to ring yourself dry at knowing the next day or week or however long you need. You're going to be able to just kind of like shut everything down and let everything catch back up. Whereas with this, you're doing it again and again again.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not knowing what could happen, or is this doable type of a thing, but still doing it and figuring it out along the way? So I would describe the transcontinental project as something like that. It's not anything unique to me or anything new. There's been a lot of people who've done it before. But essentially, it's a route. There's different routes. There's one kind of main one that's done for that is used as the record route, more or less, that you go from San Francisco to New York. And essentially you live out of an RV while you're running. So you run as much as you can during the day and you go to bed at night and then you get up and do it again and you're handling all the logistics in the”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. So this is, you know, one thing that is exciting about Ultra Marathons, I think in a lot of places, especially early in someone's ultra marathon adventure, if they decide to do that as a, you know, part of their life is you have these early years where you're doing things for the first time. And it's like so cool and scary at the same time to think, today I'm going to run 100 miles. And the furthest I've ever run before is 50 or something like that. And you just know you're going to do something that you've never done before. You're going to experience things you would have never been able to predict. And it's like this really interesting, unique, like human experience, I think. So for me, I spent most of my career at this point. I got through that phase in a lot of the events I'm really interested in. And then it was like, now let's repeat it and see if we can do it better. And you get into that mindset for a while, which is also a fun mindset. But there is that kind of like desire to kind of have that human experience again of like, you know.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and there's definitely like a switch that flips when you, in your mind, decide I'm going to do this, where then all of a sudden.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's just like Bert is definitely like, I feel like he's as unchanged from like his popularity as one can get away with. And it's just like his lifestyle, I think, is very unpredictable in the sense that if he wants to run like X time for a specific race, that's going to pull away from his lifestyle so much to focus on that. Luckily for him, he's actually a great athlete. It's under that layer of.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love Bert because he's such a nice person. I mean, as a guy who's just accelerated in popularity over the last few years, he is like super kind. So for folks who are curious, I've met Bert a couple years earlier and I just randomly asked him like, hey, I'm doing this live stream thing. We're doing it for Fight for the Forgotten. We're trying to raise some funds for them. Would you want to come on the live stream for a bit? And I thought maybe he'd come off like five or ten minutes. And I thought that'd be amazing if he did that. He ended up coming on for like over an hour. He went past his slot, sat in the next slot, and just started talking with some of the other guests.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The funny thing though about the treadmill is I actually like to do faster workouts on the treadmill like long intervals or something like that or tempo runs because for that type of stuff sometimes for those I want to release the brain power required to hit that pace and say, you take care of that. And for that, it's fun. But those are over quick, so you don't really run into the time perspective.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like even stepping off, what I noticed, I learned this on the day of actually, I noticed there's some things where it didn't really matter how long I get off. Like I get off to use the bathroom, and that was a little bit of a longer break. Then I had like a hiccup during my event where we ran so much power through one end of the house that the screen on the treadmill was blacking out. So we ended up jumping back and forth on treadmills for quite a bit in the beginning. And I noticed even turning it off, stepping on the other and starting the other one up gave me like, you know, a handful of seconds between was enough of a mental break of just like that release of being told what to do to reset.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was from the sense that here's the way I describe it when I'm on a track, it's a controlled environment and everything can be very uniform, but there are tiny little micro adjustments in pace that I'm doing subconsciously that give me the sense of control. I might run the exact same split, but there's like a fraction of a second or a fraction second faster than a fraction of a second slower that equals the same outcome. It gives you that sense of control. You're determining how fast you're going. On a treadmill, you're responding to the belt. So the advantage is you can set a pace and know you're hitting it. The disadvantage is you're being told what to do by that machine. And that gets very frustrating. I've felt like I wanted to step off. Like you get to certain points where you're just like,”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't incorporate it. I just don't incorporate it in the way that would be necessarily conducive to dealing with the mental aspects of being on a treadmill for 100 miles.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I could think of. And my thought was okay, well, I'll just live stream myself on a treadmill and see what happens. It ended up turning into like a big event.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this one is interesting to me because I definitely recognized the boredom and the difference. The thing that the question I can't quite answer, I think, with it is like, could I have remedied that with better preparation? Because the scenario that put me on a treadmill for 100 miles was March 2020, basically the cascade of every race on the planet. It got canceled. And I was in a position where I was going to be doing a runnable 100 miler on a track in mid to late April. So I had like the majority of my training under my belt. So I was like kind of putting the finishing touches on that. And I was like, oh, great. Here we are. What do I do with this fitness? Do I just scale back and hope the events come back in fall and then peak again? Or do I find something to use this fitness for? And the treadmill was the closest thing to what I had been training for in terms of just like a mechanical, like flat running essentially.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Embrace it. Yeah, and I mean, it is one of those things where it's like I'm going to benefit now and pay later a little bit too, where like, and hey, if you go and you go out with some friends and drink and you have memories that last a lifetime from that experience and you paid for it for a couple days after, then hey, maybe that's a fair trade-off from life experience”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Well, yeah, there's that side of it too, and there's a whole You don't want to ostracize yourself too much. And I think anything you can kind of manipulate that a little bit where there's things that are like not specific to, you know, that's going to negatively impact the people around you or your experiences with them. So there's a balance, like everything, I guess”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a side to me that sometimes just craves a lifestyle where it's like I have like such a small house and only what I need and just like a handful of food products I know I enjoy and work well for me and I don't even have the distraction of the other stuff. There's almost like a weight that comes off your shoulders when you think, even just thinking about it, like it's so simple.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Improvements on it. Again, it's a little messy. Like we said before, it's hard to really, you can't go back and try it a different way on that specific day. But I think most people, if they're just like, if they go at it with no bias in the sense that they're trying to make one work versus the other, you can get at least a good enough look at it. And if absolute peak performance in one activity, one very specific activity isn't your goal, then it's like, do you really care if one has a 2% performance increase that you won't even probably notice because there's other variables that will clearly overpower that 2% one way or the other?”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll usually do something similar to what I do before a race if I need to kind of stay on top of calories for the day. So I'm not like at noon with no calorie intake and like 5,000 calories to try to consume before I go to bed that night and get out and do the same thing the next day. But yeah, I think if I were doing what you're doing, if that were my lifestyle, I think I would do almost all my runs fasted. I don't see why I would be eating a lot before it because it's like I'm just introducing something that could, especially if you're noticing, like here's what I'd say. If I was doing that and I was like, wow, this run sucks. And then I introduced something beforehand and now my run was feeling great and my progress was getting better. That's when I would maybe consider having something before. But if you're running both of those like self-experiments, you're noticing, yeah, if I eat something before I go on this workout, the workout's less enjoyable. I'm not noticing any increased improvement.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think, I mean, I like to train on empty stomach. I do most of my biggest training session usually in the morning, and usually what will determine whether I eat something or not before that is like how much do I need to eat that day in order to stay on top of it to build train again the next day.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's like an approach of like training your gut so you can Be able to tolerate that much carbohydrate, which you can do, and you may have to if you're going to follow a high carbohydrate diet. But again, we go back to that practicality standpoint of if you're a professional Olympian who's living and breathing performance and you're burning two to three times your resting metabolic rate on some days, you may be able to actually consume 100 grams of carbohydrate per hour during your training sessions and just barely stay on top of your nutritional needs. Most people who are running ultramarathons aren't going to be probably training much past 10 hours per week. And they're probably not going to have the, I'll call it they're a dietary budget to tolerate 100 grams of carbohydrate consumption during their workouts and still be able to stay healthy. And, you know, so I think that's kind of like a bit of a non-starter for the majority of people, unless we want to talk about like a”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, exactly. So for me, what I found is I can push up to 40 grams without getting any digestion issues. Do I need 40 grams? Probably not, at least not based on kind of the numbers that would be like that I would see on like if I went and actually got like a metabolic cart test or something like that. But it's possible. I mean, if I had a really good race that I would get close to burning that per hour. Most folks that are following a moderate high carbohydrate are going to be recommended to do like 50 to 70 grams during a single day ultra marathon event. And you'll see some recommendations of up to like 100 grams. Not so much for ultra marathons, but just in general from like a performance standpoint, which I mean, it's one of those things where it's like application versus what you can do in a lab for one hour is going to be a lot different, especially when you're stretching out distances well past that. And there's, I'm diverting a little here.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think the funny thing is if you look at the position paper for Ultra Marathon single day events and it's very limited in the sense that it's not anyone's fault it's just we don't have a lot of great research on 100 mile race because it's really hard to study what's going on when someone's running 100 miles but they will say moderate carbohydrate diet is recommended, but they'll also say that it's like something like 60% of participants are going to report some sort of like digestion issue during the event. So then it kind of becomes an issue of do you want to flip that coin? Do you want to flip that coin?”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Carb. So I'm basically just trying to defend what I know I'm going to be burning from the carbohydrate side of that 80 to 90 percent fat. 10 to 20% carbohydrate by taking in. Usually, you know, I've gone as low as about 15 grams of carbohydrate per hour and as high as 40 grams. And the reality is somewhere in between is probably the sweet spot, but 40 I can get away without any digestion issues. So I'm not really concerned pushing up to that during a race since I'm only concerned about performance on that day.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I'm leaning on a lot of those kind of liquid calories, like those low volume, high energy fat protein stuff the morning of, so that when I start the race, my body's going to be encouraged to start out burning high levels of fat. Once I get going probably about 45 minutes in, I'll start introducing small amounts of carbohydrate. So at that point, my body's revving pretty high fat metabolism. And by introducing some carbohydrate in the context of the, you know, let's say my 100 mile personal record, you know, I'm running approximately nine miles every hour. So I'm probably going through about a thousand calories in an hour's time. I'm going to start just like defending muscle glycogen by burning super high levels of fat at the heart rate I would do for that. I'm probably burning somewhere between 80, 90% fat, you know, 12 hours of that. You can chip away at your muscle glycogen to the point where you don't necessarily want to go zero.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep. Cool. Yeah. So they've got like a creamer version and then a fruity flavored version. So you can replicate the taste and the feel of drinking a sports drink. Science is awesome. I know it is. Well, and that's so much of it too because people are always like, well, I don't know. I just like to have my Gatorade or whatever. It's like, well, you can have it now. It won't have all the”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep. Yeah, they make S Fields makes a whole product line that's kind of positioned for a low carb athlete. So they have some products on their lineup that offer some carbohydrate, which is perfect for me because I do introduce some carbohydrate on racing and some of my bigger training sessions and things. But the majority of their products are low carb. So like they have like, you know how you get like the powders that you put into like your drinks that are like high carbohydrate, you know, sports products. They make a version of that that's fat based.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Breakfast the morning of. I'm going to stay away from carbohydrates for 100 mile or anyway. And I'm going to have something like something that's pretty high energy, low volume. So like I'll do like an S fuels life bar. They've got.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, so for where the community is in agreement is that you do want to be very good at burning fat for ultra marathons. I mean, there's just the intensity is low. If your ratios are skewed very high towards carbohydrate metabolism, then you're going to have to defend your muscle glycogen through tons of carbohydrate consumption. And that's just going to be very hard to do over the course of an entire day, even at low intensities. So it's a fuel tank thing. I mean, it's like your leanest endurance athletes have way more fat than they do glycogen stores. When you're doing low intensity performance, you want to be burning high levels of fat and sparing that muscle glycogen. What I tend to do is I want to start the race burning really high levels of fat. So I'm going to, I'll maybe have some carbohydrate the night before for dinner, but then I'm going to lean into the overnight fast”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay. It'll be a little different for racing than it will be for like a big workout just because the interesting thing about Ultra Running is just like you never do the race even like most endurance races you're gonna cover the distance you're gonna replicate the race almost up to it in training whereas with 100 miles you can't you might replicate a third of it so so I'll do I'll walk you through kind of my approach for like 100 mile race and I can tell you maybe what I would do differently on like a training day”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ketogenic diet. So I wonder if some of that The depression related stuff has to do with that where now their body is just fueling their brain differently than maybe they were in the past. But that's just wild guesses on my part. And I'm deviating from the conversation. No”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The mental one, I think, may, I'm stepping out a bit on a limb here, but I want to say like some of the research of Dominic Di Agostino and Jeff Vallick was looking at the ketogenic diet, which a carnivore diet is basically going to be a part of a ketogenic. I mean, you could always go like way too high on the protein, I guess. But most people that I see doing carnivore, they're cognizant enough that at least if they're doing it for therapeutic reasons, they're not going like 50% protein, 50%. They're more like 70, 30, 80, 20, something like that. And I think you do see some work with the brain and some of the mental stuff. I know some of the, I'm not sure if this was part of the DARPA funding that Dr. Dominic Di Agostino had where they were looking at things like mental stuff, like post-traumatic stress disorder and that sort of stuff with a strict.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What this all tells me is there is for one in our food environment, like the failure rate of any one approach at a population level is going to be incredibly high. I mean, it's why we have, you know, what is it, like 88% of the population has some sort of like metabolic syndrome. And it's like, you know, it's because there's an endless quantity of everything that you can get your hands on for relatively cheap. And I think that presents a problem if your mindset is going to be we need this set of parameters for nutrition and everyone needs to adhere to that or you're wrong. And it's like, well, tell that to the person who went carnivore and cleared up some crazy skin ailment or something like that.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they're different from me. And every time, you know, when you have your own personal experience, the first guttural response is, oh, if I had done it, would have gone this way, why did it go the complete opposite way for them? And you kind of have to just kind of step out of your own perspective a bit and say, like, okay, well, they're different, you know, for whatever reason they're getting along like this.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think it's individual, though. I emphasize that a lot because I've worked with tons of people with this, and I do see a range from person to person. I've worked with people who come to me and they're like strict keto and we raise up their carbohydrates a bit and they're like, okay, I feel way better doing it this way. And I've worked with people who they come to me moderate carbohydrate, but they're interested enough. They want to try a lower carb. So we, you know, we titrate them down. And I've had clients where I'm like, okay, I'm going to give them this workout and they're going to wish they brought back a little bit of carbohydrate. And then they go and they nail the workout and I'm just like baffled that.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then you have this situation where it's actually a combination of a variety of different things. So where are the big movers? And, you know, for me, nutritional shift was pretty clear that that improved my sleep and my recovery. And I mean, people can say, well, there's the placebo effect, which is a very real concern. But for me personally, a 10-year placebo effect would be a quite lengthy placebo effect”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've referenced my 2019 racing season a few times, and it's like it'd be silly for me to put all of the emphasis on my nutrition plan for that because it also comes with two decades of endurance training. So it's possible and it's very likely that a huge portion of that success was just the culmination of a lot of work over time from the training side of things. I just think like anytime you hyper focus on one area or pick a couple variables and just target those, you find yourself in a position where you are you're putting other things in the most uncharitable light possible”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's countless people now who, like, and I'm not saying that they could not have found another route, myself included. Like in 2011, when I switched from moderate to high carbohydrates to low carbohydrate and saw some very noticeable differences in the way I felt, the way I performed in all this stuff, that doesn't mean that there wasn't another path. I just did not find that path. The fact that I found a path that was producing the results I was looking for is really all that matters in my mind. You know, like I don't really care if there was a parallel path that works just as well or, you know, something like that, because ultimately we only have one shot at everything we're doing. So like it'd be great if I could go back and try four or five different things.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's maybe less about the meat and it's more about what are you replacing? So if we step away from like me specifically and just like the people that, because I mean, we're getting to the point where I get it's anecdotes, but like that's what we have at the moment because, I mean, there is actually a study being done on, I think, I guess they'd call it hypercarnivore where they're like, I think above 80% of their intake from meat. And they're looking at a few different things there”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many reasons philosophically and nutritionally. Yeah, only 2020 happened, and now I haven't had a really good chance to improve. We'll see. Hopefully, I've got some more in the tank.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, for me, meat based definitely. I mean, I was my highest meat consumption in 2019, and that was by far my best racing season.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've ranged everywhere from like mostly plant based low carb keto to like mostly animal based. I very rarely gone much more than like two weeks strict where it's like I'm strict carnivore or strict plant-based or anything like that. We're talking probably more like 95% at the peak in terms of any type of like longer lasting for my personal experience of like being like either in like the animal food camp or like the plant-based camp kind of a process. So I've tried all of them, things that stayed consistent over the 10 years as a kind of the macronutrient profile that I've done throughout the course of.”
2021-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #205 – Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source