New research by a team that undoubtedly ranks as the highest scrabble scoring set of names we’ve come across – Coyle EF, Jeukendrup AE, Oseto MC, Hodgkinson BJ, Zderic TW – suggests that being super lean may not help your athletic performance. Or as they catchily put it “Low-fat diet alters intramuscular substrates and reduces lipolysis and fat oxidation during exercise”.
The article (originally published by the American Journal of Physiology, endocrinal metabolic section) is neatly summarised by super coach Dave Smith on the new Kjerag.com website, but it doesn’t pull any scientific punches, I qoute. “2%FAT reduced nonplasma FA oxidation by 40% in association with a 19% reduction in whole body lipolysis while increasing calculated minimal muscle glycogen oxidation”
For those of you (like us) with a less than doctorate level of sports medicine understanding what this means is a very low fat diet seems to reduce the speed at which the body processes fat during steady state exercise, and also reduces energy storage in the muscles.
And isn’t such a statement just handy halfway through “National chip week” – a celebration we’ve been supporting wholeheartedly thanks to “Lynne’s Chippy”. Very possibly the finest home made pies in the North (or at least this part of it).

Those looking for more boner fido fitness advice should also check out the new four legged fitness friendButcher’s dog of our pedigree hillclimbing chums at OUTDOORSmagic.com.