Athletes are taught that in order to perform at an optimum level–whether they’re lifting heavy weights or running marathons–they have to “carb up.”

As a retired pro athlete, I can vouch for the fact it’s what we’re taught.

When your body’s used to being fueled by glucose, that’s what it wants. Just like when you’re used to eating glucose (aka sugar from both carbs and straight-up sugar), you crave it all the time.

But does that mean glucose is the ONLY way to fuel your body; or that eating high-carb is the healthiest option, regardless of whether you exercise?

Heck no!

When you minimize carb intake, and increase consumption of healthy fats, your body switches from burning glucose (sugar) for fuel, to burning ketone bodies (fat) for fuel.

While your body is adapting to burning ketone bodies (aka switching to fat-burning mode), your athletic performance will drop for an average of three weeks. (Might be less, might be more, but that’s the average.)

However, because fat is a MUCH more efficient energy source than glucose, once fat adaption is complete, athletic performance improves significantly in most people.

The biggest problem with fueling via glucose is the way it comes with spikes and drops in your performance.

When a drop hits, you take the “goo,” or you take the shot blocks–something to give you that spike, which brings your energy back up…but only until your performance tanks again.

Those wild drops and spikes don’t happen when you’re fat-adapted. Your energy output is nice and steady.

You may be reading this and thinking, “Cristy, I thought we didn’t have to exercise on the Code Red Lifestyle™. Why are you talking about this?”

That’s a great question.

I’m talking about this because recreational “fat athletes” constantly message me in a panic (or message me trying to argue with me) about not being able to “carbo load” on their workouts.

If you happen to be an athlete, or you’re wanting to exercise more in maintenance (which I fully support if that’s what you wanna do), then first of all, understand that eating for weight loss and eating for performance are as far apart as the east is from the west.

So if you’re wanting to lose weight AND have the best performance of your life, it’s not gonna happen.

But once your weight is off, if you wanna amp up that athletic performance, I totally support you.

And I also want you to understand that, by eating how we eat on the Code Red Lifestyle™, you won’t have to put up with those constant energy spikes and dips the way you do when you eat a bunch of carbs.

I talk more about this in my video below. Click the image to check it out.

In this video I’ll also reveal a book you can read about fueling your exercise with fat, instead of with glucose.

This book will NOT help you lose weight, so again, if you try and follow it while in weight loss mode, you’ll be frustrated.

But if you wanna deep dive into the science behind why fueling your body with fat leads to more energy (including in workouts), you’ll love it.