A proprietary algorithm that calculates the amount of carbohydrates and fats consumed based on your body weight, training status, and exercise intensity during your workout. This data helps users make informed decisions about post-exercise fuelling, or develop fueling strategies for future activity sessions, minimising the risk of glucose dips or spikes [Read more].
Managing type 1 diabetes (T1D) during exercise comes with its own set of challenges. Maintaining stable glucose levels, knowing when and how much to fuel, and ensuring proper recovery are all crucial elements for optimal performance and health. But until now, it’s often been a guessing game.
That’s where our new carb and fat oxidation estimator comes in. This feature offers personalised calculations based on your body weight, training status, and exercise intensity, giving you a precise look at how much fat and carbohydrates you’re burning during your workout. With this data, you can make informed decisions about fuelling after exercise—minimising the risk of glucose dips or spikes.
Why Is This Relevant for Type 1 Diabetes?
While physical activity leads to a host of health benefits, there can also be challenges at times, such as an increased risk of lows after exercise, especially if fuelling isn’t done correctly. If you’re not fuelling enough during exercise, you may risk hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) both during and after the session, which can be dangerous and affect performance and recovery before the next workout. On the flip side, over-fuelling can lead to hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar) and make recovery more difficult (while also making weight management more difficult).
Our carb oxidation estimator helps solve this problem by taking the guesswork out of your fuelling strategy. It provides data on how much carbohydrate you’re burning, allowing you to fuel appropriately after exercise and better plan fuelling future workouts or a similar type.
Benefits of This Feature for People using Enhance-d
This tool has been specifically designed to support our users in several key ways:
Improved Glucose Stability: With estimates of carbohydrate oxidation, you can ensure a steady fuel supply that meets your recovery requirement after exercise.
Optimised Fuelling Strategy: Personalised results provide you with more insight into how to eat or drink based on your unique energy expenditure, helping you stay energised without overdoing it.
Better Recovery: Proper fuelling is key for recovery. This tool helps ensure you’re replenishing glycogen stores effectively to recover faster after your workout.
Confidence in Exercise: Knowing how much fuel your body needs helps you exercise with confidence, reducing anxiety about mismanaging your nutrition.
How the Calculation Works
The carb and fat oxidation estimator is based on established physiological principles. It factors in your body weight, training status, and exercise intensity (heart rate is required to run the calculation) to provide a highly personalised estimation of how much fat and carbohydrates your body is oxidising (burning) during a workout.
Here’s how it works:
Body Weight: Larger individuals generally burn more energy overall, so the tool adjusts the calculations based on your weight to reflect how much carbohydrate and fat you’re oxidising.
Training Status: The tool considers five levels of training status, from sedentary to highly trained. Those who are more trained tend to rely more on fat oxidation, while untrained individuals may burn more carbohydrates at the same exercise intensity.
Exercise Intensity: Based on the time spent in different heart rate zones, the estimator calculates the rate of carbohydrate and fat oxidation. For example, higher intensities lead to more carbohydrate oxidation, while lower intensities lead to more carbohydrate oxidation, while lower intensities favour fat oxidation.
How to Use the Carb and Fat Oxidation Estimator After Your Workout
In the two examples above, we’ve analysed how different rides resulted in two distinct patterns of substrate utilisation. On the left-hand side, the ride predominantly relied on carbohydrates as the primary fuel source, while on the right-hand side, fat was the main source of energy. You can clearly observe both the amount of each substrate (in grams) and the corresponding calories derived from the oxidation of these substrates, which contribute to the total energy expenditure.
With this information, athletes can easily grasp how their workout impacts their overall energy needs and tailor their recovery strategies accordingly—helping them refuel more effectively and optimise their performance.
Using the Carb and Fat Oxidation Estimator post-workout is simple and effective. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Check Your Workout Details in the Enhance-d App: After your workout, our app will provide detailed information on how much fat and carbohydrate you’ve burned during the session. This includes a breakdown based on grams and calories coming from carbs and fat burning processes.
Adjust Your Fuelling Strategy: Based on the estimated carbohydrate oxidation, you can plan how much carbohydrate to consume after your workout to replenish glycogen stores. This is particularly important for recovery and preparing for future training sessions.
Maintain Glucose Stability: The results can help you decide how much to eat during your workout if you’re planning longer or more intense exercise sessions in the future. For people with T1D, this may help to avoid low blood sugar episodes and assist with your glucose management.
A note on how to use such information for your feeding strategy after exercise
Understanding substrate utilisation after exercise is key to fine-tuning your carbohydrate intake for optimal recovery and glucose management. Recommended guidelines suggest replenishing carbohydrates based on the amount burned, typically consuming 1-1.5g of carbs per kg of body weight within the first 2 hours post-exercise. How you split your intake depends on factors like tolerance to carbohydrates, proximity to other meals, upcoming workouts, and convenience.
For example, if you’ve completed an intense endurance session and have another training session later in the day or the next day, splitting your carbohydrate intake into two or three smaller meals over several hours may help maintain stable energy levels and avoid gut discomfort. Similarly, after a long ride followed by a full meal, it may be best to consume half of the carbs immediately post-exercise and the other half at your meal.
However, after a moderate workout with no immediate follow-up sessions and limited carbohydrates need, you may find it more convenient and effective to consume your required carbohydrates all at once, particularly if it coincides with your next meal, ensuring full glycogen recovery.
Conclusion
This new feature is a game-changing tool interested in what fuels they are burning during exercise. By offering personalised insights into how your body burns fuel, it helps you optimise your workout performance, maintain glucose stability, and recover more effectively.
Don’t leave your fuelling strategy to chance—use the Enhance-d Carb and Fat Oxidation Estimator to fuel smarter and stay ahead of the game.