Valentine's Day - Metabolically in-efficient one might say.
We are what we eat. And what we eat largely determines our performance in sport. Yeah, I know, you may not want to hear it but it’s true–when we eat to support our training, we’re simply going to get more out of that training and because the training’s better, our performance will naturally improve. So, do what do what I do–eat like a champ in training and leading up to and through race day and go a little (or maybe a lot, depending on the distance/recovery) overboard after your race; you’ve (likely) earned it. If you’re like me, all the crap you shovel in post-event usually ends up making you feel pretty bad, right? And since you’re used to feeling pretty good, well, you realize, this is one great benefit of living the endurance sports lifestyle–our diet improves since we really do want to see our peak potential on race-day.
So we’ll tolerate eating “healthy” for the sake of faster times. I think we might need to recalibrate our heads sometimes. I believe that eating healthy–most of the time–should be the norm rather than the exception to the rule. And if you think you’re already eating pretty healthy then take some time to look at the foods that you’re consuming; write them all down. Are you consuming about 50% fruits & veggies at each meal? Are you eating lean meats and healthy fats regularly each week? Do you go overboard on the pasta and/or rice on a regular basis to support your perceived energy demands? Hey, I’m there with you. Once you crack open the book on eating properly to support performance in sport, well, there’s no going back. So, just commit to being the best student, or maybe scientist, that you can be and see what eating to train does for your race season.
Keep reading - Keep learning - Keep growing
So, we all know where the path is, but staying on it proves to be quite difficult and even more challenging when we’re making deliberate attempts to do so. The mind catches on to your antics and quickly and becomes your worst enemy. Eating should be empowering. And when your diet matches your training demands you’re going to feel even more inspired by what fuel you’re taking in and how that fuel is supporting your efforts. Thus, we need to eat for training rather than training so we can eat whatever we darn well please. “Hey, I just did a century. I’m headed to Carl’s Jr!!!”
What does eating for training look like? Well, I’m not a dietician or nutrition expert but I’ve been a pretty religious student of endurance sports for over 15 years now. And, like most folks, I’ve been devouring what all the sports nutrition companies have been dishing out, namely, bars, gels, chews, and drinks. I’ve gobbled them right up. And rightly so. They usually work pretty well when I’m racing, when there’s little blood in my stomach available for digestion. But what about the rest of the time, when I’m heading out for a long and steady ride or run? Do we need all these sports nutrition products all the time, all year long? Perhaps not. But don’t throw away your Clif Bars and Shots just yet. There’s a time and a place for these products but maybe just not such a big time and place.
Go to http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/bestseller/
Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual paraphrases his best-seller The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. And that’s exactly what it is–a manual for eaters. Buy it. Use it. You’ll be glad you did. Pollan gives you practical and fun “rules-of-thumb” to help you make better food choices that support optimal health. The book is broken into thirds and reads like this: 1. What food should I eat? (Eat “food”) 2. What kind of food should I eat? (Mostly plants) 3. How should I eat? (Not too much). Simplistic? You bet. Refreshing and delightful reading? Ditto.
Turns out Pollan is part of a growing body of knowledge and nutritional awareness that concerns itself most with the identification of nutrient-dense foods, i.e., those foods that truly nourish our bodies, that fuel our workouts, our lives. Foods that help our mental acuity. Foods that aid in and expedite our recovery. If only the fruits and vegetable companies had a fraction of the advertising budget that PepsiCo or General Mills has! Imagine an 11 year-old thinking a bag of carrots was as cool as a bag of Hot Cheetos! I had to become an endurance athlete in order to discover what foods best supported optimal health in order to beat my bros at the next mountain-bike race back in 1995. Taco Bell sure wasn’t doing the trick! But man, I sure did get a kick out of that little dog.
Half your plate at every meal should be filled with fruits and/or veggies.
As I understand it, most endurance athletes are good sugar burners. Think about it–We’re swimming, biking, and running all over God’s green earth in search of the next carbohydrate-fortified meal so that we can sustain this crazy multi-sport lifestyle of ours. Now, take the fact that we only have 1300 – 2000 calories of stored carbohydrate in our muscles–known as muscle glycogen. Once we burn through this, we have to supplement with our bars, gels, and energy drinks. It all works pretty well too, until the races get longer and the gastrointenstinal monster rears his ugly head and takes you out of the race. Why? Because we’re good at burning sugar. Blood sugar goes down, we pop another gel. Blood sugar goes up. We cook on down the road for a stretch. Blood sugar goes down. And so on and so forth. Is there a way to better control our blood sugar? Why yes there is. And that way is to tap into our seemingly endless internal fat stores, consisting of some 80,000 calories, which puts to shame the meager amount of calories we have in preciously limited supply in our muscle glycogen. So, bottom line? Eat for training and refine your body’s ability to burn fat by overhauling your Westernized diet, which typically consists of too many carbs and not enough fruits, veggies, lean meats, and healthy fats. Once you make these changes to your diet, you can expect to feel the effects in as little as two weeks as your body becomes more “metabolically efficient.” You’ll still use those gels on race day most likely, you just won’t need so many of them, which will save your gut some trouble.
"Metabolic Efficiency" by Bob Seebohar. Aligned well with the work of Michael Pollan.
With Michael Pollan at work in my consciousness, I visited Colorado Springs last month for a USA Triathlon coaching clinic. One of the many fabulous presenters there was Bob Seebohar, who actually is a nutrition expert and currently works with Olympic triathletes. I was all ears and taking notes like my life–or my race times–depended on it.
Bob continually brought us back to his central theme that the key to great racing, training, and balanced living for that matter, is controlling the body’s blood sugar. He told a story of an ultra-runner he coached who ran a 100mi race on only 133 calories/hour with no gastrointestinal issues. Our bodies change over time and in the last several years, I’ve had my fair share of stomach woes. I was all ears.
Bob went on to describe this process of the more efficient burning of fat as “metabolic efficiency.” There are two methods athletes must manipulate– Physical Training & Nutrition Periodization. The physical training has to do with building a solid aerobic engine that effectively burns fat as fuel. Nutrition Periodization has to do with eating for training (rather than the reverse) or fueling with foods that Michael Pollan would agree are really “foods,” that is real foods; whole foods. Foods that nourish your body. Bob recommends that athletes cut way back on their consumption of sports nutrition products and even completely when athletes are in a preparatory period–or base phase–of their training. Bars, gels, and drinks have their place; we just don’t need to be so heavily reliant upon them. I do recommend you educate yourself further on Nutrition Periodization and Metabolic Efficiency. I’ve been at it for a month now and am seeing the results already.
Metabolic Efficiency: Teaching the Body to Burn More Fat & Nutrition Periodization for Endurance Athletes, both by Bob Seebohar. Available now @ Fuel4mance.com
Excerpt from Metabolic Efficiency –
How are you supposed to fuel your workouts if you shouldn’t use sports nutrition products? Simple. Depend on your daily eating plan and whole foods to satisfy your nutrient needs. The key to improving metabolic efficiency is having a small feeding that is well-balanced (not comprised of all high carbohydrate foods but one that includes lean protein and healthy fat) in the hour or two leading up to your training session to ensure that you are not ‘turning off’ your fat burning processes. No bagels, pasta, or oatmeal. Sorry. The goal is to achieve balance, so add a good helping of chicken or salmon to a large spinach salad with veggies or spoon in some berries with some plain yogurt and extra virgin olive oil to make your feedings more metabolically efficient. I know this may seem a bit awkward as it does not support the normal thinking of consuming a high carbohydrate food before training but eating too many carbohydrates without protein or fat can spike your blood insulin thereby significantly reducing your body’s ability to oxidize fat.
The Smoothie - Such a great way to blend together some serious love and goodness.
So, let’s use my own training example, since I’m most familiar with what I’ve recently done to my guinea pig self. I’ll make it easy.
Nature's candybar. Such a convenient "real" food - before & after workouts.
I’ve cut way back on the carbs from enriched flour (white pastas and the like). I’ve doubled my intake of fruits and vegetables. I eat a BIG salad every day, from a larger container if I’m at work that day. I’m making smoothies with frozen fruit, greek yogurt, flax seed, kiwi, and Odwalla orange juice about every other day. I drink one and put another in the frig to have as my recovery drink. I’m consuming Omega-3 fats from the flax seed and from fish oil, which is supposed to help combat the body’s inflammatory response. I’m eating to train and not training to eat. In shorter workouts lasting 60-90min I’m no longer bringing anything with me. But, prior to these efforts my habits have changed slightly–I’m making an effort to combine fiber with protein (like a banana with some peanut butter for example) while making sure I’m properly hydrated before heading out. Once complete with the effort, I’m no longer waiting so long to get around to eating. It’s become priority #1 as soon as I get done. I plan for it. When I finished a long run today at Annadel, I had two bananas, an orange, and a liter of water waiting for me. You need to eat within 5min of finishing your workouts–and not with sports nutrition products. Save them for the key race-simulation workouts and racing. In the meantime, you’re going to build the most efficient fat-burning engine you’ve ever had, not unlike the Kenyan marathoner’s. Dig?
Post workout breakfast comin' up!
On Saturday, I went out to Annadel and put this metabolic efficiency stuff to the test. I’d done the Annadel Half-Marathon on nothing but a sip of Gatorade, (though I had a banana, a Clif Bar, a Shot, and some sports drink before and during my warm-up) where typically I would have taken two gels and more Gatorade during the race. I’m not ruling out that taking a gel would have provided a bump in speed, however, I never felt the need for one, which was different from what my body usually tells me during a 90min high-intensity session. No stomach issues. No cramping. Great focus the whole way. I had plenty at the end. I don’t think I could have gone much faster if at all and certainly not the 4min I would have needed for first place.
A week later, I was feeling pretty metabolically efficient. My run was scheduled for 35 miles. I did it on water, about five electrolyte capsules (taken at the top of each hour), and some dried fruit (mango, pineapple, and raisins). I had 2 liters of water on my back and two full hand-helds of H2O as well. At mile 18, about half-way, I walked, called my fiancee, and ate a peanut butter sandwich (Seebohar suggests fueling every three hours to maintain optimal blood sugar levels). Then I got back to work.
Ultra-running lends itself well to adapting to the metabolic efficiency process, primarily because 50mi and 100mi events are done at such low aerobic states that one can generally eat real food all day and be able to process it since the going is so slow. Sometimes. I’m training to go faster! Still, I’m planning to find a sweet spot, a balance between eating the real food and my trusted sports nutrition products that have worked for me in long-course triathlon all these years.
For the triathletes I coach, I’m suggesting limiting sports nutrition products in training while ensuring they have sufficient calories with them for their longer training sessions. It’s all about planning, therefore, failing to plan is planning to fail. For the realities of triathlon, sports nutrition products will still play a major role. BUT, athletes will be coming in more metabolically efficient, that is to say better burners of fat, not the slaves to sugar they may have been last year. And since they burn fat as fuel more effectively, they will conserve their precious 1,300-2,00o calories they have stored in their muscle glycogen, which is the name of the game. Burning fat better will decrease the athlete’s sugar intake, which will prevent a GI meltdown late in the race. And that’s gonna feel good.
Kiwi rates at 100 on NuVal's nutritional index.
Impromtu "ice" bath - not much fun. but worth the discomfort.
So no meltdowns for this Bob. I felt fine throughout. Legs still a bit tender from last weekend’s thrill-ride in the Annadel Half– I’m certainly not 23 anymore! I even took an ice bath (though my available freezer-ice melted pretty fast) after Bobby McGee, a running and mental skills coach who also presented in Colorado Springs last month, reminded us at our coaching clinic that what we do between workouts is actually more impactful than the workouts themselves. I was reminded of this and so much more, which I’ll be sharing with you in the coming months. In the meantime, EAT TO TRAIN. Read Pollan and Seebohar’s stuff. Make your own connections. It’s more meaningful this way. So, when we talk, the knowledge is shared and thus, the dialogue becomes more balanced, more informed, and more likely to empower you to keep learning and growing, especially when you see the results of your efforts. My job is to shine the light; I’m learning right along side of you.
Go to the farmer's market whenever you can. Whole foods are real foods!!!
( : Point Positive! : )
Nutrition
