Sports Nutrition Basics

/

There are many “rules” about sports nutrition that are floating around the interwebs and I believe that many of them lead to overeating by the recreational and weekend warrior athletes.  Here are a few truths about sports nutrition for the non-professional athlete:

1.  We only need 3 meals a day. Choose slow-burning fuel, like fats and protein, and you will feel satisfied longer. The notion that we need 6-8 small meals each day to keep our metabolism running hot and fast is not true and just teaches our body to only use the fast burning kindling (snack food = carbs) that we are putting on the fire. Our body actually does better when it learns how to be hungry and experiences times of fasting.

2.  Meal timing depends on a couple of things - what you are eating and when you are working out. It also should be individualized so what works for one person doesn't always work for the next.  Let's use the example that you workout first thing in the morning before breakfast. Grab a banana or a couple of almonds and do your workout. After, eat a breakfast that includes a carbohydrate like a starchy tuber (sweet potato). 

If you workout between 4 -6 pm, make sure you are eating a significant lunch with good fat like avocado and/or coconut and save the carbs for dinner.

3.  9 times out of 10 additional pre and post workout meals and snacks are not necessary and usually just lead to eating extra calories. Instead eat your regularly scheduled meals and adjust your carbohydrates so that you are eating them in the meal post workout. As long as you eat within 8 hours of your workout, you will restore your glycogen stores and be ready to workout again the next day. 

 The only times that you should make sure that you are eating in the 20 - 60 minute post-workout window is when your workout was done in a fasted state, you are going to workout again in the next 8 hours or you are trying to gain muscle.

4. Gatorade and other sports drinks are not real food and are not fit for consumption by anyone. Amazing advertising has convinced us that we need sports drinks if we are going to be active. So we drink them at the gym and we give them to our kids at practice.  There is nothing that we get from sports drinks that we can't get by eating real food plus real food gives the added benefit of micronutrients. What we should be drinking during activity is water and only to thirst. There is no magic number of ounces that we should drink every hour of exercise because everyone's body works differently. Just drink (water) when you are thirsty.

What about electrolytes? If you can taste salt in your sweat - you have plenty. This is our body keeping our electrolytes balanced by removing excess sodium and not a sign that we are losing electrolytes that need to be replaced.

5. I can bet that if you participated in school sports or are a weekend warrior running races, you have also participated in a pre-event pasta feed. Carbo-loading before an event is not necessary. This is because our body only has a finite amount of storage for carbohydrate as glycogen in the muscles and liver. Once storage is full, the body converts excess to fatty acids for storage - I know I don't need any extra stored fat.

The best pre-event meal is a nutrient dense one. This means more micronutrients and more nutrition. Think wild caught fish, organ meat, grassfed steak and dark leafy greans. Save the carbs for after the event when your glycogen stores are depleted.

Want more resources?  Check out these books….