How many of us take nutrition seriously?
The doc
Posts: 9
in General Chat
I just thoght it'd be fun to see how many people think sports nutrition is really imprtant. Obviously coming up to, and on, race day it is paramount to a good performance but how many people would consider their nutrition on a daily basis during race season, let alone the off season (where most of us will happily pack on a few Christmas pounds!).
I'd be of the opinion that a good knowledge of sports oriented nutrition will vastly improve your training, recovery and overall performance however, how many of us actually care/know enough to do anything about the quality of our dietary intake???
I'd be of the opinion that a good knowledge of sports oriented nutrition will vastly improve your training, recovery and overall performance however, how many of us actually care/know enough to do anything about the quality of our dietary intake???
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we were lucky enough to have Gordo Byrn and his wife Monica staying with us for alot of the summer this year. They take nutrition very seriously and some of it rubbed off on to us. They rarley ate (and now us also) pasta or bread. Majority of food was Couscous, chicken, vegatables, salad and lots of eggs and oats for breakfast. But not 3 meals a day, it was 5 or 6 smaller sittings. We have taken about 50% of this into our routine (as it is difficult to change over night) and it is working for us. There is a steady weight loss (which we need) and then energy on the long rides is there (only topped up with simple foods like fig biscuits or fruit cake). I ride alot due to my job and have experimented over the past few months and it seems to be working fine. Couscous is a great filler and learning how to cook chicken differently each night can be a challenge. All the food was easily digestible and hence gets into the system quicker. We are perfecting it a little more towards our IM goal for next year just so we can compare it to previous races where we took no interest in nutrition.
11 months before we see the results (not a quick fix as you can see)
Cheers
Ian
For me nutrition is essential as it has a direct impact on what you are trying to achieve therefore you need to establish these goals at some stage.
I learnt a fair bit about this last year as I was seeing a nutritional therapist to sort out some gut trouble that I had at the time (I'm yeast and dairy intolerent but didn't know it). What i noticed was just how subtle changes to diet affect training and performance.
I was only weight training at the time to lose some fat and its clear that you can train as much as you like but the key to losing fat is diet. I lost about 3 stone and then as I started triathlon training I started to put on weight again. Work and training committments led to me eating anything put in front of me and I put a stone back on.
For me the winters going to be about shedding the weight again and diet will again be key.
For anyone who wants to track what they eat try using www.fitday.com as this is an excellent, and free, database that keeps me going. Eating 5 or 6 times a day also makes calorie counting much easier to achieve as well as the effect it can have on your waistline.
Wella
Im very interested in this subject and would like to know what amount of calories people would estimate they comsume a day when training?
Cheers, Rich
I'm know good nutrition would improve my performance (as would losing a few pounds!) but somehow I just haven't managed to get round to it ......
Maybe next year????
I'm quite interested in this too, mainly due to my health related reasons of last year.
I've been up and down with calories for about a year now. When trying to lose fat I aim for about 1800 to 2000 calories a day as this gives me a loss of about 2lbs a week which is safe enough. Combined with weight training this was ok and worked fairly well until I had lost 3 stone and then I hit a plateau.
However, when I started training for my first triathlon back in March I couldn't belive how hungry I was getting as my training increased from 3 1hr weights sessions a week to 6 days training. Work got really busy at the same time so I was working 13hr days on top of the training. The result, I was probably eating 3000-3500 calories a day just to keep going.
I was probably eating to much though as my weight went back up by a stone. With all the training I thought I was going to lose weight, hence the reason I think nutritions important. As my weight went up, so did my run time.
I'm sticking to about 2000 calories a day at the moment and my training consists of weights 3 times a week, 2 runs of about 8-10k and rugby on a saturday. Post rugby beers add a few calories on a saturday!
My training will change gradually over the winter as I do more running to train for the Paris Marathon so I know the calories will have to go to match. This time i'll do it sensibly rather than shovelling anything I can find, normally sweets, in my mouth.
Yes I know you'll all hate me for that but it's hard to maintain my weight. I seem to eat a lot of chocolate (2 or 3 bars a day ) and drink a lot of full fat coke and seem to graze constantly on food.
Probably should eat more fruit but never seem to enjoy it as much as chocolate.
I probably average around 2500 calories a day.
Does anybody else have similar problems?
Dumb blonde
but in practice it just doesn't work...tend eat healthly(the odd take away aside) and drink a protien shake after training and take vit c and vit e on training days. but like dumb blonde I tend to not beable eat enought to keep my weight up during hard training and once it has dropped it takes longer to get back....
I guess I just need to eat more often or summat...