The Athlete’s Kitchen
Copyright: Nancy Clark, March 2006
Sports
Nutrition Tidbits
If you are eager to
learn more about how to best fuel your body for top performance, you
might enjoy muscling through three pounds and 557 pages of Sports
Nutrition: A Practice Manual for Professionals. The new fourth
edition of this in-depth resource was recently released by SCAN, the
sports nutrition practice group of the American Dietetic Association.
(It is available at
www.eatright.org; click on Shop Online.)
Although this
resource book is written for primarily sports dietitians, strength
coaches, athletic trainers and other health professionals who influence
an athlete’s eating practices, serious athletes might also like to feast
on this hard-core (but well written and relatively easy to read) book
that will answer all sports nutrition questions from A to Z, including
alcohol, carbs, calories, fats, fluids, protein, vegetarian diet, weight
gain, zinc—plus more!
To give you a
taste of the information in the book, here are a few sports nutrition
nuggets that might be of interest.
• The average
150-pound athlete has only 1,000 to 2,000 calories of stored
carbohydrates (glycogen), but over 80,000 to 120,000 calories of stored
fat. Most of the fat is deposited in adipose tissue under the skin, but
a little bit is also stored directly in the muscles and is an important
source of fuel, especially during prolonged exercise.
• Don’t try to eat a
fat-free diet! The recommended intake for athletes is about 0.5 grams
fat/lb body weight/day. This equates to 60 to 80 grams per day of
dietary fat for athletes who weigh 120 to 160 pounds. That’s 15 to 20
teaspoons of butter! Preferably, the fat comes from healthful sources:
nuts, peanut butter, olive and canola oil, and avocado.
• While some fat is
good, excess calories of fat are fattening. Your body easily stores
excess dietary fat as body fat. That’s why you want to carefully
carbo-load on pasta and breads, not fat-load on Alfredo sauce, butter,
cheese, chips.
• Your body stores
carbohydrates in the muscles in the form of glycogen (1,200 to 1,600
calories) and also in the liver (300 to 400 cals); this feeds into the
bloodstream (100 cals) and fuels your brain. During hard training that
depletes your muscle glygogen, you enhance your body’s ability to store
even more glycogen; this enhances your ability to exercise for longer
before “hitting the wall.”
• Athletes should
eat at least 2 grams carb/lb. body weight per day. That’s a minimum of
240 gm carb (about 1,000 calories) per day for a 120 lb woman and
equates to 10 pieces of fruit or 5 cups of cooked pasta. Athletes in
hard training actually should eat 4 to 5 gm carb/lb. No Atkins diet
here!
• Adult athletes
require about 0.5 to 0.75 gram protein per pound (1.2 to 1.7 g pro/kg).
Scientific evidence suggests if you eat more than 0.8 gm pro/lb (1.8 gm
pro/kg), you’ll burn the excess protein for energy. In other words,
eating a very high protein diet does not result in greater muscle gain,
even with intense resistance training. To bulk up, eat more overall
calories so you’ll have abundant energy to build muscles.
• Because eating
before exercise can enhance performance, you should target:
0.5 gram
carb/lb body weight 1 hour pre-exercise
1.0 gram
carb/lb 2 hours pre-exercise
1.5 gram
carb/lb 3 hours pre-exercise
2.0 gram
carb/lb 4 hours pre-exercise.
This means, if you
weigh 150 pounds, you need about 75 grams carbohydrates—about 300
calories—of carb one hour pre-exercise, and 1,200 calories four hours
out. This tends to be far more than most athletes consume. Experiment to
learn how much your body can tolerate, and try to build up to this
target if you currently eat less than this.
• Consuming carbs
during endurance exercise can delay fatigue by 30 to 60 minutes. Target
about 1 gram carb per minute of exercise—equivalent to 240 calories of
carbs per hour if you weigh about 150 pounds. That’s about 1 quart of
Powerade per hour.
• Consuming carbs as
soon as tolerable after hard exercise enhances muscle glycogen
replacement because—
1) the blood flow to
the muscles is faster immediately after exercise, so carbs can get
carried to the muscles faster;
2) the muscles are
better able to take up the carbs because of increased sensitivity to
insulin, the hormone that helps transport carbs into muscles. Plan to
have banana, fruit yogurt, fruit smoothie, and/or fig bars readily
available.
• Both liquid and
solid carbs refuel the muscles equally well, so take your choice:
chocolate milk or a pasta dinner.
• While many
athletes believe “thinner is better,” don’t try to get your body fat
below 5% (men) or 12% (women). Each athlete has a fat percentage and
body weight at which he or she performs best. Hence, you should listen
to your body, and take note of how you feel and perform, as opposed to
force your body to achieve a self-selected number.
• Warning:
Body fat measurements—even under research conditions—can be plus or
minus 3 to 4%. If you are told your body fat is 16%, it might be 13% or
19%. Just having a different person measure your body fat can
significantly alter the measurement. Use body fat measurements only as a
guide and give yourself a body fat range.
• At rest, your body
burns approximately 0.45 calorie per pound per hour. If you weigh 150
pounds, you burn about—
- 70 calories per
hour of bedrest, or about 1,700 calories per 24 hours of doing nothing
except staying alive.
- about 375 calories
per hour of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking at a pace of 15
minutes per mile.
- about 1,200
calories per hour of high intensity exercise, such as running at a pace
of 5.5 minutes per mile.
Clearly, the harder
you exercise, the more you can eat!
But take heed:
hard workouts followed by naps reduce your daily calorie needs. Athletes
who turn into post-exercise couch potatoes commonly reward themselves
with too much food and fail to attain their desired weight goals....
Sports dietitian
Nancy Clark MS, RD counsels casual and competitive athletes. Her private
practice is at Healthworks. the premier fitness center in Chestnut Hill
(617-383-6100). Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook ($23),
Food Guide for Marathoners ($20) and Cyclists’s Food Guide
($20) offer more information about healthful eating and are available
via www.nancyclarkrd.com
or by sending a check to Sports Nutrition Services, PO Box 650124,
Newton MA 02465. Also see
www.sportsnutritionworkshop.com
|
