Here's an interesting article I received today. I would appreciate hearing others "philosophies" on pre-race eating, loading up, post-race eating, etc... What to Eat and When for Top Performance By Nancy Clark, MS RD CSSD For Active.com Hot off the press from three prominent nutrition and exercise associations—the American Dietetic Association, American College of Sports Medicine, and Dietitians of Canada—is the 2009 Joint Position Stand on Nutrition for Athletic Performance. While there is little earth-shattering news in this comprehensive document (available on www.eatright.org), the authors comprehensively reviewed the research to determine which sports nutrition practices effectively enhance performance. Here are a few key points on what and when to eat to perform at your best. 1. Don't weigh yourself daily! What you weigh and how much body fat you have should not be the sole criterion for judging how well you are able to perform in sports. That is, don't think that if you get to XX percent body fat, you will run faster. For one, all techniques to measure body fat have inherent errors. (Even BodPod can underestimate percent fat by two to three percent.) Two, optimal body fat levels depend on genetics and what is optimal for your unique body. Pay more attention to how you feel and perform than to a number on the scale. 2. Protein recommendations for both endurance and strength-trained athletes range from 0.5 to 0.8 grams per pound (1.2-1.7 g/kg) body weight. For a 150-lb. athlete, this comes to about 75 to 120 g protein per day, an amount most athletes easily consume through their standard diet without the use of protein supplements or amino acid supplements. Vegetarian athletes should target ten percent more, because some plant proteins (not soy but legumes) are less well digested than animal proteins. If you are just starting a weight-lifting program, you’ll want to target the higher protein amount. Once you have built-up your muscles, the lower end of the range is fine. 3. Athletes in power sports need to pay attention to carbohydrates, and not just protein. That's because strength training depletes muscle glycogen stores. You can deplete about 25 percent to 35 percent of total muscle glycogen stores during a single 30-second bout of resistance exercise. 4. Athletes who eat enough calories to support their athletic performance are unlikely to need vitamin supplements. But athletes who severely limit their food intake to lose weight (such as wrestlers, lightweight rowers, gymnasts), eliminate a food group (such as dairy, if they are lactose intolerant), or train indoors and get very little sunlight (skaters, gymnasts, swimmers) may require supplements. 5. If you are vegetarian, a blood donor, and or a woman with heavy menstrual periods, you should pay special attention to your iron intake. If you consume too little iron, you can easily become deficient and be unable to exercise energetically due to anemia. Because reversing iron deficiency can take three to six months, your best bet is to prevent anemia by regularly eating iron-rich foods (lean beef, chicken thighs, enriched breakfast cereals such as Wheaties and Total) and including in each meal a source of vitamin C (fruits, vegetables). 6. Eating before hard exercise, as opposed to exercising in a fasted state, has been shown to improve performance. If you choose to not eat before a hard workout, at least consume a sports drink (or some source of energy) during exercise. 7. When you exercise hard for more than one hour, target 30 to 60 grams (120 to 240 calories) of carbohydrate per hour to maintain normal blood glucose levels and enhance your stamina and enjoyment of exercise. Fueling during exercise is especially important if you have not eaten a pre-exercise snack. Popular choices include gummi candy, jelly beans, dried fruits, as well as gels and sports drinks. More research is needed to determine if choosing a sports drink with protein will enhance endurance performance. 8. For optimal recovery, an athlete who weighs about 150 pounds should target 300 to 400 calories of carbs within a half-hour after finishing a hard workout. More precisely, target 0.5-0.7 g carb/lb (1.0-1.5 g carb/kg). You then want to repeat that dose every two hours for the next four to six hours. For example, if you have done a rigorous, exhaustive morning workout and need to do another session that afternoon, you could enjoy a large banana and a vanilla yogurt as soon as tolerable post-exercise; then, two hours later, a pasta-based meal; and then, another two hours later, another snack, such as pretzels and orange juice. 9. Whether or not you urgently need to refuel depends on when you will next be exercising. While a triathlete who runs for 90 minutes in the morning needs to rapidly refuel for a three-hour cycling workout in the afternoon, the fitness exerciser who works out every other day has little need to obsess about refueling. 10. Including a little protein in the recovery meals and snacks enhances muscle repair and growth. Popular carb+protein combinations include chocolate milk, yogurt, cereal+milk, pita+hummus, beans+rice, pasta+meat sauce. 11. Muscle cramps are associated with dehydration, electrolyte deficits and fatigue. Cramps are most common in athletes who sweat profusely and are “salty sweaters.” They need more sodium than the standard recommendation of 2,400 mg/day. Losing about two pounds of sweat during a workout equates to losing about 1,000 mg sodium. (Note: eight ounces of sport drink may offer only 110 mg sodium.) Salty sweaters (as observed by a salty crust on the skin of some athletes) lose even more sodium. If that’s your case, don’t hesitate to consume salt before, during and after extended exercise. For example, enjoy broth, pretzels, cheese & crackers, pickles and other sodium-rich foods. The majority of active people can easily replace sweat losses via a normal intake of food and fluids. Final Words of Advice If you can make time to train, you can also make time to eat well and get the most out of your training. Optimal sports performance starts with good nutrition! Nancy Clark MS, RD counsels casual exercisers and competitive athletes at Healthworks, the premier fitness center in Chestnut Hill, MA (617-383-6100). Her NEW 2008 Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook 4th Edition, and her Food Guide for Marathoners and Cyclist’s Food Guide are available via www.nancyclarkrd.com.

Lance, I want to reiterate my diet diary suggestion is you're interested in shedding a few pounds (one per minute) ...

Engineered Sports Foods: Convenience or Necessity? Comment Share Email Print By Nancy Clark, MS RD CSSD For Active.com To look at all the ads for sports drinks, energy bars, electrolyte replacers and sports candies, you'd think these engineered products are a necessary part of a sports diet, particularly if you are doing endurance exercise such as training for a marathon or a triathlon. When my clients ask for advice about how to use these products, I first assess their daily sports diet to determine if they can get—or are getting—what they want from standard foods (carbs, sodium). In most cases, they can get their needs met with a wisely chosen sports diet. While there is a time and a place for engineered sports foods (particularly among people who train at a high intensity), many athletes needlessly waste a lot of money misusing them. The purpose of this article is to help you become an informed consumer, so you can wisely spend your hard-earned money. Pre-Exercise Energy Bars While fueling with a pre-workout PowerBar and Gatorade ($2-$3) is one way to energize your workout, you could less expensively consume 300 calories of banana+yogurt+water ($1) or pretzels+raisins+water (50¢). Any of these choices are carbohydrate-rich and will offer the fuel your muscles need for a stellar workout. The best pre-exercise snacks digest easily, settle well in your stomach, and do not talk back to you. Standard supermarket foods can do that as well as engineered foods. Experiment to determine what settles best in your body. Energy Drinks There's little doubt that Red Bull and other energy drinks are popular, particularly among folks who use them for alcohol mixers. The 110 calories of sugar “helps the medicine go down” (for those who don't enjoy the taste of certain alcoholic beverages). The resulting problem is wide-awake drunks who think they can drive themselves home—but then get into accidents. For athletes, energy drinks are the source of enough sugar and caffeine to give you a quick energy boost. The problem is, one quick fix will not compensate for missed meals. That is, if you sleep through breakfast and barely eat lunch, having a Red Bull for a pre-workout energizer will unlikely compensate for the previous inadequate food intake. If you can make the time to train, you can also make the time to fuel appropriately, rather than rely on a quick fix. Caffeine A known “ergogenic aid”, caffeine enhances performance by making the effort seem easier. A pre-exercise caffeine-fix—especially if accommodated by carbs—can energize your workout. Here’s how the options compare: Option Caffeine (mg) Cost Coca-Cola, 20 oz 60 $1.59 Red Bull, 8 oz 80 $2.19 No-doz, 1 tablet 200 $0.33 Starbuck's, 16 oz 300 $1.94 Sports Drinks Many athletes believe the sodium in sports drinks is essential to replace the sodium lost in sweat. Wrong. Sports drinks are actually relatively low in sodium compared to what you consume in your meals. Sodium enhances fluid retention and helps keep you hydrated, as opposed to plain water that goes in one end, out the other. If you are sweat heavily, you might lose about 1,000 to 3,000 mg sodium in an hour of hard exercise. Here are options for replacing these sodium losses: Replacements Sodium (mg) Replacements Sodium (mg) Endurolytes, 1 capsule 40 Cheese stick, 1 oz 200 PowerBar Electrolytes, 8 oz. 65 Pizza, 1 slice 500 Gatorade, 8 oz. 110 Salt, 1/4 teaspoon 600 Gatorade Endurance, 8 oz. 200 Soup, 1 can Campbell's 2,200 As you can see, there is no need for anyone to drink a sports drink with their lunch, because the soup or cheese sandwich have far more sodium than the small amount of sodium in the sports drink. By consuming some salty food such as eight ounces of chicken broth before exercising in the heat, you can get a hefty dose of sodium into your body before you even start to exercise. This has been shown to enhance endurance. (1) Electrolytes One triathlete reported using electrolyte replacers throughout the day. He then admitted he didn't even know what electrolytes are. I explained they are electrically charged particles, more commonly known as sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Standard foods abound with electrolytes, more so than engineered sports foods— Sodium Calcium Magnesium Potassium Endurolytes (1 capsule) 40 50 25 25 Nuun, (1 tab) 360 12 25 100 PBJ & milk 600 300 130 750 Pizza, (1 slice) 650 200 30 220 Vitamin Water and Vitamin-Enriched Sports Foods Many engineered foods tout they are enriched with B-vitamins “for energy”. Yes, B-vitamins are needed to convert food into energy, but they are not sources of energy. Few athletes realize the body has a supply of vitamins stored in the liver, so you are unlikely to become deficient during exercise. Athletes, who eat far more food—hence more vitamins—than sedentary folks, have the opportunity to consume abundant vitamins. A big bowl of Wheaties offers 100 percent of the Daily Value (DV) for B-vitamins. (Most cereals, breads, pastas and other grain foods are enriched with B-vitamins unless they are “all natural”.) Eight ounces of orange juice offers 100 percent of the DV for Vitamin C. In contrast, eight ounces of Energy Tropical Citrus Vitamin Water offers only 40 percent of the DV for C. Sports Candy I groaned when one runner told me she ate Sports Beans ($1/100-calorie packet) for her afternoon snack. Like sports drinks, sports beans are designed to be taken during exercise. Regular jellybeans would be a far less expensive snack! She unlikely even needed extra sodium, given she ran for only an hour. Raisins, dried pineapple or grapes would make a healthier snack option Conclusion Not everyone uses sports foods to enhance their performance. Research on a simulated three-day adventure race suggests otherwise (2). When the racers were given a buffet of fueling options during this event, 86 percent of their calories came from supermarket foods (candy, pizza, sandwiches, soft drinks, coffee, bananas, etc.) as opposed to only 14 percent from engineered sports foods (sports drinks, gels, energy bars, protein bars). They reported standard foods tasted better and were more palatable. As an educated consumer, do you want to do the same? Nancy Clark, MS RD CSSD (Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics) counsels casual and competitive athletes in her private practice at Healthworks, the premier fitness center in Chestnut Hill MA (617-383-6100). Her Sports Nutrition Guidebook, new Food Guide for Marathoners, and Cyclist’s Food Guide are available at www.nancyclarkrd.com. Also see www.sportsnutritionworkshop.com for information about her online workshop. References 1. Sims, ST, van Vliet L, Cotter J, Rehrer N. 2007. Sodium loading aids fluid balance and reduces physiological strain of trained men exercising in the heat. Med Sci Sports Exerc 39(1):123-130. 2. Zimberg IZ, Crispim CA, Juzwiak CR at al. 2008. Nutritional intake during a simulated adventure race. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab 18(2):152-68