I studied about nutrition in this period, as I promised I would. While
searchingfor quality reading materials, I found a lot of articles and books that were too basic or too complicated. Finally, I found “Endurance Sports Nutrition” by Suzanne Girard Eberle. As a good nerd-friend, my intention was to share my notes with you, but I decided not to do it because I found this book simple and fast for reading, full of concrete advices, facts and examples and I advise you to read it. You can find it on this link.
It’s written in American Best Seller Style that I don’t like (that’s my
problem), but I assure you it’s worth reading. The writer is a former elite runner, graduated from Georgetown University in Washington. She got her Master degree in Nutrition from Boston University. The book is
written in 2000, while the third edition is published in 2014.
The fact that Suzanne is “one of us” allows her to understand the
athletes, their problems and everyday battle with food. She’s been there (and
she still is) and she knows both how do I feel when I’m eating my ice cream and
how do you feel when go out running on empty stomach. She knows us and our
crazy and stupid ideas and experiments with sport and nutrition. Moreover, she
talked with people, read stories, tested and experienced on her skin what she
talks about. Her degree in the field gives her answers to our numerous
questions. “Endurance Sports Nutrition” is intended for endurance sports
athletes who care about their nutrition, its effect on their performance, athletes
with a problem to resolve or the one who simply want to understand the
importance of well-balanced nutrition. If you are not an athlete, if you do
sports occasionally (or you would like to), if you are a couch potato bored
with your life to the point that you are reading these lines, you can still
read the book and find interesting information.
Suzanne knows not all of us studied Nutrition (ehm, just a few of
you/them), so she tries to explain everything in a simply way. I like her
approach and I admire her because she managed to give us all necessary details
without excluding the basics and using the simple, not technical language all
of us can understand. Although most probably she will never read this post, I
would still like to thank her for helping us understand our bodies and for providing
us with great and useful concrete advices. Since I would really want you to
read this book (at least parts that concern you), I will give you a short
summary of what I found interesting.
Starting with basics
Suzanne wants us to visualize our plate and fill it with: fruits,
vegetables, grains, protein and dairy. So, at the very beginning you can find a
list of healthy choices of groceries you can use when making your shop-list. Fun
food (fast and junk one) isn’t excluded. The illustration in the book leads us
to the page of US Department of Agriculture, ChooseMyPlate.gov. Take a
look! :)
Analysis
Try to find out your calorie needs by analyzing your trainings and
studying your current eating habits. Listen to your body, interpret the signals
it gives you. Find out your weaknesses and where you can improve. Key words are
balance, variety and moderation.
My Garmin advices upload my trainings to Garmin Connect that is linked
to My Fitness Pall.
If you ever thought of writing a food diary and track your calorie intake, you
may find this application useful. I do. Suzanne says “If
you bite it, write it! A food journal serves the same purpose as a training
log. Writing it all down has been shown repeatedly to help people remain
committed to a long-term goal. It’s the writing down or recording, not
precisely what you ate, that matters. Self-monitoring forces us to be
accountable for our daily actions”.
Tips
Include as much as possible “power foods” in your diet:
1. High in vitamin A: apricots, cantaloupe,
carrots, kale, collards, lettuce, spinach, sweet potatoes, pumpkin;
2. High in vitamin C: broccoli, cabbage, bell
peppers, cantaloupe, grapefruit, kiwi, oranges, sinach, strawberries, tomatoes;
3. High in fiber: apples, bananas, berries,
carrots, cherries, dates, figs, pears, spinach, sweet potatoes.
I am anemic. Like a lot anemic. I’ve been struggling with iron for years
now, so I find more than useful the list of groceries high in iron: 1.Animal
sources: beef, pork, lamb, liver, and other organ meats; poultry (especially
dark meat); fish and shellfish; 2.Plant sources: dark leafy greens (spinach,
beet, collard and turnip greens, chard), tomato and prune juice, dried fruit
(apricots, raisins), legumes (chickpeas, black, kidney, lima, navy and pinto
beans), lentils, soy foods, whole-grain and enriched breads and cereals, wheat
germ.
Further on, Suzanne talks about anemia and other frequent problems that
athletes suffer from, giving concrete advice on how to solve them! She talks
about muscle cramps, runner’s colitis, iron-deficiency anemia, food allergies,
intolerances and sensitivities, female athlete triad, eating disorders. Moreover,
she explains what are hypo- and hyperthermia, hyponatremia, hypoglycemia etc. and
how to avoid them.
Endurance sports athletes live mostly on carbohydrates. Suzanne gives
some tips on how to go lean with protein: choose lean cuts of meat, use low-fat
cooking methods (baking, broiling, grilling), eat more fish, eat more beans,
don’t shy away from eggs, toss tofu into soups, stews and lasagna, mash it with
cottage cheese, smear your bread with peanut butter.
Weight matters
Surprisingly, Suzanne doesn’t even mention a magic pill that makes you
slim and happy in no time. She states (and I hope we all agree about it) that “losing
weight is about expending calories that you consume. The total amount of
calories burned during the day is what counts-not whether you burn fat or
carbohydrate”. The logic is simple, if you want to maintain your weight you
have to consume the same amount of calories you expend; in order to gain
weight, you need to consume more, while in order to lose weight, you must
expend more calories than you take in.
Simple tips: skip the sports food (use energy drinks, bars and gels only
on prolonged exercise at a moderate-to-vigorous pace), keep moving (at least
10000 steps a day-8km), weight yourself weekly (on the same scale, at the same time
of day and under the same conditions), wat a fruit or vegetable at every meal
and snack, eat your calories (don’t drink them!).
Focus on real
food and instead of just counting calories, make your calories count!
These are frequent questions to which you have the answer in the book.
These and a whole lot more. Read it and let me know what you think about it! If
you have some reading to recommend, I would like to have a look!
