Latest / Find Your Edge: Training, Nutrition + Longevity for Endurance Athletes / Fueling with Real Food for Training and Race Day [Rerun] Ep 140
Transcript
- 0:40Coach Carlie: Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast.
- 0:42Coach Carlie: I am your host and sports nutritionist, Chris Newport.
- 0:46Coach Carlie: And today we are talking all about one of my favorite topics: portable real foods for exercise.
- 0:52Coach Carlie: So a lot of you may not even think that this is an option.
- 0:56Coach Carlie: You've only considered maybe sports drinks and gels and energy bars and energy chews, but there are other options than things that you can purchase in the store.
- 1:06Coach Carlie: Now, that being said, there's nothing necessarily wrong with those engineered foods.
- 1:10Coach Carlie: Just sometimes people are looking for maybe a cheaper option or more real food options, or sometimes their gut just doesn't do well with some of those particular products.
- 1:21Coach Carlie: So that's what we're going to be talking about today.
- 1:23Coach Carlie: So engineered foods versus real foods and getting some real foods for exercise, whether you're running, whether you're biking, doing a triathlon, getting ready to go for a swim meet, or heading out with the kids to a soccer game or whatever.
- 1:37Coach Carlie: These are options that you can try.
- 1:38Coach Carlie: So let's start with some of the basics of pre-during and post-workout nutrition.
- 1:44Coach Carlie: So we've got a great fueling and hydration sheet on our website for runners.
- 1:48Coach Carlie: It's free.
- 1:49Coach Carlie: You can head over to a website, theenduranceedge.com, to download it.
- 1:53Coach Carlie: And that is such an awesome tool to remind you the purpose of pre-during and post-workout fueling, what types of things you want to consider.
- 2:05Coach Carlie: So let's start with pre-workout.
- 2:07Coach Carlie: Before you are exercising, and this could be immediately before or it could be several hours beforehand, the purpose of that is really topping off your glycogen stores.
- 2:17Coach Carlie: So glycogen is your body's stored energy to deliver to working muscles.
- 2:24Coach Carlie: So it's stored in your liver and in your muscles, and it's in limited supply.
- 2:29Coach Carlie: So it's kind of like gold, if you will.
- 2:32Coach Carlie: We want to reserve that as much as possible and try to dip into either our fat reserves or use the energy that we take in from food to use that as fuel.
- 2:43Coach Carlie: But there's a little bit of a tipping point.
- 2:45Coach Carlie: So we can't exactly eat everything under the sun while we're exercising because then our body is going to be more concerned about digesting and you're not really going to want to exercise.
- 2:58Coach Carlie: So the slower you go, the more you can consume from real foods.
- 3:01Coach Carlie: The faster you go, the more you're going to want to think more towards liquid types items.
- 3:06Coach Carlie: But for pre-workout, think about things that are easy to digest, that taste good to you and are quickly delivering energy.
- 3:14Coach Carlie: Things like oatmeals.
- 3:17Coach Carlie: And we have a brand new recipe book out that is not only bars, bites, and energy balls, those types of things are great, but also some portable foods that can work.
- 3:29Coach Carlie: And in there, we have some recipes for overnight oats or just general oatmeals that you can take with you if you're traveling.
- 3:37Coach Carlie: You can put in little containers.
- 3:39Coach Carlie: These are easy things that you can also get at the grocery store.
- 3:42Coach Carlie: Rice cereal is another great one.
- 3:44Coach Carlie: I think a lot of people just think about that for like infants, and it works great for delivering a lot of energy before you exercise that generally sits pretty well on the stomach.
- 3:54Coach Carlie: We have a recipe on our blog that's a superfood cereal.
- 3:58Coach Carlie: That's a really fun one, and it can be um shaped into all different ways and forms as to what your preferences are.
- 4:07Coach Carlie: I'll give you an example.
- 4:08Coach Carlie: My favorite is that base of the superfood cereal that we have on our blog, which is a base of um buckwheat groats as well as um some hemp seeds and some chia seeds.
- 4:18Coach Carlie: And I like to put um chocolate chips and salted pumpkin seeds and some sort of a dried fruit.
- 4:27Coach Carlie: Um, dried cherries are kind of my jam right now.
- 4:30Coach Carlie: But maybe if you ask me tomorrow, maybe it'll be dried blueberries.
- 4:33Coach Carlie: So things like that that are tasty and delicious and that sit well on your stomach.
- 4:39Coach Carlie: Sometimes easy portable foods are things like yogurts.
- 4:42Coach Carlie: Um, I've had people do sleeves of crackers beforehand of a lot of athletes who really love to have their bagel and peanut butter or their bagel and cream cheese.
- 4:51Coach Carlie: So making sure that you get those quick delivering carbohydrates, whether it come from yogurt, whether it comes from wheat, rice, um, buckwheat, or other potatoes or oatmeal, things like that that are going to sit well and that you've tried out before.
- 5:07Coach Carlie: So make sure this is something that's easily accessible wherever you might be traveling to, uh, whether it be um you have some sort of an energy bar that you make yourself or something that's easy to grab at the local grocery store or even at the local convenience store.
- 5:21Coach Carlie: So you don't want to get there the night before your race and be planning on purchasing breakfast and everything's closed.
- 5:28Coach Carlie: I've heard of that happening to people.
- 5:29Coach Carlie: So those are our real foods for pre-workout.
- 5:32Coach Carlie: Now, once you get going during your workout, oh boy, the possibilities are endless.
- 5:39Coach Carlie: So everything from waffles, cookies, uh, sweet potato purees, um, baked pastas, you can do crackers, you can do um baby food.
- 5:49Coach Carlie: In our house, we like to call them squeezy pouches.
- 5:52Coach Carlie: I definitely encourage you to try to find the higher caloric content ones, the ones that have um some sort of rice in them or sweet potatoes, sometimes the fruit-only ones are not quite enough energy, uh, but they can still certainly work and they're super easy to track around in the back of your jersey or in a um hydration pack or something along those lines.
- 6:17Coach Carlie: Uh, crackers are another fun one you can get in the kitchen.
- 6:21Coach Carlie: And again, check out our portable foods recipe book on our website that's got some options for um some rice balls or even some energy balls um or little um energy bites too.
- 6:34Coach Carlie: Those are really fun.
- 6:35Coach Carlie: But really, I mean, you've got a lot of different options there.
- 6:39Coach Carlie: It's just a matter of thinking through some of your logistics, like how are you gonna carry it?
- 6:43Coach Carlie: Is it gonna go in your um feed zone pack if you're a cyclist?
- 6:50Coach Carlie: Is it gonna go in your transition area if you're a triathlete?
- 6:55Coach Carlie: Is it gonna go in your hydration pack if you're a runner?
- 6:58Coach Carlie: Is it gonna go in your little portable cooler if you're a soccer player or you're at a swim meet?
- 7:03Coach Carlie: So consider the type of conditions.
- 7:05Coach Carlie: Also consider whether something is gonna melt or not.
- 7:08Coach Carlie: Um, while it's debatable whether it's a real food, there are some uh sometimes some candies can work really well.
- 7:15Coach Carlie: Those sit better than things like engineered foods.
- 7:18Coach Carlie: But you know, if you're gonna be out in a 95 degree day, you're probably gonna be really sad when you open a Snickers bar and it's melted all over the place.
- 7:25Coach Carlie: So my personal favorite is um gummy bears.
- 7:30Coach Carlie: So that's uh again arguable whether it's a real food, but it's not um, they're not expensive and they're tasty.
- 7:37Coach Carlie: I get excited about it.
- 7:38Coach Carlie: And that's really the whole point of fueling during your workout is can you be consistent with delivering those carbohydrates to the body in order and in turn to the muscles to be able to do the work without getting overly full?
- 7:53Coach Carlie: Uh, point of caution here be careful with too much fat, uh, unless you're doing something like hiking or maybe even ultralunning, uh, because that will slow or delay what's called gastric emptying or how quickly your stomach um empties into your small intestines and thereby delivering some of the that energy to working muscles.
- 8:15Coach Carlie: So all of these things, I will uh repeat this again at the end, but all of these things need to be tested out before you actually use them, say on race day or on some sort of big event.
- 8:28Coach Carlie: So make sure that this is not a game day decision necessarily, although some people have more sensitive stomachs than others.
- 8:34Coach Carlie: Um, just make sure that you're used to these different options and you're playing around with it.
- 8:39Coach Carlie: All right, so those are during workout options.
- 8:43Coach Carlie: Now let's talk about recovery.
- 8:45Coach Carlie: So we don't always have to do a specific um engineered recovery product, whether it be a powder that you mix or whether it be something that um you're purchasing otherwise or some sort of a supplement.
- 8:58Coach Carlie: You could absolutely do real food.
- 9:00Coach Carlie: One of the original uh real food options, there was a big campaign uh several years back for chocolate milk.
- 9:08Coach Carlie: And honestly, it's a really great option.
- 9:11Coach Carlie: Not for everybody, but the reason why it's a great option is because um there are four, what we like to call our four, four rules of recovery.
- 9:19Coach Carlie: We want to make sure that you're getting something hydrating, you're replacing less lost glycogen with those carbohydrates, and then you're also getting some electrolytes.
- 9:29Coach Carlie: And then our fourth one that we like to kind of plug in there is are we supporting our health?
- 9:33Coach Carlie: Are we getting some sort of good quality nutrition that's gonna um further support the inflammatory process of exercise and sort of reducing that and just generally being healthy?
- 9:44Coach Carlie: So, chocolate milk is one of those that has sodium, it's got potassium, so it has those electrolytes.
- 9:50Coach Carlie: It is already a fluid, it contains some carbohydrates, it does contain a little bit of protein too.
- 9:56Coach Carlie: But then, of course, there's the people who are either sensitive to dairy or lactase intolerant.
- 10:00Coach Carlie: So clearly, that is not the greatest choice for those people, but there's tons of other options.
- 10:05Coach Carlie: One of my favorite things to do after an event, especially if it's colder, I'm heading to my local coffee shop and probably getting some sort of a um a mocha, whether it be iced or sort of frappe style, especially if it's hot, um, or some sort of a hot chocolate or latte.
- 10:25Coach Carlie: So those are things that you can grab on the go.
- 10:27Coach Carlie: You can make smoothies, and they sell some of these sort of pre-made in the store, or you can make your own and bring it with you.
- 10:35Coach Carlie: Smoothies are endless in terms of the different options.
- 10:39Coach Carlie: So, again, can you add in those carbohydrates?
- 10:41Coach Carlie: Maybe it comes from bananas, and maybe it comes from strawberries, maybe it comes from milk or a vanilla almond milk, or it comes from um adding in some chickpeas to your smoothie, for example.
- 10:53Coach Carlie: Might sound a little bizarre, but it's an easy way to get additional carbohydrates that way.
- 10:59Coach Carlie: So it's a blank canvas, really.
- 11:01Coach Carlie: Have fun with it.
- 11:02Coach Carlie: And then making sure we add a little bit of protein in there, which assists in muscle protein synthesis and just generally helps the recovery process more so than just pure carbohydrates.
- 11:13Coach Carlie: So this could be could be coming from something like a protein powder, but you can easily add tofu.
- 11:19Coach Carlie: So silken tofu is the best way to go with that.
- 11:21Coach Carlie: Maybe you do a soy milk or a regular milk, which are both going to have additional protein.
- 11:27Coach Carlie: Typically, your your plant-based milks are not going to have additional protein added to them unless it says it on the label, which is typically going to come from some sort of a protein powder.
- 11:36Coach Carlie: Um, and then you can also add, like I had mentioned, chickpeas or um some other type of bean, like a white bean is a very neutral flavored um tasting bean.
- 11:48Coach Carlie: And we do actually have a blog post all on adding different protein foods to your smoothies that aren't protein powders, so definitors.
- 11:57Coach Carlie: So definitely, definitely check that one out.
- 11:59Coach Carlie: Another fun one, and we have a ton of recipes in our portable foods cookbook, but a good old-fashioned sandwich is great.
- 12:08Coach Carlie: You'll just have to add in whatever type of fluid, maybe it's um some water, or maybe you bring along some juice.
- 12:17Coach Carlie: But the great thing about a sandwich, you can easily get some protein added in there with, say, it's um chicken or turkey, something along those lines, and then some additional carbohydrates from things like your bread.
- 12:33Coach Carlie: You can flavor it up, make it really fun.
- 12:35Coach Carlie: It tastes good, it sits well on your stomach, and then you can add things like tomato slices or lettuce or whatever um additional healthy options you have.
- 12:44Coach Carlie: So lots of things to play with.
- 12:46Coach Carlie: So we covered our pre-workout, our during workout, and our recovery nutrition things for real food options for exercise.
- 12:53Coach Carlie: But again, I really want to hammer home you gotta try all these things out.
- 12:58Coach Carlie: So, and especially in the different conditions that you might be in, whether it's really cold, whether it's really hot, um, whether it might start off cold and then get hot, or vice versa.
- 13:09Coach Carlie: So thinking through some of those details, and these are things that we love to do in our practice with people, is strategizing, thinking through details, and even um figuring out what types of carrying devices you might have for carrying your fluids, carrying your um your various foods, again, hydration packs or um bike packs or all kinds of different stuff.
- 13:35Coach Carlie: So, again, head on over to our website, theenduranceedge.com, check out our free fueling and hydration cheat sheet for runners that has some great tips.
- 13:43Coach Carlie: Again, just supporting what do you need beforehand, what do you need during exercise, what do you need afterwards, and then some of our recipe books.
- 13:51Coach Carlie: We've got a smoothie recipe book that's got, I think, over 30 recipes in it.
- 13:55Coach Carlie: Gives you lots of options there.
- 13:57Coach Carlie: We've got a bars, bites, and energy balls cookbook.
- 14:00Coach Carlie: We've got some runners recipes, what to eat before, during, and afterwards.
- 14:04Coach Carlie: So it gives you um at least two days' worth of an example of what to eat beforehand, what to eat during your workout, what to eat afterwards, and then what to eat for the rest of the day.
- 14:13Coach Carlie: There are healthy options to give you enough protein, give you enough good quality carbohydrates, fiber, different micronutrients, et cetera.
- 14:21Coach Carlie: Um, we also have a portable foods recipe book, which is what really inspired this podcast.
- 14:25Coach Carlie: So if you head to our website and purchase any cookbook or meal plan that's on there, use the code podcast and you get 10% off.
- 14:35Coach Carlie: And it is limited to one use per customer.
- 14:38Coach Carlie: So head on over, grab those.
- 14:41Coach Carlie: And we hope you enjoy your adventures in fueling yourself with real food.
- 14:46Coach Carlie: Again, this is Chris Newport, and I will catch you on the next episode.