Answer: I hear you. Until I discovered this little tip I’m about to share, I was right there with you, scrambling to find the toilet with the shortest line.

Here’s what you should try: decrease your fiber intake fairly dramatically for about 2 days prior to the race. But rather than counting calories and worrying excessively at every meal, just incorporate a few of these simple steps (which, incidentally, will also help you carbohydrate load):

-Take any major fruit sources in your diet and substitute a half or a baked potato or serving of brown rice. Try to eat no more than 2 pieces of fresh raw fruit per day for the last 48 hours before the big day.

-Decrease the size of any salads by about 1/2 and substitute a healthy whole grain source like quinoa, amaranth or millet instead – or switch from salads to lettuce wraps, in which you can wrap brown rice, chicken, and salad dressing.

-The night before the race, have a serving of carbohydrate, like one sweet potato or yam (remove  the skin if you really want to decrease fiber even more), with an easily digested meat like salmon. A small serving of veggies or side salad is OK, but avoid a huge Caesar salad or a bunch of steamed cauliflower and broccoli.

When you get up in the morning, before you leave your hotel or home, have a cup of coffee if possible and do some light calisthenics, both of which will help you have a bowel movement before you actually arrive at the race site.

Finally, remember – it’s not about killing all the butterflies in your stomach, it’s just about getting them to fly in order!

Best of luck,

Ben Greenfield
MS, CPT, CSCS, CISSN
President, Pacific Elite Fitness
Director of Sports Performance, Rock Star Triathlete Academy
http://www.pacificfit.net/bengreenfield.html
http://www.rockstartriathleteacademy.com

Many qualified experts on training and nutrition use TrainingPeaks to help manage their business. Now, a select few are offering professional training and nutrition advice on our blog. The views expressed here are the opinions of the experts and as such do not represent the official position of TrainingPeaks. Read on to learn more about the expert, and submit a question of your own below!

About the expert:

Ben Greenfield is recognized as one of the top fitness, triathlon, nutrition and metabolism experts in the nation. In 2008, he was voted as the Personal Trainer of the Year by the National Strength and Conditioning Association, an internationally recognized and respected certifying agency. Ben is Director of Sports Performance and oversees the physiology and biomechanics laboratory at Champions Sports Medicine in Spokane, WA, which offers metabolic-based weight loss, bicycle fitting, running gait analysis, swim stroke analysis, VO2 max testing, blood lactate testing, resting metabolic rate analysis, and other cutting-edge procedures for weight loss and performance.

Ben hosts the highly popular fitness, nutrition and wellness website at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, which features blogs, podcasts, and product reviews from Ben. In addition to coaching and training for weight loss and sports performance at http://www.pacificfit.net, Ben serves as a business and marketing consultant to fitness professionals, and is the host of a weekly syndicated fitness business blog and podcast at http://www.trainfortopdollar.com. Ben also directs the Rock Star Triathlete Academy, the internet’s top school for learning the sport of triathlon and getting faster! E-mail: ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com

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Conventional thinking says that if one burns more calories than they consume, weight loss should occur. Well, as I discuss in my 3DVD series, Rx Nutrition, ‘If it was that easy…it would be that easy.’ For an individual to get lean, he/she must align the ‘Big 4’: nutrition, weight training, heart rate training, and the mind-body connection. Let’s examine each one:

Nutrition:

Bump in the Road: The most common ‘hole’ in one’s nutrition that I see with such endurance athletes is that they eat too few calories. Too few calories, over time, can actually begin to slow one’s metabolism due to muscle wasting. This can put the body into too large a calorie deficit and this stresses the body. In response to this stress, the body is signaled to hold on to body fat and body weight.

Solution: As you progress from shorter to longer distance, be sure that your everyday nutrition and your in-training nutrition match your output. An athlete cannot consume the same calories during Olympic distance training as compared to Ironman distance.

Weight/Resistance Training:

Bump in the Road: The most common things that I hear are, “Rick, I do not want to get big” or “I just do not have the time.” Omitting weight training, with high volume cardiovascular training, is one of the easiest ways for an athlete to begin to waste muscle. Wasting muscle will leave us tired, fatigued, weak, and dehydrated.

Solution: Weight train at least 2 times per week; you will find that you are leaner, lighter, and your performance is improved. You will build good quality lean muscle.

Heart Rate Training:

Bump in the Road: Sure, as an endurance athlete, you must train sport specific (swim, bike, run); but, high volumes of cardiovascular training, combined with too large a calorie deficit, combined with the omission of weight training, combined with training at too high a heart rate too often, is a perfect recipe for wasting muscle. When an athlete trains too high (heart rate), too often, he/she may bypass their ability to burn body fat and go right to carbohydrate (glycogen) burning.

Solution: Outside of any specific anaerobic/high heart rate/speed workouts you are doing, be sure to keep your heart rate in an aerobic zone in order to maximize fat burning. (Refer to chapter 12, pg. 105 of Forever Fit)

Mind-Body Connection:

Bump in the Road: Many athletes beat themselves up for not being able to get lean despite all of the cardiovascular training. Their thoughts and beliefs are that they just cannot lose the weight no matter what.

Solution: Just as I mention in Rx Nutrition: Eating for Improved Performance in Life, Fitness, and Sport…whether you think you can, or whether you think you cannot, you are right. As I talk about in my book Forever Fit, ‘If you believe it, you can achieve it.’ Our mind can be our biggest asset or our biggest limiter. When an athlete starts to get his/her mind right, the body will follow.

If you happen to be an athlete that has fallen prey to this scenario, not to worry; take a look at your ‘Big 4’ and see if there are any holes that can be plugged. As you start to analyze these aspects, and make the necessary corrections, you will begin to see much bigger returns on your investment. Make it a great 2010!

Many qualified experts on training and nutrition use TrainingPeaks to help manage their business. Now, a select few are offering professional training and nutrition advice on our blog. The views expressed here are the opinions of the experts and as such do not represent the official position of TrainingPeaks. Read on to learn more about the expert, and submit a question of your own at info@trainingpeaks.com

About the author:

Dr. Rick Kattouf II is the Host of Rx Nutrition, author of Forever Fit, ITCA Triathlon Coach, Food Psychology Coach, MMA Conditioning Coach, Wellness and Nutrition Consultant, Sports Nutrition Consultant, author for Livestrong.com, and Inspirational Speaker. Rick can be contacted at www.teamkattouf.com.

Visit TrainingPeaks for TeamKattouf meal and training plans

The importance of good nutrition is more well-recognized than ever before for the endurance athlete, but often, athletes find themselves at a loss when asked to describe their “nutrition plan.”  Complicating the nutrition universe is an intertwined cacophony of messages coming from scientists, nutrition companies, experts, “so-called” experts, government agencies, the Internet, and others —and all this great intended nutrition information is often conflicting, confusing, and sometimes, completely wrong.

When discussing endurance nutrition with an athlete or coach, I often like to begin with the basic nutrition plan as a foundation for understanding what you are eating, what it is doing in your body, and why you might want more or less of some specific nutrient.  Building on the basic science and challenging the commonly understood principles is important, but that comes after you as an athlete understand the basics of nutrition and the food you eat.

There are three key steps to evaluating your diet: 1) Keep accurate records; 2) Determine your requirements; 3) compare your evaluated intake to requirement and make some decisions. The process is relatively straightforward but as you will come to see, there is a lot of uncertainty, and the more exact you can be, the better the results. It is very important to ensure you are performing each of the three steps with an understanding of the importance of being accurate and disciplined with your data—the old axiom “garbage in = garbage out” applies. If you do not keep accurate dietary records, use accurate data to evaluate those records, or exacting, scientifically sound decisions to change behaviors, you are wasting your time.

TrainingPeaks offers a fantastic way for you to manage a food diary. By simply dragging food items onto your calendar day, you can create a food diary of food eaten or even schedule a meal plan of foods you will eat. Although the process of finding the food items is straightforward, you should take a few days of “practice” to make sure you are correctly and efficiently keeping your food diary. In addition, as you add foods to your calendar you should consider also adding the foods to “favorites.” We are creatures of habit and you are likely to consume that food again.

It is certain that Endurance athletes require higher levels of certain nutrients, vitamins, and minerals compared to non-athletes, but how much more is a very difficult questions to answer. Some specific vitamins and minerals to be concerned about include: B vitamins (thiamine[b1], riboflavin[b2], niacin[b3], pantothenic acid[b5], pyridoxine[b6], biotin[b7], folic acid[b9], and cyanocobalamin[b12]), Vitamin’s C, D, E, and minerals: Iron, Calcium, Sodium, and Potassium. I could probably make an argument that every vitamin and mineral is important for the endurance athlete and I would encourage you to speak with a dietitian about the importance of any specific vitamin or mineral in question—the purpose of this article is to simply be a primer for you to use in evaluating your dietary intake. What we DO know for sure is that there are some Upper Limits of safety for vitamins and minerals and you need to know and follow these.

A good place to start when looking to see how much of a specific vitamin or mineral you need is the Recommended Daily Allowance tables and the Safe Upper Limit (UL) Tables.  The RDA and the ULs are part of the Daily Reference Intakes (DRIs). Not to cause you any unnecessary confusion, but these are not the same values as the Recommended Daily Intakes, also knows as the Daily Value and used as a reference on food labels as the % DV.  The Daily Value presented on a food label and also conveniently shown in TrainingPeaks is a good reference value for ensuring adequate intake of macro and micro nutrients for someone consuming 2000 Calories, but it’s important to realize that if you eat 4000 calories you don’t just double your Daily Value requirements.

As a dietitian I care about ALL the micro and macro nutrients—but I do educate athletes to at least be aware of the “key” vitamins and minerals.  With the recently added feature of Micronutrient tracking in TrainingPeaks now is a great time to become a little more knowledgeable in your intake of your B, C, D, and E Vitamin’s as well as your mineral intake of Iron, Calcium, Sodium, and Potassium. You can add the Micronutrient pod to your Dashboard in TrainingPeaks just like any other premium subscription pod.

Read more in the full article about micronutrients for the endurance athlete and evaluating your diet.

Many qualified experts on training and nutrition use TrainingPeaks to help manage their business. Now, a select few are offering professional training and nutrition advice on our blog. The views expressed here are the opinions of the experts and as such do not represent the official position of TrainingPeaks. Read on to learn more about the expert, and submit a question of your own below!

About the author:

Jim is one of the leading sports nutrition experts in the US.  He is finishing is doctoral work in Iron Deficiency Anemia at the University of Connecticut and has practiced clinical nutrition for over 10 years.  He is currently a dietitian in the US Air Force and has counseled hundreds of athletes (amateur and elite) including military Special Forces, cyclists, triathletes, runners, and many more.  Jim is serving as the dietitian for the Armed Forces Cycling Team and works with scores of elite endurance athletes on a wide range of nutrition topics.  He has guest lectured extensively on topics including endurance nutrition, supplementation, diabetes, celiac and low gluten diets, anemia, cycling specific nutrition, nutrition periodizaiton, and is most well known for is enthusiastic and exciting lecturing style.  Jim has published more than a dozen abstracts and papers in peer reviewed journals, authored book chapters, and served as an abstract reviewer for the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.  He is continuing his research on iron deficiency and altitude acclimatization.

Currently, Jim lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Kristen, son Gavin and daughter Nina. To reach Jim for consultation services, he can be contacted at Forza Coaching at 925-586-5282 or at weinsteinjames@yahoo.com

Eating protein – how much, what kind, when, etc. – is not my conversation. Protecting proteins (i.e. tissues) is my contribution for you. Ironically, the protein sources we eat have dramatic and differing impacts on how our tissues (proteins) are protected during hard core exercise. Hard exercise, in this case, is defined as 80%+ max V02 threshold. At a human performance symposium this Fall at the U.S.O.C. the two areas where people faulter are “rest/recovery” and “nutrition”.

Below is a ground breaking clinical study, in 2009, published in “Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise” (i.e. the scientific journal of the American College of Sports Medicine). This is tip of the iceberg on research surrounding advances in human performance. This study shows, quite dramatically, the importance of particular “foods” (in this case “food concentrates”) in the attenuation (blunting) of oxidized proteins (protein carbonyls). This represents a clear and apparent performance advantage. Read more in the study here.

What looks like a conversation for hard core athletes, interestingly, becomes a translational insight for all of us.  Thus, these results above identify both a competitive physiological advantage for athletes and the rest of us too.

How so?  When we oxidize fats, lipid peroxides are created.  When we oxidize proteins, protein oxides (i.e. protein carbonyls) are created.  Protein oxidation is measured by the level of “protein carbonyls” in the blood plasma.  Oxidative stress comes from many sources: inflammation, stress, hard-exercise, sun, pollution, medications, poor diet, lack of sleep, toxins, etc.  Thus, when oxidative stress is increases, regardless of its source, protein carbonyls increase.  This means damage to your protein cells and tissues which equals compromised physiology.

The benefits and competitive advantages from food, diet and nutrition are only as good as one’s execution.  Do you, yourself need help executing (i.e. food concentrates)? Learn more about how to improve your execution.

Many qualified experts on training and nutrition use TrainingPeaks to help manage their business. Now, a select few are offering professional training and nutrition advice on our blog. The views expressed here are the opinions of the experts and as such do not represent the official position of TrainingPeaks.

By Jim Fiore

As a Sports Performance Nutritionist, understanding macronutrient bio-energy utilization is critical to an individual’s daily maintenance, training performance, and post activity recovery. A majority of times individuals do not have a fortified diet, lacking appropriate levels of carbohydrates, protein, fiber and tending to be saturated in unhealthy fat, sugar, and sodium. As a result of this struggle within America’s dietary habits, we still struggle with diets low in fiber and high in saturated fats, as well as a lack of appropriate carbohydrates, over consumption of protein and an over utilization of supplements. With the lack of knowledge and constant bombardment of gimmick dietary fad diets, individuals are finding it hard to recover, perform and either maintain or lose weight because their nutritional habits are affecting their potential outcomes and results.

TrainingPeaks offers the ability to ensure client adherence and accountability to their dietary lifestyle while incorporating appropriate nutritional changes as their cardiovascular & strength abilities change over time. As a Nutritionist it is imperative to my clients that they can quickly and accurately maintain a nutritional food log which represents a true indication of intake. An added benefit to my clients by using TrainingPeaks is they can upload new foods that they typically consume and purchase which makes nutritional analysis, design, and implantation feedback better and quicker. By utilizing TrainingPeaks nutritional dashboard pods, I can give clients specific and accurate nutritional feedback from my office or on travel so that I can tailor both their nutritional needs and performance needs in one program.

“Now that Jim has  incorporated TrainingPeaks into his training programs it makes communicating with him even easier than before. With one easy upload of my data into TrainingPeaks, Jim is able to see exactly what is going on during my training and is able to adjust my workouts accordingly.” – Mike Miller, Competitive Cyclist

This technology has positively affected my abilities as a Nutritionist to serve my clients. I can quickly modify and guide individuals through appropriate dietary consumption habits which have played a positive role in recovery, performance, mood, alertness, proportion control, hydration levels, and meal scheduling. As you can image the list does not stop here and has increased my communication to my clients immensely, as well as my ability to see their habits in the beginning and how TrainingPeaks and working with a Nutritionist has showed, surprised, and educated my clients on how simple modifications and nutritional choices can bring about a faster and stronger individual quickly and safety.

Both FIT Conditioning and Metabolic Nutrition San Antonio work with clients all across the USA. We have found that the only diet that works for you is the one that you readily buy and consume at the grocery stores. In the USA, we have an abundant food supply with all the needed macronutrients and micronutrients at your local grocery store. However, the trick is to understand how our food choices and strategies affect your outcomes, goals, and results. TrainingPeaks is the tool that you need to do that. Get started tracking your nutrition with TrainingPeaks today.

Many qualified experts on training and nutrition use TrainingPeaks to help manage their business. Now, a select few are offering professional training and nutrition advice on our blog. The views expressed here are the opinions of the experts and as such do not represent the official position of TrainingPeaks. Read on to learn more about the expert, and submit a question of your own below!

About the expert:

Jim Fiore holds a Master’s of Science as well as being a Certified Sports Performance Nutritionist.  Jim is the owner of both FIT Conditioning and Metabolic Nutrition San Antonio. Both companies work with individuals looking to pursue healthier and more active lifestyles. Jim has had over 10 years experience as an academic researcher including positions at Thomas Jefferson University and University of Pennsylvania.  Since then he has transitioned into physiologic testing, nutrition, and coaching for the past 3 years. Both companies work with individuals across the U.S., please visit websites for insights into both companies as well as client testimonials.
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