PROBLEM SOLVED Doh! The answer is simple, my weekly hours exercise is 3.5 not 7. Adjusted for that, my approximation is much more inline with Matts numbers
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Hi, I hope someone can help me untangle this nutrition conundrum!
I am three weeks into a triathlon training phase for the first time and I’ve been reading Matt Fitzgerald’s food book “Racing Weight” because I felt I’d been getting too tired relative to my workouts. First off Matt said scrap any ideas of losing weight once in a training phase. I’m carrying an extra 10 lbs but okay, I can happily stop the 300 cal daily deficit I’ve been using for the last 3 weeks.
But then he goes on to talk about grams of carbs and protein to eat. He has a chart which says for 7 hours exercise a week, which is what I’m doing, I should eat 3 g carb / lb of racing weight, and 1.2 g of protein / lb of racing weight. He says grams, not percentages are king for carbs and protein. He doesn’t give grams for fat but mentions 13% or total calories.
So for me at a racing weight of 157 lbs, that calculates to 472g / 1900 cals carbs (65% of total cals); 189g / 697 cals protein (23% of total cals) ; 36g / 338 cals fat (13% of total cals).
This gives a total of 2934 cals, which seems a lot doesn’t it?
I say that’s a lot because when I look at my calorie burn over the last three weeks of training, it averages 300 calories per day. Apart from workouts I’m fairly sedentary. So say I take 2000 cals as my base, that gives me a total daily of 2300 cals. If I assume that 100% of the 300 exercise cals should be carbs, and 50% of the 2000 base should come from carbs then that results in carbs of 323 g / 1300 cals (57% of total cals). This is 140g (30%) less than Matt recommends!!!
If I then take his 1.2g protein, I get the same 189g of protein giving 697 cals, but that’s now 30% of the total cals, which he definitely says is too high a percentage for protein, but it’s the grams which are supposed to matter.
I then do 13% fat of total cals to get 32g / 303 cals from fat. I find these fat levels hard to stick to because I eat oily fish and avocadoes. (I don’t eat refined sugar or alcohol or fizzy drinks, nothing like that)
Can anyone tell me what I am missing regarding the mismatch between Matts recommendation and my sanity check?
(FYI over the past 3 weeks, I've been averaging 2040 cals a day, 171 g carbs, 118 g protein, 95 g fat)
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Hi, I hope someone can help me untangle this nutrition conundrum!
I am three weeks into a triathlon training phase for the first time and I’ve been reading Matt Fitzgerald’s food book “Racing Weight” because I felt I’d been getting too tired relative to my workouts. First off Matt said scrap any ideas of losing weight once in a training phase. I’m carrying an extra 10 lbs but okay, I can happily stop the 300 cal daily deficit I’ve been using for the last 3 weeks.
But then he goes on to talk about grams of carbs and protein to eat. He has a chart which says for 7 hours exercise a week, which is what I’m doing, I should eat 3 g carb / lb of racing weight, and 1.2 g of protein / lb of racing weight. He says grams, not percentages are king for carbs and protein. He doesn’t give grams for fat but mentions 13% or total calories.
So for me at a racing weight of 157 lbs, that calculates to 472g / 1900 cals carbs (65% of total cals); 189g / 697 cals protein (23% of total cals) ; 36g / 338 cals fat (13% of total cals).
This gives a total of 2934 cals, which seems a lot doesn’t it?
I say that’s a lot because when I look at my calorie burn over the last three weeks of training, it averages 300 calories per day. Apart from workouts I’m fairly sedentary. So say I take 2000 cals as my base, that gives me a total daily of 2300 cals. If I assume that 100% of the 300 exercise cals should be carbs, and 50% of the 2000 base should come from carbs then that results in carbs of 323 g / 1300 cals (57% of total cals). This is 140g (30%) less than Matt recommends!!!
If I then take his 1.2g protein, I get the same 189g of protein giving 697 cals, but that’s now 30% of the total cals, which he definitely says is too high a percentage for protein, but it’s the grams which are supposed to matter.
I then do 13% fat of total cals to get 32g / 303 cals from fat. I find these fat levels hard to stick to because I eat oily fish and avocadoes. (I don’t eat refined sugar or alcohol or fizzy drinks, nothing like that)
Can anyone tell me what I am missing regarding the mismatch between Matts recommendation and my sanity check?
(FYI over the past 3 weeks, I've been averaging 2040 cals a day, 171 g carbs, 118 g protein, 95 g fat)