i am starting training for my first im this april.i have a coach for the first time and was wondering if getting a dietician would be worth it.money is an issue but if it were really important i could make it happen.
If you dont have the time to play with different things and read alot I would get one, but there is alot of info out there and good dietians are hard to find for folks like us… Chris Carmichael has a good book to start with as does joel friel.
If you really want to fine tune your nutrition as a “hard core” athlete I would recommend a sports nutritionist or sports dietitian. I was a sub-acute clinical dietitian for 7 years and once I became a serious triathlete thought I was going to be way ahead of the game as a dietitian. I was way wrong. My game was sick people not healthy active people. Don’t waste your time with an RD/LD that doesn’t have experience in this sport.
Little story: I was having horrible lateral knee pain (that brought my training/racing to a screaching halt) soon after getting clip in pedals. I went to my doc who did all his tests. I had Xrays and Ct scans and we still couldn’t find the problem. After two cortisone shots (months apart) and waisting all of my benifits on physical therapy, I came across ST (Slowtwitch). Someone recommended that I do X,Y and Z stretches as my pain was probably IT band syndrome. I was running in 6 days. The professionals I was seeing were treating this “text book”.
A general dietitian (BS in Clinical Dietetics) may not have the exposure that you need. Yes, we were exposed to sports nutrition but nothing like a triathlete at the half or full IM distance. I am old (BS in 1996), so perhaps the curriculum now encorporates IM nutrition.
The first responder suggested some great ideas. A good tri coach might even be a better place to go than a Dietitian. After all, you are not sick or on dialysis you just want to know what works, right? Who better to go to that somone that has this experience?
Glen
Oh, and it is *Dietitian *not Dietician. This drives us crazy!
i have done 4 half im and never had a problem.do you think i would need to use one for the duration of the training or just a few months out from race day.thanks for the help
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check your PMs
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