“Hey, I have been doing tri’s for 10 years, I am looking to improve perfromance through better nutrition. Who knows a good book or two?”
“Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes” by Monique Ryan M.S., R.D. (1999, VeloPress) is a very good book on the topic. While there are several, I recommend it. It is very different from my philosphy of the four basic food groups: Sugar, Caffeine, energy bars, Taco Bell and Pizza. Note that my dietary habits differ performance to convenience. Better to read the book…
I’ve had amazing results after just monitoring and recording what I eat. I’m aiming for essentially a balanced diet. The goal is roughly 25% fat, 55% carb and 20% protein. I try and get as much of the food as natural as possible without going overboard.
Also, I question why I am eating a food and have attempted to severly reduce useless calories. For example, a soda is pretty useless for nutrition and I have gone from 1 or 2 per day to 1 every 2 weeks.
I’m still eating quite a large volume (3000-4500 cal depending on where I am in training) but I’m dropping body fat. I’ve never felt this good or had this much energy.
A book I have recommended for years is called “Lean Bodies” by Cliff Sheats. Don’t be turned off by the name. When I followed his advice, I actually couldn’t eat as many calories as he recommended. It’s not specific to triathlons, just a good book with sound eating advice.
Hope this helps!
yeah i got that book Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes but i got the newer version came out 2002. Its a good book. Although she almost says dont lose weight. I mean shes very cautious to suggest any performance gain from weight loss. Heres a quote: “It is easy to assume that dropping a few ‘extra’ pounds will allow you to bike, run, ski and swim faster, but athletic success is not always that simple.” Although i’ve read, obviously in another book, that a 10lb loss can result in a 2-3 min faster 10K.
I really like the above mentioned book, even though shes cautious on the weight loss thing. It goes into detail on proper calorie balance, essential nutrients etc.
My professor in college for my Nutrition class was Liz Applegate (you may have heard of her from Runnersworld etc) and she had a very relaxed/healthy approach to nutrition. She would always tell us icecream is a great thing cause of its protein count, that makes it a lot easier for me now to rationalize eating one of my favorite foods.
Has anyone followed Joe Friel’s Paleolithic (a.k.a. Caveman diet) plan? I read that Gordo has with pretty decent results. Basically you do not eat any processed carbohydrates (pasta is okay but only as a post workout recovery fuel).
Has anyone followed this or a modified plan similar for any prolonged period of time?
Thanks much,
-Joe
I tried the paleo diet. I think it’s great for the average person but for athletes it has some flaws, in my opinion. Most of the carb sources are from fruit and veg. I was getting too much stomach distress and gas from all the fibre and fructose. So much so that some days I couldn’t even workout. If you can handle the fruit and veg, without problems, go for it.
Here are a source to check out. I particularly like Gordo Byrn’s advice in the “Gordo Tips” section on “Nutrition and Body composition”:
http://www.byrn.org/gtips.htm#b
There’s always a lot of discussion on diet at the gordoworld.com forum. But to sumarize his advice on a modified paleo diet: avoid processesed foods, carbs as a recovery food, lots of fruit and vegetables, and lean protein with every meal.
I have the Endurance Sports Nutrition book and it is good. I also got a book called “The Formula” which outlines a whole bunch of recipes and eating suggestions for a 40-30-30 diet. I tried this for a while and dropped my winter fat quickly last year. I’m about to get back on it again (a mid-January resolution?) to help drop some Christmas weight. The only thing to be careful of is that sometimes the carbs are coming from fruits (I ate a lot of apples) so until your body gets used to burning the fat (it took me about 2 weeks since I used to eat so many carbs) you need to be careful doing really long workouts. I had a horrible bonk on a 14 mile run last year.