Irishsailsman –
Protein:
You want more protein? Eat quinoa, it’s a complete protein. So is hemp seed – hemp “protein” powder is basically just ground up hemp seeds. You can put it in the recovery drink instead of sunflower seeds. Log in your daily food to a site like fitday – your whole grains, beans, fruits and veggies – and you will be surprised to see that you are getting plenty of protein, most like more than recommended. Athletes need, at most, around 1.2 to 1.4g of protein per kilo. At 1.4 and 70 kilos, that’s 98 g of protein, or 420 calories. If you are an active triathlete 4000 calories a day is nothing, so protein intake less than 10% of the diet meets this elevated level. Protein needs scale with calorie needs – as long as you eat enough healthy food you will get plenty of protein.
Don’t worry about the protein. Instead, make sure you are eating enough quality carbs throughout the day and getting enough simple carbs post workout:
Recovery drink:
This is obviously a pretty big calorie hit – cut it in half if you didn’t do too much on the day.
· 2 tbs nuts or seeds (I like sunflower seeds) in a spice grinder until basically dust (but not nut butter!) – that’s about 130 calories, 5 g of protein.
· 1 tbsp of flax seed, grind until basically a powder. About 80 calories and 2 g of protein.
· 1/4 cup raw oats - grind in the spice grinder until powder. That’s another 70 calories and 3 g.
· Put a little water into the blender add a pinch of salt and turn on the lowest speed, gradually add in the all the powdered seeds and oats, adding more water as need, and let blend until a smooth consistency.
· Once smooth, add in some more water so that it is the consistency of milk.
· Add in two bananas and whatever frozen fruit you want, about 1 cup of strawberries is my favorite. Another 250 calories and 3 g protein.
· Total – 530 calories and 13 g protein.
What about fueling?
Dates are awesome, easy to eat, easy to digest and delicious. Don’t get pitted ones, tho – they pit them by steaming them to plump them up for the machine and this makes them hideously sticky. Raw dates are pocket stable. Dried figs also work really well – very pocket stable. Bananas, of course, are the ur-ride food.
Otherwise, sugar water is generally animal free – just keep an eye out for whey protein. Make your own bars if motivated, but if you want to buy them, clif bars are vegan, power bars are not vegan. Otherwise, read the label.
What are your daily foods other than dinner?
Just stick to whole foods for the most part. Whole grains, beans, fruits and veggies. The less processing the better. Tofu is fine if that floats your boat, I like quinoa a lot, and brown rice. Olive oil rocks – try it on toast with jam. There is a lot of info online, and a number of excellent cookbooks. Veganomicon is fine for ideas, but most vegan cook books are terrible. The Artful Vegan is an exception. It is stupendous. The recipes are daunting if attempted all at once, so just do one portion and call that an entrée. For really good veg recipes, look through Asian, Mexican, Italian, etc., cookbooks and see how they deal with veggies.
Stay away from heavily processed meat alternatives that contain soy protein isolate or textured veggie protein (TVP) both of which are waste products from soy oil processing that uses hexane. Turns out that a lot of industrial food-like products are technically vegan.
cyclingguru
