How to Fuel, Part One

Editor’s note: This is written by our wonderful dietician Abby Pattison-enjoy!

I live in a place full of very active people and this can lead to a bit of a loss of perspective. It’s easy to minimize how hard we train, leading to potentially under fueling our bodies. On hard training days you need eat more which most people acknowledge and try to accomplish, but what is considered a hard training day? Anything an hour or longer! One hour or longer is for many of you just another workout. You can imagine that if you don’t get enough on one day, and do another hour-plus workout, it’s easy to get behind and have a deficit that’s not only hard to get out of, but will also start affecting your workouts. If you feel low energy during workouts, or you don’t feel like you’re recovering well, checking in with how much you’re eating is a good place to start.

I always recommend a balanced diet that includes a mix of protein, fat and carbs, but today let’s focus on carbohydrates. Carbohydrates help provide your muscles with energy, decrease inflammation, and improve recovery time. Recommendations for carbohydrate intake in athletes is as follows: 6-10g/kg so if you are 150lbs that is 409-681g of carb this is a lot of carbs. To give you a visual that's 14-23 bananas in a day! It is pretty challenging to get that amount solely from veggies or other low kcal sources, so when you are training hard it's beneficial to have simple carbs that are easy to digest. Many athletes are very health conscious, but when you’re training a lot, simple carbohydrates are healthy! I am very excited lately about juice to help meet these needs and goals. 100% fruit juice mixed with water can provide you with antioxidants and simple easy to absorb energy to put back into your muscles while you are training, or after to start your recovery process.

If, like me, you don't like bringing a calculator to the dinner table, an easy way to remember these recommendations is the following:

• Rest day: carbs should be ¼ of your plate

• Moderate training day (45-60min.): shoot for carbs being ⅓ of your plate

• Heavy training day (60+ min): carbs can take ½ of your plate

Carbohydrate options include: grains, cereals, fruits, starchy veggies, beans, dairy, crackers, chips, etc. Let us know how this works for you!

Photo by Andrea Laughery