NUTRITION, continued...
Let’s lay out some basic Dietary Guidelines:
Adhere closely to the 40/30/30 concept: 40% of calories from Carbohydrates, 30% from Good Fat, 30% from Protein. In addition, you should follow the guidelines below:
- Drink 90 - 120oz+ of water a day.
- Eat 4 – 6 small meals a day, do not gorge!
- Reduce or eliminate all common allergens from your diet: wheat, corn, and dairy top the list as the most common in the US.
- Consume protein at each meal. Ideally try to get 30% of your daily intake of protein at breakfast! Most people need anywhere from 50 – 130 grams of protein a day. Athletes need more, I recommend 1 – 1.25 grams of protein per pound body weight on hard training days, less on rest days.
- Eliminate or limit alcohol consumption
- Eliminate Trans-fats from your diet!
The 40/30/30 concept - it is the best thing going, even for an endurance athlete!
“Most of us are familiar with carbohydrate loading as an effort to pack in as much food and energy before an athletic event. It can start one or two days before a race. It’s not known whether it’s good science, or done for the sheer joy of eating. However, the body does not have an efficient means of storing carbs. Eating a high carb meal raises blood sugar levels which stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin to drive the sugar into the cells to be either burned or converted to triglycerides (fat). Fat is then stored in adipose tissues to be burned later for energy as needed. Along came Barry Sears with his “Zone Diet” and poked a hole in all that carb loading fun by proving that a 40/30/30, (carb/protein/fat) diet worked far better than carb loading for conditioning and performance."
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What to Avoid:
- All processed grains – this means white breads, pastas, cereals, pancakes, muffins, crackers, chips, and cakes. Wheat, wheat gluten, corn, white flour, and potatoes.
- All sodas
- Highly processed meats – such as cold cuts, bologna, etc.
- Simple sugars – white sugar, corn syrup, brown sugar, maltodextrose, fructose and sucrose.
- Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils/saturated fats.
- Dairy - reduce or eliminate intake, only consume dairy from organic hormone free sources.
- High Glycemic index foods.
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What to Eat
Unprocessed Grains – eat whole grains such as long grain brown rice, quinoa, spelt, amaranth, buckwheat, and whole oats. For bread replacement if you absolutely must; try Whole Grain Sprouted Wheat, this is a delicious baked product made from unprocessed wheat or other grains. This is very different from whole wheat breads, which are processed and should be avoided.
Vegetables and Fruits – Lots of these! All kinds, and organic if you can. A salad five days a week does not constitute good vegetable intake. Eat Broccoli, Carrots, Asparagus, Bok Choy, Kale, Zucchini, Green beans, Yams, or Beets. Fruits – try eating Low Glycemic index fruits, Apples, Pears, Berries of all kinds and small portions of high glycemic index, like Bananas, Mangos, Peaches.
Meats- When eating meats choose low fat cuts and try to consume only free range, hormone and antibiotic free. Even when consuming fish; fish that is farm raised is still suspect.
Natural Sweeteners – we can all stand to cut down on sugars or more importantly high glycemic index foods. If you need a sweetener, use more natural sweeteners such as honey, agave nectar, stevia, molases, or brown rice syrup. Although other than stevia, these sweeteners still have an effect on our blood chemistry, they have healing and nutritive values as well. Use them sparingly.
Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils/Saturated Fats – use olive oil for all your cooking or canola oil when you don’t want olive oil’s flavor in the food. Look at all labels when purchasing anything in a box. If it has partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, avoid it. Simply put: our bodies are not designed to break down these highly processed (i.e. mutated) forms of fats. Therefore when introduced into our systems they can cause a number of problems from immune responses, to automatic storage as fat (never having a chance to be burned as energy), stress the liver and clog the GI track.
Dairy- if you must have dairy try to limit it to beneficial forms such as, good organic milk, organic low/non-fat yogurt, feta and goat cheese. There are alternatives to cheese such as almond cheese or soy cheese.
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Why do we need protein?
Why Protein?
Protein is an energizer, stabilizes blood sugar and controls hypoglycemia, eliminates cravings and hunger, promotes fat loss, and builds muscle. In addition: whey protein enhances immune function, increases exercise capacity, fights infections, encourages bone growth, and lowers triglycerides and cholesterol.
If you are going to use protein powder, Whey protein is often desirable over the others protein types. Whey protein is a by-product of the cheese manufacturing process. By 1992 a process was developed to extract the pure amino acids from whey. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. What the researchers came up with is the purest, cleanest, most biologically available source of protein. Whey protein is the richest source of the 8 essential amino acids and branched chain amino acids your body needs for growth, energy, and vibrant health.
The highest quality whey proteins are:
Cross flow micro filtered 100% whey protein isolate: fat free, cholesterol free, lactose free, free of artificial sweeteners, high in calcium, low in carbohydrates and fat.
If you were wondering about the “dairy” product issue, high quality whey protein is virtually lactose free and is hypoallergenic.
Spirulina – I have to strongly recommend the use of Spirulina in everyone’s diet. Spirulina is recognized as one of nature’s richest sources of unprocessed protein, as well as vitamins A and B-12. Spirulina contains over 70 nutrients combined by nature and has proven to be beneficial as a formidable aid to averting hunger by controlling appetite and chronic disorders associated with poor nutrition and devitalized foods.
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In today's carbohydrate fearing culture
it is important to understand why you need them, just don't over consume them.
Why Carbs?
When we eat carbohydrates, our bodies metabolize or “burn” them, releasing their stored energy and breaking them down again to water and carbon dioxide. For both plants and animals, carbohydrates are high-quality fuels, since it takes relatively little work to dismantle these compounds and release their energy. Because the end products are carbon dioxide and water, there are clean-burning fuels as well as efficient ones.
Sugar is instant energy for us and it is also the foundation of the body’s energy economy. All other foods are converted into sugar for distribution to our tissues and cells. Many of our cells prefer to run on sugar, and some, such as the highly specialized nerve cells of the brain, can run only on sugar; they have sacrificed the metabolic equipment needed to burn starch, fat, and protein.
Refined carbohydrates, like white flour and polished rice, are good energy sources but not as good for us as whole wheat flour and brown rice. The difference is that some of the grains constituents have been lost: the bran, which is an important source of fiber, and the germ or embryo, which has vitamins and other nutrients. Choose healthy forms of carbohydrates.
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Fat, does not make you fat!
Why Fats?
Fats are the most calorie-dense nutrients, with nine calories per gram, almost twice that of carbohydrates and proteins. We need fats for energy, healthy skin, a healthy heart, lubrication of tissues, muscle recovery, hormone production, to fight inflammation and much more.
We need to choose healthy fats and avoid "bad" or damaging fats. You want to consume mostly monounsaturated fats, a little saturated fat is fine. However you want to avoid polyunsaturated and trans fats.
Foods that are naturally high in fat include: seeds (sesame, sunflower, and corn), nuts (especially walnuts, pecans, Brazil, macadamia, and coconut), some legumes (peanuts and soybeans), some fruits (olives and avocados), many meats (beef, pork, lamb), poultry (goose, duck and unskinned chicken), some fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines, bluefish, and herring) and chocolate, butter, cream, and cheeses made from whole milk. Remember many red meats and dairy products contain high percentages of saturated fats, eat lean cuts.
What is saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated, poly or trans fats? Fats differ greatly in their composition depending on which fatty acids predominate. The terms saturated and unsaturated refer to the chemistry of fatty acids – whether all available carbon bonds in the molecular chain are occupied or saturated with hydrogen atoms. For example: saturated fats become hard and opaque in the cold, and the higher the temperature at which they stay hard, the more saturated they are. Animal fats are a major source of saturated fats in our diets. Conversely, polyunsaturated fats (including many vegetable oils) stay transparent and free flowing under refrigeration. Safflower oil is the most unsaturated of the food oils. Lying in the middle of saturated and polyunsaturated fats is monounsaturated fats. Olive and canola oils contain more monounsaturated fats than any other oils.
There is a danger involved in the consumption of polyunsaturated fats that are heated or subjected to chemical treatment. The molecular structure of some of the fatty acids may change from a natural configuration with a curved shape (called cis-) to an unnatural one with a jointed shape (called trans-). Trans-fatty acids, or TFAs are never found in nature and we do not know what the body does with them. We know that the body needs cis-fatty acids to construct cell membranes and hormones, but we do not know how it handles TFAs. The major sources of TFAs are margarine, solid vegetable shortening, and all partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
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