121119 Jet Fuel Nutrition
Recently, someone asked me to blog my thoughts on how to maintain a surplus of calories or even enough to train really as hard as he’d like. “I’ve passed the gains honeymoon phase and feel like I need the extra go.” (or something to that effect). What he’s referring to is the first year or two of CrossFit where you PR a lift anytime you touch a barbell. Everyone comes into the gym unfamiliar with the movements and the stimulus, but the coordination and confidence gains are fast and furious. In the first year or even several, the gains aren’t necessarily pure strength, but rather mainly skill. As your skill improves and you near closer and closer to your personal ceiling, PR’s are fewer and farther between. He was 100% correct in identifying his nutrition as the thing to move that ceiling. There comes a point where coordination gains don’t help move a bar that you’re not strong enough to move, and you need actual physiological or structural change in order to improve.
This is where navigating an ocean of nutrition advice can get confusing. I really think that it should become a standard practice for all doctors, researchers, nutritionists, or anyone doling out food advice to preface that advice with the population it’s best for. “This is how x person should eat to reach y goal.” I’ve personally prescribed myself the wrong strategy based on listening to a goal I wanted, yet wasn’t considering the type of person I am or was. “Oh this way of eating will lead to this cool goal.” It didn’t and it was frustrating, but I’m glad to have learned a lot.
So the question was, “how do I eat enough food to support intensity and physiological change?” He also already happens to be lean and muscular.
Preface: This advice is for an athlete with an already healthy body composition. The clue is, this athlete can see most of or all their abs and stays lean effortlessly. The rest of us can tuck this advice away for when our body composition and insulin sensitivity will allow.
I really think that for this type of athlete in terms of performance, there are two important fronts to tackle in their nutrition. The first, hormonal, and the second energy balance. Which is backwards in terms of how adaptation works. First, you do a high intensity workout and then in recovery, your body makes it’s changes. They’re equally important, but I think you should tackle the recovery piece of the equation first and the fueling of the actual workout second. The workout is going to happen, and whether lets say you are able to give it a 7 out of 10 in terms of your own intensity because of a lack of fueling, it matters little if your recovery phase is a 6 out of 10 (just making these scales up, 1 being minimal and 10 being maximal). Likewise lets say you fueled yourself perfectly and had the perfect workout, but slept and recovered horribly— muted benefit of the perfect workout. I’d argue that a 5/10 workout with awesome recovery would be more beneficial than a 10/10 workout with 5/10 recovery because the recovery is where the positive change happens. Furthermore, we know it’s really difficult to put in that 10/10 workout with limited sleep or recovery.
Luckily CrossFit prescribes a plan that addresses the important attention to hormones and recovery and it’s called the Zone diet. It is a macro-balanced diet where you eat 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein, 30% fat at each meal, and each meal has the same proportions. There are snacks, but those are weighed and balanced as well. If you’re not the counting, weighing and measuring type though. I’d advise the following.
#1 is to eat a certain amount of protein. This goes for everyone, not just the lean athlete that the rest of this advice is for. The research is really scattered on how much protein, but that’s because nutrition research sucks. For obese people, go with 1 g per pound of lean mass. For leaner people, go with 1g per pound of total body-weight. And since the research is so scattered especially recently. I think it’s safe to assume that for an active person, eating too much protein is safer than eating too little, even though the recommended daily amounts is trending towards less (as in the minimum). Most evidence shows favorable results for any performance or body composition goal with increased protein. Like I said, recovery is key, and providing much needed amino acids to your cells is very useful.
#2 Now we’re getting into the advice specifically for this lean athlete. I like to consider the way you eat carbs to be more about your hormones than the fuel to support your exercise. In the morning, we wake up with elevated cortisol, it wakes us up and is beneficial and good, it tapers off throughout the day. Chronically elevated cortisol is detrimental though. It counters testosterone (men), ruins our sleep (everybody), and interferes with human growth factor and IGF (insulin like Growth Factor) (everybody). In the evening our human growth hormone up-regulates and does it’s magic while we sleep. All that to say, the further away from your workout, you should be eating progressively slower burning carbohydrates. Starting with bed-time, eating potatoes, or beans, or oatmeal can counter cortisol to help you sleep. Your body has a lot of work to do do digest stuff like that and needs the time to do it. You’ll be sleeping well, and fueling for the next day. This is especially helpful for working out in the morning too early to eat beforehand.
3# The closer to your workout, before (maybe during) and after, those carbs should be progressively faster burning. Slow to fast- Vegetables, Starchy tubers/whole grains/ legumes, fruit, pasta/bread, candy, juice/pure sugar/honey/soda. Are you proposing someone eat sugar? Gasp! Lean athletes during or directly near their workout, yes. If that’s when they must eat. Better to time it an hour out with a bit slower carb, but when time is a crunch and you want some carb for the wod, a handful of gummy bears or a piece of fruit during the warm-up can do the trick.
#4 In addition to faster carbs nearer your workout, Lean athletes, can consume their more energy dense foods directly after their workout. This is a good strategy because it is the furthest point from your next workout and don’t risk having to load up on energy and working out on a full belly! After working out, you are the most insulin sensitive, and the theory is that you’ll immediately use that food to start the recovery process.
But like I said, this advice is for the already lean athlete, and some of these strategies could work against fat loss and I’ll explain in a future blog!