Nutritional Needs of the Neoathlete

Seeing as how I have just finished a run, and that I am now waiting for my food to finish coking, I think this would be an appropriate time to discuss post exercise nutrition. There are several different schools of thought on this, at least from my own personal experience.

First we must separate the exercising reader into 2 groups:

* The strength and anaerobic exerciser
* The aerobic exerciser

It seems almost like a stereotypical scene, the body builder loading up with protein shakes. It seems to be common knowledge that the weight-bearing stress plus calories (especially protein) equals increased muscle mass. However, among the more cardio-focused public, nutrition is less of an exact issue. Or at least, that is what we’ve been toldJust to clarify, I am referring to endurance athletes, be they runners, cyclists, cross-country skiers, swimmers, or anything else. Many new to these sports may be starting them as part of a weight-loss program. They figure that the point of the exercise is to burn calories, and if they replace them after a workout, its not helping their weight-loss. This can be true, but only to a point.

Depending on a myriad of factors, including: sex, body size, metabolism, age; the average amount of calories burned/person/hour is around 500 for a sport like running, give or take 100. According to, thefitnesscalculator.com, a 140lb man, running for 30 miles burned around 2740 calories. Spread out over 5 hours and that equates to around 550 calories/hour. This may or may not seem like a lot, and depending on how much you are running, you might not worry about eating after you run; but here is where you may fall into a bad situation.

If you exercise every other day, you most likely dont have anything to worry about. You will refuel your muscles and body during that rest day and be able to recover before your next workout. If you exercise everyday, or multiple times a day, post exercise is critical to not developing any deficits.

You may not think about it, but the body’s two principle sources of fuel for the muscles are fat and glycogen, glycogen far and away being the preferred source in most cases. Under extreme circumstances, when glycogen is depleted, the body will have to break down its own muscles to get at their carbohydrate stores, but at this point you should be more concerned with how you are going to walk up and down stairs for the next week!

After a run, your body is going to be depleted in its glycogen stores, and a little of its fat stores. Your body will burn fat with the glycogen, and there is a saying that ‘Fat burns in a carbohydrate fire’ which means that you will only be able to metabolize fat while you have carbohydrate (glycogen) do burn too. In order to facilitate recovery, theres a narrow window to start to replenish these stores most effectively.

There is a well-established ratio of carbs to protein, 4:1, that allows the most efficient re-absorption of carbs into the muscles. There are some specifically formulated sports drinks with this ratio, but there are other options as well. Chocolate milk and chocolate soymilk are both good choices as they have protein and some sugar (think 4:1) and there is a new study pointing to milk as a recovery drink (see references at the end of article for all studies). Other choices could be smoothies with added protein, or protein shakes with added glucose. You could also just eat a balanced meal at this point if you are near a meal-time.

Whatever your choice, you want to focus on eating about 300-400 calories within an immediate 30 minute window, and then to replenish any remaining calories you have as a deficit, during the remaining time after the workout, that you took to workout. This sounds a little complicated, but it is recommeded as a good guideline by Joe Friel, author of the Triathletes Training Bible, and coauthor of The Paleo Diet for Athletes, so let me just give you an example:

* You run for a total of 1.5 hours
* You burned around 750 calories (your deficit)
* During the 30 minutes post-run, you ate 350 calories
* That leaves 400 net calories that you still need to replace
* You ran for 1.5 hours, so you need to replace the calories you burned within 1.5 hours after your workout, you ate 350 in the first and crucial 30 minutes, so you have 400 more calories, and 1 more hour to go
* During that last hour you have to replace those 400 calories in order to relieve the deficit and facilitate maximum recovery

Again, to sum up, you ran for 1.5 hours and burned 750 calories, so you have 1.5 hours after your run to replace those 750 calories most effectively. You consumed 300-400 calories within 30 minutes, and the rest during the remaining hour after that.

If you ran for 2 hours, you would have a 2 hours to replace what you burned, and again, would eat 300-400 calories within 30 minutes of the run.

Now, the consequences of not following or not being able to follow these guidelines are not especially drastic. If you can only take in calories in the 30 minute window, that would be the main point to follow. If there are other unforeseen circumstances that prevent you from eating right after a workout, its not like your body will suddenly just fall apart. However, when you have a workload in training that is quite intense, say:

* Running every day of the week, week after week
* You are doing a lot of mileage building
* You are doing a lot of speed work
* You workout multiple times a day

then you may notice that you will be more tired and sluggish after repeated sessions of not eating right. Its not that you will be punished for not following these guidelines, but that you can reach a higher potential by trying to maximize every factor of your workouts.

Dieters, you should follow the guidelines of the 30-minute window(eating 300-400 calories withing 30 minutes of working out)for any exercise that lasts over about an hour, and then you dont have to focus on the rest of the calories you would have to eat during any remaining time as you are trying to lose weight. However, dont skimp on protein, you want to lost fat, not muscle!!

Following these guidelines hopefully we all can be happier and healthier, and can all work towards growing stronger!!

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/sports-nutrition-glycogen-levels-need-be-replenished-post-exercise-67

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=sportsmedicine&cdn=health&tm=21&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_p736.8.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3Dpubmed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26 list_uids%3D12235033%26query_hl%3D15%26itool%3Dpubmed_docsum

http://cme.medscape.com/viewarticle/524370

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 by Blake at 6:54 am and is filed under Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.