Ultra Nutrition
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Ultra Nutrition
We have looked at what the nutritional guidelines of the beginning and average athlete are in the previous post, Nutritional Needs of the Neoathlete. While these are excellent guidelines for most athletes to follow throughout the day, there are some more specific guidelines to follow if you participate in an ultra-endurance sport.
How does the daily macro nutrient intake differ?
Is it necessary to take in specific types of food before during and after exercise?
What types of foods should these be?
When and how much of should I eat during an ultra event?
These are a few of the questions that I want to address, and answer for you in this post. There are many different types of performance foods out there as well as guidelines to follow for the intake of these foods. I am going to take a bit of a unique approach, the ultra approach, in giving you my recommendations for Ultra-nutrition based upon my experiences. I encourage you to try them and adopt them if they work for you.
How does the macro nutrient intake differ? Macro nutrients (fats, carbohydrates and proteins) are what fuel us through our day. For your average or beginning athlete, you are exercising upwards of around an hour a day. In addition to their normal daily calorie intake, they may add another 300-600 calories. Most likely these calories come from a sports drink and maybe some protein powder.
The Ultra-athlete, however, requires a different tactic. Since they are working out for perhaps 2-4+ hours a day, they must look at their daily nutrition in terms of before workout, during workout, and after workout, in addition to those times when there is no workout on the immediate horizon.
The ultra approach:
Try to eat 5-6 smaller meals during the day. Either your 3 main meals with substantial snacks, or just 5-6 meals of around 400-600 calories; based upon how many calories you need to maintain your weight. Cut out as much processed sugar, hydrogenated fats (also called trans fats), and saturated fats as is humanly possible. Add healthy oils like olive oil and flax seed oil. Try to maintain a macro nutrient ratio between 40-50% carbs, and 25-30% fat and 25-30% protein. Good between meal snacks can and should include mixed nuts with dried fruit, fruit like apples, bananas and oranges, an energy bar, a protein shake, a salad, etc. You get the idea.
Is it necessary to take in specific types of food before, during, and after exercise, and what types of foods should these be? Short answer, yes and a balanced food intake. When you put your body through multiple hours and perhaps multiple workouts a day, every day, you body and immune system is going to be working overtime to try and make any repairs it can and to restock as much fuel as it can before your next workout.
To make this easier for your body to do, and to give it the fuel it needs to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible, it is necessary to take some extra steps beyond what the average athlete would do.
The ultra approach:
Believe it or not, I am recommending that you learn to run right after eating. I am NOT talking about eating a large meal and then doing hill repeats. I recommend trying to take in about 200-300 calories within 30 minutes of a run. This should be mostly a carbohydrate source with some protein. Adding a little protein can help prevent muscle damage, and the carbs help by keeping some fuel ready as the muscles will start to need it. Some fat is OK too. A banana and mixed nuts or oatmeal with peanut butter are a couple of my favorites.
Learning to run after eating will help your body learn to digest while you run, and it also helps to keep your speed down in the beginning of a run so that you can warm-up properly. More importantly though, it helps you get more used to ingesting foods while you run. The normal go-to foods of gels and chews may work if you are only running for a few hours. But you are going to want something more substantial while you run. You will burn 500-600 calories an hour while your run, so learning to digest more calories will help to offset this.
During a run, some trail mix with chocolate candies, m&m’s, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, energy bars, bananas, Ensure, smoothies, or even cheese can be eaten to help with the demand your muscles are making for more fuel. Aim for eating around 200-300 calories in the beginning and try to add more calories each run until you feel comfortable eating 400-500 calories. I want to make a couple important points here. Do NOT try to follow a strict schedule of calorie replacement/hour. Don’t try to eat, for example, 200 calories every 30 minutes. Also, dont try this for your shorter runs. If you bike, substitute bike for run, but I am talking about your saturday long runs where you may be out for 3,4,5 or 6 hours; or whenever your long runs are.
You will find that sometimes you will just not be hungry. In fact, if you are running hard in a race, you may not feel like eating at all. This is normal. In this case, try eating 200-300 calories every hour to hour and a half, but if your stomach feels queasy, don’t push it, slow down until you can stomach the food. In fact, I recommend eating only when you feel hungry, and you will learn what the feeling of hunger is when running. Also, shoot for taking in not just carbs, and in this case, very simple carbs are the best, but also a good amount of protein and fat, which should be no problem because you will be craving fat anyway. The foods listed above are good examples but feel free to experiment!
What should you be eating after exercise or a race? This is a much easier question to answer. You want to follow the same approach laid out in the post, Nutritional Needs of the Neoathlete, but with a bit of a twist.
The ultra approach:
Try to focus on replacing whatever caloric deficit you have within the time frame of the length of the workout. This sounds complicated, so let me just give you an example:
- You ran for 10 hours, burning about 550 calories/hour
- You ate, on average, 400 calories/hour while running
- 10 hours of running times 550 calories equals 5,500 calories burned while running
- You replaced a total of 4,000 calories while running (10 hours times 400)
- That leaves 1,500 calories that need to be replaced post run over the course of 10 hours, which is not all that bad
So, you want to eat about 300-400 calories of simple carbs, good protein and fat, within 30 minutes. That leaves us with 1100-1200 calories that you have around 9.5 hours to replace. You will want to just average that out and add it to the meals you would be eating in this time anyway. The difference here is that you will want to focus on the frequency of the meals. Even if you do not feel hungry, you must try to eat every 2-3 hours, and try to replace some of the lost calories.
You body will be working overtime to repair what has been done to it, and your immune system might also be suppressed. The best way to maximize a quick recovery is to eat early and often. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Dont forget the protein. Fat is your friend. After the initial 30 minutes switch to more complex carbs or unprocessed carbs like fruits. A good rule of thumb when in doubt is to avoid the “3 Whites”. This would be white sugar, white flour, and white fat(shortening). This should also be your rule during normal nutrition hours.
Well, we now have a complete picture of how to eat to fuel performance and health as an Ultra-endurance athlete. I encourage you to experiment on your own with what foods and intervals work best for you. These are only guidelines that we at Growstonger.com feel are great starting points to help each of you reach your maxium potential and to push yourselves to growstonger everyday. Happy eating everyone!!
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