Grains and glycemic load 

Eat high GI carbohydrates, including grains only if you’ve exercised. Eat low GI carbs and keep grains to a minimum the rest of the time.

Grains, particularly wheat, can make getting lean difficult due to additional detrimental effects associated with intolerances. Wheat can lead to water retention and digestive bloating and sluggish digestion. It’s not uncommon to eat a wheat based cereal for breakfast, sandwich for lunch and pasta for dinner – and even some biscuits in between. Keep wheat and other grain intake to times when you’ve trained or to fuel-intensive training. It’s worth taking a look at your overall wheat burden.

Eat slowly

Ok, your eating is spot on, you eat good quality and adequate protein, loads of vegetables and essential fats and your frequency of feeding and hydration is perfect. What’s the problem?

You eat too quickly and as a result you eat too much. This is very common among larger athletes, particularly those in the strength or power dominated events, and can thwart an otherwise sound nutrition and training plan.

Even if you are eating all the right ratio of low GL macronutrients, if you eat too much you’ll still get a rise in insulin and store the excess as fat. To change this try to:

• Put less food on your plate.
• Chew food properly.  Don’t put another forkful in until you’ve finished the first one.
• Put your fork down between each mouthful; this is hard but begins the process of slowing down eating.
• Try not to eat when doing something else like watching T.V; you’ll eat more and won’t be conscious of what you are eating.
• Plan meals to be sociable; taking time to have family all present at the table in the evening and discussing the day is helpful for relationships and it’ll be good for your body composition too.
• Stop eating once you are no longer hungry, and stop eating if you get more thirsty than hungry.
• If you find this really difficult, then you can drip feed your calories before the meal (while cooking) through eating raw veggies and/or starting your meals with soup.

These strategies take the edge off of hunger and result in fewer calories being consumed in the main meal.

Flex

Yes flex as often as possible. Flexing your nutrition to fit your training is crucial to maintaining performance and staying lean.

In simple terms you eat according to what you are going to do in the next 3 hours or what you have just done. Many athletes eat the same day in day out, and they recover the same for all sessions – this approach is flawed as some days they will over recover and some days they won’t eat enough to recover. This is very true of the transition from pre-season to in season training when appetite remains but training volume drops off. It’s also particularly true on rest days, where many athletes fail to keep to regular meals and can quite often under eat at these times.

• Eat more following intensive training session and less following less intensive training sessions.

For guidelines on amount of macronutrient to eat please see the flex nutrition plan later in part II of this article.

Keep protein intake consistent, but not consistently high

Most athletes don’t eat enough protein regularly enough. Protein will help to preserve your lean mass whilst cutting calories and it keeps you full so you are less likely to over eat. It is also the most thermogenic of all the macronutrients. However many athletes eat too much protein all of the time, which does two things:

1. It can provide additional and unnecessary calories from saturated fat
2. It means you need to keep eating a high amount to sustain muscle mass as the more you eat, the higher the rate of protein breakdown enzymes

Better to eat higher amounts of protein when your muscles need then most and then drip feed the protein through at other times. So on days when you are training at high intensity and involved in breaking down lots of muscle tissue eat more. On days when you train less or do not have the same recovery requirement eat a lower amount. It’s also a good idea to go on a low protein phase from time to time to reset your catabolic enzyme level.

See if you are suffering from syndrome X

Metabolic syndrome or syndrome X is the name given to the collection of symptoms associated with insulin resistance and poor carbohydrate metabolism.

In simple terms, the fatter you are the more insulin resistance your cells will exhibit.

Higher levels of insulin resistance mean more insulin is secreted to get the glucose into your cells, but high insulin levels also pre-dispose our bodies to gain fat. To make matters worse, insulin resistance tends to occur in stages, first the liver becomes resistant, then the muscle cells and finally when you are really, really fat, your fat cells start to become resistant.

If your body fat is higher than 15-16% for men and 25-26% for women you will be at the beginning stages of syndrome X. As such you need to eat carefully to control blood sugar levels.

Symptoms of poor blood sugar regulation can include;

• Fatigue
• Irritable or shaky when hungry
• Rapid mood swings
• Sleeping problems
• Poor concentration
• Forgetfulness
• Excessive sweating
• Stubborn body fat which does not seem to shift no matter how restrictive you are with your diet
• Tiredness after meals containing even small amounts of grains or high GI carbs
• Drowsy, tired or hungry during the day

See if you are deficient or require supplemental support

There are large numbers of people in the western world who are deficient in various vitamin and minerals. Athletes should be less likely to be deficient as they should eat more food because of higher activity levels, and better quality foods due to higher levels of nutritional understanding. In practice this tends not to happen for 2 reasons:

1. Many athletes eat like the general public, they may eat more but the quality of the food is poor
2. Many athletes under eat according to their activity levels, which compounds the problem

For fat loss you need to consider the following areas of deficiency:

An imbalance in omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids will contribute to insulin resistance as well as a host of negative health implications. If you cook with vegetable oil (olive oil is fine) and don’t eat oily fish or pumpkin, linseed, hemp or walnuts – there is a likelihood of deficiency. Blood tests are available for those of you who want to have a more precise look at the levels of essential fats in their cells.

Other important nutrients for blood sugar regulation include chromium, zinc and magnesium to mention a few. Low levels of these minerals will make it more difficult for the body to regulate sugar consumption and all refined foods are low in these minerals.

There have been many studies showing most athletes to be deficient in these minerals. Athletes should actively increase foods linked to these minerals (see sheet) athletes who under eat or who have had a poor eating habit for some time should consider supplementation with a good quality multi vitamin, or mineral complex. Many athletes report beneficial effects from taking a ZMA formula.

More specific formulas aimed at blood sugar regulation are available; ask your nutritionist or sports Doctor for more information.

Matt