Gary’s Fitness Blog

The spring season is in full swing and as of this past Saturday (April 11th), the farmer’s market is open here in Lexington, Kentucky. This is really good news for Nikki and I as it is a sign that our participation in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program at Elmwood Stock Farm is just about ready to begin.

Spring is one of my favorite times of year because our bodies are anxious to get outdoors and experience something besides treadmills, bike trainers and 25 yard pools.  It is also a time when the harvests are just beginning to start taking place and the early season vegetables are going to be available to fuel those outdoor adventures.

I wrote about our CSA participation a couple years ago when we first signed up.  (CSA’s and Eating for Fitness)  Now that we are entering our third year of participation, I thought I would go back and review some general thoughts about what our participation has meant to our nutritional habits and the benefits this participation has on training for triathlon.

… the more things stay the same:

As the years change and as time moves on, it is interesting to see how the same questions and issues come up again and again.  The big nutritional question that I get asked often goes something like this, “What is the perfect mix of calories I should take in to fuel my training?”

The question may not specifically include the word “perfect”, but essentially that is what I’m being asked to answer.  The questioner is often someone that nails each workout, day-after-day, often thinking that they may not be training enough.  In this way, they want to take a very detailed kcal-by-kcal approach to their nutritional intake.

Once you start asking questions such as:

1.  How many servings of vegetables do you eat?
2.  Do you eat a variety of fruits, or are bananas your only fruit?
3.  What do you eat to get your protein?
4.  What is your dependence upon sports nutrition products and sugar, during the times you are not working out?

It often doesn’t take too much probing into the athlete’s everyday nutritional behaviors to realize that a strict account of dietary choices is not necessary; what they need is a commitment to the basic nutritional habits that support their health.

How the CSA and Farmer’s Market forces us to focus on the basics of healthy nutrition:

Benefit #1 - We get a variety of foods to eat that support our health, automatically. No choices, no decisions.  It’s like an automatic savings plan with your bank….

As a part of our participation in the CSA, we get a full basket of fresh vegetables each week.  I’ll be honest and say that during our first year of participation, we had many varieties of vegetables I had never tried or cooked.  These new and different varieties is part of the benefit of the CSA.  It forces us to use, cook, eat a whole new group of foods that I wouldn’t normally try if they were not handed to me in a basket each week.  I also know that if I was left to my own devices to buy our vegetables from the grocery store, I simply wouldn’t choose many of these items, if I chose any vegetables at all.

Benefit #2 - Our diets naturally gravitate to a healthy diet plan because we need to use the food the farm delivers to us.

Nikki and I are just two people.  And while we eat a lot of food during the summer to fuel our active lifestyle, we often find it difficult to work through the entire basket of food before getting our basket the next week.  This is a great benefit for the make up of our diets as a whole because we end up filling more of our total dietary intake with these fresh and mostly organicaly grown food (a few items are still not certified organic).

Final thoughts:

The advice that I give athletes all the time regarding their swimming, biking and running is this:  “Be consistent!”  As a coach, there is no workout I can put into an athlete’s schedule that will “magically” boost their fitness and performance if they don’t swim/bike/run regularly.

When it comes to training for endurance sports there are no shortcuts.  An athlete that is out there doing the work month-after-month and more realistically, year-after-year, is going to outperform the athlete that kills themselves for 6 weeks thinking they are doing every session necessary to be successful.

This same paradigm can be said about your dietary habits and behaviors as a triathlete.  Get the basics done, week-after-week, year-after-year and you’ll be in a better position than if you spend all your time looking for the best diet to follow for 8 weeks or sports nutrition supplement to start consuming 3 times a day.

So start making a behavioral change by making a commitment to attending the local farmer’s market.  Just the process of attending the market and sorting through the vendors and food options will begin to make you more aware about what you are eating.  If you enjoy the food and the market enough, maybe you can decide to join a local CSA program too?

If you are looking for a CSA program in your area, visit - Local Havest.  It’s a great place to start looking online.

As a certified Lifestyle and Weight Management Consultant through the American Council on Exercise, I often get email newsletters from them with interesting articles.  Just this past week I got an article from them titled: “Holiday Treats + Alcohol = Extra Calories and the Gift of a Spare Tire“.

While I like to believe that I’m aware of most food and nutrition choices, in terms of caloric consumption - I think that I’ve let alcohol become a blind spot.  So to establish a basic understanding of how alcohol consumption can contribute to packing on those holiday pounds, I want to take a quick look at the calorie content of some of the common holiday choices:

Wine:

According to WineIntro.com, a 3.5 ounce glass of wine contains approximately 80 calories.  It doesn’t matter if the wine is white wine or red wine because the calories come from the alcohol that the wine possesses, but due to this important fact, if you choose a wine that is higher in alcohol content - it will have a higher caloric value also.  If you are interested in finding the exact caloric cost of your favorite wine, here is an article with the steps to calculating those calories:

How to Determine Calorie Content of Wine @ EHow.com

The ACE article also points out that dessert wines are even higher in calories, stating that a 3.5 ounce glass of dessert wine is around 165 calories.

Beer:

The calorie content of beer is highly dependent upon the beer you chose.  We have all seen the highly advertised Michelob Ultra, which almost makes that beer look like a sports drink - it contains 95 calories.  But like wine, you’ll find that the beers that have the higher alcohol content also have the higher caloric content.  I found a great table at Beer100.com listing the different brewers, the beers they offer and the alcohol, caloric and carbohydrate content of each.  The most “caloric expensive beer” was Sierra Nevada Bigfoot at 330 calories.

I personally don’t have a problem staying away from the wine (a half glass gives me a headache for two days), but I like to have a beer or two with my triathlon, running and cycling friends at Pazzo’s every now and then.  So here are my four favorite choices from their list:

• George Killian’s Irish Red - 162 calories, about 1.35 miles of running (I burn about 120/mile)
• Leinenkugel Original - 152 calories, about 1.27 miles of running
• Miller Lite - 96 calories, about 0.8 miles of running
• New Belgium Fat Tire - 160 calories, about 1.33 miles of running (Fat Tire is impossible to find in this part of the world though)

I used to work at a brewing company in Lincoln, Nebraska - Empyrean Ales.  Actually, I worked for their Brew Pub next door to the brewing house called Lazlo’s.  I wonder what the caloric consumption was during all those taste testings?

Liquor and Cocktails:

So now I live in bourbon country and it’s not uncommon for bourbon to be a common beverage choice.  We even have the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and now the 200 mile Running Relay Race on the Bourbon Trail.  What are the caloric values of liquours?  Here are some things that I’ve found for you:

• Absolut Vodka - 98 calories
• Bacardi Gold Rum - 98 calories
• Jack Daniel’s Whiskey - 98 calories
• Seagram’s Gin - 120 calories
• Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila - 96 calories

As stated in the guide put out by the Consumer Federation of America.  I also went on over to the CalorieKing and found their page on Liquors, Coolers and Cocktails.  Here are a few I took from their site:

• Red Bull and Vodtka - 177 calories
• Mint Julep - 165 calories
• Cosmopolitan - 213 calories
• Vodka Tonic - 169 calories

And if you really want to be scared away from a few cocktails, go read this article on MSNBC - “Don’t let holiday cheer make you forget calorie content of cocktails” or view their slideshow of the “10 most fattening Cocktails“.

Thoughts on alcohol metabolism:

The concept of alcohol metabolism needs to be addressed - just a little.  One comment that I’ve heard is that the calories in alcohol don’t count because they can not be stored as body fat.  This is actually an acurate comment.  Alcohol must be oxidized and then the body must get rid of it.  The liver is the main player when managing the alcohol metabolism, but it is also possible to excrete a small amount through breath and urine.

But one thing that I think a person should consider when looking at possible weight gain and alcohol is this:  even if our body can not store alcohol calories as fat, what energy sources are we not using when our body tries to manage the alcohol intake — Fat Calories.

Two other thoughts to consider:

1.  What other activities often go along with cocktails and drinks?  We like to eat party foods, holiday treats and others fattening and surgary foods.  It is not hard to imagine that drinking too many calories at the holiday party leads to eating too many holiday cookies - is it?

2.  All calories are not created equal!  So far we’ve been discussing a pure math equation scenario, but even with alcohol contributing 7 calories per gram, they don’t provide great benefit to our diets.  They don’t give us vitamins or minerals.

[EDIT -- I know that I'm going to receive all kinds of emails stating the benefits of alcohol in the diet, when done in moderation.... I understand the heart health argument.  Here's an article to read if you want to go down that route:  Alcohol: Balancing Risks and Benefits (Harvard School of Public Health)]

Bottom Line:

I am not writing this article 2 weeks before Christmas and just before the major Holiday parties get started to guilt you into swearing off all holiday beverages.  I am writing this so that you can think about the information and realize that two or three cocktails at every party may leave you with a bigger New Year’s Resolution than you currently have.

Be smart with your choices and you’ll be a happier and healthier you on January 2nd, 2009.  And please be safe when you do choose to drink.

End Note:  If you would like to view some of the articles I tagged while researching go to my delicious page:  delicious.com/ditschfitness/alcohol

The subject of when to eat and how often to eat is a common question that we get as trainers and coaches. There is a lot of discussion in the media about this topic that often leads us to believe that there is a magical formula to meal timing as it contributes to weight loss or weight management. So what are the facts?

Bottomline: There is no way to lose weight if you don’t create a calorie deficit. The timing of those meals may be helpful, especially if you look at behaviors and food cravings.

A common theme that I see in many people’s behavior patterns is that they eat very little in the morning before they head off to work, they grab a smaller quick lunch (if time allows) and then they find themselves needlessly tired and hungry by early afternoon. This hunger craving might be alleviated by a trip to the vending machine for a quick “satisfying” treat (like snickers, right?), followed up that evening by a large dinner at a restaurant or home.

I have been through these cycles and patterns too. The two sabotaging behaviors in this scenario are:

1. Eating too little during the first half of the day.

2. Which leads us to choose poor foods during the afternoon and overeat at night.

A commonly heard meal timing theory is that you can’t eat after 9pm (or any other time you may have heard). The issue isn’t so much that you eat after a specific time of day, it is likely due to the fact that you are overeating to make up for what you feel you didn’t eat earlier that day.

Another issue with late night eating is related to the behaviors that are associated with those hours of eating. Eating at late hours can often be done while sitting around trying to relax from a hard day of work, family (and hopefully exercise). Again, this situation is the perfect setting to mindlessly eat foods that are not as healthy and to mindlessly consume too much of them.

In the most recent Issue of Fitness Matters, put out by the American Council on Exercise (ACE), they tackle the meal timing discussion. Their suggestions:

1. Let hunger be your guide (but don’t eat mindlessly)
2. Eat a healthy breakfast - with whole grains and fruit
3. Create a calorie deficit - through consuming fewer calories than expending (add exercise)

So should we be concerned about when we eat during the day, while trying to lose weight?

My answer would be yes and no.

Yes - Because it appears to be beneficial to consume high quality foods earlier in the day so that we don’t overconsume later in the afternoon and evening.

No - It is ok to eat foods later in the day, as long as that food is part of a normal meal plan and not the result of mindless consumption or binging episodes to manage emotions or boredom.

My Challenge to you:

1. Over the next 5 days commit to eating a breakfast with at least 1 piece of fruit.

2. During those 5 days keep a food log. Watch your own patterns and see if you find yourself eating food without even thinking about what you are eating.

Resources for more information:

Books:
1. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think - a great book that discusses the topic of why we overeat

2. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto - my favorite book on nutrition lately. It just breaks down the subject into something as simple as “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.” Simple, yet complex in execution.

Web Links:
1. Thoughtful Decision vs. Decisions Made Without Thought - a post I wrote in January of 2006 discussing my own struggles with becoming “aware” of what I feed myself and why.

2. Fit Day.com - a free website to help you journal your food intake.

3. Meal Timing - Zone Diet Webiste - interestingly, they suggest an 11:00pm pre-bed snack

4. Tri Fuel - Meal Timing, Composition, and Amount - article by Ellen Colemen, RD, MA, MPH, I’ve always enjoyed her stuff on nutrition for runners and triathletes

5. Men’s Health - Meal Timing Examples - just a sample of three scenario’s, not for everyone but gives an idea

Yesterday (7/29/07) I completed my second race simulation ride, this time I included a short transition run following the ride to drive home the idea about pacing mistakes (if I was going to make them).

If you have not read the summary of my first simulation ride, go review it first and see the mistakes that I was trying to address this time: Race Sim and Nutrition - 2007 #1.

The Stats:

Lap 1 - 36.2 miles, 2:17:29, 120bpm ave, 152bpm max
Lap 2 - 36.2 miles, 2:09:18, 128bpm ave, 158bpm max
Lap 3 - 36.2 miles, 2:06:19, 134bpm ave, 158bpm max
t run - 2.5 miles, 20:01, 158bpm ave, 169bpm max

Lap Descriptions:

Lap 1 - I ended up going really easy to begin with which was similar to my first lap the first time I did this workout. One of the major differences this time around is that I really focused on keeping a limit on my heart rate peaks. This lap I was trying to keep it down below 145bpm, as you can see it crept up on a hill climb once so it ended up maxing out at 152bpm. This change in the peak “limit” seemed to slow my overall pace down quite a bit, but it was worth it by the end of the ride, from my analysis.

Hour 1 - 20oz regular gatorade, water. Hour 2 - 3 egel’s, water. 575kcals total.

Lap 2 - I changed the peak limit on this lap to 150bpm, but was very concious about keeping things as steady as possible during the flat areas (not many of those). At times it required backing off on the longer climbs quite a bit as I noticed the heart rate responding (increasing) quicker. This could have been due to the heat / temperature. The ride didn’t feel much harder than the first lap, but you can observe the changes in effort by keeping the focus on being steady.

Hour 3 - 20oz regular gatorade, water. Hour 4 - 3 egel’s, water. 575kcals total.

Lap 3 - My hope was to decend each lap, but unlike the first attempt at this workout I kept the cap on the efforts for this lap too. In other words, I still didn’t allow myself to “push it” through the hills and climbs. I kept the peak at 155bpm (or tried). The entire loop felt very comfortable and the major difference was that I could actually take in all the calories I wanted. Again this lap I focused on keeping everything as steady as possible. You can see a little increase in the heart rates, especially the averages. By this time in the day it was getting pretty warm (mid 80’s) so I think some of that increase was in response to my body trying to remain cool.

Transition (before lap 3) - 80% of Iced Honey Bun - appox 400kcals

Hour 5 - 20oz Mt. Dew, water. Hour 6 - 1 egel. 400kcals total.

Total Kcal Consumption:

575 + 575 + 400 + 400 = 1950kcals

1950kcals / 6.5 (approx) hours = 300kcals per hour.

That is a respectable amount of calorie consumption. I had set a goal of 350 kcals per hour, but for no other reason than intuition (i.e. nothing scientific about the 350 number).

Transition Run:

The great thing about this ride opposed to the first attempt was that I felt strong when the ride was over. I got off my bike, threw on my shoes and visor, changed shorts and was off on a short run. My plan was to run 10 minutes out and back. My cadence was quick and comfortable, my heart rate was sitting just over 150bpm, I walked 30 secs at the 11 minute mark (as always) and it all seemed to be going well.

The one thing that I really noticed once I started the run, that I hadn’t noticed so much on the bike, was the heat. The temperature felt hot and the sun was beating down on me… good lesson. I should have used the salt tablets on the bike as I usually do, even though it didn’t seem “necessary”.

All-in-all, a great day!

In addition to my last post: CSA - Community Supported Agriculture and Eating for Fitness.

The group from Mideast Multisport did a beginner’s triathlon clinic this past weekend and the number one response that I saw was - “We want to know more about nutrition”. The topic is very large and extremely polarizing. The other aspect to the topic of nutrition is that when you get down to the area of creating meal plans and specific requirements, you really should consult a sports dietician. (In fact, if someone other than a dietician is doing this, they are likely stepping “outside the bounds” of required licensing.)

With all of that said, when I hear people talk about nutrition and their needs I commonly hear a couple issues:

1. They are only concious about their nutritional intake while consuming sports drinks and other sports nutrition products. They just want to “fuel” the workout.

2. They want the details, details, details, yet lack a proven track record to show they can manage the basics, basics, basics…. a great interview that I just listened to recently was with Faris Al-Sultan on Competitor Radio, he makes a few funny comments regarding age-groupers and nutrition.

Focusing on the Basics - my experience with CSA since May

This may seem too basic for everyone here, but when it comes to nutrition I have to allow myself to keep it very simple. If I make it too complicated than I start to obsess about details regarding everything I eat and then I have a mind that continually crunches kcals, grams of pro/carb/fat, good fats, bad fats…. and on and on.

To be honest, I used to like doing those calculations, especially when in an academic setting. And there’s still a glimmer of interest that resides in my head to move on to get my Ph.D. in that area, but all that data never seemed to make my diet and behaviors improve.

This season’s quest for sticking-to-the-basics was kicked off by an article I read in the Chevy Chaser Magazine back in March. The magazine had a great article discussing the idea of community supported agriculture (CSA) and the local farms that have CSA programs. After researching a few of the farms at localharvest.com, Nikki and I sent an email to and eventually signed up for the “mini-share” at Elwood Stock Farms.

The idea behind a CSA is that you purchase a share in a local farm, in return you get a share of the current harvest each week. The benefits are pretty amazing from our point-of-view:

• You get locally grown vegetables / fruit
• The cost is cheaper than purchasing organic foods at chain stores (nice little yuppie organic/whole food stores too)
• You are forced to eat a variety of produce
• The volume of produce is enough that we have to eat them regularly
• We support a local business and economy

There are a lot of good things to say about CSA’s and while this is our first year of participating in a program, we are already discussing what we will do in the “off” months here in Kentucky.

How this relates to sports nutrition.

It all goes back to the basics. If you have trouble maintaining a normal diet, is it reasonable to believe that you can carry out the habits of an “optimal” diet for performance. The study of human behavior shows that drastic changes are not likely sustainable. Eating a well balanced and healthy diet is similar to the first suggestion I give to people about how to improve their training - do it everyday. Eating a “perfect” diet for 3 days a weeks, 2 weeks a month or even 4 months a year is not a beneficial in the long term as eating a sensible diet everyday, all the time. Just like working out for 30 hours in a single week doesn’t mean much if it takes 3 weeks to recover.

The CSA program allows us to focus on one of those sensible and healthy habits - eating plenty of fruits and vegetables. We try and combine that aspect of our meals with adequate (and lean) meats, limit as much “extras” as we can, this leads to a eating style that helps us support our health and training.

It’s not fancy, it is not a strict meal plan (couldn’t do it if it was), but I feel satisfied this summer with how my eating habits have improved. Do I eat perfectly? Nope. As most of you who have read my blog over time know, I still have a sugar craving quite often, but I’m not obessing about it as much. We are becoming entrenched in the basics, the fundamentals, once that becomes a way of life (or more so …) the other details can be addressed.

I figure by nailing the basics, I have a leg up on 75% of my age-group competition anyway…!

Last Sunday (7/15/07) was my first race simulation ride (in 2007) as I prepare for Ironman Wisconsin. The ride was a workout that I took from Gordo’s bike workouts within his “Coaching Ironman Athlete’s” document. The specific’s of my workout were:

Lap 1 - 36.2 miles, 2:10:18, 125bpm ave, 159bpm max
Lap 2 - 36.2 miles, 2:03:58, 134bpm ave, 165bpm max
Lap 3 - 36.2 miles, 2:01:47, 135bpm ave, 169bpm max

Lap 1 description: made sure to ride what I thought felt “easy”, used my hr monitor to keep it in check too, tried to not let hr spike on climbs/hills. Nutrition: 3 egel’s, 1 bottle of xtra strength gatorade (1 bottle = 200kcals), 2 salt tabs, 2 bottles of h2o.

Lap 2 description: rode a little harder but never felt like I was pushing it, as the Gordo workout says, I tried to ride at Ironman effort/pace, let myself ride a little bit harder on the hills. Nutrition: 4 egel’s, 1 bottle of xtra strength gatorade, 2 salt tabs (I use salt stick), 2 bottles of h2o.

In transition: ate a honey bun.

Lap 3 description: rode the loop backwards, primarily to see Nikki and check on her and b/c Jeff couldn’t ride entire loop again. Tried to push and “work” the hills. It didn’t feel easy, but as you can tell from my results, my body didn’t seem to react much differently… (more later on this, see: fatigue below). It was very difficult to eat any calories! I felt like burping or vomiting for about 20 miles of the 36. (I think a really good perspective on this was written by Jeff Shilt, MD titled, “Tips to help prevent Gastrointestinal Breakdown“)

What I Learned about Nutrition last year:

So I don’t repeat too many things, I’ll share two posts I wrote last August in my attempt to straighten out nutritional plans for the Runovia Triathlon:

1. Figuring out a racing nutritional plan #1 - 8/6/2006

2. Racing nutritional plan #2 - 8/15/2006

Here were the highlights of those lessons:

- eat more than you might think you need (in most cases)
- monitor fluid intake; h2o and sports drink
- drink early in ride
- eat early in ride
- comfort food is good when used wisely (re: Ale 8 and oatmeal cream pies)
- move back and forth between sports drink and food by the hour

My current thoughts based upon this past workout; I forgot about the concept of moving from gel’s one hour to sports drink the next. I will definately try that option again b/c eating seven egel’s in 4 hours was easy to do, but left me feeling like I was unable to eat more. The other issue I feel I had was using the extra strength (not too much extra) gatorade. I’ll just use the regular strength gatorade.

A major lesson for me on this ride was that the extra spikes in intensity / heart rate changed my ability to digest the calories I was taking in. - (really go read the post by Jeff Shilt, MD)

A couple changes that I have made are changing from oatmeal cream pies to honey buns. The pies seemed too sweat and actually became hard to eat, while the honey buns go down really quick and are packed with calories… (the jumbo’s are over 500kcals and they take about 20 seconds to get down!). The second change is using gel flasks. It seems a whole lot easier to manage than using so many packets.

Fatigue.

So this race simulation ride came at the end of my biggest (duration wise, not counting Brevets) week of training this year. I could definately feel it in my legs and noticed it in my heart rates. The highest my heart rate climbed to was 169bpm on the third lap. This was while I was pushing as hard as I felt possible at a couple points, once during a climb and once at the end trying to fly home and go under 2 hours.

In a normal rested state, my heart rates will easily reach the upper 180’s and stay in the 160’s for several hours. (Running they’ll stay in the 170’s for hours.) An example of this was during our 300km Brevet from Atlanta back in May, when we hit a climb in Alabama my heart rate got up to 186bpm and stayed above 180bpm for a good 20 minutes. All of this shows me that there is probably a level of fatigue setting in. (Other signs show this too.)

So yesterday (7/17/07) and today I’m taking it easy, trying to put down a little of that fatigue and come back to have a big training cycle Wednesday through Sunday. While the extra day (today) of less training was unexpected, I hope the rebound will be quicker and I won’t end up overtrained.