Top Three Nutrition Tips for Improving Performance During Distance Running and Cycling
1. Drink enough fluid. All the training in the world won’t make you a better runner if you are dehydrated. Develop a fluid plan and stick with it. Choose a sport drink to replace fluids, provide carbohydrates, and electrolytes. Find a flavor of sport drink that you can enjoy during exercise—the drink flavor you like at rest may be different from what you want when you are hot and sweaty.
2. Eat carbohydrates at every meal and snack. Good choices include whole grain or enriched breads, rolls, low-fat muffins, waffles, pancakes, and cereals. Vegetables and fruits, vegetable and fruit juices, brown rice, pasta, and baked white or sweet potatoes are also good carbohydrate choices.
3. Eat well during training. Training should include fuel training. Just as you plan your training, you should plan to properly fuel your body. Work with a sports dietitian to learn about nutrition recommendations and create a meal and snack plan that works with your training schedule and performance goals.
1. Avoid high-calorie drinks that are nothing but sugar-water, as sugar can cause imbalanced blood sugar leading to reduced endurance and increased hunger, and avoid artificial zero-calorie sweeteners for the same reason as well as worse problems. Keep hydrated using pottassium-rich watered down gatorade, Hint water, or take a multivitamin that includes pottassium with plain old vitamin-enriched sink WATER.
Avoid enriched and white flour and flour that don’t start the ingredients listing with the word “whole.” Unwhole flour has been refined and is thus has the exact same unhealthy effects as refined sugar. Examples of good sources of carbs include whole wheat flour, whole oat flour, vegetables, potatoes, herbs & spices, and unflavored soluable fiber supplements. Examples of bad carbs include flavored drinks, enriched and white flour, high-sugar fruit, candy, “energy” bars & drinks, maltodextrin, sugar-enriched juice, sugar, corn syrup, and alchohal. It is important to check the ingredients printed on the packages of breads, rolls, crackers, waffles, pancakes, etc., since often packages claim to be wholesome when it only used to be before the healthful parts of the grains had been processed away for longer shelf life. Choosing wholesome carbs makes the difference in your runs.
It is important to be aware of the amounts of calories going out from training and coming in through eating/drinking to make sure you are meeting your weight-management goals every day. Eating too much fuel will make you gain weight which would weaken your training and performance, while eating too little fuel will lose you your body fat and possibly muscle.
I run every day and manage my diet very well, by the way.
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