The world of nutrition is a complex one and depending on who you talk to you can get varying different responses to the same question. If you stick to a few simple principles however, I believe it doesn’t have to be that hard. Knowing a little more about the different types of foods and what they do can sometimes help. So …
Carbohydrates – consistent of starchy and sugary foods. These are your bodies main source of immediate energy supply. They are the easiest to digest. This food is closely related to your insulin levels (explained later). Interestingly this food type is the only type able to be used by your brain. (4kcal per gram of food)
Fats – a demonised food due to it’s name being associated with what people don’t want to be. Fats are denser foods (9kcal per gram of food) so if eaten in excess can soon push your calorie intake above your recommended daily allowance (RDA). Fats are essential for hormone production and vitamin transport and because of their job not being instantly seen/recognised people often have no problem cutting them from their diet (Atkins!) which is not healthy at all!
Protein – a vital food to help repair and grow muscle on a daily basis. 9/10 average people do not eat enough protein even when not training. The addition of protein tends to make foods more expensive. Vegetarians and vegans tend to struggle a little more to get enough protein in their diet but when understood SHOULDN’T be a problem (4kcal per gram of food).
As a rule of thumb, when we eat and train, we should try to maintain our blood sugar levels. It is this balanced blood sugar that will prevent our body going through peaks and troughs. If we spike our blood sugar with a meal heavy in carbs and little else our insulin will rise in response to this. As our body produces more insulin which drives the sugar from our blood into our working muscles, our liver then into storage as fat, respectively. Our blood sugar drops and then we feel hungry sooner. We eat a snack, generally higher in carbs (a chocolate bar) which spike our insulin. Our body produces more insulin to bring down blood sugar levels and so on. Peaks and troughs in blood sugar levels. When continued over a longer period of time this type of eating is what leads to Type ll diabetes, when our body becomes less/non responsive to these frequent sugar spikes. What we should in fact be doing is trying to level our blood sugar throughout the day. We do this by eating plates full of a MIX of fats, proteins and complex, slow release carbs (lower on the glycaemic index (GI)( – search a list of these if you are unsure)). Having more fats and proteins, particularly proteins, on your plate buffers the response of insulin as it slows absorption of the carbohydrates into the blood. Foods higher on the GI will promote higher insulin response and leave you hungry sooner (which coincidently is why these foods are considered bad when dieting. Not because of how many calories they have but how they affect your blood sugar/insulin and leave you hungry sooner).
When we add training to the equation it becomes a little more difficult:
- We should increase our protein content by 5-10% to aid recovery (take these evenly from fats and carb percentages).
- On training days, if we eat 4 meals, 2 of these meals should be based around the workouts. A medium sized meal 1-2 hours before you workout so as to give your body what it needs for the exercise (consider some sources of protein can take up to 4 hours to digest so choose your protein sources wisely or you could end up seeing it again). The other meal within an hour from finishing your working out. This is so you replace what your body will have used during the workout from your muscles, blood and liver and start the recovery process (particularly relevant in endurance athletes as there body will be particularly depleted). Ensure the post workout meal is substantial enough to replace the lost calories but if we eat in excess at this point then your body will store the excess as fat.
- Having now eaten 2 of your 4 meals for the day in potentially a 4 hour window it is now important to choose what and when you eat for the rest of the day so as to balance your blood sugar and not fall into the ‘peak and trough’ trap. These other 2 meals should be spaced out evenly in the remaining hours of the day (dependant on a morning, midday or evening workout). You may find your post workout meal is your final meal of the day and this is ok.
- Eating just before bed and those calories just sitting on your stomach and then being stored as fat is a big fat myth. A study found this to be the case but in fact the correlation they were picking up was just a correlation between people who tended to snack/eat later at night just ate more because it was an additional meal to their day. Calories are calories whether you eat them in the morning or the evening. What eating late does do however is disrupt your sleep and as we know from my other post on recovery this is vital to the recovery process. I would add to this that if you work out just prior to bed (which I have been known to do (I can fall asleep at anytime!)) then I would eat a smaller meal. Remember to plan this throughout the rest of the day for your overall calorie consumption.
- If you are looking to lose body fat alongside training then I would increase protein content even further by between 5-10% above your norm to help promote protein synthesis and muscle growth or at least maintenance . If you are an endurance athlete then I would take the majority of this percentage from your fat allowance. If you are just about lifting weights or you do both endurance and lifting then I would make the 5-10% come evenly from both your fats and carbs allowance.
- If you are looking to gain weight then I would increase your carbs by 5-10% and take the majority of this from you fat allowance. If you are trying to put on just good, muscle weight then aim for an increase of between a quarter and half a pound of bodyweight per week. This equates to around an excess of 150-250kcal of your maintenance per week.
- Maintenance should be exactly that but is not an efficient way to change your body make up. Finding your bodies natural maintenance calories is an important thing to know. A good starting point to get a rough guide for this is any calorie calculator online. Then make small adjustments from there. Find your maintenance and then make your bigger adjustments to suit.
- Stay dynamic and keep the gaining/losing weight in the bracket you need it to be.
I do not write meal plans but instead work from a macro and overall calorie system. I find that this gives you more control over what you eat but also it helps you understand the make up of different foods so you can make better, more informed choices every day. Providing you stick to the few, basic rules above then you can’t go far wrong. With check ins on your foods every now and then to ensure you are still getting enough of a varied diet (to include vitamin and mineral content) you are able to fit the meals around your lifestyle so you are more likely to adhere long-term.
Remember true change and progress is a marathon and not a sprint. Small but sustainable changes are the way forward.
Good luck!
