Fit Fare

When I began running, around six years ago, I thought that it would be a great way to lose weight. I’d head out of my house in the afternoon, after work, and run away from my house, counting the blocks until I started feeling tired and then I’d turn around and run home.

Soon, twenty blocks turned to thirty, to forty, to fifty and I began feeling pretty comfortable and confident in my running. And I even lost a little bit of weight. Then one day, I saw a flyer for the Honolulu AIDS marathon training and I thought, maybe I could do this? So I signed up for it and within a year, I’d run my first marathon. But here’s the odd part: I didn’t lose any more weight. And I don’t mean that in the literal sense, in which case if I didn’t weigh any less, it could be attributed to muscle gain. I mean, although my endurance was great and I felt that I was in the best shape in my life, I wasn’t any trimmer, couldn’t fit into those jeans, still had the rolls around my belly that made me uncomfortable in a bathing suit.

Why was this happening? Well, for one thing, I knew and could feel that I needed to eat more to sustain the increased exercise, so I ate a lot more and not very carefully. I hadn’t been to a McDonalds for years, but I found myself stopping at one on my way home from the training runs to buy fries because I deserved a reward. I ate pretty much whatever I wanted - especially if it felt like a decadent treat. During this time, I didn’t lose any more weight than I had initially, and after a while, started slowly gaining back the pounds.

Then, as soon as I ran the event, I stopped running altogether to give myself a well-deserved break. And that’s when it happened: in the period of about one month, I gained back all the weight I had lost in the early stages and then some! Even though I’d stopped all the running, my appetite didn’t shrink nearly as quickly. It was very frustrating!
Since then, I’ve learned to be more careful and have begun paying attention to my nutrition, especially when I’m training. The most important thing I learned from a nutrition lecture I attended was to realize that my body is a machine that when properly fueled can be a force to reckon with. The problem, from what I’ve noticed, is that almost all the nutritional information, recipes and diet plans geared towards athletes only think about food as a fuel, and forget that your fuel can also be a delicious treat. Most of the recipes are concerned with delivering the nutritional goods in the simplest, most efficient and easily prepared manner.

In Nancy Clark’s book Sports Nutrition Guidebook, she writes in her opening paragraph to the recipe section:

Active People generally prefer to spend their time exercising rather than preparing meals. The following recipes are designed to help you spend minimal time preparing maximal nutrition.

My interest is quite different: I have been thinking about developing a plan for athletes that is as much of an epicurean voyage as it is a precise scientific study of fueling our bodies for maximum performance.

This meal plan can be simple enough to execute and applicable to anyone from a casual runner to a hiker, marathoner, tri-athlete, tennis or soccer player. The main points to remember are:

• Make sure you don’t skip your carbohydrates. They are the most important form of fuel that your body can readily use. The more exercise you do, the higher the percentage of calories coming from carbohydrates that you will need.
• The best carbs for your every day diet are complex carbs from whole grains such as brown rice, quinoa and lentils. The best carbs for a quick snack right before you work out or during your workout are the kind your body can absorb instantly, such as gel shots or honey.
• Protein is essential for your muscles to recover from hard workouts, but most athletes and non-athletes easily get the amount of protein they need from the average diet. Excess protein can eventually be converted to fuel but no where near as efficiently as carbs are, and if you consume more protein than you need, your body will convert it to fat.
• Eat your fats in moderation. Don’t worry, the beauty of working more does mean that you can eat a little bit more fat in your diet but moderation is always key and you can still make delicious food without using excessive amounts of fat.
• Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! The more exercise you do, the more important it is to make sure you drink enough water. Sweetened sports drinks are fine, although usually a bit more sugars than you really need. It is often best to buy them in powdered form and mix them yourself to limit the amount of calories you are drinking.
• And as always, eat a balanced diets with a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Those are pretty much the most important things to remember. However, it doesn’t really tell us how this translates into practice: what are the best meals I should eat the week before a good run? How can I make a healthy snack that is delicious, but also prepares me for my afternoon workout? Is it possible for me to prepare (in advance) a recovery feast for a post-event party that would be delicious enough that even the non-runners would be impressed?

These are the things that I want to know. Yes, I want to be healthy, run strong and feel great, but I also want a more insiring meal than a plain, bland chicken cutlet, brown rice and broccoli. (Not that there’s anything wrong with this meal, it’s just that it can get, well, boring.)

So today, I’m going to start with the most simple of the recipes: the most important thing for athletes is hydrating. Gatorade, Powerade and those sports drinks are fine and all, but you can make something truly delicious to fill your water bottle with.

The most important thing about these drinks is that they contain, in the water, a small amount of Agave nectar for that little carbohydrate boost and some salt to replace the salts you lose when you sweat.  Agave nectar is a natural, simple sugar sweetener that the body breaks down more slowly.  Because of this, it provides a better, more balanced recovery after exercising.  You can find it at most health food stores or natural food markets.  Alternately, you can use honey or maple syrup.

The basic recipe is to add 5 tablespoons Agave nectar and 1/3 teaspoon salt to each quart of water.  Mix well and cool. The amount of salt is good for marathon runners and athletes engaged in a vigorous activities. You can add less if you are a more casual runner. Now, here’s where we make it interesting: after your water is mixed, you can flavour it a number of ways, but my favourite is the spa water taste: Add about one half sliced cucumber and a few sprigs of mint per quart and let it sit for several hours. Then when you pour it in your bottle, just make sure you strain it to keep the solids from bouncing around while you run.

You can experiment with other flavours, such as herbs, or adding some cooled down herbal tea such as chamomile or peppermint. Whatever you do, it’s usually best to make sure your flavouring isn’t too strong or it may cause discomfort or become annoying after drinking this for a multi-houred run.

Enjoy!
Coming up next time: The Athlete Gourmet - The Perfect Snack