I have noticed a trend on people’s food logs in my facility – breakfast either breaks the 4 main habits I look for or is practically non-existent. Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. In fact, on days you don’t train it is the most important meal by far (your post workout meal is almost as important).
Here is something that we all need to be reminded of sometimes – you’re not that advanced! Be it as a rider or in the gym, the vast majority of people reading this are not as advanced as they like to think. It’s called the “10% rule” – only 10% of people are advanced enough to sweat the details.
Here are a couple of examples to better explain this…
Mountain Bike Nutrition & Supplements, Mountain Bike Strength Training
While most people hit Interbike to look at all the shiny new bikes and parts that will hit the market next year, I went into it with a different goal. Sure, I took some time to check out the new bikes and stuff but I was pretty interested in what who had showed up to promote their training equipment and supplements.
As a long time veteran of the strength training game I am pretty skeptical of most supplements and gimmicks but I tried to keep an open mind for most of the stuff. There were not a ton of booths dedicated to training and supplements but there were some interesting things.
On the positive side, I found a few things that definitely peaked my interest. One was a supplement called Ocinna that was touted as increasing body durability. This is basically code for increasing recovery and as you know I am a huge proponent of recovery tactics so I took a few minutes to talk with the owner of the company and see what it was all about.
Nutrition is am immensely complex subject that can actually be boiled down to some very simple steps. Here is a quick rundown on how to easily get your nutrition back on track and dialed in…
Step 1 is to make sure that you are having 5 feedings a day spaced about 3-4 hours apart. Nothing else really matters if you are not getting up, eating breakfast and then making sure to eat something every 3-4 hours after that.
Not that this is the best scenario but if you have a choice between a Snickers bar and nothing at all, eat the Snickers bar. Of course, having some nuts or beef jerky on hand to fill in those gaps would be better but the take home message is to make sure that you are eating every 3-4 hours, period.
Once you have Step 1 down and are consistently eating every 3-4 hours you are ready for Step 2.
Labor Day here in the States means two things for most mountain bikers – riding and a barbecue! However, these two things also tie into two things that have been coming up lately in my readings of nutritional advice from some pretty smart guys.
Let’s look at a common thing found in a ride staple for many – high fructose corn syrup in hydration drinks. I read this great article on www.t-nation.com that everyone should check out regarding this prevalent carb source:
http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_nutrition/thank_you_for_guzzling_corn_syrup
In a nutshell, just like trans fatty acids when man tries to introduce an unnatural food source into the food supply, hormonal havoc usually ensues. This stuff is very prevalent in our food supply and despite the large amount of money spent by the food lobby trying to convince us that it is alright for us to ingest, it seems to do some bad things to our metabolism. It is very readily stored as fat compared to other carb sources, it actually can damage DNA and collagen and it is especially problematic for the 10-30% of the population that is already insulin resistant. All in all, I’ve made it a point to avoid the stuff. Sorry Gatorade but that is seriously not very G.
The second thing I want to bring up is beef. Now, I love beef and I think that it is pretty obvious that we were meant to eat meat (we have canine teeth for a reason). The problem is, though, that the beef we eat to day is not the beef your grandparents ate. Few people realize it but grass fed vs. grain fed beef makes a HUGE impact on the nutritional profile of the end product.
Grass fed beef actually has the same fatty acid profile as salmon. That’s right, eating a burger made from grass fed beef is a lot like eating a piece of one the most healthy fish in the world. Grain fed beef, on the other hand, has a very messed up fatty acid profile. In fact, most of the health risks associated with red meat are not from red meat, per say, but from the screwed up fatty acid profiles brought on by mass produced grain fed beef.
Here is a great blog post from Mike Boyle on this for those of you that want to read some more on it:
http://mboyle1959.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/grass-fed-beef-it-really-matters-what-you-ate-eats/
It is also pretty ironic that high fructose corn syrup and grain fed beef became so prevalent around the same time that the obesity rate and chronic disease rate began to skyrocket. Big food is a lot like big tobacco was – lots of money being thrown out there to combat the mounting evidence that their products are actually killing people.
Anyways, hope this gives some of you some food for thought, so to speak. What you eat really does matter on more than one level. Spend a bit more on the food you eat and you’ll be much healthier for it in the long run.
-James Wilson-
Here is the second part to this two part series. You can read the first part by clicking here.
6) Orange Juice – I use orange juice for pre- and post workout/ ride drinks. Sure, you can spend a lot of money on fancy recovery drinks but I’m not sure that you will get much more out of them than you will a cup of orange juice and a half scoop of whey protein. This gives you roughly 30 grams of carbs, 15 grams of protein and bunch of vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants. I get the pulp free kinds so I don’t have that sitting on my stomach while I ride or train.
7) Ground Flax Seed - While a lot of people have heard of and use flax seed oil, few people make use of ground flax seeds. Ground flax seeds have some unique properties that make it more valuable than the oil in my opinion. For starters it is a great source of fiber, something we all could use more of. Second, it binds to estrogenic compounds in the body and inhibits them from screwing with our hormonal system. FYI, estrogenic compounds are environmental things we ingest that mimic the female hormone estrogen in our body. Anything that helps me poop better and keeps my female hormone levels in check is pretty good in my book.
Avocados – Avos taste great and provide a lot of good fats for us. For those of us who have trouble maintaining weight when we ride a lot avocados provide a calorie and nutrient dense food that can help us keep our calorie levels high. For those looking to shed a few pounds you don’t want to eat a ton of avocados but eating some will provide you with the good fats your body needs to keep its metabolism high.
9) Quinoa – This is a “super grain” of sorts. It has a low glycemic index so it won’t screw with blood sugar levels like refined grain products will. Since a lot of people have allergies to wheat and gluten it provides a good carb source free of those two elements. It is also the only grain in the world with a complete protein, meaning that all of the essential amino acids are in there as well. Add it all up and it should be a staple food in any mountain biker’s kitchen.
10) Lean Red Meat – Yeah baby, I said it – red meat rocks! Seriously, we have canine teeth for a reason and that reason is because we were meant to eat meat. Lean red meat will provide you with protein as well as some CLA (a unique and powerful fatty acid) and some saturated fat (which is not as bad as you may think and is in fact needed by the body). Plus it just tastes good. What says summer more than a wrapping up a sweet ride with some burgers or steaks on the barbeque?
There you have it, my list of Mountain Biking Superfoods. Sure, there are lots of great foods I did include but the intention of this list was not to create an all encompassing food list. Rather, I just wanted to tell you about the foods I personally keep around and use a lot in my quest to keep nutrition as simple as possible.
The trick to making good nutritional decisions is to make sure that you have good stuff on hand so that when you get hungry you can just reach for something good rather than always reaching for the ice cream. Keeping these foods on hand will help you do just that.
-James Wilson-
