Running to Think: diet

Showing posts with label diet. Show all posts

Monday, 9 March 2015

Sport bars by PRIMAL Nutrition: our review

Dear food lovers,

Today I am writing about a sport bar that might be of interest to many of you: PRIMAL Nutrition.

Who are they?

When two belgian sport fanatics, get a break from their daily crossfit session, something good happens. Here is their vision: without proper nutrition you cannot even get close to your maximal performance. Eating healthy should be a way of living and the way to respect your body. Hence their attempt to engineer sport bars, such that it would be easy to carry and provide the correct amount of carbs, proteins and fat for your workout. Being healthy should be that easy!

What is PRIMAL Nutrition?

The bars that I am talking about are capable of satisfying your body with the primal nutrition needs that are required before and after workout, or just for your own reasons to stay healthy.

They are made 100% of natural ingredients such as the honey, grass-fed whey, dry prunes and dark chocolate. There is science in each of those, namely the Paleo and Zone diet, famous within the world of Crossfit.

The Paleo Diet consists in eating just like we used to, back in the past... way back in the past. If a caveman could not eat it, why should you?

With this, I mean anything that could be hunted or found in the nature. Sorry, pasta, cereal, and candy are not included.

The Zone diet is basically about learning how to put together perfectly balanced meals that promote maximum health, wellness, and performance. As a CrossFitter you should look at Zone as how much you eat. When following the zone diet every meal you eat is 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fat. You also eat a certain number of “blocks” based on how much lean body mass (muscle) you have.

Back to the bars, there are two sizes and one flavor. One as a energy bar (± 150 kcal) the other one as a full power bar or meal (±300 kcal).

The verdict

I chose the medium bars as a snack between breakfast and lunch. This kept me away from snacking around and gave me the energy I needed. I chose the larger bars as my lunch, even thought I have to admit that I needed some time to get used to it in substitution of my regular pasta or salad.

No worries, though. Getting used to it, is easier than you think.

The taste is really good, for those who have a sweet tooth. I could feel the difference with industrial bars which are usually smaller and contain less nutritional values.

The packaging, is simple, as healthy food should be. The fact that you can always see the bar from the package is reassuring. For those following the Zone diet, it is possible to read how many blocks of each nutrient (carbs, protein, fat) are there in the bar.

Overall it is a sport bar that can be used by everyone.

The large bar costs 5 euro while the medium one costs 3 euro.

Want to get some? Order PRIMAL Nutrition at their website

I wish those gentlemen lots of success, believing that passion for healthy food leads to great and tasty things.

Love,

Caroline

Friday, 3 October 2014

Why do I lose fat in places I don't want?

Unknown 14:27:00 cardio , diet 0 Comments

Dear ladies (and gentlemen),

we all know how hard the battle of losing weight is and our attempts to shape the body to what we consider ideal. Big thighs, flappy bellies, hanging arms... all things we don't like and we wish to change by means of exercises specifically designed to destroy that garbage (and us), sometimes in concert with a well-balanced diet.
To begin with, we claim to target a certain body shape. Bad news is that genetics will dictate the uncontrollable. Good news is that we do have the power to change a few things that might actually contribute to our overall satisfaction.
Today I want to be more specific and show you different types of bodies that we usually have to deal with. I'm sure you already heard about hourglass shape, apple shape and so on.

But what you want is probably some technicality. And there you are the categories (somatotypes) into which we are most likely:

Endomorphs – “fat retainers”
Mesomorphs – “athletic”
Ectomorphs – “skinny”

Actually i have some kind of bad news. One thing we cannot do is choosing where we want to loose weight. Detect and target a specific spot to be reduced. Just fiction.
Remember how the layers of an onion are? For most people, fat acts exactly like that. It doesn’t just disappear from a specific place, but rather it comes off layer by layer from the whole body. However, some people have localised areas where fat loss (and of course gain) is more pronounced, and while fat is still shed from all over the body, the loss is proportionately different in different areas.

What I experienced was a mix of both the conditions. When I am losing weight, that occurs everywhere with more emphasis on thighs and breast. Exactly! My breast!!
A nightmare for every woman.
Why does that happen? Well, during the initial stages of weight loss, women tend to lose fat in their breast, which is mainly fat tissue, indeed. Those with the shape of a pear tend to carry excessive body fat in their buttocks, hips and thighs as well.
So, what can we do to prevent this terrifying situation?
Not so many people know that the most important thing for those women to do is to keep their cardiovascular (cardio) activity to a minimum. Specifically to a level that reaps health benefits without excessive loss of fat, while emphasising resistance (weight) training in the effort to increase the size of the muscles that lie underneath the breasts.
While it is not guaranteed to keep the fat of the breast, your breast can very well be perked up by strengthening the main muscle group of the chest supporting them. Think of the pectoralis major and minor.
What I personally suggest is phrased in a kind of motto "eating clean, training dirty", especially those area's you don't really like of yourself. Then try to accept the body you have. I know it's not easy but, at the end everyone is unique and beautiful in his/her own way.
My body changed when i started to eat clean. But let me be honest here: we live only once so have that piece of chocolate staring at you, on the desk, begging you to bite it, once in a while.
After all, that will cost you 3-4 times/week of cardio and strengthening exercises.

Love,
Caroline

Monday, 8 September 2014

Vegetarianism and athletic performance

Unknown 22:58:00 athletic performance , creatine 0 Comments

Dear friends,

as an active vegetarian who does sports, I've always been asking myself if vegetarianism would have had an impact on athletic performance. Therefore I decided to investigate the matter within my master's thesis titled "The Impact of Vegetarianism on Athletic Performance".
This post is a brief summary of my findings.

The nutrients we should plan to have enough in our diet or supplement are:

  Omega 3: found in canola oil, soya oil, micro algae
  Proteins: cheese, milk, beans, tofu, nuts, grains,..
  Vitamin B12: fortified foods such as soy milk, eggs and cheese
  Zinc: tofu, nuts, broccoli, grains, legumes..
  Iron: fortified grains, legumes, nuts, dried fruit,..
  Carnitine: supplementation
  Creatine: supplementation
  Carnosine: supplementation

Don't be scared, those supplements are not on the doping list!
We all know that an appropriate training schedule, usually designed around the needs and qualities of the athlete and his discipline, finds a great correlation with the final performance. How about nutrition?

What we widely agree on is the well-balanced diet that varies between the five most important food groups. We usually refer to it as the food pyramid.

We also know that the diet of high performance athletes differs from the one of - allow me the term - normal people. This is usually due to eating according to their competitions or even training schedule. Our body needs the proper intake of nutrients in order to keep moisture to constant levels, engage a recovery process in an optimal way and keep daily performance at the highest degree.
What we do not know is what happens when we ban one of the five food groups out of the diet.

With this said, let me give a summary of my findings.

Finding #1

Vegetarian athletes who take L-Carnitine as supplement will increase maximal aerobic power, and promote glycogen sparing in the course of prolonged exercise. Supplementation of L-Carnitine increases also the performance of sub maximal exercise and resistance to fatigue.

Finding #2

Higher levels of carnosine should enhance performance and help keeping the level of pH constant in muscles during exercise. It comes without saying that this might be an advantage for strength and endurance athletes.

Finding #3

CoQ10 is also said to boost energy and speed recovery from exercise.

Finding #4

Finally, creatine supplement has been found to have positive effects on vegetarian athletes. In fact, creatine acts as a performance enhancer offering athletes more power and strength for high intensity workouts. Depletion of creatine within the muscle can lead to reduced muscle power and build-up of lactic acid, resulting in rapid onset of fatigue. Oral creatine supplement not only increases the total creatine content of human skeletal muscle, but also seems to affect muscle hypertrophy (an increase in size of the tissue). Creatine is actually the only one of those four supplements with enough significant research and positive results. Other supplements were mainly tested in vitro, on animals or just with not enough research.

What exactly is Vegetarianism? There are five types of diets, defined as vegetarian. But with different levels of - let's say - strictness. They span from very strict to not that strict.

Vegan: Vegans do not consume any animal product. Of course they do not consume red or white meat, fish nor fowl. They also do not consume eggs and dairy products. They do not use honey or beeswax, gelatine and any other animal product. They typically do not use animal products such as silk, leather and wool, either.

Lacto Vegetarian:

Lacto-vegetarians do not eat red nor white meat, fish, fowl or eggs. However, lacto-vegetarians do consume dairy products such as cheese, milk and yogurt.

Ovo Vegetarian: Ovo-vegetarians do not eat red nor white meat, fish, fowl or dairy products. However, they consume egg products.

Lacto-ovo-vegetarian consume dairy products and egg products. This is the most common type of vegetarian people.

Pescetarian: While technically not a type of vegetarian, these individuals do restrict their meat consumption barely to fish and seafood. Pescetarians do not consume red meat, white meat or fowl. This is considered a “semi-vegetarian” or “flexitarian” diet.

Pollotarian: Much like the pescatarian, this “semi-vegetarian” diet restricts meat consumption to poultry and fowl only. Pollotarians do not consume red meat or fish and seafood

Flexitarian: Theirs is a plant-based diet with occasional meat on the menu. These folks do their best to limit meat intake as much as possible and they have an almost entirely plant-based diet. This is not technically considered a “vegetarian” diet, but we commend the effort!

In my research I included only athletes within the category of lacto-ovo-vegetarian. I tried to find the impact of that particular diet on their athletic performance.

I started by looking at the nutrients that are present in meat, fish and poultry. Therefore, I tried to figure out wether those nutrients are really essential for the human body or not. If so, my question was “where can we find them and can we consider them enough for an athlete to perform at his/her fullest?”

What I can confirm is that the lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet has fewer chances of nutritional deficiencies due to the integration of a variety of plant foods, eggs and dairy products.

As a conclusion, with a well-balanced and varied diet, which should definitely be correctly planned, the lacto-ovo-vegetarian will have no negative but neither significant positive influence on his athletic performance.

No evidence from the performance perspective does not mean that being vegetarian is pointless. Positive findings have been related to overall health of the individual under study.

Epidemiological studies in the US, UK and Germany found that embracing a vegetarian diet has the tendency to lower the risks of heart and vascular disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, some types of cancer (such as colon, stomach, mouth, oesophagus, lung,…), high blood pressure, obesity and some other chronic diseases.

It is possible to be vegetarian and elite athletes at the same time. Think about swimmer Murray Rose, tennis player Billie Jean King, six-times-winner of Ironman competition Dave Scott and many many more.

Love,

Caroline

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

What should I eat on race day?

Unknown 22:32:00 diet , iamsofit 0 Comments

Long story short: everything, just in the right amount

CARBOHYDRATES

Most endurance athletes and coaches know how important it is to maintain the body's carbohydrate (glycogen) stores. They are also aware that, despite the fact that the depletion of glycogen may be delayed to a degree, by consuming carbs during activity, the body's stock capacity can only provide enough energy for about 90 to 180 minutes before fatigue sets in.
It is when these stores are exhausted that runners 'hit the wall', cyclists 'bonk' and everybody is doomed to slow down. Some even to quit.

It comes without saying that prolonged exercise forces athletes to get the energy they need from additional sources. The basic rule is to load low glycemic index carbs 3 or 4 days before the race (will digest slowly) and high glycemic carbs during the race so that the body can absorb fast and efficiently.
Here is a table that you better remember by heart.

When?

How much?

Why?

3-4 hours before

2-4 g/kg bodyweight

= ± 210g = 840 Kcal

· Liver glycogen will be filled

·   Blood sugar will be maintained

·   No hunger feeling

1 hour before

1-2 g/kg bodyweight

= ± 140g = 560 Kcal

·   Keep the glycogen reserves high

During

0,7 g/kg bodyweight every hour of sport in intervals of 15-20 min

= ± 49g =196Kcal/ hour

è 50 kcal every 15 min

NB: You can go until 70-75 g/hour

= 280- 300 kcal / hour

è 70- 75 kcal every 15 min

·   Keep blood sugar high

·   Increase carbohydrate oxidation

·   Delaying fatigue

Recovery (until 2 hours after race)

1,1-1,2g/kg bodyweight (preference for high GI)

= ± 84 g = 336 kcal

·   Recover the blood sugar value

·   Resynthesis of muscle glycogen

·   Restore muscle tissue

Main sources: Whole grain, apples, bananas, peaches, asparagus, carrots, rice milk, lentils, just to name a few.

PROTEINS

Proteins alone do not provide energy unless glycogen and fat are depleted and like fat, they can slow down your metabolism. You will typically get enough protein for race day if you eat high quality proteins, such as whey, egg whites, milk, soy, as part of your daily intake. Small amounts of protein during a race may reduce muscle damage. Recovery, however, requires protein. The recommended ratio is of 3 carbs to 1 protein.

Main sources: Eggs, meat, fish, chicken, cheese, beans... But you probably don't want to go for meat ;)

FATS

Another good source of energy during exercise is fat. Fat has several advantages over carbohydrates. As a matter of fact, it yields over twice as much energy as carbohydrate (9 kcal v 4 kcal). Add the fact that our body is usually loaded with a good supply of fat and you get a consistent amount of calories and energy. Typically, the body has approximately 50-60.000 kcal of energy stored as fat compared to about 1500 kcal of glycogen.
One of the effects of endurance training is to make the body a more efficient fat burning machine. Fat is not the enemy, if your body knows how to deal with it.
However, despite the abundant store of this substrate, it is not totally clear where the fat used in exercise comes from. Most fat in the body is stored in the form of triglycerides in adipose tissue. Some fat, known as intramuscular triglyceride, is stored directly within the muscle fibres. It is now believed that the greater utilisation of fat by trained endurance athletes comes from this source. This has a very important implication, because the amount of energy which can be derived from intramuscular triglyceride is thought to amount to only 2000-3000 kcal.

Depletion of the intramuscular triglyceride stores is now thought to limit endurance performance in much the same way as glycogen depletion. It has been shown that the replenishment of glycogen stores alone is not enough to restore maximum work capacity. Therefore, it may be just as important to restore, or strive to spare, the body's intramuscular triglyceride.

Although fats are vital for physical activity, most individuals have enough body fat stored for energy during prolonged workouts.
However, increasing the fat intake will only lead to less consumption of carbohydrates impeding glycogen stores (glycogen being the immediate source of fuel for physical activity). Moreover, fats have the tendency to slow down metabolism in general. Consider fats as a reserve tank of fuel, but keep them to a minimum during training and racing (20-30%).

Main sources: Fatty fish such as salmon, nuts, cheese, avocado, …

Last but not least (and not to forget)

1. Fibers: prevent gastrointestinal distress, they are difficult to digest, especially during high intensity training. Avoid whole grains and fruits with skin. In general, keep fibers to a minimum, at least on race day.

2. Maintain proper fluid balance. This is vital for an optimal performance

Have a nice race!

Sunday, 13 April 2014

What is cholesterol?

Unknown 15:10:00 cholesterol , diet 0 Comments

We all have hectic schedules. We decide to cook something easy, fast or even go for ready-to-eat food to warm up and good luck... Do you know what all of that is? Junk, of course. We deserve better than that. Making healthy choices takes time and effort, I know. But the benefits that we can get in terms of quality of food, energy and health in general are almost immediate.

The question is: what is cholesterol?

It might surprise you, but cholesterol is not that bad. Let me explain. Cholesterol is just one of the many substances created and used by our body to keep us healthy. It is basically a waxy substance produced by the liver and found in certain foods. We use it to make vitamin D, produce some hormones, build cell protections and create bile salts that help you digest fat. Wax to digest fat, exactly. How crazy our body can be. There are 2 types of cholesterol: HDL and LDL. HDL is the so called good cholesterol which helps keeping the LDL (bad) cholesterol from getting lodged into your artery walls. A healthy level of HDL may also protect against heart attack and stroke, while low levels of HDL have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease.

In order to increase your HDL and take its benefits you should reduce trans fats and have a balanced and nutritious diet.
When too much LDL is circulating into blood stream, weird things might happen: arteries can be obstructed at the point that the risk of heart attacks and strokes becomes quite consistent. LDL cholesterol is naturally produced by the body. But a number of people dispose of a good genetic inheritance by which they get more that they should. The overall amount of LDL is also determined by nutritional habits, namely eating saturated fat, trans fats and the junk food that you should be aware of (shouldn't you?)

Diet, as always, plays a fundamental role in lowering your cholesterol. Here are some foods that can lower your cholesterol and protect your heart.

1. Oatmeal and high-fiber foods

Oatmeal contains soluble fiber, which reduces the low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the bad

boy. Soluble fiber is also found in foods like kidney beans, apples, pears, barley and prunes

2. Fish and omega-3 fatty acids
Eating fatty fish can be healthy for you heart because of the high level of omega-3 fatty acids,
which can reduce blood pressure and lower the risk of developing blood clots.

3. Walnuts, almonds and other nuts
Walnuts, almonds and other nuts can reduce blood cholesterol too. Rich in polyunsaturated
fatty acids, walnuts also help keeping blood vessels healthy. Eating about a handful (1.5
ounces, or 42.5 grams) a day of nuts, such as almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, some pine
nuts, pistachio nuts and walnuts, may reduce the risk of heart disease. Just make sure the nuts
you eat aren't salted or coated with sugar.

Did you hear me? No salt. No sugar.
Caroline

Running to Think