I remember a time when nobody really cared whether they were eating too many carbs.
Phrases like:
“I’m not eating carbs at the moment”
Would have seemed, quite frankly weird!
But then Dr Atkins came along and low carb hit the main stream.
But as triathletes – what should you do?
- Low carb
- High carb
- No carb
The problem with nutrition and indeed many things in life is the desire to polarise opinion.
It would appear that as humans we like to follow an “ideology”
A way for us – maybe even an identity.
In training this may be:
- The high intensity crowd
- The high volume crowd
In nutrition, it is the high carb or high fat camp.
Which is right?
As is so often the case, the answer depends on you and your circumstances.
There are however a few general principles which apply to most people and in this case one technique which I think works particularly well for the athlete.
The approach is called Carb Cycling and its got nothing to do with riding a bike.
It basically means that on days you train more or harder you eat HIGH carb.
On days you train moderately you eat MEDIUM amounts of carbs
On days you don’t train you eat LOW carb.
This works for obvious reasons.
When you need the energy, you have it, when you don’t, you don’t.
It is slightly more complicated than that in its action but that’s the basics.
Exactly what low/medium and high mean to you depends on your training level and your size.
What is particularly good about this is that it gives you bit of variety – variety that you have in your training but people rarely have with their nutrition.
Imagine if you did the same training session every day – it wouldn’t be long before you got bored.
With this approach you will have some days where you eat a lot and some where you eat a little less but more importantly you are always fuelling you training.
I cover this in more detail in my book – The Triathlon Nutrition Code:
http://www.nutri-tri.com/e-books/
It’s getting reviews like this at the moment – which make me FEEL very proud:
“I downloaded this a week ago. Along with my Garmin and MyFitnessApp as support tools it has transformed the way I look at, cook and eat food. I didn’t think I ate too bad, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Great read and very useful information.” – Gavin Dolman
Thanks Gavin – That means a lot to me!
If you need a little guidance give it a go – http://www.nutri-tri.com/e-books/
For £9.99/$14 ish you can really make a difference to your training, performance, body fat and more importantly than anything else – YOUR HEALTH.
Jamie “Lean, Fast and Healthy” Leighton