This is an introductory post to what I foresee as a series of more specific articles dealing with aspects of diet and performance nutrition. I will cover topics as diverse as the myth of the dangers of cholesterol, the pitfalls of meatless eating, benefits of fatty acid supplementation (think fish oil here), Paleo and Zone Diets, anti-inflammatory eating along with other related topics. I will try to cover topics that readers do not have the time to research or are simply unaware of. I will try and distill the information down to the salient points and how this knowledge can be used in our own programs.
But first, a little background on my interest in the subject...
Nutrition. This is a HOOOOGE topic! It also happens to be my favorite subject related to health and athletic performance. I've been geeking out and experimenting with all things that deal with food and nutritional supplementation for at least 30 years. I've been suckered into so many countless fads involving regular food and ergogenic aids that I've lost count. Luckily for my readers, I've always been the Guinea Pig. Most of these experiments have amounted to nothing significant in terms of effects on my health and/or performance and have cost me little besides some cash and perhaps some tasty food that was avoided as a consequence of the experiment.
These days I enter into new dietary forays with a somewhat jaundiced eye after so many years but venture forth still in hopes of discovering something meaningful. But back when I was (more) gullible, I jumped on these trains with a level of zeal that both frightened and amused my friends. Not really sure why some of us feel compelled to do this while others just sit back and watch. Sure, they're interested in what I might discover but possess no compulsion to join in.
My motivation for these exploits have varied. Sometimes they are driven by body image, other times by health and wellness and still others by performance. I can distinctly remember my first supplement purchase. I was a freshman high school swimmer, new to the sport but eager to improve. One of the stars of the team told me I should eat protein powder to get bigger and stronger. At 5 foot 1 inch and 93 lbs I could use a big dose of both. I went to Walgreens pharmacy and found some (protein powder, that is). It was the rankest stuff I had ever tasted and I gagged each time I tried to drink it. The whole smoothie thing had not not occurred to me yet. Needless to say that experiment did not last long and I remained a puny, skinny boy until, well, pretty much..uhh...shit, who am I kidding? I'm still a puny, skinny boy! Only difference now is that I shave.
It was also during this time that someone made a comment to me regarding performance and food. As a young swimmer we had to do two-a-day workouts a couple of times each week. I was getting up a 5:30am which is asking a lot for a teenager. Initially, I was drinking Carnation Instant Breakfast and heading out. One of the best coaches of my life asked me one morning what I was eating before practice. I told him and he was flabbergasted. He said I might as well be eating a lane rope! So, from then on, my mother (god love her) would get up with me and make two poached eggs on toast on those brutally early mornings. Pretty sound pre-workout nutrition for 1976. I didn't really understand why eating was so important but I felt and performed better with this improved routine. The funny thing about this era is that during our 2-3 hour workouts we ate and drank nothing! Can you imagine swimming 10,000-13,000 yards without any food or liquid? We would be so hypothermic by the end of training that we would spend 30 minutes or more in the hot showers just bullshitting and trying to warm up.
I discovered rock climbing in my sophomore year of high school and soon bailed on the regimented life of a swimmer. I suffered from a case of athletic ADD back then. One of my mentors for this new obsession was a vegetarian (more on this nonsense later!) who lived on apples, peanut butter sandwiches, granola bars, yogurt and protein powder mixed in apple juice. He also climbed 5.13 before it was common to do so. Being me, I quickly adopted this kooky regimen. As a student, it was cheap at least. Can't really remember how long it was before I kicked this diet to the curb but it was probably when I was washing dishes at a nice restaurant in Sun Valley and skiing all day. I was pretty much shoveling down all the free food I could get my hands on each night.
I didn't think much about training and food again until I was in the Army in 1983. I got into weight lifting and, like most lifters of that era, read Muscle and Fitness magazine. In it were tons of ads for various supplements, protein powders and other worthless shit. I spent lots of money on this stuff trying to get big. I got bigger and stronger but it was mostly the training that did it. Still, I remained very interested in the promise of enhanced nutrition. None of us realized back then that it was the illegal supplements (anabolic steroids) that body builders used that made them so huge, not the whey protein they were associated with in those pages.
With the arrival of the modern Ironman triathlon age in the 80's came more thoughtful nutrition recommendations for endurance athletes. Eastern European cycling coaches of the era were still recommending eating a variety of protein sources including things like horse meat when the sport's stars living in San Diego were rinsing their cottage cheese and cutting all fat from their diets. As I got into road cycling during this era I mimicked some of these practices. In my nutrition course for my undergrad I kept a food log which revealed a 75% carbohydrate diet. Egad! I look back now and mourn the absence of olive oil and meat in my life then. I also had no time for salads since I saw them as calorically inert as I tried to get down 6,000 calories a day. Instead, I was often stuffing a half dozen bagels down my pie hole each day and eating pounds of pasta each week all the while avoiding any dietary fat like it was a fatal virus!
Around 1990, I was going fast and starting to win bike races. I also splurged on a massage from time to time when I could afford one. One body worker I used called herself a Cherokee medicine woman. To say she was interesting is an understatement. She was a full-on earth mamma talking about my chakras and other voodoo. During one rub, much to my surprise she said that she felt I should be eating some red meat. Being a granola head she was surprised to hear herself making such a recommendation. However, she had some scientist friends at UCLA that told her that there was some important stuff in red meat that could benefit athletes and she passed this on to me. Well, I didn't waste much time jumping on that train and started adding 3 ounces of steak to my pasta each night. I'm not going to credit this dietary shift to my increasingly winning ways back then but it was a welcome step in the right direction.
In the mid-90's I stepped away from competitive athletics for nearly a decade and, instead, focused on ski mountaineering and alpine climbing. I also lost touch with various developments in sport science and nutrition. The one item that did not escape my notice was the popularity of energy gels and protein/carbohydrate energy drink mixes. I used both during various long, single-push outings in the mountains to good effect. Guys like Mark Twight and Steve House were doing huge efforts in the mountains on little more than Gu and water. Interestingly, after Steve and Rolando Garibotti ascended the Infinite Spur on Mt. Foraker in the Alaska Range in an unheard of 25 hours, fueled mostly with Gu and water, Rolo told me that he did not think that gels were the "answer" in that kind of environment. He felt that, although effective at fueling such an effort, they were heavy for the amount of calories provided. I have not checked in with him lately to see what he is eating in similar efforts nowadays.
Rolo's misgivings aside, energy gels have remained a staple in various endurance sports. The one exception is in the professional cycling peloton where gels are more a supplement to solid food during the typical 4-6 hour event. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference and tolerance to these products. Personally, I love the gel products for their convenience and use them exclusively in most road races. They allow for simplistic and easily-monitored fuel intake that gets me to the finish line. During the Logan to Jackson road race last year (330 Km), I pounded down a total of 9 caffeinated Cliff Shots for the last 40 miles. By putting three gels in a 5 shot flask I can dilute the mix to an easily downable liquid that works great for me. One flask per hour in addition to either straight water or a dilute mix and I'm set.
Energy bars have also become big business during this same time period. I remember eating my first Powerbar during the summer of 1987. The company marketed well early on and most of the endurance stars used them. It was popular for the triathletes of the day to unwrap them and stick pieces of each bar onto the top tube of their bike to ease access to calories. I will admit to eating hundreds of them over the years. Powerbar was very generous with sponsorship in the early days and I welcomed the cheap calories. On the other hand, I can't remember ever racing with them much. I recall a couple of episodes where I started to eat one only to spit it out as an attack happened and I found that sucking wind through my nose just didn't cut it. After that, bars were relegated to training and recovery.
Although products to support racing and training continue to be released, they all share carbohydrate as the common denominator. Some companies add various things like electrolytes and amino acids and claim to be superior but none can get away from the fact that when we race and train at 70-100% of our VO2 max, we are using primarily carbs for fuel. Also impossible to escape is the fact that we can only process about 300 Kcal an hour, give or take. These two facts ultimately keep things pretty simple and the only thing that needs attention is personal taste and tolerance.
So, all this stuff is what I like to call "Frankenfood" and, in my opinion, has a limited place in the athlete's diet. For some training and racing it serves a purpose in terms of caloric density, simplicity and convenience. But what it lacks is the absence of processing and a resemblance to the original food substrate from which it was derived. I mean, come on, look at a Powerbar (sorry, I keep picking on them but they are the most recognizable). You read the label, see a few things you recognize as food but when you look at this tan blob in your hand it could just as easily be clay or compressed kitty litter. And this where the problem starts and ends for me. Somewhere along the line endurance athletes moved away from real food diversity and toward the convenience of this processed pseudo food.
Some are worse than others, of course, and I don't want to dismiss all of them. I think Clif Bar was the first company to embrace organic sources and using ingredients in a more recognizable state. Bravo to them. Another product I'm even more fond of comes from closer to home just over the hill in Victor, Idaho. Small business owner, Kate Schade, has produced the Tram Bar from ingredients that fit my criteria for food. Simple, mostly organic, easily recognizable ingredients produced locally by loving hands I trust. Break one of these tasty bad boys (or bad girls, if you wish) up on a plate and you can identify most of the little bits and match them with the list on the label. Deliciously elegant!
Although the "technical" food market continues to develop, there is movement afoot that seeks to remind consumers how to eat as our DNA demands. As I will discuss in later posts, most of the diseases of modern times can be traced back to the onset of agriculture and animal husbandry. A more plentiful and stable food supply surely allowed the explosion of the human population but came at the expense of our health. And if you adhere to the beliefs of guys like Gary Taubes, the author of "Good Calories, Bad Calories," then you know that much of the problem lies with our dependence upon refined carbohydrates as a calorie source. I will break down these concepts later in a future post.
This type of iconoclastic thinking has also spawned ideas like the Paleo Diet, the Zone Diet and others. They all share a similar fondness for eating real food, minimally processed and nearly always recognizable in its' original state. There are very few "boxes" out of which to eat this food and avoiding these vehicles will take you far to getting on what I think is the right track for daily nutrition. Concepts like "shopping the perimeter" of the grocery store are also good starting points and I will detail these and other strategies later.
The complex and synergistic relationships of hundreds of compounds found in whole food stuffs will most likely never be duplicated by food scientists. Supplementation has a role in wellness and performance, for sure, but will never take presidence over the consumption of a wide variety of minimally processed, organically grown and raised real food. - Brian