Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “nutrition”
In part 1 of this Most Inflammatory Foods series, I covered processed oils. In part 2 here, I will cover alcohol – admittedly not a ‘food’ but it does contain calories. The body can make some limited energy from these calories but they are empty – that is, there is no nutritional value found in them and the processing of …
I feel like we have all had an experience or two where you’re out there having a great ride or run and suddenly, you’re out of energy, or feeling crampy and nauseous or in a worst-case scenario looking desperately for somewhere to go the bathroom wishing you had a roll of toilet paper in your pocket.
Fear of these scenarios happening can lead us to limiting how much we eat pre-workout as well as not taking in enough nutrition during our training sessions or race. This is so unfortunate because we know we need to nourish our bodies for the workout that we are doing but even more importantly to support our recovery so we can make the adaptations we are working so hard for as well as set ourselves up well for our next workout.
Generally speaking, I prefer to highlight the foods and beverages that are beneficial to building optimal health and strength. In doing so, I hope that by including more of these foods we might, by default, crowd out the less than optimal choices. However, this ‘soft’ approach, as useful as it can be in some situations, doesn’t fully educate or bring …
While traditional advice for runners has long been to eat ~60-65% of your diet from carbohydrates, after working 1-on-1 with hundreds of runners and hearing from thousands over the past decade, I do not believe this often recommended high-carb advice serves the majority of runners. To maintain our health and prevent injury over the years, as well as ensure optimal …
The time when perimenopause begins is also a time in life when there are many other stressors that compound the stress effect. This is a time when many women have kids that are teenagers, or maybe a little bit younger, and they are going through things that put pressure on you. Your parents are getting older and may require more care and time. You may be at an important place in your career and of course you also have performance goals and expectations for your sport. All of these extraneous stressors compound and complicate some of the issues that you’re having with hormone fluctuation during perimenopause and the effects carry over into menopause.
Let’s discuss adaptogens that help mitigate those stresses on our body and our body’s response to stress.
Improving Metabolic Efficiency Series (PART 2) In my last post, part 1 of this series Metabolic Efficiency: Why You Should Care, I talked about what metabolic efficiency is, its benefits, how it’s related to our metabolism and how our body makes energy. Personally I’ve used metabolic efficiency to help me achieve my goals and perform well many times over – …
We know that how you train and nourish your body plays a huge part in how well you adapt and ultimately perform. But did you know that those factors also affect your gut microbiome, and why should we worry about that? Well, your gut microbiome influences sleep, mood, body composition, absorption of nutrients, inflammation, our immune system and so much more. You work really hard during training and want to make advantageous adaptions to improve sport performance, and supporting your microbiome is an integral part of that.
I contemplated quite a bit about how to begin this blog post. Speaking about injuries can be a sensitive subject for many runners, myself included. So, I decided to set for a long run a few weekends ago, and let my thoughts come to me organically. I was running along a beautiful river, here in Colorado, and noticed the movement …
With the decline of estrogen overall during perimenopause, we also have reduced anabolic stimulus for building lean muscle mass and bone density. So along with increase visceral fat deposition there is less hormonal drive to build and maintain lean muscle mass. But luckily, we already know that we have strength training methods and strategies to help with building and maintaining lean muscle mass and bone density. To set ourselves up well for the decline in our hormones and to have a plan to support our bodies once those hormones flatline, we need to look at how to use nutrition and nutrition timing in conjunction with strength training.
If you’ve seen my top 10 foods for runners list, you know avocados are on it. For good reason… We runners need healthy fats in our diets and avo’s are a great source. To get all technical, the type of fat found in avocados is monounsaturated fat – specifically omega 9 oleic acid (this is the same kind of fat …
