Through the first decade and more of his long career as a professional cyclist, Chris Horner lived on a diet of Coca-Cola, Snickers bars, breakfast burritos, donuts, Little Debbie brownies and Swiss Rolls, hold-the-veggies sandwiches, potato chips, and fast food. Despite eating this way, Horner stayed lean and light at 150 pounds and excelled as a climbing specialist, winning numerous U.S. races. He saw no reason to fix what did not seem broken—until a crash in the 2009 Tour of California left him unable to ride for two weeks.
Fearing the rapid weight gain that would surely be his lot if he kept living on candy bars and soft drinks, Horner decided to finally give better eating a try. He drastically reduced his consumption of fast food and sweets and introduced fruits and vegetables to his diet. Even after he made these changes, his diet remained far from perfect, but it was much improved—and it made a difference.
Because Horner had always maintained a low body weight and a low body-fat percentage, he had always assumed he was already at his ideal racing weight. But after changing his diet, he learned otherwise. He dropped down to 140 pounds and as a result began climbing better than ever. The 2010 season, when he was 38 years old, was one of the best of his career, highlighted by his first victory in a European stage race—the Tour of the Basque Country.
What’s interesting about the diet changes that led to Horner’s weight loss and improved performance is their simplicity. Any fifth-grader knows that candy bars and soft drinks are fattening and that fruits and vegetables are slimming. Common sense told Horner that if he had less of the fattening foods in his diet and added some slimming foods, he would lose weight—or at least avoid gaining weight during the two weeks when he was unable to ride his bike. There was no need to count calories or learn the glycemic index of whatever he considered putting in his mouth or complicating the process in any other way. All Horner really did was improve the overall quality of his diet.
A year after Horner won his first European stage race, a study from the Harvard School of Public Health validated his commonsense approach to dietary weight management (Mozaffarian et al. 2011). It proved that eating fewer fattening foods and more slimming foods is critical to weight management not just for professional cyclists but also for everyone.
The study included data on eating habits and changes in body weight collected from more than 120,000 men and women over a period of 20 years. The researchers looked at how consumption of just a few, specific high-quality and low-quality foods affected patterns of weight change over time. The average subject gained 16.8 pounds over 20 years. Data analysis revealed that almost all of this weight gain was associated with frequent consumption of low-quality foods such as potato chips and was negated by frequent consumption of high-quality foods such as vegetables.
For example, each daily serving of potato chips was linked to 1.69 lbs. of weight gain every four years. By contrast, each daily serving of nuts was associated with a 0.57-lb. attenuation of weight gain over four years.
It might be tempting to dismiss this study as a case of proving the obvious. Of course people who eat a lot of potato chips gain more weight over time! But the keys to effective weight management—for nonathletes and athletes alike—have always been obvious. The reason so many of us struggle with weight management is that we don’t do the obvious. Instead, we reach beyond the obvious for magic bullets and revolutionary new miracle solutions that promise to make weight management easy but never deliver on that promise.
What the Harvard study reveals is that, although effective weight management may never be easy, it can at least be simple—simpler than tallying fat grams or looking up the gluten content of everything you consider eating. Again, the average fifth-grader knows the difference between high-quality and low-quality foods. With this knowledge and a little discipline, you can identify a few high-quality foods to eat more of and a few low-quality foods to eat less of and thereby attain and sustain your optimal racing weight.
Improving your diet quality is the first step of the Racing Weight plan because it is the single most effective way to get leaner—and the simplest. If you did only one thing to shed excess body fat, adding high-quality foods to and subtracting low-quality foods from your diet would be the way to go. Once you’ve elevated your diet quality, you will be well on your way toward attaining your racing weight. The other five steps of the Racing Weight plan will take you the rest of they way.
When you think about the concept of quantifying how “good” or “bad” a person’s diet is, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a tool such as the glycemic index (GI). But these familiar tools don’t really measure the overall quality of a person’s diet; instead they isolate one specific effect of food on the body among dozens of effects.
Twenty years ago most people had never heard of the glycemic index, which is a measure of how quickly the blood glucose level rises after carbohydrate-containing foods are consumed. Researchers began to focus on the glycemic index in the early 1980s. They found that the body processes equal amounts of high-GI and low-GI carbs quite differently and that these differences might have important implications for health. Their excitement gradually made its way out of the laboratory and into society at large.
In 2002, with the publication of The New Glucose Revolution, the glycemic index burst into the collective consciousness as the low-carb diet craze (which did not distinguish between high-GI and low-GI carbs) sank toward its inevitable demise. In the United States a new diet trend trumpeted the glycemic index as the new skeleton key of weight management. The New Glucose Revolution and the many similar books that followed it taught us that high-glycemic foods increase appetite, cause carbohydrate cravings and sugar addiction, promote fat storage, and lead to the development of diabetes.
There was never much proof that any of this was true, but subsequent research has made it quite clear that the glycemic index is a nearly useless tool for weight management or general health promotion. The essential problem with the glycemic index is that it isolates one characteristic of food, pulls it out of context, and blows it completely out of proportion. Notwithstanding the fact that key tenets of the GI philosophy (such as the notion that high-GI foods promote cravings for more high-GI foods) have been exposed as myths, the key weakness of the GI philosophy is that there’s a lot more to food than its effect on blood glucose.
To draw an exercise analogy, using the glycemic index to guide your diet is a bit like using blood lactate measurements to control the intensity of your workouts. While there is a correlation between blood lactate levels and fatigue, recent studies have determined that there is no causal connection. Blood lactate levels just happen to increase in parallel to other muscle chemistry events that do cause fatigue. And since blood lactate is not only unconnected to fatigue but also tedious to measure, there’s really no point in doing so.
Similarly, many of the low-quality, processed foods we eat today have high-GI values, while most of the high-quality natural foods we are meant to eat have low-GI values. Consequently, the average GI value of an individual’s diet is, in fact, a somewhat reliable indicator of a diet’s healthfulness. However, foods are not high or low quality because of their glycemic index. There is merely an association between properties that make certain foods high or low quality, such as fiber content, and their effect on blood glucose levels.
While the glycemic index is the metric that has distracted the most people from diet quality, there are many other examples, including the inflammatory index, which makes too much of the effects of various foods on systemic inflammation, and pH value (a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a substance), which makes too much of the effects of various foods on body acidity. All such metrics suffer from the fact that they are too narrow. The only truly useful measure of a food’s value is its total concentration and balance of nutrients. So how do we measure food and diet quality?
Before the last years of the twentieth century, research scientists focused primarily on the health effects of individual nutrients. The value of such studies was limited, however, because the health effects of individual nutrients depend heavily on the total dietary context in which they are consumed. Thus, a need arose to quantify the overall quality of a diet to reflect how people really eat.
Various diet-quality indices, including the Healthy Eating Index and the Diet Quality Index, have since been created. The Diet Quality Index has been described (Newby et al. 2003) as “a dietary assessment instrument based on 10 dietary recommendations reflecting dietary guidelines and policy in the United States.” The original Diet Quality Index assigned scores in a range of 0 to 16 (where the lowest score was the best) based on the amount of eight different food and nutrient types present in the diet. These nutrients are total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, fruit and vegetables, grains and legumes, protein, sodium, and calcium. Testing of the original index revealed that its effectiveness as a predictor of disease risk was limited by the fact that it did not consider these aspects of diet:
•VARIETY: A more varied diet tends to reduce disease risk,
•PROPORTIONALITY: The proportions of various nutrients and foods relative to one another matter.
•MODERATION: A diet that provides more calories than needed tends to increase disease risk regardless of where the calories come from.
Hence a revised index that incorporated these factors was created and has been used ever since.
While the Diet Quality Index is a useful tool in nutritional epidemiological studies, it is far too complex for the average layperson to use to monitor and control the quality of his or her own diet. During the past 15 years, nutrition scientists who recognized the potential value of a dietary-quality measurement tool for individual consumers, and the inadequacy of existing scientific tools for this purpose, have proposed various new metrics that do not require a doctorate to implement.
Not satisfied with any of the existing tools that individuals might use to manage their own dietary quality, I created the Diet Quality Score (DQS) several years ago (see Table 4.1 for how to score each food group and food serving). It works by assigning a score to your total eating for one day that is the sum of point values assigned to the individual items you eat throughout the day. The higher your DQS score, the healthier your diet is. The DQS represents a simple, practical, realistic, and holistic approach to measuring diet quality. It is a tool you can use as often as every day to generate an accurate picture of how healthily you’re eating without making a significant commitment of time and energy.
The Diet Quality Score considers the intrinsic wholesomeness of foods as well as the factors of balance and moderation that also contribute to overall diet quality. Foods are divided into the following 10 categories: fruits, vegetables, lean meats and fish, nuts and seeds, whole grains, dairy, refined grains, sweets, fried foods, and fatty proteins. Foods in the first six of these categories are high quality and therefore add points to your daily DQS. Foods in the last four categories are low quality and therefore subtract points from your daily DQS. To determine your DQS for any given day, all you have to do is identify the category for each item you’ve eaten, find the point total assigned to that category, and tally the points.
The DQS encourages balanced eating through its use of six separate high-quality food categories. To maximize your daily DQS, you need to eat foods in all six of these categories, in part because the point value assigned to foods within any given category declines as you consume more servings of them throughout any single day. For example, your first, second, and third daily servings of dairy add 1 point each to your score, but your fourth serving adds none, your fifth serving subtracts 1, and your sixth serving subtracts 2. This feature of the DQS reflects the fact that it is possible to consume too much of any food no matter how nutritious. The declining point value of high-quality foods with multiple servings also encourages moderation, because it ensures that you cannot indefinitely increase your DQS simply by eating more.
The DQS approach to diet-quality assessment has been indirectly validated by a large study conducted by Swedish researchers (Michels and Wolk 2002). The authors of this study divided foods into “healthy” and “unhealthy” categories very much like the high-quality and low-quality categories of the DQS. The diets of more than 58,000 women were analyzed for the variety of healthy and unhealthy foods they contained. The researchers discovered that those women who ate the greatest variety of healthy foods had the lowest mortality rate over a 10-year period, while those who ate the greatest variety of unhealthy foods had the highest mortality rate.
Before I give you specific guidelines on using the Diet Quality Score, let me first define and explain the 10 food categories. I will be the first to admit that strictly defining some food categories as high quality and others as low quality is somewhat artificial. In truth, I don’t think it’s quite accurate to classify any food category as low quality. A can of soda could save your life in the right circumstances, for example. Going even further, I don’t like the nearly universal practice of distinguishing some nutrients as “good” and others as “bad.” By definition, a nutrient is a chemical compound that the body can use to keep itself functioning. Therefore, all nutrients are good in one sense. Consider the example of saturated fat. This nutrient is widely considered to be bad, but the human body uses saturated fats in all kinds of helpful ways. Saturated fat is good. It just so happens that the modern diet contains too much of it. In most cases, what we really mean when we label a certain nutrient bad is that we tend to consume it in excess.
The logic by which I developed the high-quality and low-quality food categories of the DQS was this: I wanted a set of categories that would, in a practical, if not a scientifically rigorous, way, encourage individuals to consume enough of the nutrients (such as fiber) that most of us do not consume enough of and to consume fewer of the nutrients (such as sugar) that we typically consume in excess. I don’t really believe that meats that are slightly more than 10 percent fat are low quality and that meats that are slightly less than 10 percent fat are high quality in any rigorous sense. I do, however, believe that designating them as such is a helpful way to promote more balanced nutrition.
With respect to weight management, quality is a function of three specific attributes of a food type: naturalness, calorie density, and nutrient density. Of these, naturalness is the most important.
Naturalness has to do mainly with how long a type of food has been a part of the human diet. The longer our species has been eating a type of food, the more natural it is for us and the more favorably it affects our body (including our body composition). Naturalness also refers to the relative “wholeness” of a specific food. Foods are more whole when they are less processed or modified from their natural state. For example, refined wheat flour is less “whole” than whole-wheat flour and therefore less natural. Likewise, processed meats such as many cold cuts are less whole than unprocessed meats, especially those from grass-fed livestock.
As we’ve seen, foods that are less calorie dense are less likely to promote weight gain. Natural foods tend to be less calorie dense than processed foods, but there are exceptions. Yet natural foods are less likely to promote weight gain even when they are more calorie dense than processed foods. For example, nuts are more calorie dense than white bread, yet they are “slimming,” whereas white bread is fattening.
Research has shown that when people add more nutrient-dense foods (or foods with higher concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients) to their diets, they become less hungry, eat less, and lose weight (or gain it more slowly) (Fuhrman et al. 2010). This doesn’t mean you can throw a bunch of powdered vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants into a blender with water, drink it, and expect to stay full until your next mealtime. Natural foods tend to be more nutrient dense than processed foods, but even when they’re not, they have a stronger effect on hunger, eating, and body weight.
Neither energy density nor nutrient density can be considered independently of naturalness in assessing the quality of a food type.
To use the DQS effectively, you need to know how to count servings for the various food types listed in the DQS table. With high-quality foods, I believe in using commonsense guidelines for serving sizes that are based on the amounts we typically eat. While it is often said that we tend to eat excessively large portions these days, this is typically not the case with high-quality foods such as vegetables and whole grains. The thing to watch out for is counting too small a portion of a high-quality food as a serving. A packet of ketchup does not count as a vegetable serving (and not because it’s technically a fruit)! In the following sections I present commonsense serving-size guidelines for each of the 10 food categories. While I do define serving sizes for low-quality foods, any amount of an unhealthy food (within reason—you don’t have to count a single sip of soda or two french fries) counts as a serving. I define serving sizes for low-quality foods in this way so that you will be sure to count your portions of such foods as two servings when you consume more than one serving’s worth of them!
Here’s the basic information you need to know about the six high-quality food categories.
The fruit category includes whole fresh fruits, canned and frozen fruits, and 100 percent fruit juices. Commonsense fruit serving sizes include one medium-size piece of whole fruit (e.g., one whole banana), a big handful of berries, and a medium-size glass of 100 percent fruit juice. Fruits are considered high quality because they are rich in a variety of essential vitamins and minerals. In addition, fruits are packed with technically nonessential nutrients, known as phytonutrients, that function as antioxidants in the body. Until recently it was believed that phytonutrients functioned in the same way as the body’s endogenous antioxidants, such as glutathione, which directly neutralize free radicals. Now it is believed that phytonutrients are actually weak toxins that stimulate the body’s endogenous antioxidants through a stress reaction, much as other positive stressors such as exercise strengthen various systems of the body. In any case, we know that men and women who consume high levels of fruits exhibit higher antioxidant capacities, are less prone to chronic diseases, and live longer.
Fruits also contain a lot of fiber and water and relatively few calories. The effect of a food on hunger is determined primarily by its volume and only secondarily by the calories within it. Fiber and water add volume to foods without adding calories. Consequently, they have a high satiety index, which means that they provide a relatively large degree of hunger satisfaction per calorie and promote a lean body composition. The health benefits of fruit consumption are optimized at an intake level of three to four servings per day, as reflected in the Diet Quality Score.
Note that fruit juice counts as fruit in government and other official dietary guidelines. This is a controversial assessment, however, because fruit juices do not contain all of the nutrients in the whole fruits they come from. For example, most of the flavonoids (antioxidants) in oranges are contained in the pulp, very little of which makes its way into orange juice. Thus, while 100 percent fruit juices are more nutritious than most beverages, I do not recommend that you rely on them to meet your daily fruit requirements.
The vegetable category of the DQS includes whole, fresh vegetables eaten cooked or raw, canned and frozen vegetables, and pureed or liquefied vegetables used in soups, sauces, and such. Commonsense vegetable serving sizes are a fist-sized portion of solid veggies, a half cup of tomato sauce, and a medium-sized bowl of vegetable soup or salad.
Like fruits, vegetables are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients; contain large amounts of fiber and water; and are relatively low in calories, so they provide nearly everything your body needs to function healthily and promote a lean body composition. The benefits of eating vegetables, like those of fruit, are maximized at an intake level of three to four servings per day.
Included in the lean meats and fish category are all types of fish and meats that are 10 percent fat or less. A commonsense serving of meat or fish is the size of your open hand.
Epidemiological studies such as the one from the Harvard School of Public Health that I described earlier in the chapter have generally found that people who eat more meat tend to gain more weight in the long term, while people who eat more fish tend to gain less weight. I believe that if a study were to look at consumption of lean meats specifically, it would find that their effect on body weight is similar to that of fish.
Both fish and lean meats support a lean body composition because they are high in protein, which is the most satiating macronutrient calorie for calorie and is also less readily converted to body fat than fats and carbohydrates. Fish and lean meats are also good sources of a variety of vitamins and minerals, including vitamin B12 and iron.
Examples of lean meats and fish include beef tenderloin, water-packed canned tuna, skinless chicken breasts, wild-caught fish, extra-lean ground beef, extra-lean ground turkey, London broil, lean roast beef, turkey breast, leg of lamb, and pork tenderloins. Eggs can be counted as a lean meat despite their high fat content. People who eat eggs regularly tend to be slightly leaner than people who don’t.
The original DQS system lumped nuts and seeds together with lean meats and fish in a category labeled “lean proteins.” I’ve since given nuts and seeds their own category because their nutritional profile is really rather different from that of meat and fish and because it seemed counterintuitive for animal foods and plant foods to share a single category. The nuts and seeds category includes all the commonly eaten varieties of nuts and seeds as well as natural nut butters (without added sugar), such as peanut butter and almond butter.
Nuts and seeds contain a highly satiating combination of proteins and healthy unsaturated fats. It is not surprising, then, that research (Bes-Rastrollo et al. 2009) suggests people who eat a lot of nuts tend to have slightly lower than average body weights. A commonsense serving of nuts or seeds is a palmful. A commonsense serving of any nut butter is a heaping tablespoon.
The whole-grain category includes brown rice and breakfast cereals, breads, and pastas made with 100 percent whole grains. Commonsense servings of whole grains are a fist-sized portion of brown rice, a medium-sized bowl of cereal or pasta, and two slices of bread.
Even though some nutrition experts encourage minimal consumption of any and all grains, because they are less nutrient dense and more calorie dense than vegetables, I believe that whole grains have a place in the endurance athlete’s diet because they are rich sources of carbohydrate, which is the energy source that endurance athletes need most. Whole grains have more fiber, vitamins, and minerals than refined grains, such as white rice. Whole grains also support a lean body composition. Studies have shown that individuals who consume the greatest amount of whole grains are less likely to be overweight than those who eat fewer whole grains (Good et al. 2008). This is in part because whole-grain calories are more filling, so those who tend to choose whole grains over refined grains eat less overall, and because the body uses more energy to digest whole grains than refined grains.
My original DQS system categorized low-fat dairy as a high-quality food group and whole-milk dairy as a low-quality food group. I’ve since tweaked the system so that all dairy foods are categorized as a high-quality food group. The reason is that there is no difference between the long-term effects of whole-milk dairy and low-fat dairy on body weight. All forms of dairy tend to limit long-term weight gain. In fact, the Harvard School of Public Health study found that yogurt attenuated long-term weight gain better than any other food, including fruits and vegetables.
Indeed, because whole-milk dairy is less processed than low-fat dairy, it is arguably a higher-quality food. It is not a food’s effect on body composition alone that determines its quality. Its total nutrient content and its naturalness also count. Remember, all six categories of high-quality food are distinguished by their naturalness, high nutrient density, and beneficial effects on body composition.
Dairy foods support a lean body composition through their high protein content and also their high calcium content. Calcium reduces the activity of a hormone called calcitriol that promotes fat storage.
Dairy foods encompass all foods made with milk, including milk itself. Goat and sheep’s milk count as well as cow’s milk. Commonsense servings of dairy include a glass of milk or the amount of milk you’d normally use in a bowl of breakfast cereal, two slices of deli cheese, and a single-serving tub of yogurt.
Dairy foods that contain added sugar—including ice cream, frozen yogurt, some nonfrozen yogurts, and many flavored milk products—should be double-counted as dairy foods and sweets.
Here’s the basic information you need to know about the four low-quality food categories.
The category of refined grains includes white rice, processed flours, and all breakfast cereals, pastas, breads, and other baked goods made with less than 100 percent whole grains. Commonsense servings are the same as they are for the whole-grains category—a fist-sized portion of white rice, a medium-sized bowl of cereal or pasta, and two slices of bread.
Refined grains are classified as low-quality foods in the Diet Quality Score because they contain more calories and provide less satiety than whole grains. There are 100 percent whole-grain varieties of every grain-based food you might care to eat, from bagels to ziti, so it just makes sense whenever possible to choose them instead of varieties made with refined grains.
This category includes all foods and beverages containing large amounts of refined sugars, including soft drinks, candy, pastries, and other desserts. If you’re unsure about whether a certain food or beverage should be counted as a sweet, use the second-ingredient rule: If any type of refined sugar (which includes brown rice syrup, brown sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, maltose, sucrose, and sugar) is listed as the first or second ingredient, it’s a sweet.
Even though they do not contain sugar, diet soft drinks sweetened artificially should also be counted as sweets. Studies have shown that regular consumption of diet sodas causes as much long-term weight gain as a daily habit of drinking regular soft drinks. The reason appears to be that artificial sweeteners alter brain chemistry to promote overeating.
Here’s the good news: Dark chocolate does not count as a sweet if it’s at least 80 percent cacao and eaten in small amounts (no more than 100 calories’ worth at a time). One serving a day of dark chocolate need not be scored because it contains less sugar than most sweets and is rich in heart-healthy antioxidants.
Sweets other than dark chocolate are classified as low-quality foods because they are a major source of excess calories in the American diet. Seventeen percent of the average American’s calories come from sugars. That’s ridiculous. Sweets promote body-fat accumulation more than any other type of food because they are extremely calorie dense and provide relatively little satiety.
I didn’t have to wander far in my local grocery store to find examples of everyday foods that must be counted as sweets in the DQS system because some form of sugar is their second (or even first) ingredient. Each of these foods is to be scored as another food type as well. For example, Mott’s Apple Sauce is a fruit and a sweet.
I’m not suggesting you need to swear off tomato soup and granola bars. But do read the list of ingredients a little more carefully. And remember, just because something is organic doesn’t mean that it passes the second-ingredient test!
Commonsense serving sizes of sweets include one small cookie, 12 ounces of soft drink, one label-defined serving of candy or (less than 80 percent cacao) chocolate, one regular-sized slice of pie or cake, and a scoop or bowl of ice cream.
This category includes all deep-fried foods such as potato chips, fried chicken, fried meats, and donuts. All snack chips except popped corn are in this category, including those that are not fried and even those made with vegetables other than potatoes and corn. The differences in calories are typically marginal, as are the differences in nutrient density. Snack chips just aren’t a category of food you want to rely on when you’re trying to get leaner.
The fried foods category does not include pan-fried foods such as stir-fries and fried eggs. Commonsense servings of fried foods include one small bag of potato chips, one fried hamburger patty, three or four buffalo wings, one small bag of chips, one small order of french fries, and one donut.
Deep frying adds a ton of calories to the base foods being fried. For example, a 156-gram baked potato contains roughly 145 calories, whereas a medium serving of french fries (117 grams) contains 387 calories. The oils used in frying are some of the most calorie dense foods in existence. Including fried foods in your diet is a surefire way to gain excess body fat. Eat as few of them as your cravings will allow!
Fatty proteins are meats containing more than 10 percent fat as well as farm-raised fish. Fatty-protein serving sizes are the same as low-fat meat serving sizes—enough meat to fit in your open hand. Examples of fatty proteins include bacon, beef ribs, bologna and most other cold cuts, tuna packed in oil, chicken with skin, regular ground beef, regular ground turkey, farm-raised fish, ham, most cuts of lamb, prime cut beef, pork chops, pork ribs, rib eye steaks, salami, most sausages, T-bone steaks, and veal.
Many of the foods we commonly eat contain foods from multiple categories. How should these be scored? Use commonsense servings to score the constituent parts of the combination food individually. For example, suppose you have a few slices of pepperoni pizza. Count the crust as one serving of refined grain, the tomato sauce as half a vegetable serving, the cheese as one serving of dairy, and the pepperoni as one serving of fatty protein.
Condiments, sauces, and spreads generally add a substantial number of calories to foods without contributing much to their satiating effect. Thus, they could be considered their own class of low-quality foods. When used sparingly on otherwise high-quality foods, they don’t do any harm, so don’t score them at all. But if you dip your french fries in mayonnaise or smoother your pork ribs in barbecue sauce, apply a –1 score to the mayonnaise or barbecue sauce in addition to subtracting 2 points from your DQS for the french fries or ribs.
Of course, some foods in this category are not low quality. If you snack on tortilla chips with homemade guacamole, for example, count the guacamole as a vegetable because it’s typically made from nothing but vegetables (although avocado is technically a fruit) and spices.
Bear in mind that DQS is a created phenomenon, not a discovered phenomenon, so there is not a single right way to score every food. If you do the best you can to score complex foods such as stews and casseroles fairly, this tool will work as it’s intended.
In moderation, alcohol consumption has a positive effect on cardiovascular health and no long-term effect on body weight. Do not score your first alcoholic drink of the day if you’re female or your first two if you’re male. Each additional drink earns a –2 score, however, because drinking beyond moderation is much worse than not drinking at all.
Coffee and tea are also good for heart health owing to their anti-oxidant content. Do not score any coffee or tea you drink if you drink it unsweetened or lightly sweetened. If you drink lattes or other coffee- or tea-based drinks with a lot of milk, creamer, or sugary syrup, apply a score of –1 or –2 depending on the size and what you have added.
What about sports drinks, carbohydrate gels, energy bars, and other ergogenic aids? Anything you consume during exercise should not be included in your daily DQS as the normal rules of food quality are suspended during exercise. Research has shown that when athletes take in calories during exercise, they consume fewer calories afterward, so the calories in ergogenic aids are truly negated.
Many endurance athletes frequently snack on energy bars outside of exercise. Those bars that are made primarily from whole grains and other natural foods such as nuts and fruit (Clif Bar) should be scored as follows: first serving: +1; second serving: –1; additional servings: –2. The reason is that even the healthiest energy bars provide a limited nutrient profile, are very calorie dense, and have a low satiety index, so they quickly turn from a positive to a negative when relied on too heavily during the day. Energy bars that are essentially candy bars in disguise (PowerBar Triple Threat) should be scored as follows: first serving: –1; any additional servings: –2.
Now that you know how to calculate a one-day Diet Quality Score, it’s time to use the DQS to improve your diet. The first step is to calculate an initial score to establish a baseline. Write down everything you eat over the course of one day, determine the food types and the number of servings represented, and add up your positive and negative points. Having established your baseline, find ways to increase your DQS.
There are three ways to do so: (1) eliminate low-quality foods from your diet, (2) add high-quality foods, and (3) replace low-quality foods with high-quality substitutes. I recommend that you start by making substitutions. Eliminating low-quality foods is not the best way to start in most cases because it tends to reduce dietary satisfaction. By replacing low-quality foods with high-quality alternatives, you maintain a steady level of eating while reducing excesses in sugar, fat, and total calories. It’s the least disruptive way to improve your diet quality. Table 4.2 illustrates simple ways to improve the quality of common types of meals and snacks eaten throughout the day.
The next way to improve your DQS is to add high-quality foods. I recommend that you add fruits and vegetables first, as these are the high-quality foods your diet most likely lacks. Add servings until you are consuming at least three and preferably four servings of each. Easy ways to add fruits and vegetables to your diet include adding fruits as midmorning and midafternoon snacks and simply doubling vegetable portion sizes at meals. Don’t be concerned that adding high-quality foods to your diet will promote weight gain. These foods provide more satiety than they do calories, so when you add them, you will naturally eat slightly less of other stuff.
There are different strategies you can use to improve your diet quality. If change is not difficult for you, it might be best for you to make a bunch of changes simultaneously. Other personalities might find it more effective to make one or two changes at a time. Naturally, the first approach will give you faster results, whereas the second is likely to feel less disruptive and overwhelming. Neither option is inherently better than the other, but each is better for some people. Consider your psychological makeup, and choose the option that will work best for you. Regardless of how you decide to begin improving your diet quality, be sure to calculate your daily DQS as long as the process of improving your diet lasts so that you can quantify your improvement and create a new personal target score.
The maximum possible score on the DQS is 32. You will achieve this score by eating four servings of fruits and vegetables and three servings of lean meats and fish, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and dairy and by not eating any low-quality foods whatsoever. You don’t need to hit a DQS of 29 every day—or ever, for that matter—to reach your racing weight and maximize your endurance performance and overall health. Instead of trying to achieve a perfect DQS, focus instead on improving your existing score until you are satisfied with the results you get. Once you have arrived at that point, there is no need to improve it any further. Continue to calculate your DQS every once in a while to make sure you are hitting your personal target, whatever it is.
Table 4.3 presents three sample one-day food journals and their scores. The first is a very-low-quality day’s eating that is unlikely to allow any athlete who eats it to attain his or her optimal racing weight, assuming that portions are determined by appetite (which in turn is influenced primarily by body size and activity level). The second food journal represents a fairly high-quality day’s eating that is likely to be sufficient for the attainment of optimal racing weight for some athletes but not others (again assuming that appetite determines the amount of food eaten). The third food journal represents a very-high-quality day’s eating that is likely to facilitate optimal racing weight attainment in any athlete.
