The Biggest Loser

Whether you are doing gentle activity or high intensity training, the body requires good fuel to perform at its best. We already know that good nutrition is essential for health. However, when we exercise our body has higher requirements for certain nutrients. Eating for optimal performance is just like fuelling a car for high performance. Cars run better when they have enough of the right fuel, the best lubricants and sufficient water. Similarly, your body performs at its best when it is provided with the right balance of energy, vitamins, minerals and water. This section explains what the body needs to function optimally for exercise.

While a car’s fuel needs are measured in litres, the energy we get from food is measured in kilojoules or calories (4.2 kilojoules = 1 calorie). For example, 500 kilojoules will fuel a 70 kilogram male to walk for 34 minutes, or to go for a light jog or bike ride for 12 minutes.

When people start exercising they often forget about the impact of diet. Food provides energy for our body and has a significant impact on performance. Nutrition training will help find out which foods work for you and which foods don’t – this varies between individuals so foods that give you maximum energy may not do the same for other family members.

Nutrition training simply involves taking note of the foods you eat on training days and how you feel when exercising. If you do this for a short period of time (e.g. 2 weeks) you may start to see patterns emerge and identify what foods make you feel the best to perform and when they should be eaten. Some foods may make you feel uncomfortable and bloated while others may keep you energised for the whole exercise session.

The best fuel for exercise is carbohydrate. Without enough carbohydrates, active people will not be able to perform at their best. Carbohydrate is the only fuel that will support high intensity exercise.

Our bodies can only store limited amounts of carbohydrate (400–500 grams) as glycogen in our muscles and liver that can be utilised during long periods of exercise. Therefore, it is important that we fill these limited stores up for optimal performance.

It is recommended that most people need to consume around 45 to 65 per cent of their daily energy requirements as carbohydrate, or 5 to 10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight. Highly active people who are training for more than 1 hour per day on more than 5 days per week need to consume more carbohydrate than does the average person.

To include carbohydrate foods throughout your day, start with a healthy breakfast based around wholegrain breads and cereals, low-fat milk or yoghurt and fruit. Then follow up with a sandwich for lunch. Good snacks are fruit, yoghurt and crackers. Include potato, rice or pasta with your dinner. Remember, if you are exercising include carbohydrate-rich foods at every meal.

Breads – bread roll, sliced bread, lavash, Lebanese bread, English muffins, crumpets, pikelets, scones

There is a common misunderstanding that more protein will build even bigger muscles. Most people eat plenty of protein and many people eat much more protein than they need. Protein is needed to build and maintain working muscles. However, if we are consuming too much protein, the excess protein does not get converted into muscle. Excess protein will get converted into body fat. Furthermore, consuming excessive amounts of protein negatively affects critical body functions (e.g. kidney function). Expensive sports supplements or protein shakes are not required to get enough high-quality protein to meet your needs.

The general population requires between 0.8 and 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight. Protein requirements can be calculated by multiplying a person’s body weight in kilograms by 0.8 (e.g. for a 70 kilogram person 70 x 0.8 = 56 grams of protein per day). .

The list below shows how easy it is to meet protein requirements. Each of the foods listed contain about 10 grams of high-quality protein. For example, one medium chicken breast (250 grams) would provide 60 grams of high-quality protein alone.

Most people can easily meet their nutrient needs by consuming a healthy, balanced diet that meets their energy needs. Generally, people that do large amounts of exercise do not require any vitamin or mineral supplementation or protein supplements to meet their needs because the amount of food they eat is increased, which consequently increases the amount of nutrients they consume, particularly if they are based primarily around the five food groups.

The key is to make sure you are getting sufficient energy for your exercising needs, but not too much or the excess energy will be stored as fat. Any accumulating weight will impact on your physical performance and efficiency and increase the load pressure on your joints, increasing the likelihood of strains, sprains and injuries. See the section on energy balance for more about keeping in balance.

Training nutritionally means being consistently prepared and organised to consume a diet that is nutritionally adequate, high in carbohydrate, low in fat and with ample amounts of fluid. If you want your performance to improve, make nutrition part of your training regime.

SWAP THIS FOR THAT

If you normally have a bowl of Nutri-Grain with full-cream milk for breakfast, switch to a bowl of blackcurrant Mini-Wheats with skim milk. You will save yourself 208 kilojoules, which is the equivalent to the amount of energy it takes to do 14 minutes of housework.

You can‘t exercise without energy. If you try to exercise without having eaten breakfast or a good-quality snack, you will soon run out of energy and flag. Even if you are exercising first thing in the morning, you should eat something beforehand.

After exercising you need to refuel, repair and rehydrate to allow your body to recover. You can do this with a mix of carbohydrates, proteins and fluid. The best time to do this is within 2 hours of finishing training. Drink plenty of water to help with rehydration, then have a high-carbohydrate, low-protein snack.

Good hydration is as important as carbohydrate for performance. Even for less active people, consuming an adequate amount of water is important for optimal physical and mental performance and wellbeing.

To continue with the car theme, without water a car overheats and blows up. So does the human body. The human body is about 55 to 75 per cent water, depending on gender and muscle-to-fat ratio. Although these figures will vary from person to person, it gives an idea of just how important fluid is to the human body. Water is the liquid of life; without it our body cannot function properly. When exercising, the body maintains a safe temperature through perspiration. Beads of sweat evaporate from our skin to keep us cool, causing a decrease in the amount of fluid in the body. The harder the workout and the hotter the air temperature, the more you will sweat and the more fluid you will lose.

If you do not replenish this lost fluid, dehydration can occur. If you lose as little as 2 per cent of your body’s optimal water levels (that is only 1.2 kilograms in a 60 kilogram person), physical and mental performance will be reduced. You will:

Therefore, when you are exercising you need to take your fluid intake very seriously. You cannot train your body to cope with dehydration, but you can train yourself to drink more fluid. Children can dehydrate easier than children; for more detail.

Before exercise, you should have had enough fluid to ensure that you urinate before starting your excercise program and your urine should be clear.

A way to measure how much water you have lost during exercise is to weigh yourself immediately before and after exercise. Generally speaking, every 1 kilogram of body weight lost is 1 litre of body fluid lost. After finishing exercising our body continues to lose more fluid through sweating and urination. Any level of dehydration also slows down the speed at which water can be absorbed by your body. Therefore, it is recommended that for every 1 kilogram loss you replace it with 1.5 litres of fluid.

A common question when people commence exercising is whether to drink plain water or sports drinks during exercise. In general, water is the best choice for drinking during exercise.

Water is very effective for fluid replacement. For people who are trying to lose weight, water has the benefit of containing no kilojoules. As it contains no sugar, it does not damage tooth enamel.

It is very rare that a sports drink will provide benefits above water to the average person. And, in some cases, sports drinks will hinder your weight loss as they contain kilojoules that will convert to fat unless they are worked off. Sports drinks are, however, useful for endurance or elite athletes.

For children, perhaps the only time a sports drink would provide benefit is during a round robin sporting event where the child is participating in activity repeatedly over a day, particularly if the weather is hot. Since sports drinks taste sweet, children will be more likely to drink them than water.

Consume plenty of fluid in the lead-up to physical activity; enough so that you need to need to urinate before starting to exercise.

Don’t wait until you feel thirsty to drink – by that stage you are already dehydrated.

Clear urine is the best indicator of a good hydration state. If your urine is dark, it is a sign that you need to drink more water.

As a general guideline, people will normally tolerate 300–600 millilitres of fluid with a meal plus an additional 350–400 millilitres during the 15 to 20 minutes before commencing exercise.

Weigh yourself before and after exercising. The majority of weight lost is water (not fat). For every kilogram of weight (water) lost, replenish with 1.5 litres of water.

There is no need to go overboard as there is no benefit with over-hydration. This will simply increase urination and you will feel bloated. If your urine is clear you are well hydrated.

Always have a drink bottle handy when exercising so you can take a sip whenever there is an opportunity; it is the most important tool you can carry. Take small sips often.

SWAP THIS FOR THAT

Rather than snack on a sweet biscuit, try a piece of fruit – you‘ll be amazed at the kilojoule saving. For instance, if you normally have two Monte Carlo biscuits but switch to a small bunch of grapes instead, you will save 515 kilojoules and nearly 10 grams of fat.