Nutrition Archives - Page 2 of 2 - www.pbcyclecoaching.co.uk/

Eat And Drink The Same Yet Still Lose Weight! How?!

Fancy a glass of vino with your dinner tonight?

If the answer’s yes you might have “accidentally” opened the bottle before you’ve finished cooking (more likely before you’ve even started cooking!).

Whereas food has to pass through miles and miles of digestive tubes before it is broken down and reaches the bloodstream, alcohol is absorbed straight from the stomach. This means that the body has to divert its energy to dealing with that alcohol (transporting it around the body, trying to draw goodness from it) before processing your dinner. Basically the alcohol stops your body absorbing lovely nutrients from healthy food.

So why not eat your dinner and half an hour later enjoy a glass of wine. Even though you might eat the same food and drink the same amount of food, by changing the order you’ll get more nutrients down you and you might not get so drunk either! What’s more you’ll feel bloated after fewer drinks so less useless calories too. Everyone’s a winner (except the off licence)!

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19/09/12 Cycling Performance , Nutrition

What Are Electrolytes?

You know when you’ve just had diahhorea you can buy a powder in a sachet which you mix with water to replace the electrolytes (we thought that’d get your attention!) ? Well, when you sweat you lose electrolytes too but what are they?? If these sports drinks come with electrolytes in or if you can get a tablet which dissolves in water isn’t that enough?

No

Electrolytes are essential for bodily functions and if you’re name’s not Bradley Wiggins then you spend a lot more time off the bike than you do on the bike so surely you’d be better off having them when you’re not riding too.

You could pop those tablets all day but that’s a lot of money, a lot of artificial additives and how do you avoid an overdose anyway?!

Here’s a crazy idea – eat some food! We lose lots of different electrolytes when we sweat. Four are more important than others, here they are:

Magnesium

Helps with: Muscle Contraction, Energy Production.

Deficiency can lead to: Dizziness, Fatigue.

Where can I get it?: Pine Nuts, Brown Rice, Dark Chocolate (oh no should we really be telling you that?!)

Calcium

Helps with: Muscle Contraction and Relaxation, Nerve Conduction

Deficiency can lead to: Stiffness, Cramping.

Where can I get it?: Dairy

By the way vitamin-D helps your body to absorb calcium so oily fish or eggs will help and so will the sunshine one day every year in England!

Potassium

Helps with: Nerve Conduction, Energy Generation.

Deficiency can lead to: Nausea, Muscle Fatigue, Weakness.

Where can I get it?: Sweet Potatoes, Tuna, Bananas, Leafy Green Veg, Yoghurt.

Sodium (Salt)

Helps with: Making your chips tasty with vinegar lol! AND Muscle and Nerve Function, Maintaining Fluid Levels.

Deficiency can lead to: Weakness, Nausea, Muscle Fatigue and Cramping, it can Hinder Rehydration

Where can I get it?: Salt (although table salt is more processed and often contains additives, compared to sea salt but this is more expensive), Salty Foods.

Before You Go

There are other foods with electrolytes in but this’ll get you started and who knows, if you switch to these foods you might drop a few pounds too (no not the chocolate!). There are plenty of other electrolytes too and the healthier, more varied and balanced your diet is the more chance you’ll have of getting them.

How many electrolytes do I need??

Bit complicated this one especially as the risks of too much salt is just as bad as losing too much.

Weighing yourself before and after exercise can give you an idea and you can be tested to see if you’re a ‘salty sweater’ (ooerr missus) at http://www.myh2pro.com/sweat-testing but you know it’s all a bit hit and miss. Start eating all the above foods in moderation and you’ll be 90% of the way there 🙂

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18/09/12 Cycle Racing , Cycle Training , Nutrition

Man Up To Avoid Cramp

Great tweet from @MTFU_training: Cramp: It’s just your bodies way of reminding you to train harder for next time. #mtfu

This isn’t as tongue in cheek as it initially seems.

Possible explanations of cramp include:

Dehydration
Loss of electrolytes (sodium, calcium, magnesium, potassium etc)
Not stretching enough
Not warming up enough
Muscle imbalance causing one muscle to do too much work

Having said that, one definite reason hasn’t been found.

We agree with our tweeting friend – if you try to ride harder than your body wants to go then sometimes it’s just gonna say “enough” and cramp is when it’s reached that point!! Train harder, train longer, train more (i.e. man up!) and your body is going to find things easier and may well cramp us less often !!

Thanks Man Up

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13/09/12 Nutrition , Weight Loss

Easy Weight Loss

We need to use 3500 calories to lose 1 lb (approx half a kilo) of body fat.

If you go out on your bike 3 times a week and use 1000 calories then you’ve used 3000 per week. Do you really ride 3 times a week, even during holidays, Christmas, when it’s p*ssing down, when there’s ice on the roads or after heavy snowfall, when you’ve got a cold, hangover, late nights at the office?! Could it be that your weekly average is less than you think? What’s more, remember that if you don’t ride then you are still using calories e.g 60 calories sleeping, 80 calories watching TV or 120 calories going shopping so you might be using 900 calories more than normal, not 1000 after all. Most people ( other than Bradley Wiggins ) haven’t a hope in hell of using 3500 extra calories every week. Exercises increases your appetite too so you might start eating more and the worst part about exercise is you’ll start justifying treats/booze/biscuits as you’ve done some exercise!!

Going to the gym is no better; Intelligent people and Bankers bash away day after day at the gym across the nation, before work (skipping breakfast!), after work, in their lunch hours (skipping lunch now, arrrgh it’s just getting worse and worse) even though the maths just doesn’t stack up. If you went to a restaurant and didn’t eat would you go back? If you went to the cinema and didn’t see a film would you go every week? Why is the gym so different? Why does everyone say they want to lose weight but 1 year later their weight is the same yet they are still a member?. Well, if we had all the answers then you’d be the first to know and we’d be retired but we’ll have a guess and say that we can control what we do for 1 hour but we have no willpower to be disciplined 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

i.e. we need to address the way we eat.

Then (and only then) it gets very easy.

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01/09/12 Nutrition , What Is Nutrition?

What Is Nutrition?

Strange question. Surely You’re Referring To Our Coffee And Cake Stop?!

We all know at least one really skinny guy who can eat what he/she wants and never gains weight and we might even be a little jealous (ok very jealous) but there’s more to food than whether it makes us fat or not.

Macro And Micro Nutrients

Following their Sunday morning 100 mile ride you often here something like this whilst the rider is tucking into cake, a chocolate bar and a latte: “The good news about training for L’Etape is you can eat as much rubbish as you like without putting on any weight!”

Imagine you own a Ferrari. Fill it up with petrol and you’ve got a 180 mph supercar (sorry car geeks we’re only guessing the top speed here!). Now imagine it rains and there’s no wiper fluid or water. Imagine there is no air in the tyres, no oil, no water in the radiator. It is not simply a case of putting petrol in the tank any more, you’re going nowhere!

The petrol is our carbohydrate (or energy) but if we paid attention to the other important nutrients, not only would we get ill less often, sleep better, improve our concentration, our moods and our energy levels, improve the quality of our complexion, hair and nails, we’d recover quicker from training and build more muscle and burn more fat BUT ALSO we’d be much better bike riders for it!!! This sounds like a wonder drug (oops sore subject) but food is soooo much more powerful than you give it credit for.

Along with carbohydrate we need proteins and fats. These three are known as our macronutrients. We also need vitamins, minerals and fibre in there two, known as our micronutrients. Oh and it might be a good idea to throw a fair bit of water in there too!

So whether you want to improve your performance or lose weight (or more likely both), click on the tabs above to read more.

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