It’s a good thing you live an active lifestyle! Exercise can reduce your risk of developing heart disease, certain cancers, dementia, and other diseases of aging. But what most people don’t know is 16% of North Americans will die from low fitness / sedentary lifestyle. That's more than the 14% of people who will die from “smokerdiabesity” (smoking, diabetes, and obesity all combined).

If exercise is so good for us, why are so many people failing to exercise regularly? And how can we get them to exercise by choice? Incentives work in the short term. That is, employees who get a discount on their health insurance premium will initiate an exercise program. But in the long term, people maintain an exercise program if it gives them pleasure, makes them feel good about themselves, improves their mood, and offers friendship.

If you are exercising just to lose weight, think again. What happens when you reach your weight goal? You'll still need to keep exercising to maintain that fat loss, so you had better start a program you are interested in enjoying for the rest of your life!

Thanks to ACSM's Exercise is Medicine campaign, doctors are now being encouraged to prescribe exercise to their overfat, underfit, (pre)diabetic clients, telling them how often, how hard, and how long to exercise. This written prescription has been shown to help improve exercise compliance.

When you’ll be exercising in the heat for more than three or fours hours, you should pay attention to your sodium intake. You might be losing 400 to 1,500 milligrams of sodium per hour (depending on how much you sweat and the sodium-content of your sweat). If you are, let's say, biking for 5 to 8 hours, these losses can take a toll.

Although most sweaty athletes believe sports drinks are an exceptional source of sodium, sports drinks are actually low in sodium compared to many to many other foods.

Here are some portable snack ideas that can better boost your sodium intake. These salty suggestions will likely be a welcome flavor-change if you have been downing sweet gels, sports candies and sugary sports drinks for several hours.

Few of these options offer stellar nutrition, so limit them to during endurance events when your goal is to survive (as opposed to optimize your health!

Salty sports snacks that you can easily carry in a bike shirt pocket or backpack:

Information from food labels, May 2011

For additional information on replacing sweat losses; Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook

Do you know how sumo wrestlers "get fat"? They skip breakfast!

To their detriment, many athletes think skipping breakfast will help them "get thin" by saving a few calories. Wrong! Think again!

My typical weight-conscious client complains, “Every time I go on a diet, I end up blowing my diet and gaining weight.” This has little to do with will power but rather physiology. Just as a person cannot breathe normally after staying underwater for too long, a dieter cannot eat normally after having eaten too little food for too long. That’s the physiology of hunger. The body wants to overcompensate for the perceived “famine” (diet).

My words of wisdom to dieters are: If you want to lose weight, enjoy a hearty breakfast and lunch, and then “diet” at the end of the day so you can lose weight when you are sleeping, not when you are trying to train and perform well. Please, do not eat like a sumo wrestler!

With best wishes for high energy and low body fat,

Nancy

For more information, refer to the weight reduction section in:

Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to find recipes to fuel you for high energy and good health, check out my new app: Nancy Clark’s Recipes for Athletes. The information will help you create meals that make you feel and perform better.

The app offers 71 recipes, searchable by calories, carbohydrate, protein, and fat. You can further sort the recipes by recommendations for what to eat pre- and post-exercise, as well as for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free recipes.

Each recipe comes with a  colorful photo of the prepared dish accompany the recipes as well as additional nutrition information for each recipe so you know the exact health value for each prepared meal.

The app also includes a quick reference listing of the most popular protein and energy bars, sports and energy drinks, and protein powders.

If you live outside the States, you can select imperial or metric measurements.

All this for only $2.99!

Eat wisely and feel great,

Nancy

Available at the App Store:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nancy-clarks-recipes-for-athletes/id429672418?mt=8&ls=1

Contents

I. Recipes

Breads and Breakfast

Pasta, Rice, and Potatoes

Vegetables and Salads

Chicken and Turkey

Fish and Seafood

Beef and Pork

Beans and Tofu

Beverages and Smoothies

Snacks and Desserts

II. Quick Find

Calories

Carbohydrates

Protein

Fat

Nutrient Timing

Special Diets

III. Advice

Sports Drinks

Electrolytes

Endurance Food Recovery Drinks

Energy Drinks

Energy Bars

Protein Bars

Protein Powders

This past weekend I attended a state-of-the-art sports nutrition conference sponsored by SCAN, the Sports and Cardiovascular Nutritionists practice group of the American Dietetic Association. I had the pleasure of listening to the top researchers offer their latest sports nutrition news. Here’s what researcher and registered dietitian Louise Burke, PhD, Director of Sports Nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport, had to say about carbohydrates.

DAILY CARBOHYDRATE NEEDS

•  Don’t try to calculate a diet according to “percentage of carbohydrates”—such as a diet with 60% of the calories from carbs (a typical recommendation for athletes). Rather, define your daily carbohydrate needs in terms of grams per pound (or kilogram) body weight. The guidelines developed by the International Olympic Committee are:

Low intensity exercise:                      1.5 to 2.5 g Carb/lb        (3-5 g Carb/kg)

Moderate exercise (~1 hour/day):      2.5 to 3 g Carb/lb           (5-7 g Carb/kg

Endurance exercise (1-3 hours/day):  2.5 to 4.5 g Carb/lb       (6-10 g Carb/kg)

Extreme exercise (>4-5 h/day):          3.5 to 5.5 g Carb/lb       (8-12 g Carb/kg)

Hence, if you are a serious athlete who weighs 150 pounds and trains for 2 hours a day, you’d need about 375 to 675 g carbohydrate per day. One grams of carbohydrate offers 4 calories, so this equates to 1,500 to 2,700 calories of carb to fully fuel (and refuel) your muscles. This is more carbohydrate than many endurance athletes tend to consume when eating on the run.

• By hitting your carbohydrate targets, you can restore depleted glycogen stores within 24 to 36 hours post exercise.

CARBS DURING EXERCISE

* If you will be exercising for less than 45 minutes, you have no need to consume carbs (such as a sports drink) during exercise. What you eat pre-exercise will carry you through the workout.

• If you will be exercising for 1 to 2.5 hours, you should target 30 to 60 grams carbohydrate per hour. Your pre-exercise snack should carry you for the first hour, and then you’ll want to target 120 to 240 calories of carbohydrate per hour thereafter. This equates to 120 to 240 calories from carbohydrate.

• If you will be exercising for more than 2.5 hours, you should target 60 to 90 grams of a variety of carbohydrate per hour (as tolerated). That’s 240 to 360 calories from sports drinks, dried pineapple, gels, gummi bears, and other carbs that taste good and settle well.  Be sure to practice fueling during training, so you know what foods and fluids work well – and what ones don’t!

Fuel wisely and perform well!

For more information:

www.SCANdpg.org

Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook

Do Hummers need more gas than Mini-Coopers. Of course!

Do athletes who weigh 180 pounds need more calories than those who weigh 120 pounds? Of couse.

While this seems so obvious, I spend too much time counseling 180-pound over-fat athletes who try to eat like a 120-pound ballet dancer. They believe:

1. Food is a fattening “enemy.”

2. The less they eat, the faster they will lose weight.

3. The lighter they are, the better they will perform.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

1. Food is fuel, not fattening. People who eat normally tend to be lean. People who diet tend to be heavy. Hence, dieting tends to make people heavy (in the long run) while learning how to eat normally contributes to a leaner physique.

2. The less you eat, the more likely you are to binge and regain all the weight you lost. This urge to binge is physiological. Just as you gasp for air and cannot breath normally after having stayed too long underwater, you can eat normally after having restricted food the point of feeling ravenously hungry.

3. The best-fueled athlete (who is genetically gifted and well trained) will out-perform the starved athlete who is thinner-at-any-cost.

I invite you to eat wisely, perform well and be at peace,

Nancy

For food help:

To consult with a registered dietitian (RD) who specializes in sports nutrition, find your local expert at www.SCANdpg.org.

To read how to lose weight and resolve dieting gone awry, enjoy the weight-reduction section in my Sports Nutrition Guidebook.

Marathoner Bill Rodgers may have been right when he commented more marathons are won or lost at the porta-toilets than they are at the dinner table! Diarrhea is a major concern for many athletes, particularly those who run. Understandably so. Running jostles the intestines, reduces blood flow to the intestines as the body sends more blood to the exercising muscles, stimulates changes in intestinal hormones that hasten transit time, alters absorption rate, and contributes to dehydration-based diarrhea. Add some stress, pre-event jitters, high intensity effort—and it’s no wonder athletes (particularly novices whose bodies are yet unaccustomed to the stress of hard exercise) fret about "runners’ trots."

Exercise—specifically more exercise than your body is accustomed to doing—speeds up GI transit time. (Strength-training also accelerated transit time from an average of 44 hours to 20 hours in healthy, untrained 60-year old men.) As your body adjusts to the exercise, your intestines may resume standard bowel patterns. But not always, as witnessed by the number of experienced runners who carry toilet paper with them while running. (They also know the whereabouts of every public toilet on the route!) Athletes with pre-existing GI conditions, such as irritable bowel or lactose intolerance, commonly deal with runners’ trots.

Solutions for  intestinal rebellion

    To help alleviate undesired pit stops:

--try exercising lightly before a harder workout to help empty your bowels.

--experiment with training at different times of the day.

--if you are a morning runner, drink a warm beverage (tea, coffee, water) to stimulate a bowel movement; then allow time to sit on the toilet to do your business prior to exercising.

--visualize yourself having no intestinal problems. A positive mindset (as opposed to useless fretting) may control the problem.

The following nutrition tips might help you fuel wisely and reduce the symptoms:

1) Eat less high fiber cereal. Fiber increases fecal bulk and movement, thereby reducing transit time. Triathletes with a high fiber intake reported more GI complaints than those with a lower fiber intake.

2) Limit “sugar-free” gum, candies and foods that contain sorbitol, a type of sugar that can cause diarrhea.

3) Keep a food & diarrhea chart to pinpoint food triggers. For a week, eliminate any suspicious foods--excessive  intakes of juice, coffee, fresh or dried fruits, beans, lentils, milk, high fiber breads and cereals, gels, commercial sports foods. Next,  eat a big dose of the suspected food and observe changes in bowel movements. If you stop having diarrhea when you cut out bran cereal, but have a worrisome situation when you eat an extra-large portion, the answer becomes obvious: eat less bran cereal.

4) Learn your personal transit time by eating sesame seeds, corn or beets--foods that can be seen in feces. Because food moves through most people's intestines in 1 to 3 days, the trigger may be a food you ate a few days ago.

5) Stay well hydrated. GI complaints are common in runners who have lost more than 4% of their body weight in sweat. (That's 6 lb. for a 150 lb. athlete.) Runners may think they got diarrhea because of the sports drink they consumed, but the diarrhea might have been related to dehydration.

6) When all else fails, you might want to consult with your doctor about timely use of anti-diarrhea medicine, such as Immodium. Perhaps that will be your saving grace.

The bottom line 

You are not alone with your concerns. Yet, your body is unique and you need to experiment with different food and exercise patterns to find a solution that brings peacefulness to your exercise program.

Eat wisely & exercise well,

Nancy

Author, Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook

Workshop leader: Tampa March 4-5

Come to the University of South Florida for this information-packed workshop that is geared to helping health professionals teach an effective nutrition message to exercisers and athletes. 10 hours of continuing education with myself and exercise physiologist/protein researcher WIlliam Evans PhD.

Non-professionals who want learn how to enhance their sports diet are also welcome. A good time is had by all!

For more information: www.sportsnutritionworkshop.com

Hope you can come!

Nancy

If you are interested but cannot travel to the workshop, it is available online.