Base training is a traditional phase of cycling periodization and is utilized by coaches and athletes alike to prepare their bodies for the greater physiological demands the build and peak phases bring, increase aerobic capacity while ideally maintaining anaerobic capacity, increase sport specific strength, and improve pedaling technique if needed; essentially you are training for the sake of training and improving, not for a specific race or goal. There has always been much debate over what ‘camp’ an athlete should choose – Traditional or Sweet Spot. This article will hopefully serve to make your choice a little easier, and if not, feel free to scathe me in the comments 😉

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Why ‘Base’ Train?

Base training is all about bettering your aerobic capacity, improving your body’s ability to use fat versus carbohydrate to meet the energy demands of the muscle, and increase the percentage of VO2 Max at which you burn primarily fat (this can be lower than 50% for untrained athletes, and 90% for highly trained).

The key here is to stimulate and progressively overload your aerobic system WITHOUT having a huge accumulation of lactate (i.e. going above your ‘lactate threshold’). If you continually go above your lactate threshold and sustain it for a length of time, your body will prefer carbohydrate over fat to meet energy demands of the muscle due to carbohydrate being a more efficient supplier of energy (with caveats of course).

Quick Digression about Lactate

Before we move further, let’s speak a little bit in regards to lactate. Lactate is a product of glycolysis. Glycolysis is an energy system used by the body to break down glucose (stored as glycogen in the liver) into pyruvate and lactate. Think of pyruvate and lactate as teeny-tiny molecules that the mitochondria use to produce ATP (energy). The amount of pyruvate or lactate produced depends upon how much oxygen is present in the cells at the time of glycolysis.

In exercise where lots of oxygen is present (aerobic) your body will produce more pyruvate and less lactate. When you continue to push yourself into the higher power zones and above your lactate threshold, oxygen level in the cells will decrease and you will go into anaerobic energy production, thus producing increased lactate and decreased pyruvate.  Continue to push harder and the levels of lactate produced will continue to increase while pyruvate levels decrease. I.e. the fuel ‘mixture’ of fat (pyruvate) to carbohydrate (lactate) changes as an athlete works closer to their individual lactate threshold.

Back on Topic

Another issue in this argument is the amount of training stress (TSS) Zone 2 creates versus Sweet Spot…

Zone 2 for 1 hour

1 hour at Zone 2 steady state (.65 IF) will provide approximately 42 TSS/hour.

Sweet Spot 2×20 Minute Intervals

A 1 hour Sweet Spot focused workout (.9 IF intervals) produces 69 TSS, or roughly 30 TSS/hour more compared to Zone 2. Said another way, Sweet Spot training can produce roughly 40% more training stress per hour compared to Zone 2 with similar physiological changes and benefits! This is why GC Coaching uses it so frequently with our athletes that are on a time budget.

Planning your training off TSS is a great way to truly know if your training density is enough to create a positive return on your training time investment, and something I highly recommend you doing. Plus, it removes the guesswork from training and actually simplifies things once you understand it.

Now, let’s talk about the 2 methods of base training relevant to this article a little more…

What is the ‘Traditional’ way to Base Train?

Traditional base training involves doing A LOT of long duration riding at low to moderate intensity (i.e. Zone 2) with the goals of increasing capillary density, mitochondrial density, muscular endurance, and mental strength (pain tolerance). This sounds great in theory, but is it just an archaic way of thinking and training? Yes and no…Yes for the athlete who does not have 20+ hours per week to train and needs to get a better return on their training time, and no for the athlete who has oodles of time to dedicate to their training (remember training density). Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water though…

I utilize zone 2 training with my athletes when they are coming out of their race season and into their off-season to give them a mental break and remind them that they can just ride their bikes for enjoyment. Then again during their transition phase to prepare their bodies for the higher volume and intensities to come. Zone 2 is also where you spend a lot of time when you are cruising in the peloton during a race, so you need to be used to spending hours in this zone before race season starts. Most importantly though, Zone 2 is more than appropriate for the athlete who can spend enough time in it to achieve the required training density (TSS) for progress. This just happens to occur VERY rarely in my experience as most athletes work full time, have families, and other obligations aside from pedaling their bikes… Being an adult is hard sometimes.

So, if you don’t have hours and hours to train like a professional athlete, what should you do to increase your aerobic capacity? That, my friends, is where Sweet Spot training comes in.

What is the Sweet Spot Zone?

The Sweet Spot zone is between 84-95% (make it simple, and call it 90%) of your FTP, think high zone 3 and low zone 4…

This is called the Sweet Spot zone because it is smack dab in the middle of where you get the best bang for your buck in terms of return on training time invested. You can spend a lot of quality time here without building up undue fatigue which allows for greater repeatability and increased training density over the course of a training block.

Let me say that again and really drive that thought home… You can spend a lot of quality time here without building up undue fatigue which allows for greater repeatability and increased training density over the course of a training block. The absolute KEY with sweet spot training is the time you spend working in it, and the frequency at which you repeat it per week. Remember, training density, is what matters for fitness progress. If you can’t make more time in your schedule, the only other way to increase density is through intensity (i.e. Zone 2 versus Sweet Spot).

Most importantly though, you can spend a lot less time in Sweet Spot compared to zone 2 training and get similar physiological improvements. Thought of another way, espresso and coffee have a similar caffeine content, but you need a lot less espresso to achieve the same caffeine buzz.

Another Consideration

I’ve seen thousands of FTP tests and analyzed data from hundreds of athletes over the years, and it is my opinion that the non-lab FTP tests (those without a lactate analyzer) over-estimate FTP. I say this because the definition of FTP is:

The power output that a well trained, fresh, and motivated athlete can hold in a quasi steady state for 1 hour.

This is definitely possible with very highly trained athletes, BUT in my experience, most athlete’s time to exhaustion (TTE) is in the 30-45 minute range at FTP, NOT 1 hour. So, I would argue that the Sweet Spot range is actually closer, and more accurate, to an athlete’s true FTP (as defined above) and is a better approximation of lactate threshold which is what an FTP test is trying to estimate, in essence.

Benefits of Sweet Spot Training

The above table helps to really hammer the training density point home. As you can see, zone 2 training does help to improve a myriad of aerobic factors, but you need to spend ample amounts of time working in this zone to reap the benefits. Now, look at the Sweet Spot zone, you can achieve the same increases in aerobic factors, but in half the time needed compared to zone 2.

This does not mean to go absolutely bananas and do every single workout at Sweet Spot zone. Figure out, or ask a coach :-), what your races for the season will need to be done at in terms of length and intensity. Then, match the amount of Sweet Spot training to this with a goal of being able to maintain Sweet Spot for the longest climb in the race, your longest TT, or criterium/cross race length. For example, if you are a Cat 5 road racer, you don’t need to be spending 2 hours working at Sweet Spot when your longest race of the season will be 60 minutes.

“This all sounds awesome, Shayne!  You are telling me I can can workout for half the time and get the same benefits!?”

Not so fast my friends…

Drawbacks of Sweet Spot Training

Refer back up to the physiological adaptations table, notice that Sweet Spot training does jack squat for your anaerobic system, neuromuscular power, and fast twitch muscle fibers? This is a huge issue because athletes who specialize in road races, criteriums, cyclocross events, and track races rely heavily upon their anaerobic systems and fast twitch muscle fibers to generate breakaway power, power up a short and steep incline, accelerate after a sharp turn, and get off the blocks as quickly as possible. So, make sure you are using the later stages of your off-season effectively and not just increasing your aerobic capacity if you plan on competing in any of these events! There will be another article regarding the ‘Build’ phase of a periodized plan which will be more appropriate to speak about that.

Another drawback of Sweet Spot training is the ride lengths usually aren’t long enough for certain athletes. For example, an athlete who specializes in road racing will typically spend 3 hours+ riding their bike during a typical road race, but if they are only spending 90 minutes on their bike at a time, even if they are working at a respectable intensity, chances are they will not have the muscular endurance or, pain tolerance, to last for 3+ hours and be able to produce a decent enough kick at the end to win. So, make sure you are still getting out for those longer rides at least a couple times a month in the winter to maintain your muscular endurance and mental fortitude!

Wrap it up Already!

As the winter closes in and your training time invariably decreases, don’t waste your time spinning aimlessly at zone 2 if you can’t achieve enough training density doing so!  Instead, include some Sweet Spot work into your routine and continue to watch your FTP and fitness rise steadily throughout the winter.  Remember to not just spin at Sweet Spot though as you will indubitably lose your anaerobic and neuromuscular power. Finally, zone 2 still has it’s purpose! It is beneficial for those athletes who have a ton of training time available, are burnt out from a long season of racing, coming back after injury, or preparing their bodies for the high volumes and intensity of the build phase. Whatever camp you choose, just keep pedaling 🙂

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“The Training Book” is a series which chronicles Bereda Training’s conversations with coaches, athletes, scientists, and industry thought-leaders as we seek to learn from the best and share knowledge with Endurance Athletes about how to improve, whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced. We discuss a variety of endurance sports, trying to gain insights from how different disciplines approach their craft. The idea is simple: if we talk to enough people, maybe we could write a book 😉

In this episode, Shayne Gaffney, Head Coach of GC Coaching, outlines the importance of helping athletes make important changes in their lifestyle in order to support their athletic pursuits.

He’s not just coaching Cyclists, he’s coaching people to become Athletes.

In the episode, he lays out his thoughts on the first few chapters of our eventual Training Book, which include:

• Making Time
• Building Habits
• Athlete Mentality
• Sleep
• Nutrition
• And generally… how to be an athlete.

Shayne has advanced training knowledge but works with a lot of beginner and intermediate level athletes and focuses on helping athletes set up their training and lives in unison in order to be successful on the bike. He takes a holistic approach to training.

Enjoy!

Eating the right foods to support endurance training is just one piece to the puzzle. When you eat matters too. Nutrient timing is such an important part of endurance training and supporting your body with the right foods at the right time, but it is also a big topic of confusion as there never seems to be a clear-cut answer as to when exactly you should eat.  

In this article, I am going to clear up the confusion and dive into what nutrient timing is, why it’s so important, and what the science says about exactly when endurance athletes should eat.

What is Nutrient Timing?

Nutrient timing sounds pretty simple, but it can be a bit complex. It’s about knowing when the best time to eat is before, during, and after training as well as what to eat. It is used to help support your body through endurance training for optimal athletic performance. But, nutrient timing is also focused on looking at how different foods impact your body at different times, which we will be covering next, so keep reading. 

Why Does Nutrient Timing Matter?

Nutrient timing can play a super important role in endurance training as you are literally fueling your body before training, replacing what has been lost through sweat, and providing additional fuel to keep blood sugar levels stabilized. Nutrient timing also involves eating to help replenish depleted glycogen stores and supporting muscle recovery.

Without eating the right foods at the right time, you run the risk of reduced stamina, low blood sugar, poor muscle recovery, and overall poor athletic performance.  

In addition to supporting the body for optimal athletic performance and recovery, here are some of the other benefits of nutrient timing. 

• Improves overall health.
• Supports nutrient positions-this is all about where the nutrients are going once you eat them.  
• Supports better energy balance. 

The Best Time for Endurance Athletes to Eat 

So, what does all of this mean for the kinds of food endurance athletes should be eating and when they should be eating them?

Let’s take a closer look at what and when endurance athletes should eat, based on the nutrient timing model.  

Fueling Before Training: 

When to Eat Before Training: It is so important to fuel your body before training, and it’s important to eat 30-60 minutes before training begins. 

What to Eat Before Training: So, what should you be eating before training? It is best to enjoy a carbohydrate-rich snack that is around 200-300 calories. You will want to stick to carbohydrate-rich foods and try to avoid anything that is too high in fiber or too high in dietary fat as they can be harder on the digestive system. Some great choices include sweet potatoes, oatmeal, bananas, brown rice pasta, unsweetened Greek yogurt with granola and raw honey. You want to provide your body with an easier source of fuel that will be used directly for energy support during training. 

It is also important to hydrate your body. Ideally, you will want to start hydrating 2-4 hours before you start your training and then continue to drink water throughout exercise, ideally containing some Skratch powder.  

Fueling During Training:

When to Eat During Training: When it comes to endurance training, you will need to replenish your body with a fuel source along with staying hydrated. Studies have shown that athletes need to consume carbohydrates throughout training if they are active for longer than 1-2 hours. The studies have shown that adequate carbohydrate intake for endurance athletes training for 1-2 hours would be 30 grams of carbs per hour, 60 grams of carbs per hour for training 2-3 hours, and 90 grams of carbs per hour if you are training longer than 2.5 hours. As you can see, the longer you train, the more carbohydrates you will need. Be warned though, once you start approaching 90 grams per hour, you have a higher risk of digestive problems. So, practice before the event / race to see what your individual tolerance to carbohydrate absorption is. Some of my athletes can consume 110+ grams per hour with no problem, where others are lucky to ingest 60 grams.

Studies have also found that high-quality carbohydrates boost physical performance. High-quality carbs are what fuels and sustains an endurance athletes energy levels. High-quality carbs have been found to provide muscles with energy needed for endurance training. 

Protein also plays an important role during training as it can help prevent muscle breakdown. To help support the body’s protein requirements, strive to get 20 grams of protein in during long periods (over 2 hours) of training, but don’t consume all 20 grams at once. Try to stay below five grams of protein per hour of training to help reduce the chance of digestive upset. 

What to Eat During Training: To help support your muscles and energy levels during training, you can snack on things like grass-fed jerky for protein, and whole-foods bars made with fruits and whole grains for carbs. Bananas and other low-fiber fruits like melons can also make a good carbohydrate fuel source.

Refueling After Training: 

When to Eat After Training: After training is when your body really needs to refuel and replenish those depleted glycogen stores. Eating after intense exercise is also essential for proper muscle as well as tissue recovery. To help support muscle recovery through muscle protein synthesis and to replenish glycogen stores, it is important to eat a protein-rich meal with some complex carbohydrates as soon as you are finished training. Ideally, your meal should contain 20-25 grams of protein after endurance training. 

A meal rich in carbohydrates that is easily absorbed and digested right after intense exercise can also help support what’s called glycogen resynthesis which involves glycogen replenishment post endurance training. Studies have found that endurance athletes can achieve total muscle glycogen resynthesis within 24 hours when consuming an average of 500-700 grams of carbohydrates over that time frame. 

Since glycogen resynthesis tends to be at its peak within the first two hours after training, you can boost glycogen resynthesis by consuming 0.70g glucose/kg body weight every two hours. 

What to Eat After Training: A great way to get both protein and carbs is to make a nutrient-dense post workout shake which contains:

• Unsweetened almond milk.
• Unsweetened raw cacao powder.
• Some full-fat unsweetened Greek yogurt.
• A frozen banana.
• You can add a tablespoon of pure maple syrup and some added superfoods like chia or flaxseeds as well.

Drinking this immediately after training will help support both muscle recovery and provide your body with the carbohydrates it needs to support those depleted glycogen stores. It also makes a really easy and convenient way of getting your carbohydrates and protein in without having to make a meal immediately after training.  

You will also want to enjoy a balanced meal about two hours after training to continue to help replenish and nourish your body. 

The Importance of Fueling Throughout the Day & On Non-Training Days 

Nourishing your body with optimal nutrition on non-training days is just as important as it will help to support your muscle recovery and nourish your body with what it needs to be in tip-top shape. 

Be sure to consume at least three balanced meals each day with two nutrient-dense snacks in between. Meals should have a balance of complex carbs, clean protein, and healthy fats. Snacks can include things like two hard-boiled eggs with a side of fruit, or a half of an avocado sprinkled with sea salt. 

The Takeaway 

To help sum this all up, here’s a breakdown of what you need to know. 

• Eat 30-60 minutes before training fueling up with a carbohydrate-rich snack between 200-300 calories. 
• If training for 1-2 hours, consume 30 grams of carbs per hour of training, 60 grams of carbs per hour for training 2-3 hours, and 90 grams of carbs per hour if training for more than 2.5 hours. 
• Strive to get 20 grams of protein in during long periods of training, getting five grams of protein per hour of training to avoid digestive upset. 
• Post training, try to eat right away and consume 20-25 grams of protein and 0.07g of glucose/kg of bodyweight every two hours. 

Nutrition plays such a critical role in how well your body performs when it comes to endurance training, and nutrient timing can be such a useful tool in helping your body function at its best. Try implementing these tips and time your meals and snacks appropriately to get the most out of your training. Many athletes are surprised at how much better they feel before, during, and after training with just a few adjustments to when and what they eat. 

If you’re looking to learn more about sports nutrition, create flexible, sustainable, and indefinite habits when it comes to healthy food choices, and have a knowledgable Coach in your corner throughout the process, check out our Nutrition Coaching program.

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Resources 

1. Ryan Andrews. Precision Nutrition. All About Nutrient Timing. 

All about nutrient timing: Does when you eat really matter?

1. Friedman JE, Neufer PD, Dohm GL. Regulation of Glycogen Resynthesis Following Exercise. Dietary Considerations. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1901662 

1. Asker Jeukendrup. A Step Towards Personalized Sports Nutrition: Carbohydrate Intake During Exercise. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008807/ 

1. Kimberly Mueller, MS, RD, CSSD. The Triathlete’s Guide to Protein. http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/news/articles/2016/01/triathletes-guide-to-protein.aspx#axzz5dd91yc5x 

1. An Athlete’s Guide to Everyday Nutrient Timing. https://www.hprc-online.org/articles/an-athlete-s-guide-to-everyday-nutrient-timing 

A gray area surrounds our use of the term “anaerobic threshold”, and especially in endurance sports where FTP is commonly used to describe it. Conflicting opinions exist on what actually constitutes the anaerobic threshold. Terms like lactate threshold and OBLA (onset of blood lactate accumulation) are used interchangeably with anaerobic threshold—and for good reason. Outside of a research setting, those using these terms are all attempting to describe the same thing. The point where exercise intensity can no longer be maintained. It’s like the tipping point of exercise. Similar to hitting your 25^th birthday—the ball starts rolling out of control and it’s all downhill from there. In this incredible moment of exercise a spectacular number of changes to your physiology occur. 

 Seemingly all at once…

”there is nonlinear steep increase in ventilation, known as ventilatory anaerobic threshold, a non linear increase in blood lactate concentration, known as lactate threshold , a non linear increase in CO₂ production, an increase in end tidal oxygen, an increase in CO₂ production, an arterial lactate level of 4 mM/L, known as onset of blood lactate accumulation (OBLA), and an abrupt increase of FEO₂ (expired O₂ fraction).” ¹

 What does this all mean?— It means your body isn’t keeping up with the demands of the activity you’re doing.

 What is Anaerobic Threshold?

 If you’re an endurance athlete, you’re all too familiar with your anaerobic threshold. Your legs start to burn, catching your breath becomes more difficult—you can’t maintain this speed. Once beyond your AT it’s only a matter of time before you become exhausted or you must slow down.

 Staying just below anaerobic threshold is the max level an athlete can work at for a long time without experiencing a significant increase in blood lactate levels.

 Increased blood lactate levels are a marker showing that your mitochondrial respiration is falling behind in production of ATP. Without the necessary amounts of ATP (energy) we can’t maintain that level of exercise.

 The “father” of the term anaerobic threshold made this statement in his original paper on the subject:

“The onset of anaerobic metabolism during exercise can thus be detected in three ways: (1) as an increase in the lactate concentration in blood, (2) as a decrease in arterial blood bicarbonate and pH and (3) as an increase in the respiratory gas exchange ratio (R).”

-Karlman Wasserman

 This was written in 1964. Since then the understanding of anaerobic threshold and how it impacts performance has been developed and refined—but this statement still holds true.

How Anaerobic Threshold Limits Performance

 Most endurance athletes are familiar with the importance of their Vo2 – it’s a representation of your aerobic ability. But perhaps anaerobic threshold is an even more important factor in your performance.

Vo2 max is a measurement of how much oxygen your working muscles can consume at their highest capacity. Having a high Vo2 shows you have a high cardiovascular potential—your body can deliver large amounts of oxygen to your muscles. This is an important aspect of performing at a high level—but what it doesn’t tell us is what percentage of your Vo2 you can maintain for an extended period. That’s what anaerobic threshold tells us.

This means it’s possible for an athlete with a Vo2 max of 50ml/kg/min to outperform an athlete with a Vo2 max of 57ml/kg/min. It all depends on when they reach threshold. Threshold levels range drastically across training statuses, with untrained individuals having the lowest relative levels and elite athletes having the highest.

Average people hit their anaerobic threshold around 50-60% of the Vo2 max, while trained athletes don’t experience threshold until 70-80% of their max. And elite athletes? Some don’t reach anaerobic threshold until 90-95% of their Vo2 max. 

Common Tests to Estimate Anaerobic Threshold / FTP

Outside of a laboratory setting its difficult to precisely pinpoint the level at which you reach anaerobic threshold, but there are several ways of getting an accurate estimate.

Old Faithful – The 20 Minute Test

• Warm up for 10-15 minutes.
• Ride ALL OUT for 20 minutes.
• Record what your average power was for the 20 minutes.
• Multiply that number by .95.
• Voila!  You have your FTP.

This is the most common test used currently, and probably the one you’ll see during your workout plans.  Remember though, if you have a strong anaerobic capacity, or are a new rider, you can have an inflated result.  I suggest going hard and over-pacing the test for the first 3 minutes to exhaust your creatine phosphate system, and to decrease the anaerobic system energy contribution, to hopefully see your power drop and eventually plateau to your true FTP.  Ideally you’ll see a gradually increasing heart rate and subsequent power drop for the first 3-5 minutes, then a plateau for the final 15 minutes at your actual FTP.

2x 8 Minutes Test

• Warm up for 10-15 minutes.
• Ride ALL OUT for 8 minutes.
• Rest for 10 minutes.
• Ride ALL OUT for 8 minutes.
• Record what your average power was for both 8 minute tests.
• • Add both of the averages together, and divide by 2.
• Multiply that number by .90.
• Voila!  You have your FTP.

This testing protocol is the least accurate, in my experience, however
In 2007, Klika et al. demonstrated that a cycling based field test was found to be accurate and repeatable in estimating threshold levels. This test is relatively simple to complete.  Test participants are asked to cycle for 8 minutes, between 80-100RPM at the gear of their choice. This was shown to produce about the same power output associated with lactate threshold in a laboratory setting. At the end of the 8 minutes, record your heart rate. That heart rate should be close to your threshold level.

The Ramp Test (Max Aerobic Power, MAP).

• Warm up for 10-15 minutes.
• Having a smart trainer makes life much easier here.
• • I start my athletes off at 60% of their FTP, and increase by 8% every minute or 2 (based on athlete fitness), until failure is reached.
• • Once you settle into a cadence of your choice you must maintain that cadence, or pedal faster, throughout the rest of the test. For instance, if you ride at 90 RPM for the test you can’t then have your cadence fall off to 85, 80 and even 75 RPM in the final stages. Once you can’t maintain your cadence the test is over, but you must push to the point of failure and not give up!

You are looking for a heart rate inflection point for this test.  The inflection point signals the lactate threshold (FTP) and can be very hard to see in my experience.  Another way is to take the last COMPLETED step of the test, and multiply this by .75.  This test is also called a Conconi Test. 

Outside of a laboratory setting, it’s difficult to precisely pinpoint the level at which you reach anaerobic threshold, but hopefully the test examples above help your estimate become a bit more accurate.

Stay tuned for our next article which will be all about effective ways to increase your anaerobic threshold!

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References:

1. A.K.Ghosh. Anaerobic threshold: its concept and role in endurance sport.Malays J. Med. Sci., 11 (2004), pp. 24-36
2. Wasserman, K., and M. B. McIlroy. Detectingthe threshold of anaerobic metabolism. Am. J. Cardiol. 14: 844-852, 1964.
3. KlikaRJ, Alderdice MS, Kvale JJ, Kearney JT. Efficacy of cycling training based on apower field test. J Strength Cond Res. Feb 2007;21(1):265 – 269.

Your commitment to fitness takes up a lot of your time. The time that you’ve spent training and preparing for certain events have required you to remain disciplined. You may have even trained multiple times a day to keep up with the demand. It’s no easy feat to continue this trend day in and day out, as friends and family may not understand or even support this dedication.

And worst of all, that’s just the training aspect of it all. What about the role that nutrition plays? If anything, this will eat up (pun actually intended) even more of your time then the training does. I mean, you’re training for 1-3 hours per day, while the rest of your remaining hours are spent on recovery and, well, eating. What you put into your body is very important, and could drastically affect your performance.

However, good thing is that we have total control over what we put into our mouths. And even better, we don’t have to meticulously count every single calorie that goes into our bodies either. There’s something out there that’s much more practical…

Intuitive Eating

What exactly is intuitive eating? Well, it can be generally defined as eating in response to physical hunger signals that your body gives you, as opposed to emotional or other external cues [1].

The great thing about this style of eating is that more and more scientific literature is being released on the topic in regards to its superiority over calorie-counting diets, such as its benefits for psychological as well as physical health benefits [2]. For example, a sample of former female collegiate athletes described their experience with intuitive eating as drastically reducing their anxiety levels about both their food choices, along with their appearance and performance [3].

As for physical benefits, the athletes were “better able to listen to their bodies” and have a better sense of what hunger and satiety (feeling of fullness) actually feels like. In essence, this allowed the athletes to become more in tune with their bodies and provide it the nourishment that it needed to perform, without resorting to any form of disordered eating.

How Do I Start?

Okay, now that you know why you should consider intuitively eating to benefit both your physical and mental health, as well as boost your performance, how do you even know where to start? Well, we’ll want to start out by learning how to assess when we’re truly hungry and satisfied. We can use a simple scale of 1-10 to assess this. There’s no exact scientific literature on this type of a scale, but it can be used as a practical guide to familiarize yourself with this style of eating, as it may be difficult to grasp at first. It would look a little something like this:

1	Extremely Hungry
2	Very Hungry
3	Hungry
4	Slightly Hungry
5	Satisfied, but could still eat more
6	Satisfied
7	Full
8	Too full
9	Extremely Full
10	Nauseous

Although this scale seems quite simplistic, it gets the job done. It’s easy to remember, which makes it much more practical. And practicality is what intuitive eating is all about.

Volume vs. Density

One of the most important aspects of intuitively eating are the two concepts of volume and density. When we’re talking about food, each food has a different volume: density ratio. Now, don’t think of these ratios as numbers, rather, think of them as more of a cost: benefit ratio sort of thing.

Let’s dig a little deeper. So volume is the amount of space the food takes up in your stomach, while density is the actual amount of energy (calories) that you’re obtaining from it. The “density” factor is the only one that influences our weight, not volume. The weight and volume of the physical food itself will not influence your weight whatsoever. Knowing this, for weight loss, we should eat foods that are high in volume and low in density. Ideally, we want to keep this “ratio” in favor of volume over density.

This will help to keep us full and satiated, while also keeping our calories as low as we can (healthfully, of course, we still want to get in enough calories to function and perform well). Low-energy and high-volume foods tend to have higher levels of water, fiber, and protein content. It’s been shown that those who eat a majority of these kinds of foods in their diet resulted in feeling fuller for longer compared to those who ate mostly high-density foods [4].

An Issue That Needs To Be Discussed

One issue that does need to be brought up is about self-control. This is usually only a problem that is witnessed when first starting out. Athletes will begin their weight loss journey, but because they’re eating intuitively, they have no set plan. They kind of just “wing it”, and I REALLY want you to avoid this.

Nothing good has ever come from just “winging it”. Intuitively eating is still a type of eating plan. It still requires discipline and especially the knowledge to know what foods will aid your performance and weight loss efforts the most. However, what you also have to realize is the vast amount of knowledge you will gain from this, including:

• How certain foods make your body perform
• Which foods keep you full for longer, while knowing which ones don’t
• Knowing what truly being hungry and full really feels like

I suggest keeping a food log and jotting down any relevant information that will make your food choices easier. Over time, you’ll come up with a ‘greatest hits’ of sorts and understand what foods work best for you and your body.

Conclusion

Definitely different from meticulous diet tracking, I know. But it can absolutely help you on your weight loss journey. Life is full of events that may throw us off track and alter our schedules and ways of life, and our diets are extremely susceptible to this.

But what I really want you to take away from this is that this is probably one of the most educational diets out there. As cliche as it may sound, knowledge is truly power. Being armed with the knowledge to be able to adapt to various situations; social events, injury, food availability, the list goes on. You’ll be ready for it because utilizing an intuitive eating diet helped you to learn about your mind, body and the food you put into it.

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References

1. Horwath, C., Hagmann, D., & Hartmann, C. (2019). Intuitive eating and food intake in men and women: Results from the Swiss food panel study. Appetite, 135, 61-71. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2018.12.036
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