IronFit Strength Training and Nutrition for Endurance Athletes by Fink Don. Fink Melanie. & Melanie Fink

Author:Fink, Don.,Fink, Melanie. & Melanie Fink [FINK, DON]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762791736
Publisher: Lyons Press (R&L)

Six-Meals-a-Day Approach

We have worked with hundreds of athletes for many years, helping them to achieve optimal racing body weight. We have also seen athletes try many of the seemingly endless approaches to weight loss that continually come and go.

What we have observed is that the best way for most athletes to approach their nutrition is to adopt a simple six-meals-a-day approach. Instead of the traditional three big meals a day, eat six mini meals spread throughout the day. This does not necessarily mean increasing your calories (although it may in certain situations), but it does mean spreading your calories out more evenly through your day.

There are two key advantages to taking this approach. First, you are giving your body the calories it needs when it needs them. Second, it keeps your energy level higher and more consistent throughout the day, avoiding periods of feeling tired and sluggish while your body is digesting a big meal.

One of the most common mistakes we see is athletes neglecting to consume calories before and after early-morning training sessions. While this is bad enough, some athletes don’t even hydrate before a morning workout. The usual excuses are that they don’t want that full feeling before training or that they are tight on time and would rather try to catch up on their nutrition later in the day. Or there’s the classic one we love: “If I don’t eat before my morning workout, I will burn more fat.”

It is not true that an athlete burns more fat by not eating prior to a morning workout. In fact, such an approach actually encourages more body fat storage. While we are sleeping, our bodies are fasting. If our last calorie intake was around 7 p.m. on the previous day and we wake up at 5 a.m., then we have already fasted for ten hours. We dress, warm up, and go for a run, adding another two hours to this period.

What many athletes don’t understand is that certain metabolic changes occur in our bodies, changes that have profound consequences on the rest of the day. If we put our bodies into a regular pattern of fasting for fourteen hours a day and eating during ten hours of the day, our bodies may become more efficient at storing fat during the ten hours to sustain us through the fourteen hours of not eating. Teaching our bodies to be good at storing fat is definitely not what we want to do.

Some athletes take morning fasting even further by waiting to eat until they get to work, which may be two to three hours from the time they wake up. Worse yet is the athlete who then eats something like a bagel and coffee—not a very balanced meal. This athlete has extended the fasting period from fourteen hours to eighteen to twenty hours. So, after he or she eats that first meal of the day, this athlete is famished by the time lunch rolls around and then overeats as a result. This creates a cycle of energy highs and lows throughout the day and into the evening.

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