That goes for all body types, from stick-thin Tour de France pros to stock strong crossfitters and obstacle course racers. Eating good fats regularly in your diet teaches your body to see fat, as fuel.

First, eat a massively varied diet that focuses on whole foods. Whole foods deliver the biggest gains for athletes because they're the most nutrient-dense foods going. The more processed a food is, the fewer nutrients it supplies and the more synthetic gunk gets added to it.

So fire up huge salads loaded with nuts, seeds and avocados, wrap up huge vats of beans and rice chock full of veg in tortillas, and cook up curries, chilis and more loaded with legumes. In all cases, you just need to think: how can I add more whole foods to this plate?

Do this, keep it varied and you won't ever be deficient in any of your macronutrients, particularly if you follow the next step. If it's been a heavy training day or week, know that throughout it and for a few days afterwards your body will need more of everything nutritionally.

So don't miss meals, get ready for seconds when you feel the need, and prepare to deploy snacks between meals in strong supply. Rice cakes with peanut butter and banana, bags of raw nuts, and as much fruit as you can scoff are ideal. Training hard? Be conscious you may need to eat hard too.

This is also the ideal time to bring in our Pre and Post Workout Shakes. Designed for the biggest possible beneficial hit of the most powerful whole superfoods for athletic performance, these are an elite turbo boost to your athletic diet.

There's no need to get protein-obsessed, just make sure you include good sources in all meals. You'll not go short on your needs doing this. And recognise how you feel. If your recovery is strong, your sleep easy, your digestion good and your energy levels high then all is well.

You're clearly refueling in line with your requirements. But if any of these metrics are consistently out you'll need to do some fine tuning.

As long as your core diet is built on whole foods, the areas to tweak in search of perfection are:. Ignore how good or bad it is, if it gives you pleasure and you enjoy it go for your life. Pizza cravings? The best diet for endurance training is one packed chock full of great whole foods that tastes delicious and makes you feel awesome.

It's as simple as that. No need to fret about alkaline diets, ketogenic diets, paleo diets, plant-based diets or anything else. These are just labels. All you need to do is keep your food real, be aware of how it makes you feel and adjust accordingly. If you remember nothing else, this is the ultimate hack: you can never eat too many fruit and vegetables.

Best protein for endurance athletes. Fat adaption: why it matters and how to do it. Dairy and athletic performance: good or bad? Want to upgrade your training diet from great to perfect? Our unique Pre and Post Workout Shakes are the answer, delivering the biggest hit of beneficial nutrients for massive performance in one delicious and perfectly-calibrated hit.

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Check out. Do not eat white table sugar, cookies, cake, donuts, sports drinks or sports energy foods except during exercise , jam, jelly… Avoid sweetened bread, and anything else that tastes sweet from added sugar.

Sugar is addictive. If you have the addiction, you will feel tired, draggy or ravenously hungry for up to a week as you adjust to a sugar-free lifestyle. The worse you feel, the more addicted you were. Feel free to eat lots of fresh fruit. Research shows that while fatter and thinner people often get similar total amounts of sugar, fat people get it as added sugar while thin people get it in fruits.

Cut out the potatoes, grains, bananas and other starches except to the extent that you need them as exercise fuel.

This does not apply during exercise. During exercise, emphasize dense carbohydrate sources. Every meal should include some protein fish, poultry, pork, tofu, tempeh, beans, yogurt, cottage cheese… , some low or moderate glycemic index complex carbohydrate source if losing weight, fruits and vegetables.

If stable in weight and exercising more than 7 hours per week, pasta or whole-grain bread, beans, lentils, brown rice, oats, corn… , and some fat. The more fat-free-products become available, the fatter Americans become.

Could there be a connection? Fat has a powerful appetite reducing effect, so eating fat actually helps you be comfortable eating less. Fat reduces appetite after it reaches the intestine, so fat at the beginning of a meal will do more to help you eat less than fat at the end of the meal. If you are aiming to lose weight, drink a large glass of water before you eat to help you feel full sooner.

Urine would ideally be pale most of the time and copious at least once per day, after exercise on exercise days. If you have trouble sleeping through the night due to a full bladder, avoid drinking much fluid in the evening.

For health and performance as well as weight loss, avoid both sugar waters sodas, lemonade, sports drinks and fruit juices. Orange juice has about as many calories as Coca-Cola. Drink water and eat fruit. If you must drink other than water, drink teas or diluted fruit juices.

This does not apply during training. During training use a sports drink or juice that includes both carbohydrate and electrolytes. Avoid diet soft drinks and other artificially sweetened beverages. Research shows they make people fat, probably by triggering an insulin response, which triggers a drop in blood sugar leading to hunger and more eating.

Adding a drizzle of olive oil or butter is okay. Avoid over-consumption of raw spinach however. Raw spinach contains oxalic acid, which will chelate calcium preventing it from being absorbed from your gut into your bloodstream.

A spinach salad now and then is okay, but a daily bag of spinach will eventually cause cramping. A small amount of daily alcohol consumption may have some heart-health benefits, which can be gained equally well in other ways, such as by exercising and following a healthy diet.

Alcohol also enters metabolism at the same place as fat, so each calorie of alcohol blocks the metabolism of one calorie of fat. A typical drink has calories as alcohol. One drink per day you can burn off. Multiple drinks per day are harder to work off.

Each extra alcoholic drink per day adds up to pounds of fat not burned over a year. In the long run, weight loss or weight maintenance is about behaviors, so the rest of these rules are about eating behaviors and the psychological states that trigger them.

These guidelines are especially valuable to those who seek to lose weight or to keep weight off, and they may not be relevant to those who naturally arrive at a good performance weight. A bulky meal that stretches your stomach makes you less sensitive to the bulk of later meals.

Your stomach then has to be fuller before you feel satisfied so you stay hungry longer and eat more. Take a small amount of food on your plate at one time. After you eat it, ask yourself if you are still very hungry.

If you are not hungry or barely hungry, be done eating. If you are still hungry, take another small serving of something else. Heap on the praise for what you do eat and then declare yourself full. Given the huge portions in many restaurants, you can get enough nutrition from salads or appetizer-sized portions.

In Mexican restaurants, pick one thing you like rather than the four-item combo. You can always come back again and try the other items. Order the smallest pizza that might satisfy you and always get a salad to fill you up. Athletes need some salt. Plan variety in every meal and cover all your bases on the first go-round.

Take the time to enjoy each bite of food. Pay attention to what you eat. They say that hunger is the best seasoning. The flip side of that is that when your body no longer needs more food, the food stops tasting as good.

Your weight will fluctuate by a few pounds from morning to night and from day to day, especially when heavy training is affecting hydration. Rather than being concerned about your weight each morning, keep track of your average weight for each week.

That will be a good indication that you are really gaining or losing weight. If a bad weigh-in might trigger a binge, talk to a dietician about other ways to track weight. Many people diet well until some emotional situation comes up and then seek comfort in food.

Do you eat in response to stress? Relationship troubles? Go for a walk or call a friend instead of overeating. Finally, inadequate sleep reduces motivation and will power so you are less likely to stick to your diet. If you lose more than one pound per week, half a pound for some people you may experience decreased strength and power, so reduce slowly.

Adopt these rules as lifestyle changes. We are trying to get you onto a sustainable regimen of healthy eating. For people who need to lose weight for their riding, all the rules are supposed to help you eat less. It is quite possible to follow all the rules and still eat more.

If you do this you will gain and not lose weight. Take control of your eating. Test a new food in training several times under race-similar conditions in terms of intensity, heat and humidity before using it in a race.

Race foods need to be easy to open and digest, not too messy, and tasty enough that you will eat them enthusiastically. Training and racing foods can be sweet or savory, so long as they are high in carbohydrate and low in protein and fat. Test drinks in training several times before using them in a race.

Race drinks need to contain carbohydrate and electrolytes and taste good enough that you will drink them with enthusiasm. On hot days you will need to dilute your drinks more than on cooler days so you can get enough water without getting too much carbohydrate, causing a tummy-ache, or carry one bottle plain water as well.

Test any possible pre-race food in training several times before using it in a race. Pre-race meals should be easy to digest, low in fat, high in carbohydrate, moderate in protein, easy to prepare and available anywhere you travel. Practice with several possible pre-race meals in case your favorite is not available at a particular race.

Be careful with fatty breakfast foods such as pancakes, sausages, bacon and muffins. They can sit in your belly and make you feel uncomfortably full when exercising for several hours but then maintain your energy later in multi-hour events.

Experiment in a hard training session before risking these in a race. These are high glycemic index foods that will decrease your endurance in your next training session and also cause your body to store more fat if you consume them while NOT exercising. During exercise they help maintain blood sugar and energy.

During exercise, use these ONLY after warm up and before cool down. These snacks vary in glycemic index but are calorie dense for those who have trouble eating enough to maintain weight. Your body will use muscle protein for fuel in the absence of other sources of energy so athletes who want to maintain or increase muscle mass or who have trouble eating enough to maintain weight should first make sure they are getting adequate total calories, especially carbohydrates as exercise fuel.

An extra couple of dozen grams of protein per day is also helpful, so if you are looking to add muscle and your normal protein intake is on the low side, consider some protein snacks:. No matter your athletic goals, these ideas and rules can assist you in moving closer toward them.

Have questions or challenges for these guidelines? Write to us at info wenzelcoaching. com with your questions, and we will respond or possible cover your question in a future article. This article and handout have been created and maintained by Head Coach Scott Saifer. Scott is available to work with all levels and ages of endurance athletes, relishing his work in particular with those facing unusual challenges and obstacles in their training.

Inquire About Working with Wenzel Coaching. Posted on May 3, Posted in Health , Nutrition. Athletes will utilize the following four basic eating plans: Different foods and quantities are appropriate to each of these four plans.

Components of the Four Fueling Plans Main Eating Plan for Endurance Athletes This plan is for endurance cyclists and racers, Olympic distance and The Main Healthy Eating Plan for Endurance Athletes has these components: Low in highly processed foods.

Includes little or no processed sugar or white flour. Avoids sweets, cakes, cookies, candies, sodas, sugared beverages and white breads.

To properly assess, weigh yourself immediately prior to and after a workout. For every pound of weight lost, replace with 16 ounces of fluid.

Best hydration choices include water, low-fat milk or percent juice. Sports beverages are best reserved for competition, where quick hydration and electrolyte replacement are necessary. There are a few golden rules when it comes to eating on game day:.

It happens the days, weeks, and months leading up to the competition. Peak performance during competition means eating nutritious food while traveling.

Relying on the concession stand for food during competition is an almost certain failure. Players and parents should prepare by packing a variety of food and beverages.

Choose energy-packed foods such as whole grain crackers with low-fat cheese, tortilla wraps with veggies and lean meat, hard-boiled eggs, vegetable or bean soups, small boxes of non-sugary cereal, fresh fruit, mini-whole wheat bagels with peanut butter, pita bread with hummus or pasta with grilled chicken.

Fibrous carbohydrates can be beneficial as these tend to cause GI disturbances. UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Refer a Patient. Clinical Trials. Find a Doctor. Search Submit. Pay a bill. Refill a prescription. Price transparency.

Obtain medical records. Order flowers and gifts. Each category of macronutrients carbs, protein, and fat includes certain foods that offer higher nutritional value, making them better choices for fueling and refueling the body. Here are a few to consider. Offering a mix of carbohydrate sources, for example, these dietician-recommended energy chews, gels, and bars help provide sustained energy.

Since pre-training eating involves consuming complex carbs, healthier foods that fall into this category include:. To continue high-level exercise for extended periods of time, athletes benefit from fueling their body during the training session with easily digestible or "fast" carbohydrates.

Some good mid-exercise refueling options that won't weigh you down include:. Protein helps the body heal, making it a great after-training food source. Healthier protein food options include:. However, the body does need some fat to function effectively.

Fats that are healthier include:. Just as it is important to know what to eat and when, endurance athletes also benefit from understanding how much to eat.

This ensures that you obtain the needed nutrients in the right amount without consuming too many calories and potentially gaining weight. Intake recommendations for endurance athletes are:  .

When calculating your body weight, one kilogram is equal to 2. So, a pound person weighs roughly 68 kilograms divided by 2. If you exercise intensely for more than three or four hours at a time, you need to be mindful of your hydration needs and drink water before, during, and after you exercise.

Don't rely on thirst to tell you when to drink during exercise. By the time you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated. It's best to drink small amounts often, rather than gulping a lot at once.

Get into the habit of weighing yourself before and after long training sessions to determine your individual hydration needs and to learn how different weather and training conditions may affect you. Another simple way to determine your post-workout hydration status is to monitor your urine output and color.

A large amount of light-colored, diluted urine most likely means you are well-hydrated. A small amount of dark-colored, highly concentrated urine may mean you are dehydrated and need to drink more water.

The following tips can help you stay on top of your fluid needs while exercising:. Rehydrate by drinking about 24 ounces of water for every kilogram 2. This helps support optimal performance, both physically and mentally.

A quick and easy option is to consume an electrolyte-containing sports drink during the training or event. This can help reduce the risk of developing hyponatremia , which is water intoxication caused by below-normal sodium levels. Some types of protein bars also contain electrolytes.

Every athlete will have their own unique fueling and refueling needs and preferences. By experimenting with different approaches, you will find the approach that works best for you. Try various foods and food combinations before, during, and after your workouts. Vary the timing of your food intake and the amount you eat as well and, over time, you will be able to determine your optimal refueling style.

Burke L, Hawley J, Jeukendrup A, Morton J, Stellingwerff T, Maughan R. Toward a common understanding of diet-exercise strategies to manipulate fuel availability for training and competition preparation in endurance sport.

Intl J Sport Nutr Exerc Metabol. Masson G, Lamarche B. Many non-elite multisport endurance athletes do not meet sports nutrition recommendations for carbohydrates. App Physiol Nutr Metab. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Choose healthy fats. Potgieter S. Sport nutrition: A review of the latest guidelines for exercise and sport nutrition from the American College of Sport Nutrition, the International Olympic Committee and the International Society for Sports Nutrition.

So, is there a specific time when athletes should eat? Like most people, you probably think that the best time to eat while endurance training is immediately before or during your event.

However, this isn't necessarily the case. Depending on the length and intensity of your endurance training, you may need to eat differently to fuel your body correctly. Eating before or after a workout can make a big difference in your performance, so knowing which option is best for you is essential.

Like with what foods you add to your diet, is no one-diet-fits-all solution to meal frequency and timing. Each sport, activity, and person will need to work with their coaches and medical professionals to determine the best time to eat.

Timing your nutrient uptake will require methodical planning and patience while you experience trial and error. What you eat before and during an endurance event is just as important as your training.

Eating for endurance means choosing whole foods that will give you sustained energy without making you feel weighed down, fatigued, or bloated. Here are some tips for fueling your body for a successful event:. Choose whole-grain bread, pasta, fruits, and vegetables over refined or processed foods.

Dehydration is one of the ultimate enemies for athletes. For successful endurance training and overall health and wellness, it's essential to understand your metabolic needs. And this includes finding the foods that suit your body best. Everyone's metabolism is different, so you need to know what works best for you.

Metabolism is the process that our bodies use to create energy, and many things can affect it. By understanding how it works, you can make better choices about your diet and lifestyle that will help you reach your goals.

It includes observing your energy levels, hunger pangs, and blood glucose reactions to foods and exercise. Many athletes work with professional dietitians and doctors or utilize technology to learn about their metabolic needs.

You may even consider using a CGM for running or other types of exercise to learn more about your nutrition. Smartwatches, continuous glucose monitors, hydration trackers, and performance analytics can be a game-changer while your body is getting used to your training routine.

Your blood sugar levels can significantly impact how your body feels and functions. When you join the Nutrisense CGM program , our team of credentialed dietitians and nutritionists are available for additional support and guidance to help you reach your goals.

Ready to take the first step? Start with our quiz to see how Nutrisense can support your health. Amanda is a Nutrition Manager and Registered Dietitian at Nutrisense, with a Masters in Dietetics from Stephen F. Austin State University. Originally from south GA, she got her undergrad degree from Texas Tech University.

Before joining Nutrisense, she worked at a hospital in Fort Worth, TX, for 4 years as a dietitian, counseling those living with HIV. How It Works Nutritionists Journal. What Is A CGM? Get Started. Promo code SPRING will be automatically applied at checkout!

Eating for Endurance: A Complete Guide for Athletes. Team Nutrisense. Share on Twitter.