The Importance Of Fueling
While you cannot get fast by eating well, you can certainly disrupt the adaptations of hard training by eating poorly. Proper fueling is the platform to build your daily eating habits around. In an effort to hammer home the importance of proper fueling, we will explore the consequences that occur when you fuel incorrectly.
Loss of Functional Mass
- Muscles are what creates locomotion, which means power and speed
- If you consistently under fuel, your muscles will fail to recover and eventually begin to cannibalize due to athletic starvation
- Losing functional mass is never a good thing when it relates to performance
Retention of Fat
- This occurs as a combination of a stress reaction due to 'athletic starvation' and over-indulging in sugars and starches during the nutrition window
- Carbohydrates eaten during the nutrition window have a higher likelihood of being stored as fat
Energy Imbalance
- The body performs best when at homeostasis, or balance, and under-fueling disrupts this balance by increasing the stress that accumulates in the body
- The resulting athletic starvation limits performance and recovery, while also increasing fat retention
- Under fueling will lead to high peaks and valleys of alertness and fatigue
Performance Decline
- Poor fueling has a massive negative effect on your training and overall performance
- In fact, poor fueling is also central to most cases of chronic fatigue that I see in athletes and everyday folks
- You might not have chronic fatigue but you are lowering your level of function if you under fuel
Stress Increase
- Consistently allowing your body to dip into athletic starvation creates hormonal havoc
- This leads to an increased risk of injury and illness
- A lower ability to manage mood
Improving Body Composition & Weight Loss
Athletic performance improvements are the result of improvements to body composition, but the old mantra of 'lighter is better' is not entirely true. Lighter is better, with the assumption that it is accompanied with a great platform of health and no loss of ability to generate power. I promise you that the only way to effectively accomplish this is with a long term habitual approach to improving your body composition. Short-term diets or interventions, as well as crazy 'restriction' diets never work. Ever. Here are a few tricks and tips to help.
Always Fuel
- During and immediately following training is not the place to improve weight or composition
- Never restrict fueling following workouts, as it leads to the above consequences, including fat retention
Limit Evening Carbs
- If you fuel effectively, then a simple and effective strategy is to limit or eliminate starchy carbs from all afternoon and evening meals
- Maintain protein, veggies and good oils, but scratch the heavy carbs
Minimal Blanket Restriction
- This only works if you already have good fueling habits and a platform of healthy eating
- If this is the case, simply cut a small portion of everything you eat on a daily basis.
- Eat a cup of yogurt? Leave two teaspoons. A glass of wine? Leave two sips. A turkey sandwich? Leave 1 to 2 bites.
- This approach is simplistic, but the net effect is a few hundred calories per day. Add this over weeks, and it is about a pound per week
- Make this a habit and you will fall into a place of balance, but never feel like you are being restricted