The Nutritional Institute

TRIATHLON SA - OCTOBER 2011

By now some of you will be starting to pick up the training distances to aim for Olympic distance events, ½ IM’s and possibly IM later in the year. For any race that exceeds 2 hours, you’ll need to get the race-day nutrition just right in order to perform at your potential. That is something that I will talk about deeper into the season but right now, I’m going to focus on the nutritional support of your training. There are many dietary tips that you can take on board for your triple pursuits, but by far the most basic and most important, is blood sugar support. 

Whether you are an athlete or simply a couch surfer, many of you are victim to the sugar rollercoaster on a daily basis. Think back to the last time you consumed a Danish pastry and cup of coffee (the worker’s breakfast!) – the likelihood was that you felt good and energetic for a while, but this gradually gave way to feelings of fatigue, poor concentration, sleepiness and hunger. 

Many problems with our health can stem from poor management of blood sugar levels. Energy is most undoubtedly affected by the sugar highs and lows, but have you also noticed that your mood tends to go along for the ride – excitable and focused, progressing towards irritable and anxious. These are just the things that you notice – behind the scenes; you may be experiencing a slow build up of fat reserves in anticipation of the fast that never comes; your body can become inflammatory, which doesn’t help recovery from hard training sessions and believe it or not, it can raise susceptibility to overtraining or adrenal burn-out.

The blood sugar curve

Take a look at the blood sugar curves. If you follow the red curve for now, that pastry and coffee breakfast that I already mentioned, or cornflakes plus skimmed milk for that matter, will give you a nice sugary start to the day. Did you know that cornflakes have a higher GI than table sugar?! Brekkie will probably give you a lift for an hour or two but insulin is very effective at its job and by the time it has kicked in, your blood sugar levels can drop quickly, meaning; low energy, poor concentration, sleepiness and hunger for more sweet food – just like a smaller scale hypoglycaemia. So perhaps you take a coffee and a couple of biscuits to project yourself out of the blood sugar trough! Lunch is also a bit on the go and you grab a sandwich and low-fat/high-sugar fruit yoghurt while you sit at the computer (with your stress hormones still raised). Stress hormones themselves will actually raise blood sugar levels which is why many people are able to literally go through the day without eating. They also down-regulate your digestive function, so even if you do eat, the food won’t be absorbed so well. The afternoon follows a similar picture to the morning but often with a more pronounced dip in energy and by the time you arrive home for dinner, especially after a gym workout (where you only drink water, cause you’re trying to be ‘good’), you’re ready to eat a horse! When you do in fact eat the proverbial horse, the blood sugars drive so high and long that they set you into Sumo fat storage mode and sometimes you don’t sleep so well, thereby missing out on a nice anabolic growth hormone spike. Does this sound familiar? 

Cholesterol

Since the subject of cholesterol is also being covered in this issue of the mag, I’ll quickly explain the relationship between it and blood sugar levels. High levels of blood sugars have several negative health consequences. The body therefore becomes quite proficient at converting excess sugars to fats, which are in fact, less harmful: some of this fat will be stored in adipose tissue (the typical fat deposit sites), while some will become the fats that are typically found in the blood stream, including triglycerides and cholesterol. To illustrate my point, through lab tests, I have measured elevated cholesterol levels in strict vegetarians. Since dietary cholesterol is only found in animal products, their glycaemic diet was likely to be somewhat to blame. 

Practical guidelines for managing blood sugar levels

In essence it’s pretty easy to manage blood sugar levels and achieve the ‘green’ curve in the diagram above if you’re prepared to pay a bit of attention to your diet and spend some time off the stress treadmill. Let’s start with some foods or substances that you should be avoiding as much as you can and we’ll go onto discuss the best dietary and lifestyle approaches.

Factors that can imbalance blood sugar levels:

• Sugar, refined foods and high GI foods 
• Alcohol
• Coffee
• Tobacco
• Foods that your body is Allergic or Sensitive to
• Nutritional Deficiencies (such as vitamins, minerals, essential fats)
• Hormone Imbalances (especially sex hormones)
• STRESS 

How to balance blood sugars

The BOTTOM LINE with managing your blood sugar level, is to balance your carbohydrates, protein and fat intakes at each meal. Protein and fat have very little effect on insulin and when digested alongside carbohydrates, will substantially slow the appearance of sugar in the blood and the related insulin response. The average person should be consuming roughly similar amounts of protein- and carb-rich food in each meal or snack. The healthiest representation of this would be a small plate, one third filled with fish and two-thirds filled with vegetables. The fish provides protein plus ‘good’ fats. Vegetables mostly consist of water and fibre, so they are required in higher quantities than energy dense foods such as meat or grains. They are the best source of slow energy-releasing carbohydrates. 

• Good Sources of Protein: Fish, poultry, red meat, eggs and soya (best from fermented sources such as tofu and miso). You can also get a complete protein source by combining beans or nuts with wholegrains (eg. lentils and brown rice). 
• Good Sources of Carbohydrates that are low GI: Vegetables, fruit, wholegrains (eg. brown rice, wheat, oats, millet, quinoa). Since we aim to have high intakes of vegetables in our diet, the average person who is not heavily active does not require many wholegrains. In general, I like to increase grains in a person’s diet based on the amount of exercise that he or she is doing. In addition, minimise refined grains such as bread, pasta, white rice and pastries.
• Good Sources of Essential Fats: Oily fish, nuts and seeds. In addition, some saturated fat from good quality animal sources such as eggs and meat or vegetarian sources such as avocado and coconut is vital for giving stability to cell membranes and for making hormones, especially the sex and stress ones!

Enjoy experimenting with your blood sugar control and the increased energy that should result from it. As you near important training sessions and races, increase your “food-focus” and along with lekker sessions, you can aim for some new PB’s.

Blood sugar guidelines

• Balance protein, carbohydrates and fats in each meal and Snack (see text)
• Eat a meal within one hour of waking
• Eat five times per day: 3 meals plus 2 snacks (plus an extra post-exercise one when working out)
• Distribute the quantity of food evenly throughout the day – breakfast, lunch and dinner should ideally be similar sizes.
• Do not go for more than 5 hours without eating
• Aim to finish your final meal of the day at least 2-3 hours before bed time
• Vegetable consumption – aim for 5+ portions per day (1 portion = size of an apple)
• Fruit intake – aim for 2-3 portions per day, but no more than 4 because they are sugary (1 portion = size of an apple)
• Whole grains – the average person can reduce intake to a maximum of 2 portions per day (1 portion = 2 thin slices bread, 50g dry weight rice, pasta, oats). All grains (carbohydrates) should ideally be unrefined such as brown rice, bulgar wheat or quinoa. The more exercise you’re doing the more you can build your amounts.
• Water – aim for 1-2 litres per day depending on needs