Try a Pre-Workout Fast

June 16th, 2010

Bike Nutrition

A recent study by researchers in Europe suggests that fasting before a workout might help get rid of more fat.   Here’s the reasoning:  If you don’t eat before exercising, you don’t have carbohydrates lying around to burn, so your body burns fat instead.

“When you exercise (after fasting), your adrenalin is high and your insulin is low,” said Peter Hespel, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Leuven in Belgium, in an Associated Press story.

The AP reports that in a 2008 study, Hespel tested the effects of this concept on men who did their endurance training workouts after fasting compared to those who ate before their workout.  In the men who didn’t eat, researchers found an increase in the amount of proteins needed to process fat – the fasting got their bodies ready to burn more fat.

Deb Acord

Note from UltraRob: Hammer Nutrition has long recommended not eating for 3 hours before long workouts or races, not for weight loss, but to increase endurance for the same reasons as this study found. It has worked well for me but I have to start eating right after starting or I get behind on calories.

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16 Tips to Break Your Sugar Addiction

June 3rd, 2010

Sugar Drinks

Sugar has been my biggest nutritional challenge over the years. When I was riding two to three hundred miles a week, I got by with it but it wasn’t good for me. Now that I don’t have the time to ride as much, it’s affecting me even more. Here are some good tips for cutting back on sugar.

Breaking the Sugar Addiction: 16 Tips

by Jamie Jefferson

It seems as though added sugar is in everything these days, from ketchup to salsa to soup. It is everywhere, I suppose, because we have come to expect it to be.

And it is not just the white stuff we need to worry about. “Refined carbohydrates,” such as white bread and white flour products, produce the same reaction in our bodies.

Researchers have linked sugar consumption to everything from cavities to wrinkly skin, as well as wide range of much more serious health problems.

Some research has been cited that says sugar has not been proven to be a direct cause to these health problems and may not even be directly linked to them, but when you consider that added sugar is basically non nutritional calories, the lack of nutrition and obesity can cause health problems in themselves.

Sugar, some researchers say, can lead to the damage of healthy cells, and can lessen the effectiveness of white blood cells, leading to a weakening of the immune system. Too much sugar means lots of empty calories, too, which can lead to obesity. As any parent knows, when you fill up on sugar, you simply are not hungry for nutritious meals. And sugar can make you hyperactive and irritable, too, as it knocks your body out of whack.

When you eat sugar, your blood sugar spikes. So your body secretes insulin, which sends your blood sugar crashing. The result? Irritability and fatigue. Plus, you are hungry again and probably craving another hit of sugar, and so the cycle repeats itself anew.

One of the nicest things you can do for your body (and your mood) is to reduce your intake of added sugars and refined carbohydrates.

What is the Daily Recommended Sugar Intake?

The World Health Organization recommends reducing your intake of added sugars to less than 10 percent of your total caloric intake. That means, if you eat 2,000 calories, you should eat less than 12 teaspoons of sugar each day. The US Department of Agriculture also recommends limiting your consumption of added sugar to between 6 and 12 teaspoons of sugar each day, depending on your daily average caloric intake. (Six teaspoons a day for people who eat 1,600 calories; 12 teaspoons if you eat 2,200 calories each day.) Keep in mind that a single 12 ounce soft drink contains 10 teaspoons of sugar.

To find out how much sugar is in some of the items in your cupboards, look for Sugars (measured in grams) on the Nutrition Label. Then divide the number of grams by 4 to get the number of teaspoons. So, 12 grams of sugar is 3 teaspoons of sugar. Sixteen grams of sugar is 4 teaspoons.

How to Break Your Sugar Addiction

So how do you start to reduce your sugar intake? Here are some tips.

1. Try decreasing your intake of added sugar gradually

It can be difficult to suddenly cut all added sugar and refined carbohydrates. Try taking a week by week approach. One week, add less sugar to your morning coffee. Next week, replace your afternoon soda with bottled water. The following week, replace white bread with a whole grain alternative. Before long, you will find that the foods (and drinks) you used to love now taste sickeningly sweet. And you will likely find it easier to keep your moods on an even keel, too.

2. Keep notes on your sugar intake in your journal or Daytimer

How does decreasing your sugar levels impact your energy levels? Your mood during the day? Your ability to fall asleep at night? When do sugar cravings hit? It might be helpful to start with a Sugar Fast for a day or two. See how one day without added sugars affects you.

3. Make easy substitutions

Buy brown rice instead of white rice, for example. Brown rice has a nice, nutty flavor, and takes just a bit longer to cook. The next time you go to the store, experiment with all kinds of whole grain alternatives. You might find some new family favorites.

4. Keep healthy snacks readily available, and rely on a bit of protein in your snacks to keep your energy levels high

Keep a small bowl of nuts on the table, along with fresh fruits. When you are hungry for a mid afternoon snack, opt for lean protein and complex carbs.

5. Indulge in moderation

If you are a chocoholic, treat yourself to a square of fine chocolate at the end of a long day. When the chocolate is quality, you will not feel the need to have more and you will be more apt to take your time and savor it. When you do indulge in a sugary snack, keep it small, eat it slowly, and eat a bit of protein, too, to help moderate those blood sugar spikes and dips.

6. Dilute the fruit juice

If you or kids love fruit juice, try diluting it gradually to the point where you are just adding a splash to the top of water.

7. Become a sugar detective

You can start by knowing the alternate names for added sugars, often found in ingredients lists. These include any ingredient that ends in the suffix “ose,” including sucrose, dextrose, fructose, lactose, polydextrose, maltose, and galactose. Also, look for the following: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, molasses, carob syrup, turbinado sugar, fruit juice concentrate, brown sugar, cane juice, cane sugar, evaporated cane juice, beet sugar, and sorbitol.

8. Avoid replacing added sugar with artificial sweeteners

Your best bet is to gradually reduce your taste for sweet foods, not to replace them with chemical alternatives. On ingredients lists, look for sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame K, and neotame.

9. Avoid the center of the supermarket as much as possible

That is where most of the processed foods are shelved. Instead, shop the perimeter for healthy, raw foods.

10. If you have young kids, go to the grocery store by yourself

You may be less apt to come home with sugary treats. Plus, you can take more time to examine the labels for hidden sugar. If your kids are grade school age or older, take them along and enlist their help as Sugar Detectives. Give them each a list of hidden sugars and artificial sweeteners and turn it into a game.

11.Carefully measure how much honey you put in your tea and how much sugar you put in your coffee

Aim to put in a bit less each day or each week until you are drinking it either unsweetened or with just a bit of sugar.

12. Buy items that are not sweetened, and add sugar only if you find that you need to

This will help you wean off the sugar gradually.

13. Steer clear of sugars for breakfast

When you start your day with a sugar blast and crash, you may find yourself in a vicious cycle for the remainder of the day. Start your day with healthy lean protein and complex carbs. Try natural whole grain breads and cereals for breakfast, along with a lowfat protein, such as skim milk, cottage cheese, or yogurt.

14. If you need to lose weight, consider a diet plan that focuses on reducing sugar intake

The Sugar Busters Diet Plan is probably the most well known. The idea of this diet is to reduce your intake of sugar and high starch carbohydrates, focusing instead on lean protein, low starch veggies, and whole grain carbs, in order to lose weight. Many of the low GI diets out there use this method, as well.

15. Be careful not to make sugar taboo in your household

With children, especially, when you swear off something completely, you run the risk of creating a mystique around the forbidden food. Instead of running a completely sugar free household, make sure your children understand the effects that sugar can have on their bodies and their moods, and then help them understand the beauty of moderation. Encourage them to eat low fat protein and help them develop a taste for healthy whole grain carbs.

16. Focus on well balanced, nutritious diet, instead of simply swearing off all sugar

Your cravings will slowly and naturally fade once you gain a better understanding of why they are cropping up in the first place.

(This article is for informational purposes only. Please discuss any dietary changes with your doctor.)

Jamie Jefferson is a frequent contributor to Momscape.com, where you can find diet reviews and special promotional coupons on the most popular weight loss programs.

Article Source: U Publish Articles

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Shaving Legs, Manitou Incline Directions And Food

May 20th, 2007

Looking Down Manitou Incline

The last couple weeks the top 3 things that have brought people to this blog have been people wanting to know why cyclists shave their legs, directions to the Manitou Incline and endurance food.

I’m sure the reason I’m getting visits for why cyclists shave their legs is because my recent post about leg shaving.

No Trespassing Sign on Manitou InclineI’ve written a few times about doing the Manitou Incline but I’ve never written how to get there. It’s a 2,000 vertical foot scar running straight down Mount Manitou. I must live 6-7 miles away even by the way the bird flies and I can see it from my house. Just drive west until you’re at the bottom of it. The important thing is to not park in the Pikes Peak Cog Railway’s parking lots or their spaces on Ruxton. Either park in the Barr Trail parking lot or down Ruxton by the Iron Springs Chateau Melodrama. The Barr parking lot is full a lot of the time. In the summer you have generally have to be there before 6 AM to find a parking spot.

You can either start up the Incline on a trail out of the Barr parking lot that is at the opposite end from Barr Trail or the bottom of the Incline by cutting through one of the Pikes Peak Cog Railway parking lots. I doubt they like people doing that. At a 40 minute pace, the point the trail from the Barr parking lot joins the Incline is about 4 minutes from the bottom of the Incline. The middle part of the Manitou Incline is owned by the Pikes Peak Cog Railway and you are trespassing if you do it.

For how to eat for endurance sports, take a look at my post on how I use Hammer Nutrition products. I also have a post on what I did for nutrition during my 2006 solo Race Across America attempt. You can get 15% off your first order by using my customer number 10704. Even though I believe Hammer has the best fueling products and supplements on the market always race with what you trained with. Their products are different than the sugary sports drinks out there and can take a while to dial in if your used to the other stuff.

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How I Use Hammer Nutrition and E-CAPS Products

April 14th, 2006

Since Al asked about my take on Hammer Nutrition products, I thought I’d write a post rather than just add a comment because I have a lot to say about their products. I’m sponsored by them although it’s a discount, not cash or free product, so if I didn’t like their products it wouldn’t do me any good. If you’ve never ordered from them before, you can get 15% off your first order by following this link. They have a Yahoo group where even the owner will answer questions. Steve Born that has finished RAAM more than once and done things like start at the finish line of the Furnace Creek 508 and ride to the start to do the race has been a big help for me to get my nutrition dialed in for long races. Last year I was really out of shape for the Adirondack 540 and I had to call him the day before the race to be convinced I could do the race.

The best way to explain my take on the products is to tell my experience when I first did Montezuma’s Revenge in 1998. It was my second 24 hour mountain bike race. I was sick when I first did the 24 Hours of Moab and spent 7 hours off the bike but was so congested I couldn’t lie down without starting to choke.

I had tried Sustained Energy during training but had trouble with bloating and gas so I had given up on it. I now know that because it doesn’t have any preservatives it goes bad in about 3 hours in the hot sun and that is what was causing my problems. They actually say it should last a little longer but 3 hours has been my experience. I ended up solving that problem by mixing my 2nd bottle the night before and freezing it. That was back before they had Perpetuem and HEED which take a lot longer to go bad. I had gone back to using CytoMax and GU. I got about 8 hours into Montezuma’s Revenge and got so sick to my stomach I didn’t feel like eating plus I was peeing like crazy but at the same time feeling really dehydrated. I got up on Gray’s Peak above 13,000 feet and was stumbling and falling asleep as I tried hiking with my bike on my back.

After that miserable race, I decided to give Sustained Energy another try along with some Hammer Gel. I used them at the 24 Hours of Moab along with solid food and did much better although still had some stomach problems. Dr. Bill that has had a huge part in developing the Hammer Nutrition products finally convinced me that for 24 hours I was best off without solid foods. The first time I tried without solid food I had plenty of solid foods available and ended up not using any and didn’t have any stomach problems. I now pretty much just use their products except I’ve eaten a small amount of solid foods in my RAAM qualifiers. When I did the Furnace Creek 508 in 2002, I had 36 servings of Sustained Energy and less than a 1,000 calories from other foods.

Now they have more choices in fuels and I mix them depending on what I’m doing. For short, hard group rides I use HEED and some Hammer Gel. When they first came out with HEED, they just had the Lemon-Lime flavor and I didn’t like it but I’ve come to really like the Mandarin Orange. For 2-3 hour mountain bike races, I use Sustained Energy with a couple scoops of the powdered Endurolytes added in plus I use a coin purse to carry more Endurolytes. For 100 mile mountain bike races I mix Sustained Energy and Perpetuem half and half along with some powdered Endurolytes. When I’m going hard I seem to have some problems digesting straight Perpetuem and that’s why I mix it with the Sustained Energy.

In 24 hour mountain bike events and RAAM qualifiers I use mainly Perpetuem but use a little of the other fuels for variety. I always have plain water with me so I can drink what I need independent of the calories I’m getting plus it helps to not have any taste in my mouth. Even under ideal conditions, I have trouble digesting much over 250 calories and hour and try not to go over 28 ounces of fluid an hour. Eating or drinking stuff with simple sugars while using the Hammer fuels is a sure way to bonk. I found this out the hard way doing the Vail Ultra 100. Julie offered a couple bite sized Snickers bars at one of the aid stations and within 20 minutes I was severely bonking and sat at the next aid station for an hour wrapped in blankets and shivering.

If I’m doing an early morning race, I sleep as late as possible and don’t eat anything until I’m on the bike. The first few times I didn’t eat before I felt really hungry and thought for sure I’d bonk but my stomach felt better early in the race than if I had eaten and I didn’t bonk. I do find I have to start eating sooner but my stomach feels fine. If I ate too close to the start, I’d find my stomach didn’t feel the best and it would be an hour or so before I could start eating.

Lately on my long training rides I’ve been mixing one bottle with 4 scoops HEED and 2 scoops plain Perpetuem and another bottle with 1 scoop HEED and 5 scoops Dreamsicle Perpetuem and 3 scoops powdered Endurolytes in each bottle. For performance I’d probably be better off using more Perpetuem but I like the variety of flavors.

For races and rides under 3 hours, I take 1 Race Cap Supreme, 1 Mito-R-Cap, and 4 Anti-Fatigue Caps an hour before the start and then just Endurolytes during the race or ride. I longer races and rides I take the same thing before the start and then starting 2 hours in I take the same thing every hour except drop the Anti-Fatigue Caps to 2 and take 2-3 Endurolytes. I always have more Endurolytes so I can take more if I need them to keep from cramping. The Anti-Fatigue Caps really help keep me from smelling like ammonia. Before I started using them I used to stink of ammonia by the time I’d get 6 hours into a race. For during races and rides, I use the little baggies to but in an hour worth of pills so I can just grab one out of my pocket and dump everything into my month. I can really tell I don’t fatigue as fast and recover faster if I take the supplements. During training I generally open the bag and squeeze from the sides on the zip section to open it wide so I can reuse it but during races I generally tear the top off. If I have a crew with me, I use empty canisters that film come in and have them hand it to me. Now that I’m using a digital camera I have to make sure I don’t lose the ones I have.

After hard rides, I generally have 2 or 3 scoops of Recoverite and then a little while later I mix a bottle of 2 scoops of Recoverite and 1 of Whey Protein. I also take Super AO and Tissue Rejuvenator.

Update: See what I did for nutrition during my 2006 solo RAAM attempt.

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Undoing the Dew

February 17th, 2006

One of the biggest problems with my weight and training has been my addiction to Mt. Dew. In college I would sit down after dinner to study with a 2 liter bottle of Mt. Dew and when it was gone it was time to go to bed. My first job out of college was a block from a Loaf n Jug and I had a 32 oz cup that cost 59 cents to refill. It was a nice break to walk to the Loaf n Jug and refill it.

Over the years I’ve tried to cut back which has worked for a little while and then I go back to drinking too much. At my current job, they have Coke and Pepsi products delivered by the case and it’s just up to us to make sure what we like to drink is in the coolers. I sit just outside the break room and it’s just too easy to get up and grab another can. I can think I haven’t had much but by the end of the day there’s a pile of Mt. Dew cans on my desk. I can easily go through a 6 pack in a day.

I’ve figured out that if I drink one can, I drink a lot. In 2003 I quit cold turkey and didn’t drink any for 6 months. I had my best race season ever and got my weight back to where it hadn’t been for 7 years. In May I won the Expert 30-34 Chalk Creek Stampede which was part of the regional championship series. In June I finished 2nd at the Fireweed 400. In August I finished in the top 20 at the Leadville Trail 100 and 4th the following weekend at the Durango MTB 100.

I think it was more than just losing weight in 2003 that helped my performance. Sure my doctor finally got my thyroid medication figured out but I think cutting out the sugar was a big impact. Refined sugar does lots of bad things to the body. I figure I need to do everything I can in order to finish RAAM and that include time when I’m off the bike.

Since with my Eiseman Hut trip I wouldn’t have access to Mt. Dew for 4 days I figured that was a good time to quit. The first week is the hardest and the trip would get me more than half way the first week. There have been days that it’s been tough not to grab a can out of the cooler but I’ve made it for 2 weeks. Since I track all my food in DietPower, I can see that my average daily sugar intake for the 3 months before I quit was 268 grams and the last week it has been 77 grams. My fiber intake has also increased 20%. The only problem is I’ve replace too much of it with diet drinks and I really need to drink mainly water.

I’d like to say I feel better but I’ve been fighting a sinus infection for a little over a week. I think though that I would have felt worse this week than I have. My weight has also gone up a couple pounds although I haven’t been over eating. I seem to remember that also happening in 2003 for a couple weeks before the weight started coming off easier. I think too much sugar causes the body to be a little bit dehydrated and so I’ve probably gained a little water weight.

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