Sports Nutrition Tips

Use the following sports nutrition tips to help you eat to get the most from your running workouts.

Without a doubt, what you eat and when you eat affects how you run.

A wisely selected sports diet can help you be stronger, train harder, and compete better.

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Fuel
Quick Energy
Pre-Run Meals
Fluids
Water or Sports Drink
Sports Nutrition Tips on Recovery Foods


Fuel

The best foods to fuel your muscles are carbohydrates from fruits, vegetables and grains.

Each meal and snack should include naturally occurring sugars in fruits and juices, or grain-based foods such as pasta, bread, rice, cereal, oatmeal, and corn.

These carbohydrates provide not only energy but also important vitamins and minerals. Refined sugars (as in soft drinks, sports drinks, gels, and candy) also fuel muscles––but are nutrient-poor choices and lack the vitamins that help your body's engine run best.

Your muscles store only carbohydrates--not protein or fat--in a form of sugar called glycogen. During hard exercise, your muscles burn this glycogen for energy. When you deplete your glycogen stores, as can happen during repeated days of hard training and a low carbohydrate diet, you feel overwhelmingly exhausted.

Eating high carbohydrate foods (cereal, pancakes, bagels, bread, fruit, vegetables, pasta, potato, juice) on a daily basis can help you train harder and compete better.

Although protein is a poor source of fuel, a small serving of a protein-rich food at two meals per day (plus the protein in two or three cups of milk or yogurt) is important to build and repair muscles. The protein should be the accompaniment to the carb-based meal, not the main focus.

Quick Energy

If you are hungry, tired, and craving a quick energy boost prior to running, you don't have to eat sugar for energy. Try this sports nutrition tip to perk you up, a simple snack of crackers, fruit, or a low fat granola bar.

Better yet, prevent the need for an energy boost. Simply eat a heartier breakfast and lunch that fuels you earlier in the day so you won't be running on fumes later that afternoon. These meals will be digested in plenty of time for your afternoon or evening workout. You will feel ready for action, not tired and hungry.

For some people, eating lots of sugary foods for quick energy 15 to 45 minutes before exercise can hurt their performance. The sugar causes the body to secrete insulin which, when combined with exercise, can cause blood sugar to drop. If you are sensitive to blood sugar changes, you may feel light-headed, uncoordinated, shaky, and tired. This is needless--and preventable.

Pre-Run Meals

Many runners incorrectly believe they should run on an empty stomach, but research suggests pre-exercise food actually improves performance. Because runners vary in their ability to tolerate pre-run food, you need to experiment during training to learn how much and what kinds of food work best for your body.

Part of your training is to train your intestinal tract to tolerate pre-run fuel. Some popular sports nutrition choices include oatmeal, cereal with low fat milk, bananas, canned peaches, energy bars, bagels, pasta. Avoid large, hard-to-digest, fatty meals (burgers, fried foods).

The day before an event (and every day, for that matter, because you can only compete at your best if you train at your best), you should eat carb-rich meals to fuel your muscles. For example, eating pasta for a pre-race dinner allows adequate time for your body to digest and store the carbs as glycogen in your muscles.

One to three hours before a strenuous morning run (such as a 9:00 a.m. road race), plan to eat a light breakfast (cereal, bagel) or comfortable snack (energy bar, banana). This food helps maintain a normal blood sugar level and enhances your endurance.

Before an afternoon competition, eat a hearty breakfast and a comfortable lunch (soup, sandwich); before an evening event, add a snack and/or dinner as tolerated.

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Just as lack of carbohydrates can hurt athletic performance, so can lack of fluids. To prevent yourself from becoming dehydrated, drink fluids before, during, and after running. To tell if you've had adequate fluids, monitor your urine. It should be pale yellow (like lemonade), not dark (like beer). You should need to urinate every two to four hours.

Water or Sports Drink

Which is better: water or a sports drink? Water is fine for a run that lasts less than an hour, particularly if you have enjoyed a pre-rune snack to fuel your workout. If you're running for more than an hour, a sports drink during your run offers energizing carbohydrates and can enhance your stamina and endurance.

After running, your body needs water + carbohydrates. While sports drinks are popular, low fat (chocolate) milk, flavored yogurt, a fruit smoothie, or juice offers more nutritional value. Runners with significant sweat losses can replace sodium losses with salty foods, such as soup, pretzels, pizza, or salt sprinkled on any food.

Sports Nutrition Tips on Recovery Foods

You should eat or drink carbohydrates (fruit, juice) as soon as tolerable (within an hour) after a hard run to replace depleted glycogen stores. Muscles are most receptive to refueling at this time.

For runners who do exhaustive workouts, consuming a little protein along with the carbs (as in fruit yogurt or chocolate milk) can enhance the speed of recovery and may reduce soreness.

Remember this sports nutrition tip: Only carbohydrates can quickly refuel your muscles and prepare you for tomorrow's workout. Hence, your recovery meal should not be a greasy burger with french fries.

Instead, choose carbohydrate-rich thick-crust pizza with veggie toppings, pasta with meatballs, or a grilled chicken dinner that emphasizes potato, pasta, bread, vegetables, juices, and other carbs.

Copyright: Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD
Nancy Clark's new Sports Nutrition Guidebook (2008), Food Guide for Marathoners, and Cyclist’s Food Guide are available at her website www.nancyclarkrd.com.

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