Hey fans (Honestly all two of you – hey there)
Recently I presented to a group at the gym. This group was part of the 8 week challenge that is currently running in all Goodlife gyms around the country. Now I have presented A LOT over my years at uni and I am ALWAYS nervous even if there’s only one person in the room! Actually now I think about it, 1 or 2 people watching you is more intimidating than 100 people
*THROWBACK to honours when I had to present to my supervisor in her office WOW*
In short my presentation was around healthy eating. Conveniently, I thought, this actually makes for an informative blog post (who knew I was capable of writing something with substance)!
Why is your nutrition important when exercising?
Basically the food we eat (our fuel) impacts on our strength, training, performance and recovery. Professor Ron Maughan of Loughbrough University, UK says it best:
“A good diet will not make a mediocre athlete into a champion, but poor food choices can turn a champion into a mediocre athlete”.
And I’m sure you have heard that muscles are torn in the gym, and grown in the kitchen. The foods you have before and after your workout are crucial. Often people will be going hard in the gym for months without any results, this is where you need to take a look at the foods you are eating. It is much more difficult to create an energy deficit through exercise than it is to create an energy deficit through changing your eating habits.
Diet and exercise go hand in hand in changing your lifestyle. The recommendation for adults is 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity and this should involve muscle strengthening activities on at least 2 days per week. This is important as you age, as it keeps you nice and strong, reducing the risk of falls and fractures from falls.
So how exactly should you be fuelling yourself pre-workout?
PRE: You should have a carbohydrate containing meal 2-3 hours before exercising, and if you feel like you are still hungry, you can have a pre-exercise snack 30 – 60 minutes before your workout.
DURING: Hydration status during exercise is most important.
POST: Your post-exercise meal should be based on a high quality carbohydrate and include some high quality, lean protein. This can be a snack, or meal. This should be eaten as close to finishing exercise as possible. This is vital for recovery and refuelling.
So what else is important? Let’s start with three of the main groups of food:
Fruit and vegetables – These are two food groups that we as a nation are not very good at consuming! In 2017-18, just over half (51.3%) of Australian adults met the guidelines for the recommended daily serves of fruit (2 or more serves), while 7.5% met the guidelines for serves of vegetables (5 or more serves). And when you combined this – only 5.4% of adults met both guidelines and these rates have remained consistent over time.
Now these are just some numbers. Why do we care about these numbers, and in answering that WHY is it important for us to eat our fruit and vegetables? Simply put, if your goal is for weight loss, vegetables and fruit are both low in calories/ energy. You can eat less and feel fuller because of the fibre and water content. Fibre is one of the most important components of the diet, yet it is one that can often be overlooked.
Secondly, vegetables are absolutely jam packed with our key vitamins and minerals! Notably vitamin A, C and E, magnesium, zinc, phosphorus and folic acid.
And thirdly –
Based on years of evidence-based research, meeting your recommendations for these two food groups, lowers your risk of chronic illness. This has been shown to be the case in multiple cancers (especially gastrointestinal cancers) it decreases your risk of developing T2DM, and cardiovascular diseases like stroke and heart disease.
Grain and Cereal foods: Carbohydrates have developed a bit of a name for themselves, as I am sure most of you will be aware. If you have ever tried any diet, or investigated “how to lose weight” on google, it is this nutrient that you will be told to cut out. Carbohydrates are generally looked at as the culprit for causing weight gain. However, this is misleading, because weight gain comes from an excess in overall kilojoules (or energy), which can come from any food source, whether that’s carbohydrates, fat or protein.
It is recommended that around 45-60% of our intake daily should come from carbohydrate sources. Our body’s preferred source of energy is glucose, which are the building blocks of carbohydrates. In fact our brain only uses glucose to function – which explains why you begin to lose concentration when you’re ready for your next meal. There are carbohydrates in your obvious foods like bread, pasta and rice. But there are also carbohydrates in fruit, vegetables, and your dairy foods.
I had one of the PTs at the gym ask me about legumes, as in chickpeas, beans and lentils. The question was around if these are good for you because they contain carbohydrates – The answer is YES. These are some of the best sources of carbohydrate as they are high in fibre, protein and iron – which is a bonus if you are a vegan or vegetarian.
Another amazing thing about carbohydrates, which I have just mentioned is the presence of FIBRE (yes we are back to that). Research has also shown that beta glucan, a type of dietary fiber found in oats – is recognized as having blood cholesterol-lowering properties which is good for your heart health.
A handy tool that I use with all my clients to guide them, and even myself is The Healthy portions plate. In short it’s a guide for how your plate should look which is: ½ Vegetables, ¼ protein and ¼ carbohydrate/starch source.
One of the biggest challenges for my clients is really understanding the amount they are consuming. It’s a TRAP that I fall into also. It’s super easy to have a large portion of a delicious food that we love (you should see me eating pasta – WOW), but as a population we are good at overconsuming and having portion sizes that are large. It is often our portion sizes that can let us down when we are trying to reach new goals. It is very easy to unknowingly consume more than you realise! And that is okay!
Some examples of what “a serve” is
Grain food group = 1 slice of bread, or half a cup of cooked pasta/rice/ quinoa
A serve of chicken is 80g, or tofu is 170g
A serve of vegetables is 1 cup of raw salad veg, or half a cup of cooked veg.
The key to everything is balance and moderation and sometimes balance can be hard to achieve, but as long we keep making small changes to better our lives and our diet, then we will see results!
Until next time,
Big Sis x
