Fuel Your Body: How to Cook and Eat for Peak Performance: 77 Simple, Nutritious, Whole-Food Recipes for Every Athlete - Hardcover

Asche, Angie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1572842962 ISBN 13: 9781572842960

Publisher: Agate Surrey, 2021

Synopsis

Take your athletic performance to the next level with these nutritious, simple, and convenient recipes.

This new cookbook is an indispensable resource for athletes of all ages and experience levels. Fuel Your Body: How to Cook and Eat for Peak Performance: 77 Simple, Nutritious, Whole-Food Recipes for Every Athlete is filled with nourishing recipes that are not only quick to prepare and simple enough for beginner home cooks, but don’t sacrifice flavor in the process. Whether you are an athlete at the elite level or a weekend warrior, the foods you put in your body have a direct impact on your overall health, performance, and recovery. This book compiles useful guidelines to sports nutrition and expertise from Angie Asche, a certified specialist in sports dietetics and founder of Eleat Nutrition, and can be used to help everyone reach their fitness goals through a whole-food and anti-inflammatory approach.

Whether you are a recreational half marathoner, the parent of a teenage athlete, or competing at a high level in your chosen sport, Fuel Your Body has recipes and meal plans to help you reach your full potential. This is the ultimate resource for anyone looking to educate themselves on both the nutrition necessary for optimal athletic performance and the simple recipes you can use to get there.

About this title

About the Author

Angie Asche, MS, RD, CSSD, is a sports dietitian and nationally recognized food and nutrition expert. She owns and operates Eleat Sports Nutrition, which provides nutrition coaching and counseling to athletes nationwide, and is based in Lincoln, Nebraska. Since founding her company in 2014, she has worked with hundreds of high school, college, and professional athletes nationwide in the MLB, NHL and NFL. Angie has also worked as the nutrition consultant to the University of Nebraska volleyball team. She is a board certified specialist in sports dietetics (CSSD) and a certified exercise physiologist (ACSM-EP). Her expertise and recipes have been featured in national publications including Men’s Journal, Muscle & Fitness, Food Network, Shape Magazine, Runner’s World, and NBC News.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: Performance Nutrition
Performance nutrition, also referred to as sports nutrition, is the study and field of nutrition based around improving athletic performance. The focus of performance nutrition is the right types of foods, in the right amounts, and at the right times in order to optimize training ability and recovery. To put simply, nutrition is essential for athletes as it provides the source of energy necessary to perform. In other words, food is fuel.
Anyone who is living a physically active lifestyle, regardless if they are a competitive athlete or an avid gym-goer, can benefit from implementing aspects of performance nutrition. I use the term athlete often in this book. Keep in mind that when I use this term, I am referring to anyone who competes in a sport or who is habitually physically active. Performance nutrition is not one-size-fits-all, and an individual’s lifestyle, sport or activity, personal goals, and/or medical condition can all lead to variations in nutrient needs. Reading through this book in its entirety will help to figure out what’s right for you.
This chapter discusses the three macronutrients: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. It then covers what’s called nutrient timing, the ideal timing of your meals to best optimize performance and recovery. Finally, it provides a breakdown of supplements, followed by steps to calculate your energy needs, as well as the importance of implementing “nourishment over numbers.”

The Macronutrients
Macronutrients are the types of nutrients that your body requires in large amounts: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Macronutrients provide your body with energy (calories), and all three play crucial roles in making sure your body is functioning at its best. While most foods contain multiple macronutrients, they are typically categorized by the macronutrient that they contain the most of. For example, rice and potatoes are often categorized as carbohydrates, even though they do contain small amounts of protein. And beef and salmon are often categorized as proteins, but they do both contain fat as well. Let’s discuss each macronutrient individually and why they’re all three important for your overall health and performance.

Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are the body’s most efficient source of energy. When consumed, the body converts them to glucose, which then provides us with an immediate energy source for all forms of exercise. Glycogen, or the body’s stored form of carbohydrates, is used during high-intensity exercise to provide both power and speed. Intense exercise depletes most of your glycogen stores, which are restored by consuming carbohydrates. When you do not consume adequate carbohydrates, you run into the risks of poor concentration and focus, a decrease in performance, and a breakdown of lean muscle mass as a fuel source (i.e., amino acids are broken down into glucose). There are several myths surrounding carbohydrates and performance, which I address in my nutrition myths section (see page XXX).
How many carbohydrates do you need? The amount of carbohydrates an athlete should consume varies significantly depending on the activity, level of intensity, and duration, ranging from 3 to 12 g/kg of body weight per day. This is a very wide range, but when it comes to energy expenditure, there are so many differences even within the same sport. The athlete’s position, weight, body composition goals, and even where they’re at in their training cycle all effect carbohydrate needs. For example, a starting pitcher burns significantly more calories than an outfielder, but also only starts once every five days. In football, a cornerback and a defensive tackle both play defense, but have very different body sizes and composition, making carbohydrate requirements extremely variable depending on the athlete.
A very generalized guideline is that athletes performing at moderate to high intensities, or training about 1 to 3 hours per day, should aim for at least 5 to 8 g/kg of body weight per day. For athletes training at very high intensities and for very long durations (e.g., long distance runners), carbohydrate recommendations are increased to 8 to 12 g/kg of body weight per day. Carb-loading is a practice common in endurance athletes in the days leading up to a race. By increasing intake of carbohydrates to 8 to 12 g/kg of body weight in the final seventy-two hours leading up to a prolonged endurance competition, athletes can increase muscle glycogen stores, especially when training volume is tapered back. Increased muscle glycogen stores may help athletes exercise harder for longer, as it helps to delay the onset of muscle fatigue.
Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of energy, so it is very important to adjust carbohydrate intakes before, during, and after your hard training sessions to ensure adequate replenishment. Some general guidelines are to consume 1 to 2 g/kg of body weight about 1 to 2 hours before exercise. For endurance exercise (e.g., running) that will last longer than 60 to 90 minutes, a general guideline is to consume 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour during. For optimal recovery post-workout, a general guideline is to aim for up to 1.5 g/kg of body weight right after you finish exercising, and continuing to replenish with carbohydrates throughout the day. Although protein also plays a very important role in repairing muscle, without adequate carbohydrates, the recovery process is not as efficient.
Carbohydrates are found in a wide variety of foods. You’ve probably heard that simple carbs are “bad” and complex carbs are “good.” For athletes, the type of carbs you should eat depends on what you’re doing. Simple carbohydrates are sugars (such as fructose and glucose) that are easy for your body to break down. They are absorbed quickly and can provide you with a jolt of energy. That’s why they can come in handy mid-competition, when your glycogen stores are running low and you need an immediate source of glucose.
Honey Stinger waffles, GU energy gels, gummies, jelly beans, and sports drinks like Gatorade are just a few of the many products you may have heard athletes using mid-competition for an energy boost. However, simple carbohydrates should account for a small amount of your intake, they should be utilized only when necessary, and they should not be your primary source of carbohydrates.
Instead, most of your carbs should come from complex carbohydrates, which have a more complicated molecule structure that takes the body longer to break down. Often, though not always, complex carbs are found in whole-foods with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and sometimes protein and/or fat. Whole-food sources such as orange slices, bananas, and even potatoes are all options athletes can use in place of traditional products mid-competition.
In general, the best sources of carbohydrates are whole, unprocessed foods. This includes vegetables, fruits, oats, rice, whole-grain pasta, whole-grain bread, beans, lentils, and potatoes. It’s best to stay away from processed foods that provide energy (calories) but that don’t provide much nutritional value (vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, fat) beyond that. Some examples include refined white flour, cane sugar, honey, fruit juice, and soda.
What about keto or low carb diets for athletes? Training with limited carbohydrate availability can lead to an increase in fat utilization during training, meaning your body may shift in favor of using more fat as fuel than carbohydrates, but it does not lead to improvements in performance. There’s insufficient evidence supporting a clear performance benefit, and research continues to show training with limited carbohydrate availability impairs intensity and duration. When your body is training at moderate intensities, for example an ultra runner sustaining the same intensity through a prolonged endurance event, your body is more capable of oxidizing fat for fuel. But at higher intensities or for high-intensity intermittent sports such as hockey, basketball, and soccer, carbohydrates are the preferred energy source and performance is impaired when intake is low.

Edition details

• Publisher: Agate Surrey
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1572842962
• ISBN 13: 9781572842960
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 231