triathlon nutrition resources

Joe Friel's got a great blog post on nutrition entitled "how much should you eat?" It's quite timely for me, because I seem to have plateaued in the 192-195 pound range and can't go lower.

The most insightful section for me is the following (especially since I've just started eating bagels again):

But it isn't simply how much you eat, but also what you eat. My pet peeve with athletes is that they eat way too much starch. Starchy foods such as rice, bagels, bread, cereal and corn are the staples in many athletes' diets. Such foods are great for recovery. Eating them in the meal following a long and/or intense workout is a great way to restock your glycogen stores in preparation for the next workout. But continuing to eat such foods as a significant source of calories outside of the narrow recovery window is a sure way to pack on excess poundage. And to make matters worse, most starches are very low in micronutrients (for example, vitamins and minerals)compared with vegetables. Once beyond the recovery window, micronutrient intake is the key to becoming more fit and healthy.

I've immediately relegated my bagel munching ways to the recovery window instead of the "quick snack" status they'd started to take over throughout my day.

I'm no longer suffering from the hunger pangs or empty furnace feelings of the first couple weeks of training, but given I'm on a plateau, I've got to really pay attention to intake and timing. I can see the muscles showing in places that used to be pudgy, so I know part of what I'm doing is trading fat for muscle, but I'd still like to see the numbers on the scale begin to drop again.

Lucky for me, Left Coast Mom sent me this great food calculator at foodsel where you can select the food and amount you plan to eat (or already have) and it tells you both the nutrient content and how much activity you'll need to engage in to work it off.

And with their handy BMI calculator, I see that since I started last Summer, my BMI has dropped from 28.2 (overweight) to 24.7 (normal) as I've shed these 28 pounds. When I hit my target weight of 180, I'll be at 23.1. Still in the normal range, but solidly so.