The Pit Stops: Refueling (Part II)

It’s been a while since the last post, but I hope you have been putting into practice the hydration techniques during this time.

Remember; when in doubt…drink up!

Water and more water!

(Obviously, the occasional beer and wine will keep you happy, too!)

Let’s now focus on the sources of energy during your “Pit Stops”, glucose and fats, and we’ll leave the third and final part of these series of blogs to the amino acids.

GLUCOSE

Have you ever seen a car running without fuel?

Never?

Me neither.

But that is what some people pretend to do with their own bodies during training and races. And then they wonder why they are not able to finish their races, or why they have to slow down so much.

What is happening is that their gas tank is just empty, and their engines are running just on fumes. They have skipped their needed “Pit Stops”, and now they are paying the price.

Without glucose, which is the primary and fastest source of fuel, your body simply stops. It is no longer able to move properly, and it is not able to transform other sources of energy like fat.

To avoid that, you have to make sure that there is enough glucose in your body to keep you moving. Otherwise, you have to consume sugars and carbohydrates (they will be transformed into glucose in your body) to support you during training and racing

When:

a.            Eat moderate amounts of carbohydrates (brown rice/ pasta/ bread, potatoes, etc) and lots of fruits and vegetables in your meals to keep the glucose levels in your body (stored as “glycogen” in muscles and liver) to the maximum.

b.            If you are about to do a long or highly intense workout or race, make sure that you have eaten a bit of carbohydrates at least 2 hours before starting.

c.            If you are racing or training for more than an hour, make sure that you are taking energy gels, honey, sports drinks or any other liquid sugar after the first half hour, and keep doing it at regular intervals. Avoid solid food if you are doing highly intense activities, as you will have a difficult time digesting it.

d.            Immediately after you have finished a long race (longer than one hour) drink your water and eat carbohydrates and simple sugars. Drinking a sports beverage is a good idea as it contains lots of sugar, besides the water and minerals needed to rehydrate you.

Well, now you know that replenishing glucose is fundamental if you are training and/or racing for more than an hour and at intense levels. However, you have to keep in mind a couple of warning points:

1. Do not eat or drink anything when you are exerting yourself at maximum levels. If you are gasping for air and you eat/ drink at the same time, your stomach will not be able to digest food properly and you will end up with an upset stomach. Thus, if you are pushing hard, take a few moments to slow down a bit to ingest your food or drink your beverage.
2. Additional sugar and carbs are not needed if you are not training hard or racing for a long period. The reserves in your body, created from your normal meals (mainly from eating fruits and vegetables), are enough to keep you moving. Do not eat additional carbs or take any sports drinks or gels if you are not working out much. You will only end up creating an insulin spike (see the blog post "Understanding the Vicious Cycle"), which will only make you fat!

Have you seen marathon runners with a big belly and lots of bodyfat? Well, that’s because they have eaten too much carbs thinking that they need a kilo of pasta and tons of bread every time they train.

Don’t make the same mistake.

Find the right balance of carbs needed to support your long and intense training and racing. If you avoid emptying your muscle and liver reserves of glycogen, you will recover much faster and you will be able to train and race hard again in no time.

FATS

You might think, “why do I need fat if I want to be lean and athletic”?

Well, you need fat in your diet to be lean and athletic, but most importantly to be healthy.

Fats are fundamental to support your hormonal systems and to repair your cell membranes. They also help you avoid peaks in blood sugar levels, so your energy levels are more constant. Finally, they are the most concentrated form of energy that is stored in your body and which can provide calories for you for days even if you ran out of food.

Fat is the ultimate source of energy for survival when there is no food available.

You need to eat good fats (olive oil, nuts, fish oil – omega 3, flaxseed oil, etc) during your normal meals, to support your health. Without these fats, your hormonal system will not work properly and your cell membranes will be weaker.

The other benefit of fat is that it slows down the process of food being converted into glucose. The slower the process, the more constant the levels of energy and the less insulin there is circulating in your body. With normal or low levels of insulin, you are more able to use fat as fuel and you end up becoming a lean machine!

Keep in mind, however, that you do not need extra fat during your training or racing. Different to glucose, which is stored only in limited amounts in the body, we all have already a lot of fat in our bodies to survive for several days.

When:

a.            Consume your good fats during your meals: extra virgin olive oil as salad dressing, or eat cold water fish like salmon or sardines.  

b.            Use nuts as snacks. Instead of cookies or candy bars, replace them with a fistful of nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, cashews, etc). Just avoid the salty and fried types. Go natural!

c.            Do not consume fats during your training or racing, as they are slow to digest and you might end up with an upset stomach. Besides, you do not need to replace fats during racing as you have huge reserves in your body, as said before.

Although fats are highly important, you must be careful with the quantities. Fats are high in calories, so make sure you consume them in all your meals and snacks, but in small quantities.

If you follow your appetite, you will eat small portions, as fat satiates your hunger almost immediately and for long periods of time. In other words, your body knows when to stop eating. You just have to listen to it!

Well, now you know how to keep your Perfect Machine running fast and recovering even faster with the proper Pit Stops to rehydrate you and fill your tank. 

Next time, we’ll cover how to eat protein (i.e. amino acids) to keep  your moving parts and organs strong and healthy.

Remember; keep your tank full, but do not overload it!

The Pit Stops: Refueling (Part I)

Have you ever seen a Formula 1 car race?

Those incredible machines can be driven at speeds greater than 350 km/h. They are perfectly designed to combine an extremely powerful engine with a very light and aerodynamic chassis. The result is a wonderful machine that can only be driven at its potential by the most talented pilots in the world.

But even the best machine and pilot needs to do “Pit Stops” during the races to change tires, fix any problem and refuel. If the Pit Stop is skipped, sooner or later, even the best engineered machines stop completely.

Well, your body, your Perfect Machine, is exactly the same.

To make it work properly and at its best, you need to do all your “Pit Stops”. And you have to do them at the right time and with the right fuel.

When you master this, your recovery times improve tremendously.

So let’s now concentrate on the “refueling” aspect of your pit stops. In other words, let’s see how you can best replenish all the nutrients and fluids that your body consumes during normal living and especially during sports training.

RESOURCES CONSUMED

While you are having fun working out or practicing your favorite sport, you are basically wearing and tearing your machine's chassis (muscles and tendons) and consuming several resources in your body.

In simplified terms, you are consuming:

1. Water : lost in great quantities to cool you off through sweating, and in minor quantities through your urine to depurate you of detritus resulting from the chemical reactions at cellular level
2. Electrolytes: also lost trough your sweating, these are minerals like magnesium, potassium and sodium (that’s where the salty taste of your sweat is coming from)
3. Glucose: consumed as the fastest source of energy to make your muscles contract and make you move. The faster you go (and the greater effort  you do), the fastest rate at which glucose is consumed
4. Fats: consumed as a very concentrated, but slow source of energy. If you move easily and for a long time (like a hike) a great proportion of your energy is coming from fats. Fats are also used to repair cellular membranes.
5. Amino Acids: these are the building blocks of protein which are used in large quantities to repair and reinforce the muscle fibers damaged during training. They are also consumed in small quantities to produce energy.

Let’s now see in more detail how you should replace these resources to make your Perfect Machine work at its best all the time.

WATER

This is the most important of all the resources. Make a mistake in your hydration, and your performance will decrease enormously and your post-workout recovery will take much longer.

Keep in mind that when you feel thirsty, you are already a bit dehydrated. Thus, drink constantly!

That sense of fatigue you get after you exercise can be greatly reduced if you drink enough before, during and after your workout.

When:

1. Drink all the time. Keep a water bottle next to you and keep sipping all day.
2. Make sure you are going into your workout well hydrated by drinking one or two glasses of water half an hour before the start.
3. Try to sip water continuously during your workout when you take short breaks. Just don’t drink much when you are working at extreme levels of intensity as your stomach might get upset. It is better to wait for the end if you are working out intensely for less than 30 minutes.
4. Drink at least half a liter after your workout, and much more if you have been training for more than an hour or in hot conditions. The more you have sweated, the more you have to drink. It will also help you to carry out of your body the toxins produced during your training.

ELECTROLYTES

These work together with the water to keep you hydrated up to the cellular level.

If you have been sweating a lot (like in a hot marathon race), plain water will not be enough to hydrate you. The sweating makes you lose minerals (lots of sodium) from your blood and cells.

Actually, you need the electrolytes to carry the water inside the cells, otherwise you are only “washing up” the mineral content in your blood and cells (if this is taken to the extreme it is called hyponatremia which can be very dangerous).

Without the proper mineral balance, the electrical impulses sent from the brain are not transmitted well to the muscle fibers, so they cannot contract properly. That’s when the horribly painful muscle cramps appear!

When:

1. During prolonged workouts or long races (more than an hour), sip sports drinks (i.e. Gatorade or Powerade), in addition to lots of water. The greater the heat, the greater the amount of salts and minerals you have to drink in addition to your water.
2. After your long workouts or races in the heat, eat salty food and keep drinking sports drinks in addition to your water. Your rehydration and recovery will be much faster this way.

If you have not sweated much, water is enough. The minerals lost with normal sweating are replaced with your meals. Thus, avoid sports drinks if you are not working out much (they have too much sugar that you do not need in short workouts!).

Bonus tip: 
(This is for those friends of yours who are alcohol lovers, not for you of course!)


After drinking lots of alcohol and before going to bed, drink at least half a liter of a sports drink with as much water as you can. 
Hangovers are mainly a severe state of dehydration caused by all the peeing (and vomiting!) done to eliminate the toxic alcohol from your body.
Thus, after the night out, and if you are conscious enough (I mean, your friend!) eat salty food, and drink a sports drink in addition to lots of water before going to bed. You will feel much better the day after... Well, that’s what they tell me ;)

OK. I’ll leave you here. Hopefully, you are now sipping from your water bottle and keeping well hydrated!

Next time, we’ll cover the other three resources that you need to replace to be in top conditions to perform at your best and recover faster.

In the meantime...

Train hard, drink hard!...water, I mean!

The Switch (final part)

It’s time to close the series of posts about how to make The Switch happen. This time, I will not focus on the right foods, but on the right quantities.

As you might know already, even when you eat the best food possible, if you eat too much of it, you will store the extra calories as body fat. No way to go around that. Period.

Fat is the ultimate and most efficient way for your body to store energy.

If you keep eating in all your meals more calories than what you need, you will end up storing more and more energy. And your belly and hips will end up becoming larger and larger!

So - you might say - if I stored fat by eating too much, I can get rid of it by starving myself, right?

Wrong!

Your body does not work exactly like that.

(Bad news…I know, I know!)

However, that is what many people do: eat like maniacs and drink gallons of alcohol one day, and then eat almost nothing the next couple of days “to balance” things out.

While the effect is that they feel lighter after eating very little for a couple of days, in reality, what has happened is that their bodies have gone through a very negative cycle of:

1. Feeling bloated and enlarging the stomach  (from eating large amounts of food)
2. Storing extra fat (because too many calories were ingested)
3. Having low energy levels (during the following day/s when eating very little)
4. Tearing down muscle tissue (the body needs the protein to sustain vital organs and life processes – if you do not eat, the body gets its needed protein from its natural storages which are the muscles)
5. Slowing down the metabolism (no energy is getting in, so the body slows down to consume less energy – it consumes less fat, too)

In other words, if you pig out one day and starve the next day, you end up with a larger and upset stomach, with lower energy levels, less muscle and a slowed down metabolism.  You might have lost a kilo or even two, but that lost weight is manly water and muscle, not fat.

So, what to do to avoid this negative cycle?

Just avoid overeating!

And do it with every meal you have.

Very simple, huh?

OK, I know it is not easy. Not at all.

Honestly, for me this is the most difficult thing to do.

I tend to overeat a lot when partying or when dinning out.

I just can’t resist good food  (and sincerely, I just do not want to!).

Since I guess you might have the same “problem” I have, let me give you now some quick tips on how to avoid overeating when going out to parties or dinners:

Eat before you go

Eat a small snack before going to the event. The whole point is to avoid arriving there starving, so you do not end up eating the whole buffet by yourself as soon as you arrive. Ideally, you should eat some sort of protein in your snack, as it will satisfy your appetite much better. As an example, you can try eating some nuts (not salted or fried, but natural) and a small piece of fruit.

Drink water

If you drink a couple of glasses of water before your party, not only you will be better hydrated, but also your stomach will be already filled a little bit with no calories at all (more on the importance of drinking water in later posts!). With water in your stomach, you will have less desire to pig out once in front of the food.

Take it easy with the alcohol

Alcohol is full of calories. You know it. I know it. We all know it! So try to avoid drinking too much. A couple of glasses of good wine or beer are perfect with nice food, but more than that starts to become too much if you are trying to lose fat. If you are drinking alcohol, at least eat less. On the other hand, if you feel like partying and losing your senses with alcohol one night, invite me!!!

Slow down and be aware

I think this applies for almost anything in life. Slow down and savor every single moment. Enjoy every single piece you eat. Be aware of how food awakes your senses. You’ll end up eating much less, but being much more satisfied. After all, Life is mainly a qualitative, not a quantitative experience.

Ok, let’s be honest here.

If you are like me, you will not do this perfectly. Far from it.

You will overeat and drink too much many times.

But now you know what the consequences of your actions are.

You are also better equipped to reduce their negative effects.

So, don’t sabotage your Perfect Fat Burning Machine.

Follow your appetite and do not overeat.

Remember that constantly starving yourself does more harm than good. Just eat a little lighter the days after you have eaten too much, but do eat. And eat properly.

Relax and enjoy your dinners and parties.

No need to be extremely strict.

It is enough if you follow good habits 80% of the time.

(and make sure the other 20% really counts!)

It's all about quality, not quantity!!!

The Switch (Part 2)

It’s been a while since the last post about how to make The Switch happen.

I’ve been a bit busy(ier) with work, normal life, and mainly from my long distance triathlon training and racing. The Ironman race is going to be happening almost a month from now, so I had started to become serious (kind of!) with my preparation, and I have not had much time to write more blog posts. Sorry!

To make up the lost time, let me go directly to one more powerful tip that will help you take full advantage of your Perfect Fat Burning Machine:

Increase your protein consumption

With our current diet habits, we tend to eat too much carbs and too little protein. This is a mistake, because the right amount of protein in your diet brings you many benefits to your health, your fitness and your looks, too. I will actually write a full blog post in the near future about the Power of Protein to go into more details, but for now, let me focus on how protein can help you burn fat. Lots of it!

If you eat a good amount of protein in all your meals, breakfast included, you have three positive effects for fat burning:

1. Your hunger is satisfied for much longer (so you do not eat too much during the day)
2. Your metabolism becomes faster (so you end up burning more calories and body fat)
3. You build -or maintain- muscles more easily (and the more muscle you have in your body, the more calories and fat you burn daily, even while sleeping!)

Three synergistic effects for the price of one!

Great deal, huh?!

So, how can you make it happen?

Start by checking if you are consuming at least 1 gram of protein for each kilogram of bodyweight you have a day. For example, for a guy weighting 80 Kilos, he should consume at least 80 grams of protein during the day. These grams should be spread out in each meal, at about 25-35 grams per meal (about one chicken breast portion or steak portion)

In my case, as I am training and racing (this damages the muscles and they need to be repaired using extra protein from the diet), I consume much more protein than that.

To make it practical, use your main meals to consume large amounts of protein:

1. Breakfast: this meal is critical to boost your metabolism and set your day. Don’t waste it with donuts, cookies or sugary cereals that have very little nutrients in them and lots of calories. Use instead plain yogurt (a large portion) with no sugar added and fruits or natural cereals. You could also use ricotta cheese, or if you enjoy it, also eggs, ham or even salmon (I don’t like salmon at all for breakfast, but in some countries is very common). The point is to find what you like (yogurt for me!), but consume large amounts of protein for breakfast. You will notice a positive difference in your energy and hunger levels during the whole morning.
2. Lunch and Dinner: make a large portion of either chicken, turkey, fish, beef or tuna (whatever…just make it large and vary it every day) and add lots of vegetables dressed with extra-virgin olive oil. Make a large portion of both protein and vegetables. Don’t be afraid about the calories! If you do not add bread, rice, pasta or desserts, you will not gain weight by eating this. You will instead “train your body” to burn fat as fuel, and the best thing is that you will not be hungry for many hours.

As I do not like to measure everything (it is boring and unpractical!), I check if the amount of protein I am consuming everyday is appropriate with two things:

1. Are my nails growing fast and strong? Is my beard and hair growing fast? This is in an indication that there is enough protein in the diet to help build and repair body tissue (muscles, hair, nails, etc)
2. Am I getting sick frequently? Catching colds or the flu? Allergies? This might indicate that I am lacking protein in my diet, as a strong immune system is greatly supported by enough protein in the diet. By the way, I do not remember when was the last time I had a cold (knocking on wood now!!)

If I think that the level is too low, I usually adjust it by adding extra protein using Protein Powders to supplement my normal diet. The chocolate flavor, whey protein shakes are my favorites!

Go ahead!

Increase your protein consumption drastically from today!

Try it!

You will immediately notice that you are less hungry.

Your body temperature will rise slightly (this is your metabolism speeding up!)

And you will start to see muscles in your body that you didn’t know they even existed!

Additional protein is the secret weapon to make The Switch really happen even with people that usually have problems losing fat.

As always, test it by yourself!

And then let me know if you are happy with the results

(I know you will be!)

Understanding The Vicious Cycle

My first flight was delayed one hour. 

I lost the connection with the second flight as a result.

So I just got four “free and unplanned hours” in the airport now. 

What to do?

Write a new blog post, of course!

Many of you have written to tell me that you are really curious about what to do to awaken the Perfect Fat Burning Machine you have in your body. Thus, this time, I will not go into all the theory before giving you the practical advice. I’ll do exactly the opposite. I’ll give you immediately the secret to melting body fat with no effort, so you can start melting it already from today.

Here is the secret.

Ready?

KEEP YOUR BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS STABLE ALL DAY LONG.

That’s it.

That’s the secret.

No joke!

If you are able to do it, you will be naturally using a lot of your stored body fat as energy all day long. And as result, you will reduce your clothes sizes pretty dramatically in a short period of time.

(Start saving  some money now, so you can buy the new wardrobe!)

Well, if that is the only thing to do, you might be asking, why not everybody has a “lean machine”? Sounds simple and easy to do, right?

Reality is that it is simple and easy, but we have many habits in our modern diets which takes us very far away from this principle. Actually, with our diet habits, most of us go through constant “roller coasters” in our blood sugar levels during the day.

Are you constantly hungry? Actually starving?

Do you have very low energy levels, or even risk falling asleep over your job desk after lunch?

Are you always looking for something sweet to munch?

All these are examples of constant “peak and valleys” in your blood sugar levels. When you are in a peak, you feel energized and concentrated. But that high peak lasts very shortly. And almost immediately after you are feeling hungry and falling asleep (yes, that’s the valley! ).

What happens is that our brain needs sugar to work properly, but it needs it in a certain amount. Not too much, and not too little. So when there is too much sugar in your blood, your brain does not like it. So it “asks” the pancreas to produce a good amount of insulin to immediately carry and store that sugar in your muscle cells and into your liver, and in that way, the blood sugar levels are immediately reduced to a safe level.

The problem is that the pancreas tends to produce too much insulin, and so the blood sugar levels are reduced drastically. And you feel your energy levels in “reserve mode” almost immediately (the valley!). You almost start falling asleep and you desperately look for something sweet to calm your hunger.

This Vicious Cycle, not only keeps you in a energy roller coaster, it also tends to make you ingest a lot of extra calories because you are constantly starving. And extra calories mean also extra fat!

However, the worst thing when this cycle is happening (when insulin is high in your body) is that your capacity to burn fat as energy is completely shut down.

Let me say that again:

WHEN YOUR BODY IS PRODUCING TOO MUCH INSULIN, YOU STOP BURNING FAT AS ENERGY.

Not only that, if your muscle cells and liver are already “full” with sugar (glycogen is the right name of sugar when it is stored in the body) the excess sugar is converted into fat. Thus, if you eat too much sugars or carbs you not only stop your natural fat burning mechanism, you are most likely also increasing your body fat storages, too.

A complete mess, if you want to lose fat!

But this happens every day to most of the people I know.

And this same people tend to think that losing fat easily is just for “athletes” or genetically gifted human beings.

The truth is that the whole problem is in their diet habits, not in their genes or physical activity levels. They are living in a constant Vicious Cycle of excessive insulin production.

Again, it is a Vicious Cycle that is “hidden” in our modern diet habits!

-          Sweets (or excessive carbs),

-          Peak in blood sugar levels,

-          Excessive production of insulin,

-          Shut down of fat burning mechanisms,

-          Highly probable increase in fat storage,

-          Low blood sugar levels,

-          …sweets again!

-          …and so on!

Keep in mind that when this cycle is always present in peoples’ bodies, it creates also health problems.

The first stage is “insulin resistance”, which means that your body is constantly producing an excessive amount of insulin because the normal quantities do not produce the desired effects anymore.

The second stage is Diabetes (type II).  Your blood sugar regulation system goes havoc, breaks down completely, and you become diabetic.

Most of the apparently “healthy” people are actually “insulin resistant” to a certain degree, and that is why it is sometimes very difficult to lose extra weight (but it is not impossible!!! Especially when the right things are done).

OK. You are right!

That was theory and not practical advice.

I got carried away! Sorry!

But the thing is that I needed to at least explain to you the Vicious Insulin Cycle, so you could better understand the logic of the future practical advice. And in this way you are better equipped to apply it on your own.

I promise that in the next blog post I will list several actions you can do to keep your blood sugar levels stable to avoid the Vicious Insulin Cycle. And therefore, to keep your Perfect Fat Burning Machine working at its maximum power all day long.

(Quick preview of next blog: avoid sweets, desserts, sugar and excessive carbs. Replace them with fruits and vegetables. Eat lots of protein and good fats too!)

Next time I’ll give you a list of tools to help you switch from the Vicious Insulin Cycle to the Virtuous Fat Burning Cycle.

Get ready to do The Switch and to be amazed by the results!