"Snacking" for Athletes

[emmfromsc]

I need some help. I am on day 15 and I think I am making some big errors in eating. I'm a habitual snacker and always hungry. I swim, run, cycle or do Bikram 6 days a week at a high intensity. I also do a day or two of olympic lifting and a day or two of CF met cons later in the day. I am burning lots and cannot figure out how to refuel. My husband sort of busted me on my nuts, dried fruit and almond butter "snacking". I have been doing it about 3x a day and not quite in moderation.

If I am doing cardio workouts at 5am and on some days something else around 9/10 am, when should I eat and what is reasonable? I see nuts, nut butter and dried fruits in "moderation" or "limited". What (in your minds) does that constitute for someone who is pretty active?

I really want to do this right. I pretty much fueled myself on pizza, honey peanut butter and chocolate chips for years...I know I need a change!!

Thank you for any help,

Beth

[Tom Denham]

I think you have to get past the idea of snacking at all and start focusing on eating pre- and post-workout meals regularly and enough at regular meals to fuel your high activity levels. A good example on the forum is Fenderbender at forum.whole9life.com/topic/8674-fenderbenders-log-w42-while-doing-primal-elite-soldier-training/. You can incorporate nuts and nut butters in meals, but they are bad snacks.

The meal template is your guide to meal timing and what to eat overall: http://whole9life.com/book/ISWF-Meal-Planning-Template.pdf

You might eat a boiled egg before a 5 AM cardio workout and some chicken breast and sweet potato immediately afterwards. And then more chicken and sweet potato immediately after a 9/10 AM workout. Then eat a good lunch with protein, fat, and veggies 3 or 4 hours later in the noon to 2 PM period. Then have supper at 6 or 7 with more protein, fat, and veggies. With your activity level, you need to eat starchy carbs every day. Probably as much as one medium to large size sweet potato or the equivalent pumpkin, butternut squash, yucca, etc. This plan has you eating five meals on workout days. If you get hungry doing this, you would probably need to increase the portion sizes of your protein and add more fat.

[emmfromsc]

Thank you, Tom. I had not revisited this PDF. Do you have thoughts on dried fruit as fuel and what "limited" constitutes? I have loved reading your responses on other posts. They are beyond helpful.

Also just checked out your blog and pinned the cauliflower/chicken soup...tomorrow night's supper--yum! Thanks.

[Tom Denham]

I guess dried fruit can be okay for an active person, maybe as something to eat in place of gels. I had my best marathon performance eating 2 real bananas during the race, but I suppose dried banana chips would have worked and fit in my fanny pack better.

Hope you like the soup. It was amazingly easy and good.

[Stephanie Starkey]

I am glad I found this post because I had a similar question. I adhere to the CrossFit Endurance protocol; CrossFit 6x week (3 days on, 1 day off) plus 2-3 interval runs. The exception being that, whenever a training day falls on a Sunday, I will do a long run in lieu of a WOD. On running days, I do my runs first thing in the morning before work (about 5AM) and do CrossFit at about 5 or 6PM, and when Saturday is a training day, I will always do a 12PM Hero WOD with my friends. So I was wondering about the pre/post workout protocol on double training days. I got the impression from the previous reply that adding a post workout meal to the second training session is appropriate. Is this correct? On double days, my workouts must be a minimum of 3 hours apart, but with my schedule they will almost always be about 12 hours apart. Any specific recommendations?

[Robin Strathdee]

You definitely need post workout food after each workout Consider a part of your wod, if you will. It doesn't really count toward your food intake for the day, so just make it a habit.

[Stephanie Starkey]

Thank you so much!

I've just muddled through Day 3 and am still troubleshooting. Today my evening workout was at 6pm. Lunch had been at about 1pm, and I had my pre-workout snack at around 5:20pm. Post workout meal was immediately following training (about 7pm) and dinner was an hour later. This puts the final meal about 1.5 hours before bedtime. Is that too close? Would it be better on days like this to have my dinner meal in lieu of the pre-workout snack and make the post workout meal the final feeding of the day?

[Robin Strathdee]

I think you're fine eating in that time frame, but if you're having trouble sleeping or you feel like your eating is off after a couple of days, you could try eating dinner as your pre-wod. Just don't ralph