Top 3 strategies to gain your athletic edge through nutrition

When you workout employ these 3 nutritional strategies to help enhance your workouts and improve your results:

1. Ready Strategy
2. Fueling Strategy
3. Recovery Strategy

Ready Strategy
It is important that your ready meal before your workout contain starchy carbs.  The amount of starchy carbs, ¼ to 1 cup, depends on your gender, the length or intensity of your work-out, and whether you want to lose weight, maintain weight, or gain muscle mass.

When your workout is long then you will want to add a healthy fat like coconut oil or a plant-based healthy fat like nuts or seeds.  If you will be playing tennis, hiking, or skiing for 2 or 3 hours or golfing for 4 or 5 hours then it will be very important to add a healthy fat to your ready meal. 

When working out in the morning your ready meal would be your last meal the night before. When working out at lunch then this meal will be your first meal of the day and for an evening workout this meal maybe around 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon. 

Starchy Carb amounts in Ready Meal:
Women:

1. Weight loss: ¼ cup
2. Maintain Weight: ½ cup
3. Gain muscle mass: ¼ to ¾ cup (depending on hunger)

Men:

1. Weight loss: ½ cup
2. Maintain weight: ¾ cup
3. Gain muscle mass: ½ to 1 cup (depending on hunger)

Fueling Strategy
About 30 minutes before you workout you want to start sipping your fueling beverage.  If you are working out first thing in the morning and don’t want liquids in your stomach then you will want to drink little amounts of this beverage during your workout. 

It is critical if you workout during the afternoon or evening time  to eat your ready meal and drink your fueling beverage so you feel the right level of lightness in your body for your workout and your own personal style.  So, some people may want an emptier stomach than others.  It may depend on your personal preference and the type of workout you are doing.  The more intense your workout like sprint training the less you want to have in your stomach.  So, you will want to have your ready meal much sooner. 
 
Now if you are doing weight training then you may be able to have your ready meal and hour or hour and half before you workout.  It is best to experiment with what is going to work best for you. It also depends on the intensity of your workout.

Nutrient dense beverage supplements: 

1. Electrolytes without artificial sweeteners and colors
   
2. Ribo-CarniClear or Carnitine
3. L-Glutamine
4. Optional: 1 cup Non-Starchy veggies or freeze dried veggie mix

If you are planning on a long hiking, playing golf for 4-6 hours, skiing, multiple games of tennis, or a long bike ride you are going to need more fuel than just your nutrient dense beverage.  You need to decide if you want to drink your after workout shake or eat a food based meal that has a high sugar fruit like bananas or dates and incorporate a healthy fat into the shake or food based meal like coconut oil, nuts or seeds.

Recover Strategy
The most important nutrients for recovery are amino acids.  Now that you have torn down your muscle tissue, made of amino acids, you want to rebuild those amino acids using the best building material you can find.  The fastest way to get the amino acids into your system is to drink a soy free vegan protein post workout shake because it is already in the form of amino acids.  If you use an animal based protein source it will be very difficult to digest, takes hours to digest, and will not be able to get to the muscle cells in the window of recovery time, which is within 30 to 45 minutes.  Do not use whey or casein based protein powders because they are allergenic to most people, and can produce an immune reaction in your body which will prevent those amino acids from being up taken by your muscles.
 
The BIGGEST mistake you can make after your muscle tissue is torn down is to put sugar, processed fats, salt, and processed carbohydrates into your system because you will not be able to rebuild that muscle tissue, recover time will be slowed down and your body will get very exhausted.  Do not eat junk food as an excuse because you burned so many calories and now we can eat whatever we want.
 
Post Workout Shake examples:

• 20 grams soy free vegan protein shake mix
• 1 cup coconut water
• 1 tsp freeze dried greens or 1 cup non-starchy veggies
• 3,000 to 9,000 mg L-Glutamine

Or

• 20 grams soy free vegan protein shake mix
• 1 or more cups water or other non-dairy liquid
• ½ of a whole banana or ¼ cup pineapple, mango or grapes
• 1 tsp freeze dried greens or 1 cup non-starchy veggies
• 3,000 to 9,000 mg L-Glutamine 

As soon as you get hungry after you finish drinking your post workout shake, you want to eat an unprocessed, balanced meal consisting of protein, non-starchy carbs, starchy carbs and a healthy fat.

If you need a supplement recommendations please email me at Susan@DiscoverOptimalWellness.com

We would love for you to share your workout strategies by commenting on this post.