Profile of a Swimmer’s Snacking Style

11/19/2013

By Jill Castle, MS, RDN

As a mom and a dietitian, I get a lot of questions about snacking, especially for the athlete. “What’s a healthy snack?” and “How do I handle my child’s snacking habits?” are common ones. Truth be told, how the swimmer snacks and what he chooses is as much about personality, environment and opportunity as it is about nutrition. Some of the more common snacking scenarios parents face with their swimmers are:

The Starving-After-Practice Snacker

This swimmer enters the car or home, starving and about to die if he doesn’t get some food fast. I encourage parents to rewind the day, and look at the child’s actual intake at lunch, and even breakfast. It may have been mediocre. There may even be evidence: leftovers in the lunchbox, or a half eaten bowl of cereal in the morning. When swimmers eat inadequately at the beginning and middle of the day, they may be very hungry when they return home after a day of school and swim practice.

Remedy: Encourage your swimmer to “front-load”—eat a hearty breakfast and lunch including a variety of food groups and a good protein source.

Example: cereal + milk + fruit + toast + nut butter; egg + cheese + ham + English muffin + 4 oz. 100% fruit juice.

The Never-Full Snacker

Within an hour after a meal, this swimmer is hungry! Several reasons may contribute to this scenario, such as not eating enough food at mealtime, eating the wrong foods (nutrient-poor foods aren’t nutritious or satisfying enough to carry a swimmer 3-4 hours until the next meal), or a ‘habit of asking’ rather than true hunger. Whichever the reason, take a critical look at meal schedules, the food strategy, and the food balance of meals and snacks.

Remedy: Get back on a regular schedule (3 meals + 1-3 snacks depending on swimmer’s age and activity level). Boost the balance of food and nutrients, erring on the side of whole, healthy and nutritious. Don’t let the nutrient-poor foods crowd out the good stuff.

Example: Child and Teen Swimmers: 3 meals + 2-3 snacks using real food from grain, meat/non-meat protein foods, fruit, veggie, milk/non-milk and healthy fat groups.

The Take-It-or-Leave-It Snacker

Some swimmers aren’t big on snacking, or may prefer to graze, nibbling through the day and saving their appetite for meals. This tends to be an eating personality or style within the swimmer.

Remedy: Make sure to offer nutritious snacks, and if not eaten, boost the main meals with extra options and let your swimmer self-regulate his appetite. Most swimmers will eat to match their calorie requirements if given the opportunity and plenty of wholesome food.

The ‘I Love My Junk’ Snacker

Some swimmers succumb to readily available snacks in their pool and school environment, which may be processed foods instead of fresh foods, sweets rather than naturally sweetened items, and fried chips or fries over baked foods. These snack foods can easily take over the swimmer’s diet, contributing a significant amount of empty calories. Contrary to popular belief, you can re-program this!

Remedy: First, adopt a guideline that outlines how many ‘junk food items’ the swimmer can have each day with a maximum of 1 or 2 per day. This way, favorite foods are not completely eliminated, which backfires anyway, but limited to a reasonable amount. Second, point out which foods have a limit (e.g., desserts). Third, let your swimmer have a say in which ‘junk foods’ he will choose for the day. Congratulations! You’ve just negotiated a happy middle ground-- one that allows some ‘junk,’ but sets a limit.

Examples of Fun Foods: soda, cookies, candy, pie, cake, donuts, chips, and French fries. Limit two per day which might be a donut after morning practice and dessert after dinner.

The Healthy Snacker

This is the swimmer and eater we are all trying to develop! One who chooses to eat wholesome, real foods at snack time, most of the time. A swimmer who doesn’t go overboard with too much food or too many empty calories, and who listens to his body, eats mindfully and appreciates his own hunger and fullness.

Target: Stay on course with timing of snacks, a variety of foods, and a healthy balance of nutritious food. If you get side-tracked, check the solutions above, and get back on track.

What kind of snacking style do you have?

Jill Castle, MS, RDN is a childhood nutrition expert and co-author of Fearless Feeding: How to Raise Healthy Eaters from High Chair to High School. She is the creator of Just The Right Byte, a childhood nutrition blog. She lives with her husband and four children in New Canaan, CT. Questions? Contact her at Jill@JillCastle.com .

Posted from usaswimming.org

Dehydration

October 23, 2013 Blog Posts Megan Fischer-Colbrie

Hey guys! I am back for my second post of the Building Blocks series. In this segment, we will be discussing hydration. I hope you guys enjoy the article, as it is an immensely important topic in the field of athletic performance!

Staying hydrated is an age-old phrase, but many of us choose to ignore the whole “drink 8 ounces of water 8 times a day” thing. Are we chronically dehydrated? The answer is a resounding yes, and it comes about in a variety of ways. It’s time to start thinking about why you may forget to stay hydrated, and what hydration specifically means for your body so you can be motivated to do it more than just for the sake of health in general. Since I find sweeping health tips to be the first to drop from my repertoire because I don’t feel direct results, let’s make drinking water directly beneficial to you.

Yes, I said water: it’s time to get away from flavored this and infused that…water is your key liquid to hydration. So before we move on to electrolytes and sports drinks let’s start simple.

Most athletes know to drink water, but besides staying hydrated during practice, post-workout hydration is an important part of recovery. Water flushes out toxins and helps flush out excess acid from muscles in the body post-exertion. It also aids in cellular repair, so those micro tears created in muscle during exercise will heal faster, and leave you with less soreness the next day. If you’re into statistics, an athlete dehydrated with 2.5% loss of body weight in the form of water can experience up to 45% loss in capacity to perform high-intensity exercise. For a 150 lb athlete, this means a loss of 60 ounces of water! It may sound difficult to lose this much, but under normal conditions an athlete produces about 27-48 ounces of sweat per hour of average exercise, and that’s not including hot, dry conditions or high intensity exercise that many elite athletes undergo. So, chances are, if you work out longer than an hour, you are highly likely to be dehydrated to the point of reduced performance in the second half of your workout or competition…unless you actively hydrate!

Hydrating means sustained work capacity; in other words, you’ll be able to work harder if you drink more water.

We tend to think our hydration depends on our activity level, and to some extent, this is true. However, our less active days still demand some attention. In a study published in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers found that simply sitting at a desk can lead to dehydration and negative consequences even without visible sweating or exercise. His study indicates that once dehydration sets in, it affects your cognition, concentration, and ability to control your mood. Results found that mild dehydration (defined as a 1.5% loss in water) led to fatigue, difficulty in memory tasks, anxiety and tension. So what does this mean for you? It means that when you’re thirsty, your body is already 1-2% dehydrated, so you better go grab a tall glass of water. It means that on average, the daily recommended 6 to 8 glasses of water or 1.2 to 2 liters per day really can save you time and energy while preventing muscle soreness when you consider the awesome benefits to your brain and body that come with hydration.
Water lubricates your joints and eyes, helps maintain chemical balance in the brain, and flushes out toxins to keep you feeling fresh and your skin looking beautiful. With all this in mind, it can still be difficult to add in another health habit to your daily routine. If hydration seems out of sight, out of mind, make it visible! I always carry a water bottle with me wherever I go. Have it with you at work to refill, in the classroom during lecture, and at home or in your car. When you feel fatigue setting in, try grabbing your water instead of a coffee or tea. You’ll find yourself drinking more water subconsciously, and not reaching those dehydrated energy lows. Hydration is a fast and simple way to help you perform at your best—both in practice and out—so take advantage of its benefits whenever you can.

References:
1. http://www.cp12.org/blog/index.php/2013/06/06/chronicdehydration-are-we-thirstier-than-we-thing/
2. Sawka, Young, Cardarette, et al. 1985
3. http://beta.active.com/nutrition/articles/cracking-the-code-on-sweat-rates
4. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/20/mild-dehydration-causes-a-_n_1288964.html

About Megan Fischer-Colbrie

Megan recently graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Human Biology, and a particular focus in human physiology. Megan is currently preparing for medical school, and recently finished 4 years as a Division I athlete at Stanford. While in college, Megan learned about the human capacity for performance in great detail, in both the classroom and competitions. Megan has conducted research for both Type I Diabetes and pediatric cardiac conditions, and has heard incredible lectures from some of the leading professors in their respective fields at Stanford. It is Megan's wish to impart sound, research-based information to you, the reader, so that you can maximize your performance now. View all posts by Megan Fischer-Colbrie →

Reposted from bridgeathletic.com

Recovery, Part I

October 22, 2013 Blog Posts Megan Fischer-Colbrie

Hello All! My name is Megan Fischer-Colbrie, and, together with Shelley Harper, I will be writing a series of posts called “The Building Blocks”. The Building Blocks will focus on maximizing athletic performance through a number of “off the playing field” categories. Today’s post will be on the recovery process.

We athletes tend to respect our bodies in the days or hours prior to a practice or competition, but what happens after? In spite of being a veteran swimmer and collegiate athlete, I at times neglected my own nutritional needs following an intense workout. Athletes spend so much time training that they owe it to themselves to help their bodies recover as quickly as possible. Not only will you feel better the rest of your day (big surprise!) but also the physiological changes in your body will carry over to your next workout, enabling you to perform better even as the week of training carries on. In this post and my next, I will elaborate on some of the effective recovery strategies for the elite athlete. Today we’ll explore mostly timing and protein for both endurance-based athletes (here’s to you, distance swimmers) and strength-based athletes (sprinters and post-weight room sessions). An important aspect of proper nutritional recovery is timing.

You must ingest your food or beverage within 30 minutes of the end of your practice.

A brief look into exercise physiology can explain this strict guideline. Immediately following exercise, the cells in the muscles you worked during exercise have depleted their glycogen stores (they use sugar to function, synthesize protein, and store as backup fuel to access during the next bout of exertion). Think of the muscle cell as having a gate to that opens post workout for sugar intake. The longer you wait to replenish post-workout, the closer the gate comes to closing, eventually slamming shut after 30 minutes. At this time, food or drink intended to supply sugar to muscle cells gets used nonspecifically in the body, primarily leading to storage in fat cells. Protein degradation can also occur as a result of missing this refueling time window, meaning that your muscles may begin to break down rather than build up post-exertion. Protein ingestion also follows a sensitive time frame. Once protein has been consumed, maximal protein synthesis in the body lasts 3 hours following exertion, with a peak around 45-90 minutes. After that, synthesis drops back down to baseline levels, indicating there is a small window of protein synthesis in the muscle before a refractory period. Whatever manner of nutritional recovery you prefer, ingest it immediately after training, before you shower or get ready to leave the pool/gym/field.

My theme for recovery nutrition is BALANCE. When it comes to supplements, vitamins, and juggling protein, carbohydrate, and fat, no single group is the answer to building muscle or improving performance.

If you eat a healthy diet, many of your vitamins will already be provided in your food. While we need lean protein to build and preserve lean muscle, at the end of the day, the body runs on glucose and burns carbohydrates the cleanest (fewest bad side effects). As you shift to an optimal diet for your sport, remember that going to extremes is not the answer.

So, how much protein is right for you? It’s true that athletes require a significantly greater amount of protein in their diet as they tend to maintain a higher muscle mass, but your protein needs may be different from your teammates. Adequate protein intake can easily be achieved through one’s daily diet, but if you tend to eat little meat, eggs, or dairy, supplementation can help you reach your protein target zone. It is important to note that protein supplements are not inherently better than protein from whole foods, but serve as an easy alternative source. For a 150 lb athlete attempting to preserve lean muscle mass, about 100g of protein per day is sufficient (using 1.5g protein/kg body weight as a reference point). This is higher than the 0.8g/kg recommended dietary allowance because athletes need more protein to maximize muscular development. A quick look at food labels will tell you that one 8 ounce glass of chocolate milk gets you 11g of protein, while an average chicken breast confers 33g of protein. Your body weight and protein already in your diet will tell you how much supplement to add, if any.

If you want to try supplements, a study of trained male athletes showed that a whey/casein blend of protein (40g whey, 8g casein) ingested post-workout promoted the greatest increase in fat free mass following 10 weeks of resistance training, as compared to a whey/amino acid supplement or simply carbohydrate supplement.

This agrees with a recent study that used a measure of biological value (BV, higher the better) to assess how efficiently exogenous protein gets used for protein synthesis in the body. Casein has a BV of 77, whey has a BV of 104, and bovine milk has a BV of 91 (milk is 80% casein, 20% whey). Dairy milk or pure whey are extremely efficient in triggering protein synthesis in the body. Whey studies also showed increases in strength, whereas casein did not. Studies looking into milk-based protein sources showed that fat-free milk was superior to soy milk (BV 74) in promoting lean body mass and muscle mass development post workout. While resistance training requires protein, endurance athletes also need protein to maintain muscle. Swimmers and water polo players undergo a hybrid of endurance and strength training. While sprinters looking to build more muscle may focus on slightly higher protein intake, distance swimmers still need the protein intake commensurate with their body weight (1.5g/kg body weight).

Ratios: Following a cardio-heavy workout, I use a 3:1 ratio of grams of carbohydrate to grams of protein for immediate fuel. Carbohydrates and protein consumed together enable quick replenishment of glycogen stores and initiation of protein synthesis.

Protein cannot cause synthesis as readily without the presence of insulin, which carbohydrates trigger the release of. Whether you’re leaving the weight room or hopping out of the pool, a blend of fast-acting sugar like maltodextrin or glucose with a source of protein (whey) will maximize your training session recovery, lean body mass, muscle hypertrophy, and strength. You’ll give yourself the opportunity to perform better at your next practice by helping your body build upon the work you just completed. To get started on better recovery habits, pick the recovery drink or bar that’s right for you. Luna bars tend to carry a 3:1 ratio and are easy to pack in my bag. When I finish a workout, sometimes I opt for tall glass of fat-free milk. It provides that blend of sugar and protein your muscles crave. Be careful to read the labels on bars or drinks that preach “recovery” all over the package. Many times, they contain way too much protein, such as a 1:2 ratio or a bar that claims to have 40% of your daily intake. They also can be unnecessarily high in saturated fat or simply have too many ingredients. When in doubt, go simple. If milk is a good source of recovery, but you can’t drink it, choose an alternative that has few ingredients and the ratio you’re looking for.

My hopes are that you take away a few salient reminders from this post:

Eat or drink within 30 minutes, period.
Calculate your protein need based on your body weight and see if you need more or less.
Use a carbohydrate/protein blend in your recovery snack.
Try drinking fat-free milk, using a maltodextrin/whey protein blend, or purchasing bars that have an appropriate carb-to-protein ratio.
Most of all, remind yourself that your diet needs balance…make subtle changes and see the improvement in your performance firsthand!

References:

Effect of glucose supplement timing on protein metabolism after resistance training B. D. Roy 1, M. A. Tarnopolsky 1,2, J. D. Macdougall 1, J. Fowles 1, and K. E. Yarasheski 3 Journal of Applied PhysiologyJune 1, 1997 vol. 82 no. 61882-1888
Norton L, Layman D, Bunpo P, Anthony T, Brana D, Garlick P. The Leucine content of complete meal directs peak activation but not duration of skeletal muscle protein synthesis and mammalian target of rapamycin signaling in rats. J Nutr.2009;139(6):1103–1109. doi: 10.3945/jn.108.103853.
The effects of protein and amino acid supplementation on performance and training adaptations during ten weeks of resistance training. Kerksick CM, J Strength Cond Res. 2006 Aug;20(3):643-53.
Hoffman J, Ratamess N, Tranchina C, Rashti S, Faigenbaum A. Effect of protein-supplement timing on strength, power, and body-composition changes in resistance-trained men. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2009;19(2):172–185.
Verdijk L, Jonkers R, Gleeson B. Protein supplementation before and after exercise does not further augment skeletal muscle hypertrophy after resistance training in elderly men. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009;89(2):608–616. doi:
Hartman J, Tang J, Wilkinson S, Tarnopolsky M, Lawrence R, Fullerton A, Phillips S. Consumption of fat-free fluid milk after resistance exercise promotes greater lean mass accretion than does consumption of soy or carbohydrate in young, novice, male weightlifters. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;86(2):373–381.
Wilkinson S, Tarnopolsky M, MacDonald M, MacDonald J, Armstrong D, Phillips S. Consumption of fluid skim milk promotes greater muscle protein accretion after resistance exercise than does consumption of an isonitrogenous and isoenergetic soy-protein beverage. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;85(4):1031–1040.
Protein timing and its effects on muscular hypertrophy and strength in individuals engaged in weight-training Matthew Stark, Judith Lukaszuk, Aimee Prawitz, Amanda SalacinskiJ Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2012; 9: 54. Published online 2012 December 14. doi: 10.1186/1550-2783-9-54

About Megan Fischer-Colbrie

Reposted from http://bridgeathletic.com/recovery-part-i/