Another Nutrition Question

[Trek420]

RoadRaven posts "I read the other day that you should start carbo loading about 3 days out from the "event"..."

According to my sources (JD Power focus group of women riders waaay hecka faster than me) that's strictly for the guys.

Women due to our vastly superiour ability to use fat for fuel should concentrate on a balanced diet, meaning all four food groups:

* chocolate
* fats and/or good wine
* caffeine
* cheese

jk about which four food groups, serious as a heart attack about the balanced diet as opposed to pasta feed thing.

[MomOnBike]

DH and I have been know to state (with straight faces) that the four basic food groups are fat, sugar, salt and artificial colors and flavors - at least for the majority of USAians.

OTOH, the Five basic food groups are onions and garlic, fat, salt, chilis and chocolate - all of which can be found in a good mole sauce.

All joking aside, I've also read that carbo loading doesn't help women as much as it does men. Eat well, of good quality food, but not too much, and you probably can't go wrong.

Mom(starting to get hungry)OnBike

[CorsairMac]

I had also read (please don't ask me where...it could've been here!) that women don't process carbs the same so the whole "eat 15 mins before you ride" doesn't always apply to women. I do it anyway just to make sure I Eat before my evening commute home but I thought that was interesting.

and I"m thinking - salted chilis fried in oil and covered in chocolate and aritifical red dye #7 with a beer should cover the basic 4 food groups yes??

[wabisabi]

Hm, let's see: sugar, salt, fat, alcohol and chocolate? What about caffeine, definitely a basic food.

[Technotart]

Note too that there are different kinds of carbs and the body converts them to glycogen or burns them off differently - typically, the less processed your grain and vegetable products are, the more efficiently your body will use them and convert them to fuel with fewer spikes in glucose levels

Whole wheat/whole grain carbs like oatmeal (not the over processed quick cooking kind), stone ground bread and pasta (NO ENRICHED FLOUR!), corn meal tortillas, these are the kinds of carbs you want to load up on - sweet potatos and other starchy vegetables are also good, but we do tend to load potatos full of butter and fat. Buy bread and pasta products that list the first ingredient as "Stone ground" or "Unbromated" grain - it's more expensive, but you get a lot more nutrition for your money. Your body burns these slower, more efficiently and at a more even rate than over processed simple carbs. And you don't have to eat as much of them to get the effect you want as you would have to eat if you were having white bread for instance.

Enriched flour is WORTHLESS - all the nutrition is processed out of it, then it is "enriched" by adding back in an artificial form of what was removed!

Fat and simple sugar (like a snickers bar) creates a spike and then a rapid decline in glucose levels - that rapid decline is most likely what was responsible for your nausea and vomiting - not only did you run out of fuel, but you probably down spiked your glucose level at about the same time. Eating a gel pack will reverse this quickly, but then you have another downspike coming along soon - to avoid this you need to maintain a baseline glucose level with complex carbs (an oatmeal bar pre-workout for instance), and then use your glucose spikes to create fuel above that when your workouts hit high intensity.

Sports drinks are excellent if you are doing long high intensity workouts - but caution needs to be used with these too - if you find they are making you thirstier instead of satiating your thirst, that's a sign that you need to drink water instead.

Mud?

[Dogmama]

Buy bread and pasta products that list the first ingredient as "Stone ground" or "Unbromated" grain - it's more expensive, but you get a lot more nutrition for your money.
Mud?

what is "bromated" grain? I often wondered about that...

[Technotart]

Bromating is the process the use to remove the hulls and bleach it - thereby removing all the nutrition so that they have to put it back by "enriching" it. I don't know exactly what the process involves....might be interesting to find out

[spazzdog]

wabisabi; on corsair's basic food grps... chocolate has caffiene in it so her food "pyramid" has you covered.


spazz

[wabisabi]

Well, true true, I think there must be something I associate with the whole caffeine ritual, the rain, sitting inside with a mug of coffee, contemplating....how little training I have done this spring because of the rain...on another note, I keep some very dark chocolate in my office and eat just a little after lunch, and it really perks me up and I get no cravings.