You're Not Eating Right!

While I do not normally try to sound like your mother, it is almost Mother's Day, so today I want to help out mothers everywhere and write about why you should be eating a more healthy diet.

I write as a convert. It has taken me a long time to really see the connection between what I eat and how I run. And even now, I still make "training mistakes" that involve not eating (or drinking) enough, not eating at the right time, not eating the right stuff.

Of course, I wouldn't be noticing any of these sins on a day-to-day basis except that I have this crazy thing I do called training. Let me refresh your memory about training: training is adaptation to stress. It has three parts: you perform some moderately stressful task; you recover; you improve. There are basically two training errors: 1) too much stress (not enough recovery), which leads to injury or staleness and diminished performance; 2) too little stress/too much rest, which provides insufficient stimulus for adaptation to occur. Training is nothing more than figuring out how to provide an appropriate stress and getting the balance of stress and recovery right. So simple.

And yet, we always seem to mess it up. One way we do this is by taking insufficient care to provide fuel for performance and recovery. Either we try to get by on less than we need, or we fail to replace what we use.

Do any of the following scenarios sound familiar?

You skip your breakfast or lunch (or get by on snacks). When I am coaching, one of the most frustrating experiences is to watch someone struggle through a run or a workout and then find out they have eaten anything all day, or they had an apple at breakfast. I'm not talking about anorexia, which deserves its own more serious essay. I'm talking about being too busy or too distracted to eat well when it will do you the most good, and when it will help set up your day to do everything you need to do, including train at a high level.

You don't re-hydrate or eat until hours after a hard run or race, and then you eat junk. I understand that it's normal not to feel hungry after a gut-wrenching effort on the track or in an XC race. But you've got to know, to anticipate, that within a couple of hours your body is going to need hydration and carbohydrate replacement. Failure to plan for it and get a good meal in, means you'll be dragging for the next couple of days. I learned the right habits after years of watching my training partner Terry, who ALWAYS has a bottle of electrolyte/carbohydrate replacement drink with him after every workout and long run. I don't think it's an accident that he recovers very quickly from hard efforts and has proven extraordinarily durable over the years.

You eat too much white stuff. I know there's some trendy diet these days in which you avoid white things: white sugar, white flour, white bread, potatoes, etc. I don't know anything about that diet, and I'm not a big fan of diets anyway, but I do know that the craving for quick calories in the form of sugar and fat leads to a quick-fix mentality about food. But quick-fix approaches end up being bad habits. I think the result is wildly fluctuating sugar and energy levels, which, again, negatively impact training.

You don't get enough sleep. Ok, this isn't about food, but it's part of the same pattern as not eating right. The athletes I coach have heard me say this a thousand times: sleep is the most underrated part of training. Sleep is recovery. Sleep is where physiological changes occur that consolidate fitness gains. Lack of sleep kills otherwise useful training.

So, wise up. Eat breakfast. Eat lunch. Eat dinner. Replace fluids and carbs within two hours after hard runs. Get a good night's sleep. Get faster, stronger, healthier.

Happy Mother's Day.