TriSupporter

Eating right

So it's the new year - Happy New Year - and many people resolve to lose weight or eat healthfully. Rianman and I started our attempt before Thanksgiving. We signed up for 7 weeks with Success Meals KC. They supply a full day's meals each morning according to your dietary needs and restrictions.

When you start, you provide your height and weigh and activity level as well as any food allergies or avoidances e.g. lactose intolerant, no salmon. In turn you get a specially designed meal plan with all the calories you need for a day. Each day on our doorstep we'd get a bag filled with 5 yummy meals. The food is sooo good. I had eggs benedict this morning with turkey bacon. Granted I had one and Rian got to have two but that's the result of the customization provided.

At first, you're sort of stunned at how small the portions seem to be but in just a few short days you realize you feel better and you're losing weight. In the 7 weeks we've been using Success Meals, we've lost a total of 15 pounds and that's with the holidays in there.

The good.

• It works. You lose weight, eat healthier, feel better.
• It's very tasty! Every day you get dessert. The meats are varied. We even had black eyed peas and collards for the new year!
• It's easy. I don't have to think at all about what I'm going to eat. I have breakfast, snack, lunch, dinner and dessert everyday.

Some downsides.

• Sometimes you don't like an ingredient but I have learned to eat foods I don't typically like or wouldn't typically choose like carrots or peas.
• You can't always predict when a friend will invite you out for dinner. We've tried freezing foods. SuccessMeals is good about skipping days if you're traveling--just give them 24 hours notice.
• It's pricey. If you can get a package, you might be able to get it for about $100 a week per person. But for two people, it adds up. Given we're big on eating out; the added expense wasn't significant.
• A lot of plastic containers. They're recyclable but I feel a bit guilty. They're high quality microwavable and resuable.

Overall, we recommend it for triathletes and their supporters to maintain weight or lose weight. (Note: this is not a paid endorsement...just our opinion.)

 

 

Who's Fault?

Who is to blame when there's not a drop of Hammer Gel or Power Ade Recovery drink in the house?

I'm not sure but I know who has to place the order.

Sports Nutrition for Women

The NYT's has an article today that I thought was particularly interesting albeit not surprising. Women are different from men! Okay we all know this but here's the catch. Most research on exercise and nutrition is done on men. So all that info on carbo loading and protein needs may not apply to women. If you're a women or your triathlete is a women, take a look at this Well: Phys Ed: What Exercise Science Doesn’t Know About Women?

 

To Whey or not to Whey

Last night Rianman came home with a big jug of whey protein from Vitamin Shoppe. He needs to supplement cause frankly it is really hard to get the 145 or so grams protein he needs just from his diet. When I checked the ingredients, as I always must, for milk or milk products, there it was. I mentioned the vanilla flavored whey mix has milk and he was pissed mad at himself for not having checked first.

After dinner, we went to GNC (nutrition store 2) to find a whey protein that didn't have milk or lactose. A very ripped, smooth-armed attendant helped us find a whey protein that didn't have lactose.

Maybe you're wondering why we need to find whey without lactose...well Rianman is lactose intolerant...he basically can't have any milk products so bars, drinks, supplements etc MUST be lactose-free.You do not want to be on a group ride with him if his bar has milk in it...trust me.

 

I'm sure he's thrilled I'm sharing this but...it's my blog, not his.

Well we found the whey protein and came home where it was then time to start placing a big Hammer order to restock gels, bars, etc. Rianman rifled through all the Hammer reading materials and found one on....you guessed it, whey protein. Reading (scanning at best) the flyer, he was convinced he needed Hammer's Whey Isolate which is different from the whey we bought (figures!) Apparently whey isolate is extremely low in lactose and a purer form of protein than whey concentrate. It also can be absorbed by the body at rest...like when you're sleeping. Hammer's whey isolate also has double the glutamine that others have--this is true, we checked the two jugs of whey sitting on our counter.

Later this week I expect to get a very large box and in it will be the third jug of whey protein to grace this house. My next to-do, returns to Vitamin Shoppe and to GNC. Ah the life of a TriSupporter.

Just when you thought customer service was extinct...

...the people at Hammer Nutrition show it's working to keep it alive. You already know its Perpetuem has made a huge change in Ri-guy's nutrition plan. Since starting Hammer products full-time, no nausea, no bonking, etc. We're hoping it's the key to his nutrition for the Ironman (in 9 days Oh MY GOD!)

This is no 100-pairs-of-socks story like Steve in a Speedo's, but it is about one pair of socks.

Last weekend, Ri-guy placed his last Hammer order before Ironman Wisconsin. This is stuff he wants for the race. We're leaving next Thursday so he needed it at least by next Wednesday and preferably this week. Well he earned free shipping which based on their calculations would put the product on our doorstep Tuesday the 2nd. At the end of the order form was a textbox for comments so I added a request for speedy processing because of the IM. I figured they wouldn't ship faster and I was too cheap to pay for express shipping, but they might be able to hurry things up on their end.

Today, just 5 days from  our order (placed on a weekend), the truck pulls up to the house and in the brown box placed on our doorstep is all of Ri-guy's order including bars, gel, pill carriers, tri shorts and extra water bottles.

The best part of getting Hammer shipments is the free stuff they throw in there. So I went through the box looking for the freebies...a few single pouches of Heed and Recoverite...nice. A few temporary Hammer tats...cool. Then I saw them.

Wrapped in a little plastic bag tucked between water bottles...

...black Hammer cycling socks!!

Wow...he got free socks!! How cool is that? Not only did they actually process the order quickly, they gave him a pair of socks! Hammer--you guys and gals ROCK!!

So could Dry Max socks be too far off? We love those socks too.

9 days till IMoo...ding, ding.

If only I burned 8,000 calories a day

What does it take for an athlete to sustain the caloric demands his or her training requires? Ri-guy has had training days where he's burned 8,000 calories (according to Polar or Garmin). It's hard to fathom burning that many calories. I'm thrilled when I burn 600 at spin class.

All summer we've struggled with making sure Ri-guy gets enough to eat. I think people think it is easy to get that many calories in. They wish they could eat that much. You might think a diner breakfast is 1000 cals, a burrito at Chipotle is 1500 cals, an order of chicken wings are 1500, and we haven't gotten to dinner or snacks. 8000? No problem.

Sure it wouldn't be problem except he shouldn't be eating garbage...he's not 20. He's almost 40 with a family history of heart disease. Loading up on two pizzas is probably not a good idea. Now, you may be thinking, "Gee, Steve in a Speedo eats crap and races well. What's up with that?" Who can explain that? I wouldn't want to eat canned Mac N Cheese (yes it exists) period and certainly not before or after working out.

Clearly, everyone is different. For Ri-guy, he eats fairly healthfully - could eat more veggies. He eats when he's hungry which is often. He often needs to eat two dinners (the first one I made is rarely enough). But, he's easily dropped 20+ pounds since training in earnest for IMoo. He wanted to drop weight of course but he didn't "diet", he just trained and ate and it came off. Imagine living with that??? Well you probably do...just know you're not alone.

I started thinking about all of this when Ri-guy sent me this graphic originally from the Baltimore Sun. It's what Michael Phelps, who as of this post has won 11 gold medals--the most of anyone in history, eats on a typical day. I heard a commentator on NBC mention the breakfast and I remember thinking, "He doesn't eat all that for one breakfast--it must be examples of what he might eat." But, no. He eats egg sandwiches, omelets, grits, french toast, AND pancakes. For breakfast. For one day. Then apparently eats that again the next day. Oh to be an Olympic athlete.

Nutrition for the long distances

In the last few weeks, Ri-guy's training includes what I would consider ridiculously long rides and runs. The rides are 90, 100, 112 miles long. Honestly, I don't even take lightly making a 112-mile road trip in my car!! Coming back from WIBA I was irritated when we still had about 120-miles left ...and we were going 80 mph. Imagine only going like 18 mph!!

Back to the nutrition...

So on these rides, he would fuel with what he's always fueled with: Gatorade Endurance and GU with some salt and water. Endurance athlete friends we know would always make reference to 'the sugar' and would be surprised that Ri-guy was good with all that "sugar". We would look at each other with a knowing look that said, "What the hell are they talking about?" We have looked at each other like this a lot since Ri-guy started doing triathlons.

After these rides he would feel nauseous and sick for hours (never vomiting, thank god--but he was drag for the rest of the night.) He started to question how he was ever going to get the nutrition right. He told his coach he was going to try some solid foods. Coach Ken told him to stay away from the solids and a bunch of experienced IMers gave Ri-guy some Ironman cocktail recipes.

The Ironman Cocktail

So what is this Ironman cocktail? It's a thick concoction of two or three powdered drink mixes that delivers the calories you need in an easily digestible mix (without all that 'sugar'). From what I can tell it is usually Cytomax, Carbo Pro, and something like Accelerade or Metabol. You can even buy it bundled. We (yes we, I'm a much faster researcher) spent some time this past weekend researching and reading blogs and message boards and finally Ri-guy settled on Hammer's Perpetuem instead of mixing a cocktail. He also decided to go all Hammer and got Heed (think Gatorade) and Hammer Gel's. Hammer makes a compelling argument for using their products: natural, complex carbs, easy to digest, etc.)

The Hammer Test

So yesterday was the Hammer test. It was a 100 mile ride in 90+ temps. He loaded up the aero bottle with Heed, loaded one bottle with Perpetuem at about 1000 calories (looked like sludge), and had 2 water bottles on board. He had a Ziplock of Perpetuem to mix for the 2nd half of his ride and about 8 Hammer Gels. We marked the Perpetuem bottle into quarters so he would have a visual for how much he had to drink each hour to get his 400-500 calorie requirement.

Results

Yesterday was the first long ride where he did NOT get nauseous. He is optimistic that he's found his nutrition and he'll have enough time to get used to it and work with it. He's a new found believer in Perpetuem. Maybe it was all that sugar.

Epilogue

I have cabinets full of over $150 in unopened Gatorade tubs and boxes of chocolate GU.