Fueling with Real Food for Training and Race Day [Rerun] Ep 140

Many athletes rely on gels, sports drinks, and energy chews to fuel their workouts—but real foods can be just as effective.

In this episode of the Find Your Edge podcast, Coach Chris Newport shares practical ideas for fueling endurance exercise with portable real foods.

We cover:

• Real food options for pre-workout fueling
• Portable foods for long runs and rides
• Recovery nutrition without supplements
• Easy smoothie and sandwich recovery meals

If you're looking for simple, affordable fueling strategies, this episode is packed with ideas.

Want our Natural Fuel for Athletes FREE Recipe Collection? Download it here (scroll to the bottom!)

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Goal

Coach Carlie 0:02

Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am your host and sports nutritionist, Chris Newport. And today we are talking all about one of my favorite topics: portable real foods for exercise. So a lot of you may not even think that this is an option. You've only considered maybe sports drinks and gels and energy bars and energy chews, but there are other options than things that you can purchase in the store. Now, that being said, there's nothing necessarily wrong with those engineered foods. Just sometimes people are looking for maybe a cheaper option or more real food options, or sometimes their gut just doesn't do well with some of those particular products. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. So engineered foods versus real foods and getting some real foods for exercise, whether you're running, whether you're biking, doing a triathlon, getting ready to go for a swim meet, or heading out with the kids to a soccer game or whatever. These are options that you can try. So let's start with some of the basics of pre-during and post-workout nutrition. So we've got a great fueling and hydration sheet on our website for runners. It's free. You can head over to a website, theenduranceedge.com, to download it. And that is such an awesome tool to remind you the purpose of pre-during and post-workout fueling, what types of things you want to consider. So let's start with pre-workout. Before you are exercising, and this could be immediately before

Real Food Versus Engineered Fuel

Coach Carlie 1:34

or it could be several hours beforehand, the purpose of that is really topping off your glycogen stores. So glycogen is your body's stored energy to deliver to working muscles. So it's stored in your liver and in your muscles, and it's in limited supply. So it's kind of like gold, if you will. We want to reserve that as much as possible and try to dip into either our fat reserves or use the energy that we take in from food to use that as fuel. But there's a little bit of a tipping point. So we can't exactly eat everything under the sun while we're exercising because then our body is going to be more concerned about digesting and you're not really going to want to exercise. So the slower you go, the more you can consume from real foods. The faster you go, the more you're going to want to think more towards liquid types items. But for pre-workout, think about things that are easy to digest, that taste good to you and are quickly delivering energy. Things like oatmeals. And we have a brand new recipe book out that is not only bars, bites, and energy balls, those types of things are great, but also some portable foods that can work. And in there, we have some recipes for overnight oats or just general oatmeals that you can take with you

Pre-Workout Fuel And Glycogen

Coach Carlie 2:58

if you're traveling. You can put in little containers. These are easy things that you can also get at the grocery store. Rice cereal is another great one. I think a lot of people just think about that for like infants, and it works great for delivering a lot of energy before you exercise that generally sits pretty well on the stomach. We have a recipe on our blog that's a superfood cereal. That's a really fun one, and it can be um shaped into all different ways and forms as to what your preferences are. I'll give you an example. My favorite is that base of the superfood cereal that we have on our blog, which is a base of um buckwheat groats as well as um some hemp seeds and some chia seeds. And I like to put um chocolate chips and salted pumpkin seeds and some sort of a dried fruit. Um, dried cherries are kind of my jam right now. But maybe if you ask me tomorrow, maybe it'll be dried blueberries. So things like that that are tasty and delicious and that sit well on your stomach. Sometimes easy portable foods are things like yogurts. Um, I've had people do sleeves of crackers beforehand of a lot of athletes who really love to have their bagel and peanut butter or their bagel and cream cheese. So making sure that you get those quick delivering carbohydrates, whether it come from yogurt, whether it comes from wheat, rice, um, buckwheat, or other potatoes or oatmeal, things like that that are going to sit well and that you've tried out before. So make sure this is something that's easily accessible wherever you might be traveling to, uh, whether it be um you have some sort of an energy bar that you make yourself or something that's easy to grab at the local grocery store or even at the local convenience store. So you don't want to get there the night before your race and be planning on purchasing breakfast and everything's closed. I've heard of that happening to people. So those are our real foods for pre-workout. Now, once you get going during your workout, oh boy, the possibilities are endless. So everything from waffles, cookies, uh, sweet potato purees, um, baked pastas, you can do crackers, you can do um baby food. In our house, we like to call them squeezy pouches. I definitely encourage you to try to find the higher caloric content ones, the ones that have um some sort of rice in them or sweet potatoes, sometimes the fruit-only ones are not quite enough energy, uh, but they can still certainly work and they're super easy to track around in the back of your jersey or in a um hydration pack or something along those lines. Uh, crackers are another fun one you can get in the kitchen. And again, check out our portable foods recipe book on our website that's got some options for um some rice balls or even some energy balls um or little um energy bites too. Those are really fun. But really, I mean, you've got a lot of different options there. It's just a matter of thinking through some of your logistics, like how are you gonna carry it? Is it gonna go in your um feed zone pack if you're a cyclist? Is it gonna go in your transition area if you're a triathlete? Is it gonna go in your hydration pack if you're a runner? Is it gonna go in your little portable cooler if you're a soccer player or you're at a swim meet?

During-Workout Real Food Options

Coach Carlie 6:26

So consider the type of conditions. Also consider whether something is gonna melt or not. Um, while it's debatable whether it's a real food, there are some uh sometimes some candies can work really well. Those sit better than things like engineered foods. But you know, if you're gonna be out in a 95 degree day, you're probably gonna be really sad when you open a Snickers bar and it's melted all over the place. So my personal favorite is um gummy bears. So that's uh again arguable whether it's a real food, but it's not um, they're not expensive and they're tasty. I get excited about it. And that's really the whole point of fueling during your workout is can you be consistent with delivering those carbohydrates to the body in order and in turn to the muscles to be able to do the work without getting overly full? Uh, point of caution here be careful with too much fat, uh, unless you're doing something like hiking or maybe even ultralunning, uh, because that will slow or delay what's called gastric emptying or how quickly your stomach um empties into your small intestines and thereby delivering some of the that energy to working muscles. So all of these things, I will uh repeat this again at the end, but all of these things need to be tested out before you actually use them, say on race day or on some sort of big event. So make sure that this is not a game day decision necessarily, although some people have more sensitive stomachs than others. Um, just make sure that you're used to these different options and you're playing around with it. All right, so those are during workout options. Now let's talk about recovery. So we don't always have to do a specific um engineered recovery product, whether it be a powder that you mix or whether it be something that um you're purchasing otherwise or some sort of a supplement. You could absolutely do real food. One of the original uh real food options, there was a big campaign uh several years back for chocolate milk. And honestly, it's a really great option. Not for everybody, but the reason why it's a great option is because um there are four, what we like to call our four, four rules of recovery. We want to make sure that you're getting something hydrating, you're replacing less lost glycogen with those carbohydrates, and then you're also getting some electrolytes. And then our fourth one that we like to kind of plug in there is are we supporting our health? Are we getting some sort of good quality nutrition that's gonna um further support the inflammatory process of exercise and sort of reducing that and just generally being healthy? So, chocolate milk is one of those that has sodium, it's got potassium, so it has those electrolytes. It is already a fluid, it contains some carbohydrates, it does contain a little bit of protein too. But then, of course, there's the people who are either sensitive to dairy or lactase intolerant. So clearly, that is not the greatest choice for those people, but there's tons of other options. One of my favorite things to do after an event, especially if it's colder, I'm heading to my local coffee shop and probably getting

Recovery With Chocolate Milk And More

Coach Carlie 9:36

some sort of a um a mocha, whether it be iced or sort of frappe style, especially if it's hot, um, or some sort of a hot chocolate or latte. So those are things that you can grab on the go. You can make smoothies, and they sell some of these sort of pre-made in the store, or you can make your own and bring it with you. Smoothies are endless in terms of the different options. So, again, can you add in those carbohydrates? Maybe it comes from bananas, and maybe it comes from strawberries, maybe it comes from milk or a vanilla almond milk, or it comes from um adding in some chickpeas to your smoothie, for example. Might sound a little bizarre, but it's an easy way to get additional carbohydrates that way. So it's a blank canvas, really. Have fun with it. And then making sure we add a little bit of protein in there, which assists in muscle protein synthesis and just generally helps the recovery process more so than just pure carbohydrates. So this could be could be coming from something like a protein powder, but you can easily add tofu. So silken tofu is the best way to go with that. Maybe you do a soy milk or a regular milk, which are both going to have additional protein. Typically, your your plant-based milks are not going to have additional protein added to them unless it says it on the label, which is typically going to come from some sort of a protein powder. Um, and then you can also add, like I had mentioned, chickpeas or um some other type of bean, like a white bean is a very neutral flavored um tasting bean. And we do actually have a blog post all on adding different protein foods to your smoothies that aren't protein powders, so definitors. So definitely, definitely check that one out. Another fun one, and we have a ton of recipes in our portable foods cookbook, but a good old-fashioned sandwich is great. You'll just have to add in whatever type of fluid, maybe it's um some water, or maybe you bring along some juice. But the great thing about a sandwich, you can easily get some protein added in there with, say, it's um chicken or turkey, something along those lines, and then some additional carbohydrates from things like your bread. You can flavor it up, make it really fun. It tastes good, it sits well on your stomach, and then you can add things like tomato slices or lettuce or whatever um additional healthy options you have. So lots of things to play with. So we covered our pre-workout, our during workout, and our recovery nutrition things for real food options for exercise. But again, I really want to hammer home you gotta try all these things out. So, and especially in the different conditions that you might be in, whether it's really cold, whether it's really hot, um, whether it might start off cold and then get hot, or vice versa. So thinking through some of those details, and these are things that we love to do in our practice with people, is strategizing, thinking through details, and even um figuring out what types of carrying devices you might have for carrying your fluids, carrying your um your various foods, again, hydration packs or um bike packs or all kinds of different stuff. So, again, head on over to our website, theenduranceedge.com, check out our free fueling and hydration cheat sheet for runners that has some great tips. Again, just supporting what do you need beforehand, what do you need during exercise, what do you need afterwards, and then some of our recipe books. We've got a smoothie recipe book that's got, I think, over 30 recipes in it. Gives you lots of options there. We've got a bars, bites, and energy balls cookbook. We've got some runners recipes, what to eat before, during, and afterwards. So it gives you um at least two days' worth of an example of what to eat beforehand, what to eat during your workout, what to eat afterwards, and then what to eat for the rest of the day. There are healthy options to give you enough protein, give you enough good quality carbohydrates,

Test Your Plan And Race Logistics

Coach Carlie 13:40

fiber, different micronutrients, et cetera. Um, we also have a portable foods recipe book, which is what really inspired this podcast. So if you head to our website and purchase any cookbook or meal plan that's on there, use the code podcast and you get 10% off. And it is limited to one use per customer. So head on over, grab those. And we hope you enjoy your adventures in fueling yourself with real food. Again, this is Chris Newport, and I will catch you on the next episode.