by Thomas Kurz
There are many nutrition systems, all offering more or less conflicting advice to athletes. Some of these are FDA Food Pyramid, Zone, Optimal Nutrition, Paleolithic Nutrition, Primal Eating, Chinese Medicine Dietary System, and Vegetarian Nutrition System. How can you tell the value of a nutrition system? How can you tell which is really healthy? Which is right for you?
There is a way of evaluating a nutrition system by looking at its long-term effects—for example, by looking at coaches and retired athletes. If they balloon soon after they cease to exercise often and intensively, then their nutrition knowledge is useless and their nutrition habits are unhealthy. Intense exercise offsets many deleterious effects of unhealthy nutrition, but as soon as one reduces the amount of exercise, the effects of eating badly come through. Nutrition practices that show unhealthy effects as one enters middle age, when youth’s intensity of exercise can no longer be sustained, must be detrimental to athletic potential during the age of peak performance.
Hard work and talent can overcome the deleterious effects of suboptimal nutrition—but why not optimize the nutrition in the first place?
To optimize nutrition one has to understand signs of healthy nutrition and unhealthy nutrition—in an individual athlete.
The key to optimal sports nutrition, just as with optimal exercise selection and dosage, is for the athlete to listen to his or her body and for the coach to observe the signs too and make adjustments on the go.
The signs range from those noticeable during and soon after a meal (feeling energized or sleepy, light or bloated), through those manifesting themselves several hours later or during the next couple of days (sweat, body smell, urine, stool, intestinal discomfort), to those that reveal a long-term nutrition status (fat deposits, skin, hair, nails).
What one can observe during exercise may be an effect of momentary influences that may, or may not, be changed in an instant. Effects of emotions and of food as manifested in the functioning of the digestive system cannot be changed in an instant; thus, these functions need to be monitored constantly. (Effects of emotions do manifest themselves in the functioning of the digestive system: for example, digestive disturbances of emotional origin.)
To sum it up: Whatever would compromise one’s survivability in “the wild” cannot be healthy. So any sign of a meal not agreeing with the athlete—feeling bloated, heavy, sleepy, hungry soon after a meal; having gas, abnormal stools; urinating frequently—should be investigated by a physician. If the sports physician can’t be bothered to monitor for signs of good function or dysfunction, but rather waits for a “disease entity,” then a better physician needs to be found.
This article is based on books Optimal Nutrition and Science of Sports Training. Get them now and have all of the info—not just the crumbs! Order now!
If you have any questions on training you can post them at Stadion’s Sports and Martial Arts Training Discussion Forum
Dear Mr. Kurz,
do you agree w./ Dr. Kwasniewski that pork meat is the best protein?
Do you eat white rice or brown rice?
Which vegetabeles are you eating for carbs?
Thak you very much
The best protein is in egg yolk. Read dr. Kwasniewski’s works or just think about the function of an egg yolk. But I do like golonka (ham hocks in sauerkraut).
Both.
Any that are easy to prepare.
Dr. Kwasniewski says rice is inedible for humans. So, why do you eat rice?
Because I can prepare it quicker than other carbs and 7 to 14 grams of rice per day doesn’t hurt me.
Thank’s! 🙂
Another question: Why do we need also carbs if fats are a better ‘fuel’? Why Kwasniewski says not to mix different kind of fuels and, at the same time, says to eat some carbs? (Surely there’s something I misunderstood)
7 to 14 grams of boiled ( wet ) rice or raw?
If I may ask how tall are you and how much do you weight? ( In meters and kilogramms )
Thank you very much.
It is dry weight.
1.69 and 70
There are downsides to producing acetyl coenzyme A from fats and proteins rather than from carbohydrates and so dr. Kwasniewski advises to eat about 0.8 g of carbs per 1 kg of lean body mass per day. (Acetyl coenzyme A is necessary in the Krebs cycle. Without the Krebs cycle there is no oxidative phosphorylation, which produces the majority of the ATP in the body.)
This is very simply put, and all the more effective for doing so. Nutrition is an area which I understand in theory, but am poor at implementing in practice. Having reached middle age, I see the value in health, rather than just performance.
Thanks coach,
Whoever you are–athlete, instructor, or neither–you should know what foods may do for you or to you….
Like most people, you likely do not have the time to study human physiology and nutrition over a few semesters. Luckily, Dr. Court Vreeland, DC, DACNB, can teach you what you need to know about the connections among the foods you eat and your gut, your brain, your immunity, and chronic inflammation (and thus predisposition for injuries) in this 40-minute podcast.
Best regards,
Thomas Kurz
Glad to hear that you eat sauerkraut Mr Kurz. I’ve become a fan this last year or so, it’s not so popular in the UK but it is fast catching on. I make my own, it doesn’t take long (to prepare) and the benefits on the gut flora and the subsequent knock-on effects on immunity cannot be underestimated nor replicated with pasteurised versions.
I’ve just read Optimal Nutrition by Jan Kwasniewski and now I’m trying to test the effects on myself of his nutrition system.
But I find rather difficult to stay with the macro-nutrient proportions he suggests. Is it really natural to eat all that fat? I mean, I have to add butter on practically every food! How do you manage to reach the right proportions? What do you usually eat? Thank’s 🙂
I’m not understanding how the brain functions when we are on the optimal nutrition. Doesn’t the brain run on glucose? If so, then I think the recommended amount of carbohydrates is not enough to cope with that, and so the body has to produce glucose through gluconeogenesis. But this goes against one of the principles of optimal nutrition, not to make the body do unnecessary work.
Brain runs on three fuels: glucose, fatty acids, and ketone bodies derived from fatty acid oxidation. People who follow a very low-carb/high-fat diet feel and function very well. People who change to such diet from a high carb diet may feel lousy and weak for a couple of weeks when their metabolism adjusts to the new diet. After the adjustment they feel better than ever before. Look up info on brain metabolism and fatty acids and ketone bodies. Further, look up info in Optimal Nutrition (pages 45, 71-72) on the way of matching carbohydrate intake to one’s needs.
Why there is no simple recommendation how much of what to eat in the chapter Nutrition of ,,Science of sport training”? You only describe fats, carbs and so on… You provide only answers like ,,You need to feel full and be no dizzy after 3 hours of the meal”.
Why have you chosen that way of answering, rather giving direct recommendation to optimal diet?
You quote me incorrectly. Below is the actual text from page 111 of the Science of Sports Training.
“There is no diet good or bad for everybody at all times, with set-in-stone percentages of carbohydrate, protein, and fat. There are only individually suitable diets that let an athlete perform well and stay healthy and unsuitable diets that lower performance. An athlete needs to eat different meals before exercises and after exercises.
“How to tell if an athlete’s last meal was good for him or her? It is simple—if the athlete feels well, alert and energetic, and not hungry four hours after the meal—then the meal was suitable and good. If the athlete is hungry four hours or less after the meal, then it was not suitable.”
I give these guidelines because it is better to follow signs of one’s body functioning than some rigidly set percentages of calories for macronutrients, or grams of each, and such.