Written By: Victoria Perez; SLU Dietetic Intern
Fueling for fitness is tough. There is so much information out there and it is hard to discern what is right or wrong. I have been on this journey learning to fuel for fitness since I started playing soccer at the age of 6. After hanging my cleats up at 22 years old, I continued this journey but instead of fueling as an athlete I began to learn how to fuel to just live a healthy lifestyle. So I would say I have had a long journey (17 years to be exact) trying to figure it all out.
Whether you're a seasoned athlete or just starting out on your personal fitness journey, understanding how to nourish your body for this journey is crucial to meet your goals. A lot of key principles of nutrition are often forgotten, or people are simply misinformed due to the increasing amount of information available. There are also just a lot of people that have a bad relationship with food, which is something I also personally struggle with at times. I want to discuss what I have learned throughout my years of experimenting and trying to figure out what works best for me.
1. Food is Fuel
Your body needs fuel. Your body's fuel is food; therefore, no matter what your end goals are it is important to eat to give your body energy. Don’t be scared of eating, don’t be scared of food; food is good! It’s about what we are eating, but we’ll discuss that later on. Food shouldn’t be labeled as “good” or “bad”; it’s all about the amounts we eat. For the longest time, I was afraid of eating pasta. For whatever reason I convinced myself if I ate pasta I would gain weight or that it was bad for me. This coming from someone that knows carbohydrates are energy, so why was I so concerned over consuming pasta? It’s odd because I would eat rice, but pasta was a “bad” food in my eyes. Last year I made the effort of starting to face these things because for one, I know that it’s not true and secondly, sometimes I just wanted pasta. I started cooking pasta in my meal preps and guess what, I did not gain weight (shocking I know). I actually had some more energy during the day (also very shocking, I know). So it is important to really realize there is no “good” or “bad” food, it’s just labels we decide to put on them. It’s all about eating the food we want in moderation and making sure we have a whole balanced diet which will help optimize your fitness journey as well as just your life in general.
2. Exercise is 20% while Nutrition is 80%
This one I learned somewhere around the age of 18 when I started training at a collegiate level. I had a personal trainer over the summers and the first time he said that to me, it’s easy to say I was shocked. I never worried about what I was eating, I thought the key was to train a lot and that would help my performance. It did help to a point, but once I started focusing on the nutrition portion of it, my performance increased to levels I didn’t even know I was capable of reaching. I had energy that lasted not only throughout my workouts but throughout the day. I was so much more efficient during these workouts and I felt like I was getting more out of it. Now you might be reading this thinking “well i’m not a collegiate athlete why do I care?”. Well, let’s say your goals are to lose weight, and you go to the gym everyday and you don’t see any success in that objective. Odds are it has a lot to do with the nutrition portion of it. If you started focusing on nutrition and just skipping the exercise side (not that I recommend that, just making a point), you would probably see more results on the weight loss front.
3. Calories in vs. Calories out
Most people attempting to lose weight have heard about calories in versus calories out. The idea is that you need to burn more calories than you are consuming to be in an energy deficiency and consequently, lose weight. This is true; however, having an inadequate intake of calories is important both when thinking of over consuming as well as under consuming. Too many calories can lead to the body storing the extra energy as fat which can lead to unwanted weight gain, but too little calories can lead to constipation, fatigue, slowed metabolism among other negative effects. Some people start their weight loss journey and go to the extreme eating about 1,000 kcals a day. Sure, they see results, but that way of living is not something you can maintain long-term. The key here is to create a lifestyle that is sustainable and can be consistent, another topic we will go into later. Remember that above all else food is fuel. So be sure that you are eating enough to fuel you, don’t be scared of calories, especially if you are also exercising.
Nutrient timing is also super important to achieve your fitness goals. I always try to eat something, even if it is a little snack, between an hour and a half to 30 minutes before I go to the gym. Something else that’s important is protein intake. If I am doing strength training but I'm not eating I'm in a way wasting my time. The body needs calories to help recover and grow muscles. I always try to have some type of protein intake after my workouts. This could be a protein shake, a protein bar, or if you have time, a whole-balanced meal!
4. Don’t go into it blind, make a plan
This is the biggest thing to make sure you can achieve your goals is to go in with a plan. Look at this example. On January 1st you had the idea that your new year's resolution was to work out more. Then you went to sleep, woke up the next day and continued along your day and never worked out. Same thing the next day. It was a good idea, but what does “workout more” mean? How are you going to achieve that? Or another example, you are busy, work all week and on friday you have the idea you want to start meal prepping for the week because you're tired of always having boxed foods or you want to eat better or whatever the motivation was. The weekend goes by and now it’s Monday and no meal prep was done, and you're back to your turkey sandwiches you buy at the cafeteria. What happened? You had such a good idea, how could it fail?
Well, there was no plan. We all do it, say “we’re gonna start eating better monday”; but does that Monday ever come? Usually, it doesn't because we don’t make a plan. How do we make a plan?
The first thing we need to determine is a SMART goal. This stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Using the same example as before, let's make that goal into a SMART goal. “Working out more” is a goal, but it isn’t a SMART goal. It’s not specific, measurable or time-bound. Let’s say you are someone that doesn't work out at all, a SMART goal would be saying “Start working out twice a week before January ends”. That is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Now that we have our goal, we need to determine what needs to happen to achieve these goals. This could be that you need to get clothes, or plan your schedule to know when you can go etc. Personally, I struggled last year to be consistent with the gym due to time constraints. My goal for this year is to try and strength train at least twice a week. To help achieve this I determined when in the week I would have time, and I packed a gym bag the night before and had it in my car so I could go after work. This way I am more motivated to go because I prepared for it and have a plan.
5. Sustainability and Consistency is key!
So you have your ideas, you have your goals, you made your plan: how sustainable are these? If you are trying to go from never working out to suddenly working out six times a week, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it’s probably not going to last very long. If you eat fast food every day, and you decide you're gonna stop cold turkey, I would say that’s not very sustainable either. You want to develop something that can become more like a lifestyle rather than a two week fix, so it needs to be sustainable. Let’s hypothetically say your goal is to lose 10 lbs. You cut out all junk foods and processed foods and lost 10 lbs in two weeks, great! Your goal has now been met, you feel great, and now you can eat junk food again! So now we are back to eating processed foods and in another two weeks you gain 10 lbs back and maybe even another 5 lbs, not great!
It is important to create something sustainable that even though you might not see the change in two weeks, you will see changes long term and achieve your goals and maybe even go beyond the goals. Which goes into the consistency portion. You need to be consistent to see your goals. This isn’t to say one bad day or week is going to ruin your entire progress, but it’s important to be consistent long term. So sustainability and consistency (in my opinion) go hand in hand. One won’t come without the other.
6. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate
Hydration is such an important principle, one of the easiest to achieve, and for some reason the one most forgotten. One summer while I was home with my sister, we started this contest of who could drink more water throughout the day. I am unsure what started this, but either way the competition had begun. We were both drinking probably like 100oz of water a day (a standard thermo bottle is probably like 32 oz so a lot). So the pretty obvious outcome was we were both going to the bathroom a lot. The other outcome neither of us really expected was we both lost some weight in the process. Neither of us really set out to do this, and we didn’t change what we ate or the exercise we did; however, I lost like 3 lbs in a week time period and she lost like 5 lbs. On top of that, we felt more energized, our workouts were way more efficient, overall we felt better when we were hydrated.
Drinking water is one of the easiest ways to increase your metabolic rate, to help prevent constipation, to help maintain normal blood pressure, to help maintain body temperature, to even improve brain function. Some easy tips to achieve this is to carry a water bottle around with you. If you just have a water bottle with you, you are likely to increase water intake. Another good tip is to set benchmarkers throughout the day. A good example would be to finish your water bottle before noon, or to drink four bottles throughout the day. What I would avoid is trying to meet your goals by drinking all your water later in the day, this will disrupt your sleep patterns because more likely than not you will wake up having to go to the bathroom (I am a victim of this more often than not), and sleep is important for the fueling journey even though I did not make it one of my principles.
7. This is all dose-dependent
So dose-dependent was a term I learned this year. Sounds like a pharmacological term, but I like to use it day to day. In basic terms, it means you get whatever you put in. So the more of a “dose” you get, the higher the biological response. So if you exercise once a week, you’ll see benefits but not as high benefits as if you did twice a week. If you decide you're gonna eat at home twice a week, you’ll see some benefits; however, if you eat at home 5 days a week, you’ll see more benefits. At the end of the day, you are going to get out of your fitness/fueling journey as much as you are willing to put in.
My journey dealing with fueling for fitness has not been linear. There have been ups and downs. I have achieved some goals, failed at others and am still working on some. The important part is always knowing that it is your personal journey, not anyone else's. It is about showing up for yourself and knowing you have the power and the strength to live a healthier life. That is what matters most. What also matters most is learning who to trust when reading information online. Make sure you get your information from accredited sources (research papers, registered dietitians, professionals in the nutrition field). Fueling for fitness is a journey that involves understanding your body’s unique needs and providing it with the right nutrients at the right time. Remember the key to success is found at the intersection of a well-balanced diet, consistency in diet and training and just trying to keep a healthy lifestyle.
