Tag: nutrition

GI Problems, Nutrition + Health, Running, Sports Nutrition

Training the Gut for Athletic Activity Part II: Fueling During Activity

by RebeccaLeave a Comment on Training the Gut for Athletic Activity Part II: Fueling During Activity
The author fueling on the run, Oct. 2023
I recently shared a primer on training the gut and fueling during exercise in Part I of this training the gut and fueling athletic activities series. This is a both a performance as well as digestive health topic that’s pertinent to endurance athletes, and particularly runners. As many athletes are beginning their early season race training, it’s a good time to start practicing and dialing in nutrition, because it will significantly impact performance for the months going forward.

Last time in part I, we laid the groundwork for what training the gut is and why it is important, as well as a brief discussion on under-fueling, both during exercise and throughout the day, and its consequences.

Today, we’ll delve a little deeper into how much fuel you should be consuming during exercise, and what factors might affect how much and what type of additional nutrition you take on while moving.

How much to Fuel During Exercise

You may have read that elite athletes such as professional cyclists on the world tour level are now aiming to ingest upwards of 120 g/h of carbohydrates. This is true and a showcase of what is occurring at the top end of performance fueling, as well as what’s needed to compete at an elite level. This is also what is most helpful for performance during intense ultra endurance events where athletes spend upwards of six hours on the bike, often at tempo or threshold efforts for much of that time.

For you, what’s important to remember is that your need for and rate of carbohydrate use depends largely on intensity. If you are exercising at a lower intensity, which is more common in many athletes and those doing longer races, you will likely need less carbohydrates. Similarly, how long you will be racing matters. A short but intense half marathon will require less carbohydrates per hour than a marathon that’s raced at similar but slightly lower intensity. That means instead of aiming for 120 grams per hour of carbohydrates, there is a large range depending on intensity and time, to the tune of 30-90+ grams of carbohydrate consumed per hour. 

So the answer as to “how much” will depend on your race distance, how long you’ll take to complete that distance, weather, and other factors such as your fuel tolerance, gut training, and practicality. 

You can find any number of articles on the internet giving specifics of how much you should fuel per hour during your particular goal distance. But these are broad numbers and aren’t specific to you. For specifics for your situation and performance goals, it is always best to work with a knowledgeable sports nutrition professional. See the end of this article for more information about individual consultations. 

The author fueling on the run, circa 2014.

What Types of Fuel During Exercise

Now, what about the choice of fuel you choose to consume during exercise? I’ve met many athletes that say they prefer “real food,” whether that’s a small handful of raisins, dates or dried apricots, a banana, homemade nut butter and fruit bars, a rice cake (popular in cycling), or even something like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

On the flip side, there are ample sports nutrition products to choose from on the market–in many cases there are too many options–hence the confusion. There are “real food” gels, various sugar-containing gels, drinks and drink mixes, sport beans and candies, gummies and chews, and bars. 

What you choose to consume during exercise will depend on your goals, your tolerance and gut training, convenience, and other factors like personal preference. For instance, if you’re aiming for an Olympic Trials qualifying time in the marathon, you’re likely going to be choosing a quick-absorbing carbohydrate fuel that’s convenient like a sports drink or gel. 

If you’re training for a 100 mile ultra run, and your pace and intensity is much slower, you may opt away from gels altogether and make your own sweet potato and maple syrup packs, or even pack a PB&J, stop for a real meal at an aid station, etc.

And if you’re just out for a slow Sunday long run or ride, and you’re not currently gearing up for a target race, you might have a pocket full of dates, a banana, or a rice cake or homemade energy balls that contain both slower absorbing carbohydrates and perhaps some fat. 

Based on how much you will be fueling per hour, the types of sugar in your chosen fuel will also start to matter, as there will be a need for carbohydrates from both glucose and fructose to increase absorption and utilization, once you start to consume above 45 grams of carbohydrates per hour (Rowlands et al 2015). 

There is no right answer in terms of what fuel you choose–but there is a correct fuel for the purpose of that day, and for the amount of fuel you need for that day.

Fueling During Exercise and Its Effect on Digestion and the GI

Finally, let’s turn to the topic of fueling during exercise and how it affects both digestion and GI function more generally. 

From research studies, we see that: 

  • There is a greater reduction in markers of damage done to the lower GI –damage resulting in injury to the cells lining the small intestine and causing “leaky gut” or intestinal permeability, where larger molecules than ideal get through into the bloodstream and cause inflammation and symptoms–when athletes took in glucose compared to just water during two hours of running  (Martinez et al, 2023).
  • There are improvements in carbohydrate malabsorption after two weeks of gut training with carbohydrate from a supplement during exercise (as opposed to taking in no carbohydrates or in that particular study, taking in carbohydrates from “real food”.) 
  • There is a significant reduction in GI discomfort both during and after exercise in those that consume carbohydrates during exercise and have undergone gut training protocols.
  • Performance can be improved. From some field data from professional cycling teams, the higher the amount of carbohydrates that were taken per hour of exercise, the faster the finishing time of the athletes  (Viribay, 2022)
    • On this note, in a study of trained Mountain Trail Ultra runners consuming between 60 and 120 grams per hour of carbohydrate, there was a lower rate of perceived exertion when consuming 120 gr/hr CHO. 
    • Consuming the higher amount of carbohydrates during their race also lowered markers of muscle damage after the race for these athletes when compared to consuming lower amounts of carbohydrate. (Viribay et al, 2020)

So far in this series, we’ve shared about the dangers of under-fueling both during and outside of activity, the advantages of fueling and training the gut on both digestion and performance, a brief overview of how much and what type of fuels to consume, and the knowledge that for every person has unique variables to work with, so for best results, tailoring your fueling plan to your needs and race goals is best. In the coming weeks, I’m planning to continue this topic of fueling sports performance in more detail. Stay tuned!

Learn More

If you’d like to know more, I work with clients in individual nutrition consultations, and as a Licensed Dietician / Nutritionist and Certified Nutrition Specialist, use medical nutrition therapy, integrative health measures, and a root cause approach to heal imbalanced health conditions. 

Conditions I specialize in include all digestive health imbalances and disorders, endurance athlete sports nutrition, vegan/vegetarian diets, intuitive eating, and autoimmune diseases.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can improve your symptoms of imbalance, I’d love to speak with you in a quick phone consultation! 

References:

Martinez, I.G., Mika, A.S., et al. (2023). The effect of Gut-Training and Feeding-Challenge on Markers of Gastrointestinal Status in Response to Endurance Exercise: A Systematic Literature Review. Sports Medicine, 53, 1175-1200. doi:10.1007/s40279-023-01841-0.
Rowlands, D. S., Houltham, S., Musa-Veloso, K., Brown, F., Paulionis, L., & Bailey, D. (2015). Fructose-Glucose Composite Carbohydrates and Endurance Performance: Critical Review and Future Perspectives. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 45(11), 1561–1576. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-015-0381-0
Viribay, A., Arribalzaga, S., Mielgo-Ayuso, J., Castañeda-Babarro, A., Seco-Calvo, J., & Urdampilleta, A. (2020). Effects of 120 g/h of Carbohydrates Intake during a Mountain Marathon on Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage in Elite Runners. Nutrients, 12(5), 1367. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12051367
Viribay, A. (2022). “Training the gut in pro cycling and elite running.” WE Sports Nutrition Pre-Conference, 18 Oct. 2022.

Ayurveda, GI Problems, Herbal Medicine, Nutrition + Health, Seasonal Eating, Spring, Summertime

Observing the 20 Energies and How To Really Start Intuitive Eating

by Rebecca4 Comments on Observing the 20 Energies and How To Really Start Intuitive Eating

Every day in May is precious.

Where I live, the months of February through April are often the most challenging – January and the post-holiday, beginning of year hope always seem to fly by, but it’s in February, and March, and April that every day can feel like a grind. 

It’s not the sunshine that May can bring that necessarily turns it all around for me. I do love the sun and warmer days, but I also enjoy the rain. 

It’s the flowers and the fully leafed out trees that late winter and early spring lacks. The sheer density of foliage that has returned by early May.

A heavy blanket or extra padding of plant life that soothes my nervous system as I go out into the world, making everything hard, more bearable, and everything mundane or merely good, elevated. 

The twenty Gunas valued in Ayurvedic medicine.

One thing that is inevitably helpful from day to day, whether it’s in those more difficult late winter and early spring months, in May, or in the heat of peak summer, is tuning into and adjusting my food and lifestyle choices based on the energies around and inside me. What I’m referring to are the 20 Gunas in Ayurvedic wisdom. These are a set of 10 pairs of opposing qualities or energies that describe the different attributes inherent in all substances. 

For instance, a rock is hard. Feathers are soft. 
A rainy day is wet. A clear, sunny day in August in Oregon is dry. 
Fresh ginger is heating. Coconut milk and coconut water are cooling.  

What is so powerful about observing these qualities in your body and everyday life, and then using them to make subtle food and lifestyle adjustments, is that it’s a way to bring balance to your body, mind and health.

This daily adjusting is especially helpful as a preventative measure, but should also be used when there is clear illness or disease. Our body’s prefer to operate at homeostasis. Even with everything we do in our everyday that knocks the body out of homeostasis, its object is always to return to ‘baseline’ as quickly as possible. When there are too many blocks in its ability to do so, that’s when illness and disease, abnormal lab values, pain and aches, and injuries occur.  

The 20 Qualities are:
Heavy | Light
Cold | Hot
Soft | Hard
Oily | Dry
Smooth | Rough
Dense or Solid | Liquid
Slow or Dull | Sharp
Stable | Unstable or Mobile
Cloudy, Sticky or Slimy | Clear
Gross or Big | Subtle or Small

Observing and using the 20 qualities or gunas is a way to help the body system return to homeostasis. How you do that is for every quality that is out of balance, utilize the opposite quality instead. 

For instance, if I am currently experiencing hot, itchy skin rashes or acne, I know that adding more heating substances, foods, and heating spices will further increase the heat condition. Reducing the amount of spices in food, the type of foods that are hot in nature, and increasing cooling foods will help to clear the heat. Adding cooling, bitter vegetables like broccoli and asparagus and more cooling spices and herbs like fennel, coriander, mint and cilantro,  instead of eating a dish with garlic, onions, ginger, mustard seeds, and chili peppers will slowly (or sometimes quickly) assist in coming back to equilibrium. 

Or say I have a tendency towards being constipated and gassy, and I eat lots of dry, airy foods. Snacking on popcorn, granola, chips, crackers, yeasted bread, and raw, crunchy salads, which I eat while on the go, or eat while talking. All are dry and/or contain a lot of air.
A way towards balance is to increase the moisture — both through adding liquid into the foods consumed, and cooking foods until they’re soft, and by adding liquid fats and oils instead of dry, crunchy roasted nuts or seeds, etc.

A Daily Check-In

One way to begin to use this method is by doing a short daily check-in. Take a few minutes near the beginning of each day to journal or jot down the answers to these questions:

– What is Present today? 
– And What is Needed?

Getting more granular, it can sometimes be helpful to do a quick scan or review of different body systems, the mind and emotions, and the weather to help. Is something feeling dry? Hot? Slimy and mucousy? Slow and sluggish? Adjust your food and lifestyle choices with the opposite qualities, and see where it begins to bring more balance. 

As we weave into the summer months in the northern hemisphere, it’s often that the qualities on display in the environment become hotter, dryer (or more humid, depending on where you live), and this can be mirrored in the body more rapidly, especially when we likewise choose heating and drying foods. Here’s a recipe for summer that can give you a good example of how to balance the heat and dryness with cooling spices, coconut and gently cooked, more liquid-containing meals. 

Observing what’s occurring internally and externally and adjusting to quickly reach equilibrium is the very definition of true intuitive eating. It’s tuning into what the body needs rather than what the mind craves. 


If you’d like to know more, there is a free download in more detail to use this idea in the Resources section. I also work with clients in individual nutrition consultations, and as a Licensed Dietician / Nutritionist (LDN /LD) and Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS), use medical nutrition therapy, integrative health measures, and a root cause approach to heal imbalanced health conditions. 

If you’d like to learn more about how you can improve your symptoms of imbalance, I’d love to speak with you in a quick phone consultation! 

Autumn, Nutrition + Health, Winter

Creamy Koginut Squash + Sage Pasta

by RebeccaLeave a Comment on Creamy Koginut Squash + Sage Pasta

When choosing new seed varieties late last winter for the  upcoming growing season, I somehow convinced William I needed another type of winter squash to grow. He hates winter squash. But somehow, I won him over and then our late season garden became a sea of squash. I chose the Robin’s Koginut variety from Row7 Seeds. It’s a variety that has gotten a lot of press in the last few years, for chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill, who also wrote one of my favorite books, helped develop the variety in partnership with his local farmers and seed breeders. The result is a combination of a butternut and a kabocha squash variety, and I quite like it. But I also like nearly all winter squash.

Relatedly, over the course of the last few days, I’ve been taking a cooking class on using cooking techniques from Ayurveda. This means an emphasis on getting all six flavors in every dish, balancing the meal so that no flavor stands out over the rest, and that the end result is balancing to the body. One of the other tenets of Ayurveda is eating seasonally, i.e. what is in season, where you live.

One of the other person’s in the class asked about fruit, since I have virtually all types of fruit available to me where I live, she said. Our instructor reminded her that what’s at the store does not always represent what’s in season locally, as most well-stocked groceries carry fruit and other produce from all across the globe at all times. Unless a banana grows outside your door right now, it’s probably not in your best health interest to eat a banana, our instructor said, and advised the person to visit her farmers market instead.

I agree with my instructor wholeheartedly on a personal level. As many of you long-time readers know, I’m a big advocate of eating locally in season, getting to know your local farmers, supporting your community and economy, voting with your fork for sustainability and climate resilience, and of course, because what’s in season is often better for our health.

But for anyone that works with me with nutrition, I take a much more individualized approach. Not all of us come ready and able to make dietary changes that are so vastly different than what we’re currently doing. Not all of us live in a bounty of locally available all the time. Some of us need gentle guidance without judgement to get started where we are.

I have a book on healing with whole foods on my shelf that is nearly falling apart. When I first began really getting into holistic/integrative health, I read it from front to back, a little at a time, night after night. The pages are textbook size and there are nearly 800 of them. When I got done, I started reading again. Over years, yes years, I very slowly incorporated practices encouraged in the book. I tried meditation. I incorporated chlorella and spirulina (years before these would become more mainstream). I learned about types of oils and when and how to use different sweeteners. I learned about the effect of different foods on the body. It was an incredibly slow process and along the way, I slowly shed the way of eating that leaned heavier on the cheese, yogurt, ice cream, baked goods, convenience fast-food, and then all the “skinny” diet crap products, and more into trying new and then seasonal foods. Part of what really pushed me further was the second of three health crises, but I eventually figured out a way of eating that is intuitive and right for me. In the process it also helped heal the first, second, and third health crisis, the last of which I now believe to be both a reaction to a multi-year stint in a moldy apartment and emotionally related, leftover from the first.

This is all to say, for personal sustainability-sake, I don’t believe everyone needs to completely ditch their mainstream big-box grocery immediately and only shop at the farmers market from here on out. Or never again eat a banana. But I do think it can be life changing if you research a couple ways to seek local food where you live, and try a couple new in-season foods to start

If you come across the Koginut Squash, I encourage you to try it. Or if not, seek out a Butternut or Kabocha Squash instead. For learning about local farms and markets near you, try “Local Food Near Me” as a google search, or check out Local Farm Markets as a start. Or if you’re ready or in need of some extra food and nutrition guidance, please reach out to me for more personalized support.

Creamy Koginut Squash + Sage Pasta, serves about 4
1 medium koginut (or butternut) squash
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup water or vegetable broth (low/no sodium)
¼ cup nutritional yeast
1 Tbs. raw apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs. dried sage leaves, plus a few more to serve
salt and pepper to taste
12 oz. gluten-free pasta, preferably a bean/legume based pasta unless you’ll be adding chickpeas or other beans
3-4 medium handfuls dark leafy greens such as spinach or kale, optional

  • Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking pan with parchment paper.
  • Halve the squash and take out the seeds. Then put the two halves, cut side down on a baking pan, along with a couple splashes of water. Cook for 40-45 minutes until tender when pierced with a fork. Remove from the oven and let it cool slightly.
  • While the squash is cooking, heat a large pan over medium heat. Add the oil and the onions. Cook until soft, about 7-10 minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook for another minute. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  • In an upright blender, combine the squash, onions, and garlic, water or broth, nutritional yeast, vinegar, sage, and salt and pepper to taste. Blend on high speed until the ingredients become silky smooth. Transfer to a saucepan and keep warm over low heat until ready to use.
  • Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the box. Drain it, and then combine it with the sauce. If you’d like some extra greens, tossing in a couple handfuls of spinach or another soft leafy green (such as kale or swiss chard), is ideal at this time.
  • After you’ve dished up each serving, sprinkle with a couple pinches of minced sage over the top.