Health and Food- Sports Perspective
During this lovely pandemic that we find ourselves in (obviously sarcastic), many people are taking time to read and learn about different diets and ways to “body hack”. I felt it may be a good idea to delve into some diets with posts and give some perspective on the different diets out there. For this post, I’ll do a general overview, trying to keep it short and sweet, and then I’ll follow it up with specific diets out there and try to relay the research I can find on benefits and deficits of those diets. Some of the specific diets I’ll try to address are: Intermittent Fasting, ketogenic, Mediterranean, and low carbohydrate. Some of these mesh together but each tout themselves as the best.
So, let’s look at the basics. Many people know that food provides energy that the body will use and ultimately expend, called Calories. In general, glucose (sugar) is broken down to produce this energy to do all of the body’s processes. The food we consume will consist of “macronutrients” within them that are used to produce energy and for the building blocks of our cells and DNA, to help our bodies do what they do.
Macronutrients will consist of Carbohydrates (bread, fruit, vegetables), protein (meat, legumes, nuts, quinoa), and Fats (avocado, vegetable oil, nut oil, lard). Each of these macronutrients can produce different amounts of Calories via digestion (the body breaks everything down to its base absorbable molecules). Carbohydrates will equate to about 4 Calories per gram (science uses metric weights), Protein will also be 4 Calories per gram, and Fat will be 9 Calories per gram. Note that fat contains way more Calories per gram. And just for fun, alcohol (beer, wine, spirits) have 7 Calories per gram. So, it is true that you should be careful if you choose to imbibe alcohol because there can be a lot of calories in it.
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Did I pop my pinkie when taking a picture…
For sports, and health, there are a couple of ways to make sure you are eating right. One is to track your Calories “in” (and if you have a fitness tracker you may be able to track Calories “out”). This can get tedious and you can sometimes really get tunnel vision. Also, you may not get the right food for overall health if you only count calories. There was a guy during lent one year that only drank beer. Not the typical kind you find at a bar, but the heavier and “wheatier” beer that Monks would brew. He ended up losing weight doing this, but his overall nutrition wasn’t good and I assume his liver took a bit of a beating.
The other way to track diet is to count ratios of Macronutrients. Generally, you should shoot for Carbohydrate to be anywhere from 40-60% of your daily nutrient intake. This can vary depending on your goals, such as weight loss or training. Protein is the next important one that should be around 15-30% of your diet. If someone is training or weight lifting, they will need more protein than a ‘normal’ person and should increase this portion of their ratio and lower the carbohydrate or fat. Fat should never be above 30% of the diet, and this is where many fall off, as fat is included in everything these days. Make sure to read labels. Fat is important to have in the diet, so fat free everything isn’t a great idea, but do try to limit it in the diet and make sure to know the types of fat being ingested. Trans fats (how the lipid tail of the molecule is aligned) should be avoided. They will generally be solid at room temp.
from Kirbyhealth.org
Okay that can get kind of dense and boring. There are nutritionists and dietitians that can go through this as well. A whole lecture could be given just on the basics, but it’s really boring to talk about. Eyes glaze over very quickly. But hopefully this can give a brief overview. Now a blend of both Calorie tracking and tracking macronutrients can help with goals. If you want to lose weight, then have a Calorie deficit and keep those macros in order. If you want to maintain current weight, then Calories out must equal Calories in. Want to gain weight, then Calories in must be more to provide the excess energy.
Via the evolutionary process over the years, humans have become more reliant on Carbohydrates and glucose for fuel. It is more readily available and more easily burned by the body. However, there are diets that try to ‘retrain” the body to revert to those hunter and gatherer days and burn fatty acids instead to utilize the Calorie-rich Fat and help with health. I’ll go over some of these diets which can sometimes be called “fad diets” and how they can relate to health and sports. If one sounds interesting and enticing, just please remember, some do have good scientific backing, like the Mediterranean diet, and some are mixed. Ultimately, whether someone chooses to use a specific diet, the most consistent failure I see is that the diet to too restrictive or difficult to maintain and people just revert to old habits and diets. Whichever diet it is, it needs to be sustainable and ultimately incorporated into a new lifestyle to be of any benefit. No one can just intermittent fast for 10 weeks and then stop and go back to their previous habits. When picking a diet to follow, pick one that can be continued long term and know it is a lifestyle change and not a ‘miracle diet’.
Anyway, for my next post I’ll delve into Intermittent Fasting.
But for now, stay safe out there and keep moving!
P.S. If interested these are some sources for the above information
Bytomski, J. (2017). Fueling for Performance. Sports Health,10(1), 47-53.
Christopher, Madden, Margot Putukian, Eric McCarty and Craig Young. "Chapter 5 and 6." Netter's sports medicine. 2. Philadelphia: Elsevier, 2018. 28-42. Print.
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