High Carbohydrate Nutrition
What I am about to say should not be news!
It should however spark your interest to consider if you are meeting your unique carbohydrate needs and make you question if you are choosing quality carbohydrates to enhance performance and recovery. Can we agree that the athlete is trying to reach an output of optimal strength and speed most of the time? Sport nutrition research focus in the 1960’s was geared toward understanding the body’s ability to consume, store, and use glycogen for fuel. Current research continues to highlight carbohydrates as the body’s preferred fuel source during high intensity exercise (VO2 max at or above 65%). Carbohydrates are required to replenish muscle and liver glycogen stores for progressive training and normal physiological function. If an athlete consistently fails to meet carbohydrate requirements, training adaptations, recovery, muscle mass and immune function may suffer. The athlete may also put themselves at increased risk for injury and overtraining. All of this equates to limited potential! Once you understand and implement your unique carbohydrate and energy needs for training, recovery and performance naturally improve.
Meeting unique carbohydrate needs can be difficult for some due to limited time, resources, lack of a desire to prepare foods, or an inability to consume the amount of food required to meet higher carbohydrate recommendations. Research clearly supports carbohydrate as a performance enhancer, especially when consumed around training times. Carbohydrate recommendations should vary depending on sport, timing, intensity, training capacity, and hydration. Though the sport nutrition market is flooded with products that promise improved recovery and maximal performance, the athlete should be encouraged to get a majority of their carbohydrates from whole food sources like grains, fruits, and vegetables to support optimal performance and recovery.
What’s a recommendation without the why for following through? The benefits of food typically outweigh supplementation on a day to day basis due to the additional food components that come with foods including vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients. The nutrients work in conjunction with one another to promote optimal metabolism. For athletes with high carbohydrate needs there is limited tolerance for incorporating copious amounts of fruits and vegetables due to higher fiber content of these foods. Choosing carbohydrate sources that are nutrient dense will ensure micronutrient needs are maintained to enhance performance and recovery.
Supplements have their place! Nutrition is not black and white, and therefor neither is supplement use. Food and beverages which include refined carbohydrates are encouraged when immediate recovery of glycogen is needed due to multiple training sessions per day or during longer bouts of training. Supplements are composed of glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, maltodextrin, and/or amylopectin molecules to be quickly absorbed and metabolized by the muscles and liver to restore glycogen levels. Each of the constituents varies in their glycemic index (ability to raise blood sugar) and osmolarity (ability to be absorbed which affects stomach tolerance of the product) to provide athletes with choices that best suit their unique needs. An athlete should understand when their training schedule may require the need for carbohydrate supplementation or when food should be the preferred source of fuel. One thing to keep in mind when choosing to supplement is: there is no required regulation of supplements, which means supplement labels might be stroking your ego making you believe you are getting more or less of what is printed on the label (YIKES!). However, there are some companies who choose to get their products third party tested to ensure customers are aware that their packaged product contains exactly what is printed on the label. Third party companies include NSF, Informed Sport/Choice, and USP.
What about carbohydrate timing? As research evolves, the focus has shifted from a generic high carbohydrate diet to a focus on carbohydrate availability and specific strategies of “training low” or “recovering low” to improve adaptations. In the coming weeks I will review strategies and purposes for using these chronic fueling strategies.