Tag Archives: carb loading

Does Power Eating hold up after all these years?

I have a lot of educational books that at this point are now old books. Susan Kleiner‘s 1998 book Power Eating is one.

Whereas at the time the notable RD’s tome was timely and cutting edge, the preceding couple of decades have rendered much of the book’s conventional wisdom somewhat outdated and possibly to some extent currently off-base.

To preface, it’s worth noting that Kleiner has since released a sequel to the book, The New Power Eating, that is certainly more up to date on today’s knowledge. But still, I’m curious to see how well the old edition holds up.

Kleiner obviously didn’t err based on the information available to everyone in her field at the time. No one then knew of the benefits of concepts like intermittent fasting, carb cycling, that the kidneys could in fact handle a large amount of protein without ill effect, that we didn’t necessarily need as much carbohydrate as they thought for intense activity, etc.

I’m reading through some of the book now, primarily initial sections on exercise fueling, before and after training. She echoes a lot of the conventional wisdom regarding endurance running nutrition, which as people know is very high-carbohydrate and carb-centered.

While the following is hardly comprehensive, I have read a few interesting points that are either not necessarily true today, or could well be valid today and has not been carried over into subsequent analyses.

Continue reading
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Quick thoughts on what causes weight gain when running

orange food truck

Photo by Artem Saranin on Pexels.com

If you struggle with weight gain while running, your problem may not necessarily be overeating.

In fact, you need all the nutrients you can get during high volume training. Cutting calories might be the worst thing you can do for your recovery.

Your culprit is not how much you’re eating, but the type of food you’re eating. For most of us, the easiest and most readily available form of satisfying food is processed. It comes out of a box or package. It’s either ready to eat or cooks quickly. It was chemically engineered in a lab and factory to taste good.

This food is high in sodium and a variety of additives. The organs’ struggle to process and coexist with these (non-)”nutrients” inflames your entire body and leads to your prime culprit: Water retention.

Water has weight. Drink a 16 oz glass of water and guess what? You just gained one pound. Ideally, your body urinates, sweats or evaporates this newfound pound out at some point soon.

But when your body is inflamed, it responds by retaining water to surround and protect your organs. The more processed food you eat, the more often you eat it, the more water your body continously retains to buffer your organs from all the chemical byproducts of the garbage you’re eating.

This is why when people try to diet, or clean up their diets, they lose a bunch of weight early on. A cleaner diet eliminates the inflammation and the need to water-protect organs. Your body begins to flush the excess retained water out. Whoosh!

(And yes, you may notice you’ve got to pee a lot more after you start a cleaner diet. There goes all that retained water!)

This is also why people on diets see their weight loss slow after an early surge of lost weight. They weren’t losing fat early on. They were losing retained water.

Back to the point: If you’re gaining weight as a runner, you almost certainly are eating an excess of processed food. You may have your reasons for eating as you do. Your body is the ultimate scoreboard and won’t lie about what you’re eating and drinking.

Simply put, you can stop and reverse your weight gain by eating more unprocessed whole and natural foods. Eat for the whoosh, get yourself back on track, and stay back on track.

Tagged , , , , , ,

The Race Eve pasta dinner: Is pre-race carb loading a good idea?

I may or may not have touched on the folly of carb loading, that your diet and glycogen stores are a body of work, and not something you can fix in the 48 hours before your race (though your glycogen stores and physical condition are certainly something you can break in the preceding 48 hours).

Still, the Race Eve Pasta Gorge is a favorite runner ritual, and while you may not substantially improve your glycogen reserves, you at least won’t go to bed hungry.

This leads me to two questions.

  1. Can there be a situation where a Race Eve carb-load can be beneficial?
  2. Is the Race Eve carb-load beenficial for races shorter than the marathon? If so, when so, and when not so?

Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,