Boring! That’s what most people are probably thinking when they read the title of this post. The fact that you are reading this sentence means you probably have some appreciation for healthy nutrition. It’s a shame those others don’t realise how much performance you can gain through changing simple eating habits!

        

Over the years, I’ve been to coaching/nutrition courses, training camps, and nutritional seminars. All pretty much drill the same old spiels into you. As a teenage triathlete I would sometimes eat huge amounts of pasta, bread and cereals, simply because that’s what I was told was the best thing to do by those “in the know”! In fact, I would go as far as saying that there is almost a binge eating issue in some circles of the sport. I speak as an former example of that.

Long training rides were a lead up to a post-training refuel that consisted of eating as much as I could, a lot of it high in sugar. It’s no wonder that the following day saw me feeling incredibly lethargic. My body was still struggling to process all of the rubbish I’d stuffed into it. Sound familiar?

Ok, so maybe you haven’t submitted yourself to quite the same turmoil, but it can easily become the normal post-training routine. In return, you easily lose the benefits of doing the training in the first place and quite possibly cause your body a great deal of harm. Unfortunately, for quite a while I considered this to be normal – as do, I suspect, many other triathletes out there.

Kristian Manietta of TriSpecific (visit the blog for some great advice) and Trigger Point Therapy (TP) had the greatest influence on the changing of my nutritional habits. The holistic theory behind the TP tools taught me, or rather, opened my eyes to the important role nutrition plays in the development of our bodies. Training provides the stimulation to become faster and stronger, however it is our nutrition that allows us to do that and determines how much benefit, if any, we gain from our training sessions. My old nutritional approach was effectively causing my body to plateau and barely recover from training sessions. In fact, it was quite likely the cause of the calf injury that led me to go and see Kristian.

So what did I change? I began to eat less processed foods and replace them with natural alternatives like fruit, vegetables, lean sources of protein and nuts. I concentrated on lowering the quantity of food I was eating and increasing the quality of it. I started doing the majority of the shopping around the edges of the supermarket, where the fresh produce, frozen goods and less processed items can be found – trying to only venture into the aisles for canned fruit & vegies, oats and bathroom/laundry items.

The effects of this gradual change have included feeling more energetic, faster recovery from training, a “lighter” feeling stomach and wounds (eg. blisters) heal super fast, just to name a few.

Now, I’ll admit to having a sweet tooth and enjoying some so called “bad” foods, but they’re only really “bad” when not eaten in moderation. A little indulgence is a healthy thing.

Take a look at your post-training habits. Are they healthy?

I challenge you to ask yourself whether your nutritional approach to life in general is helping you to lead a healthy life, because without your health, athletic performance is irrelevant. You can start with your next meal. What small changes could you make?