Intro to Sports Nutrition: Chapter 3 - Changing Mindset and Products We Use

Chapter 2 Recap

In Chapter 2, we dabbled in how your muscles work and emphasized that exercise is a biochemical process that requires the right ingredients to work. Without the right molecular ingredients, you cannot simply will your way to success by being mentally tough. For chapter 3, we'll dive into my mindset shift and what specifically has worked well for me. 

Over the years, I’ve come around to the idea of consuming carbs for endurance sport.

There is a whole other topic on performance vs health that we’ll get into another time and will explain why it took me a while to come around. I also detoured into some high fat, low carb approaches that I could never quite make work for me (though that doesn’t mean it won’t work for you, or that I won’t try again sometime in the future). 

In coming around to consuming more carbs to increase performance in Triathlon, there were a few key pieces of advice that have been working for me so far, taking me from about 3.9 watts/kg to 4.5 in the past year. 

Advice that has worked for me 

Don’t diet during exercise  - Phrase credit Amber and Pete on the TrainerRoad podcast. Great resource by the way. The way I’ve interpreted the advice is that carbohydrate timing matters and depleting yourself can cause major spikes in hunger.

My original goal was to limit both sugar and overall calories, so I’d avoid sugar during a hard bike workout, get off starving, eat two burritos and have dessert cravings at night that I inevitably gave into.

It took me a while to realize how backwards this was, but I eventually experimented with fueling my hard work in the moment, when my body could actually make use of the carbs. I’d get off the bike less hungry and experience less late night cravings. I still don’t love how much sugary goo I’m putting into my body, but its working, and I’m making a tradeoff between performance and nutrition that I am ok with right now. The TrainerRoad guys have a great clip on exactly this concept, which you can check out here.

My advice would be experiment and find what works for you.

In terms of how much, I will typically range from 30g - 90g of carbohydrates per hour of exercise. I’ll be closer to the lower end of the range on easier workouts, and on the high range for higher efforts. If you’re still on the fence, something that helped me was to do the calorie calculation. Every gram of carb is about 4 calories. That means that on my hard days when I’m slamming 90x4 = 360 calories in an hour, I’m still burning double that from the work itself. You’d be hard pressed to be in a calorie surplus if you’re fueling correctly, so technically you’re still dieting. 

Products that may be worth experimenting with

So you’re down to experiment fueling your workouts, what products should you use? Here are some of the products I’ve been using that have helped me up my game:  

Maurten Gels - they don’t put artificial flavors and dyes in their stuff. Hydrogel is the way to go, but they are on the pricier side. They are also on course now for Ironman events so training with what you'll use on race day is a plus. 

Science in Sport (SIS) gels go down extremely easy, and my personal race day favorite. Definitely some artificial flavoring going on here, but once you’ve tried these, you’ll never go back to those paste-like gels that have you gasping for air while you try and swallow them on the bike. 

G1M sport by Bare Performance Nutrition. I’ve experienced the product as advertised - tastes good, no stomach discomfort. Mixed with their amino acids for even better taste.

Have a favorite carb supplement not on our list? Let us know in the comments!