Sports Nutrition

I attended a very interesting Fitness Conference this past weekend in Montreal. I love these types of events where you are surrounded by like minded people interested in learning more about health and nutrition for ourselves but also for our clients. Well except for the chick eating MacDonald's in the lobby. 


I spent two fantastic hours listening to Scott Josephson, MS, RD from the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida talk about nutrition. His seminar was called Eating for Energy and it completely changed how I think about fueling my body. http://www.hippocratesinst.org/   I highly recommend checking out the site. I was able to speak with him after and he was so knowledgeable about every aspect of fitness and nutrition it was astounding. I explained to him how I needed to lose 5-10lbs and he said to me "You don't need to lose 5-10 pounds, that is a personal weight-loss goal not a medical one." That made me smile, to hear a fitness expert who works with the best athletes in the world tell me that felt like a giant weight lifting from my shoulders. I needed to stop being fixated on the "weight" and really start treating my body like an athlete's. We talked about my exercise schedule and how many calories I consume, always with a focus to lose weight. He used an example of a 125 female doing twice a day workouts like me, burning an average of 300 calories per workout. For her to properly fuel her body and get the most from her workouts she had to eat over 2500 calories a day!  In my ongoing quest to lose weight I had cut my calories back to 1400 and the scale hasn't budged in over a month. We talked about pre-workout carbs/protein, post-workout recovery and adjusting my carb/protein/fat ratio based upon the type of exercise I do (intense cardio and high rep/high weight training). Turns out I should be eating another 500 calories a day! Can we say Merry Christmas? 


I love talking about nutrition, exercise and developing plans. I downloaded a handy little app called Calorie Count by FatSecret. I've always tracked my calories in a notebook but now that I am looking at food as fuel and making sure to time it according to my workouts and really monitor my carb/protein/fat intake, this little app is amazing. I also picked up a great book called Vegetarian Sports Nutrition by D. Enette Larson-Meyer PhD, RD http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/vegetarian-sports-nutrition which follows the same guidelines as Scott's presentation. 


I know only a handful of people are really interested in this stuff like I am but I wanted to share.