The spring season is in full swing and as of this past Saturday (April 11th), the farmer’s market is open here in Lexington, Kentucky. This is really good news for Nikki and I as it is a sign that our participation in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program at Elmwood Stock Farm is just about ready to begin.

Spring is one of my favorite times of year because our bodies are anxious to get outdoors and experience something besides treadmills, bike trainers and 25 yard pools.  It is also a time when the harvests are just beginning to start taking place and the early season vegetables are going to be available to fuel those outdoor adventures.

I wrote about our CSA participation a couple years ago when we first signed up.  (CSA’s and Eating for Fitness)  Now that we are entering our third year of participation, I thought I would go back and review some general thoughts about what our participation has meant to our nutritional habits and the benefits this participation has on training for triathlon.

… the more things stay the same:

As the years change and as time moves on, it is interesting to see how the same questions and issues come up again and again.  The big nutritional question that I get asked often goes something like this, “What is the perfect mix of calories I should take in to fuel my training?”

The question may not specifically include the word “perfect”, but essentially that is what I’m being asked to answer.  The questioner is often someone that nails each workout, day-after-day, often thinking that they may not be training enough.  In this way, they want to take a very detailed kcal-by-kcal approach to their nutritional intake.

Once you start asking questions such as:

1.  How many servings of vegetables do you eat?
2.  Do you eat a variety of fruits, or are bananas your only fruit?
3.  What do you eat to get your protein?
4.  What is your dependence upon sports nutrition products and sugar, during the times you are not working out?

It often doesn’t take too much probing into the athlete’s everyday nutritional behaviors to realize that a strict account of dietary choices is not necessary; what they need is a commitment to the basic nutritional habits that support their health.

How the CSA and Farmer’s Market forces us to focus on the basics of healthy nutrition:

Benefit #1 - We get a variety of foods to eat that support our health, automatically. No choices, no decisions.  It’s like an automatic savings plan with your bank….

As a part of our participation in the CSA, we get a full basket of fresh vegetables each week.  I’ll be honest and say that during our first year of participation, we had many varieties of vegetables I had never tried or cooked.  These new and different varieties is part of the benefit of the CSA.  It forces us to use, cook, eat a whole new group of foods that I wouldn’t normally try if they were not handed to me in a basket each week.  I also know that if I was left to my own devices to buy our vegetables from the grocery store, I simply wouldn’t choose many of these items, if I chose any vegetables at all.

Benefit #2 - Our diets naturally gravitate to a healthy diet plan because we need to use the food the farm delivers to us.

Nikki and I are just two people.  And while we eat a lot of food during the summer to fuel our active lifestyle, we often find it difficult to work through the entire basket of food before getting our basket the next week.  This is a great benefit for the make up of our diets as a whole because we end up filling more of our total dietary intake with these fresh and mostly organicaly grown food (a few items are still not certified organic).

Final thoughts:

The advice that I give athletes all the time regarding their swimming, biking and running is this:  “Be consistent!”  As a coach, there is no workout I can put into an athlete’s schedule that will “magically” boost their fitness and performance if they don’t swim/bike/run regularly.

When it comes to training for endurance sports there are no shortcuts.  An athlete that is out there doing the work month-after-month and more realistically, year-after-year, is going to outperform the athlete that kills themselves for 6 weeks thinking they are doing every session necessary to be successful.

This same paradigm can be said about your dietary habits and behaviors as a triathlete.  Get the basics done, week-after-week, year-after-year and you’ll be in a better position than if you spend all your time looking for the best diet to follow for 8 weeks or sports nutrition supplement to start consuming 3 times a day.

So start making a behavioral change by making a commitment to attending the local farmer’s market.  Just the process of attending the market and sorting through the vendors and food options will begin to make you more aware about what you are eating.  If you enjoy the food and the market enough, maybe you can decide to join a local CSA program too?

If you are looking for a CSA program in your area, visit – Local Havest.  It’s a great place to start looking online.

As a certified Lifestyle and Weight Management Consultant through the American Council on Exercise, I often get email newsletters from them with interesting articles.  Just this past week I got an article from them titled: “Holiday Treats + Alcohol = Extra Calories and the Gift of a Spare Tire“.

While I like to believe that I’m aware of most food and nutrition choices, in terms of caloric consumption – I think that I’ve let alcohol become a blind spot. So to establish a basic understanding of how alcohol consumption can contribute to packing on those holiday pounds, I want to take a quick look at the calorie content of some of the common holiday choices:

Wine:

According to WineIntro.com, a 3.5 ounce glass of wine contains approximately 80 calories.  It doesn’t matter if the wine is white wine or red wine because the calories come from the alcohol that the wine possesses, but due to this important fact, if you choose a wine that is higher in alcohol content – it will have a higher caloric value also.  If you are interested in finding the exact caloric cost of your favorite wine, here is an article with the steps to calculating those calories:

How to Determine Calorie Content of Wine @ EHow.com

The ACE article also points out that dessert wines are even higher in calories, stating that a 3.5 ounce glass of dessert wine is around 165 calories.

Beer:

The calorie content of beer is highly dependent upon the beer you chose.  We have all seen the highly advertised Michelob Ultra, which almost makes that beer look like a sports drink – it contains 95 calories.  But like wine, you’ll find that the beers that have the higher alcohol content also have the higher caloric content.  I found a great table at Beer100.com listing the different brewers, the beers they offer and the alcohol, caloric and carbohydrate content of each.  The most “caloric expensive beer” was Sierra Nevada Bigfoot at 330 calories.

I personally don’t have a problem staying away from the wine (a half glass gives me a headache for two days), but I like to have a beer or two with my triathlon, running and cycling friends at Pazzo’s every now and then.  So here are my four favorite choices from their list:

• George Killian’s Irish Red – 162 calories, about 1.35 miles of running (I burn about 120/mile)
• Leinenkugel Original – 152 calories, about 1.27 miles of running
• Miller Lite – 96 calories, about 0.8 miles of running
• New Belgium Fat Tire – 160 calories, about 1.33 miles of running (Fat Tire is impossible to find in this part of the world though)

I used to work at a brewing company in Lincoln, Nebraska – Empyrean Ales.  Actually, I worked for their Brew Pub next door to the brewing house called Lazlo’s.  I wonder what the caloric consumption was during all those taste testings?

Liquor and Cocktails:

So now I live in bourbon country and it’s not uncommon for bourbon to be a common beverage choice.  We even have the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and now the 200 mile Running Relay Race on the Bourbon Trail.  What are the caloric values of liquours?  Here are some things that I’ve found for you:

• Absolut Vodka – 98 calories
• Bacardi Gold Rum – 98 calories
• Jack Daniel’s Whiskey – 98 calories
• Seagram’s Gin – 120 calories
• Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila – 96 calories

As stated in the guide put out by the Consumer Federation of America.  I also went on over to the CalorieKing and found their page on Liquors, Coolers and Cocktails.  Here are a few I took from their site:

• Red Bull and Vodtka – 177 calories
• Mint Julep – 165 calories
• Cosmopolitan – 213 calories
• Vodka Tonic – 169 calories

And if you really want to be scared away from a few cocktails, go read this article on MSNBC – “Don’t let holiday cheer make you forget calorie content of cocktails” or view their slideshow of the “10 most fattening Cocktails“.

Thoughts on alcohol metabolism:

The concept of alcohol metabolism needs to be addressed – just a little.  One comment that I’ve heard is that the calories in alcohol don’t count because they can not be stored as body fat.  This is actually an acurate comment.  Alcohol must be oxidized and then the body must get rid of it.  The liver is the main player when managing the alcohol metabolism, but it is also possible to excrete a small amount through breath and urine.

But one thing that I think a person should consider when looking at possible weight gain and alcohol is this:  even if our body can not store alcohol calories as fat, what energy sources are we not using when our body tries to manage the alcohol intake — Fat Calories.

Two other thoughts to consider:

1.  What other activities often go along with cocktails and drinks?  We like to eat party foods, holiday treats and others fattening and surgary foods.  It is not hard to imagine that drinking too many calories at the holiday party leads to eating too many holiday cookies – is it?

2.  All calories are not created equal!  So far we’ve been discussing a pure math equation scenario, but even with alcohol contributing 7 calories per gram, they don’t provide great benefit to our diets.  They don’t give us vitamins or minerals.

[EDIT -- I know that I'm going to receive all kinds of emails stating the benefits of alcohol in the diet, when done in moderation.... I understand the heart health argument.  Here's an article to read if you want to go down that route:  Alcohol: Balancing Risks and Benefits (Harvard School of Public Health)]

Bottom Line:

I am not writing this article 2 weeks before Christmas and just before the major Holiday parties get started to guilt you into swearing off all holiday beverages.  I am writing this so that you can think about the information and realize that two or three cocktails at every party may leave you with a bigger New Year’s Resolution than you currently have.

Be smart with your choices and you’ll be a happier and healthier you on January 2nd, 2009.  And please be safe when you do choose to drink.

End Note:  If you would like to view some of the articles I tagged while researching go to my delicious page:  delicious.com/ditschfitness/alcohol

The subject of when to eat and how often to eat is a common question that we get as trainers and coaches. There is a lot of discussion in the media about this topic that often leads us to believe that there is a magical formula to meal timing as it contributes to weight loss or weight management. So what are the facts?

Bottomline: There is no way to lose weight if you don’t create a calorie deficit. The timing of those meals may be helpful, especially if you look at behaviors and food cravings.

A common theme that I see in many people’s behavior patterns is that they eat very little in the morning before they head off to work, they grab a smaller quick lunch (if time allows) and then they find themselves needlessly tired and hungry by early afternoon. This hunger craving might be alleviated by a trip to the vending machine for a quick “satisfying” treat (like snickers, right?), followed up that evening by a large dinner at a restaurant or home.

I have been through these cycles and patterns too. The two sabotaging behaviors in this scenario are:

1. Eating too little during the first half of the day.

2. Which leads us to choose poor foods during the afternoon and overeat at night.

A commonly heard meal timing theory is that you can’t eat after 9pm (or any other time you may have heard). The issue isn’t so much that you eat after a specific time of day, it is likely due to the fact that you are overeating to make up for what you feel you didn’t eat earlier that day.

Another issue with late night eating is related to the behaviors that are associated with those hours of eating. Eating at late hours can often be done while sitting around trying to relax from a hard day of work, family (and hopefully exercise). Again, this situation is the perfect setting to mindlessly eat foods that are not as healthy and to mindlessly consume too much of them.

In the most recent Issue of Fitness Matters, put out by the American Council on Exercise (ACE), they tackle the meal timing discussion. Their suggestions:

1. Let hunger be your guide (but don’t eat mindlessly)
2. Eat a healthy breakfast – with whole grains and fruit
3. Create a calorie deficit – through consuming fewer calories than expending (add exercise)

So should we be concerned about when we eat during the day, while trying to lose weight?

My answer would be yes and no.

Yes – Because it appears to be beneficial to consume high quality foods earlier in the day so that we don’t overconsume later in the afternoon and evening.

No – It is ok to eat foods later in the day, as long as that food is part of a normal meal plan and not the result of mindless consumption or binging episodes to manage emotions or boredom.

My Challenge to you:

1. Over the next 5 days commit to eating a breakfast with at least 1 piece of fruit.

2. During those 5 days keep a food log. Watch your own patterns and see if you find yourself eating food without even thinking about what you are eating.

Resources for more information:

Books:
1. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think – a great book that discusses the topic of why we overeat

2. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto – my favorite book on nutrition lately. It just breaks down the subject into something as simple as “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.” Simple, yet complex in execution.

Web Links:
1. Thoughtful Decision vs. Decisions Made Without Thought – a post I wrote in January of 2006 discussing my own struggles with becoming “aware” of what I feed myself and why.

2. Fit Day.com – a free website to help you journal your food intake.

3. Meal Timing – Zone Diet Webiste – interestingly, they suggest an 11:00pm pre-bed snack

4. Tri Fuel – Meal Timing, Composition, and Amount – article by Ellen Colemen, RD, MA, MPH, I’ve always enjoyed her stuff on nutrition for runners and triathletes

5. Men’s Health – Meal Timing Examples – just a sample of three scenario’s, not for everyone but gives an idea