Eat Like an Athlete
Asheville Marathon Prep (Ep 7)
Hey everyone and welcome to another running article!
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Today’s topic is one that I didn’t think I’d end up writing about.
It is a topic that I believe has the most nuance, the most arguments, and the most division. A topic that is difficult to figure out what is true and causes so much anxiety and other mental problems. And yet it’s something we all use every single day.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, that topic is: food.
Food has caused such division in our modern culture. The word “diet” has such a heavy connotation to it. Diet used to mean its proper definition: “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.” Now it means some short term way of eating to achieve some short term goal.
We have so many camps of food people nowadays. And they all believe they are 100% correct and all the other camps are 100% wrong. And not just wrong, but that they are also poisoning themselves and will die.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the keto diet, carnivore, paleo, vegan, blah blah blah.
Yes, some people in these camps don’t act with division, in fact the majority probably don’t. But the ones in those camps with the loudest voices most certainly do.
The problem is they can’t all be right, so how do we discover the truth?
To be honest, I don’t know. And that’s mainly why I didn’t want to write about food. But here we are.
But today is not about you. Today is about me :) I get to be selfish today. Because I may not have all the answers, but I do think I have one answer. I think one of the reasons there are so many camps shouting they are right and everyone else is wrong is that everyone is different.
So maybe all the camps can be right. We all process different foods in different ways. Some people obviously can’t handle gluten or dairy as well as others. Some people die if they eat a peanut. Those are the extreme cases, but I think it’s all a spectrum. Certain foods aid your performance better than others.
And so today is not about what specific foods you should or should not eat. I will talk about what types of foods you should eat if you are training for a marathon. And I will dive into the specifics of what I eat in a day. But I can’t guarantee if you copy my exact meal plan that you will have the same results.
Furthermore, I’m still learning. There is so much food at our disposal. More than any other time in human history combined. And so much variety of food year round. So it takes a lot of experimenting to figure out what really works.
And what worked one month might not work as well 8 months later.
But enough gibberish, let’s just jump in!
What “Types” of Food to Eat for a Marathon
Alright, so now that we are focused in on marathon specific eating, I can give some actual pointers.
The first thing to note is that when we talk about the types of food to eat, we will talk about it in terms of “macro” nutrients. These are carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
So if you grab a food item at the store, those are the 3 big ones to look at on the nutrition label. This is an extreme oversimplification, but from what I’ve learned here are the primary benefits of each one in the context of running a faster marathon:
Carbohydrates: primary fuel source
Fats: secondary fuel source
Protein: recovery source
Fuel Sources?
What do I mean my primary and secondary fuel source? Well, our bodies can use carbs and fats as fuel.
However, we are normally way more efficient at using carbohydrates as fuel. To use fats as a fuel source, we need to convert the stored fat into ketones through a process called ketosis.
This is where the term “keto” diet comes from.
The whole goal of that diet is to use fats as the primary fuel source. Our bodies are amazing at adaptations and when you force your body to live off of fats, you do eventually get way more efficient at using them.
However, for the majority of marathoners, carbs are the more efficient fuel.
But why do we even need to use or care about fats then?
Well, simply put, we can store an insane amount of fat, but our storage capacity for carbohydrates is limited. When we consume carbs, our bodies store what is called glycogen. We can store glycogen directly in our muscles and also in our liver.
Most people can store around 2,000 calories worth of glycogen at one time. And for most people’s lifestyles, that is plenty.
However, in the context of a marathon, that might not cut it. Especially because not everyone’s body will have enough storage capacity for a full 2,000 calories or be efficient enough to fully fill the tanks.
That is where fat comes in. If we take a person that is 140lbs and say 6% body fat, that means they are storing around 30,000 calories worth of fat! And that person I described is extremely lean. That is magnitudes of more energy than we can store in the form of glycogen.
When you run a marathon or do any kind of activity, our bodies are super efficient at knowing what fuels to use, and they use both at the same time.
It actually makes a graph of sorts. The more intense the activity the more carbs you need for fuel. The less intense, the more fats that are used. That’s why if fat loss is your main goal, lower impact walking might actually help you achieve your goals faster than going on intense runs.
But if running a faster marathon is your goal, you need to prioritize eating tons of carbohydrates.
Wait…So how many carbs are we talking?
The reality is you need to eat a lot of carbs. Like more than you might think.
For the traditional American diet filled with junk food, bread, and soda, this number of carbs will actually be really easy.
The problem is, if you want to provide your body with good longterm performance fuel, processed sugars don’t really do so well. In the short term, if a snicker’s bar doesn’t give you a stomach ache, then by all means, that candy bar will give you some quick energy.
But in terms of loading carbs for big training runs or especially for race day, candy and processed sugars won’t cut it.
That means you need to consume good solid carbs like pastas, rice, corn, potatoes, fruit, honey, and whatever else works well with you.
How many carbs should you get?
There are a lot of different answers out there, but they all fall into a general range.
One breakdown I like from Advanced Marathoning is this:
If you train 1 to 1.5 hours a day: 2.3 to 3.2 g of carbohydrate per pound of body weight
If you train 1.5 to 2 hours a day: 3.2 to 3.9g of carbohydrate per pound of body weight
If you train 2 hours or more a day: more than 3.6g at least per pound of body weight
For me, I’ve been targeting around 3.1g per pound of body weight because that gets me to a goal of around 500g of carbs a day. For those doing quick math out there and happen to know that 1g of carbs equals 4 calories, you know that means I need 2,000 calories worth of carbs a day alone. That doesn’t include protein and fats.
My total caloric intake on a daily basis is around 3,000-3,500 calories.
Do I hit these calorie goals every day?
Nope.
I’m not perfect at this; it’s a lot of food to eat. Again, you can rack this up real quick if we are talking cheesecake. But if we are talking burgers, potatoes, masa flour, fruit, and honey? It’s pretty difficult.
That doesn’t even include race day.
We’ve all heard the term “carb loading” before. Typically, this is a 2-3 day process where training is low during our race taper, but we eat even more carbs than our normal training.
For my carb loading phase during the marathon, my goal will be around 700g of carbs. During the tune up race, I got 600g of carbs the day before, and even that was a struggle.
I have more practice and fine tuning to do to figure out what works well with my body.
But the goal is to learn how to best fuel my body so my glycogen stores are fully maxed out. So, the next question is…what specific fuels am I putting in my body?
Animal Based Diet
Now that we are getting into the nitty gritty, I just want to say again, this is a specific diet that seems to work for me.
That doesn’t mean it will work for you. Just like a gazelle wouldn’t do well on a lion’s diet or vice versa. Everyone is built differently.
For me, I found this animal based diet from another YouTuber named Paul Saladino.
He is a former medical doctor that left the practice to create content about healthy eating lifestyles. He felt like the medical world not only ignored nutrition, but almost frowned upon it as if it carried 0 weight on our overall health. He felt like the research was overwhelmingly the opposite and that the medical world only felt like this because of monetary gain in pharmaceuticals.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, he really does have interesting ideas on nutrition.
What I love about Paul’s content is that he says “if you are thriving, don’t change anything.” But he likes to push against societal norms. Culture and society tell us that vegetables are good for you no matter what and that red meat and butter will give you a heart attack or stroke no matter what.
He shows research proving just the opposite for some people. A lot of vegetables have defense chemicals that can trigger poor responses in some people. Red meat and butter actually contain tons of nutrients that are good for humans and it turns out that the studies linking red meat and heart disease or stroke are not very accurate.
All that to say, the main goal of anyone’s diet is to determine what foods work well with their body. What gives you energy, what digests well and doesn’t give you stomach aches or other digestion issues, do certain foods cause your skin to break out, etc. These are the metrics when Paul talks about “thriving.”
He has tried vegan diets, full carnivore, and now this diet. He used to have really bad eczema and maybe even asthma. Both of those are now gone because of the diet he changed to.
I’m not trying to sell you on this diet, but I do think it’s pretty fascinating and has definitely made me rethink things and try to find the exact diet where I “thrive.”
So what is the base animal based diet?
Essentially: meat, fruit, honey, and raw dairy.
That’s it.
Basically all the delicious foods.
No vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, etc. Before you knock it, you do need to realize that a lot of “vegetables” are actually “fruits.” So tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, etc are all fruits. If they have seeds inside…it’s a fruit.
Eating this was actually does feel really good, and I think I am really close to “thriving.”
However, there are still two difficult pieces for me. The first is I don’t think dairy mixes well with my skin. I tend to break out more with more dairy consumption. Raw dairy tends to do better, but it is not very available to me.
Raw Dairy vs Pasteurized Dairy
I won’t spend much time here because I’m not an expert. But essentially, lactose is the protein that if you have dairy issues, you have a hard time digesting. Thus…lactose intolerance. Raw milk contains nutrients that helps our bodies create lactase, which breaks lactose down. Pastuerized milk does not contain that as it’s killed.
Thus, the theory is, if you have dairy issues, you may not experience those if you consume raw dairy.
Difficulty Getting Enough Carbs
The second issue I have is that as a marathon runner, getting the carbs we just talked about from fruit and honey alone is pretty difficult.
As such, there are two specific carb sources I added back in that I believe my body does well with. That is masa flour (corn flour) and potatoes.
My diet is still not perfect, I still have skin breakouts and digestive issues every now and then. I also am not perfect at sticking to my diet, so it’s always hard to tell what causes what.
But it’s all part of a journey.
In Conclusion
Food is an amazing gift from God. It tastes amazing and I’ll tell you that on this new diet, the “land flowing with milk and honey” has a new meaning to me and it sounds amazing!
But in all seriousness, food is an amazing gift. It tastes great and fuels us for the goals we have.
Whether your goal is a big physical ordeal, a mental challenge at work, or healthy longevity. Whatever it is, food is a central theme throughout your life and figuring out the right fuel for your goals I believe is the biggest life hack there is.
Make sure to checkout the YouTube channel as the episode on this topic premiers tomorrow!
And until next time, run with joy!