2455: Taking Your Diet to the Next Level by Nancy Clark on Balanced Athlete Nutrition, Meal Planning & Sustainable Eating

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[00:01:08] Taking Your Diet to the Next Level by Nancy Clark of NancyClarkeRD.com. And I'm your host and personal narrator, Dr. Neal. Welcome back to Optimal Health Daily or welcome for the first time if you're new here.

[00:01:22] This is the podcast where I read to you from some of the most popular health and fitness blogs online. And with that, let's get right to today's post as we optimize your life. Taking Your Diet to the Next Level by Nancy Clark of NancyClarkeRD.com.

[00:01:43] Some athletes are still on the seafood diet. They see food and they eat it. Others are a bit more mindful about how they nourish their bodies. They put thought into selecting high quality foods that invest in good health, quick healing and top performance.

[00:02:00] They commonly report they have taken their diets to the next level. For some disciplined and dedicated athletes, the next level is a perfect diet with no sugar, no processed foods, no desserts, and no quote unquote fun foods.

[00:02:15] While aspiring to eat quality foods is certainly a step in the right direction, eating too healthfully can sometimes create problems if the food policy becomes a bit too zealous. Is birthday cake really a bad for you food? I don't think so.

[00:02:31] Is gorging on vegetables really best for your body? Not if your hands acquire an orange tinge from having eaten too many carrots or if you experience recurrent diarrhea due to an excessively high fiber diet. Perhaps a better goal than a perfect diet is an excellent diet.

[00:02:48] An excellent diet might be more balanced, enjoyable and sustainable. Even birthday cake with refined sugar and saturated fat can fit into an excellent diet. That is the dietary guidelines allow for the inclusion of small amounts of so-called imperfect foods in your food plan.

[00:03:06] In fact, the dietary guidelines say 10% of our daily calories can come from refined sugar. That's about 250 to 350 calories coming from sugar for most athletes. That would be about 60 to 90 grams of sugar each day. Now this sugar fuels your muscles.

[00:03:24] And by the way, sports drinks and gels count as refined sugar. The dietary guidelines also state that 10% of our daily calories can come from saturated fat. And again, this is the fat that tends to clog arteries and is associated with heart disease.

[00:03:41] For an athlete who requires about 2500 to 3500 calories a day, consuming 250 to 350 calories of saturated fat per day if desired can fit within this saturated fat budget. By the way, that would be about 30 to 40 grams of saturated fat per day.

[00:04:00] This means from time to time you can enjoy without guilt some quote unquote bad foods such as bacon and chips. One slice of bacon has about one gram of saturated fat, a small bag of potato chips, about three grams.

[00:04:14] Certainly there are healthier foods to eat than bacon and chips. But you want to look at your whole day's food intake, not just a single item, to determine the overall quality of your sports diet.

[00:04:26] If 85 to 95% of your food choices are high quality, a little bacon or a few chips will not ruin your health forever. Some athletes deal with unhealthy foods by setting aside one day a week to be their cheat day. Think Fatterday or Football Sunday.

[00:04:45] This well-intentioned plan can easily backfire. Most people don't overeat or splurge until they have first been denied or deprived of a favorite food. Hence, when the perfect diet starts on Monday, people can do a heck of a lot

[00:04:59] of last chance eating the days before starting their restrictive food plan. Other than a Sunday splurge, let's say on bacon, you might want to enjoy just a few slices of bacon throughout the week. This can curb cravings and dissipate the urge to splurge on Sundays.

[00:05:15] This can be a diet portion of any food. Going to the Next Level For athletes who want to take their diets to the next level with a sustainable plan, I offer these suggestions. 1. Evenly distribute your calories throughout the day

[00:05:32] Most active individuals that identify as female need about 2400 to 2800 calories a day. Those that identify as male may need 2800 to 3600 calories a day. This number varies according to how much you weigh, how fidgety you are and how much you exercise.

[00:05:48] That's why meeting with a professional sports dietitian can help you determine a reliable estimate. To find a local sports dietitian, use the referral network at www.scandpg.org. 2. Most bad food decisions happen at night after your body has been under-fueled during the day.

[00:06:11] If you are starving before dinner, add a second lunch to curb your evening overeating. You will easily save yourself from a lot of junk food at night, trust me. 3. If your body requires 2400 to 2800 calories per day, this divides into 4 food buckets with about 600 to 700 calories every 4 hours.

[00:06:34] For example, 7am breakfast, 11am early lunch, 3pm later lunch and 7pm dinner. Adjust the times of course to suit your schedule and divide the calories into smaller snacks within that 4 hour window if that suits you. 4. Your breakfast food bucket should be the same size as your dinner bucket.

[00:06:58] This likely means you will be eating a smaller dinner and a bigger breakfast. If you train in the morning, you may want to eat part of your breakfast calories before you exercise and the rest afterwards. And 5. Include in each food bucket at least 3 of these 4 types of foods.

[00:07:15] Protein based foods, about 150 to 250 calories per bucket to help fuel your muscles. Easy whole grains would be whole wheat bread, oatmeal and baked corn chips. Next, protein based foods, about 250 calories per bucket to help build and repair your muscles.

[00:07:34] Easy, ready made options include rotisserie chicken, deli turkey, hummus, tuna pouches, tofu, hard boiled eggs and nuts. Next fruits and veggies, about 100 to 200 calories per bucket for those much needed vitamins and minerals. Choose a variety of colorful fruits like strawberries, cherries, oranges, peaches, bananas and blueberries.

[00:08:01] Also choose colorful veggies like dark green broccoli, peppers, spinach, orange carrots, sweet potato, red tomatoes and so on. Include dairy and calcium rich foods, about 100 calories per bucket for maintaining low blood pressure and of course bone health.

[00:08:19] Examples would be of course low fat milk or low fat soy milk, yogurt or Greek yogurt and cheese. Just please don't choose rice milk or almond milk. They are equivalent to juice with very little protein or nutritional merit.

[00:08:34] By filling up on quality foods at breakfast, lunch number 1 and lunch number 2 you will crave less junk food at night and may not even miss it. Your diet will easily rise to the next level no sweat.

[00:08:51] You just listened to the post titled Taking Your Diet To The Next Level by Nancy Clark of NancyClarkeRD.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. Dr. Neal here for my commentary. Did you notice Nancy's tone throughout today's article?

[00:09:07] Nancy kept using the terms allow, can have and enjoy. When we tend to talk about eating nutritious foods, we often say stay away from or don't or reduce. In fact studies are finding that when we think about eating more nutritious foods instead

[00:09:28] of focusing on removing foods that we like from our diets it actually works better. So again it's better to think about adding nutritious foods instead of reducing foods we don't want to consume. Why is that? Well think about it for a second.

[00:09:45] When we try and limit our choices, when we are limited in any way we often want to rebel as humans. We don't like these restrictions so if we change our perspective and think about adding foods and how many more options there are especially nutritious ones we

[00:10:02] may not feel like we're depriving ourselves. Now adding foods of course may not seem like a great goal if we're trying to manage our body weight but studies are finding that if we can make these nutritious foods a priority

[00:10:15] meaning we consume them first during meals we'll probably feel more satisfied and end up eating less of those less nutritious foods and all without banishing any foods. And again that's something that today's author Nancy also mentioned.

[00:10:32] So let's think about adding nutritious foods instead of removing foods from our diets. Alright that'll do it for another edition of Optimal Health Daily I hope you're having a wonderful weekend thank you so much for listening and I'll be back here tomorrow

[00:10:47] as usual where your optimal life awaits.