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Showing posts from March 20, 2022

Uncomfortable body day - when you feel fat

When it comes to self-image (the mental image that you have for yourself), it can fluctuate a lot from day to day, or even minute to minute. If you are having an awesome day or you crushed a hard workout, your perception of your body may be really good. You don't worry about what you eat and you carry on with your day with positivity and confidence. But if you are stressed and anxious, you made a mistake, had a bad workout/race or someone said something to you that made you feel less worthy, your self-image may become negative - which makes you feel fat. Additionally, during moments of high stress and anxiety, a preoccupation with your body is not uncommon. When things/life feel out of control, you may direct your focus to food and exercise as a coping mechanism. The next time you experience a "I feel fat" thought, give yourself space to get to the root of what triggered this misinterpreted feeling. As a reminder, diet culture has taught you how to use food to gain a feel...

Sport Nutrition 101 - making a case for sport drinks

If you are a long distance athlete, you've likely experiences several pronounced and uncomfortable symptoms related to unsuccessful fueling/hydration methods. Headache, dehydration, swelling, bloating, sleepiness, lethargy, lack of appetite, nausea, chills, fatigue, deep muscle aches, moodiness and dizziness are not just performance limiting but they are also extremely risky for your overall health.  Proper fueling during intense or long duration exercise can help you sustain a desirable effort to maximize training adaptations.  Proper fueling/hydration also minimizes the stress load to help keep your body in better health. Proper fueling/hydration in training also helps you practice fueling strategies for competition as you can train the gut to tolerate nutrition while exercise at various intensities. Contrary to the opinion of other nutrition experts, I'm a huge proponent of prioritizing sport drinks during training. I've also had great success prioritizing liquid calorie...

Unconventional long distance triathlon training

  I'm a big fan of repeatable workouts. I feel there is great value of doing a workout several times over the course of several weeks as you know what to expect and you can focus on executing better each time (especially under fatigue). I also believe that certain workouts are worth repeating year after year. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.  When training for a three-sport, ultra endurance event like an Ironman distance triathlon, I feel that the best training approach is to find the least amount of training needed to produce the biggest training gains. However, among the endurance triathlon community, I find that far too many athletes are doing the same workouts over and over, hoping for different results. Every weekend is a long ride (5-6 hours) followed by a run (20-40 minutes) and the next day is a long run of around 2 hours (and maybe a swim or bike before or after). The training is somewhat predictable for the majority of long distance triathletes and this often r...