Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

I hope you enjoy my latest article from the free Iron Girl Newsletter. Nothing makes me happier than writing and sharing my thoughts with my readers. Enjoy! Race Day Nutrition By Marni Sumbal Nutrition can either make or break your race. Fortunately, nutritional fueling is one of the few things in a race day plan that is in your control. As for what's out of your control? You cannot control the terrain of the course, the weather, the number of registered athletes, what time the race will start and the port-o-john lines. In addition to training, there are three important variables that can help you feel confident on race day. 1) You can control your racing plan. For example, how fast or slow you will race in order to preserve muscle glycogen. Based on the duration of the event, your goal is to race as efficiently as possible in order to conserve energy while controlling heart rate. Within your racing plan, you can also control what you wear. Dependent on the weather, it is import...

There has been a lot of talk lately regarding leucine as a supplement. It seems like every journal I read has an article on the benefit of leucine in the diet. Leucine is one of the three Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAA's) - isoleucine and valine are the other two. There are 9 essential amino acids (can not be made in the body) and 11 non essential amino acids (made in the body). The beauty about the three BCAA's (essential AA's) is that they can be metabolized in the muscle, rather than in the liver (where most dietary protein is metabolized such as deamination and transamination of amino acids). Once protein is broken down into individual amino acids, the aminos are either used to build new proteins or to be burned as fuel for energy. After exercise (ex. recovery), it's most important that you properly refuel with protein and carbs, so that carbs and fats (primarily fats) can be used for resting energy expenditure, and BCAA's can be used for tissue repair. BCAA...

Hi there...I'm still alive and doing well. I'm about to finish my 1st of 4 weeks of staff relief and things are going better than expected. As I sit here writing this blog, I feel my heavy eyes attempting to close. My days are slammed-packed and I have a lot of responsibilities from 8am until 5 or 6pm. I start my day looking at my unit and I print out my task list to see what patients I need to see for the day. I see patients based on Length of Stay (5 days in the hospital), database referrals (for wounds, eating problems >1 week, wt loss), RD nutrition consults (ex. failure to thrive, decubitis/ulcers, diet education, etc.) and clear liquid diets >5 days. I then make my list of patients to see which is typically around 8-10 patients. Because I am covering a unit for another dietitian, she would typically see my unit, in addition to two other units, so my 8-10 person task list (which takes 8-10 hours) is nothing compared to 15 or 20+ patients that the other dietitians see...

I think we all have something in common. We love to exercise. If you don't love to exercise, perhaps you are working your way to a consistent and enjoyable fitness routine, valuable for your heart and health. It's understandable if you are slowly making changes with your diet, to include more heart-healthy and wholesome foods. Take it from me, it took me about 8 years of being an unhealthy vegetarian, followed by 4-5 more years of not understanding my needs as an endurance vegetarian athlete, to finally (5 years later) understand my individual needs and how I can properly fuel for workouts. Yep, that's right, I've been a vegetarian for almost 18 years now!! I remember around the age of 14, being in World's Gym with my swim team, lifting weights and doing plyometrics/dry land. After 30-40 min of strength, we would run over to the YMCA (Lexington, KY where I grew up) and swim for 2 hours. We did this two days a week and swam a total of 9 times a week. When I was in co...

We all know that the "taco" part of a taco salad is not-so friendly for the heart (or waist). Sure, once or twice a year is no big deal but choosing a taco-salad as a "healthy choice" is not likely to help when meeting your weight/performance goals if on-occasion becomes every now and then. The average taco-salad (with the fried shell) contains around 950-1000 kcal, around 50-60g fat and close to 2000 mg sodium. The other night I was going for a veggie-filled wrap until my tortilla began to toast more than I wanted. I typically toast my tortilla on a low heat pan (after I cook my veggies) with a little non stick spray for a minute or two (total, both sides included) but when I started to see the bubbles in my "La Tortilla Factory 100 kcal tortilla (http://www.latortillafactory.com/products-5.aspx) I realized that there was no way I would be able to fold my wrap. I ended up putting my tortilla in a shallow bowl and I noticed that I was able to bend the edges (...

It's finally here! It's all a bit surreal right now because I am 4-weeks away from no longer being a dietetic intern. As I cleaned up my binder this week and sat with my preceptor to sign-off on my many assignments and projects, I could not believe how far I have come in the past 14 weeks. It was only 14 weeks ago that I was starting my clinical rotation for Long Term Care and overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge that was necessary to be a clinical dietitian. It was a quick 5 weeks because before I knew it, I was stepping foot in St. Vincent's Hospital, surrounded by physicians, nurses, pharmacists, family health, MD's, specialty doctors and of course, acute care dietitians. After 14 weeks of interning, today will be my last day for my clinical rotation and I will be spending 4 weeks "playing RD" with my own task list, covering different units/floors all by myself. The RD assigned to the unit(s) will sign-off on my notes but it will be up to me to assess pat...

I can't believe I am entering my last (14th) week of clinical interning and my 32nd week of interning. After this week I will be starting "staff relief" and on April 22th, I will be finished with my internship. Between now and then comes two finals, 4 more quizzes and turning in my binder (on Thurs) and hopefully I will successfully complete my internship program in order to receive my papers that say I am eligible for the RD exam. I had a little time this weekend so enjoy some non-interning reading so I choose the April 2011 issue of Consumer Reports on Health. There were three great articles and I thought I'd share them with you since they are very relevant to my fitness-oriented blog readers. Enjoy! (p.s. bear with me this week....I'm hoping to stay balanced but I have 4 more days in the ICU, a meeting with my preceptor to approve/sign-off on my assignments in my binder and another quiz to study for this weekend...oh and healthy cooking + training to keep me ha...