I can start this post by acknowledging that food and weight are a fairly taboo subject amongst women in sport. Not necessarily in a secretive way, just in a being slightly uncomfortable talking about it way. I can also say that I understand a lot of the reasons behind this; its easy to get obsessed with what you eat - REALLY easy. It never even seems like a problem, until you realise you're actually judging yourself every mealtime on something as small as red meat versus fish. So when athletes go to a coach and demand information, very often with that little warning glint in the eye that signals emotional nuclear meltdown, its no wonder the information becomes confusing. It becomes about damage control, rather than nutritional advantage. How often as an athlete do you get sat down to talk about how much good stuff you need to put in your body, that it's a beautiful thing that needs to be fed and looked after? Maybe once a year? For slalom anyway.
I've learnt quite a lot this winter about food. To be honest, I thought I already knew a fair amount, because I enjoy cooking and like to eat healthily. I've had some bad habits, like not eating after sessions to try and lose weight. Not fuelling my body properly at lunchtime, so that by the time dinner comes I'm starving and just eat everything in sight. It's quite hard to write about those habits, because to be honest, on paper they look stupid and contradictory. But once you're in the cycle, it's really hard to get out of it.
I've learnt quite a lot this winter about food. To be honest, I thought I already knew a fair amount, because I enjoy cooking and like to eat healthily. I've had some bad habits, like not eating after sessions to try and lose weight. Not fuelling my body properly at lunchtime, so that by the time dinner comes I'm starving and just eat everything in sight. It's quite hard to write about those habits, because to be honest, on paper they look stupid and contradictory. But once you're in the cycle, it's really hard to get out of it.
Slalom is all about pulling ourselves along with our upper body, controlling dynamic movement through our core muscles, and generally being powerful enough to position ourselves flexibly in whitewater. So having a decent strength to weight ratio is arguably a priority in our sport. That's quite hard to achieve already, without placing yourself at a nutritional disadvantage before you even get to the gym. The other thing is illness. We are outside ALL the time. In Scotland, this becomes kind of like a race between your warm up and the cold, and the end of your session to get to the changing rooms. Mistakes like not bringing that extra thermal, or forgetting to put a hat on your wet hair in the cold air, can cost you weeks of being ill, or not at peak fitness. When your body has to work even harder to stay warm, because you're not giving it the nutrients that it needs, its fighting a losing battle.
So the point I'm getting to, is what I learned in the last couple of weeks - the value of timing your meals and what they comprise of. On hearing that I should be eating around 2-2.5 grams of protein for every KG of body weight to supplement my heavy training, I was horrified to estimate that I probably ate less than 60 grams a day. No wonder my body wants to kill me by the end of the week. Getting up to near 120 grams a day isn't easy, but it seems far more manageable by breaking it down into six batches of twenty grams. Theres less protein than I thought in eggs, and much more than I thought in chicken. I panicked initially at the increase in food, because I feel full basically all the time. But then I found that carefully placing carbohydrates in relation to my sessions means that I get that extra bit of energy when I really need it, and not when its just going to be sitting around!
Having spent the last two weeks increasing my protein consumption, and refuelling my body more efficiently, I was surprised to notice that I'm leaner, but with the most energy I've had in months. Hindsight is an infuriating thing, because you wonder why you ever did something in the first place. But that's why it's so effective. Because our bodies adapt to the environment that we create for them, and with the proper information, why wouldn't you fuel it properly? It's hard sometime to not be caught up in the societal judgement of what makes a perfect body, but what I'm truly interested in is being a perfect athlete.
So the point I'm getting to, is what I learned in the last couple of weeks - the value of timing your meals and what they comprise of. On hearing that I should be eating around 2-2.5 grams of protein for every KG of body weight to supplement my heavy training, I was horrified to estimate that I probably ate less than 60 grams a day. No wonder my body wants to kill me by the end of the week. Getting up to near 120 grams a day isn't easy, but it seems far more manageable by breaking it down into six batches of twenty grams. Theres less protein than I thought in eggs, and much more than I thought in chicken. I panicked initially at the increase in food, because I feel full basically all the time. But then I found that carefully placing carbohydrates in relation to my sessions means that I get that extra bit of energy when I really need it, and not when its just going to be sitting around!
Having spent the last two weeks increasing my protein consumption, and refuelling my body more efficiently, I was surprised to notice that I'm leaner, but with the most energy I've had in months. Hindsight is an infuriating thing, because you wonder why you ever did something in the first place. But that's why it's so effective. Because our bodies adapt to the environment that we create for them, and with the proper information, why wouldn't you fuel it properly? It's hard sometime to not be caught up in the societal judgement of what makes a perfect body, but what I'm truly interested in is being a perfect athlete.
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