Stepping Up The Nutrition Game

Recently I followed an online course at Shaw Academy called ‘Sports and Exercise Nutrition – What Fuels Energy Systems’.
I had the luck that I found out about it through an online action, so I paid €5 instead of €395.
If you would happen to stumble upon it through Groupon or whatever, I’d say go for it, because I learned a lot from it in function of my long distance running.
There’s a lot of trivial info, but seeing it all aligned and being able to adapt it for yourself helps a lot.
Just to show what I’ve learned I’ll show you the calculation I did for myself and some conclusions I’ve made because of it.

Some sideinfo:

  • I weigh ~72kg
  • 1g CHO (carbohydrates) = 4 calories
  • 1g PRO(teïnes) = 4 calories
  • 1g fat = 9 calories

First step: finding my CHO intake

I’ve put myself in the ‘Competitive – moderate’ because I do 3-5 training sessions between 1 & 3h.
This means 6-8g carbs/kg

Second was my PRO intake

A bit harder to find
I chose ‘Moderate intensity endurance athletes’ with a range of 1.2-1.5g/kg so I had some room to manoeuver…
The course went into length about the PRO intake and said you can safely up it to 1.8g/kg without side-effects, …
They give a fuller feeling when eaten, so I figured, if I eat too much of one of the macronutrients, it might as well be my protein.

Total Calorie intake = RMR (Resting Metabolic rate) * PAL (Physical Activity Level)

I’m 28 & male ==> (15.3*72)+679


Chose Moderate ==> 1.7-1.9

I averaged everything out, soooo …

RMR * PAL = ((15.3*72)+679)*1.8 = 1780.6*1.8=3205.08 calories/day (before I ate about 2500)

CHO average = 7*72 = 504g ==> 2016 calories
PRO av g= 1.35*72 = 97.2g ==> 388.8 calories
CHO+PRO = 2016+388.8 = 2404.8 ==> 800.28 remaining ==> 88.92g vet

At running days I try to go higher on the low-fat/high-carb ratio than on non-running days.

This is all very theoretic of course, but I’m roughly a month into this new calorie regime and have noticed that:

  • I run better
  • I’ve lost a bit of tummy fat (my hardest region)
  • crave less junk food (I eat/ate too much crisps in front of the TV)
  • I get to eat more, because it’s “better” food and do not need to starve myself.

If you happen to have questions about this, feel free to hit me up in the comments.