Heathpack 

I have considered starting a Nutrition thread for awhile, my main hesitation has been that I'm somewhat food and drink obsessed and honestly the last thing any of you need is me prattling on about my favorite subject. However, we need a venue I guess for me to post some of the recipes/formulae that I mentioned recently in the training thread, so here we go... I'll try to restrain myself from too much food porn.

Racer Ex 

Simplified sport drink:

Water
Honey
Dash of lemon juice
Electrolyte tabs

Ratios can be calc'd out according to anticipated environment and exertion.

Got me through two Gila's and a lot of stage races.

Heathpack 

I'm no expert and my understanding is that the jury is out as to the necessity of a recovery drink after a workout. I guess my feeling is as long as I can manage the calories, what's the harm. So I have one after any workout, on or off the bike.


I'm happy to chat about the concept behind recovery drinks or to explain my choices of protein and carbs. I'm just not sure how much interest people have in the nitty gritty details vs just wanting some recipes. My goal for my drinks is 0.8 gm/kg bodyweight carbs and 0.4 gm/kg protein. This works out to around 300 cal/drink, with 50-60 gm carbs and 22-24 gm protein. People of different size can scale up or down as needed.


My Recovery Drink Base consists of 12 oz skim milk and 3T whey protein isolate. To that, I just add different ingredients to make the various drinks. Whirl up the ingredients in a blender and then have at it. For hot drinks, whirl in the blender before heating, otherwise the whey clumps and is gross.


Some of the ingredients are homemade things (like raspberry freezer jam) or unusual ingredients (like date paste, easy to find in LA because of the large Persian population) or local farmers market things that you could probably find locally too (apple syrup).


Enjoy! My favorites are the Coffee Caramel and Date Shakes, Cherry Vanilla and the Peppermint Hot Chocolate


I have the nutritional analysis for each of these recipes too. Its just a lot of work to cut and paste it all and I'm not sure if there's real interest. I can add that if people want it.



Banana Cream Pie
Recovery Base plus
Banana, 1 large frozen, chopped + Torani French Vanilla syrup, 1 oz


Blackberry Vanilla
Recovery Base plus
Blackberries, 1/2 cup frozen + Torani French Vanilla syrup, 1.5 oz


Raspberry
Recovery Base plus
Raspberry freezer jam, 1/4 cup


Raspberry Chocolate
Recovery Base plus
Raspberry freezer jam, 2T + Hershey syrup, 1T


Pear
Recovery Base plus
Pear, 1/2 large chopped + Honey 4 tsp + dash cinnamon


Pear Date
Recovery Base plus
Pear, 1/2 large chopped + Date paste 3T + dash cinnamon


Apple Cinnamon
Recovery Base plus
Applesauce (homemade or low sugar) 6 oz + Apple syrup 1.5T + dash cinnamon


Date Shake
Recovery Base plus
Date Paste 4T + Dreyer's light french vanilla ice cream 1/4 cup


Strawberry Cream
Recovery Base plus
Strawberries, frozen 8 medium + Dreyer's light french vanilla ice cream 1/8 cup, + Torani French vanilla syrup 1.5 oz


Chocolate
Recovery Base plus
Hershey's syrup, 2T


Coffee Caramel Shake
Recovery Base plus
Coffee ice cream 1/4 cup + Torani Salted Caramel syrup 1 oz + 5 coffee ice cubes


Mocha Shake
Recovery Base plus
Coffee ice cream 1/4 cup + Hershey's syrup 1.5 T + 5 coffee ice cubes


Cherry Vanilla
Recovery Base plus
Cherry ice cubes 5 + Torani French Vanilla syrup 1 oz


Creamsicle
Recovery Base plus
OJ ice cubes 6 + Torani French Vanilla syrup 1 oz


Hot Mocha
Recovery Base plus
Hershey's syrup 1.5 T + Vanilla syrup 0.5 oz + hot coffee 4oz, top w/whip 0.5 oz & cinnamon


Hot Chocolate
Recovery Base plus
Hershey's syrup 1.5 T + Torani French Vanilla syrup 0.5 oz, top w/whip 0.5 oz & cinnamon


Peppermint Hot Chocolate
Recovery Base plus
Hershey's syrup 1.5 T + Torani Peppermint syrup 0.5 oz, , top w/whip 0.5 oz & cinnamon

Heathpack 

Except for the electrolytes, I have used the honey drink with great success on long events. You can carry a lot of calories in a hammer flask of honey. And since you didn't mention it, I will (although I learned this trick from you)- the lemon juice is key to improve the flow of the honey. Otherwise its too sticky.

echappist

all those electrolytes really rock my stomach after the race. i do well enough during the race though.

as for the drink recipe @Heathpack provided, that would mean a lot of added # for someone with low self control (e.g. yours truly). Plain kefir works well, i think

BigPoser

What kind of ratios are you using? I like the looks of that. I've been using Tailwind Nutrition for a while now and it's been great, for me at least. On rides that are 3 hours and longer though I still take a few gels and food with me.

Heathpack 

Of course if kefir works for you, there's no arguing with results. But I'm intentionally looking for a higher carb content- in part to replace what I used during my workout (which I usually do fasted, at least for short workouts 2 hrs and less) but also to get an insulin spike. Insulin has a catabolic effect post workout, it has a positive effect on building muscle.

Interestingly, I got religous with these recovery drinks when I was losing some weight. I really didn't want to lose any muscle mass. I think I lost 15ish pounds since I started drinking these things, they are hugely helpful for me in managing post workout hunger. Basically, my hunger level is reset to normal if I drink a recovery drink. I'm not starving all day. But beyond the recovery drinks, I was counting calories, it's not that I attribute the weight loss to the drinks. It's just that for me, they are not at all counter-productive.

I burn around 550 cal/hr in a decent workout. The drinks are around 300 cal each, I still wind up with a net calorie deficit. If I have a 2 hour workout, I start my day with an 800 cal deficit which is pretty huge, given that I'm only allotted 1550 cal/day. Best thing though is a long weekend ride, where I can routinely net a 1200 cal deficit even accounting for the recovery drink. Sweet. You can eat pretty well on 1200 + 1550'cal when you've already consumed the better part of the day riding your bike.

echappist

what i meant to say is that you have a lot more self discipline than i do

Racer Ex 

I'll do anywhere from 150-400 calories of honey per water bottle, depending on heat and how hard/long the race may be. Usually 2-6 Endurolyte capsules.

I'm in around the "standard" 300 calories/hour absorption rate. So I figure what my water intake will be and dose the honey and electrolytes accordingly. Hot days when I'm plowing through a lot of fluid I'll drop the honey and up the electrolyes. Cold days I'll up the honey and drop the electrolytes a bit. And so on.

As noted the lemon juice is mostly there for flavor and as a cutting agent for the honey.

Cleave

Full strength Dr. Pepper.

When I started doing this crazy sport, de-fizzed Coca Cola was the energy drink of choice. Today I use a variety of Hammer products despite a particular doper's claim that his positive was due to contaminated Hammer Race Caps and Endurolytes.

sarals 

I don't posses the cooking gene. I'll avoid posting here, I'll just read and use my printer.

revchuck 

On endurance-pace rides <3 hours or so, I stick with water and add a Nuun tab in hot weather. On longer and/or harder rides I use mix from Infinit. Their "Speed" has 230 calories/bottle and their "Go Far" has 280 and includes protein. Both are more palatable than Gatorade and don't bother my stomach. I work in an LBS so I get them at cost, keeping them reasonable.

AZSkeptic

This is great. Please keep it coming. I'm always looking for new items to rotate through my recovery arsenal.

IBOHUNT

^I second this

Bandera

I'll have to try Electrolyte tabs in my old standard:

Weak green tea
Honey
Lemon Juice

Prepared hot the honey dissolves to be stored in the 'fridge for later use.
Well shaken poured into a Colored bottle, clear or white bottles are straight H2O.
Never pour the contents of a colored bottle over your head.

-Bandera

Heathpack 

Lol.

Heathpack 

Muesli, I eat it for breakfast most days. It's convenient, because I make up 4 days at a time and put each serving into little mason jars. Grab & go, I carry one to work each day. It's practical, no cooking so I can eat it when I travel. Give me a paring knife for the apple and I can even make it in a hotel room. Great alternative to cold cereal, no preservatives. And for some reason, I find cold soaked oats to naturally taste sweeter than cooked oats, I can get away with adding very little sweetener.

Nutritious stuff too, nothing bad for you in this recipe. Well except maybe the sugar.

Mix together in a bowl:
1 cup rolled oats
3 cups skim milk (obviously you can use any milk you want here, or a combo of milk & yogurt)
2 T dried fruit, whole if small or chopped if larger
2 T chopped nuts, walnuts best fit omega 3s
2 T chia seeds
2 T dried unsweetened flaked coconut
2 T seeds, I use half sunflower & half pumpkin
1 T sugar, honey or maple syrup, my favorite is vanilla sugar which I make by shoving a vanilla bean into a jar of sugar and letting it sit a few weeks
Dash salt
Cinnamon to taste
1 apple shredded

Divide into 4 portions, around 8 ounces each. Let soak at least over night, up to 4-5 days. I usually top with more berries, either blueberries or blackberries, since we can get fresh local berries year round in SoCal.

Cold oats, I know it sounds weird but I really like em.

nycphotography

When I'm laying down base miles in winter or endurance miles in season, fat adapting is part of the purpose being served. I target fat burning zones, and to the extent I get into z4+, I run a sugar deficit, and I don't necessarily replenish carbs with recovery drinks. I tend to target more protein. Basic recovery drink is 50g whey protein, 12oz 1 pct milk. Although the milk does have some lactose/sugar. I sometimes give it squirt of Hersheys (choc, caramel or strawberry) and that has some sugar too. But if I'm focused on cutting weight, I reduce the milk to 8oz and add no carbs.

On the bike, I mix my own (per 24oz bottle): 3/4 scoop gatorade powder (blue or red), 2 struck tablespoons whey protein (approx 12g), 1/8 tsp potassium salt (morton lite).

I carry pre-measured powder in ziplock bags (1 per bottle) and a couple gels.

Sometimes, I do a whole winter base ride without touching a bottle in which case they become recovery drinks when I get home. The point of not drinking them on the bike is, again, fat adapting.

But when things go wrong, like when 4 hours of z2 turned into a 4 hour hammer fest, I have the bottles and gels available.

Warm weather, I'll start with my two bottles and then refill with water or half strength for hydration.

Short rides, like if I'm doing my 12 mi commute, I carry nothing and use nothing. If I'm hammering out intervals or intensity, I can do 550+ kj (depending on the wind), but I leave the body to replace that from whatever carbs I happen to eat.

Heathpack 

@nycphotography, what kind of riding/racing do you do?

I actually intentionally ride with minimal calories most of the time myself, in order to become as fat-adapted as possible. I started off doing my interval workouts fasted out of practicality (because I do them so early in the am) and then just gradually worked on cutting calories out of my longer rides too. Now my goal on my long rides is a 1500 cal deficit, and I routinely accomplish that. I just figure 550 cal/hr burned multiplied by how long I plan on riding and take it from there.

Although I completely understand the logic behind fasted riding- you are trying to force your body to burn fat when it would typically be leaning toward carbs, I don't really follow the logic behind restricting carbs after a ride when you'd normally be leaning towards burning fat anyway. Is this something you read somewhere or have a source for? Or just what you've evolved to doing on your own?

I have tried to consume protein while riding (in drinks) and I just can't do it. Sits in my stomach like a lead weight. Carbs I can digest while moving and I can digest either while stopped but I still have to limit the protein intake. Which makes sense physiologically- protein delays gastric emptying and takes longer to digest than carbs. So they really do sit in your stomach longer, which is likely why protein is more satiating than carbs. Of course different people can get away with different things while eating & drinking on a bike.

Interestingly I have largely moved away from electrolytes in my bottles. I only use them when I expect to be sweating a lot. This is something of an artificial difference from the rest of y'all though, because I largely avoid the heat. I have developed a whole cadre of friends who have zero problem starting a summer ride at 5am, and yes SoCal is hot but desert hot, so even when it's going to be 115F in the afternoon, mornings are usually cool. Most of my races are morning, and just one 30-60 min race. Not the same thing as those of you doing a long road race or multiple crits in a day. If I do some epic thing in hot/warm weather, though, I usually go with Skratch. I like the taste.

double_stuf

it's necessary only if you actually care about recovery.


"just eat food!" yadda yadda.


food is okay but science is better

nycphotography

Structured training for road racing / riding. My goals are focused on long tough single day road events. I don't like circuit races (but I do them for the high end speed / vo2max development that you can't get anywhere else). I don't do crits, just not in the mood for that crash fest having broken enough body parts over the years already.

The not replacing carbs is really the 'if I'm focused on cutting weight..." I cut 25 lbs, from 175 to 150 this spring. For that, I just burned the carbs out of the blood and left the body to burn fat for recovery and scavenge whatever carbs I ate to glycogen rather than storing as fat. Let the liver replenish glycogen from fat overnight too. Plus lots of protein so it would never have to cannibalize one muscle to get protein for another. I also added a small amount of high impact gym work to trigger T and HGH response and to boost metabolism. It worked.

A couple times I woke up with metal mouth... figured I had pushed the protein over carbs thing past the limit... put a couple extra spoons of sugar in my coffee.

When NOT cutting weight, I will eat to replace calories, still emphasizing protein over carbs. But not avoiding carbs as much. So maybe bananas, ice cream, peanut butter, and chocolate syrup. Sometimes in a blender with some raw oats and protein powder, sometimes not.

If the weight comes back up, I'll do 2-3 days of hard cut (yogurt for lunch, protein shake for dinner).

Then back to normal meals again. Normal means buy lunch at work, usually something home cooked for dinner. No breakfast (exc coffee w cream and sugar).

I don't exclude all carbs. I cut extraneous ones. Bread. Rice. Potatoes. Fries. We get so many carbs just in everything around us that we still get plenty of carbs.

There is a lot of brands of garbage "protein powder" that is really candy for kids. All sugars and added fats. That stuff doesn't dissolve in the bottle and doesn't digest as well. But I find just a tad of pure whey protein digests easily and contributes to endurance.

Heathpack 

@nycphotography, my philosophy on recovery drinks is that if I can work them in while simultaneously creating a calorie deficit for the day, then they make sense. And I can make that work for sure. In fact they're a good bargain for me because they have a really useful effect on hunger management. I know the protein is key for that, but I'm not sure if the carbs play a role as well. I'm not married to to concept of the recovery drink as I use them, but so far is seems to work well for me. I lost 15 pounds (10% body weight) last winter with no loss of power, so I was happy.

I agree that you can likely recover your muscle glycogen stores by just allowing this to happen throughout the day with whatever carbs you naturally eat. The reason I do this in the form of a recovery drink is because there's some evidence the carbs enhance recovery- the insulin hit you get is quite anabolic as I understand it. If I'm going to eat the carbs anyway that day, and I might get more benefit from them immediately post workout, then I'll go for the bigger bang for my buck & consume them in my recovery drink.

For me, if I count my calories and keep them within my limit and get my 100 gm/day protein, the rest of it just sorts itself out. It's pretty consistently 50% of my calories from carbs without me trying specifically. Full carb-dose recovery drink and all.

VanceMac

I don't really do anything more than a couple hours anymore, but when I do, it's just maltodextrin in the bottle. Mainly because I'm cheap, but also because it isn't sweet and has a high glycemic index.

https://tinyurl.com/helckf4

Heathpack 

Boneless skinless chicken breast. You've gotta figure out how to make it delicious.


A few years ago, I went to a Mario Batali-Nancy Silverton restaurant called Pizzeria Mozza. Their sausage was so fennel-ly good, I couldn't figure out how they did it. So I bought their cookbook and I learned their secret ingredient: fennel pollen.


You can buy it here: ORGANIC FENNEL POLLEN 1 OZ TIN ? Pollen Ranch And then figure out what to do with it. Of course you can make sausage but since one of the ingredients in sausage is pork fat, maybe that is not so great toward your desire to be a skinny bike racer.


Tasty thing is to rub boneless skinless chicken breasts with a little oil, some kosher salt, freshly ground pepper and fennel pollen. Grill over high heat and you will have tasty fennel crusted chicken. You could stop there of course and you'd have a great dinner.


BUT then some time might pass and you might want to increase your walnut consumption, on account of the omega-3 content of walnuts. Then one day be looking at oils in the supermarket and notice this product, which of course you'd have to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Tourangelle-R...001EQ5EJQ?th=1


And then go home and try to figure out: what am I going to do with walnut oil besides the obvious salad dressing? You can't cook with it and it goes rancid quickly so you've got to eat it up fast. The answer here is mayonnaise. I know you are now saying What? Mayonnaise is not health food. Well, an organic egg from the farmer's market, walnut oil, Dijon mustard, lemon and tarragon from your garden and a little garlic? What's bad in that? Nothing. Its health food for sure, just happens to be caloric, but otherwise its all good stuff.


So you become addicted to Lemon Tarragon Garlic Mayo and find a wide number of applications for it, one of which is eating lots of raw veggies dipped into a Buttermilk Herb Dip made from this mayo. Which is: buttermilk, mayo, salt, pepper, chopped dill, chives and mint ($0.69/bunch at the Mexican grocery store!).


This will leave you with extra dill and chives lying around, so you will start making dill butter and chive butter and keeping these butters in the freezer.


One day you will figure out that a pat of dill butter atop the grilled fennel chicken breasts will make your life even better.


But then you will be noodling around the internet, wondering what to do with your abundant lemon crop and you might come across this: How To Make Mandarin Orange Dust Powder | Pen & Fork And then say to yourself, Hmm Grilled Chicken Breasts with Fennel Pollen and Lemon Dust and Dill Butter, now THAT would be tasty.

Bandera

Since the answer is "Mayonnaise", as it often is, the question is:

What tasty, fresh, versatile and easy to prepare sauce can I whip up at home myself?

Aversion to eating real food prepared thoughtfully with skill at home that would be recognized by your grandmother as very good is beyond my ken.

-Bandera