HMF

The truth hurts.

hammy56

Chris Horner comes to mind...

gsteinb

I'm pretty certain Horner's dietary habits are exaggerated. He may like burgers but he probably doesn't subsist on them. Also one can find an exception to any rule. So even if he can eat prodigious amounts of junk food and ride with no ill effects, I know I certainly can't.

gsteinb

I'm not sure what that means or who it's directed towards.

wens

When i was in Fl for winter training in college and put in a 30ish hour week (swimming and cross training) for a week and a half i found i had to eat stuff that was really calorie dense, or i'd lose 5 pounds in a week, have joints hurt like crazy, and get sick. I don't know how that would've worked out differently if the ramp up in volume had been more gradual, or if i'd gotten used to putting in those kind of hours, but for a week I was eating all the junk food I could find just to try to keep up.

Now I wish I could eat multiple pints of ben and jerry's every night for a week and lose weight.

climber7

interesting story. not really surprising, though. thanks for the link.


i have a friend who is a lightweight rower and is probably one of the best endurance athletes i know. he competes at the elite level and has rowed for the usa junior national and u23 teams. his diet is probably 90% bread and butter and 10% ice cream. ok, maybe i'm exaggerating a little...but not much. this guy eats a higher percentage of bread, pasta, and other carbs than anyone i've ever met. he tried eating healthy for a while - a salad or a bunch of cucumber of something instead of more carbs - and said he felt like he had no energy when he was working out. went right back to his normal diet.

YMMV...but if you do enough endurance activity, you need to fuel it with carbs. not really any way around that.

KendallF

I loved the Pollan books. He's got a sense of humor, I didn't find him preachy. I'm struggling with this for the upcoming season also. I'm specifically aiming at doing Everest Challenge so it'll give me incentive to be 10-15 lbs. lighter late this year. My current diet could pretty much be described as "Paleo, then add a bunch of dessert crap".

Gotta go, brownies just out of the oven.

mike868y

this.

my closest friends at uni are swimmers and I've never seen so many super skinny/fit kids eat so much junk food in my life. one of my buddies literally cannot gain weight. he intentionally eats as much as he can and stays incredibly lean and fast in the water.

hammy56

agreed. that was what I was getting at. I find the variance in athletes' diets interesting. Just as much as their training...

I just got done with some yummy cake w/two scoops of ice cream.

rotti

Anyone remember Michael Phelp's 10,000 calorie a day diet plan? It absolutely amazes me that pro cyclist can ride 4-6 hours a day and still have to watch what they eat.

Beaker

I actually wonder what condition his arteries are in.

roadiejorge 

Why do you hate America? The health products industry needs to pay its bills you know.



Throughout cultures there is a lot of wisdom concerning the balance of diet, exercise, and mental well being. Unfortunately there's a lot of profit to be made by selling products that may or may not be anything more than a placebo.

mollusk

I've known several national and international level swimmers. Swimmers need to put in more hours of even harder work than cyclists. Those guys are nuttier than we are and that is saying a lot.

Fat Boy

Probably me, but it misses the point.

Here's an example of what I mean. He extolls the virtues of the French diet and the 'French Paradox' of a high fat diet, high carb diet with relatively little heart disease. What he fails to mention is that the French are increasingly finding it difficult to eat a 'French diet'. Now if the people who live in that country and with that culture are finding it a difficult thing to do, then what chance do I have of pulling it off. None. So you end up with "Cool Story, Bro".

It's been a couple years since I read the book, but I remember thinking, "I don't really disagree with this information, but there's absolutely no chance of me using any of it in a daily application to improve the diets of me and my family". The best sentence of the entire book comes right away, and it's the one that HMF quoted.

Fat Boy

Swimmers can actually afford to carry a little fat on their body as well. The best swimmers are not rail-thin Kenyans. They have a little fat and a lot of upper body muscle. Quite a different matter than your average pro GC guy.

Fat Boy

Maybe it's because he's not a kid anymore, but he credited his form in California last year with changing his diet and losing weight. This was important enough that he stayed in the US prior to the Tour to keep on his diet. Apparently, it was just too difficult to try and travel and keep the weight off. I've been there, and it's true. Every time you get on a plane, it's 5 pounds.

gsteinb

I was sort of the opposite. Taken as a whole his books, those by a few other authors, and a couple I'm reading now have informed how I eat and importantly where my food comes from. I'm just trying to look at what specific things I eat, and in what quantities that support the going fast thing. Healthy would be a nice thing to be as well.

kensuf

No burritos on the TT challenge?

KendallF

Well, maybe. Burritos are Paleo friendly, right?

kensuf

Not the tortilla.

HMF

or the beans.



I couldn't get on board with Paleo.

RUOkie

I agree with you overall. My earlier post was being a sarcastic female dog. I do think that the genetics of the Kenyans is probably the most important factor towards their success as runners. However, eating a well balanced diet, primarily of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and whole grains is probably the healthiest way to eat. In the summer months, I grow my own veggies. Still eat some meat, local farmer's market eggs (free range) grass fed beef etc. Since we stopped eating factory farm meat, I feel better. I don't know whether it is placebo (from paying attention), lack of hormones, or less feed corn.

But I also live in Oklahoma, where we can get locally grown stuff all through the spring/summer/autumn. We are still growing our own greens (lettuce/kale etc.). I would not know how to do this as easily if I still lived in NJ.

Fat Boy

Same here, and the 'Paleo for Athlete's' thing is just a joke. Paleo means no grains, no 'root' vegetables (potatoes & carrots), no beans, no dairy and only sugar from fruit. Even if I wanted to do it, it's just not practical. Anyway, life is just too short to live like that.

Funny enough, the Kenyans diet is about as far from Paleo as you can get.

badhat

none of the dudes around here who are big paleo evangelists are fast or thin.

The_Cretin

But they are the hippest and trendiest.