Just because you are burning calories like crazy doesn’t mean that it’s time to load up on sugar. But the fuel for your race is carbohydrate, and your body does need lots of it right now. One of my mottos is “put your food to work for you”, and now is the time to distribute your carb-rich foods throughout the day and properly around your exercise to maximize their impact. Here’s a strategy that will help your muscles recover, repair, refuel and grow as you train for race day.

1. Eat whole carbohydrate-rich foods at every meal and snack.

-throughout the day, choose whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains and beans to supply your muscles with the fuel they need to go the distance. Your portions don’t need to be huge, but eat at least 2 servings of a variety of different foods at each meal. This variety will give you the vitamins, minerals, food factors, fibers and phytochemicals to catalyze the metabolic processes that boost training and recovery.

2. Carbohydrate-rich beverages should be low in added sugars and high in nutrient value.

-focus on drinking water, nonfat or low-fat milk, 100% fruit and vegetable juices and other beverages with no or very low amounts of added sugar. Sports drinks are beneficial around exercise, but they don’t offer the dense nutrition that you require throughout the rest of the day.

3. Fuel yourself before, during and after exercise with the sports beverage that works best for you.

-do your homework and look for companies that have actually conducted research studies on their own products. This will narrow your search considerably, as most products don’t have any research to support their claims.

-experiment with different products. While a product might work incredibly well for one person, it might not work at all for someone else. Taste is an important factor but not always the most important, and sometimes flavors become more or less acceptable during exercise than when you taste it at the store or at home. Road-testing products is very important for both practicality and acceptable taste.

-you might employ different products for before, during and after training. You might find that beforehand you can have something a little more solid that also contains some protein, like yogurt. Adding pretzels or other low-fat, high carbohydrate food will help you reach your body’s pre-exercise fueling needs. Make sure to at least drink water to optimize your hydration levels. During your run you must replace fluids, carbohydrate and electrolytes. The scientific support for protein during endurance exercise is still equivocal; but again, don’t hesitate to experiment with products that have research to support their claims. After exercise you must replenish carbohydrates immediately to promote recovery. The more rapidly that carbohydrate reaches the muscle cell, the more able you will be to train hard on successive days. This takes a high-glycemic index carbohydrate and is the key to maximizing your training response and your performance.

-follow your recovery drink within two hours with a full meal, rich in grains, starches, fruits and vegetables, proteins and high-performance fats like extra virgin olive oil, olives, avocados, nuts and seeds. You will find that by putting your food to work for you, you stay energized and focused, the ideal mental and physical framework for success.

Yours in a good mood,

Dr. Susan Kleiner

You breathe, therefore you have inflammation.  One of the side effects of being alive and active is inflammation. We stay healthy because we have multiple systems operating in a coordinated effort to unplug oxidative pathways and shut down inflammatory processes. Inflammation increases the more we move and the greater the intensity of muscular effort.  When tissue is damaged, inflammation is part of the healing process.

Heavy exercise like long distance running naturally leads to muscle damage, initiating inflammation so that muscles can heal. You know this process is under way when you feel sore, and the area around a sore muscle can be warm to the touch, with redness and swelling. While some inflammation is important for healing, unchecked, inflammation will cut into your training and slow your progress.

Controlling inflammation is a high priority for an athlete. Along with following a well-planned training program, what you eat and drink has a tremendous impact on how much inflammation you develop, and how long it can last. Certain foods, called anti-inflammatory foods, can help your body fight inflammation.   Some foods, referred to as pro-inflammatory, actually promote inflammation. You want your diet weighted heavily with anti-inflammatory foods.

Include these anti-inflammatory foods in your meals and snacks as often as possible:

“Anti-inflammatory foods”

• Apples
• Citrus fruits and juices
• Fatty fish
• Ginger
• Green beans
• Kale
• Nuts
• Olives
• Olive Oil (Extra Virgin)
• Onions
• Pineapple
• Pomegranate
• Prunes
• Seeds
• Turmeric
• Vegetable oils
• Wheat germ

Avoid or limit these pro-inflammatory foods, typically found in packaged foods and baked goods and fast foods:

“Pro-Inflammatory Foods”

• Safflower oil
• Corn oil
• Sesame oil
• Margarine
• Partially hydrogenated oils
• Shortening
• Sugars and refined starches in high amounts

Yours in a good mood,

Dr. Susan Kleiner

Most people run marathons just to finish the race. Many run to top their personal best time. A few run to win. Regardless of the category that you fit into, everyone needs to prepare for the race, because it is no walk in the park, even if you walk the distance.

The Chicago Marathon is just under 8 weeks away, on October 10^th. I have put together a last minute nutrition guide to getting yourself marathon-ready. Each week I’ll post a tip on my blog to help you prepare your body and mind for the 26-mile pursuit. Like any athletic endeavor, this is an event that takes mental fortitude along with physical stamina. So let’s get started.

TIP #8: EAT MORE FOOD AND EAT MORE OFTEN

This is build-up time. Your training distances are building. Your diet must support your increased nutritional needs for muscle repair and recovery, and endurance expansion.  This is not the time to restrict food with the hope of losing body fat. Your winning strategy is to eat enough food to increase your energy, raise your training, build muscle, and then you burn the fat and win the race.   Without enough food you will never make it to the finish line, and combined with heavy training you raise your risks for illness and injury.

So today’s tip is eat more food and eat more often. While you’ve probably heard this before, I really mean it.  Eat at least 5 meals daily. With the level of training that you are doing, your body needs to stay in a building phase all the time to allow for daily recovery and repair of heavily exercised muscles. If you let more than approximately 3 hours pass without eating, your blood sugar will begin to drop and you will move out of building phase (anabolic) and into tearing down phase (catabolic). Eating more food more often will maximize your training time, and keep you healthy and strong.

Eat simple, wholesome foods as often as possible. Carry food with you so that you don’t get caught having to buy unhealthy snack foods or fast foods. All the athletes that I work with carry backpacks or briefcases full of food. Here are a few suggestions: fresh and dried fruit, nuts, organic mozzarella cheese sticks, yogurt, Soy Crisps, turkey or tuna jerky, hard boiled eggs, cut up veggies, edamame, PB&J (I like apple butter instead of J) on sprouted wheat bread, even a turkey sandwich. While protein-energy bars are one of my least favorite choices, they are convenient. Look for brands that offer at least 10 grams of protein, real fruit and nuts, and no fractionated oils. One of my favorites is Zing Bar.

Don’t forget that you can depend on beverages for good nutrition, too. Smoothies are a great way to get in your recovery nutrition and nutrient-rich calories during the day (see my June 29 blog). To top off my hydration and my recovery, I drink a solixir Restore after my recovery smoothie and before my next meal. It’s a great pick-me-up for mind and body.

While I can’t tell you exactly how many calories you need to eat, if you are experiencing intense fatigue beyond just what would be normal after a very long run, you are not sleeping well, you have recently developed headaches, you are getting sick more often than usual, you are hungry or anxious about food, or you just can’t complete your workouts, you should consider adding more food to your diet.  It can be just the magic bullet that you are looking for.

Yours in a good mood,

Dr. Susan Kleiner

500 million eggs are being recalled due to a salmonella outbreak. Salmonella poisoning can result in serious illness, and can be fatal in susceptible individuals.  If you have eggs in your refrigerator, read the alert at www.eggsafety.org.

If you have these eggs at home, return them to the store or throw them out. Do not take a chance and eat them.

Dr. Susan Kleiner

Beijing 2008

I work with extraordinary clients. Here is a post from Jill Kintner, 2008 BMX Olympian Bronze Medalist, 3-time MTB World Champion and 2010 Downhill Mountain Bike Champion.

Diet and nutrition are huge aspects of performance that compliment all the other factors that go into being an elite athlete!  Knowing the most efficient way to refuel, and how  to sustain a healthy lifestyle have aided me to reach the top of my field in cycling. Over the last few years, I chose to address nutrition and try to find natural ways to get the most out of my body. With Dr. Susan Kleiner's help, she reviewed my weekly diet, calorie intake, vitamin needs, what was lacking, etc., to put me even more on track as to how and when food can have the most beneficial outcome. It took me awhile to understand and get into the routines of taking vitamins, eating more lean protein, snacking often, etc., but once I got it, I started to notice a freshness in my body and was ready to train. The fish oil supplement made the biggest difference. The effect made me feel like lube to a chain, just loose and free. Without being steered into these kinds of things by an expert, I probably would have missed out. Obviously nutrition takes practice and experimentation, but every little thing counts when you are competing at an elite level.  I am grateful to have found more knowledge to apply. Thanks Susan.

Thanks, Jill!

Follow Jill as she goes to the World Downhill MTB competition at www.jillkintner.com

Yours in a good mood,

Dr. Susan Kleiner

The debate over the best nutrition for recovery after exercise has been the rage of sports nutrition scientists for more than a decade. In the 1990’s the argument promoting the benefits for strength and power athletes of combining protein with carbohydrate immediately after exercise became apparent. Researchers showed that dietary protein catalyzed protein synthesis, and reduced protein breakdown significantly more than carbohydrate alone. Athletes could train harder and gain more power and strength when they included protein in their recovery meals and shakes.

More recently endurance athletes have benefited from the science of recovery nutrition. Studies now clearly document the benefits of including protein along with carbohydrates immediately after exercise and for several hours afterward. A study published in 2008 from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, showed that cyclists who exercised for 2 hours and then consumed protein with carbohydrate post-exercise and for 3-hours afterward had increased protein synthesis and reduced protein breakdown compared to when they were given carbohydrate alone. This was true even when a high amount of carbohydrate-alone was given, which had been a lingering question. However, the addition of protein did not enhance glycogen resynthesis into the cell, or refueling of muscle cells, beyond carbohydrate alone.

This finding is enough to make a difference in your training and your results. If muscles can recover, repair and grow more quickly, you benefit with greater training results, day after day. You’ll notice the difference in how you feel and how perform.

How much protein and carbohydrate should you have right after exercise? In this study the amounts are given so that each person can figure out exactly what they need. Since the study was conducted during 3-hours post-exercise, the amounts are reported in that way.

Carbohydrate: 1.2g/kg/hr (this translates into 0.5g/pound body weight for 3 hours post-exercise)

Protein: 0.4g/kg/hr (this translates into 0.2g/pound body weight for 3 hours post-exercise)

To replicate this study in a real-life way, you should have one recovery shake, and then eat a good meal 2 hours later. This is how you figure out your personal recovery formula.

If you weigh 150 pounds, make a shake using:

0.5 g carbohydrate X 150 pounds = 75 grams carbohydrate

0.2 g protein X 150 pounds = 30 grams protein

Then for your meal, make sure to have twice these amounts:

150 grams of carbohydrate

60 grams of protein.

This is equivalent in food to:

2 servings of bread/starch

8 ounces of milk

7 ounces protein-rich food

You could, of course mix this up any way you like over the 3 hours. Remember, the subjects in this study cycled for 2 hours. If you are going out for just an hour-long jog or a pleasure ride, your needs are not this high.

You can find recipes for recovery shakes in my book, Power Eating, Third Edition, on my website www.drskleiner.com.

Yours in a good mood,

Dr. Susan Kleiner

Pre-register: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=B6NKZ7JHT5ZNL

The Good Mood Diet and Solixir

Please join me at Whole Foods Market at Roosevelt Square for great food, drink and fun!

June 30, 6-8 PM

RSVP: Natasha.Calvert@wholefoods.com

Since my last post I've gotten lots of emails about supplements, and which products/brands are my favorites. As opinionated as I am, it should not be surprising that I have some strong ideas about this topic. My stance on recommending products and brands has changed over the years. For most of my professional career I have stayed away from publicly naming brands and putting my name behind any specific products. That was because there really wasn't anything that separated one product from another except their marketing hype. But times have really changed, and I have changed too.

When a company puts science behind their label, I listen. And when the owner puts "proof before promises" I'll not only use the product myself and recommend the product with confidence, it gets top billing on my blog. That owner is Anthony Almada and his company is Genr8. Genr8 produces the carbohydrate supplement, Vitargo S2, and there is no other carb supplement that can make the claim that it is emptied from the stomach and enters the muscle cell nearly twice as fast as any other carbohydrate product on the planet. Read the research at www.genr8speed.com. It will change your game forever.

Olympic athletes along with everyone else deserve supplements that guarantee their formulations are science-based, pure, as potent as possible, and fully digested and absorbed by the body. Confident of this promise, my family and I use USANA Health Sciences products and I recommend them to my clients. This is a rare guarantee, with claims certified by recognized third-party organizations, and sets USANA apart from just about every other company on the market. Read more about USANA at www.drskleiner.usana.com. If you live in the Seattle area, come to the presentation that Tom Mulhern and I are giving this Saturday morning, June 5th, at the Seattle Central Public Library: Healthy Body - Healthy Wallet. For more info and registration please email Lorie Mulhern at LorieMulhern@me.com

There are undoubtedly other great products out there, and I will continue to call them out in my blog from time to time. I not only have favorite supplements, but I have favorite beverages (Solixir, of course. www.solixir.com) and even favorite tuna, favorite salmon, favorite chocolate, and the list goes on. You'll just have to keep visiting to learn more.

Yours in a good mood,

Dr. Susan Kleiner

One of the most asked and debated questions in the nutrition world is do you need more than food to be optimally healthy? Do we really need supplements? I usually turn that question around and ask, "can you eat enough?". Here's why.

There is a fascinating area of nutrition study that examines nutritional needs through archeological and anthropological research.  Scientists can determine what our ancestors ate and how much exercise they got 10,000 years ago. The body that we have today was the same body that our ancestors inhabited then, and the physiological needs of that body allowed for the adaptations to occur so that we could live optimally in the environment.

This type of research led to the determination of how much fiber we should be eating every day. A very recent study of fossilized human feces from the Chihuahan Desert showed that our ancestors ate a plant based diet that was very high in prebiotic fibers, found significantly in their diets from agave, sotol and onion. Only a few days before the release of this research, a large review study was published about the benefits of flax seed, another great source of prebiotic fibers.  Flax seed lignans may protect against cancers of the breast, prostate, colon and skin, while their soluble fibers maintain steady blood sugar levels.

Archaeological and anthropological research tells us that our ancestors had an energy requirement of at least 2700 to 3500 calories per day or more. Taking an evolutionary perspective, that means the body that we inhabit adapted requiring that much activity and nutritional input. Today, few of us get that much exercise, and if we eat that much food we are overweight. So unless you are burning at least 2700 calories each day, there is no way that you can consume enough food to get the nutrient density that your body really needs to be optimally healthy. For the same reason that we add ground flax seeds to our diets, we need to add nutrient supplementation. While we can't completely replicate all the factors in food that our bodies likely need, we can supplement what is available at this time.

Yours in a good mood,

Dr. Susan Kleiner