Keeping Cramps Away....

A common question about nutrition and exercise is how to prevent cramping. Here are some ideas to help prevent cramping from disrupting a lovely day of bike riding. :o)

For digestive/abdominal cramps, the advice from my last post about a “nervous stomach” is where I’d start. Those same tips are what helps keep your digestive system running smoothly and hopefully prevent cramps. Another tip is to focus on your breathing. Keep those deep breaths going so that oxygen can get into your system and keep your blood pumping and all systems going. Breathing is not really a nutrition tip per se, but breathing does do wonders for digestion. When riding a bike, we can tend to get hunched over, making our airway less open. This makes it challenging to take good deep breaths, and as a result we may be limiting the amount of oxygen we're taking in. By focusing on keeping your chest and shoulders as open as possible and breathing deeply, you may find relief from cramps and hopefully prevent cramps altogether.

For muscle cramps, particularly in those big muscle groups in your legs, cramps that creep up at the end of a long ride or in the hours afterwards often indicate low levels of electrolytes and early stages of dehydration. So…..back to the importance of fluids and electrolyte replacement! This means drinking enough fluids and sports drinks before, during, and after riding.

Low levels of the electrolyte potassium are often blamed for muscle cramping. One of my favorite Spin instructors once told us how at the end of a stage of the Tour de France, riders are sometimes handed whole baked potatoes that they eat like apples…. and wash it down with a sports drink. The reason? Potatoes are rich in potassium and easily digested carbohydrates, which combined with the sports drink gives them the extra potassium to replace those electrolytes (and also glycogen, which I’ll cover later) and also help prevent cramping.

Two other lesser-discussed electrolytes—calcium and magnesium—may also play a role in muscle cramping. That’s why it’s a good idea to eat a substantial snack or meal soon after a long ride.

As I type this it’s raining rather furiously…..but hopefully Mother Nature is getting that out of her system so we can enjoy great riding weather on Sunday morning! Hope to see you on your bike in front of the Y at 8am!

Ride on!
Shelley

Taming the Nervous Stomach

A bit of nervous energy about a long ride like the MS Ride is certainly natural, particularly if this distance is new to you. Most athletes can relate to those pre-event jitters. The challenge is to make sure that this eager anticipation does not get in the way of good nutrition.

First and foremost, do not let those nerves prevent you from fueling up. Often, that “nervous stomach” seems to be saying “Hey, don’t put anything in me!”, but don’t listen to that advice. Your body needs fuel for the long ride ahead, and having a completely empty stomach will actually make you feel even worse. How do you fuel up when your body doesn’t seem to want it?

Timing can help.

The goal for fueling your ride is to maintain adequate glucose in your system. Small, frequent meals and snacks work well because this way you are not overwhelming your digestive system (and, therefore, not aggravating a nervous stomach). Try to eat your morning meal at least 2 hours before the event begins. With early-morning start times for many events, it's a challenge to get up early enough to have time to eat well in advance. Another option to eating a breakfast 2 hours ahead of the start time is to eat a substantial snack before bed the night before (a “bedtime breakfast” of sorts) and then eat a light snack in the morning. Be sure to stop at all of the rest stops, and even if you aren’t feeling much of an appetite, do try to eat at least a piece of fruit.

The type of fuel matters.

Glucose is what fuels your muscles and your brain. It’s the carbohydrate in food that yields this glucose, so be sure that you include some form of carbohydrate with each meal and snack. To settle a nervous stomach, focus on the easily digested carbohydrates: fruit juice, canned fruit, toast, bagels, oatmeal, cereal, pasta, rice. As a dietitian, I am almost always promoting high-fiber carbohydrates. In a person struggles with a very nervous stomach, though, it may be a good idea to choose lower-fiber carbohydrates. This is because high-fiber foods may take longer to get broken down in your stomach, and if they spend more time in your stomach they may exacerbate that nervous-stomach feeling. For the particularly nervous stomach, you may want to avoid fruit with a skin (e.g. choose applesauce over a whole apple) to keep the fiber lower.

Fat in food also takes longer to digest, so avoid high-fat meals. That doesn’t mean you should avoid fat altogether, but if you find yourself with a nervous stomach, it may be better to skip the sausage, bacon, and cheese omelet on the day of the event. :o)

Some other tips:

• Ginger (in the form of ginger ale, ginger tea, ginger candies, etc) seems to help calm nausea and also often helps settle a nervous stomach.
• Caffeine can bother a nervous stomach in some people, but others find a cup of coffee really improves performance.
• Bland is usually better for pre-event butterflies. Many people complain that spicy foods don’t agree with them on race days. Some people also complain that acidic fruits/juices don’t agree with them.
• In the case of a nervous stomach, the plan of small, frequent meals & snacks also applies to fluid. Try to sip fluids throughout the day, rather than chugging full water bottles all at once. When you have a lot of fluid in your stomach at one time, things tend to “slosh” around, increasing the potential for queasiness.
• I love trying new foods, but not on the day of a long bike ride. Stick with what you know and what you know works for you on those ride days.
• Breathe. While this is not really a nutrition tip, focusing on your breathing really does wonders for a nervous stomach.

I will end all of this with the caveat that everyone is different. My comments in this post are just some general ideas that ring true for a lot of people. But remember that what agrees with my digestive system may seem to disagree with yours. Only you know what works to make you feel your best, so again, use these weeks leading up to the ride to assess what works for you.

I also want to hear what works for you in the case of a nervous stomach. Please share your ideas by posting a comment for the team.

Ride on!

Shelley

Calculating Calories

Yikes, where does the time go!? I’ve been wanting to reply to the excellent questions raised in the comments to earlier post,s and finally have a chance to translate my thoughts into words on the screen. :o)

Liz raised a question about the difference in nutritional needs for different sports, specifically between running and cycling. The general answer is that the amount of calories you need for each varies, but the building blocks of the diet (i.e., carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins/minerals) are the same.

During endurance runs or bike rides, your body needs fuel from carbohydrates. Carbohydrate comes in many forms: Grains and fruits are primarily composed of carbohydrate, and sugar is also a carbohydrate. During the MS ride days and on longer training days you’ll want to snack on some type of carbohydrate food at the pit stops. (I’ll get into more detail about the amounts of carbohydrate we need in my next post.) During long running events, your body also needs carbohydrate…eating while running is a bit challenging, though, so that’s why gels and sports drinks (which have some sugar) come in handy for runners.

After completing an endurance event, whether cycling or running, some researchers advise that you should consume a snack with both carbohydrate and protein within about 30 minutes to aid muscle recovery. Not everyone agrees about this, but I tend to find this works for me.

To see how calorie needs vary from one activity to another, and how calorie needs vary based on your level of exertion, check out the calories-burned calculators at fitday.com.
http://www.fitday.com/webfit/burned/calories_burned.html

Here are a couple examples based on the calculators on this site.

• For a 5’5”, 140# 35-year-old woman, biking leisurely burns 410 calories/hour. Biking at racing speed (16-19mph) burns 634 calories per hour. For the same woman, running at 10 mph burns 519 calories per hour.

• For a 5;10” 175# 35-year-old man, biking leisurely burns 529 calories per hour. Biking at racing speed (16-19mph) burns 831 calories per hour. Running at 10 mph burns 680 calories per hour.

So, the amount of fuel you need depends on your age, height, weight, gender, the activity and how hard and how long you’re exercising. These calculators are just estimates, but they are a good place to start. You do not need to eat all those calories you're burning DURING the time of exercise, but you need to start the event well-nourished and be sure to re-nourish yourself well at the end. More on eating plan ideas to come later....

Ride on!

Shelley

Fluid Facts....How (much)?

I’ve covered the “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, and “why” of hydrating for exercise, so now we get to the final question:

“How much?”

There is no one universal answer to this question. Several factors affect how much fluid you need: the amount of time you’re on the bike, the weather, the type and amount of clothing you wear, your weight, your body’s ability to acclimate to different weather conditions, and your genetics—meaning some people are just genetically programmed to sweat more than others.

Estimated baseline fluid needs for endurance cycling are as follows:

• Before cycling (within approximately 2 hours before getting on your bike), drink 16 ounces of fluid.
• During cycling, drink 8 ounces every 15 minutes. Over the course of 1 hour during the time you're riding, at least half of that fluid should come from a sports drink to replace electrolytes.
• After cycling, drink 16 to 24 ounces within approximately 1-2 hours.

These amounts are a good baseline, but remember that you’ll need to bump this up when it’s hot or if you feel you are sweating more than usual.

You can determine your specific baseline fluid needs for exercise by measuring your "sweat rate". Here’s how it works:

1. Weigh yourself, wearing little or no clothing, before exercise.
2. Fill your water bottle and measure exactly how much fluid is in the bottle.
3. Then, exercise vigorously in controlled environmental conditions (such as on a treadmill inside or a Spin bike). Be sure to also monitor the length of time you exercise (ideally, approximately 30 minutes for this test.)
4. After exercising, weigh yourself, again wearing little or no clothing (We don’t want the weight of the sweat still trapped in your clothing to be measured.) Do not urinate until after you weight yourself.
5. Subtract your after-exercise weight from your pre-exercise weight. Your weight before exercise minus your weight after exercise=weight lost due to fluid lost through sweat and evaporation in the respiratory tract. (Weight lost during exercise is not “true” weight loss, but simply represents a fluid deficit during that exercise period.)
6. Measure how much fluid is left in your water bottle and determine exactly how much fluid you drank.
7. Every 1 pound of weight lost during this time period of exercise represents a 16-ounce fluid deficit—this is how much you need to add to the amount you drank during exercise to achieve adequate hydration.

To illustrate:

• Before a 60-minute Spin class, a cyclist’s weight (wearing little or no clothing) is 150 pounds. For this one class, she does not drink any fluid. After class, she weighs herself (again wearing little to no clothing) and her weight is 149 pounds. During class she drank 14 ounces of fluid.
• Her 1-pound weight loss during exercise represents a 16-ounce fluid deficit. The 14 ounces she drank during the 1-hour class was 16 ounces less than what she needed.
• Her total fluid needs for 1 hour of exercise would be:

12 ounces (the amount she did drink) + 16 ounces (representing her fluid deficit determined by her weight change) = 30 ounces.

This gives her a baseline for her fluid needs per hour, but she will need to remember that this amount will be higher during hotter weather.

Another more quick-and-easy way to assess whether you are drinking enough fluid during exercise is to check the color of your urine. If it’s clear or nearly clear, you’re hydrating enough. If not, you need to be drinking more fluids.

How much water? How much sports drink? A good rule of thumb for most people is to drink half water and half sports drink. Using two water bottles (one for water and one for a sports drink) works well to stay on track. Or, some people make a cocktail of half water and half sports drink in each bottle.

Is it possible for you to drink too much? Actually, yes, if you drink too much plain water without any electrolyte replacement, you may put yourself at risk for a condition called “hyponatremia”. I have first-hand experience with hyponatremia, and I’ll tell that story in my next post so you can learn from my mistakes. :o)

Until then, ride on!

Shelley

Fluid Facts: Why?

Hey Team!

I’ve got a couple more posts to round out my “Fluid Facts” theme….I’ve talked about the “who” “what” “where” and “when”, which brings us to “Why?”

Why do you need to think about fluid intake for exercise? Water plays a lot of roles in our bodies. It regulates our body temperature. It lubricates our joints (which is why water is so important for preventing joint pain). All of the metabolic functions in our bodies require fluid. It is what lets things move around from place to place in our bodies.

Our bloodstream is one of our bodies’ main transportation networks and we need water to keep that system flowing. It’s an odd analogy, but our bodies are sort of like the city of Venice, with the waterways representing our bloodstream. The term “dehydration” refers to having too little fluid in our blood, which can make the blood “thicker” and therefore makes the heart work harder to pump the blood through the body. What would happen if the water in the canals of Venice started to dry up? When the transportation system is stressed and things can’t be transported efficiently, the entire city would slow. It’s sort of the same when we get dehydrated: when oxygen and nutrients are not moving as efficiently through the bloodstream, our cognitive and athletic performance slows.

When we get dehydrated, our ability to cool our body also diminishes, putting us at risk for heatstroke. Dehydration also makes our muscles fatigue quicker. Because fluid helps keep our joints lubricated, join pain is another risk from dehydration.

Why do we also need to think specifically about sports drinks on longer rides? The electrolytes in those beverages replace the electrolytes we lose in our sweat. A normal balance of electrolytes in our bodies is essential. Sodium and potassium are the most commonly discussed electrolytes. You may remember from your high school chemistry class that electrolytes are basically substances that are “ions” in solution, which means they are able to transmit electrical impulses. Our brain and muscles depend on these electrical impulses for communication, and when the concentration of electrolytes in the bloodstream is too high or too low, that communication is disrupted, leading to potentially serious problems.

Sports drinks also provide a little bit of carbohydrate (usually in the form of sugar), which helps fuel our muscles. Carbohydrates are the fuel for our muscles (like gas fuels a car), but the body can only store a small amount of carbohydrate. When cycling for a long time, our muscles can “use up” any carbohydrate stored in the body and then will need us to consume more carbohydrate (more on carbs in a future post). Just like a car that runs out of gas, if we don’t fuel our bodies we’ll be stranded too!

So, the most obvious answer to the question of why we need to think about fluids during endurance exercise is that fluids keep us alive! But, in addition to that, staying well-hydrated also keeps our bodies running smoothly and lets us enjoy the ride.

Ride on!
Shelley