Picking Foods as Fuel

These days it’s more difficult than ever to actually determine which foods are actually worth their calories and which will hinder your goals. Marketing departments have done a lot of work to make us see the following words as ‘healthy:’ keto, paleo, vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, fat-free, and smart (whatever that means). The fact of the matter is though that any of these can be just as counterproductive as a chocolate bar. Choices matter! Here are some quick tips for choosing food that works for you rather than against you.

Thinking differently about what you eat

Why do you eat? Is it to satisfy hunger? For energy? Because you like to? For most of us it’s all of the above. For those who are working at changing our bodies and training hard in the gym food has an additional function: fuel for performance and building blocks for muscle. By being aware and conscientious of those two food-functions you can make better food choices - even when you’re indulging! Overtime this will become intuitive and you’ll barely have to think about it as your mindset around food shifts to support your fitness goals.

Disclaimer: this advice will work best if you know how to read a food label and it will work even better if you have some practice at it. It’s good practice to always read food labels even if you’re not currently dieting because overtime you will gain an intuitive sense for the nutritional value of many different foods.

Food for energy and performance

When we’re talking about food that gives you energy and increases your performance in the gym we’re typically alluding to carbohydrate-dominant foods. Recall the bottom two steps of the food pyramid (fruit, vegetables, and grains). These foods predominately contain carbohydrates in the form of fibres and sugars. Simply put, digesting these foods leads to a higher concentration of circulating glucose (blood sugar/available energy) and glycogen (stored energy) in your muscles.

This article isn’t about metabolism, but there are a few helpful things to understand when it comes to choosing carb-rich foods. Simple carbs like sucrose, fructose, and glucose (cane sugar, fruit, honey etc.) digest quickly and provide a rapidly available source of energy for your muscles and brain. More complex carbs like the starches found in grains and starchy vegetables are slower to digest and provide a sustained release of energy over time. Typically you’ll want to imbibe slow releasing carbs prior to a heavy training session (to give you energy throughout your workout) and a mix of slow and fast carbs following exercise (to replenish blood glucose and glycogen levels).

When it comes to bodybuilding type training many athletes have a special relationship with pre-workout carbs. Having a good supply of glycogen in your muscles has the pleasant side-effect of causing intracellular water retention (not to be confused with subcutaneous water retention, otherwise known as bloat). This causes muscles to appear much fuller and can facilitate a greater pump! So if you know you’re going to have a carb-heavy cheat meal and there’s just no getting around it, try to eat it within a few hours before your workout to put those extra calories and carbs to work!

Food for muscle growth and repair

No surprises here, I’m talking about protein. Muscles are made of proteins and proteins are made of amino acids. When you eat protein it is broken down into amino acids by your digestive system. You need a certain amount of amino acids circulating around your bloodstream for the body to construct new muscles (anabolism). If you were to completely deprive your body of new amino acids it would resort to breaking down existing muscle tissue (catabolism) to release amino acids needed for vital organ function.

It stands to reason then that if you’re trying to build muscle than you want to be in a constant state of amino acid surplus (this sentence if oversimplifying things, but bear with me). If you find yourself choosing a meal or a snack during the day and you haven’t eaten in a while it’s always a good choice to have something with at least a little protein in it to keep your body well supplied. Also, you would be pretty hard-pressed to find any food that is relatively low in fat and carbs but high in protein that wouldn’t be considered ‘healthy.’ Forget about all the marketing buzzwords, if you’re looking for a healthy snack and you don’t want to think that hard about it go for something low in carbs and fat, but high in protein.

What about fat?

Fat is tricky. You need it to survive (it plays a large role in hormone regulation and certain metabolic processes), but it comes in so many different varieties that different fatty foods can be entirely non equivalent in terms of ‘healthiness.’ For example, salmon meat and potato chips are both high in fat, but one is full of healthy fats and the other… Not so much.

Luckily when it comes to good fat vs bad fat, you can typically use your best judgement and common sense. Sure you could scour the label to look at saturated versus unsaturated fat (should look for food with more unsaturated than saturated), but most people are generally pretty good at recognizing that the fat in an egg is better than the fat in French fries.

Regarding fats I won’t say anything else other than to not neglect them if you’re following a very strict diet. Fats contain more than double as many calories per gram than carbs and protein and therefore some people tend to avoid them so that they can eat more in a day. This is a mistake for two reasons. One: you need fat to survive and feel good. And two: a meal or snack with fat can be very filling and leave you feeling satiated far longer than one without.

Disordered eating

Because I’m advocating for food choice restriction (even if it’s in the loosest sense) I feel the need to also give a disclaimer about disordered eating. Any time you begin to restrict your eating habits you run the risk for getting carried away and falling into disordered eating. If you feel like you are beginning to develop attitudes around food that feel unreasonably inflexible or if you begin feeling shame or anxiety with eating than it is time to ease back on things and consider seeking help.

Summary

If you are new to fitness and nutrition than following a set a meal plan can be the best way to learn about the power of food on your body, but if you’re human you’ll deviate from time-to-time either because of temptations or simply because a situation has arose that makes it impossible to follow your meal plan. In those situations (or in the case where you’re not following a meal plan) the amount of options you have for ‘healthy foods’ can be overwhelming. But by being mindful of the above information you can make better choices while still enjoying the foods you love.