The Secret Is Out: Using Nutrition to Reach Your Goals

Home  »  nutrition • Oh Yeah! • Passion • Uncategorized   »   The secret is out! And how you can use nutrition to reach your goals.

So here’s the big revelation.

I’ve been teasing for a while now that I’m doing my placement with a pretty big football club.

Dropping hints here and clues even more obvious than how a teenage boy would on a girl whom he has a huge crush on.

It’s so obvious that you pretty much should know which team I’ve working with right now.

To those who are still clueless, you should really improve your observational skills.

If you still don’t know, I’ll spare you the suspense, the team I’m currently doing my work placement now with is Cardiff City FC!

I’m here for a month on a work placement as a sports nutritionist.

My responsibilities ranges from filling up the supplements for the players, preparing their water bottles and doing consultations with them.

Being a sports nutritionist, one might think my role is to prance around the dining room when the players have their food and ring the alarm whenever I see them eat something bad.

Let’s be clear, I am not the food police and my job is not to “catch” people and put them in dietary prison for their nutrition crimes.

Instead, it very much boils down to education and guiding the football players on how eating influences their performance and how it can help them play better.

Let’s be frank, as elite athletes most would expect them to have sound nutritional knowledge and be eating well.

But truth be told, they are very much like a normal person walking on the street that requires nutritional guidance.

If they already knew everything about nutrition and how it relates to performance, I would be out of a job!

Throughout the time I’ve spent there, working with the first team , Under-21’s and academy level players made me realize something.

 

Nutrition coaching goes beyond the rocket science they teach you in school.

The basic biochemistry and physiology is very important but how you translate that into something tangible for the lay person plays a larger role in good nutrition.

Translating the science for the layperson to implement plays a larger role in nutrition than science alone. <—– Click To Tweet!!

I can blabber all that about how consuming carbohydrates at certain times can maintain plasma glucose levels and enhance performance while restricting it sometimes can enhance adaptation through mitochondrial biogenesis.

Tell that to a football player and he’ll feel worse than getting red carded after scoring an own goal.

It just won’t work!

From what I’ve observed, nutrition really boils down to making things simple. When you start getting the simple things right, then there’s other advance rocket science you can implement.

If someone have no idea when or why they should be consuming protein, I’m not going to throw a cupboard full of beta-alanine and cherry active at them and tell them it would improve performance.

The first step is to educate them on the role of protein play in muscle growth, regeneration and recovery.  Once that’s nailed down, now I can start prescribing my creatine and other supplements that can give an extra boost.

Despite being elite football players, I treat them like how I would treat any other client I have.

As a person who has a job to do, a family to take care of and a life to live.

It’s just that their job right now is to play football and yours might be something else.

At the end of the day, we’re all people who show up daily to work, wanting to do the best we can.

Thank you Dr James Morton for helping me understand this better.

And my job is to make nutrition as simple as possible so that they can use it to their advantage.

It’s not so much about the rocket science, it’s about building rapport, developing relationships and then inflicting small changes that could lead to bigger results in the long run.

That’s how I see my role as a sports nutritionist.

I promised a little nutritional takeaway(pun definitely intended) for all my readers. So here’s something I think you can put into practice.

It’s something I’ve told some of the football players as well.

The goal of nutrition is to support the goal you’re trying to achieve from your training.

For most people, it’s some form of physique change, be it an increase of muscle mass or simply to lose weight.

Let that goal dictate what your nutrition will be like.

Just to throw it a few easy guides, here’s a table on how can use each macronutrient to help you reach your goals.

It’s a simple recommendation, but I think most people can’t even get it right.

Here’s the table:

 

	Fat loss	Muscle Gain
Protein	Increase amount to help stay full	Moderate amount 1.6g-2g/kg bodyweight
Fat	Moderate, have some omega 3’s as part of your diet	Can be used to add additional calories if needed
Carbs	At enough that will still allow you to lose fat. Have it	Carbs are your friend, if you
	around your training window	Aren’t gaining weight, increase carb intake.

So there’s a simple table on how each macronutrient can change according to what your goals are.

Fat loss

The reason why protein intake is particularly important for fat loss is because it helps keep you full for longer period of time. The lower your hunger episodes are, the better your chances of not overeating and binging.

Besides, it’s important to preserve lean muscle mass while trying to lose fat, and protein does exactly that.

As for carbohydrates, think of it as performance fuel.

The more you put in, the better you can perform during training, so completely restricting it wouldn’t be wise.

But when it comes to fat loss, because carbs or so easily consume, it would be wise to monitor how much you are consuming.

Eat as much as you need yet not losing the ability to lose fat.

In doing so, chances are you’ll feel happier and perform better during training. Which are both important keys when it comes to long term fat loss.

Muscle Gain

Protein intake need not be as high as most people think it should be. This is because being in a mass gain phase, we are by default already in caloric surplus and this spare/build lean mass if training is done right. 

However adequate amount is needed to ensure muscle growth, so anywhere from 1.6-2g/kg of bodyweight should be just fine.

When it comes to gaining muscle, carbs are your best friend. Not only because it can help improve training, but it is also easily consumed calories.

Calories plays an important role when it comes to gaining weight. If you find that your training is going great and you’re not putting on any weight on the scale, sometimes to change that, it’s as easy as adding 2 slices of toast a day.

My take on fat is pretty similar for both goals, be watchful with the amount you eat and make sure a part of it comprises of Omega 3’s which can be obtained from fatty fish or a fish oil supplement.

If you are eating enough carbs and still find it hard to gain weight, bumping up your fat intake can be a viable strategy.

So there you go, a pretty much no brainer guide you can take home and start tailoring it to your goals.

I have slightly less than 2 weeks left for my placement and then I’m back to London which holds some pretty exciting things before Christmas comes, so do check back every now and then to stay updated!

P/S: I have something special in mind for Christmas for all my readers, I’m sure it’s something you don’t want to miss out on!

 

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