spend hours training only to squander a portion of the potential fitness gains by eating less-than-optimal foods.
What are optimal foods? These are the categories of foods that have been eaten by our Paleolithic ancestors for millions of years; the ones to which we are fully adapted through an inheritance of genes from the many generations that preceded us here on Earth: fruits, vegetables, and lean protein from animal sources. Optimal foods also include nuts, seeds, and berries. These are also the most micronutrient-dense foods available to us—they’re rich in vitamins, minerals, and other trace elements necessary for health, growth, and recovery. Table 4.7 compares the vitamin and mineral density of several foods. Those with the highest content are in boldface. Notice that vegetables especially provide an abundant level of vitamins and minerals; most other foods pale by comparison.
Stage V Recovery Guidelines
In terms of athletic performance, the nutritional goals and guidelines for this stage of recovery are as follows.
Maintain glycogen stores. For some time prior to this stage of recovery, you intently focused your diet around carbohydrate, especially high glycemic load sources such as the sugars in starchy foods. While these foods are excellent for restocking the body’s glycogen stores, they are not nutrient dense (see Table 4.7 ). There is no longer a need to eat large quantities of such foods; in fact, they will diminish your potential for recovery. Every calorie eaten from a less-than-optimal food means a lost opportunity to take in much larger amounts of health- and fitness-enhancing vitamins and minerals from vegetables, fruits, and lean animal protein. The more serious you are about your athletic performance, the more important this is.
TABLE 4.7
Comparison of Vitamin and Mineral Density of Selected Foods (standard units)
The highest vitamin and mineral contents in each column are indicated by a bold listing.
* No information available
Furthermore, one of the beauties of the human body is that, regardless of which system or function we are talking about, it takes less concentrated effort to maintain than to rebuild. This means that by eating prodigious quantities of high glycemic load carbohydrates in the previous stages, you’ve rebuilt your body’s glycogen stores, and now less carbohydrate is required to maintain that level. Low glycemic load fruits and vegetables will accomplish that while also providing the micronutrients needed for this last stage of recovery.
Rebuild muscle tissues. Despite your best efforts to take in amino acids in recovery, if the workout was sufficiently difficult, you will have suffered some muscle cell damage. If you could use an electron microscope to look into the muscles used in an intensely hard training today, it would look like a war zone, albeit a very tiny one. You would see tattered cell membranes and leaking fluids. The body would be mobilizing its “triage services” to repair the damage as quickly as possible. To do this, the body needs amino acids in rather large quantities. Most needed are the branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) you read about earlier. Without them, the body is forced to cannibalize other protein cells to find sufficient amounts of the right amino acids to complete the job. Also needed are the essential amino acids, those that the body cannot produce and that must come from food.
BCAA and essential amino acids are most abundant in animal products. If you’re hesitant to eat red meat from feedlot-raised animals, we don’t blame you. The common beef products you buy in supermarkets are a poor source of food. While certainly rich in BCAA, meats from feedlot-raised animals are also packed with omega-6 polyunsaturated fats and other questionable chemical additives and are best avoided.
So what should you eat to provide BCAA and the essential amino acids for your rebuilding muscles? The best possible source would be meat from game animals
What are optimal foods? These are the categories of foods that have been eaten by our Paleolithic ancestors for millions of years; the ones to which we are fully adapted through an inheritance of genes from the many generations that preceded us here on Earth: fruits, vegetables, and lean protein from animal sources. Optimal foods also include nuts, seeds, and berries. These are also the most micronutrient-dense foods available to us—they’re rich in vitamins, minerals, and other trace elements necessary for health, growth, and recovery. Table 4.7 compares the vitamin and mineral density of several foods. Those with the highest content are in boldface. Notice that vegetables especially provide an abundant level of vitamins and minerals; most other foods pale by comparison.
Stage V Recovery Guidelines
In terms of athletic performance, the nutritional goals and guidelines for this stage of recovery are as follows.
Maintain glycogen stores. For some time prior to this stage of recovery, you intently focused your diet around carbohydrate, especially high glycemic load sources such as the sugars in starchy foods. While these foods are excellent for restocking the body’s glycogen stores, they are not nutrient dense (see Table 4.7 ). There is no longer a need to eat large quantities of such foods; in fact, they will diminish your potential for recovery. Every calorie eaten from a less-than-optimal food means a lost opportunity to take in much larger amounts of health- and fitness-enhancing vitamins and minerals from vegetables, fruits, and lean animal protein. The more serious you are about your athletic performance, the more important this is.
TABLE 4.7
Comparison of Vitamin and Mineral Density of Selected Foods (standard units)
The highest vitamin and mineral contents in each column are indicated by a bold listing.
* No information available
Furthermore, one of the beauties of the human body is that, regardless of which system or function we are talking about, it takes less concentrated effort to maintain than to rebuild. This means that by eating prodigious quantities of high glycemic load carbohydrates in the previous stages, you’ve rebuilt your body’s glycogen stores, and now less carbohydrate is required to maintain that level. Low glycemic load fruits and vegetables will accomplish that while also providing the micronutrients needed for this last stage of recovery.
Rebuild muscle tissues. Despite your best efforts to take in amino acids in recovery, if the workout was sufficiently difficult, you will have suffered some muscle cell damage. If you could use an electron microscope to look into the muscles used in an intensely hard training today, it would look like a war zone, albeit a very tiny one. You would see tattered cell membranes and leaking fluids. The body would be mobilizing its “triage services” to repair the damage as quickly as possible. To do this, the body needs amino acids in rather large quantities. Most needed are the branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) you read about earlier. Without them, the body is forced to cannibalize other protein cells to find sufficient amounts of the right amino acids to complete the job. Also needed are the essential amino acids, those that the body cannot produce and that must come from food.
BCAA and essential amino acids are most abundant in animal products. If you’re hesitant to eat red meat from feedlot-raised animals, we don’t blame you. The common beef products you buy in supermarkets are a poor source of food. While certainly rich in BCAA, meats from feedlot-raised animals are also packed with omega-6 polyunsaturated fats and other questionable chemical additives and are best avoided.
So what should you eat to provide BCAA and the essential amino acids for your rebuilding muscles? The best possible source would be meat from game animals
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