Nutritional periodization weight of food questions

[rubenzmd]

Cody,
I just finished listening to your nutritional periodization podcast. I thought it was a good big picture description. What gram per kg of fat, protein and carbs do you advise? How does one weigh things? Guesstimate? A real food scale? Look on the package label? Should the kg be my ideal weight or current weight?

Do you plan on race day nutrition and hydration podcast? I need it. I need to train my gut also.

Ruben

[Cody Waite]

Thanks for the question Ruben.
My personal recommendation for someone that wants to really track the nutrition side of things is to use the app MyFitnessPal.

Rather than focus on specific grams of macronutrients, focus on percentages of macronutrients you’re consuming within your total daily “allowance” of calories. The app can be set to determine a daily calorie goal and if you link to your Training Peaks it will add in the training calories you burn as well. You can also adjust your macros within the app based on your current training focus (ie. base, build, peak) to compute your total grams per macro.
* The total grams will change daily based on how much training you’re doing on the given day; your percentages will remain more or less the same within training days of under 1000 calories.

On big days, training more than 1000 calories, you will want to focus on adding more carbs (on long rides and/or race or intensity days) and more fat (when it’s low intensity base training), while keeping protein grams more or less the same. Your protein needs in grams don’t change a whole lot…other than adding a bit more on strength days. You’ll naturally get more protein in on longer days simply by eating more total volume of food, without making an effort to eat more protein.

In general think of the macros as fuel: fat for slow endurance, carbs for faster endurance & speed, and protein for muscle repair. Consider the overall training objectives of your training period (ie. base, build and peak/race) for the big picture, as well as your daily training to adjust the macros to follow suit.

Here is a good article with a range of grams per body weight of macros to get you in the right area…
https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/understanding-nutrition-periodization/

Hope this helps!

…and yes we will get into fueling for higher intensity training AND fueling for racing in future podcast episodes. Thanks for listening (and don’t forget to leave a rating (5 stars!) and review.

[Cody Waite]

Ruben,
I forgot to answer all your questions 😉

So measuring & weighing food will be helpful to begin with. After a while you will begin to look at food and estimate the amounts pretty accurately. Volumetric measurement is used most often for liquids & dry foods; weight measurements are used for “bulkier” foods like say strawberries or pizza that don’t fill volumetric measurements easily, compared to rice or oatmeal. So a food scale will be helpful as will measuring spoons & cups.

And for grams/kg allotments, use your current weight for macros… and create a total caloric deficit of around 300-500 calories per day to make a fat loss of 0.5-1 lbs per week. On lighter training days stick to a lower deficit (200-300) and bigger training days you can push it to a larger deficit (500-600)… this help keep you from feeling like you’re ‘starving’.

*keeping the intensity low here is key here as well when you’re dealing with caloric deficits…tap into those fat stores and don’t ‘ignite’ the sugar burning ‘furnace’ that will make you hungry later in the day.

Hope this helps!

[Author]

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