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Stealing Athlete Nutrition Techniques

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sound-design-live-stealing-athlete-nutrition-techniques-Chuck_NorrisIn this last post in my series on food and drink at work, I’d like to share with you some of the diet and nutrition techniques that I’ve been introduced to while hanging out with athletes. In my interview with Wendy Jo Peterson we mentioned energy gels, caffeine, and recovery drink, and I want to say a few more things about each of those to put some new ideas in your head about eating healthy on the job.

Gatorade/Red Bull/Monster Energy

A popular slogan going around the world of athletics right now is “Hydration in your bottles. Food in your pockets.” Remember it. When you try to quench your thirst with a drink that has a lot of carbohydrates (sugar), your body actually has to take water away from your muscles in order to digest the drink — not a great way to hydrate. Stay away from calorie-and-sugar-rich energy drinks like Gatorade and Coke. It’s tempting to have a soda because they are readily available, and you may feel justified in having a Red Bull because you are working long hours, but you’ll feel a lot better on a long day if you avoid these and stick to drinking water throughout the day and eating solid food when you need to up your energy stores.

sound-design-live-stealing-athlete-nutrition-techniques-energy-gelSnack tip: For long low-intensity work, like sitting behind a mixing board at an all-day corporate event, break up your snacks. Your body can only process so much food energy at once, so if you want to get the full benefit of your food, instead of eating an entire energy bar at once, eat a couple of bites every 20 minutes. For high-intensity work, such as large load-ins, have an energy gel or another simple-sugar/low-fiber food (jelly beans, pretzels, etc.) every 45 minutes for the duration of the work.

Caffeine

Did you know that your body builds up a tolerance to caffeine? Many endurance athletes use products during competition that have caffeine in them, but that won’t do them any good if they slam espressos all the time when they’re not competing.  Coaches frequently recommend that athletes have one cup of regular coffee in the morning (about half the amount of caffeine they will consume during one hour of competition), and then switch to decaf.

If you wash down your 5-hour Energy shot with a Red Bull, you’ll quickly become desensitized. You might feel a little bump, but you’ll definitely feel a big crash. Go easy on the caffeine in your day-to-day life so that when you really need that extra energy for heavy lifting, your caffeinated energy gels or espresso will actually do something for you.

Recover Faster, Work Easier

When you do physical labor, you deplete your muscles of glycogen, which is the most readily-available energy source for your body (fat is another source, but it takes longer to turn into a form you can use). After hard work, you want to replace your muscle glycogen within an hour of finishing work, when your muscles are most receptive to refueling and repair — that’s called your “glycogen window.” Athletes usually replenish using a four-to-one carbohydrate-to-protein ratio; the carbohydrate loads your muscles up with glycogen and the protein helps your muscles repair themselves. Solid foods are best for after-work recovery, but can be substituted with recovery drink when necessary. When is that necessary? For example, if you’re done working but you have an hour commute home and you forgot to bring a snack. Keep a packet of recovery mix, like GU Recovery Brew, or a shelf-stable box of chocolate milk (a lot of athletes recover with chocolate milk because it has the correct ratio and is readily available/often cheaper than fancy mixes!) in your car and drink one of them on your drive home.  Then, have a real meal within three hours of finishing. Your body will thank you.

sound-design-live-stealing-athlete-nutrition-techniques-complex-carbohydratesCarbohydrate Loading

Carb loading is widely misunderstood, and it’s not a free pass to eat all the pasta and bread you want (sorry). Don’t eat a big meal right before work, because it will just sit in your gut and divert energy away from your muscles for digestion. You need to allow time for the food to process through your system.

So, if you are working early in the morning, eat plenty of complex carbohydrates like whole wheat pasta, brown rice, or sweet potatoes for dinner, then have a light breakfast the next day. If you are working at night, eat a big breakfast with complex carbs like oatmeal or whole-grain pancakes, and then a light lunch. The idea is that your body needs several hours to make your food available for action, and whatever you eat right before work won’t have enough time to actually to help you work, it will only draw energy you need to do your job into your digestive system. If you work with musicians or actors, you may have noticed that they like to eat dinner after the show, not before. This is why.

Also remember, it’s called carboHYDRATE for a reason — it helps your muscles store water and remain hydrated, so it is important that you drink a bunch of water with your major pre-game meal.

Food Diary

If you really want to dial in your nutrition, keep a food diary. Note how you feel at regular intervals in the day and see how that relates to what you eat. Did you feel really weak at the end of the day? Maybe you didn’t eat enough overall. Did you feel tired at the middle of the day? Perhaps you ate too big a meal right before starting work that made you feel sluggish. Did you feel rested the next morning? A diary will help you remember what you ate during your glycogen window and increase it next time.

Future Food

Now accepting human trials.

  • sound-design-live-stealing-athlete-nutrition-techniques-jetsons-food-pillSoylent: Have you heard of this kid in San Francisco who has stopped eating food? Instead, he is drinking a food substitute. Meal substitutes have been around for a while, but this is intended to supply all of the human body’s daily nutrition. As you can imagine, it’s very controversial. The original article is How I Stopped Eating Food. Not sure if that one will be up forever because they raised $1,000,000 on KickStarter and are now selling direct on this site. Please let me know if you try it in the comments below.
  • Noni juice: Produced mostly in Tahiti and Hawaii, the Polynesians have been using it has a remedy for over 2,000 years. With no scientifically proven health benefits it is, again, very controversial. I’ve been trying it for a month, but haven’t developed the super powers I expected. I’ll let you know, or you’ll just read about me in the news.
  • Honey: Honey is organic and virtually indestructible. It can be used to help you sleep and treat heartburn. It’s also basically bee vomit and it has been shown to have no nutritional value over table sugar. Keeping with the athlete theme, Tour de France champion Greg LeMond (who had a huge sweet tooth) says that the difference between sugar and honey is that one sticks to your teeth.
  • Chia seeds: These little seeds became popular alongside the barefoot running craze when the book Born to Run came out. They’re supposed to be an Aztec superfood that make you feel full for a long time and help you run long distances. Some athletes mix them with water or fruit juice in a flask to make their own custom energy gel.

What are some of your favorite food tips?

Great thanks for the considerable input from Elis Bradshaw.

BOOK REVIEW: Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies

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sound-design-live-mediterranean-diet-cookbook-dummies-bookI follow Wendy Jo Peterson on Twitter (@FuelinRoadie) because she is the the only nutritionist I’ve come across who works specifically with musicians and live event crew. As part of my series on food and drink at work, I decided to review her book, Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies. The few things I know about cooking I picked up from friends and family, and this is the first cookbook that I’ve owned and used. It’s easy to read; each recipe is simple and straightforward, requiring only a few steps. Let’s jump right into some of Wendy’s best meals to take to work:

 

Best Recipes To Take To Work

Frittata

I love meals that last for days, and this is definitely one of them. If you’ve never made one, they are super simple. Basically, you just sauteé whatever veggies you like and throw a bunch of eggs on top. I like to make a big one for the week and heat up a slice in the morning. You may or may not enjoy this cold, so it’s best to make it when you have a microwave at work.

The first recipe I made from the cookbook was the Goat Cheese Fritatta, which was great, but I had to double the salt, pepper, and garlic to suit my tastebuds. This makes me think that the seasonings in these Mediterranean recipes might be toned down to please bland American palates.

Salad

Salads are great to take to work, but they wilt and taste like crap when they are hot, so if you are going to be outside take an ice pack with you. In the last post I mentioned Wendy’s salad in a jar, which is a great way to prepare salads ahead of time and keep them fresh. Don’t forget to include nuts and beans for added protein. And fruit salads! There is a recipe for Pomegranate Salad in the book that looks great.

If you want to turn your salad into a more substantial meal, add salmon or tuna (or tofu for vegetarians). If you want to please your stomach with more carbs, add pasta.

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Couscous and Polenta

Couscous and polenta keep well in the fridge for days. I included a great couscous recipe in my last post, Eat Healthy On Tour. Polenta will congeal when not kept warm, so you can just cut off a slice and pop it in the toaster. Peterson includes a recipe for Polenta with Prosciutto and Parmesan, but I like to use mushrooms and onion instead of prosciutto.

Beans

The cookbook includes several recipes with beans that would both taste good cold and be fine to carry around, including Black Beans with Tomatoes and Feta. The secret ingredient for most of these recipes is feta cheese. Yum.

Wendy suggests eating protein-rich food together with a bit of fat to slow digestion at meals. As you can see, all of the above recipes can be modified to have more or less protein and fat. The other recipe from this cookbook that I tried out myself was Grilled Scallops. Scallops are great! They are a little expensive and might be hard to find fresh in your town, but they are super easy to prepare on a grill or in a pan and make for a very impressive meal.

The Mediterranean Lifestyle

Research has shown that people who live in these areas have less heart disease and better longevity.

This book is more than a cookbook; it also includes a nice survey on the Mediterranean lifestyle and its health benefits. This is important because heart disease is the number one cause of death in the US. There is a great story in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers about Roseto, a US town that in the 1950s was heavily populated by Italian immigrants and had an incredibly low rate of heart disease compared with the rest of the country. After researchers exhausted all other hypotheses about diet, exercise, and location, they discovered that it was the community itself that made people more healthy. You can read the entire story here. Along with nutrition, Peterson’s cookbook covers some of these intangible qualities of work-life balance in her attempt to describe the Mediterranean lifestyle.

[quote name=”Wendy Jo Peterson” align=”left” picture=”https://www.sounddesignlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/food-drink-at-work-for-sound-engineers-wendy-jo-peterson-headshot.jpg”]Mediterranean diet is a way of life – one where you eat lots of fresh food and slow down.[/quote]

I experienced a version of Mediterranean diet while I lived in Portugal 2003-2008. While Wendy recommends eating seafood and drinking wine a couple of times a week, I’m thinking, people in Lisbon do this for every lunch and dinner! Woohoo! That’s because you can eat a complete fish lunch for the same price as buying the fish yourself. And you can get a bottle of great local wine for $4. Portugal doesn’t have a siesta after lunch like Spain, but you usually get an hour off for lunch and having alcohol with your meal isn’t taboo. (Speaking of taboo, did you know that Portugal decriminalized all drugs ten years ago? Apparently they’ve reduced national drug addiction by half. Read about it here.)

Mediterranean Diet Cookbook also has good information on incorporating more plant-based foods into your diet. This is important to me because I eat mostly vegetarian, but also because I recently watched the documentary Knives Over Forks. If you haven’t seen it, it basically blames meat and dairy for cancer. Polarizing much?

Conclusion

When I started reading this book, I thought: “I’m going to find some fast easy recipes for busy sound engineers.” In the end I found a lot more value in the recommendations for relaxation and stress reduction. There is much more to the Mediterranean lifestyle than just olives and wine. It’s gathering for food with our friends, family, and community that really reenforces our human connections and emotional balance.

Do you have a Mediterranean style life-hack?

For more about how to recover from a long work day, the best snacks for instant energy, and nutrient-rich meals for the road, listen to my entire interview with Wendy Jo Peterson.

Healthy Eating On Tour

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sound-design-live-healthy-eating-on-the-road-catsAnyone who has been on tour knows how tough it is to eat healthy on the road: you eat out for every meal, which usually means fast food. Fortunately there are smart choices you can make, as Wendy Jo Peterson points out in her article Healthy Eating On The Run. In this post I will cover the two tips from Peterson’s original article that are most applicable to sound engineers. For more from Wendy Jo Peterson, listen to my interview with her, Food And Drink At Work For Sound Engineers.

Make A Plan

[quote name=”Wendy Jo Peterson” align=”left” picture=”https://www.sounddesignlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/food-drink-at-work-for-sound-engineers-wendy-jo-peterson-headshot.jpg”]Think ahead. Plan where you will eat and consider what meal options are available. Look for restaurants or carry-out with a wide range of menu items.[/quote]

Eating healthy will be easier down the road if everyone is on the same page from the start. Bring up the topic of food at the very first pre-tour meeting. One or two naysayers can easily derail group decision making, so it is better to have issues come out early in the game instead of right before dinner. Some people, especially actors, might want to always eat after the show; you’ll have to work that timing out. In my experience those people are in the minority and have no problem getting their food to go when everyone else eats before the show.

If you are on a small tour, then the tour manager is also likely the bus driver, the technical director, and the drummer. That means they won’t have time to organize every meal. Offering to find a couple of meal options in each new city means that you won’t end up eating burgers night after night. The best strategy is to find two or three different restaurants with healthy options and carry-out within a block of each other so that there will be something to satisfy everyone. Tools like Yelp and UrbanSpoon can simplify the process. Just figure out where you will be around lunch time and put that location into Yelp. Afterwards, build good karma by writing a short review of those places with notes for other tourists.

Making a plan also means preparing some meals ahead of time, for when things run late. For snacks, bring a bag of your favorite fresh or dried fruits and whole-food bars (Kind Bar, Laura Bar). For a true meal, try a protein-rich sandwich with hummus and sprouts or a salad in a jar. What is salad in a jar? Take a mason jar and layer dressing on the bottom, dense veggies or beans next, then light or leafy vegetables, and pasta or potatoes on top. When it’s time for lunch, just shake it all up and eat it. Want more ideas? Listen to the entire interview:

 

Make Smart Restaurant Choices

No matter where you end up eating, you can make smart choices with any menu.

  1. Menu terms that often mean lower fat and calories: baked, braised, broiled, grilled, poached, roasted, steamed.
  2. Menu terms that often mean more fat and calories: batter-fried, pan-fried, buttered, creamed, crispy, breaded.
  3. Go easy on the booze. Alcohol tends to increase your appetite and provides calories without any nutrients. (Drinking alcohol reduces your blood sugar level, therefore fooling your body into thinking that it needs more food.)
  4. A baked potato offers more fiber, fewer calories, and less fat than fries as long as you skip the sour cream and butter. Top your potato with broccoli and a sprinkle of cheese or salsa. (I LOVE FRIES! That is all.)
  5. Go easy on the sour cream, cheese, mayonnaise, tartar sauce, guacamole, bacon, and other high-fat toppings. (Fries need sauce! Damn it!! Oh, apparently ketchup is okay.)
  6. Try a smoothie made with juice, fruit, and yogurt for a light lunch or snack. (I wish there were a JambaJuice next to every place I worked!)

Bonus Recipies

Here are a couple of great meals that I make regularly and take to work with me. See the full article at Super Easy Meals That Last You For Days.

sound-design-live-healthy-eating-on-the-road-couscous-protein-recipeSANDWICH

  1. Carbohydrates: Bread
  2. Protein: Meats (turkey, ham), Cheese (gouda), Hummus
  3. Vitamins: Avocado, Tomato

 COUSCOUS MEDLEY

  1. Carbohydrates: Couscous
  2. Protein: Meat/Cheese (tuna)
  3. Vitamins: Crunchy (vegetables)/Soft (fruit)
  4. Dressing: Olive Oil, Lemon Juice

To prepare: Make Couscous, chop vegetables and fruit, mix everything

Cost: About $10

Value: About 3 meals

As you can see, this recipe is simple and flexible. Grab whatever fruits and vegetables you like at the store, then mix to taste. You can also substitute healthy nut oils (pumpkin seed, hazelnut, walnut, etc.) for the olive oil and balsamic or sherry vinegar for the lemon juice to change up the dressing. For an Asian-inspired dressing, try a little toasted sesame oil and seasoned rice vinegar. A dab of mustard will help prevent your dressing from separating.

What are your favorite ways to eat healthy on the road?

Food And Drink At Work For Sound Engineers

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Subscribe on iTunes or SoundCloud.

On this episode of the Sound Design Live Podcast I speak with Wendy Jo Peterson about making good food and drink choices at work. We discuss the best snacks for instant energy, nutrient-rich meals for the road, and common food myths. We also talk about how to recover from a long work day, nutrition apps, and how to analyze your urine to determine your de/hydration level. Hurray!

When you start to feel thirsty you are 2% dehydrated and at 4% you’re at risk for death.

Details from the podcast

  1. All music by Gala Drop
  2. Wendy Jo on Instagram and Twitter
  3. Aioli is a sauce made with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and egg yolks.
  4. High glycemic (i.e. high calorie, high simple sugar, fast energy) snacks: Energy Gels (instant energy), Justin’s Nut Butters, honey (could spike the gut, better for off-hours)
  5. Moderate glycemic snacks with complex carbohydrates (less likely to make you crash): Greener banana, apple, orange, grapes, roasted sweet potato w/lime zest, Kind Bar, Laura Bar
  6. Food at work:
    1. Protein rich sandwich with hummus and sprouts
    2. Almond butter with apple slices
    3. Salad in a jar: dressing on the bottom, dense veggies or beans next, more leafy vegetables, pasta or potatoes on top, shake it, eat it. See more about this on Wendy’s video about bus-friendly foods.
    4. Greek yogurt with goji berries and chopped nuts
  7. Recovery nutrition: Take 30min to get a good meal instead of heading straight to snacks and alcohol. Substitute with a shake or nutty trail mix.
  8. Galeria Zé Dos Bois
  9. Food Apps: Foodicate, Calorie King, MyFitnessPal, My Daily Plate
  10. Bright yellow or brown urine in the afternoon = too many supplements and possible dehydration
  11. CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. $25/week approx. for a huge box of organic produce. Search at Local Harvest.
  12. The Dirty Dozen: Fruits and vegetables you really should by organic.
  13. Quotes
    1. “Find a bar that has less than seven ingredients.”
    2. “I understand the necessity for [powders/bars/gels], but on the whole, try to go for whole foods as much as you can.”

     

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