Nutrition: how important to improve running?

Personally, I don't keep too strict with my diet, but I do notice that if I eat more balanced and "healthy" (i.e. enough protein for recovery, complex carbohydrates, etc), I recover easier and therefore train better. It seems like individual capabilities to respond to training loads vary, but regardless of who you are, you're probably better off trying to get proper nutrition.

The added bonus to eating plenty of "good" food is, you tend to crave sweets less and actually can get to your optimal race weight. Having an extra bowl of cereal and piece of fruit throughout the day is obviously better than going hungry and then downing a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

At age 35, past my prime, I began a diet of fruits, veggies, and grains. No meat, no dairy, nothing processed ever. Lots of rice as I recall. I also ate a lot of soups.

I was 6' 0" and 172 pounds. I look pretty thin at that weight. I ran 29:52 on the track at age 20--the last year I ran competitively.

After a year of eating healthy, my weight dropped from 172 to 148. I looked like a human skeleton. I felt as if I had the strength of ten men. My 10k time (on the roads) went from 40:00 down to 32:47. I felt great. I felt young.

I'm sure the lighter weight had something to do with it. It is easier to run fast when you're not carring around those extra 24 pounds. But it seemed to be more than that. I had energy from all the good food. My system wasn't clogged up with crud.

I wonder what kind of impact not eating junk would have had on me if I had tried eating well in my competitive youth. In those early days, I lived on cereal (Cocoa Puffs, Cap'n Crunch), Kraft Mac n' cheese, pizza, and beer.

I kept up the diet for 2 years (and only cheated one time: pizza). I'm 47 now and am mostly vegan. I never eat meat, but I eat candy, things with eggs in it (like bread), have pizza on occasion (every 3 months or so), and I am back to eating cereal. I weigh 180 pounds, and really need to get back to 170. I have kids and a career so it's harder to avoid the bad foods than it used to be.

Those are my thoughts.

Not to hijack the thread, but does anyone else find it nearly impossible to eat healthy when they're running higher mileage?

I'm talking about doughnuts, pastries, granola, trail mix, cookies (like oatmeal raisin), etc.? Not horrible stuff, but lots of simple carbs... I can't seem to help myself around this kind of food. But the odd thing is that when I'm taking some down time from running I can easily say, "No thanks."

Wow, that's impressive stuff. Gives me some motivation to really look at my diet.

I used to be very strict about nutrition. At the time, I thought it was crucial to my success. I eventually suffered a couple serious injuries in a row. I might have been inadvertently undereating because of how strict I was about eating the right foods and never eating the "wrong" ones. Anyway, I missed a lot of time and quit caring so much about nutrition and stuff like that. I felt like I had tried to be perfect for so long, and it wasn't worth the extreme effort anymore.

Though I eat somewhat healthy now, I'm not nearly as particular as it was then. I rarely eat pure junk food, but I don't hesitate to order exactly what I want at a restaurant. I eat desserts somewhat often, too. My running is better than ever, so I can't say that I'm still such a huge advocate for the "optimal running diet." I actually feel like I have more energy when I don't limit the amount of fat/sugar that I consume.

That's just me, though.

Just for more information:

My weight at age 20 when I was competitive was 150 to about 152. I was pretty steady.

The diet I went on was by cardiologist/dietitian team John and Mary McDougall. I used them for the information to put my diet into practice. They advocate using no oil, which I also did not consume. However, it's probably good to eat some oil, especially if you're running a lot--you can burn the calories. They omitted the oil because they usually work with big fatties with bad hearts.

During the good diet, age 35 to 37, I did no speed work. I just did my own thing, which is basically long runs and tempo runs on hills. I never did a track workout or did any kind of repeats or intervals or sprints of any kind. I did do a little bit of weight work to improve my arm strength--mostly curls, bench presses, and lifing a barbell from a resting position on my chest above my head (whatever that's called). Not a lot of weight work. I was running about 50 to 55 miles a week (usually one day off per week). I wasn't thinking about my running or trying to be successful at it. It's just something I've done since I was 10. My times coming down was just a reflection of how great I felt eating like I was.

The other thing was the mental part. I so turned off my brain to being satified with food that I didn't crave anything really--even having that pizza was kind of a fluke thing (we were on vacation). I got no satisfaction from eating, nothing tasted wonderful, but had virtually no craving for anything. I just kept my mind focused on other things. We had no kids, and my wife did the diet with me. We went though our cupboards and got rid of everything--all the food in boxes, all the junk. The food we gave away filled up our jeep. Then we went shopping for fresh, healthy stuff. She was always a little heavy (she's very tall with a medium sized frame--not big boned but leaning that way), but this diet kept her looking fabulous. She lived on Mountain Dew and red licorice before that so she felt pretty good too.

Eventually, though, the social part of our diet got to us. It felt like a huge weight was off our shoulders when we decided to eat more like the rest of our friends. We both look back fondly on that time period though because we both felt so great.

Just watch Morgan Spurlock's documentary "Super Size Me"

and you will see that what you eat matters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Spurlock

Fast Food=Fat Food

Eat smart, run smart

Hey shooter,nutrition is half the battle.

Kenny Tarmack

There's a lot of options in between the extremes of the perfect diet and eating McDonald's for every single meal. I don't think anybody is recommending that you eat a Super Size Me diet.

I think one of the most important nutritional things you can do is try to eat a high glycemic index (GI) food as soon as possible after workouts and harder runs. it really helps your muscles recover.

as far as performance goes, if the furnace is hot enough, anything will burn. with that said, losing unneccessary weight will really really help your running if you can afford to lose a few lbs healthily.

as far as long term health though, i try to eat a diet low in fat and cholesterol, i cut out most red meats, and eggs. i eat a fairly low fat diet with most of my fats coming from healthy sources such as nuts and oils. this will keep my heart healthy for the long run

Somewhere in Africa, there is a tribe which drinks only whole milk, eats only beef, with some cow's blood thrown in there. They have the lowest cholesterol of any recorded people, and nearly zero heart disease.

The link between saturated fat and heart disease is unclear at best.

By the way, a low fat diet has repeatedly been shown to be no better than a normal diet. Fats are good for you, just try to eat healthier fats. There is also nothing really wrong with beef or dairy or eggs.

Read The China Study by Campbell and Campbell. They rebut myths like the one above with actual biochemistry research.

The link between animal products (primarily casein) and heart disease, strokes, obesity, and many diseases is very clear.

Fox News Channel tactics existed in the world of nutrition long before they ever got to politics.

There are no tribes in Africa confounding nutrition research, and there are no 122-year-old Russians eating mostly yogurt either. And Keebler cookies aren't made by elves either.

I always thought one thing about fast Kenyans and Ethiopian runners that was consistently overlooked was their simple diets. They don't eat all the wild foods we do--snickers bars and the like. They subsist primarily on Ugali. Maybe there's something to it.

I had four Africans on my team in college. Ugali is not very tasty. Definitely needs salt and maybe some ketchup or something. Gives you a huge clue as to why they are all so skinny.

I wonder how an American runner would do eating oatmeal two or three times a day?

This is interesting:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22116724/

R.L. Scribner wrote:

This is interesting:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22116724/

Great site on food:Harvard School of Public Health

I am 51 years old with low body fat, 5'7"/130lbs.

Seem to be in excellent health.

Got serious about food 7 years ago.

Currently:

-no meat or dairy recent change

-zero trans fat long time

-whole grains,rolled oats and brown rice just added these back

-lots of fruits and veggies long time

-nuts peanuts and almonds long time

-low cal cranberry juice long time

-multi vitamin,omega 3 long time

-B complex recent addition

IMO for optimal health a male needs to:

-Keep his body fat in the 3 to 5 percent range.

-Consume adequate amounts of essential nutrients.

-Avoid processed foods.Especially ones that contain trans fats.

WhatItsWorth wrote:

things with eggs in it (like bread)

not a big deal or anything, but lots of breads don't have eggs in them.

this i tell you as a baker.

WhatItsWorth wrote:

I wonder how an American runner would do eating oatmeal two or three times a day?

Haha...thats me. Seriously addicted to that shit. Always eat it plain, but with added skim milk, berries, or pumpkin/raisins/walnuts. Hasn't seemed to be the miracle key yet.

I came to the same conclusion (that diet is critical to running) a different way.

I improved dramatically my freshman year, mainly because of quality of coaching/training in college.

My sophomore year and first semester junior year, however, had a different pattern. I'd train great over the summer, even break 15 in an end-of-summer 5K road race without a lick of serious speedwork. I'm come back to school, improve for the first month or so, and then fall apart. It got so bad that I began to think that I was some sort of head case practice runner.

After Christmas vacation my junior year, I finally noticed that returned to running fresh the longer I stayed at home.

It turned out that my typical college student diet (pizza, beer, not a vegetable in sight) was killing me. At home, my mom cooked veggies and I ate well. Once the good stuff worked its way out of my system at school, my running crapped. By eating well for the rest of my junior and senior year, I was able to run dramatically better times.

Question for those who don't eat meat:

How many grams of protein would you say you consume in a day and where do you get your major sources of protein?