Should you take meal replacements?

Meal replacements are an excellent way to supplement your diet with the necessary protein, vitamins, minerals and even dietary fibre. In todays fast paced world we often dont get the time to prepare or buy meals that will meet our dietary needs, this is where meal replacements become most beneficial.

To the athlete, gym goer and couch potatoe a meal replacement provides a quick and efficient meal providing quality protein, healthy carbohydrates and fats which help the body to perform at its best and recover from stress as quick as possible.

Herbalife Nutritional Protein Drink Mix
Created with advanced food technology, the specially formulated, unique blend of ingredients in the Herbalife products provides easily absorbed, high quality soy protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, mineral, dietary fibers and herbs. The antioxidant nutrients Vitamin C, E and selenium can help protect against cell damage.
Drink a Formula 1 shake, and you’ll feel full and satisfied and energetic. Each serving packs nine grams of protein & is Rich in dietary fiber. Loaded with vitamins and minerals, including the antioxidant vitamins A, C a E. Provides dietary amino acids the body cannot produce on its own.

Conclusion

Meal replacements will benefit any athlete or gym goer serious about seeing results, a good meal replacement will provide all the needed nutrients and vitamins, and bring noticeable results.

Good Nutrition is the key to getting into shape!

Cycling endurance event prep essentials

Carbo Loading

Carbohydrate loading is the process of eating higher than usual levels of carbohydrates in the lead up to an endurance event. Any good complex carbohydrates like pasta, rice and breads are good choices. The idea is that by eating excess carbs, our muscle glycogen levels will be filled to the max and come race day, we will have more stored energy in our muscles. People often think that carbo loading will increase performance or V02 max. It won’t. It will hopefully increase your endurance, but it will not make you faster. If you’ve ever hit what cyclists call the ‘bonk’ then you have completely depleted your glycogen levels and are now relying on fat supplies to fuel you. Hopefully, by carbo loading properly and fueling yourself during the race, you’ll preserve enough glycogen to last the race.

So how should you carbo load? I reccommend that in the 3 days leading up to the event, carbohydrate intake should be moderately high. You should be getting 7-8g of carbs per kilogram of body weight for each of the 3 days prior to the event, except the last day where that is bumped up to 11g (more on this later).
In the 3 days prior to that, carbs should be kept quite low, but not so low that it affects you final exercise preparations. Around 200g or what ever you feel comfortable with should be fine. The idea behind this is that if you deprive your body of carbs for a few days your body will supercompensate and fill your muscles with above normal levels of glycogen once you hit your carbo loading phase.
Increase your fat and protein intake while in the carbo depletion phase just to keep your calories high, this will prevent muscle wastage.

Caffeine

Caffeine is scientifically proven to help you exercise longer in endurance events. Caffeine not only stimulates your central nervous system, but it also acts as a glycogen preserver. When supplementing with caffeine, the body elects to burn more fat for fuel instead of depleting your precious muscle glycogen. Another nice side effect is that it decreases perceived effort, enabling you to work harder.

If you choose to use caffeine as an ergogenic aid then you should try to cut out all caffeine in the week leading up to the event. caffeine should then be taken in doses of 100-300mg in the form of coffee or tablet form. A cup of coffee is around 150-200mg of caffeine. It should be taken about 30 minutes before the event as caffeine peaks in the blood stream after 45-60 minutes.

Lasty, people are often concerned with dehydration when taking caffeine, but research has proven that there is no change in hydration levels between athletes who supplement and those who don’t.

Pre-Race Meal

Eating a meal 1 or 2 hours before a race is actually counterproductive and will hinder your performance. You need to be eating 3-4 hours before the event. If your event is early in the morning then you either need to get up earlier or skip the meal altogether. If you’ve been carbo loading properly, then your muscles should already be full of glycogen. The aim of the pre-race meal is just to top up those levels that might have dropped slightly overnight.

But why not eat an hour or two before the race? While this might seem counter-intuitive, eating this close to the race can lead to something called rebound hypoglycaemia, which is abnormally low blood glycogen levels. This can lead you to feeling slow and sluggish at the start of a race. It can also negatively affect the conversion of fats into fuel and speed up muscle glycogen depletion.

This meal should consist of predominently carbohydrates with a small serving of protein, eg cereal with fruit.

During the race

For high-intensity race day action you’ll need to be refuelling around 60g of carbohydrates and 750ml of fluid per hour, depending on your size, exertion levels and temperature. Believe it or not, but complex carb sources like maltodextrin are better than simple sugars, like those found in most sports drinks. Complex carbohydrate can empty from the stomach at higher concentrations (meaning they need to be diluted with less water) and faster than simple sugars, providing more energy and reducing gastric stress. It’s also important to keep your electrolyte levels up. Try to find a sports drink that has maltodextrin as its main carbohydrate source.

Training the week before the race

On the 6th, 5th and 4th day before the race, I like to train for a short to moderate distance with a relatively low intensity. This close to the race, you are not going to make significant adaptations to improve your time by training really hard. This week should be viewed as a de-loading and recovery week. This training co-incides with the low carbohydrate days.

The 3rd and 2nd day before the race are rest days. This also co-incides with the beginning of your carbo loading phase, so you want to be resting to prevent any muscle glycogen from being burnt while your trying to super saturate them.

24 hours before the race is time for the final ride. The aim of this ride is to boost the muscles glycogen storage capacity even further than carbo loading alone.

Get to the finish line!