Being as active as I am with swim/bike/run, it takes a lot of food to keep me going. When I'm training for an Ironman, it takes a family-of-four amount of food to keep me going. That may be exaggerating a little ... but I suspect that The Queen might agree with me on this one (as she's the one who buys the food).
I came to realize that there is a better way, one where the calories you get are more nutritionally dense, helping the body recover. In my younger days recovery rarely came to the front of my thoughts. Since turning 40 a few years ago, thinking of recovery - and how to speed up the process - has definitely been front of mind. My thinking on 10/11/10 was fairly simple: better nutrition would lead to better overall health, which would lead to better recovery.
At that point in time the decision was made to eat more fruits and vegetables.
In the past I have read up on nutrition and could tell you about how much protein you need, and things like that. Yet, I really had no knowledge on food ... so I started to read up on the subject. Which led me to Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food. The thesis is simple: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." When he says food, he means real food, not "edible foodlike substances." This made me think back to when I a kid and we had dinner almost every night around the kitchen table as a family. Those meals were real food, cooked by mom, not the processed food-like substances that fill grocery store shelves today.
Another overriding theme of the book is that the science of nutrition has done more harm than good. The more we think about the need for this vitamin or that mineral, we lose the big picture of fueling the body. Go to almost any grocery store and you can see what Pollan's talking about. "Enriched with Vitamin C" ... "Calcium Fortified" ... vitamin enriched just about anything ... you know what I'm talking about.
The Western diet, essentially, has lost its way, becoming something that is more damaging than helpful. He argues that something gets lost when we break down what we eat into its nutritional pieces without losing something in the translation. Food is more than the sum of the parts.
So when we have a simple meal of rice and beans, for example, we know that we get a certain amount of protein, x grams of carbohydrates and fat, with a variety of vitamins and minerals. And while we could take in these exact amounts of nutrition in a different way, there is something about the combination of the rice with the beans that makes biological sense to our bodies, and makes the combination work. Sure, it is a tasty combination, but Pollan argues these foods work together to give you a nutritional value greater than the sum of the parts.Put another way, 2+2=5.
The ideas in Pollan's book helped confirm my own ideas about eating and fueling the body. I have always been a believer in "real" food as it makes sense. Please don't let me fool you into thinking I'm perfect. I eat chips and other questionable substances, but the vast majority of what I eat is real food. Maybe I can thank Joe Weider's Muscle & Fitness magazine or maybe my mom. Probably both.
Since 10/10/10 I have gone from being a "bad vegetable eater" to a "good vegetable eater" and have noticed the difference. I still eat meat, but I really don't crave it like I have in the past. My energy levels have become very consistent and my body recovers much better since making the change. I feel the difference not just from workout to workout, but also near the end of the year when, in the past, my body would always seem to break down.
This book has helped me make some changes to my eating habits for the better. I recover faster, have steadier energy levels, and I have to be healthier. In Defense of Food is a relatively quick read that makes sense for anyone looking to just be healthier, or for the athlete who is looking to get the most from his or her body. Michael Pollan has a new book, Cooked, that I have on my Summer reading list.
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