Can eating carbs throughout the day boost your performance?

· Carbs & Glycogen ·

Hi Saturday Morning Fan,

I think I can speak for all of us when I say we've had training sessions where we didn't eat enough carbs throughout the day. Often, we know it and for whatever reasons, we fell behind but training time still came. And training didn't go well. Why?

Our bodies LOVE carbs for energy. Our brain cells use them almost exclusively for energy, so when we don't have them we feel foggy and less motivated before training. Often this shows up as a lack of desire to get ready for the session, procrastination in starting the session or performing any activation exercises, or rationalizing ways to reduce the length or the intensity in the session.

Then when we start training, we can feel "flat" with a heaviness and inability to pick up the pace. It can sometimes feel like a loss of fitness and can even have us doubting our overall preparation or abilities as an athlete. Some athletes worry that they're overtraining or that their plan is wrong. It can be a negative emotional spiral and that's definitely not what we want.

What's the antidote? Carbs, of course!

When we eat carbs throughout the day, our goal is to make sure our storage form of carbs in the body - known as glycogen - is stocked. Glycogen is usually stored in the liver and the muscles.

The liver makes sure our bodies - especially our brains - constantly have enough energy to maintain daily function! But during exercise, our muscles ALSO start sponging up carbs.

But something interesting... energetically, muscle glycogen gives us more total energy than carbs coming in from outside of the cell do.

This is because when energy is coming from outside the cell, we have to use energy to get it in and prepare it for use! Whereas carbs that have been brought in before training have already soaked the energetic cost and are ready to go.

This IS an important reason WHY we need to make sure we're getting enough carbs in both throughout the day AND during training.

So what can we actually do to mitigate not eating enough?

If it is almost training time and you know you haven't eaten enough during the day, there are some last minute steps you can take. Eat something with simple carbohydrates within 15 minutes of starting exercise (a gel, a sports drink, maybe some low-fiber fruit) and then make sure to fuel during the session (follow the guidance from the app!).

One thing to avoid is eating in the period between 90 minutes before and 15 minutes before training. This can result in rebound hypoglycemia and then feeling flat during the start of the session (for more on this see last week's newsletter). So if it's more than two hours out, eat a meal with 60-80g of carbs, if it's closer to training time then follow the advice in the paragraph above.

And tomorrow, and every day in the future, aim to try and get in enough carbs during the day!

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