Using Sports Drinks

I was scheduled for a big workout yesterday, but Friday’s night out gave me extra motivation. I planned to do a full weight routine, at least 25 minutes on the cardio machines and plenty of stretching. Normally I only drink water or water with a low calorie electrolyte tablet during my workouts but I wanted to make sure I would have enough energy to last the entire 100 plus minutes I planned to be in the gym, so I added a sports drink.

Now, I’m not normally a big fan of sports drinks, as they can be overly sweet and full of empty calories. But when you exercise you use up the glycogen (a type of sugar) stored in your muscles for energy. If you are working out for less than an hour, water is all you really need as your body has enough glycogen stored to last about an hour. However, if you plan to exercise for longer, as I did yesterday, you need the sugar boost as well as the electrolytes found in most sports drinks. As your glycogen stores are depleted, you start to feel tired as your body has to turn to your fat stores for energy. The problem is that converting fat to energy takes time, which slows you down and makes you feel tired. In order to keep working harder for longer you have to top up your glycogen stores, with the most popular option being a sugary sports drink. Of course, this adds a good 150 to 250 calories to your diet, which is a lot for someone my size, so despite what the Gatorade adverts would have you believe, you don’t want to use them for shorter exercise sessions (unless it is very hot and you are working very hard, like in a summer race). So the usual rules about too much of a good thing certainly apply to sports drinks!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
2063.84	108g	226.74g	68.26g	15.5g	26.49g
	21%	44%	30%	5%
Calories burned through exercise:		636

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
09:45	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson’s Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Gluten Free fruit muesli	70g
	Alpro Soy milk	120mL
	Sainsbury’s pressed apple juice	170mL
10:15	Black tea	500mL
11:30	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
13:15	Baked salmon	122g
	Merchant Gourmet Red and White Quinoa	100g
	Steamed broccoli	60g
	Steamed cauliflower	100g
	Kraft light Honey Mustard dressing	13g
13:45	Green Tea	250mL
15:15	Workout - resistance training + 25 min on cross trainer
	Sponser Isotonic sportdrink, fruit mix	about 58g
	in water	750mL
17:15	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
19:45	Cook Catalan Chicken	about 290g
	Red Wine	150mL
	Cook Lemon and lime pavlova	about 1/8
21:30	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.