Speedwork Needs Carbs!

Looks like I shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping to my goal of 2000 calories per day, if the past 3 days are anything to go by. Though to be fair, I have to say that I rarely have problems keeping the calories down so long as I stay away from the chocolates. I have been eating a low fat chocolate mousse with my lunch but that’s not the same as 100g of chocolates with 500 plus calories, most of them from fat and sugar.  

I am finding it more difficult to balance my diet to the 25% protein, 50% carbohydrates, 25% fat I’m aiming for. I usually struggle to get enough protein, since to have 25% of 2000 calories from protein means getting about 125g of protein per day, which is a lot. But I also need to get a good 250g of carbohydrate per day fuel my new training plan.  Before I was doing lots of endurance work but now I’m switching to more speed training. And speed training requires lots of carbohydrates.

During long slow endurance training, most of the calories burned come from fat stores because there is time for your body to break the fat down into usable energy. However, during fast or intense efforts, the number of calories burned per minute goes up too rapidly – there isn’t enough time to break down fat stores. Your muscles need more immediate energy, which is supplied by the glycogen (stored carbohydrates) in your muscles. The more intense the effort, the greater the proportion of energy which comes from carbohydrates rather than fat. If you don’t keep your muscles supplied, you won’t be able to keep up an intense effort for every long. This is why trying to lose weight by cutting calories while still doing lots of speed work will hurt your performance.

So time to take another look at the gluten free carbohydrate possibilities!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1994.73	97.22g	241.13g	58.56g	18.03g	35.85g
	20%	48%	26%	6%
Calories burned through exercise:		404

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
07:30	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 and cherry juice	200mL
10:00	Black Tea	500mL
10:45	Brazil nuts	6g
	Cashews	17g
	Plums	165g
11:00	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
13:00	New Covent Garden Pea and Ham soup	300g
	Genius brown bread toast	2 slices
	with Flora Light	4g
	and honey on one slice	8g
	Raw tomato	160g
	Skim milk	200mL
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill
14:00	Weight routine + 30 min bike
	Citrus Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	750mL
16:15	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
20:15	Del'Ugo organic gluten free Chickpea Spaghetti	63g
	Waitrose Beef and Red Wine ragu	150g
	Waitrose Babyleaf salad	25g
	with olive oil and balsamic vinegar	2 tsp
	Red wine	100mL
	Red wine	75mL
20:45	Fresh Figs	80g
	with honey	5g

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