Daily Nutrition
Contents
- Introduction
- Balancing calorie intake and expenditure
- The proportion of Carbohydrate, Fat and Protein in your diet
- The glycemic index of the foods you consume
- Are you getting enough vitamins and minerals?
- Food allergies
Introduction
Due to a decrease in the daily activity of the majority of the population resulting in obesity issues our eating habits have received a lot of bad press. This has led to a very negative attitude towards eating with an over emphasis on reducing the calorie content of the foods we eat. As an active triathlete obestiy isn't likely to be a concern and I would encourage you to have a positive attitude towards food as your daily diet can play a significant role in your triathlon performance. Amongst other things it can:
- Help maintain a healthy immune system and prevent illness
- Build strong and health bones, muscle and connective tissue helping avoid injury and improve performance
- Maintain and potentially help build skeletal muscle
- Influence the way your body responds during exercise
- Help you recover from exercise sessions
Balancing Calorie intake and expenditure
The number of calories you require on a daily basis (daily caloric expenditure) is made up of the following 3 components:
- Resting Caloric Expenditure (RCE)
- Daily Activities Caloric Expenditure (DA)
- Exercise Caloric Expenditure (ECE)
Formula: Daily caloric expenditure = RCE + DA + ECE
Resting Caloric Expenditure - As the name suggests this is the amount of calories you burn in a day whilst doing nothing. You can use formulas to estimate it or measure your bodies oxygen consumption at rest to get a more accurate figure. The figure will be relatively stable over time but is mainly affected by your muscle mass. Other less significant influences include:
- Body surface area - estimated by height and weight)
- Age
- Temperature - If you are cold you will shiver more to generate heat and burn more calories
Daily Activities Calories - These are the calories you burn from day to day tasks which is very dependant upon what you do for a living. Someone who sits at a desk all day every day will have a very low figure for DA whilst a builder will have a much higher figure. This is always going to be an estimate and some common values are given below:
Exercise Caloric Expenditure - These are the calories you burn each day from exercise. For a triathlete this will be the area that varies most on a day to day basis. During a heavy training phase or whilst racing this value can be very high whilst on a rest day it will be zero. Like your daily activity calories this will always be an estimate, but as you are likely to be wearing a training devices during many of your exercise sessions these can help to make the estimations more accurate.