What I eat and my approach to food...

So following on from yesterdays blog this post now covers what I eat and how I approach nutrition whilst my career is high performance sport. My approach to nutrition and food is very simple, I base everything around intaking macro nutrients: Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats (Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids). In addition I then seek out micro nutrients: Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Magnesium, Selenium, Calcium, Zinc and Iron. All of these key macro and micro nutrients I seek in the food I eat over a period of a week. I don't physically register the intake of these macro and micro nutrients I am just aware of what food types they are in. To ensure I get all of these micro and macro nutrients, well it is quite simple, I make sure it is only these food types that are in my cupboard and in my fridge wherever I am in the world.

So why do I look at my food in a categorical way? Now this is where my education benefits my career. When we perform daily at such high intensities and volumes I am aware of exactly what nutrients our body uses during the course of a training session, hard training day and week in general. My aim through restoring all of these key nutrients is to ensure my body is in energy balance. These key nutrients are not only what my body uses and I need to restore, it is also a massive contributor to my bodies healing and recovery process.

So why the above macro and micro nutrients in particular? Below I have very simply defined how I view each macro nutrient and summarised the value of micro nutrients.

Carbohydrates: Our bodies main source of fuel when conducting activity is carbohydrates, just like cars run on efficient, fast acting fuel our bodies do the same and this is Carbohydrates.

Proteins: every time we train we break down small muscle fibres, in order to repair these muscles fibres and make them stronger our body requires proteins.

Fats: when I say fat I mainly focus on getting mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega 3 and 6), why? These fats are vital for our immune system. When we train and race hard we suppress our bodies immune system and it is always a balance to ensure we don't get ill and we don't get injured, especially when in heavy training and immediately after competition.

Micro Nutrients

All of the above micro nutrients Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Magnesium, Selenium, Calcium, Zinc and Iron we basically can't live without them. These micro nutrients are especially important for us as sporting athletes. Compared to the general population we put a large demand on our bodies ability to repair, restore and strengthen the overall structure.

Look at this way, we smash our bodies day in day out through hard intensive training, our body basically needs to be able to repair itself in order for us to become stronger. By ensuring the regular intake of key micro nutrients we are giving our body the best chance possible of recovering, gaining strength and adapting to our ever demanding training load. We can't train day in day out and expect the body to recover if we don't feed it with the right nutrients.

That is how I look at food and this is how I structure my eating habits. There is always room for 'plea surely' foods, especially when you are having a high training load, but it is vital that the key nutrients come first.

A welcomed treat after my win at Life Time Fitness Tri, Miami

So what do I exactly eat, well as I mentioned at the start I think it will surprise many as to the quantity of food I eat so instead of just writing a list I thought why not make a food diary? It is what I do whenever I work with new clients and their eating habits, so I am going to do the same through images. Tomorrow I start my approach to Rev3 Knoxville, I have 3 days of hard training remaining and then I enter my taper period, it is this time where it is absolutely crucial my body gets what it needs in order for me to be in energy balance come the weekend. I will commit to publicising a 3 day food diary from Monday to Wednesday. I will upload images at the end of every day when I have got my feet up and resting in bed. This album I will host via my Facebook page - www.facebook.com/helletri

I hope this blog and the 3 day food diary will provide you all an insight into my approach to food and what I eat on a regular basis.

And now to finish up by saying awesome job to Alica Kaye for the win at St. Anthony's today, Alicia and I have spent a lot of training hours together over the past months, she has put me in the hurt locker on many occasions and it is fantastic to see her hard work paying off.

How I train and what I eat...

The question that seems to interest a lot of people, so why not write about it? 

First of all before I go any further, can I just have a moan?…I am tired. I can't moan to Ben because he often tells me to suck it up and I can't moan to Joel because he just smiles as if to say "Great! We are on target." So instead I thought why not moan to you guys. You listen right? Or shall I just shut up and get on with it? 

Now when I say tired, I mean physically fatigued, this last training block has been very hard. Mentally I am great, my body is holding up well but WOW it is over loaded at the moment. You know when you wake up and just wish you could stay in bed, well I had that this morning…

…we all get it, open the training program, take a double glance at it to say "really? Oh s**t this is going to be a struggle". My job is high performance sport and since working with Joel I have grown to realise that unless there is major concern or something is not right then there is no real place for moaning. So as much as I hate to admit it, when I get the Filliol smile and the Powell words of suck it up, I guess I should do just that. I have a team around me that I trust 100% therefore I just have to get on with it, however it is nice to let off some steam once in a while so thanks for 'listening'. Now moaning over and back to the main topic - what I eat and how I train.

Now having just read that this morning I opened up the training program and responded with "really? oh s**t this is going to be a struggle", your probably thinking but what was the session then. Now purely out of respect for Joel I will not go into any details of individual sessions but I will be happy to share with you some values and figures in relation to my training over the past months. Then I will finish it up with what I eat. 

Training, like most peoples, comes in blocks. We plan our season, we schedule in our goals and then we work out a program. A program that allows us to hit a peak for the races that would have a big star next to them. This year however has been a little different, there is no big star visible on the training schedule. Oh at least not yet…my aim is purely to become a more complete triathlete, develop and put myself on the start line of some highly competitive races. '14 is a little different I have my star hovering close to Vegas but let's just see how things go. I am a serious person, often mistaken as being too serious but this is just who I am, so whenever I do something I am in it to do it right. High performance training is all about creating a fundament that allows an athlete or sports person to back up the work, session after session. Providing we can form this fundament then backing up race results is a far less complicated process. High performance sport is not supposed to be easy and this counts for training also, we should never expect to race at the highest level we want to if we are not prepared to train hard enough for it. This is something I have not actually recognised as much as I do now and I think this is a large part of why my early season form has been good. We have worked for it.

My average training week is hovering at around 25 hours, not massive in comparison to the likes of others but it works for me. Since February I can see that I have logged 255,373m of swimming, cycled 3853.41km and ran 582.84km to be honest quantity doesn't impress me it is just numbers what is key in all of this mileage is the quality. A training block that I am in right now, has something specific every day and each session has a purpose. Riding is now strength based consisting of hard TT efforts within longer rides up to 4 hours, running is often 4 - 6 x a week with a minimum 3 sessions being very much speed/strength specific. Swimming, well swimming is just always hard, for me it is important that I don't get complacent and pull my foot off the gas when it comes to swimming. I want to be competitive from the gun and with more and more ITU girls making the switch to non-draft/Ironman 70.3 there is no reason for me to change my swim approach. 

I have not had one complete rest day since February apart from travel days. Crazy huh? but not uncommon. The first thing I try to pick out whenever I receive my new program is the easy day, why? It allows me to build my mindset up in blocks, as an example if I identify the easy day in any given week is a Thursday then I will mentally approach it as 3 days on, 1 easy day, 3 days on. What may surprise you though is that the easy day that I seek out can often be something like 1 hr 15 min run and a 3.5km swim. So why is a 2 hour training day a recovery day? Well it is quite logical - recovery periods. Recovery periods are periods in a day where I can recover, get my feet up, sleep, rest, eat and generally allow the body to recover. The day that contains the largest amount of recovery period in any given week is regarded as the easy day. 

I can not stress enough how important recovery periods are when it comes to training results. Heavy training days for me can often be between 4 - 5 sessions, this means I am always on the go, very little time for resting. So if I don't have time to rest in between sessions my priority is re-fuelling. This now brings me onto the next topic what I eat. It seems my slight yet toned body composition fascinates many and believe me when I say this, I eat so much. 

A few days ago I posted this picture to Facebook…

It is from one of the comments by Anna Hertel that led to me writing this blog post, so thanks for the inspiration Anna. Unfortunately like always it seems my muscular, slight physique throws up controversy and people take offence to it, Nike Women creating this fantastic commercial back in 2012 - I love it.

Actually now I come to think about it, why not split this post into two parts? I think it will become easier to digest  rather than me now ramble on about what I eat, so I will post a blog specific to what I eat tomorrow.

Enjoy your weekend and good luck to all those in St. Anthony's.

Never Give Up - A film by John Hicks

Never Give Up, filmed by award winning director of photography and film John Hicks, beautifully portrays my outlook on life through a combination of powerful/well thought of scenes, epic landscapes and perfectly composed music. I personally narrate the film aiming to provide a very personal yet powerful message about life and decisions in life that have made her who I am today.

The film is a production proudly supported by Nike, HED Cycling, Sailfish and Active Lanzarote.

Enjoy :)