Winter weight gain
Nutrition for athletes is our specialism, we’re always here to get people back on track. But we’d rather they worked with us over winter so we could simply fine tune things in spring and they could get straight into efficient training.
While people definitely need some relative relaxation time, and time off from strict control, that doesn’t mean letting weight and fat roller-coaster over the year, it’s not a healthy way to treat your body. Nutrition should be managed so that come Jan/Feb it takes just a few weeks to return to optimum body composition, and that means aiming to gain no more than a few pounds. It’s realistic to expect a small rise in body weight and fat percentage, in fact sometimes, particularly for females whose hormones are somewhat affected by levels of body fat, it’s a healthy thing. Maintaining an unnaturally low level of body fat all year can lead to endocrine disruption and contribute to burnout.
What to eat in the off-season
So, it’s pretty obvious that when race season ends you’re not burning as many calories and you have a reduced need for carbohydrates; therefore it figures that you should change the way you eat to suit your less intense and structured exercise regime. You may also have let the tanks run dry nutrient-wise if you had a hard season, pushing yourself and perhaps not having much recovery time. You need to put the colour and variety back into your diet.
Humans are creatures of habit. Athletes get used to eating larger than normal portions and more than the average amount of carbs during periods of heavy training and competition, and give no thought to periodising their nutrition as well as training. But, with some thought and planning about what to eat in the off season, new year crash diets can be a thing of the murky past.
A wise athlete will have a plan for the winter that sees them maintain a reasonable level of fitness as well as a body composition that doesn’t require drastic action just before the new season starts.
Your nutrition goals over the winter are
- To keep or or bring your weight down to within 4-5lb of race weight.
- To keep or bring your fat percentage to within 2-3% of optimum for your sport.
- To eat a wide range of natural foods from all macronutrient groups, in activity-appropriate amounts.
- To ensure your vitamin and mineral status is excellent.
- To tailor your carbohydrate intake, both amount and timing of, to your activity level.
- To develop a healthy eating style that is sustainable for life, if you haven’t already done so (easier to work on this health behaviour during the off season).
- To enjoy a bit more of a free-rein with food
If you’re confident about managing those goals yourself that’s excellent, but many people lack the knowledge or willpower to put it all into practise. They try all sorts of fad regimes and never settle into a lifelong simple healthy eating pattern that optimises their health and performance. With such a vast amount of conflicting nutrition messages in the media and on social media it can be really confusing, and hard to know where to start, so people don’t bother until it reaches critical stage. Either that or they take up one of the fads and end up with deficiencies or disordered eating.
Nuush’s Sports Nutrition. Trusted by athletes all over the world.
Nuush will help you with your nutrition and body composition goals. Our Personalised Sports Nutrition plan is a bespoke solution for that’s fully tailored to your training regime.
We provide you with weekly nutrition plans, written specifically to suit your life, training, taste, circumstances, work and health. You might use these if you have a complex life or just want some professional one-to-one support for a few weeks to get you into it.
The plan will help you to maintain or lose body fat, and be robust and healthy, ready to hit next season prepared and ahead of the competition.
What about sports nutrition or general supplements and superfoods?
We don’t prescribe supplements or any so called ‘superfoods’; all our plans are packed with natural health-boosting vitamins and minerals, as well as being quick to make, mainstream and delicious food. Our nutritionists are foodies as well; we search for, and create, the best meal combinations using foods that you love.
Need to lose weight? You won’t even notice it’s a diet – because it isn’t, it’s healthy eating.
Trust us with your sports nutrition
As well as being nutritionists and foodies we have completed marathons, competitive open water and pool swims, half and full ironman and all other triathlon distance races up to IM, as well as cycling sportives. We know the nutrition inside out from both sides, which makes us very attuned to our clients’ needs.
Good nutrition makes the competitive difference. Make a commitment to better performance today.
Personalised Sports Nutrition
Get your nutrition fully dialled in with our Personalised Sports Nutrition plan for improved performance, sport-appropriate body composition, robustness and fantastic health.
