Tapering Diet
Friday, May 29th, 2009
Now that my taper is in full swing and I’m letting the legs completely rest before Rev3, I realized that I need to make some serious changes to my diet. I’ve gotten pretty lean with all the HIM training, but I’ve also been eating a ton to try and make up for all the extra calories that I’m burning.
I’m a huge snacker and eat something different every hour or so. If I kept that up during the taper I’d blow up like a baloon and I’d be rolling myself across the finish line. Either that or I’d get DQ’d because I couldn’t even fit in my tri top.
I emailed with Coach Brett about it and he had some good tips that helped put things in perspective, but I decided to go straight to the source and hit up Team ZenTri’s nutritionist, Christine Lynch (@holisticguru). I sent her everything that I ate the day before, and asked her to basically tear it apart. And she did. I probably didn’t pick the best day to send her, since the only veggie that I ate were some pickles on a BBQ sandwich. Some days are better than others, and this clearly wasn’t one of the better ones, but at least I get points for honesty, right?
Here is my mini diary:
7:00 – bowl of frosted flakes w/ 1% milk. Multivitamin and fish oil pill
9:00 – tea w/ stevia and half a grapefruit
10:00 – peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread
12:00 – another PBnJ or some sort of chicken sandwich
3:00 – hand full of fig newtons or something else stashed in my desk drawer
6:00 – stuff something fast down my face before PM workout. Usually reheated leftovers or BBQ sandwich w/ pickles.
9:00 – bowl of cereal w/ 1% milk
10:00 – bowl of ice cream
If you want to read some really awesome tapering nutrition tips (and really just great nutrition tips for any time of the year) check out her post: http://holisticguru.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-think-you-should-blog-about-how-to.html
Here is my new tapering fuel plan that should keep me happy and lean for race day. I’ve got some shopping to do this weekend, but am really looking forward to trying it out on Monday.
7:00 – Steel cut oats (made ahead of time from HolisticGuru’s blog recipe) Multivitamin and fish oil pill.
9:00 – tea with stevia and half a grapefruit
10:00 – apple slices or celery with almond butter or peanut butter and raisins
12:00 – quinoa cooked with veg or chicken broth, cut up veggies and beans (sweet potato and black bean with salsa sounds yummy in my head right now and would only take 25 mins to make… you can make it while you’re cooking the steel cut oats)
3:00 – handful of dried fruit with dark chocolate chips and a giant glass of water
6:00 – hummus sandwich with veggies (lettuce, tomato, cucumber)
9:00 – quick omelet and a side of something leafy and green and maybe some potato wedges
10:00 – bowl of fruit sorbet, or a small amount of ice cream isn’t terrible
In the mean time, I did make some killer raspberry/papaya pie yesterday and cut out almost all of the sugar. (At least Christine can be proud of me for that). I had some leftover pie crusts from another baking venture a few weeks ago and not enough raspberries to fill it up. A big ‘ol papaya was calling my name at the grocery store, so I decided to throw it in with the raspberries and test it out.
It took about 3 cups of raspberries, one cut up papaya, 4 packets of stevia and 2 or 3 tablespoons of lime juice for the filling. Because raspberries are so sweet anyway, they don’t even really sugar or stevia anyway, but I was curious how well it baked, so I tried it out. Cover it like a normal pie crust, sprinkle with brown sugar (Okay, I couldn’t cut out ALL the sugar) and bake at 400 for 30-45 minutes.
TA-DA!
The raspberry flavor also totally overpowers the papaya, but it is at least good having the papaya in there for some nutritional variety. Seriously, look at all the health benefits inside of Papayas! That pie is awesome. And no. I’m not sharing. Make your own, it tastes better when you make it yourself anyway.
This is what one looks like in case you get lost on your next trip to the produce aisle.
Happy tapering fatties!
Tags: raspberry papaya pie, triathlon tapering nutrition | Posted in Triathlon | 5 Comments »
