Geschatte leestijd: 9 minutenSports nutrition or dietary supplements are often a synthetic form of nutrients, often in a very high concentration with the aim of making these nutrients easily ingestible to supplement daily nutrition. This is one of the main reasons why dietary supplements should be used, namely for supplementation and supplementation. There are more reasons to use supplements and sports nutrition than just this reason. You can also more easily measure the correct proportions of nutrients you are getting and you can also take them in isolated form. However, one should not consider sports nutrition as a replacement for normal food.
Sports Nutrition
When we talk about sports nutrition, we mainly have to address two points:
- Determining the nutritional needs
- The diet and its implementation
Sports Nutrition and Nutritional Needs
When determining the nutritional needs as an athlete, you always start by answering a number of questions:
- How many calories does my body need to function at rest (maintenance level)?
- How much do I burn through sports and what does this add to my energy calorie requirement (activity factor)?
- What is my goal and to what extent does weight play a role in this?
- Once you have determined what you need, you look at how to fulfill this need:
- From which nutrients should this energy come from (macro distribution)?
- With which foods do I meet the calculated need?
- When do I eat what?
Most of the above points actually apply to anyone who wants to be
consciously involved with nutrition. Whether you want to
lose or gain weight or because you want to eat
healthy. For athletes, there are additional circumstances such as a
higher consumption associated with point 2. In addition, some competitive athletes may need to consider weight classes that determine their body weight goals. Also, the
timing of nutrition may be different for athletes who, for example, have a higher intake of food around competitions and training sessions.
Determining Maintenance Level: BMR.
Everyone who wants to know what a
suitable diet is should start by calculating the calorie requirement. Calculating your resting metabolic rate is an indication of the energy your body needs to keep things going.
This
Basal Metabolic Rate is the minimum amount of energy your body needs to maintain itself if you were motionless in bed all day. The calculation for this BMR is the same for the athlete as for the chronic couch potato.
Scientists have devised various formulas for calculating this BMR, taking into account some variables. Some formulas, for example, consider gender, height, and weight (Harris-Benedict). Others are more accurate because they are based on body fat percentage and therefore have more information about the body’s composition (Katch-McArdle).
You can calculate the BMR on the page where we have placed a calculator for this purpose. It should be emphasized that all these formulas only try to give the best possible indication of your personal consumption.
Determining Maintenance Level: Activity Level
This applies even more to the activity factor. Simple tables with so-called activity factors show with which number you should increase the BMR to take into account energy consumption from activity.
On the calculator page, we use the following common factors:
Little or no training: office work — x 1.2
Light training: sports 1-3 days a week — x 1.375
Average training: sports 3-5 days a week — x 1.55
Heavy training: sports 6-7 days a week — x 1.725
Heavy daily training: sports plus physical work or training twice a day, marathon, soccer camp, competition, etc. — x 1.9
These are of course fairly generic descriptions that mainly look at the number of training days. It says almost nothing about the type of training, duration, and intensity. So, this is only an approximation with a fairly wet finger.
The result of the BMR times the activity factor tells you your maintenance level, how much your body consumes daily in total, and how much you need to stay at the same weight
Sporting goal: weight
Weight plays a major factor in sports. In some sports, you have to take into account weight classes, in other sports, it literally determines the impact you make (think of boxing and American football, for example). In many sports,
extra weight is an advantage (Sumo is probably the best example) while in other sports, extra weight is a disadvantage (such as endurance sports, gymnastics, and dancing).
The desire to become bigger or
lighter determines what you do with your answer obtained from questions 1 & 2. For example, if you have determined your maintenance level at 2800 kcal per day, you can go below or above that. Normally, smaller and gradual adjustments (for example, 5%) work best to prevent a counter-reaction from the body. It also gives you more mental opportunity to get used to a new diet. With that, the chance of lasting results is greater. However, if you still have to lose 4 kilos in a few days to reach your weight class, you can take more drastic steps. The next important consideration is in which sources you save calories.
Macro distribution and timing for sports performance
Once you have determined how much energy you need daily, you can fill it from three sources. The so-called
macronutrients, or ‘macros’:
Carbohydrates
Proteins
Fats
How you distribute these depends again on your goals. Each plays an important role and the right ratio can therefore have a major impact on your health and athletic performance.
Koolhydraten
As for sports performance itself,
carbohydrates play a significant role. Carbohydrates provide a source for the most important and rapidly available
fuel for the muscles, glucose. Different types of carbohydrates provide this energy at different speeds.
One of the most important considerations for athletes regarding sports nutrition is therefore which types and quantities of carbohydrates are suitable for providing the blood with the right amount of glucose at the right time. As a rule of thumb, simple and fast sugars offer the best fuel
before and during athletic performances. In some cases, these are also preferred immediately after a training session or competition. However, this is to promote
recovery. By providing the blood with glucose, the body’s need to produce glucose itself is reduced. One of those ways is the breakdown of muscle mass to release amino acids that can be used to produce glucose. Another way is the breakdown of fats.
Proteins
This brings us to the role of
proteins, or protein. Where carbohydrates primarily serve as primary fuel, the role of
proteins is mainly to provide building blocks. The amino acids in the protein in food are made available through the bloodstream to be absorbed by muscles and used to form proteins there again. Proteins are therefore necessary to
get and maintain enough muscle mass. Faster recovery of
damaged tissue naturally means that performance can be resumed more quickly.
For protein in general, a similar rule of thumb applies as with carbohydrates. Around workouts, preference is often given to the types of proteins that are absorbed quickly, such as the popular whey. These types of ‘fast proteins’ quickly cause a peak in the available
amino acids in the blood and especially stimulate the synthesis of new proteins in the muscles (protein synthesis). However, muscle mass is the result of continuous synthesis and breakdown of muscle proteins. “Slower” types of protein such as
casein do not quickly increase the amino acids in the blood, but do so for a longer period. The effect of this seems to be mainly inhibitory on the breakdown of muscle proteins. So, there is also an important role for these slow proteins that are preferably taken throughout the day.
Fats
The third major supplier of nutrients is of course the
fats. Fats serve as (secondary) fuel, as
transporters of fat-soluble vitamins, and as suppliers of building materials for, for example, cholesterol (and therefore testosterone). With about 9 kcal per gram, they provide more than
twice as much energy as carbohydrates and proteins, both of which provide 4 kcal per gram. However, this energy is less readily available than that in carbohydrates due to the required conversion to
glucose.
There are many different types of fats that we extensively cover in various articles. Most studies have focused on the different effects on health. However, there are also interesting differences in the effect on metabolism that athletes can benefit from.
The ultimate “ideal” distribution of macros naturally differs from sport to sport and even within the same sport among practitioners. Endurance athletes, for example, may need twice as many carbohydrates due to their extreme efforts as the average person. Someone who regularly runs marathons and trains for them, of course, burns a huge number of calories and trains his body mainly to do this as efficiently as possible. No unnecessary muscle mass. An Olympic weightlifter needs to stay within a certain weight class and doesn’t run 40 kilometers for breakfast. Too many carbohydrates are not an option. Short, maximum efforts require much more muscle mass, so a lack of proteins is also not an option.
However, even if you know what should ideally be for your sport and your body type, it is still only an indication. You work with it, measure your results, and adjust when necessary. You take this prior knowledge as a starting point and work from there to develop the best implementation for you.
Sports Nutrition and Dietary Supplements
First and foremost, sports nutrition is a calculated diet, where you know why and when, for example, you eat whole grain bread instead of white bread or cottage cheese instead of chicken.
What then is the role of dietary supplements?
There are countless dietary supplements available in a market with a billion-dollar turnover. Athletes in particular, but especially top athletes, would be wise to know the value and risks of different supplements.
We mention them here deliberately late in the article. The above basis should be your starting point. Dietary supplements never compensate for a lack of understanding of your nutritional needs and how to fill them. This is also logical because of the word ‘supplement’ itself. Supplementing something without knowing if there is a shortage
and the size of it is like pouring tea blindfolded without knowing if it has already been drunk.
Concentrated nutrients
Dietary supplements are merely a concentrated form of certain nutrients that you can often also get from food. The question is just how much of that food you would need and whether this fits into your diet.
One of the most famous dietary supplements is of course
protein shakes. The reason for this is the aforementioned importance for muscle mass. Both athletes who want to gain muscle mass and people who want to maintain it while losing weight find protein shakes an easy solution. This can be purely because of convenience, but also because the required amount of protein sometimes turns out to be greater than the appetite. For most people, a shake is easier to consume than 4 eggs.
This also applies to
vitamins and minerals. A healthy diet should provide these in sufficient amounts, with the exception of vitamin D for which we rely on adequate sunlight. Athletes may have a higher need for certain vitamins and minerals. Supplementation is then an easy way to target any deficiencies. Here, too, a good understanding of personal needs is important. Furthermore, it should be noted that the quantities stated on a package do not always correspond to what is actually provided. However, this applies to all supplements, and researching available test results is therefore advisable.
Another popular example is
creatine. The value of high levels of endogenous creatine has been repeatedly demonstrated in research. The personal value therefore depends on individual levels. Since creatine is mainly obtained from meat, meat eaters normally have higher creatine levels. However, since levels fluctuate, the added value is significant and the price is low, creatine is one of the most popular dietary supplements worldwide. A similar example is caffeine, which has been listed as a performance-enhancing substance on the WADA and IOC doping lists.
Customized nutrients
Supplements can also provide customization. For example, by providing you with only the fast proteins from milk in the form of whey protein or the slow protein in the form of casein. They can provide proteins that are partially broken down and absorbed even faster, or offer a mixture for gradual absorption (the added value of which compared to casein may be doubted).
This also applies to carbohydrates delivered in very rapidly digestible forms for around a competition or training session. These also include the many sports drinks for which the sugar/water ratio plays a role in absorption. Other supplements such as the well-known weight gainers sometimes (but just as often not) offer more complex carbohydrates for a more gradual release of sugars. This is to prevent unwanted increases in fat mass.
The
weight gainer is of course also an example of a supplement that mixes multiple nutrients, usually carbohydrates, protein, and whatever else the manufacturer comes up with to make it more interesting. What ‘the best’ weight gainer is depends on where it fits into your diet.
Sports Nutrition and Doping
In a number of articles, we discuss the possibility of banned substances ending up in your supplements. Either deliberately by the manufacturer or as contamination in the production process.
As a top athlete, you should be aware of the regulations to prevent you from using supplements that are not allowed. However, the danger of contamination is real, which means you can unknowingly ingest banned substances. To prevent this, you can choose to buy your supplements through officially designated parties by the IOC (and affiliated federations). The supplements are tested per batch in these cases to exclude contamination.
Water and Sports
In separate articles, we discuss the role of water in sports. After all, water plays an important role in the functioning of the body in general, particularly for athletes.
Water is necessary for countless processes in the body; it serves as a means of transport and as a means to regulate temperature.
Research has shown, among other things, the effect of dehydration on muscle strength. This is not very surprising, given the necessity of adequate hydration for normal hormone function.
Water also plays an important role in providing energy to the muscles during athletic performance. To make the sugars discussed earlier available as quickly as possible, the right ratio of sugar to water is important. Too little water and the carbohydrates are absorbed more slowly, too much water and you receive relatively little sugar.
