Latest Posts

For active people who hike, bike, walk, jog, lift weights, or just play, healthy snacks are an important component of solid nutrition for athletes. It is no secret that there are plenty of poor tasting protein drinks and stomach-churning power bars available. Now, however, finding the right snacks and the most flavorful nutrition can be a much more enjoyable experience than it was in the past.

Whether you devise your own healthy snacks or buy something prepackaged, it is more common now to find treats that are likeable and provide a boost to your fitness routine. What has changed is that the most powerful nutrition for athletes can now be more convenient and easy to obtain from healthy snacks in concentrated formulations that are prepared with real whole food ingredients. These concentrated formulas include the perfect levels of complex carbohydrates, protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals. The most appealing aspect is that these concentrated snack formulas taste great, and they are so easy to prepare.

To consume even more solid nutrition for athletes, throw in a few bananas or other fruits with these all natural whole food concentrates and make healthy snacks that could be full meals, especially for breakfast. Besides additional fruit, try adding organic peanut butter for a little more protein. You may be astounded at the great taste and your body will appreciate the increase in essential fats. When it comes to tasty and convenient nutrition for athletes, these kinds of concentrated, nutrient dense smoothies are far superior to juicing or food combining. It is great to know that you can get all the nutrients you need to perform at peak levels by simply using a blender and about 30 seconds of effort.

One thing to remember is that purchasing concentrated whole food healthy snacks requires some digging. Learning more about what you are purchasing is critical if you are really serious about finding the highest quality nutrition for athletes. It is necessary to look beyond the nutrition fact labels to uncover how the products are processed and whether or not they contain whole food ingredients with live enzymes. Try to understand if the healthy snacks you think you are buying are alkaline foods or acid foods. This will depend on the structure of the all-natural, whole food ingredients that are used and if they were overly processed in packaging.

Numbers to look out for on the nutrition facts label include sodium and sugar levels. Too many people make the mistake of only looking at carbs, calories and protein when buying nutrition for athletes. However, many of the so-called healthy foods actually contain dangerously large amounts of protein for anyone except bodybuilders and pro athletes. Really healthy snacks that qualify as appropriate nutrition for athletes are those that include whole food ingredients with plant-based protein, not synthetic proteins, vitamins or minerals.

Cycling Training Nutrition

Ok, I’m not going to bore you with in-depth details about what ratio of carbs to fats and protein you should eat, you can read an article on that next if you find yourself wanting more details and facts about the number crunching side of good nutrition.

Now, some of you might be doing cycling training so that you can lose weight. Still, you need to remember, if you are doing almost any kind of sports training, to get in shape, lose weight, or both, you need to eat enough to support your physical activity. What I am saying is it isn’t good to under eat. If you aren’t doing any physical training, then eating less is a perfectly fine way to lose weight, however, when you are doing sports training you need to eat a surplus of calories to make it really pay off. Your body will need those extra calories to build muscle, and to give you the energy to participate in the activities involved with whatever you are doing.

The next big thing you need to do is to eat healthy. You don’t need to eat healthy all of the time, or buy 100% organic food. (It’s great if you can, but a lot of people can’t afford it). None the less, you need to pay attention to what you eat before and after any kind of training you do for cycling.

So, what’s healthy food? Generally speaking, fruits, veggies, and water do the trick pretty well. Most other stuff that isn’t widely known NOT to be a healthy food to eat works alright most of the time too. Just make sure you stay away from things like: alcohol, soda, pastries, and other junk foods before workouts. One of the main reasons to do this, other than those foods being bad for you, is that many of them, like soda or alcohol, will have a soporific effect, or other negative impact on your training, which can add up to be a severe detriment to your progress.

In general, you should avoid consuming any of the above mentioned foods entirely while on a cycling training routine, or a cycling training program. It’s very important to have a good exercise program for your sport, but you won’t be able to make the progress you want with your cycling training program unless you have good nutrition to back up your efforts.

To recap:

1) Make sure you eat enough, food is your body’s energy source, no food, no energy.

2) Make sure you drink enough water! Your body uses more water than normal while performing any kind of strenuous physical activity, and if you don’t drink enough water, you may feel tired, dizzy, and experience headaches.

3) If you really can’t live without your junk food, don’t eat it before or after exercising, and I mean several hours before or after. (Like 3-5 hours).

4) Eat healthy whenever you can. This means fruits, veggies, organic food, and water as your primary source of liquids.

Don’t forget to make a good cycling workout routine/training program. If you don’t have enough experience to create one for yourself, there are many top quality guides and programs already on the market.