Cycling Nutrition 101: Part 3
In part 1 of Cycling Nutrition 101 I talked about the importance of having fats in your diet. In part 2, I talked about the importance of having complex carbohydrates in your diet. For part 3 in my series of cycling nutrition articles I will talk about a part of your diet that you are probably already fulfilling, and then some.
If you ask most athletes what the most important part of their diet is, they will most likely tell you it is protein. Athletes are bombarded with products that contain protein. We get protein in energy bars, sports drinks, and protein powders. We have continually been told that the way to gain muscle mass is by sucking down as much protein as we can.
Protein is a part of muscles, bone, hormones, antibodies, and enzymes, and makes up about 45% of the human body. It is, without a doubt, an incredibly important part of anyone’s diet, but the amount of protein that we need is far less than most people believe.
Figuring out how much protein you should take in daily is pretty easy to do. The amount of recommended protein intake will vary from person to person. All you need to do is take your current weight and multiply it by the number associated with descriptor that best describes you below:
- Sedentary Adult (0.4)
- Active Adult (0.4-0.6)
- Training Athlete (0.6-0.9)
- Adult Building Muscle Mass (0.6-0.9)
As an example, if you an adult cyclist who is actively training and want the maximum but acceptable amount of protein daily (0.9 x 160) than you can take in around 144 grams of protein a day. This number may seem high, but this is a lot easier achieved than you might think. If you start your day with a couple eggs, and a piece of toast; a deli meat sandwich for lunch; an 8 ounce piece of chicken, and vegetables for dinner, and a couple glasses of milk during the day; you will have taken in at least 140 grams of protein. Now, keep in mind this is the amount of protein that an adult who is lifting weights to build muscle mass should intake. I think it is a much more reasonable amount of protein intake is about 0.6 grams per pound of body mass, or less than 100 grams for a 160 pound adult.
My point is that supplements and energy bars are entirely useless. You can safely get more than enough protein to fill your daily requirements without much change to your current diet.
Supplements also lack other important nutrients found in meats and grains, such as iron, zinc, B-vitamins, and calcium. While eating a half pound burger will get you about 50 grams of protein, you also have to keep parts 1 and 2 of Cycling Nutrition 101 in mind. Healthy sources of protein include most types of fish (especially salmon), black beans, peanuts or almonds, milk or soymilk, and eggs.
The bottom line is, don’t focus too much on protein. Remember all three important parts of a healthy diet, because they all play an important role in creating energy, building muscle, and helping to prevent injury.
I have now broken down each of the three most important parts of a cyclist’s diet. In part 4 of Cycling Nutrition 101, I will put it all together for you and build a meal plan to help improve your energy and endurance.
[...] parts 1, 2, and 3 of Cycling Nutrition 101, we dug into the main components of not only cycling nutrition, but [...]
Is your calculation for protein correct? Going by your example, if you take your weight and mutiply by any of those conversion factors you would get varying results based on if you used Pounds or Kgs as the unit. So according to your example of 0.9 x 160, you get 144 grams of protein. Assuming this is pounds, the kg conversion is around 72.5kg or around 65grams of protein. This is much more realistic than 144 grams. I can’t understand how you can swap between pounds and grams, one is imperial and the other is metric. Totaly smashes your creditablity bro.
The calculation should be using weight in kilograms, not pounds – Mathamagician (fantastic handle btw) is correct. I did my undergraduate degree in dietetics and am currently getting my Ph.D. in nutritional sciences. The American Dietetic Association, Dietitians of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine released a joint position paper on nutrition and athletic performance this year (2011): (http://www.eatright.org/WorkArea//DownloadAsset.aspx?id=8435).
Their recommendation for athletes is 1.2-1.7 g/kg. Comparatively, 0.8 g/kg is often the reference taught in nutrition/dietetics curricula for normal adults. It actually is not very feasible to maintain an intake of 140 g protein/day for a 70 kg adult, since other macronutrient intakes may be undesirably altered (potentially, too few carbs and too much fat, depending on the diet). Excess protein would just end up being excreted in the urine as urea anyway, although extremely high intakes (probably over 2.5 g/kg) may cause kidney damage.
Also, just a note, your “Training Athlete” (0.6-0.9) and “Adult Building Muscle Mass” (0.6-0.9) categories have the same intake levels listed. I would say the former category should probably be around 0.8-1.2, while the latter (we’re talking about serious anaerobic lifting here, more like bodybuilding or powerlifting) would be in the 1.2-1.7 range.
I’m an avid cyclist and with both my cyclist and dietetics hats on see no reason for most cyclists to be consuming more than 1.2 g/kg. Cycling is certainly anaerobic at times, but not nearly enough to require much more dietary protein than that. The fiber damage and repair needs in a cyclist’s legs are simply not on the same level as in a bodybuilder or the like – they’re two separate physiological responses.
Finally, the link I have included has a lot of high-quality information on performance nutrition in topics other than protein needs. I recommend a full reading.
Take care.
Without going to deep into the process…you need 1 gram of protein per pound to maintain muscle and 1.5 grams per pound of body weight to gain muscle. By not taking in enough protein each day to maintain your body will literally start to eat its own protein to survive.
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