Reviewing a sports dietitians 7 day food diary
What do you eat on ‘average’ each week? Chances are you probably think you eat better than you actually do!
One of the first steps I have all clients do before we start working together (and the first step of the cycling nutrition framework) is to complete a thorough food, mood and training diary of their current nutritional intake and the factors that influence it to establish a clear baseline.
I use Cronometer Gold nutrition app with clients in my nutrition practice.
Lots of things influence what we eat - work, family, stress, training.. some of these things we can control, others we can’t. Which is why what we eat from one week to another may fluctuate a bit.
I find that the process of recording food intake periodically and especially at baseline plays a key role to help everyone identify patterns and behaviours around their food and nutrition where there is room for improvement. Not perfection, improvement. There’s always something that can be improved, but often we are blindly unaware of what we are eating and underestimating the contribution of certain foods. Taking a food diary can help raise awareness of this.
It’s not about perfection, but looking for ways that you can make sustainable adjustments and improvements that you can stick with for LIFE. Not just the next 7 or 21 days.
Getting you to complete your own 7 day food diary is a key action task for Module 1 in my 4-week online Cycling Nutrition Framework. As an example, I completed a 7 day food, mood and training diary myself and have analysed it for your entertainment to demonstrate the value of this for you!
Cycling nutrition coaching, workshops and resources to fuel peak performance as a cyclist. Become a well fuelled cyclist with Advanced Sports Dietitian Dr Gemma Sampson.
I’m no different or better than the person next to me at times when it comes to stress and business in life. Rather than sharing a perfect what I ate in a day vision, you can see the reality!
To give some context, it's August, I am in Spain, its about 35 degrees with high humidity, busy with clients and various different stresses which mean I'm mostly doing big rides on the weekends, not particularly hungry during the day because of the heat and life is just a little bit chaotic!
Here’s a summary of what I ate that week.
A sports dietitians 7 day food and training diary
Energy intake and energy balance
First let's look at my energy intake, expenditure and energy balance. On an average day for weight maintenance, my body needs approximately 2000kcal plus energy to compensate for training. Looking at the graph below, you can see that for the most of the week I was around or below my energy needs until the weekend where my energy intake almost doubled.
Now because I was doing two very long rides on the weekend, I ended up with energy deficits on those days - even with the extra intake (and 1500kcal dinners!!). However, if I had eaten that same amount on those two days without having done the exercise I would have been in a big surplus throughout the week which when left unchecked over a few weeks would likely result in weight gain.
This is important to note for occasions when you eat 'really well' during the week and restrict (perhaps a bit too much), then on the weekends go to town and eat much more than normal. Which is why I don't like the term 'cheat meals' because it typically suggests a free-for all on those days. And while it's important to relax your intake periodically, you want to relax it closer to maintenance calories rather than a big surplus.
Overall across the course of the week I ended up in a net calorie deficit of about -125kcal, which explains why I've been losing about a kg a month over the past few months (without me having been trying).
Carbohydrate intake
Now let's look at macronutrients - starting at Carbs. As you'll hear me say time and time again, my approach with carbohydrate is to periodise it specifically to the training that you're doing - fuel for the watts required. This is what I teach my clients to do in our 1:1 nutrition coaching sessions and within the Cycling Nutrition Framework. Our brain and bodies need carbs for multiple different reasons, but that doesn't mean you need to go extremes either eating them never or all the time.
On an average day, a good aim for me (around 3g per kg body weight) is just shy of 200g of carbohydrate, which provides more or less 500kcal to my daily intake. However, when i'm exercising I then adjust and add more food (including carbohydrates) in to meet the intensity and duration of the rides that I'm doing. Which explains why on the weekends my intake basically doubled. I was doing two long 3-5hr rides climbing up the Tourmelet in the Pyrenees and needed lots of energy to fuel that!
Protein intake
So what about protein. This is one macronutrient that still needs work for me - even as a sports dietitian. Especially if I don't eat eggs for breakfast, I really struggle to meet my targets. Personally I am aiming towards around 120g per day (2g per kg body weight). I wasn't too far off most of the week, except for Friday where I totally missed the ball! This was because I was running around like crazy and missed breakfast, and then because it was a 40th birthday ended up eating more cake than anything else that day! However when I put that into context I hadn’t eaten cake in about 3 months so that’s not really a concern. Still, room for improvement when it comes to protein intake.
Fat intake
Fat wise, on an average day I'd aim towards around 60-90g (1-1.2g per kg), which wasn't too far off. This is where context is really important to consider. See how much higher it was on the weekends? If you recall my overall energy intake and food intake doubled on these days because of the rides I did. As such so did what I needed to fuel my body. So I'm not too concerned about this. Yes I did eat 3 cupcakes on Friday.. not ideal, but to put it in context I'd not eaten cake in about 3 months at this point and seriously - you have to eat cake for a birthday!
Overall dietary assessment
All things considered, it was a pretty good week considering the chaos that happened. I was very surprised that there were days that I was eating less than 1700kcal. But I weighed everything, so it was accurate! It does explain the weight loss. As always, it made me more mindful of what I was eating, why. There was a pack of M&Ms in there, something that again I've not had in months but there's no sense hiding it or pretending it didn't happen. Just being realistic about what I ate, how often and why.
Room for improvement
A big thing for me to work on at the moment is having food and meals especially available that I can eat sort of on the go or when I'm busy with work. I sometimes forget to eat when I'm busy or don't get excessively hungry so that's something for me to get better at. Speaking of the devil its 9:30pm, I'm still at work and haven't eaten since 2pm... better head home for dinner!
Remember. It’s not about perfection, but progress and consistency when it comes to making changes to your nutrition.
I hope this has helped give you a bit of insight into some of the things you can consider when reviewing and assessing a food diary and improving how you fuel your training.
Gemma