Paleo, Protein and Going the Distance

I often find blog post subjects from questions or comments I receive via twitter, facebook or emails, so keep them coming along, please!

The other day I received a such one comment via Twitter to my post about eating bananas and coconut water during training, or carbohydrate gels.

“So no protein for you? Paleo Diet for Athletes says 4:1 carb/protein during long races“, the question read.

To begin, I definitely found Paleo for Athletes to be an invaluable read; it was the second Paleo book I read, after the quintessential must-read, Dr. Cordain’s The Paleo Diet.   Both are an important component in any Paleo athlete’s library.

My own interpretation that I suggest for my clients as well is to read the books, soak up the knowledge and get to work implementing them by trial and error.   While we all share the same commonality of being human, we all vary in terms of how much food we can handle close to training, how much we can properly ingest during and how long it takes us to recover, to a degree.

In other words, take the science provided by Dr. Cordain and then do your own ‘field-tests’ on yourself to see what works.

For example, in Paleo for Athletes, there is a recovery plan of what to eat involving phases of recovery.  

I’ve had clients tell me that they’ve had their homebrew recovery drink but don’t want to wait for a certain period of time to elapse before eating protein and veggies because their body is craving it.  Or, in my example from the other day’s post, I find that for me, eating protein when I’m working at high intensity for a long period of time doesn’t sit as well with me as just carbohydrate.

This is certainly not meant to oppose all the science behind the recommendations; rather a suggestion to understand the science and see what works best for you.  

Test it, try it, test it again and get everything dialed in before your key race and just watch how much better you perform and recover compared to the old days before you were Paleo!