When eating for sports or fitness regimen, timing is most important

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THE AMOUNT, QUALITY and timing of your food intake are as important as the amount and type of training you do for your desired sports performance, whether it is to improve your time in your next race, to lift heavier in your power-lifting competition, or to finish your first triathlon. Proper...

Brown Sugar Myth Buster

Are brown sugars with fancy names (and higher price tags) any healthier than the plain old white stuff in the jar next to the tea bags?

More flavourful? Yes.

Healthier? No!

Most brown sugars come from the same plaec as white sugar (sugar cane) and all are chemically identical containing sucrose.

Darker sugars like demerara or sugars labeled “raw” are simple processed differently to retain molasses or other flavours.

While molasses supplies some minerals that white sugar lacks, the quantity is too small to make a health difference.

Deeper-coloured sugars do, however, add a richer flavour to your coffee or more texture to your baking.

The verdict: if you prefer the taste and the thought of a less process product, go for it. But once it hits your gut, it’s all the same.

Source: Runner's World

Tips for diabetic runners

Ever thought what a diabetic runner goes through when running a marathon?

Danger signs you should be aware of
some indicators that your blood sugar might be low:

1.             1.   You feel very weak

2.     You “hit the wall”

3.     You feel so hungry that you demolish any food in sight

4.     The road comes up to meet your feet so that you feel unbalanced

5.     You break into a severe sweat

6.     You feel light headed

7.      If you have any of the above symptoms try and drink a sugary drink or eat from the tables, which provide potatoes, bananas, biscuits and sweets.

The scary truth about sugar for runners

I dis­cov­ered this arti­cle on CNN Health 

It’s about the impact of sugar on blood-​fat pro­files (known as ‘lipid pro­files’) and car­dio­vas­cu­lar risks, and it’s scary!

Now every­one knows that too much sugar is bad for you. But run­ners typ­i­cally get to ben­e­fit from the equa­tion
Calo­ries In <= Calo­ries Out
In other words, if you con­sume extra calo­ries, you can just run them off!

Had an extra por­tion at a busi­ness din­ner? Run it off the next day! Co-​worker brought snacks in to a meet­ing? Run them off! Need a Coke and a candy bar in the mid­dle of the after­noon for a pick-​me-​​up? Hold that thought!!!

Here’s what the study in the arti­cle found:

The strongest rela­tion­ship between added sugar and blood fats was found in val­ues for HDL-​​C, which fell from 58.7 mg/​dl for those who ate the least added sugar to 47.7 mg/​dl for those who ate the most. A higher HDL-​​C level is asso­ci­ated with a lower car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk.

Among some blood fats linked to higher car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk, the con­verse was true: Triglyc­eride lev­els went from 105 mg/​dl in the group that ate the least sugar to 114 mg/​dl in the group that ate the most. The so-​called bad cho­les­terol, LDL-​​C, went from 116 mg/​dl for women who ate the least sugar to 123 mg/​dl for women who ate the most. There were no sig­nif­i­cant trends for LDL-​​C among men.

Ouch! That’s a double-​whammy!! Sugar makes your good cho­les­terol go down and your triglyc­erides and bad cho­les­terol go up!

And the prob­lem, even for run­ners, is that sugar is processed so quickly, chances are you’re not run­ning it off before it starts affect­ing you.

But wait, there’s more!

Data from the mid-​​1990’s show that 15.8 per­cent of the typ­i­cal American’s diet was com­posed of added sugar — 21.4 tea­spoons or 359 calo­ries per day. That’s up from 10.6 per­cent in 1977–1978.

And in the study cited in the arti­cle, the study par­tic­i­pants that were in the highest-​consuming added sugar group ate about 46 tea­spoons of added sugar per day! Try to visu­al­ize that. If you need help, take a look at this arti­cle which shows what a mere 18 tea­spoons looks like, and also tells you how much sugar is found in com­mon drinks (one can of Coke has about 10 tea­spoons!).

Added sugar is every­where you look. Yes, you can avoid sodas and choco­late bars and candy. But how about ketchup, spaghetti sauce on your pre-​​race pasta din­ner, and the run­ner favorite Gatorade? All of these have added sugar in the form of “caloric sweet­en­ers,” the most com­mon of which is corn syrup. And even if you can con­trol your sugar intake, do you know how much sugar your chil­dren are eat­ing every day?

So what are a run­ner and a con­cerned par­ent to do?

“What it really means is we have to go back to things like whole grains and veg­eta­bles and fruit and eat things in mod­er­a­tion in order to be healthy,” What that means is just because you can run a marathon (or a half, or a 10K…) doesn’t mean you can bal­ance excess with excess. Excess non-​nutritional caloric intake bal­anced by excess dis­tance does not a healthy run­ner make! If you achieve bal­ance by putting too much on both sides, your bal­ance may break.