Ask the Experts - Nutrition

Answers from Andrew Hamilton:

Q. I am very keen to improve my 10km time. I am 28 years old and my time for 10km is 30 minutes. I have found that when I eat meat and chicken my 10km time seems to slow to 32 minutes, but when I stop eating meat my time drops again to 30 minutes. My coach had advised me to eat meat for strength, but I find it makes me feel slow and feel heavy. Can you please advise me why this is and what’s the best thing to do?

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Without having a more detailed look at your diet, it’s hard to know why eating meat and chicken seems to make you feel and perform worse. One possible explanation is that when you eat meat and chicken, you are unwittingly displacing carbohydrate-rich foods such as rice, bread, pasta, potatoes, beans etc in order to ‘make room’ for the meat. Carbohydrate (in the form of stored muscle glycogen) is your body’s principle fuel for performing high-intensity exercise and any dietary shortfall could mean that you’re failing to fully replenish the muscle glycogen lost during training and competition, which can rapidly lead to feelings of ‘heaviness’ and fatigue during subsequent training/competition.

Another possibility is that if you are adding chicken and meat to your diet without cutting back elsewhere, the increased calorie intake that results may gradually be leading to body fat gains, which again would make you feel heavy and reduce performance. However, this is something you would only really notice over a period of weeks, not days. A third possibility is that you have some kind of food intolerance to one or more of the chicken/meat products you’re consuming. Food intolerances can make you feel tired and they’re often accompanied by weight gain in the form of water retention, which would also make you feel heavy and reduce performance.

Chicken and meat are excellent sources of protein and red meat is an excellent source of iron – especially important for endurance athletes. However, provided your diet is well balanced, there’s no reason why you should feel compelled to eat meat products if you feel they don’t suit you; many athletes can and do perform extremely well on properly balanced vegetarian diets. And if you’re happy to consume foods such as fish, eggs, beans and nuts and seeds, your protein and iron intake will almost certainly be sufficient. However, if you are serious about your training, you may wish to consult a properly qualified nutritionist, who can take a detailed look at your diet to assess where the problem lies!