The Importance Of Food Logging
Food logging, sometimes called a food diary or food tracking, is a very simple method of keeping on top of your nutrition. All that is required is you to write down everything that you eat and drink, this can be as simple as writing everything out in a note pad or using a specific app, such as My Fitness Pal, which can calculate the calories in each item off food. Also My Fitness Pal can connect with your Training Peaks account, which will allow you to compare your nutrition with your on the bike performance. There are a few general tips to keeping a successful food diary, the first tip is to write as you eat because you are less likely to miss out the finer details if you complete the diary at the end of the day. Another tip is to be as specific as possible, this can include portion size, time of day, location, people you are with and even the emotion after you ate. Try and set a fixed date every week to review the previous week, this is the point of the diary because you can highlight areas where you can improve the diary. The final tip is BE HONEST the only person you are cheating is YOU, it’s not ideal if you devoured an entire 14 inch pizza, but it’s a bigger crime if you don’t put it in the diary. Slip ups even on the strictest diets, but you need to acknowledge the mistake and correct it.
Diary review/spotting habits
Once you have been logging your food intake for roughly a week, you will start to build a picture of your habits and the beauty of the food journal is that it keeps you accountable and makes you more aware of what you are eating. You are less likely to grab that piece of chocolate cake if you know you have to write down later and face the ultimate critic (AKA you). Plus, you become more aware of the emotions tied to your food or the habits you’ve fallen into. Perhaps you find that you crave sugary snacks around 4 p.m. When you sit down and ask yourself the simple question “why” in your journal, you realise that 4 p.m. is peak stress time at work.
Replication of your diet
Keeping track of what you eat can allow you to replicate the preparation of specific training sessions, for example if you felt really strong during a sweet spot session and the following week your legs feel really heavy, you can look back at the nutrition and training leading up to the session and possibly figure out what went wrong. This can be really important when you are power testing, for example an FTP test, because you want to keep the conditions as close as possible to the initial test. Before the test, you can look back to what you ate the day before and morning of the test in order to replicate it, for example there could be a performance difference if you had Spaghetti Bolognese before the first test and curry the night before the second test.
Some things just don’t work
Bad training days happen to anyone, even the pro’s, sometimes it can’t be explained why but most times it’s down to nutrition. You can use a food diary to reflect on what you had before and during the session. If you had something completely new, maybe a recipe or energy bar, then there is a good chance that could be the culprit. It’s also recommended that you include the time of food intake, in relation to the training session, because eating too close to exercise can cause gut problems or can lead to a generally lethargic training session. In the diary you can include a “things to avoid” section where you can make a note of certain foods/products/brands to stay away from because they haven’t worked for you in the past.
Published by Olly Cook
Once you have been logging your food intake for roughly a week, you will start to build a picture of your habits and the beauty of the food journal is that it keeps you accountable and makes you more aware of what you are eating. You are less likely to grab that piece of chocolate cake if you know you have to write down later and face the ultimate critic (AKA you). Plus, you become more aware of the emotions tied to your food or the habits you’ve fallen into. Perhaps you find that you crave sugary snacks around 4 p.m. When you sit down and ask yourself the simple question “why” in your journal, you realise that 4 p.m. is peak stress time at work.
Replication of your diet
Keeping track of what you eat can allow you to replicate the preparation of specific training sessions, for example if you felt really strong during a sweet spot session and the following week your legs feel really heavy, you can look back at the nutrition and training leading up to the session and possibly figure out what went wrong. This can be really important when you are power testing, for example an FTP test, because you want to keep the conditions as close as possible to the initial test. Before the test, you can look back to what you ate the day before and morning of the test in order to replicate it, for example there could be a performance difference if you had Spaghetti Bolognese before the first test and curry the night before the second test.
Some things just don’t work
Bad training days happen to anyone, even the pro’s, sometimes it can’t be explained why but most times it’s down to nutrition. You can use a food diary to reflect on what you had before and during the session. If you had something completely new, maybe a recipe or energy bar, then there is a good chance that could be the culprit. It’s also recommended that you include the time of food intake, in relation to the training session, because eating too close to exercise can cause gut problems or can lead to a generally lethargic training session. In the diary you can include a “things to avoid” section where you can make a note of certain foods/products/brands to stay away from because they haven’t worked for you in the past.
Published by Olly Cook