Many people worry that you can’t build muscle on a plant-based diet. This comes as vegetarian and vegan diets have become more popular than ever among athletes and regular exercisers. This may be for health reasons or concerns about animal welfare, cost, sustainability or the environment. The question is whether plant proteins are as…
Periodised carbohydrate training has become the latest buzzword among endurance athletes. Essentially it means matching your diet to your workload and new research suggests it may improve endurance performance and make you a more efficient fat burner. The idea behind training with low glycogen stores (‘training low’) is that it forces the muscles to burn more…
Whether you’re running the Virgin Money London Marathon on 23rd April, or one of the dozens of other marathons and half-marathons in 2017 now is the time to get your marathon nutrition on track. A good marathon fuelling plan is crucial if you want to run to your full potential. It will support your training,…
Think a vegetarian diet can’t give you the right nutrition for your training? Well think again – there are plenty of examples of world-class athletes who have shunned meat. David Haye, Lizzie Armistead, and Serena and Venus Williams, Brendan Brazier and Martina Navratilova to name a few. Whether you’re a veggie sceptic, a committed vegetarian, a part-time veggie…
If, like me, you’re planning to put your feet up and cut back on your exercise over Christmas, you’ll need to be mindful not to squander your training gains through overindulgence in food or alcohol. According to researchers at the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) on Wednesday, you would need to walk for 4…
Despite the rising popularity and well-documented health benefits of vegetarian diets, relatively little research has been done on the impact on athletic performance. In the first study of its kind, researchers at Arizona State University have shown that a vegetarian diet can support strength and cardiorespiratory fitness development, and that some vegetarian athletes may even…
8th June 2016 For years, we’ve been told that saturated fat is bad for the heart. The dogma was that this particular type of fat raises levels of cholesterol, promotes atherosclerosis and causes heart disease. But a new report and rash of media headlines (‘Eat Fat to get thin’) has claimed that saturated fat doesn’t…
8th June 2016 I’m not in the business of commercial endorsement but when an opportunity comes along to help bring a bit of balance back into the healthy eating debate, then I’m all for it! This week I was delighted to get behind the new ‘Powered by Bread’ campaign that aims to encourage young active…
19th May 2016 Many sports supplements make bold claims about boosting performance but only a few are backed up by credible research. In the third article of this 5-part series on supplements, I look at the evidence for caffeine. What is it? Caffeine is a stimulant that’s legal, relatively safe and found in many everyday foods…
