What is Food?

Real foods are those that came from the ground or a tree or from an animal. This rule alone will remove a lot of foods that are doing you no good (yes, that means sugary cereal for breakfast just doesn’t cut it anymore). Humans have spent thousands of years thriving on natural foods, without the need for creating food in factories. Since our body’s processes take thousands of years to adapt, we can say that it would be beneficial for us to stick to a real food diet for the most part. Fortunately, however, we now have a more in depth knowledge of what our food is made up of and how it affects us, so we can use this to our advantage. That doesn’t mean we have to eat whole foods only. Perhaps 80–90% of the time would be more achievable and enjoyable.

Basically, there are three main macronutrients found in foods: Protein, carbohydrates and fats. Each of these affect our body in different ways, as outlined below.

Protein

Protein is found mainly in animal products, but also in some vegetables, pulses, nuts and seeds. It is generally involved in the repair of muscle tissues within the body. Protein is essential for anyone who wishes to build muscle and generally people who want to be optimally healthy. One way that weight training creates muscle growth is by first breaking down the muscle, and then using protein (or more specifically amino acids that have been broken down from protein) to repair the muscle and make it stronger/bigger than it was before. If the body doesn’t have a good supply of protein, the muscles will remain damaged.
Protein can also aid in keeping you feeling fuller for longer. Those 10am hunger pangs may be due to the fact that your breakfast at 8am didn’t contain much protein, as is the case with people eating cereals/toast etc for breakfast. Try adding some eggs to your breakfast and see if that staves away the hunger for longer.
For the reasons above, it is very important to include at least some form of protein with every meal, especially when you are training hard. After a training session is an important time to get some protein in, as your body is broken down and in a state where it may potentially best utilise the protein. Whether this is a protein shake or a real whole food, it is very important that the body has some form of protein after training.

Carbohydrates

Mainly found in vegetables (especially root vegetables like potatoes), grains (like rice etc), fruits, pasta, bread, and in broken down form as sugars. Carbohydrates are the body’s main source of energy (although fats and proteins also provide energy), and are especially important in a high intensity training environment. When carbohydrates are ingested, they are broken down and stored as glycogen in the liver and in the muscles. This glycogen can be converted in glucose rapidly when needed in high intensity training, for example.
From a performance standpoint, it is very important that glycogen levels are maintained as much as possible, so that the energy is available when needed. Think of it like topping up the car’s fuel to be used when you need to drive. In that same sense, there is a point where adding more fuel may be too much, and it may contribute to fat gain.
Unexpectedly, the best time to ‘top-up’ glycogen levels tends to be after training. The body tends to store the carbohydrates more effectively as glycogen, after you have just used that which you have previously stored.
This raises a very interesting concept called ‘carb-cycling’. The basic idea is that you eat the majority of your daily carbohydrates after training, because that’s when they are stored best for the next session. Saving most of your carbohydrates until the evening will also increase insulin sensitivity, increasing the body’s ability to store carbs as glycogen as opposed to causing fat storage. This suits the average GAA player, because most training sessions tend to be in the evening, combining both effects of carb-cycling.
There is also a good argument in favour of drinking a sugary drink such as lucozade sport or powerade, or a glucose sachet before/during a tough session. These can bypass the above process and instead, the glucose (sugar) is taken straight into the blood and used quickly.

Fats

Fats are mainly found in nuts, seeds and oils, as well as in most animal products. Fat has a bad reputation in the mainstream nutrition world, but any good nutritionist will tell you that they are extremely important, and avoiding them totally will be detrimental to health. Eating fat does not necessarily make you fat. Overeating any macronutrient can lead to fat gain.
Now, what I will say is that not all fats are created equal. Contrary to popular belief, low-fat spreads that are marketed as a healthy alternative contain the least healthy type of fat, trans-fat. These are artificially made and have no function in the body. In fact, the body is not very good at processing these and they can be very detrimental to health.
Another commonly misunderstood nutrient is saturated fat. This type of fat does have an important role in the body. It is vital in hormone production and regulation, as well as helping the body’s immune system. The problem comes when choosing sources. Generally, saturated fat is found in red meat and dairy products. This in itself isn’t the problem, but rather the quality of the animal may be. Animals that are fed in a way that isn’t healthy for them (eg. cows eating a grain-based diet rather than a grass-based one) will store a lot of toxins in their fat. But if the quality of the products is high, this will not be a problem. So basically, if a high quality source is not available at the time, avoid the meat fat and replace it with something like nuts, but if it’s a high quality piece of grass-fed steak, the saturated fat is very beneficial.
With this said, the importance of unsaturated fat can not be over-emphasized. The two types of unsaturated fats are polyunsaturated and monounsaturated. They come from healthy oils, nuts seeds etc and are vitally important for the body’s health.
Healthy fats should be a key part of any diet, and some great sources are nuts and seeds, avocados, fish, good quality oils, such as coconut oil and olive oil. One caveat is that these can be high in calories, so if weight loss is a concern for you, you may want to control your portions of these, but should never completely remove them from your diet.

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Thanks! Conor, Know Yourself Nutrition