Q&A with Nutritionist Angela Walker

When you’re spending upwards of 40 days isolated at sea, all nutritional decisions and queries need to be sorted out beforehand. With that in mind, Ian and Dan fired a few nutrition questions at Nutritionist Angela Walker — hopefully the answers will help you too!

1. “Should protein factor into our dietary decisions, or is this all about energy?”

Yes, you need protein to help maintain your lean body mass during the row, but we need to look at overall nutrient and energy (calories) intake rather than just focus on one nutrient.

Let’s start with some foundations.

My personal daily consumption is around 2,000 calories.

For my health and to support the activity I do, I’m looking to break that down into the following macro nutrient ratios:

• 20–25% protein
• 30% fat (mainly from monounsaturated fats and Polyunsaturated fat sources)
• 45–50% CHO (carbohydrate)

Which equates to:

On the Atlantic row a typical person will burn in excess of 5,000 calories and given your height and body mass, we need to factor for more like 6,000 calories.

To convert that into the individual macro-nutrient needs you might think we just x3 each of the Macro nutrients, e.g. 375g protein per day? While it sounds logical, it doesn’t work that way.

375g protein is way too much protein to consume and you don’t need that amount of amino acids (which are the building blocks of protein) to maintain lean muscle mass. Plus protein foods might be more expensive and difficult to prepare. On top of these “wastage” issues, your digestive system might struggle with that amount of protein. So you need to increase the proportion of calories from CHO (easiest to digest) and fat (most calories per gram of food), in relation to the protein to factor up your total calorie intake.

200g protein in a 24 hour period is about right. That will replace the lost muscle (which will be turning over a quite a rate as you row) and be manageable for your digestive system.

You still don’t want to eat that protein all in one go, but aim for around 25–30g per meal or snack. I.e. around 6 or 7 times in a 24 hour period.

2. “We’ll inevitably be losing loads of weight-should we be leaning towards fat-rich foods?”

It is a bit of a myth that “eating fat makes you fat”. If that were true, then leaning towards fat rich foods would be logical during the row.

In reality it’s a combination of calories in vs calories out and having the right macronutrient ratios (and micronutrient levels) to maintain what we call “metabolic flexibility”.

“On the Atlantic row a typical person will burn in excess of 5,000 calories and given your height and body mass, we need to factor for more like 6,000 calories.”

The most important thing for you during the row will be to maintain the right calorie intake. I think you will struggle to consume sufficient overall calories, which is why weight loss is inevitable (the average rower loses 8kg during a crossing).

There are more calories in fat than there are in protein or carbohydrate, but fats can be harder to digest, especially versus carbohydrates.

This is where your personal preferences will come in. It will be interesting to see how you guys go on the training rows. Some of the snack bars we have had supplied (from MegaRawBar) have a higher fat content than others — if you get on with those ok, they might well be more efficient for making up calories in a day, but if you have a preference (taste or mouth feel wise) for the other ones, then we will need to factor that in.

3. “How can we counter a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables for such a long period of time?”

The reason people like me advocate a diet high in fresh fruit and vegetables is because of:

• Fibre (soluble & insoluble)
• Phytonutrients + micronutrients (vitamins, minerals and other bioactive plant ingredients.
• Hydration — fresh fruits and veg are about 80% water, that water is more easily absorbed

We need to make sure that the food and drink supplies you do have are compensating or contributing in a similar way. If we take each of those factors in turn:

• Fibre. I am not worried about this because your fibre needs don’t increase and you will easily consume an optimal amount given the 5–6,000 cal intake.
• Phytonutrients. & micronutrients. We carefully picked snack bars that are based on “real” ingredients such as nuts, seeds, dried fruit, this means they are rich in minerals, vitamins and phytonutrients.
• Hydration. This is clearly going to be extremely important to take care of. One thing that will help replicate the water found within fruits and vegetables is to drink water that contains electrolytes ie dissolved minerals. Something as simple as adding a pinch of salt to a litre of water can make a difference.

4. “How long will it take our bodies to get used to this ocean rowing diet?”

That is a great question! This is exactly why I recommend you test out the food when doing your test row. I want you to have tried all the meals, figured out how best to prepare them, tried the snacks, noticed if anything causes bloating or in any other way is difficult to digest.

5. “Should we be fasting at all, given we’ll be moving all day and night?”

In regular life I recommend fasting for at least 12 hours overnight for everyone. This is a daily “re-set” for your microbiome and digestive system. Extending that daily fast to 14 or 16 hours can help with maintaining metabolic flexibility.

On the row things are a little different. Your number 1 priority is to try and maintain enough calorie / energy intake. Adding in extra “rules” about when you eat is neither helpful nor a priority.

My advice will be to eat what and when you can rather than to worry about fasting during the row. During the build up, fasting for at least 12 hours overnight would be recommended.

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Originally published at https://roaring40s.co.uk on September 15, 2022.