The Best Way to Stay on Your Nutrition Game in the Off-Season

There is something I’ve noticed about many endurance athletes over the years (which includes me), we either don’t take an off season (or at least not a very long one) or we completely forget about health and fitness and let ourselves go for a few months.

I’ve done both.  And what I’ve personally learned is I don’t like the way I feel either way. 

The first year or two I got into triathlon, I completely stopped training (for the most part) and just ate whatever I wanted for about 3 months after my last race. Pretty much the entire holiday season I justified eating mostly crappy food and not really doing too much activity. 

I justified to myself that after 9 months of training, I deserve a break from all of it. But after a 3 month hiatus from training and a very lackadaisical approach to my eating, I wondered why in the heck I ever thought that was a good idea when I: 

1. Had to get back into a bathing suit, and 
2. Tried to actually do a swim workout. Holy moly you can lose some serious fitness in 3 months! 

So then I switched up my approach. I’ll put a late race on the calendar so I keep training into the holiday season, then make sure I have an early event next year so I get right back after training ASAP. 

I flipped my justification to ‘why the heck would I want to lose all that fitness I built up last season!?!’ It wasn’t until mid season that I realized just how burnt out I was and how much I needed a break! 

Years later, I finally learned that there is actually a middle ground. 

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks talking about how to use your off-season wisely so you feel rested going into your next race season, but also strong and fit...like you haven’t started back over from the very beginning! 

We’ve discussed strength training, optimizing sleep, and managing stress...all things that can be improved on in the off-season. But there is something else that is SOOOOOO critical to ensuring a successful off-season (and therefore, a successful next race season) and that is nutrition. 

Just like your heart and muscles can be trained, so can your metabolism. 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could consume less race food and still have stable energy levels? You can. How nice would it be if you could eat healthy meals that are quick to prepare and not feel like you're starving or deprived all the time? It’s possible. 

And that whole bonk thing that happens to athletes at the end of a long training day or towards the end of your event. Wouldn’t life be great if that didn’t happen anymore. 

Well….you can actually train your body to prevent it. This week, we’re going to talk about why you want to optimize your nutrition in your OFF-SEASON and how to do it.

Fat Adaptation
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I’m sure by now you’ve heard all about getting fat adapted.

If not, to put it simply, when your body is “fat adapted” that means it is efficient at utilizing fat for energy (rather than just relying on carbohydrates for energy!).

If you’ve heard of fat adaptation before, maybe you think it’s a hype, or maybe not. Here is where I stand on the subject...you never know if it will work for you until you try it. 

Maybe you follow the traditional recommendations for endurance athletes and eat a high carbohydrate diet and feel amazing. You carb load with pasta and bread the night before your long workout and have a great session the following day. 

Your annual blood tests are all great, you sleep great, you have high levels of energy that are stable throughout the day and you have a body composition you LOVE. Good for you! 

My advice for you is: don’t change anything. Clearly what you are doing is working for you. 

However, if you are not in love with your body composition, your energy levels fluctuate throughout the day, you bonk easily during longer workouts especially if you don’t consume enough sugary race food, you feel like it takes you forever to recover from workouts and your sleep could certainly use a little help...it’s time to consider doing something different. 

My advice to you is: get fat adapted. 

Fat adaptation is the process of changing your diet so your body can access energy from both sugar/carbs and fat, instead of just sugar/carbs. The diet consists of eating low amounts of carbohydrates, moderate amounts of proteins, and higher amounts of healthy fats. This process of turning yourself from a sugar burner to a fat burner can take about 6-8 weeks for endurance athletes to really feel a difference in their training. 

For this reason, I highly recommend you consider this process in your off-season.

​The longer you give yourself to get fat-adapted, the more benefits you’ll see when you get back to training and racing.

Just like your muscles have memory, so does your metabolism!

So the longer you eat a low carb, high fat (LCHF) diet, the better and better you’ll feel. So instead of following the ‘take 3 months off’ approach and then trying to slam home this process 6-8 weeks before your first event next year, here is what I’d recommend:

• Take 2 weeks off of structured training and structured nutrition after your final event of the year (or in the case of COVID, the 2 weeks after the cancelation of your final event). This doesn’t mean you should sit on the couch and eat bon bons for 2 weeks. It means you should be active in ways that feel really good for your body and eat mostly healthy whole foods without doing any calorie counting, weighing or measuring. Just eat.
• ​After 2 weeks of unstructured movement and eating, complete a 2 week supported liver detox. My 2 favorite liver detox kits are Biotics Research NutriClear Plus and Designs for Health Pure Paleo Cleanse. There are 3 reasons I’m a big fan of this:
  1. ​​It supports the liver to clear out excess toxins that are often burdening the body during the training year. I personally spend an ungodly amount of time in a chlorinated pool which is NOT good for you! If you apply loads of sunscreen to protect yourself from sun damage, consume processed foods during training or for regular meals and/or rely on caffeine to help you get going in the mornings or alcohol to help you relax at night, you should consider this too.
  2. The protocol I use gives the digestive system a break from consuming so many calories. It does this by providing the supporting nutrients in the form of 2 shakes per day. This allows you to consume 1-2 healthy whole food meals + the 2 shakes and still feel nourished and satisfied. 
  3. It prepares you for the process of fat adaptation by decreasing your caloric intake without you feeling hungry all the time. One of the best ways to help your body start burning more fat is to eat less often. So instead of 3 meals and 2 snacks throughout the day (which many of us do with a pre and post workout snack/meal plus our regular meals), you would consume 2 shakes and 1 or 2 meals. If you follow these recommendations you will be helping your body transition to burning more endogenous fat as energy. ​

After the Detox​

After the 2 week liver detox, slowly change your diet to be lower in carbs, moderate in protein and higher in fat. What exactly does that mean? 

There are 3 ways I recommend this:
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3-2-1
You can simply prepare 2-3 meals per day that include 3 cups of non-starchy vegetables, 2 tablespoons of healthy fat, and 1 serving (palm sized amount) of healthy protein. 

Macro Tracking
You can open a free online food tracker (like MyFitnessPal) and set up the account to be 70% fat, 20% protein and 10% carbs. You may not settle on these exact macro ratios in the end, but I find that the majority of endurance athletes get the benefits of fat adaption when following these ratios for 6-8 weeks.

Ketone Testing
You can purchase any whole food keto book of your choice, follow the recommended recipes in the book and test your blood ketones to ensure your body is burning fat. Some of my favorite books are: The Ketogenic Bible by Jacob Wilson, The Keto Paleo Kitchen by Vivica Menegaz and The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney. 

Once you have changed your diet, ideally, you’d follow this style of whole food LCHF eating for 4-6 weeks. This allows your body to transition from prioritizing sugar as the main source of energy to being capable of tapping into your over 30,000 calories of stored body fat for energy. 

What Happens After
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I get it.  If you’re not someone who already eats a lower carb diet, the idea of doing this may be intimidating.  That is why I created The Keto RESET Program, a 6-module course that walks you through the entire process so that you can become fat adapted and experience more energy, better sleep, less cravings, and your desired body composition!

I am opening the doors to the program again later this month BUT you can get on the waitlist now by clicking HERE!  By joining the waitlist, you’ll be the first to find out when the doors open AND you’ll snag an exclusive discount not offered anywhere else!

JOIN THE KETO RESET PROGRAM WAIT-LIST