Dietary Tips and Rationale

Explanation of Dietary Guidelines

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Eat meals and snacks at regular times every day (See Possible Strategies)

  • Less tendency to over eat next meal
    • Particularly if meal is higher fat
    • Less probability to eat easily accessible calorie dense snacks
  • Regular eating may keep metabolism high
    • Particularly digestion of higher fiber foods
    • Thermoneogenesis: calories converted to body heat
  • Maintains energy level throughout day
    • Potentially higher caloric expenditure during activity
  • Improve serum profile
    • Reduced fasting circulatory concentrations of cholesterol, low-density-lipoprotein (LDL), and apolipoprotein B (Jenkins 1989, Jones 1993)
    • Reduced circulating insulin concentrations (Jenkins 1989. Jones 1993)
  • Reduced mean 24-hour urinary cortisol excretion (Jenkins 1989)
  • Possible decrease of BMI and waist circumference over time
    • Girls with a lower initial frequency of eating had greater increases in BMI and waist circumference across 10 years of adolescence (Ritchie 2012).

Eat higher carbohydrates meal (with protein) very soon after exercise (See Guidelines)

  • Improves post workout recovery (Niles 2001)
    • Faster rate of muscle glycogen re-synthesis
      • 50% more glycogen can be stored (Friedman 1991)
    • Improved performance in subsequent exercise
    • Less muscle damage
  • Increased protein synthesis
    • Nearly 3 fold increase (Levenhagen 2001)
    • Decreases post exercise cortisol levels
  • Increase lean muscle mass (Esmarck 2001, Holm 2004)
  • Decreases risk of injury (Flakoll 2004)

Eat fruits or vegetables

Eat high fiber foods (Possible Strategies)

Decrease fat (Possible Strategies)

Limit sugar consumption (Possible Strategies)

Eat a variety of foods from each food group every day

  • Better insures ingestion of all essential nutrients
  • Decreases risk of developing food intolerances

References

Jenkins DJ, Wolever TM. Vuksan V, et al (1989). Nibbling versus gorging: metabolic advantages of increased meal frequency. N EngI J Med. 321, 929-34.

Jones PJH. Leitch CA. Pederson RA (1993). Meal-frequency effects on plasma hormone concentrations and cholesterol synthesis in humans. Am J Clin Nutr. 57, 868-74.

Ritchie LD (2012). Less frequent eating predicts greater BMI and waist circumference in female adolescents Am J Clin Nutr. 95(2), 290-6

 

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