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How The Pros Stay Lean
By Matt FitzgeraldPublished May 21, 2013
Take cues from the world’s best triathletes in achieving your own optimal racing weight.

Lukas Verzbicas has a body composition of 6 percent fat and 94 percent fat-free mass. These numbers place the 2011 triathlon junior world champion well within the 99th percentile for men between the ages of 20 and 24. In other words, if you chose 100 young men at random off the street, chances are Verzbicas would have less body fat than any of them.

Linsey Corbin has a body composition of 10 percent fat and 90 percent fat-free mass. These figures rank the third-place finisher of the 2011 Ironman 70.3 World Championship inside the 99th percentile for women between the ages of 30 and 34. (Women naturally carry a little more fat on their bodies than men do.)

Compared to other championship-caliber triathletes, however, Verzbicas and Corbin are about average in terms of body composition. This is no great shock because research has shown that body-fat percentage is a powerful predictor of triathlon performance. The leanest triathletes tend to lead the pack, while those with a little more fat follow close behind, and so on. In fact, some studies suggest that body-fat percentage affects triathlon performance as strongly as VO2max (or aerobic capacity) does.

It’s not hard to understand why. Although a certain amount of body fat is needed for good health, any extra body fat is dead weight that increases the energy cost of running and of accelerating and climbing on a bike. It also reduces heat dissipation, compromises muscle fueling, and slows athletes down in other ways.

Body composition is influenced by genetic makeup. Few people are born with the physical capacity to healthily become as lean as the likes of Lukas Verzbicas and Linsey Corbin, just as few people are born with the potential to attain a VO2max as high as theirs. But even the most gifted triathletes cannot rely on favorable genes alone to get lean enough to contend for world championship titles. They must rely on hard training and, yes, careful eating as well.

There are many noteworthy examples of gifted triathletes who became leaner and performed better after cleaning up their diet. One such example is four-time Olympian Hunter Kemper. Through the first several years of his professional career, Kemper was a somewhat careless eater with a weakness for Krispy Kreme donuts. But after the 2004 season he decided to make a change. He met with a sports nutritionist and subsequently improved his diet by adding vegetables and other high-quality foods and by subtracting donuts and other sweets. He lost excess body fat that he hadn’t even known was there and finished the 2005 season as the ITU World Cup champion.

RELATED: Triathlon Nutrition Tips From The Pros

The sport of triathlon is so competitive that no athlete is talented enough to reach the top with poor training or eating habits. So the training methods and dietary patterns that are most widely shared among the world’s best triathletes are almost by definition those that work best. In researching my book, Racing Weight, I studied the eating habits of elite triathletes and other world-class endurance athletes with the hope of identifying a diet formula that other athletes could use to reach their own ideal body composition for racing performance. The results of this research were both surprising and encouraging.

Age-group triathletes who decide to get serious about shedding body fat often follow a “diet with a name.” Examples include veganism, the Paleo Diet, gluten-free diets and the Zone Diet. These and other named diets are typically defined by rigid restrictions that are out of step with both normal cultural eating habits and mainstream nutrition science guidelines. For example, the Paleo Diet forbids the consumption of all grains, whereas grains are a major component of every major cultural diet—and nutrition science has clearly demonstrated that people who eat lots of whole grains are healthier than people who eat few.

By contrast, elite endurance athletes, as I discovered, generally practice what I call “agnostic healthy eating.” With rare exceptions, they do not follow diets with names. Instead they eat like normal people, without rigid restrictions. But the pros do eat very carefully, packing their meals and snacks with high-quality foods that are proven to prevent long-term weight gain (specifically vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, lean meats and fish, whole grains, and dairy) and limiting their consumption of low-quality foods that are known to promote weight gain (specifically refined grains, fatty meats, sweets and fried foods).

What’s great about agnostic healthy eating is that it is a more flexible and accommodating approach to eating than are the diets with names, yet it is no less effective. Agnostic healthy eating is far from an “anything goes” approach to feeding yourself, but it is relatively easy to sustain because it does not require you to give up favorite food types forever or aim for a precise macronutrient ratio or anything like that.

In Racing Weight I formalized the agnostic healthy diet that I observed in the world’s best endurance athletes through a set of guidelines that make the approach simple to emulate and easy to adapt to any athlete’s personal eating preferences. These guidelines are summarized in the table to the left.

The book also includes many examples of agnostic healthy eating in practice that are included. I’m sharing one on the next page: a one-day food journal from now-retired pro triathlete Chrissie Wellington. Notice that it includes many of the high-quality food types and even a low-quality treat. Despite its normalness this diet was good enough to keep Wellington lean and fast, and I am certain that an agnostic healthy diet of your own will help you attain your optimal racing weight.






Racing Weight Staples
The world’s fastest and leanest triathletes eat healthily but normally. They also tend to eat some of the most popular natural foods in the North American diet quite often, relying on them as convenient, nourishing staples to help them stay lean without a lot of fuss. Here are six “racing weight staples” representing each of the half-dozen high-quality food types.

Tomatoes (Vegetable*)
Tomatoes add a ton of flavor and nutrition to meals without adding a lot of calories. They’re also used in a tremendous variety of the foods we love, including sauces, soups, salads and sandwiches, making them a terrific racing weight staple.

Bananas (Fruit)
Because they have more starch and fewer antioxidants than many other fruits, bananas have become underappreciated in recent years. But they are a convenient and tasty natural source of the carbs that every triathlete needs to support hard training. Plus, unlike most other fruits, good bananas are available everywhere all year long.

Peanut butter (Nuts and seeds**)
Research has shown that people who consume nuts regularly are leaner than those who eat them sparingly. When spread on whole-grain bread or crackers, old-fashioned peanut butter (just peanuts and salt) is a great post-workout or between-meals snack for triathletes.

Turkey (Lean meat)
Turkey is the leanest popular deli meat. Good turkey sandwiches are easy to find or make at home. Just be sure your turkey sandwiches are made with 100 percent whole-grain bread and lots of vegetables, and without mayonnaise.

Whole wheat (Whole grain)
One of the simplest dietary changes you can make to facilitate fat loss is to replace refined grains with whole grains whenever possible. Fortunately, whole-wheat versions of popular foods such as breads, breakfast cereals, pastas, tortillas and crackers are becoming more widely available.

Yogurt (Dairy)
A recent Harvard study found that yogurt prevented long-term weight gain more effectively than any other food, including fruits and vegetables. That’s great news because everyone likes yogurt—even most lactose-intolerant individuals can tolerate it thanks to the probiotics it contains.

* The tomato is technically a fruit, but I prefer to follow culinary convention instead of botanical convention and classify it as a vegetable.
** Peanuts are technically a legume, but I prefer to follow culinary convention instead of botanical convention and classify them as a nut.

RELATED – Triathlife With Jesse Thomas: I Eat A Lot And That’s OK

Chrissie’s Food Journal
Chrissie Wellington is a four-time winner of the Hawaii Ironman World Championship and holds the Iron distance world record (8:33:56). In addition to the foods and drinks listed here, in a typical training day she drank water and Cytomax throughout the day (approximately 3 liters total).

Pre-workout
Banana
2 T honey
2 T peanut butter
Cup of coffee with milk

Workout 1
Nothing

Breakfast
“Huge bowl” of porridge oats, all-bran buds, raisins, dried plums, coconut, nuts and seeds, mixed with vanilla yogurt
Cup of tea or coffee

Pre-workout
Apple

Workout 2
Cytomax sports drink
Muesli bar
Carbohydrate gel

Lunch
2 bagel sandwiches with turkey and cheese
Large green salad
Handful of nuts

Pre-workout
Banana

Workout 3
Nothing

Dinner
Beefsteak stir-fried with vegetables
Rice
Bowl of frozen fruit with yogurt

Evening Snack
Small bar of chocolate

RELATED: Greek Yogurt 10 Ways

High-quality foods
Vegetables (including legumes) Eat all of these food types.


Eat each of these food types more often than any low-quality food type.



Try to eat the food types near the top of the list more often than the food types near the bottom.

Fruit
Nuts and seeds
Lean meats and fish
Whole grains
Dairy
Low-quality foods
Refined grains Eat each of these food types less often than any high-quality food type.


Try to eat the food types near the bottom of the list less often than the food types near the top.

Fatty meats
Sweets
Fried foods


http://triathlon.competitor.com/2013/05/nutrition/how-the-pros-stay-lean_76179