Meeting with a sports nutritionist

On Friday last week I had an hour long nutrition “tune-up” with Dina from Fuel4mance. A tune up includes:

Our Nutrition Tune-Up is a one-time consultation for those seeking assistance with their daily eating program and competition day planning. Whether it is fine tuning your nutrition to ensure good immune and cardiovascular health or overcoming a weight loss plateau, this service includes a customized eating program based on past medical health history, fitness level and future nutrition goals.  

Competition day nutrition is also included in this assessment when time allows.

I was excited for this meeting because I have been looking to clean up my diet a bit and lean out for heavy training come spring.  I am at a “healthy” weight but feel that I could lose about 15 pounds and be able to swimbikerun easier. Since I sort of thought that Ironman training would help knock some pounds off (It did not….bummer) I thought I would call in the professionals. Dina was super nice and fun to talk to, her main advice was to not count calories or do crazy diets but to work on metabolic efficiency (i.e. not spiking your blood sugar). I don’t want to give everything away since this is her job and everyone’s nutrition needs are different but I am changing my diet to see how I feel and if I can drop a few pounds.

The biggest change is getting rid of grains and extra crap from my diet. 

I am not going low carb, I am still eating plenty of low-fat dairy and fruit, I am just avoiding breads, rice and starchy veggies. This will be a bit of a challenge for me because I really like grains and starchy veggies (goodbye butternut squash, pumpkin and sweet potato). I am going to give it a try for two weeks to see how I feel, if I have enough energy to get through 15+ hours of training and if I drop a few pounds.

Oh yeah....Alcohol is a nono as well =(

Have you ever worked with a nutritionist or wish you could? Did you find that it created a big change in your diet, body or life?