Nutrition vs Diet

As type A personality people, triathletes are always looking towards perfection. When we do something we do it to the best of our abilities, when we go hard we want to go so hard that we’ll make ourselves throw up and feel proud of it, where we put our mind we put our heart.

Let’s be honest only a handful of people outside of the triathlon world think we are ‘normal’, and that small group probably includes our spouses and/or parents, and the only reason why they think we are ‘normal’ is because they’ve lived around us long enough to know is just easier to agree with us than to disagree, at the end of the day there is only one way; ‘our way’. As insanely sick as it might sound to them to be out there for 2, 3, 5 or 10+ hours putting our bodies to what we put ours through, they know how important it is to us and by now most of them have given up on us and finding what they seem to think a ‘normal’ life.

So, it is not surprising to me to see many of us obsessing about everything. One of the things I have always been in wow of is how triathletes change their lifestyle to welcome a much healthier, and at the end faster ‘me’.

We all come to this sport from different backgrounds but at the end of the day we are made of the same ‘material’. I always find it quite interesting to read how different backgrounds define us on this sport, cyclists are usually small, and so are runners and it is no surprise that their biggest opportunity is swimming.  On the other hand it is often that you read how one of the bigger changes swimmers need to make when they come to this sport is that they need to ‘slim down’.

I am no different, I come from a family of four girls, and other than Raquel we all swam growing up, our adolescents’ years were full with visits to doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, you name it. A combination of peer and coach pressure made us very conscious of what we ate and what effect that had in our bodies.

After my swimming days I took a hiatus from exercising and as most people the diet fell through with it.  Put a bunch of weight on and for years I struggle to lose it. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I made the conscious decision that I needed a healthier lifestyle, I stopped thinking about ‘diets’ and started thinking about ‘fueling’ my body.

Going back to type A personalities, I meet so many people in this sport who never have enough, they are not fast enough, they are not thin enough, they are not … you name it. We can’t have Gisele Bundchen’s body and perform like Chrissie Wellington. We often forget that one thing is to be thin and a different thing is to be ‘fit’. Yes, I agree with the common opinion that the leaner you are the faster you’ll be, nothing like being a lean mean machine on race day, but I also think that there is a fine line between being lean and being too lean.

Some of the goodies we've been enjoying this Holiday Season

Coming off the Holiday Season most of us have some work to do before our first race of the season, I personally have 16 weeks to get to that ‘lean machine’ body. I don’t use the word diet, haven’t use it or done one of those for many many many years, instead I am planning on a top notch nutrition plan, I am fueling my body with the best out there by choosing yummy whole foods instead of the not so healthy treats I have been indulging on this past week. So if you are on my same shoes, don’t forget we are going after the perfect fit not the perfect body.

Wishing you a New Year full of Happy Training and Healthy Eating!