Optimal nutrition is critical for any athlete aspiring to reach their highest potential. The food athletes consume provides the basic building blocks that fuels their body and impacts all aspects of performance – endurance, strength, power, speed, and recovery. As such, coaches have a unique role and responsibility to properly educate and advise their trainees on evidence-based dietary guidance that will enhance their capabilities on the court or field.

However, nutritional science continues to evolve and remains highly controversial. Long-held beliefs about “healthy diets” promotes ideas not supported by science or what humans have thrived on for thousands of years. Various epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases reveal the failings of conventional wisdom. Coaches must cut through the noise and myths to offer their athletes scientifically sound advice.

The Dangerous Truth About Vegetable Oils

Most people associate a “healthy diet” with limiting intake of saturated fats from animal sources. This stems from the long-standing demonization of saturated fat by health authorities. However, these recommendations lack any evidence showing harm from traditional saturated fats humans consumed for millennia.

Meanwhile, another form of fat has pervaded our food supply and constitutes upto 30% of calories even in athlete diets – vegetable oils. Also referred to as “polyunsaturated fatty acids”, these oils predominantly include soybean, canola, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, rice bran and grapeseed oil. They are promoted as “heart healthy” yet ignore their extreme overconsumption – present intake is estimated to be 2000X times higher compared to a century ago.

This matters because vegetable oils are uniquely damaging to cellular function and human health via oxidative stress. Heating and processing these delicate oils create free radicals that contribute heavily towards inflammation. Cell membranes and critical structures like mitochondria are degraded by oxidation, impairing energy production. Vital enzymes, proteins, even DNA can be altered.

The rampant oxidation from vegetable oils hence accelerate aging and disease processes. It is linked with epidemics of arterial plaque buildup, obesity, diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Animal research show rats fed soybean oil despite less carbohydrates still gained more weight and developed fatty liver compared to controls.

Therefore vegetable oils drive dysfunction even in presence of healthy lifestyle factors like an optimal carb intake. They represent the worst fat to consume while lacking any unique health benefits beyond being a bland cooking aid. For athletes to perform at their highest level, vegetable oil consumption should be strictly minimized or eliminated.

The Importance of Good Fats and Traditional Cooking

Restricting intake of vegetable oils is only the first step. Optimal athlete nutrition requires emphasizing traditional fats that nourish cells and facilitate energetic capacity. This means prioritizing animal foods in their whole form, including fatty cuts and organ meats. It also means utilizing cooking techniques developed over centuries that enhance nutrition.

Meats cooked on the bone in stews, bone broths, slow roasting are critical because they provide bioavailable forms of glycoproteins and collagen lacking in modern diets. Consuming the cartilage, skin and connective tissue offers compounds that strengthen joints, ligaments and bone matrix health. Pasture raised animals further enhance this, as their tissues accumulate higher omega-3s, vitamin K, iron, B12 and more.

Traditional fats like lard, tallow, duck fat or ghee for cooking also supplies fat soluble activators absent from muscle meats. Their stability at high temperatures prevent oxidation that vegetable oils are prone to. Coconut oil as an alternative supplies unique medium chain triglycerides directly usable for energy. Maximizing these traditional fats optimizes the absorption of vitamins and antioxidants from vegetables as well.

Incorporating probiotic foods like unsweetened yogurt, kefir, pickles, kimchi and kombucha provides beneficial strains of bacteria. They assist digestion, synthesize key nutrients and strengthen gut integrity. Intermittent fasting allows ease of fat adaptation for cellular energy. Ancestral eating patterns provides template for nutrition that encodes countless subtleties easy to overlook from a reductionist lens.

Honoring traditional wisdom passed down over generations is key for nutrition that epitomizes health. Athletes need proper fetal development and robust strength capable of withstanding oxidative, inflammatory and metabolic strain. Emphasizing nose-to-tail animal foods raised on pasture, cooked properly with time-tested techniques checks these boxes and more.

Carbohydrates: Finding the Right Balance

Carbohydrates, especially refined ones rich in sugar, receive much blame for modern health woes. Advocating their restriction is valid. However, context matters since carbs when from whole food sources provide energy, fiber and nutrients athletes require. As with fats, quality and quantity determine benefit versus harm.

The optimal amount differs based on activity levels, metabolism and goals. Endurance athletes generally need more carbs compared to intermittent sports. A common pitfall is overestimating carb needs and basing too much intake around processed sources. This chronically elevates blood sugar and insulin, promoting inflammation, weight gain and suboptimal fuel utilization.

Symptoms like post-meal brain fog, energy crashes and cravings often accompany overcarb consumption. Monitoring individual response allows customizing intake aligned with performance. As general guidance, 3-5+ grams per pound for those training 1-3 hours daily is reasonable. Carb sensitive individuals do well closer to 2 grams per pound.

Emphasizing whole, minimally processed sources ensures adequate micronutrients and fiber. Sweet potatoes, buckwheat, quinoa, beans, lentils, beets, winter squash supply complex carb chains unlike refined grains. Including fermented options further enhances nutrition. Rationalizing carb contribution during different training phases gives flexibility for athletes.

Pre-workout carbs for intense sessions optimizes intensity and recovery. Higher carb refeeds every 4-7 days or post-competition restores muscle glycogen. Otherwise, focusing on protein, healthy fats and vegetables enable fat burning while avoiding blood sugar spikes. Individual customization allows harnessing benefits of carbs for athlete goals.

Additional Nutrition Tips for Optimizing Performance

Beyond emphasizing traditional fats while avoiding vegetable oils and moderating carb intake, several other diet factors contribute to elite athletic performance. They synergize with the core template to further elevate health and ability.

Consuming nutritionally dense organ meats like liver, heart, kidneys once or twice a week provides concentrated dose of vitamins, minerals and compounds lacking in muscle meat. Pasture raised is preferred. Including bone broths and using parts like feet, knuckles and neck for the compounds they contain enhances connective tissue health.

Eating wild caught, low contaminant fish as well as pastured egg yolks offer anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats EPA/DHA critical for cellular function, nervous system and metabolic health. Their omega 6-3 ratio balance metabolic processes towards fat burning versus storage as body fat.

Incorporating fermented vegetables from properly prepared raw sauerkraut to pickles, along with including sprouted nuts, seeds, tubers and sprouted or soaked grains greatly enhances digestibility and micronutrient availability through enzymatic breakdown that unlocks nutrients. Probiotics aid assimilation as well.

While fresh vegetables and fruits offer antioxidants, focus on above ground and cruciferous options provides superior nutrition density over sugary fruits and starchy tubers. Maintaining minimum 12 hour overnight fast facilitates cellular autophagy for homeostatic clean-up of debris accumulated from stress. Caffeine and light exposure upon waking further enhances hormonal reset.

Attention towards ancestral eating patterns centered around locally and seasonally available whole foods encapsulates subtle nuances that structured human genetics and metabolism over millennia. Using this as inspiration for modern eating allows articulating foundational athlete nutrition.