Athletes Plates in Practice

How do you know which athlete plate to choose for your run training? When we refer to athlete’s plates, we are talking about using a nutritional tool which helps you decide what and how much food should be on your plate, related to your training and everyday activities. We use athlete plate graphics with our clients to help them plan their food on a day-to-day basis and we often refer to everyday plate balance and athlete plate balance during our conversations on the podcast.Today we’d like to share a little more about the background to the development of the athlete plate concept and explain how you can use them to support your run fueling so you have a sound nutrition foundation for every level of running.This will help your performance, your recovery and support injury prevention. Often people aren’t sure which athlete plate to choose so we aim to help you with that today.The key areas we are going to talk are:1.    Why were athlete plates created and how using them as a nutritional tool may be supportive to your nutrition and running goals and performance?2.    Our interpretation of athlete plates and how we use them with our clients.3.    An example of how a runner training for a marathon uses athlete plates for fueling training.Download our FREE E book TOP Running Snacks and Nutrient Timing to Fuel Peak PerformanceSHOW NOTES(05:11)Who created Athlete Plates and why?Athlete Plates were designed as a visual tool by the UCCS - University of Colorado/Colorado Springs (UCCS') Sport Nutrition Graduate Program led by a research scientist Nanna Meyer in collaboration with the US Olympic Committee's (USOC) Food and Nutrition Services.Their aim was to help sports dieticians and athletes to adjust their nutrition to variable training loads when following a periodised training and competition plan. They developed and designed athletes plate graphics for EASY/MODERATE and HARD TRAINING.https://swell.uccs.edu/theathletesplateMore recently they have developed a Vegan/Vegetarian Athletes Platehttps://swell.uccs.edu/vegetarianvegan-athletes-platehttps://swell.uccs.edu/sites/g/files/kjihxj2576/files/2020-10/Airi_Research_Poster-compressed_0.pdf(08:15)What are the main components of the athlete plates? There are 3 main aspects of the traditional athletes plate – Lean PROTEIN, WHOLEGRAINS/GRAINS and VEGETABLES alongside basic information regarding healthy fats, fluids, flavours (herbs/spices/condiments). The concept is to help athletes to choose the correct balance of these food groups to support the level of training they are undertaking.So the base for EASY Training is to eat ¼ plate PROTEIN, ¼ plate whole grains, ½ plate vegetables.For MODERATE training – protein remains the same but whole grains increase to approx. 1/3rd plate with the remainder being vegetables.For HEAVY TRAINING – protein remains the same – ½ plate of grains and ¼ plate vegetables. Note the change from whole grains to grains – this is due to suggesting use of more quick release carbohydrates.(10:11)How does the athlete plate for plant based athletes look?The protein element is approximately 1/3rd plate for each of the athlete plates and this is because you’re likely to need a bigger portion of plant protein