Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Nutrition Energy

On the day before Thanksgiving I have something to be very thankful for. I've searched high and low for a sports nutritionist that could meet my complex needs as a diabetic and as an athlete. Some programs I found like fit4d.com sounded fantastic but the fact that the nutritionist wasn't local made me a bit hesitant. Other nutritionist I spoke with were famous in their industry but didn't have the expertise required to deal with a diabetic athlete. But yesterday I had a close to 2 hour conversation with Lauren Antonucci, of NutritionEnergy.com.

Lauren has completed 3 Ironmans (Lake Placid, Wisconsin and the now defunct Utah); finished countless marathons and is very active in the triathlon community. She has the education credentials I was looking for including a Graduate Fellowship from Cal Berkeley in Nutritional Biochemistry. This fellowship is really impressive, the Haas program at Berkeley is one of my top choices from an MBA program and getting any sort of grant from them for research and education means you're pretty freakin smart. And most importantly she is a CDE who in my initial conversations displayed a real knowledge of diabetes (yesterday she even told me that she hates that Type 1 and Type 2 are under the same umbrella!)

Anyway, I met with Lauren for close to two hours yesterday. She took detailed notes to comprehend the challenges I'm facing and make better sense out of the nutrition logs I created. She took the time to get it right and understand my needs, for the first time in all of this I felt like I wasn't alone. I've had many people help me along the way but all of us including me were just "guessing" at the right answer - Lauren laid out a plan. Walking out of that office knowing I'm supposed to eat 50 - 60 g of carbs before a run or swim mixed with 15 - 20g of protein lifted a 1,000 pound weight off my shoulders. This plan may be no better than the suggestion of "just eat a bagel" but for me having numbers makes all the difference in the world. Thank you Lauren.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

ed,
i get it.
that is great news.

i am happy for you.

happy thanksgivinbg!!!

Dances with Corgis said...

so tell us more about the plan, what are some of your options with 5-60 grams of carbs and 15 g protein for you to eat pre workout?

I've been hearing a lot about how chocolate milk is great... maybe that would work for you?

Bernard said...

Ed

Let us know how this works out for you.

And have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Shannon said...

Happy Thanksgiving, Ed :)