Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Physiology, Sports Nutrition & Diabetes

I met with Lauren (my sports nutritionist) for about an hour yesterday to go over my bs logs from the past couple weeks. I took more care to document everything I ate and tested more often over the past 2 weeks than I ever had before. Lauren was able to utilize all this information and came up with some pretty awesome answers to my questions yesterday.

As she was reviewing my logs with me she kept punching numbers into her calculator and giving me firm suggestions of how many grams of carbs or protein I needed at specific intervals throughout the day. Two items of real interest were:

1 - On Saturday I woke up a bit later (ok alot later) than usual and ate a bacon, egg and cheese for breakfast at like 10:50. From 10:50 until 12:30 I went pumpless and thought I would have no problem getting through my trainer ride with some accelerade. Lauren asked the simple question "when do you normally have lunch?" Although I had eaten a substantial meal an hour and 1/2 pre-workout my body's muscles were craving food at 12pm (my normal lunchtime). Since I rode straight through lunch and didn't eat until 2pm my blood sugar was screwed up for the rest of the day. Essentially even if I didn't have diabetes I would have been cranky and miserable but since I have diabetes the symptoms manifested in a low.

2 - On Sunday 45 minutes before my 10k was to start I had a blood sugar of 198 which I thought would hold for the next 55 minutes prior to my first accel-gel. However, 10 minutes before the start of the race or 30 minutes after I was 198 my bs was down to 115. This one really confused me but Lauren's explanation made perfect sense. Due to my body's physiology I burn sugar pretty efficiently (high muscle mass) so while I had a "perfect" pre-race breakfast that breakfast was 2 and 1/2 hours before the start of the race. I need to ingest up to 80 grams of carbs for that period and the clif bar I ravaged before the start of the race actually gave me the perfect # of carbs to start.

All the information she provided was based on some equation that incorporates body weight, % of body fat and activity level. I'll let her master's from Berkeley figure all that stuff out and pretty much just obey her like Pavlov's dog.

In other very exciting news I received my interview invite from the Darden MBA program at the University of Virginia. One of the biggest hurdles in getting into an MBA program is receiving the interview invite - the schools extend invites to about 40% of the applicants. The wait for the invite is probably the most stressful part of the whole process; yesterday it was like 1,000 lbs were lifted from my shoulders when my status on their webpage was updated.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

nice blog ed. you know its tacky to have a profile pic of you with someone else obviously cropped out? lolz.
-L

Brett said...

I can't remember how I came across your blog...maybe from Jay Hewitt or who knows what.

Anyhoo, I have a 5 1/2 year old girl with Type 1 who was diagnosed after 16 months. From that point on my sleeping has been on hold. I figured I might as well start exercising if I'm going to be up late checking her blood sugar. Over the last few years I've gotten into decent shape.

I enjoy reading about other people who have Type 1 not just taking it in stride, but actively reaching out to beat and defeat it. I want my daughter to do anything she wants when she grows up. Its inspiring and comforting to read that while you have challenges, you can do whatever you want, and in many cases more than regular saps like me who are busy worrying about things like 'are my shoes too tight' or 'what shirt do I wear on my next run'.

Mary Eggers said...

THANK YOU LAUREN!!!! WOO HOO! Ed we've found our girl! WAY TO GO!

:-) MAry!

Dances with Corgis said...

I don't get Lauren's comment at all- wtf? Wait- is that your nutritionist? (confused)

Anyways, congrats on the Virginia interviews :) although I know you just are happy to have an excuse to go down there and eat southern food :)