Eating For Energy

With the world becoming more interested in nutrition, the number of new "healthy" products on the market is ballooning. Food marketers see one peer company's success in a new area and then rush to it like five-year-olds to a soccer ball, hoping to get their own piece of the pie. So we end up with 15 versions of pretty much the same thing, not having the time or enough interest to investigate what the best version is. Or if there is a best version at all. But we buy and eat, thinking we're doing the right thing for ourselves and our families.

While preparing for my recent "Eating for Optimum Energy" workshop and training for the Brooklyn Half Marathon, I became even more aware of the exorbitant number of energy drinks and bars on the market. Yes, the number of people running races has grown over the past several years and exercise is touted more and more by experts as a disease-figher, but the companies selling these "energy-producing" food products aren't making their millions from exercise enthusiasts.

Look around. Women and men rush to work with Chocolate Chip Cliff Bars in hand. Teenagers walk down the street with brightly-colored Gatorades. Kids sit in strollers eating chocolate-dipped granola bars and sipping Vitamin Waters. There's something very wrong with this picture.

To say these bars and drinks give you energy is not false: ANY food gives you energy. But the kind of energy varies tremendously. The food referenced above is laden with sugar, and sugar gives you instant energy. This is appropriate for someone about to do a hard workout, run a race or play in a game. Need a pick-me-up at half-time? Sure, drink some Powerade and eat a Luna bar (though does anyone else wonder where the orange slices and water from the good old '80s went?) and then go play hard again for an hour. But how about the office worker who makes this her daily breakfast regimen and then goes in sits in meetings for 10 hours? She's likely intermittently tired and hungry throughout the day, unknowingly strapping herself into an energy roller-coaster ride each morning.

Because these foods and drinks are associated with healthy activities, they enjoy the guise of being healthy. They are not. Because these foods and drinks give athletes energy before and during intense activity, they are assumed to produce the kind of energy needed on a regular basis. They do not.

So then how to eat for energy? The sustained and balanced kind of energy that most of us need to make it happily through our typical, harried days? I've boiled it down to five things:

1. Drink water. One of the leading causes of a lack of energy is dehydration. Our bodies are up to 60% water. Our brains and hearts are 75% and our lungs are 83% water! Think about those figures and then ask yourself if you're drinking enough - enough to keep that water fresh and ensure your organs are working at optimal levels. Rule of thumb is to drink half your body weight in ounces a day. Your pee should be a very pale yellow.

2. Eat breakfast and make it good. Many say breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day. Maybe, maybe not; some people can't stomach a lot in the morning. But it's definitely the most important. As the first thing you put in your body every morning, it sets the tone, both physically and mentally. My two favorite breakfasts are Quinoa Granola with almond milk and Almond Butter & "Jelly" Green Smoothies. Never am I hungry before lunchtime. And when you eat a good breakfast, you're much more inclined to continue on a healthy track for the rest of the day: good begets good.

3. Replace processed foods with whole foods. Whole foods provide complete nutrition, no additives necessary. And nature has beautifully designed them to provide us with balanced energy. Many processed foods tout whole ingredients, but be a food detective and check out their sister ingredients. Added sugar is almost a given (often in disguise), along with lots of other unpronounceable things our ancestors never consumed. They typically give us a jolt that leads to a crash, which we respond to by eating more sugar-laden foods to pick us back up quickly. This cycle is a great money-maker for Big Food and Pharma, not so great for obesity and diabetes rates.

4. Avoid dieting. 98% of diets fail. Why? Because they're unsustainable, most requiring deprivation and a significant reduction in calories. At some point, willpower stops working. Stop thinking about how much you're eating and focus on what you're eating. Real, whole food is delicious and makes you feel so good - slowly introduce more of it and you'll naturally begin to crowd out the not-so-good food-like stuff that's leading to your "need" to diet in the first place. 

5. Keep a journal. I'm not talking about a food journal where you write down everything you eat in a day. That's torture. I'm talking about spending a few minutes each night writing down how you felt during the day, what your mood was and how your energy levels were. Were they different at different times of the day? What do you want to do differently tomorrow and what do you want to repeat? You'll start to see how eating patterns correspond to energy levels and mood and you can make changes based on what you learn. If this is all written, you'll have a harder time ignoring it!

Overwhelmed? Just start with water and go from there. There's no better energy drink around. And for a healthy energy bar, go for Lara. A number of them have no added sugar whatsoever and very few ingredients. Frank's favorite is banana bread: almonds, dates, bananas. That's it. And that's how it should be.