Monday 13 January 2025
If you are reading this blog, you are probably trying to make progress in your beloved sport. The winter period is ideal to prepare for competition(s) later in the year and to address weaknesses or imbalances. By aligning your nutritional intake with your training goals during the winter, you can optimize this process.
In this blog, dietician, strength & conditioning coach and exercise scientist Brecht D’hoe from Ghent University shares his insights on how to optimize your diet during the winter months.
Sufficient energy availability is essential to achieve long-term training adaptations. This energy availability is the balance between the amount of energy you take in through your nutrition and the energy you consume during training, divided by your lean mass. If you take in too little energy for too long, staying below the 40 kcal/kg fat-free mass threshold, your training quality and subsequent training adaptation will be impaired. Therefore, taking in enough energy is important across the spectrum from endurance to strength athletes. Ideally, you should stay in energy balance (daily energy intake = daily energy expenditure) throughout the winter months to train optimally. This energy balance is best monitored via the scales. If your weight remains more or less the same on a weekly and monthly basis, you are in energy balance.
If your training goal is to gain mainly muscle mass and strength, and you have been practising strength training consistently for several years, it is ideal to take in slightly more energy than you consume. This is called an energy surplus (daily energy intake > daily energy expenditure). An energy surplus of 10 %, or around 300 kcal for an average athlete, is a good starting point here. However, this should be accompanied by careful monitoring of training progress and body weight so that the approach can be individually adjusted to minimise fat mass production. Practically speaking, most of your energy surplus comes from carbohydrates, with a smaller contribution from fats. This is because proteins are the most satiating and fats slow down digestion, which is less desirable when you want to maintain a light energy surplus. This advice changes if you are someone who gains weight quickly, mainly in the form of fat mass. In that case, it is advisable to get the extra energy mainly from proteins.
In addition, creatine supplementation can further support the process of muscle strength and muscle mass building. Creatine is an endogenous substance that plays a role in the energy production of muscle contractions during short and maximum efforts, which is specific to strength training. For more information on creatine, please visit the Etixx blog about creatine.
Besides energy balance itself, the structured intake of the macronutrients carbohydrates, proteins and fats is important to support your workouts. For endurance athletes, a daily carbohydrate intake of 6-12 g/kg body weight per training day is recommended to maintain glycogen stores, the energy stores in your muscle, to boost training performance. For team athletes, these carbohydrate intake guidelines are similar, only the lower limit is slightly lower; specifically 3-12 g/kg body weight/day, because of the lower energy consumption during skills/technique training. In strength sports disciplines, the total energy consumed during training is usually lower than in endurance or team sports, so the recommended carbohydrate intake is lower; 4-7 g/kg body weight/day. For each sporting discipline, daily carbohydrate intake should be matched to training volume and intensity, and thus to energy consumption during training (1).
Energy consumption during training |
Training |
Recommended carbohydrate intake |
Low |
Low intensity or skills/technique training |
3-5 g/kg BW/day |
Moderate |
Moderate intensity (~1h/day) |
5-7 g/kg BW/day |
High |
Endurance training – moderate to high intensity (~1-3h/day) |
6-10 g/kg BW/day |
Very high |
Extreme training volume – moderate to high intensity |
8-12 g/kg BW/day |
Example overview of carbohydrate sources and portion amount for a 75 kg athlete trying to consume 7 g of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight on a training day:
Breakfast |
Noon |
Pretraining |
During training |
Evening |
100 g oatmeal 1 banana 25 g sultanas |
120 g rice 150 g carrot 1 apple |
4 slides gingerbread |
500 ml isotonic drink/hour of exercice |
150 g pasta 150 g pepper 100 g blueberries |
Unlike carbohydrate intake, protein intake does not have an acute training effect but a chronic training effect. Athletes have an increased protein requirement to ensure muscle recovery and adaptations after training. In both endurance and team sports, the focus has long been mainly on carbohydrate intake. However, increased protein intake relative to a sedentary, non-sporting population is important to promote muscle recovery and support the body's protein balance. For this, as a team or endurance athlete, ingest 1.4-2.0 g protein/kg body weight/day (2). If you want to maximise muscle mass production as an athlete, it is best to eat 1.6-2.2 g protein/kg body weight/day (3). The lower limit of this protein intake (1.6 g protein/kg body weight) is the amount sufficient for most people to maximise muscle production. The upper limit (2.2 g protein/kg body weight) is the amount at which some individuals can still build additional muscle mass and can be a good choice if you want to be sure of optimal results. Recent literature even suggests that the upper limit, at which additional protein intake still contributes to muscle building, is at 2.35 g protein/kg body weight (4). Moreover, the majority of your protein intake should come from high-quality staple foods. However, protein concentrates or isolates (e.g.: whey protein powder) can be a useful supplement to reach your daily protein goal.
Example overview of protein sources and portion amount for the same 75 kg athlete trying to consume 1.6 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day:
Breakfast |
Noon |
Evening |
Prebed snack |
25 g whey protein powder 2 eggs |
125 g chicken breast
|
200 g tofu
|
350 g cottage cheese
|
Besides carbohydrate and protein intake, fats are also essential for your training performance and overall health. Try to get 20-35% of your energy intake from fats. Fats contribute to hormone and immune regulation, prevent chronic inflammation and support joint health when taken in the right ratio of omega 6/3. A typical Western diet consists of an omega 6/3 ratio of 10/1, while the recommended ratio is 4/1. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the intake of sufficient omega-3. Good sources of omega-3 are: oily fish (e.g.: salmon, mackerel, sardines), flaxseed and walnuts. Do you find it difficult to take in enough omega-3 from natural food sources? Then supplementation with high-quality omega-3 may be a practical solution for you.
Finally, it is important to eat a sufficiently varied diet during the preparatory winter months to avoid micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) deficiencies. Typical symptoms of such deficiencies are fatigue, muscle weakness, reduced sleep quality, physical pain and increased susceptibility to disease, which can negatively affect training performance. To avoid deficiency, vary your choice of fruits and vegetables by eating as wide a spectrum of colours as possible. This is because each colour represents a unique set of micronutrients that are important for your health. For example, broccoli and spinach contribute significantly to vitamin C and potassium intake, while carrot contains a high concentration of vitamin A. Besides varying fruits and vegetables, it is also important to rotate in your carbohydrate, protein and fat sources because different foods contain different vitamins and minerals. For example, vary between rice, white and sweet potato, and whole grain cereals to include adequate carbohydrates and micronutrients.
Still, despite a varied diet, getting enough micronutrients during the winter months can remain a challenge. A good example of this is vitamin D, a fat-soluble vitamin that we can absorb not only through food (e.g. fatty fish, egg yolk, liver), but also through exposure to sunlight. Due to our geographical location, we absorb very little to no vitamin D through sunlight during the winter months (October-March). As a result, more than half of our population is deficient in serum vitamin D, so supplementation can provide valuable support. A golden tip: always check nutritional information when choosing a micronutrient supplement, as many supplements contain concentrations that exceed the recommended daily intake or even the upper limit of the tolerable amount. For example, the recommended daily intake for vitamin D is 15 mg or 600 international units (IU) with 100 mg or 4000IU as the maximum tolerable dose per day (5). As with exercise, more is not always better, it is all about the right dose.
The winter months offer a unique opportunity to optimise your training performance and prepare for upcoming competitions. By ensuring a good energy balance, a thoughtful intake of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, and sufficient variety in your nutrition, you can not only maximise your training adaptations, but also support your overall health. Supplementation can provide valuable support in situations where basic nutrition is insufficient to get certain nutrients, such as omega-3 and vitamin D, in adequate amounts. The essence is in optimally matching your nutrition to your training goals, so that you can face the new season with confidence.
Brecht D’hoe - Ghent University
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