EAT LIKE YOU SLEEP

I am by no means a nutrition guy.  I eat a low carb diet because it’s one less thing to think about, I’ve never counted a calorie or a macro in my life minus 1 day in 2004 when I started my training log, and I found the whole experience so off-putting I never tried again.  I really don’t think it’s all that complicated, yet I constantly have trainees asking me to explain to them the idea of “eat to recover from your training.”  That is ALWAYS the advice I offer when it comes to nutrition: your food supports your training, so you need to eat in a manner where you are recovering from training.  Inevitably, the brain of the person asking the question starts going to the realm of macro counting, and they ask me if I mean to eat so that they’re gaining 1-2lbs a week, or eat for maintenance, or something else entirely.  Folks: that’s a WEIRD question to ask in the context of the conversation.  Food is recovery: just like sleep, yet somehow folks completely understand how to sleep and have no idea how to eat.  Allow me to demonstrate…

Some of you already have this figured out

Let’s say you and I have a big day planned tomorrow.  It’s winter, in North Dakota, so we know that the first thing we’re gonna need to do is shovel snow for 2 hours so that we can get our car out of the driveway, and then we’re gonna drive to a strongman competition, compete all day and drive back home that same day so that we can beat the winter storm that will inevitably follow us home and snow us in again.  I tell you in the evening: “Hey, we got a big day tomorrow: make sure you get enough sleep.”  How come that’s ALL I need to say to you in order for you to understand intent?  Why is it that when I say “get enough sleep to perform” you know that means you probably need to get to bed an hour earlier than you usually do?  You’re not asking me dumb questions like “Do you mean get enough sleep that my eyes aren’t red when I wake up in the morning?  Or should it be that I get enough sleep that I wake up naturally on my own and don’t need an alarm clock?”  No, somehow, when I say “sleep enough that you are recovered from today and ready to perform for tomorrow”, you know what you need to do, but when I say “eat enough that you are recovered from today and ready for tomorrow”, you’re helpless.  It’s ALL just recovery.

And it’s the same thing when it comes to QUALITY of recovery.  Same exact scenario, I tell you to get enough sleep for tomorrow, you KNOW that what you need to do is get to a bed in a dark room and try to get some solid, unbroken, restful sleep.  You won’t try and do something stupid like take a 1 hour nap on the couch with the TV on, wake up, hang around for 20 minutes, then go sleep on the floor for 2 hours with the lights on and dogs barking, then figure you’ll grab a nap on the car ride to the comp and that should be good.  We KNOW that quality sleep is important ALONG with quantity sleep, but when it comes to nutrition?  We have “If It Fits Your Macros”, the “car nap” of nutrition: collecting macros from anywhere just like getting your hours of sleep at any time.  We have folks that have memorized the amount of carbs in a large McDonald’s French fry yet have no idea what Vitamin A does.  We have folks that have convinced themselves that fast food and TV dinners are the superior choice because they are mega high in sodium and “salt is good for lifters bro”, not recognizing the terrible quality of food they’re putting into their bodies.  Yet again, I tell you to sleep to support your training and it makes total sense, but when it comes to eat to support your training…

Yup

The real kicker out of all of this is that I’m the first to say that sleep isn’t that important for recovery: at least, not compared to food.  Folks, if sleep was the most important part about getting big and strong, I woulda been a world record holder at age 17, but I slept a LOT as a teenager.  I slept like a baby, multiple double hour sleep sessions a day, ESPECIALLY in the summer, when I had no real obligations.  My body was PRIMED for recovery: but my nutrition was crap.  Not enough food, and what I did eat wasn’t very good.  I’m in my 30s now, and I continue to grow bigger and stronger every year, despite the fact I’ve been sleeping less, and the sleep I get tends to be erratic and broken.  It’s a byproduct of children/pets, being a light sleeper who tends to react to both of those things when needed, and a weird work schedule that forces my sleep to adapt.  But my nutrition has improved substantially.  For one, I learned how to cook, and can make enough quality food that I’m never forced into a situation where I have to eat something awful for me “for the macros”.  I’ll indulge in fast food or eating out, but that’s the thing: I acknowledge it’s an indulgence.  I understand I’m getting a “car nap” of nutrition out of it, but in turn, it’s not a permanent fixture of my lifestyle.  I’ve experimented with both, and folks, given a choice between an abundance of good quality sleep with awful nutrition vs awful sleep with an abundance of good quality nutrition, the latter absolutely wins, hands down, at least insofar as getting bigger and stronger goes.  In fact, in a true bout of “proof of concept”, the IDEA for this blogpost came to me as I was driving home at 3:00 AM, with an alarm set to get up at 6:15 to walk my kid to school so I could get back to bed by 7:30 and get another 3 hour nap before starting my day and training at 12:30.

So take this metaphor to heart and uncomplicate how you eat.  When you hear “eat to support your training”, think of it as no different than how you would sleep.  If you have an average training block ahead of you, feel free to eat averagely.  If you have light training, eat lightly.  But if you’re entering a training block that is going to be intense, and call upon your reserves, you’re going to need to eat in a way to support that training.

Sweet dreams.