Subject: RE: Need help balancing energy vs. weight loss...What do you mean when you refer to "energy" foods? Sports drinks, bars, gels etc? Specific types of vegetables and fruits? Red Bull and such? Based on your workout descriptions, I don't really see a need for anything other than real food. Sports drinks, bars, and gels are basically sugar with various salts and proteins added. Useful if doing workouts more than an hour or doing really intense workouts. Red Bull and such are sugar and caffeine. Useful for a quick pickup but you will crash pretty quickly. 5hr energy drink is better, but I wouldn't use it long term. You say you put on 5 pounds. Has your diet changed to more liquid forms of food? Water is heavy. Sports drinks will increase your sodium levels, causing you to retain water. My suggestion would be to make sure you're drinking lots of water (your weight may go up if you were dehydrated before) and emphasize healthy fruits and vegetables. Brightly colored is usually a good guide that's trendy at the moment. Make sure you keep the calories in less than the calories out but only by a few hundred. You also mentioned 4 months of increasing workload. Have you been backing off the workload every 2 or 3 weeks for a "recovery" week? This will help the reduce the feeling of fatigue that builds up with exercise. Obviously you back off on your calorie consumption when you back off the exercise. ETA: Congratulations! You've come quite a ways in those 4 months. Edited by daijoubu 2008-09-26 3:57 PM
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