A lot of us have grown up on peanut butter and if you love the stuff, it probably gets slathered on toast, apples, celery… as post training recovery food. As with all foods, variety is the spice of life, and it is good to mix things up so that you don’t get exposed to toxins from pure volume (a lot of peanut products have traces of aflatoxin – and many people have low level peanut allergies). There are all sorts of nut butters out there: almond, cashew, sunflower seed, hazelnut, macadamia… so give some others a try. You might find a new love.
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I recently tried Pumpkin Seed Butter and it was very good also.
Hi,
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I just wanted to say that i like a lot your blog and websites, your tips are great!
I actually have a question about fat consumption: I was curious to know what source of fat you are using when cooking: butter, light butter, oil, which one?
Do you cut down on fat intake at specific times?
Do you pay attention to the ratio of omega3/ omega6?
Thanks a lot!
David
PS: I am from Europe so excuse me if i make mistakes and also if I am not so much into peanut butter
Hi David,
Yes, Europeans and their lack of nut butters… I lived in Norway for a couple of years and I missed them terribly. When my mom shipped some over and my roommates had a taste, they all thought I was insane! “Ewww, it’s oily, but dry at the same time, how disgusting!”.
Anyway, to answer your questions about fats: We cook with olive oil and use a vegan “butter” called Earth Balance for bread etc. It has no hydrogenated oils or cholesterol – I avoid dairy in general.
We add Nutra Sea – an amazing lemon flavoured fish oil – to all of our recovery smoothies and to homemade salad dressings.
Avocados are an important source of fat calories for us as are nuts and seeds.
We try to stick to energy bars that have all natural ingredients like Lara Bars, and Raw Organic Food bars. These generally have a lot of fat calories from nuts but this is the primary source of energy during long rides anyway – we’re tapped into our fat burning metabolic zones – so it makes sense to replace what you burn.
When we do our harder, lactate threshold efforts, that’s when we down high glycemic foods like bananas and raisins… and well coke if we’re really on the edge (generally before a hard run right off the bike
We try to keep it pretty simple and eat as many whole, unprocessed foods as possible. I only think about cutting down on fats, and calories in general when tapering for a race. It is easy to keep eating like you are in the middle of a big training block when you are not, so it’s important to be mindful when training the volume goes down!
The biggest mistake I see people making when it comes to trying to be healthy with fats, is to choose “low fat”, processed foods that have ridiculous amounts of sugar instead! This is just as bad for you, if not worse than the fat in the first place.
Hope that’s useful for you.
Cheers
Heather