Everyday Nutrition - Carbohydrate foods

Focus on high-carbohydrate foods and drinks

Carbohydrate foods play a vital role as a training fuel. The critical source of energy for exercising muscles is your body’s carbohydrate stores – a little from blood glucose and a larger amount from glycogen stored in your muscles. These stores can only provide for up to a couple of hours of continuous exercise, and must constantly be refilled from the carbohydrate in your diet. Running low on carbohydrate causes fatigue – you have probably experienced how bad it feels to run out of fuel.

The more you train, the greater your daily carbohydrate needs are. Athletes who train every day can find it difficult to replenish their muscle glycogen levels, day in day out, and may gradually deplete body carbohydrate stores. This is often the cause of tiredness and ineffective training.

Typical Australian eating habits do not provide adequate carbohydrate. The focus of a winning diet is to increase our intake of these fuel foods. How much do you need? For general health benefits and to provide energy for a light to moderate training program, sports dieticians recommend that carbohydrate foods should make up more than half our total energy intake. Athletes in heavy daily training may need to eat higher levels again or to achieve special carbohydrate intake targets. For maximum daily glycogen storage an intake of 7-10g of carbohydrate per kg of your body weight is needed. This means an intake of 400-700g of carbohydrate for a typical endurance athlete.

Nutritious carbohydrate-rich foods

Breads.
Breakfast cereals.
Pasta, rice, noodles and other grains.
Fruit in all its forms.
Starchy vegetables – potato and corn.
Legumes – lentils, beans, baked beans.
Cereal bars, breakfast bars and other muesli bars.
Sweetened low-fat dairy foods, eg flavoured yogurt, fruche and fruit smoothies.
Pancakes, scones and other foods made with flour.

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