K-Rock wrote:Lots of bad carbs here...
Even if he burns them off as energy, a pound of enriched pasta at one time is still gonna do a number on his blood sugar and insulin levels.
The food still has to go through that process before he can use it as energy, amirite?
First, the disclaimer:
"I'm not a doctor....I just play one on the message boards."
Okay, here's a just slightly (enough to be dangerous) learned guess.
There is an order to how fuel(s) get used in the body -- glycogen, glucose, proteins/fats, stored fat.
Compared to glucose, glycogen is actually a more complex sugar that's made up of several chains of glucose and/or parts of the glucose molecule that happen to be left over and floating around. Sugars get digested and formed into glycogen in the liver, where a good percentage of them sit until called for or dumped out. However, at the cellular level of the muscles all over the body, a tiny amount of glycogen gets stored in each cell for rapid access.
When a muscle starts getting used, it immediately starts breaking apart and burning the glycogen already stored there. It's not much, but it can keep a muscle cell going very hard for a minute or so or at a moderate pace or effort level for several minutes. The glycogen in the muscle is then spent for the time being.
After that, the muscle cell starts looking for whatever glucose it can get its tiny little hands on (no time to call for, locate, store, and break down glycogen at that point). It'll pull it out of the bloodstream and burn it immediately. Extract...burn...extract...burn.....continuously until there ain't no more glucose coming by in the blood, which is what happens if muscle use continues for some time. (And I believe that amount of time is under debate....actually, rather than time, it's "calorie expenditure" that gets debated, but we tend to perceive calorie expenditure in terms of how much time we can keep doing some activity....so.....you know.....anyway, the common belief is that the average person can burn, at most, in the neighborhood of 2000 calories in one continuous session)
Once the glucose is exhausted, the body makes the call for fat. Fat tends to take 15-20 minutes to get pulled out of storage and into the bloodstream, so the muscle cell starts taking anything it can get -- namely, proteins and any fats you have floating around that haven't made it to your fat cells just yet. You'll notice this point if you ever smell or sense ammonia because ammonia is a byproduct of this kind of digestion of protein. Once you do smell or sense that, "hitting the wall" (or "bonking") is very close (or maybe has already occurred), and you better slow down and hope the metabolized fat is about to arrive if you're planning on continuing.
Think of this whole thing like building a fire....
Glycogen, already sitting in the muscle, is like kerosene....powerful and explosive but consumed quickly.
Glucose, being pulled from the bloodstream, is like a steady tossing-in of sticks and small branches....grows and sustains the fire as long as the tossing keeps coming.
Proteins and fats in the blood are like the bark on a log....not exactly what you're looking for for your fire, but you gotta burn through it to get to the log...and it does burn, so why not?
Stored fat is like the big logs....capable of giving you a really good, long-lasting fire as long as you've got the time and patience to get 'em going in the first place and are looking for the moderate/measured/controlled pace of such a fire.
Not the perfect analogy, but not bad. And most probably can't keep going until they get to the logs...if the kerosene and kindling are gone before the log's goin', it might be hard to keep the fire burning.
And, then, you gotta start figuring in individual differences in how the cells behave, how much they store, how efficiently they burn, how much the whole system can keep handy, how fast it can deliver it......and how much of all that is genetic and how much is from some particular training. The truly great athletes all have genes that the rest of us don't have, and matching or even beating their training won't necessarily get us anywhere near their performance.
So.....Phelps and his food.
On raceday, his shorter races, being powerful short bursts, are all likely glycogen-fueled, and it would seem to be extremely likely that he can store more glycogen in his muscles than we can (although we can assume there's a genetic component to that, too, that's one thing that supposedly can be improved by us all with training). Once that glycogen is burned, the cells, if they have time, will call for more glycogen from the liver, which will then be looking for more food being digested so it can do its thing. As long as that keeps happening, he can (and darn near must) keep eating, and that eating should lean a bit in the protein direction for the sake of building and repairing the muscles while not neglecting the carbohydrates that fuel them.
His longer races will consume the glycogen and possibly start the call for glucose. As far as the liver, stomach, and food go, this is the same as the above.
His training, though, could be something very different. Although the races require the building and improvement of muscle and, thus, will feature the glycogen-consuming "bursts" of output, surely a good amount of his training will fall into the "endurance" category and require the consistent delivery of glucose. That would mean upping both protein
and carbohydrates fairly significantly, both to repair and replenish what was lost and to load for the next time. Although that published menu might really be typical, I'd almost bet amount and composition vary daily according to what was done and what is to come. As far as his blood sugar goes, I would think that would again depend on his level of activity, the amount of glycogen he can store in his cells and liver, and how efficiently he can get it into storage / his particular sensitivity to insulin.
But, again, "I'm not a doctor....I just play one on the message boards."
