Thats one of the down sides of training hard, working hard and often trying to juggle friends and family as well.

We all know we need training to get faster but as most of you will know, it is the adaptation to this training where the magic really happens.

That means quality recovery.

Quality recovery means you have to make time for it which I know is NOT easy

Part of that recovery is your nutrition.

I will use my client Soraya as an example here:

Soraya trains everyday apart from Sunday – that usually means she starts Monday fresh (ish)!

If she is not fresh on a Monday we know she is in trouble.

One of the reasons she is fresh is not only because of the rest but also because she tends to eat more calories at the weekend (all good quality of course) – This means she has full glycogen stores come Monday.

Then as the week goes on (she is in a fat loss stage), she will become more and more depleted.  This depletion to some extent is necessary to lose fat.

Like most people Soraya has tried to lose weight on her own with some success, however like most people her performance was effected

She basically eat less and trained more, which lead to under recovery, under adaptation and ultimately poor results despite all of her efforts.

Now we schedule in rest days from dieting in the same way she schedules rest days from training.

Her performance is better, she feels better and she still loses fat.

I would describe the approach as non aggressive and thats because aggressive only works short term and she wants long term results and so should you.

I have one space for a coaching client – if you want in click the link:

http://www.nutri-tri.com/coaching-plans/

If you don’t, please don’t make the mistake of being too aggressive and too short term in your outlook.

Half a kilo a week for three months is 6 kilos which will make a big difference for most people.

Useful/Interesting links: 

Want some tips on open water swimming and lets be honest – who doesn’t?

Click below

http://www.triathlon.co.uk/item/open-water-swimming?category_id=6

Recipe of the week:

Healthy (ish) Cake

Chocolate beetroot cake – This may not be perfect but it is a damn site better than what you will pick up in a coffee shop or from the supermarket so give it a blast.

As a tip, replace the flour with rice flour or some other gluten free alternative.

Then freeze what you don’t eat and eat it in the future so you don’t have to polish it all off in one go:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chocolate-recipes/chocolate-and-beetroot-cake/

I made this – correction, my wife made this at the weekend and it was very nice.

Jamie “loves veg in cake” Leighton