Carbohydrates are essential in sports nutrition. Especially as an athlete, you should not do without these energy suppliers. Unfortunately, carbohydrates have a bad reputation these days and low-carb diets are all the rage.
You don't even have to give up carbohydrates to stay fit. You just have to distinguish between good and bad carbohydrates.
In this blog, we explain exactly how this works and how many carbohydrates you need as an active person.
The ideal nutrition for athletes - read more!
What exactly are carbohydrates?
Carbohydrates, along with fats and proteins, are among the three macronutrients that the body needs, among other things, to convert into energy.
Biochemically, they consist of a chain of simple sugars, which can be either linear or branched. Carbohydrates can be divided into different classes, which have different properties depending on the chain length.
Carbohydrates are divided into mono-, di-, tri-, oligo- or polysaccharides. Monosaccharides (simple sugars) are, for example, glucose or fructose.
Disaccharides (two-fold sugars) are composed of two monosaccharides; an example of this is lactose.
Oligosaccharides are complex sugars that consist of three to ten monosaccharides. In general, mono-, di- and oligosaccharides taste sweet and are easily soluble in water.
Polysaccharides (complex sugars) consist of more than 10 monosaccharides and have no characteristic taste and are poorly soluble in water. Starch, for example, consists of many glucose units that are linked together.
Dietary fiber forms a special group of carbohydrates. These are indigestible fibers that humans cannot digest.
A low-carb diet avoids carbohydrates, but this is not useful for a balanced diet. Foods that do not contain carbohydrates include fish and meat.
What are good carbohydrates?
It is particularly important for you as an athlete/sportsman to distinguish between good and bad carbohydrates. In nutritional science, we speak of high-quality or complex carbohydrates and isolated or refined or simple carbohydrates.
These designations already indicate the big difference between good and bad carbohydrates: while good carbohydrates have hardly been processed at all, bad carbohydrates are found in highly processed industrial products.
A good example is the difference between muesli without sugar (hardly processed industrially and healthy) and cornflakes (highly processed industrially and unhealthy).
Other good carbohydrates are generally all whole grain products (whole grain bread, whole grain pasta), parboiled rice or legumes.
According to the German Nutrition Society, oat flakes are a real superfood because oats contain a particularly large number of good carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.
The glycemic index (GI) of foods can be measured medically, which enables an assessment of good and bad carbohydrates.
The GI indicates how strongly a food affects blood sugar levels. The lower the GI, the more complex and better the food. Porridge, for example, has a low GI.
Sport porridge from Verival – discover it now
What are the bad carbohydrates?
As a result of industrial processing, many important nutrients and vitamins are lost. Therefore, bad carbohydrates are almost without exception contained in all ready-made and fast food products.
They are also found in sweet cereals, chips, long-grain rice, instant mashed potato, sweets and so on. Even bread can be a bad carbohydrate if it is white bread, for example. The same applies to pasta.
Why are carbohydrates good for athletes?
To be in top physical shape as an athlete, your body needs to provide a lot of energy. Carbohydrates are the most important energy supplier in our body.
One gram of carbohydrate provides 4.1 kilocalories. After eating, the carbohydrates are converted into glucose in the body and used for energy.
Conversely, glucose can be converted back into carbohydrates (glycogen) when energy is not needed. As an athlete, it is important for you to distinguish between eating before and after exercise, as carbohydrates are needed for different things in each case.
Eating before exercise
As a general rule, exercising on an empty stomach is counterproductive! On the one hand, a higher performance can be achieved by eating, and on the other hand, this leads to a higher overall energy consumption due to the afterburn effect.
Nevertheless, it is important for you as an athlete that a full stomach is also counterproductive; in general, you should take a break of two to three hours between eating and exercising.
The food you eat before exercising should give you enough energy for your workout to perform well and should be easy to digest so that your body doesn't waste energy metabolizing it. Therefore, low-fiber and low-fat dishes that contain lots of good carbohydrates are suitable.
Examples of healthy food choices for before exercise include brown rice with turkey breast and vegetables or oats with milk, banana and almonds. If you exercise in the morning, porridge is the ideal breakfast before your workout.
Eating after exercise
After exercise, the energy stores in your muscles are depleted and need to be replenished. Therefore, the carbohydrates you eat in a meal after exercise are not converted into fat, but are used directly to replenish your energy stores.
Studies have shown that consuming carbohydrates and proteins as soon as possible after exercise leads to better muscle building and faster recovery. Nuts are particularly suitable as a high-protein and at the same time plant-based source of protein.
A varied diet for good performance in sports
Nutrition has an influence on both physical and mental performance and therefore plays a crucial role in improving performance in sports.
A balanced and varied diet ensures that the body is supplied with all the essential nutrients and minerals. In addition to carbohydrates, these naturally also include proteins and fats.
Do you already know your BMI value?
It doesn't matter whether you want to lose weight, just do something for your health or are in the middle of muscle-building training.
The body mass index is often the first measurement that shows you whether you have your body weight under control. Here you can calculate your BMI (body mass index) in just a few seconds and find out more about what this value means.
Healthy breakfast for athletes from Verival
A healthy breakfast is not only the first meal of the day, but also the most important! Verival's healthy breakfast is made from 100% organic products.
The sports muesli or porridge is ideal before training because it provides you with the necessary energy to increase your physical activity through its many natural ingredients and in particular through the good (= complex) carbohydrates.
Many of Verival's mueslis also contain freeze-dried berries and fruits, which still contain vitamins and therefore also contribute to a balanced and healthy diet. If you suffer from gluten intolerance, Verival also offers gluten-free muesli for you.
