In February of 2009, I received an email from one of my triathlon friends who had great success with Craig David at Max Muscle Boulder. I was a bit skeptical of course because of all the usual factors: they were a chain store; they sold their own products, why hadn’t I heard of them, etc. Skepticism aside, I decided to go in and talk with Craig about my nutrition. I had taken off 8 months in 2008 and I was going to try to do everything in my power to get back into shape this year and have a decent year of training and racing. Craig measured me up and I was about 16% body fat. I’ve been this high before, so it wasn’t a shock to me, but as you get older it’s definitely tougher to get the weight off. Your metabolism doesn’t fire as hot and you are losing muscle mass at the rate of 1% a year.Craig has his work cut out for him!

Craig and I went through each of my workouts, day by day, and hour by hour. I was pretty stoked that Craig was taking the time to do this. I have sought out advice from plenty of outstanding nutritionists in Boulder, the USOC and across the country but Craig is the first nutritionist that I’ve come across that actually gave me a meal plan! The crux of the plan is that the calories would come from whole foods (grains, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, etc.) and a small percentage from supplements. Many of the other nutritionists asked me what I ate, handed me a food pyramid and sent me on my way. I’ve struggled with meal timing on my own, but here is Craig, laying it out for me. Just like I tell my athletes, “If you want to improve, follow the plan.” So, all I had to do was “follow the plan”.

At first, it was tough to get in all the calories. Yes, even as a hungry, over weight triathlete, I wasn’t eating enough food on a daily basis. Before working with Craig my caloric intake was somewhere around 2500 calories a day. Craig set my daily caloric intake at 3800 calories and even though I thought it was a lot, but if someone tells me to eat more, I eat more. I taped my meal plan to the side of the refrigerator and crossed things off as I ate them. This was the easiest way for me to keep track of getting all of the calories in. At first my weight didn’t move much, but I was putting on muscle for sure. I could tell my clothes were fitting
differently and things were moving around in the right direction. In June I went to 70.3 Kansas and wasn’t sure what to expect. I hadn’t race a HIM in almost 2 years and I was pretty worried I would have my slowest Half ever. On the drive to KS, I had to improvise my plan and I ended up eating a loaf of bread on the way there along with a tub of peanut butter– carbs and protein.