Carbohydrate Diet for a Half Marathon Runner

What is the role of carbohydrates in the diet of a half marathon runner? Well, like most of us would already know, carbohydrates help to provide energy to the active muscles in our body. They are the nutrients that burn in order to provide energy to do most daily tasks. However it is not uncommon for us to hear dietitians talk about the evils of carbohydrates and the importance of having a low-carb diet.

While the generalization of carbohydrates being evil to the body is not completely true, this advocacy is not completely untrue either. This is because of the way the different foods burn up in order to provide energy. In this regard, we shall classify the carbohydrates we intake into two categories - the good and the bad.

First the good. Carbohydrates that we obtain from organic food are, as you guessed, good for the body. This is because these carbohydrate have a very optimum burn rate which pretty much balances with the other activities of the body and hence is able to provide energy to the everyday activities. Food that provides you with such good carbohydrates include fresh fruits, fat-free milk, bread and vegetables like potatoes.

So why are some food items bad? This is because most of the junk food that we have burn at a higher rate in our body. When this happens, the level of sugar (glucose) rises in our blood. Our body detects this as an abnormal case similar to diabetes and injects a dose of insulin to control this sugar rise. This eventually causes such sugar to be condensed into fat and stored in our body.

So, while as a marathon runner, you must be extremely encouraged to have carbohydrates in order to provide you with energy to fight it out on the field, be extremely careful about the kind of carbohydrates you intake since that can define your energy levels on the field.