How To Eat For Tournaments

You want to be elite, you cannot argue with physiology. If you want to play at the top level you must prepare the body as well as the mind. This is courtesy of Ben Wiggins, Seattle Sockeye #5

As developed over the years, through a combination of trial-and-error, professional advice, and scientific literature...

For a typical 2-day, weekend tournament, and assuming your goals are to play your best ultimate all weekend, and peak on Sunday afternoon.

Monday/Tuesday: Protein Loading
Why: Body cycles protein slower than other food constituents. Protein loading allows storage of long-term energy.
What to Eat: 3/4 meals per day, with at least one meal being primarily a main protein source (meat, eggs, tofu). Better if two meals focus on protein. Avoiding fat is nice, but no more necessary than any other day.

Omelette for breakfast, chicken or fish for dinner will do it, as long as everything else is balanced.

When this will help: Throughout the weekend, but primarily after
burning through daily reserves. Think "second-wind" on Saturday/Sunday afternoon.

Wednesday/Thursday: Vitamin Loading
Why: Body processes require vitamins to function. These cycle more quickly than protein, but can still be stockpiled during the week.
What to Eat: At least one large, complex salad each day. Focus here is on eating balanced meals that will allow intake of excess vitamins and minerals. Drink a smoothie. Balance the other food groups, make sure you get some protein (especially because you will likely be recovering from a practice or workout on 3-4 of these days). Steam, don't boil, your vegetables...and drink the juice. A Vit C pill isn't a bad idea. Garlic is amazing.

When this will help: Any injury or illness you pick up over the
weekend needs to be fought off quickly, which your body is fully able to do given the right materials. Saturday night you body will heal as fast as you allow it to through what you eat on these days.

Thursday Night/Friday: Carbo Loading
Why: The levels of enzymes that use carbohydrates to make energy can be raised by intaking large carbohydrate meals, and this will also store energy in the short term in sugar form.
What to Eat: At least one full meal of a carbohydrate like bread,
pasta, or rice. The more "hippie" it is, the better, meaning go for
whole-grain instead of bleached white. Keep balanced meals. Get more fluids to help digest (and to hydrate). Keep hydrated, but DO NOT drink gallons and gallons of water solely. This throws your mineral/water balance out of whack just as much as losing all of your water. Actually, pounding salt-water mixes helped a former team of mine. Hyperhydration is a serious threat in hot temperatures: it manifests as the same symptoms as dehydration (cause the same water/mineral imbalance is happening) or as heat exhaustion except without the raised body temperature.
When this will help: Your maximum stored energy will be on Saturday, and this might give you an extra boost in terms of energy usage.


Saturday Morning: Pre-Game Meal
Why: You are about to play 4 games. You must have fuel.
What to Eat: A mix of carbohydrates, simple sugars, and protein.
Fruits/vegetables will help keep mineral levels high, but right now you are mostly concerned with energy for the day. Pancakes/waffles make for good carbohydrate energy. Do not neglect protein, though- fats and proteins make for longer energy throughout the day. No sense in crashing after game #1. This is why Sausage Mcmuffiins and the like are more than just a humorous choice- they actually give a pretty good spread of carbs, protein, and fat.

Those with "weak" stomachs will want to eat at least an hour before you hit the field to allow digestion and give blood that localizes to the stomach time to spread back out. This requires, of course, that you get up earlier.

On-Field Meals: Recovery and Fueling
On the field, you need a mix of fluids and food. Quick energy like
"Goo" is great when you have to have it now, but if you can, try to eat immediately following games, to maximize digestion. Drink sports drinks or something similar to keep water/mineral levels high. Get some protein: sausage or Clif Bars are good for fat/protein intake. A head of lettuce (green) is basically like eating a cup of water with a vitamin pill in it. Pickles, a tried and true favorite, are great for salt (minerals) and for vitamins from the vegetable. Drink more.
Do not allow yourself to EVER feel hungry on the field. Hunger will
lead to your body pulling resources back for safety, leading to lowered energy availability. Eat before you are hungry.

Saturday Night Meal: Recovery Mode
One day down, one to go. You need to heal all the damage you have done and maximize your chances of waking up Sunday feeling good. Eat soon after playing. Cagging at the field is fun, but you have a 90-minute "glycogen window" after exercise in which to replace sugars, or else the body will start to break itself down to feed metabolism. If dinner is going to take a while, eat something right then, to stave off the breakdown.
Eat a balanced meal. You need some of everything to maximize your recovery: minerals, vitamins, protein, carbs. A big plate of Mexican food gives a great mix of resources. Indian food is good. Saltworks II is optimum. Drink water and sports drinks.

Weekend After 1st Chem Mid-Term

Dam things have been going by fast. I can't remember if I've been in college for a month, or two months? Let me try to give short glimpses of my days and nights so I won't forget them

Thursday: Well Happy Birthday Ben! You've been 18 for a year! Isn't that excited... well I thought so. For my birthday I ended up not going to Frisbee practice because I felt stressed over my chemistry mid-term the next day, then I ended up pulling an all-nighter studying for the mid-term. I like all-nighters because they make me feel worthy to call myself a dedicated student for some reason. I had printed out five practice mid-terms and their keys (which turned out to be around 120 pages) from the the Tech center in the SAAC earlier that day, so I forced myself to practice each mid-term all night long. I did end up going to breakfast with the crew team sans Liam because he wanted to study more around 7:30. We took the test at 9:00 and I felt really good about it minus not finishing it. No one else finished it either, so that worked out for a nice curve. We got our tests back Monday after chem lab. I got a middle B which I'm happy with.

Friday: My Friday started after I took my chemistry mid-term. It began falling all downhill from there. I fell asleep in calculus class while listening to my ipod. Then when I got back from that lecture, I realized I forgot my key to get inside my room. I figured I would just lay down and wait for Liam to come to the room. I knocked on the door, but nobody came, so I guessed that he was either in the bath or at class. Well waiting got really boring, and I was really tired. I ended up closing my eyes for a few seconds... which turned into two hours. Lol, I practically passed out for two hours on the hard floor right outside my dorm room. When I woke up, there was an outline of empty bottles around my body and a sign that said, "Ben Hubbard is passed out on the floor. Take pictures of him and write on his face". Luckily nobody wrote on my face, but I did see pictures of myself laying on the ground later on from Sean's phone. My door was still locked and I had no way to find Liam. He was probably out to lunch or something, I really didn't care about that thought. All I was thinking about was finding more places to sleep at. Brooke ended up letting me use her bed to sleep from 2 to 4 until my Stat class. Nice bed and all, which makes me feel bad about farting all over it. Hopefully it didn't smell too much like me afterward. Then I had my first Chico team practice from 5:30-7. Lol it went surprisingly well, but I do need to start skying more people.

Saturday: Chico team practice from 10am-1pm. This was really fun. They video taped whenever we played, so I hope I look good when I watch the tape at Taylor's house on Thursday night. After that, Mom, Dad, and Michael came up to visit me for a birthday celebration. We biked around downtown Davis (which I secretly wish I could do more often) and had lunch at Chipotle. Then we biked the entire Arboretum. That is a beautiful bike ride. I definitely want to do that at least once a month. We stopped at one point along the way and watched Michael play with the geese. Later on at night we went to Fuzio for a nice dinner which rocked my socks off because I hadn't eaten that much all day long after practice. Food just tastes better when your hungry. After my parents and Michael left to go back to Pleasanton, I went up to floor 2 and began to get my drink on. It wasn't exactly right away, but we did end up finishing around 7/8ths of Sean's handle before going to the bonfire. Then we came back to the room after the bonfire and drank some more. Tonight was the night that everyone was going to my Frisbee party. It was at Kevin's house on Vassar which is right behind Cuarto. They told me to bring girls, so I brought around 9 girls and 4 guys. I invited all the girls from my floor along with Natasha and her friend. The Frisbee party was legit and I was having fun, but I think most of the girls from floor 2 were being wet towels, and I was having fun with Sean, Isaiah, Natasha, Samantha, and Tonhu, so I'm pretty sure we just ended up leaving and then going to watch airplane in the main lounge while still being semi-drunk. I think I ended up sleeping in the lounge until about 7:30am when a cleaning guy was doing his thing moving chairs around. I waited until he was in the kitchen, then I rushed up to my room and slept until around noon.

Sunday: Not as much happens during days when you wake up at noon compared to other days. I remember we played an IM ultimate game (and lost), but I got Natasha to come out and give our team more girls. She seemed interested in playing or getting better. But I still had to teach her everything new. First practices are always hard for ultimate because you drop the disc more than catch it, and then you only catch it once or twice. Most of the time your just running around confused. Later that night we ended up watching Amelie in the main lounge. Now I had alot of chemistry homework for Lab that needed doing... but this was Amelie, which I just couldn't pass up. I'm sure anyone in my position whose seen Amelie before and liked it would have done the same thing. Anyways, movie was as bomb as I remember :) This time I did not sleep in the lounge. For the future, I hope I don't turn into one of those people who watch movies because they have nothing else to do.

Monday: What else is there to say other than it's my hardest day of the week. I wake up and wash my face, then go to chemistry lecture. Then I come home and take a shower. I decided to skip calculus for two reasons: 1) I had chemistry homework to finish and 2) They are learning about shortcuts for differentiations which I already know. After lab in my stat class, I realized that I hadn't eaten any food at all today. This kinda worried me, but I just blew it off because I knew I could have all-you-can-eat for dinner at the DC. After I got back from my nutrition class, I called Natasha and asked if she wanted to throw. She said that people had just gone to the DC and that I should come. Well, I came, I saw, I conquered. I had 8 different dishes with 4 cups of liquid (one of them was cappuccino which might be one of the reasons I'm up so late). Everyone ended up leaving except Natasha before I ate a huge salad and two more slices of pizza. We tried out drinking coffee and reading the newspaper on the nice couches (conclusion: it still rocks). After dinner Natasha, Sean, and I all went to the ARC/Pavilion to play some racquetball. It was fun, but just "playing around" racquetball. When we got bored of that, we went back to the main ARC because Sean wanted to practice some wrestling moves on me. I also taught both Sean and Natasha how to do the moonwalk, and they taught me how to balance on my head and do a cartwheel. Now I do believe I'm all caught up on my life. Gonna go take a shower because my Stat teacher gave us an extra day for homework (Wednesday 3:00am instead of Tuesday 3:00am)

Jetman

Oh man I just owned this one girl on Jetman!

Scavenger Hunt

Tonight was the most bomb-diggity night so far in Davis. Better than parties, and way better than studying. Around 7 o'clock I had this idea to make a scavenger hunt for all the Thompson residents. This came about because I was playing around with my Thompson '08-'09 facebook group that I made to keep a directory of everyone in my building. There is a button that lets me message everyone in the group, so I sent out a message saying I was going to make a scavenger hunt.

This got me thinking about everything I could do for the scavenger hunt. Usually once I get rolling with an idea, more ideas come even more quickly to me and I had an entire scavenger hunt planned out in my mind in about ten minutes. The plan was to have people come to my room for the first clue, then I would have pieces of paper with more clue directions on them for where to go next. There was something witty written on the paper like, "Where can I study for my mid-terms at on the first floor" (answer: study room) or, "Lets make some popcorn in the microwave" (answer: a clue in the microwave).

This is my list of places I was going to have people go to:
1. Laundry room
2. Floor 4 trash chute
3. Study room
4. Floor 2 lounge area
5. Piano room
6. Floor 3 emergency exit
7. Next to the soda machines
8. Kitchen fridge
9. Floor 4 Lounge area behind a couch
10. Kitchen microwave
11. ?????

I sat and thought about what the prize should be at the end. Then it hit me. Have everyone go to Ashley's (my floor R.A.) room and wish her happy birthday. Her birthday is the same day as mine (October 16th) which is tomorrow. But I gotta make it a cool prize though. So what I did was I went out about bought a bag of 75 small airhead candy stuff. Then I went to Ashley's room and told her that I wanted to give her a birthday present, which was the bag of candy. The last clue was in place. The final paper from the microwave said something like, "Go up to room 201A and say 'Happy Early Birthday Ashley! Can I have some candy', but make sure you don't say anything about the scavenger hunt. If she asks, just play dumb".

Such a fucking good idea. In the end I had like 15 people doing the scavenger hunt all from Thompson Hall. I got on my R.A.'s total good side. And to a bunch of people, I'm no longer that one guy who walks around in his underwear.

Why I Picked My Major

My career discovery group for nutrition assigns us to write her emails with prompts every Friday. This was her prompt this week:

"Tell me how you picked your major? What sort of process did you use to determine that you liked nutrition or food science enough to specialize in it in college? Tell me some of your fears or worries about focusing on this subject (i.e. you are not sure you will like the jobs, but you know you like the subject, or salary worries, hours required per week worries, etc.) I am looking for some thoughtful answers that are 1-2 paragraphs in length."

This is my response

"Good afternoon Joelle,

I only became interested in bodies nutrition in the past year or two. My older brother (UCSD ’09) would always come home from college on holidays and then the summer to cook up amazing meals that would blow my mind. He would also help me out with food secrets to make my body function better when doing a sport like ultimate Frisbee. My family has also always been food conscience by never having soda or white bread in the house, or things like that, but my brother made me realize how extremely important it is for your body to eat the right diet. I began eating right, and I got interested in reading food labels then making connections between what I ate and how I functioned or felt. I’m pretty sure that everyone in my family had read fast food nation like three or four years ago, but then we started getting into books like “The Omnivores Dilemma” or “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan. So basically right now, where I am in my life, I take pride in being aware of everything I eat, and I think that having knowledge of metabolism is valuable.

I’m not thinking about jobs at all right now that require a nutrition science degree. I mean, yes, I do want to work more under the biochemistry side of nutrition compared to the community approach, but I’m not concerning myself with which companies I should apply to in four years. I am a little worried that most jobs for nutrition don’t pay around 200,000 a year, which would be nice, but I’ll worry about that after 4 years.

Another problem I foresee in my future is that I really like chemistry, but I’m just not good at it. I love the idea of chemistry and learning about it. Sadly I’ve never done that well in any chemistry classes that I have taken though. This makes me worried because in the future, I’m probably going to want to take a lot of chemistry classes, but not do so well in them. I will probably have to go to tutoring a lot more often.

Best of wishes,

Ben Hubbard"

Cappuccinos

Almost every time I go to the DC now, after my meal I pick up the Aggie newspaper and sit down on the nice chairs with a cappuccino. It makes me feel like an adult college student. Sometimes I cross my legs if I wanna feel extra college.

Getting Better

In the short amount of time since my last post, I've done a lot of productive things that have made me feel good about myself. After I finished writing my "Ugh" post, Liam told me that we had to schedule an appointment with a person to talk about being written up, so I got the number and called the lady without thinking twice. We scheduled to talk with this guy in the SAC (brick building) on Tuesday at 1. Then Jake called me and I agreed to fill in his spot at a Intramural-Captain meeting at 9:45-10:15 tonight because he can't make it. This makes me happy because I'm able to fulfill these promises I am making to people, and people are being able to rely on me again. After that, I went to Jake's room in Gilmore to pick up "The Game" by Neil Strauss. It's a great book on how to meet women and I think the author writes amazingly well. Walking back to Thompson, I stopped by the junction to put 10 dollars on my WEB Laundry card! Now I'm going downstairs to do a load before ultimate practice at 4. In between now and practice, I plan on focusing my undivided attention to studying chemistry.

Ugh Life Is A Downer

Lots of things have been bringing me down lately. Most of the occurrences that happen are pretty small, but I've been getting a lot of them, and I'm not used to being down. Thanks for Mr. Schneider's wall junior year, I remembered a quote from Dave Mathews:

"To change the world
Start with one step
However Small
The first step is hardest of all"

So my first step to fixing the problems in my life is to write down the thoughts from my head and figure out what I need to do in order to change. By writing down the things that have brought me down in the past couple of days, I want to look for connections between them and come up with solutions that will help all of them.

Don't laugh at me, or tell me that my problems don't mean anything, because they mean something to me and they are affecting me. Of course I'm happy to be alive and all that other shit, I just want to fix my problems and make myself happier.

Here is a list of things that I can think off the top of my head that have brought me down.
- Going to the DC (Dining Commons) alone
- Losing all my money on Facebook Poker
- Afraid of asking people for their phone number
- Giving myself enough time to study for Chemistry or Statistics
- Not giving myself enough time to arrive to my lecture halls
- Not wanting to do my laundry
- Not wanting to lift weights after I run in the ARC
- Spending too much time in the bathroom for showers
- Cluttered desk
- Worried about maybe not getting the things I need for my Halloween costume
- Being sucky at defense during Frisbee practice
- I know I'm going to Chico CHUG, but I still might not make the A team
- Not taking good care of my immune system
- Being written up for taking the screen off our window

What I need to do is focus on one thing at a time and figure out how to get out of that rut, instead of trying to fix everything at once.

Running Thoughts

Sometimes I exercise when I get frustrated. It lets me put my emotions into something that is productive and healthy. Certain people vacuum, I exercise. Right now I feel like putting on shoes and running alot... like a fucking shitload. Then a thought came into my head, "What did I have for dinner". That thought made me realize that I felt like running until I threw up. As I recall, I had a hamburger, salad, focaccia bread, 2 glasses of fruit juice, a cup of cappuccino, and some fruit. It would be ok if I ran until I threw up. I feel fine about pushing my body now.

Jesus Shirts

It's fucking rediculous. I own two shirts that I bought from a Christian Supply store and people keep fucking complimenting me on it. I'm disgusted by these real Christians.

Katie is Dropping Band

Katie Yost said she was thinking about dropping band. I think that once you get that idea in your head, there must be a reason that makes you think that after 3 years. This is what I told her, and I think it's a good read for anyone worried about what colleges think about them during the application process.

"wowowowowow. Ok so Moorf only writes recommendations if you are doing marching band in college... which you wont. And you probably wouldn't do that anyways. Secondly, if your not enjoying band, there is no reason to stick it out because it will not help you in the long run. Senior year really pissed me off (but you already know that katie). Also, ... Read Morethere is no formula that colleges use when they accept people that will make the difference between 3 years of band and 4 years. Like, if there was a point system going on: AP classes would give you 20 points and a year of band would give you 1. They care about leadership abilities that mostly come from band, but you've already taken 3 years. And you've got lifegaurd experience. Seriously drop band if you want, and then take your extra time and money to explore who you are and discover things that you've never done before. 3 years if enough. Btw apply for colleges in unimpacted majors. You'll get in. BTW APPLY TO DAVIS

Understand the application process first before you make assumptions about what it takes to get into college. For CSU's, All you write down are your grades for classes that fulfill credits to graduate high school. Just make sure you check the box yes for that one question asking if you were ever in a leadership position. For UC's, you write down ... Read Moreyour grades (remember that they only register one year of band for your GPA) so it obviously is significantly less important doing band compared to a legitimate course. After you give your GPA, there is a spot where you write down 5 achievements or certificates. Remember that people who aren't in band, also get into college. I know you Katie, and you've got many things under your belt that will show how much character you have. Then their are two essays.

Don't write about band. Don't write about band. Don't write about band.

All the UC's get probably 8,000 essays from kids explaining how being apart of the flute section gave them such leadership and how much they learned with the discipline they achieved during marching band. Application readers can see through that bullshit, and they know that probably only 4% of those essays are true. Either way, you want to write about something that MAKES YOU UNIQUE. That is the most important part of the college application process. If you ... Read Morewant to drop band, and instead do something that will give you purpose and expose you to new ideas and new lights.... thats exactly what colleges should look for and praise. Make sure you're UNIQUE in your essays and if colleges realize how much diversity and experience you can bring to their campus, you'll be admitted."

To Ami

Alright Ami, so I've got three questions for you.

1) Is there any one specific thing you want me to talk to you about?
2) When do you want me to talk to you about it?
3) What should we cook the next time I come to your house?

Get back to me about that :)

Late Night Music

Sitting here with Liam at 1 in the morning. We got back from hanging out at the Crew house with all crew people... and me. That's ok though because it was a really chill house. I also feel like I'm getting really close with Julian, Haley, and Bianca which I think is great. Right now we are just sitting here, smelling incenses, and listening to music. Not talking or anything which is fine. He is on facebook talking with people while I sit and think post-post-modernisticly about my life.

Right now I'm at a point in my life where I don't completely disregard my upcoming responsibilities in the future, but I do believe I'm living around 98% in the moment. Independence is not an excuse, it is a building block. I like where I am in my life, and I think I'm doing what is best for me.

The amazing part of living in a collective student body that cares about higher knowledge as much as you do is... well that's the amazing part. We are all fully functional capable human beings put together along with the highest outlets for learning given throughout the world. Everyone here is basically a well rounded person (they had to be to be accepted), and the combination of everyone working towards creating the world a better, faster, or more efficient place with the tools to do it at our fingertips makes for an excellent blend.

Frisbee With Sean

I was still writing/editing a super long email to my Career Discovery: Food Science/Nutrition teacher when Sean came into my room and asked me if I wanted to throw a Frisbee around with him. My response was, "I still have to edit my email to my teacher, and I have class in 20 minutes, and it's raining outside: Yes let's throw". Oh man I love Frisbee.

I have been bruising a lot from ultimate practices though. I've got a huge bruise on my upper palm (makes me look like that creature from Pan's Labyrinth with eyes on his hands), and a bruise mysteriously on my inner wrist. Then my blister (from a frisbee) is finally starting to heal back to the color of my skin on my pinkie. I think the bruising though is from not getting enough iron in my diet. I only eat twice a day at the DC and when I do I average around 6 plates to fill up my stomach for 12 hours at a time. I think I need to start eating more salads or something like that to stop brusing.

Well tonight I plan on going bowling with Liam, then play raquetball with Liam, Jake, and Victor. That will be fun. I also plan on doing all of this weeks homework tonight because I havn't even started any homework yet. My dad is coming up to visit tomarrow and he is bringing my real bike. Yay!