Lockdown and sport: should you avoid fats in your diet?

During this lockdown period, some people find it hard to keep to a balanced diet. The temptation to snack to kill time is strong, and we comfort ourselves over a good meal… It’s not easy to resist! Yet even though the next racing season is distant, uncertain and still a matter of guesswork, it is essential, with a return to racing in mind, to regulate your nutritional intake. In a normal competitive season, obsessed with finding his or her racing weight, the athlete tends in particular to cut lipids out of the daily diet. A mistake! Certain animal and plant fats are essential for performance. Here is what you need to know, and a few things to enjoy.

By Pierre-Maxime BRANCHE. Photos: Pixabay

When it comes to fats, it is customary to talk about good and bad fats. In terms of terminology, it would be more accurate to distinguish between the fats known as essential for the body and those that are not. Lipids are made up of fatty acids, themselves divided into several families: on the one hand saturated fatty acids, on the other monounsaturated fatty acids, and finally polyunsaturated fatty acids. Among the latter, we distinguish omega-3s and omega-6s. These two fatty acids are called “essential” because our bodies cannot synthesize them. They must therefore be supplied by our daily diet. The others (saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids) are not considered essential and should therefore be limited or even avoided.

Long live oils!

Omega-6s are easy to find in everyday foods. They can be consumed in vegetable oils such as sunflower, grapeseed or corn oil, and in another form in meat, offal and eggs. Omega-3s, which have anti-inflammatory properties, are found mainly in other vegetable oils such as rapeseed, walnut or soybean oil, and in so-called “oily” or “blue” fish such as salmon, mackerel, sardines, anchovies, herring and salmon trout. These oily fish provide another polyunsaturated fatty acid, called DHA, which has a major influence on brain and visual function.

As for saturated fatty acids, even though we have seen that there are no “bad” fats as such, it is nevertheless important not to consume them in excess, as they promote cardiovascular disease. These saturated fatty acids are found in meat, full-fat dairy products, cheese, cured meats, butter and sour cream, so essentially in animal fats, but also in coconut and palm oils (pastries, baked goods and industrial biscuits).

Fats… every day

In a sports diet, essential fats must be eaten every day, whatever the season. These intakes are linked to goals of health on the one hand, performance on the other, and finally the search for optimal weight. As athletes are often looking for their racing weight, they have to control these intakes in terms of both quality and quantity, which often takes them outside the recommendations given to the general population. Whereas around 20 years ago intakes of 30-35% of the daily diet were advised, since the 2010s the recommendations have raised this percentage to 35-40%, as researchers realized that the need for polyunsaturated fatty acids was not being met. These recommendations nevertheless have certain limits, in that they do not suit every population, and athletes in particular. For athletes, and more especially in weight-category disciplines such as cycling and triathlon, it is rather advisable to limit lipids to between 20 and 30% of the daily diet. In practical terms, and given the essential needs for omega-3 and DHA, this can correspond to two tablespoons of rapeseed or walnut oil a day and two to three portions of oily fish a week.