Racing Weight: How to Get Lean for Peak Performance (The Racing Weight Series)

I was blown away by this book. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about nutrition, but I found a whole lot of useful information here about things to tweak in my eating patterns to improve my sports performance and to get leaner. Before I go into the details let me pose a few questions for you: 1)Do you think the lowest weight you can achieve should be your target weight to maximize racing performance? 2)Do you agree with low-carb diets being the best way to lose weight and keep it off? 3)In your opinion, is calorie-counting essential when trying to achieve your optimal race weight? 4)Do you think that the timing during the day of your intake of different food sources (protein, fats, carbs) has no impact on weight loss? If the answer to most of these questions is "No", this is the books for you. Actually, even if you answer "Yes" to the questions, you may be swayed to change your opinion after reading Fitzgerald's clear and insightful explanations. It all starts with finding a target for racing weight, and this is not based on height or BMI, it is based on % of body fat. You will have to estimate this in some shape or form, the easiest one being a scale that provides this measurement. The target is an approximation, because a low body fat per se is not beneficial unless it's associated with better sports performances. Therefore, during this process you will monitor your performance at different weights / body fat % combinations to determine what your optimal situations is. One of the main aspects I liked about the book is the philosophy about balanced nutrition. I am one of those people that is completely against low-carb diets, since when I have tried this is in the past, I have felt awful. The author presents us with a "scoring system" for our eating during the day in which healthy foods provide you with a positive score but these points diminish as you eat more servings during the day. Unhealthy foods have a negative score, and you goal is to score as high as possible within reason. Since I was eating healthy, I did not drastically change my eating habits, however, one of the elements that are important is timing of nutrition, with more carbs early in the day and relatively more protein later. Also, the author makes you aware of some foods that hide sugar in them and that should be avoided when possible. These simple changes have made me leaner than I ever was. Like I mentioned before, the book does not focus on counting calories (unless you are in the off season and not training much and need to jump start your weight loss), but there are some recommendations about how to manage hunger. This does not mean that you are severely going to limit your food intake, but instead that you should focus on eating the right portions and combinations of nutrients to deliver your needs without overeating. There is a section about strength training and high intensity training which were the portions of the book that I did not pay that much attention to. I already have a training plan that works and I do not want to mess with that at this point. This may be helpful to others though, so just be aware that it's there too. Overall, this is a truly excellent book, with a lot of information and explanations on why the author recommends the course of action he presents to us. It is so good in fact that I have decided to read pretty much any other book he has written, hopefully with the same results. I recommend this book to all endurance athletes without reservations. As I mention that, I should point out that there is even a section dealing with athletes that are vegetarian and with those that have gluten intolerance.

I have biked for many years and have always seen (as all bikers do) my performance affected significantly by weight. At the same time, however, I often felt that I wasn't getting the nutrition I needed to perform well. I used My Fitness Pal for close to a year but found that it was just too much hassle so I eventually stopped and have been looking for an alternative. This book mostly provides what I have been looking for. Is is very simple and effective at guiding me in my nutrition. I would compare it to a customized food pyramid. You track "common sense portions" of the different food groups rather than specific foods. This makes it very simple but also effective at guiding me to make balanced food choices. As soon as I started using this, I noticed big holes in my nutrition that were quite obvious and easy to fix. Matt spends a lot of effort teaching nutrition principles that can guide you in managing your nutrition rather than laying out the specifics. In fact, the lack of specifics can become a little frustrating for me. For example, he is a little light on information about what foods are included in each group. This can be a little frustrating, but at the same time, it has encouraged me to make simple, obvious and natural food choices because I know how to score them. This may be his point but I do feel he could at least provide a bigger list of common foods that fit in each category. Matt also spends time educating how food timing, pre and post exercise nutrition and other nutrition principles that are useful in making effective choices. At the end of the day, his approach is to teach principles so you can make correct choices regardless of your particular situation. Results: In the first few weeks I have found my body fat to have dropped noticeably and my energy has been good. I am not hungry and do not feel like I am "dieting". I do a much better job of getting good nutrition after my rides. It has been much easier to eliminate the empty calories from my nutrition because of all of the complete nutrients I am getting. I would recommend this for everyone regardless if they are trying to lose weight, gain weight or just be healthy. It contains fundamental good principles organized in a way that makes it easy to manage nutrition and makes it easy to make good choices.

Some background on my point of view for this review. I'm in my 40's and am a lifetime runner who's gone in and out of competitive modes over the years. I'm back in that mode now and have finally admitted to myself that nutrition matters, and I should probably do something about it - not only for racing but for general healthy living. A statement early on in the book immediately grabbed my attention, and that is that the book is not a diet book for the sole purpose of losing weight. It's a book about how to adjust your eating habits to get to your ideal racing weight for the purpose of maximizing your performance. A very important distinction to me. There were two main ideas I found very useful about the book. The first was in how the author presents a method for generally assessing the quality of your diet. The second was that he provides guidelines on how much of what category of food to eat based on the unique needs of endurance athletes. The best part is that he doesn't get too specific (Day 1, Meal 1: eat this, etc.), but allows you to choose whatever you want as long as you're adhering to the guidelines. After reading the book, I went through my kitchen and catalogued the nutritional values of everything I had been eating. I compared the results with what I should be eating, and then was able to make some adjustments to get things in the proper balance. It was a process that took the better part of a weekend day, but very informative and productive in the end. I'm less than a month into the changes, but I have dropped a few pounds, am completing my workouts at a higher level, and recovering well between workouts. If you recognize the importance of proper nutrition for race performance and are willing to make a change in your eating habits, I highly recommend this book.

I'm a 46 yo female cyclist, 5 ft 3 and had 15 lbs to shed. I wanted to get back into amateur bike racing after 3 years off due to job changes and a series of knee injuries. I kept coming back to this book because of the positive reviews. I'm glad I did! Excellent program and I have already recommended to several of my biking friends. After 4 weeks on the program I have dropped 10 pounds and feel MUCH stronger on the bike. I've also lost most of my desire for sweets and other junk food - the eating plan the author lays out is very satisfying and easy to follow (besides being super-healthy). It turned out I was seriously undercutting my calorie and carb needs as a lot of women do - I was training 10 hours a week on the bike and eating 1300 calories/day (with few carbs) and not losing weight. And I was getting seriously tired and frustrated. I decided to follow the Racing Weight plan (and the high-volume cyclist training plan in the Quick Start guide) since nothing else seemed to be working. I cleaned up my eating, added in another ~600 cal a day (mostly high quality carbs), and trained a little differently (added HIIT but kept hours on the bike the same). Wow, what a difference and after only 4 weeks! I'm going to follow the plan through week 6 (at least) and possibly week 8 to see where that takes my weight. As the author states in the book, my best racing weight may actually be a bit lower than what I had thought. My only wish - that the author would create additional training plans for cyclists as he has for runners. His Quick Start plan has worked so well that I'd like to continue using one of his plans after my 8 week weight loss cycle!

I want to preface my review by stating that I have extensive background in exercise science, nutrition and human performance. There is very little from a nutrition or performance standpoint that I am not already familiar with as I keep up with most peer reviewed academic journals. Having said that, I learned a great deal from Mr Fitzgerald's book. Perhaps more importantly, I was able to put this knowledge into practice. I cannot say enough good things about the brilliance that is this book. If you are serious about honing your performance, you should buy this book. About me: I am a serious runner in my mid 30's who averages about 100 miles per week. I mostly stick to 5k's and 10k's, but did my first marathon last year and came in at 2:59. I was a state runner at high school, but never quite fast enough to make the college grade. My 800m repeats are fast as are my miles, but I knew that in order to make serious PR gains I needed to drop weight in a healthy way. This book has been by blueprint for getting there. The book has proved to be so comprehensive, well-researched and insightful. It's principles are beautifully and artfully laid out. For the past 4 months I've been following closely the dietary quality score approach and managing my hunger and I've gone from 165 lbs to 155 (I hit my goal weight a few days ago!) The last 5 lbs were stubbornly difficult to shed, but I got there. This spring I'm going to see how my new racing weight will allow me perform at my 2nd marathon. Stay tuned! The Dietary Quality Score is such a holistic, refreshing approach to eating. I found it so outstanding that I created a family DQS chart for our little boy with magnets on the refrigerator. We challenge him to get as high of a score as possible every day. Thanks Mr Fitzgerald for your comprehensive work!

Lots of valuable, scientific insight to obtaining a healthy race weight with performance in mind. The only downside is the author spent just a little too much time trying to convince you with the research as to why a particular method, process or approach works. I found myself saying, "OK. I believe you, now get to the point and the meat of the matter." Outside of that small nuisance, it is a great book.

Great read!

I found this book very useful. As a lifetime member of Weight Watchers who started running in the last three years, the book reemphasizes that nutrition plans have to become a way of life. I'm just beginning to try the Diet Quality Score in addition to my traditional points that I track via Weight Watchers. The advice to eat breakfast like a King, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper, sticks out and was an easy way to remember when we should eat what. Examples of real food journals from athletes was helpful, and it would have been interesting to go ahead and figure the Diet Quality Score as practice. I will probably get the cookbook and Quick Start Guide, but I'm thinking a good tracking journal would be a nice compliment. While it is an easy read, the challenge is taking this knowledge and making the appropriate behavior changes.