Ironman
How i fuel: Braden Currie
When you do as many miles as Ironman Braden Currie does, you need to fuel – and refuel – your body with healthy whole-foods as well as sugar and caffeine for added firepower
1 min
What does Braden Currie eat before a big race?
When you do as many miles as Ironman Braden Currie does, you need to fuel – and refuel – your body with healthy whole-foods as well as sugar and caffeine for added firepower
Given your busy training schedule and the distances you race what part does nutrition play?
Everything is a balance, everything in moderation. I also drink a lot of Red Bull. That’s how I survive. It's got all my vitamins, my daily doses [he smiles].
Fueling is the coolest thing about what we do. We’re trying to get the absolute most out of our bodies, it's so important to perform, to be able to train every day competitively, and not get sick.
For me, good food is the key to performance. I believe everything should be balanced and eating healthy and eating whole-foods is key to being able to have consistency and be healthy in training.
Braden says good food is the key to performance
© Scott Sinton
Take us through your daily menu.
A staple day for me is up in the morning at 5:30am, I’ll have a smoothie – bananas, cacao, pea protein powder, coconut cream, almond milk, coconut butter. Then coffee, caffeine tends to help you keep going.
Lunch will normally be a hearty meal.
I use sugars and caffeine when I need to fuel for key sessions. Like this afternoon, I'm going to be tired when I show up for the swimming pool, and those sessions need to be fueled well, so that’s where Red Bull and those caffeine and sugars come into it.
Dinner is also pretty standard whole food, meat, and vegetables. We’re very lucky to live in a country where good food is pretty much everywhere we go. You can walk into most cafes and get good, whole foods.
Have you tried any specialist approaches in terms of nutrition?
I have tried diets. I tried LCHF [low-carb, high fat]. I have been through phases trying to minimise my calorie intake and make the body work that little bit harder to fuel itself and lose weight.
The biggest thing I'm learning now though is that the body pretty much does what it wants to do.
It is incredibly capable of finding energy in different places, if you don't give it the proper energy.
I had an Ironman championship, and I was trying to lose weight for it and I'd do things like take in 1,000 calories a day and I'd be burning close to 8,000. Huge amounts of energy going out, long training, and it resulted in me having a really low bone density after four years.
I wasn't losing the weight I wanted to, because my body was finding its own place to take the energy from. It's saying, ‘I need my muscles, my heart, my lungs, but I don't need the bone density, so let’s start taking the calcium out of the bones’.
I can try and fast and try eat very little but with the amount of exercise I do the body will find different areas to get energy from. So, it's key for me to fuel it as much as I can – and over-fuel it.
Over-fuelling on big training days is key for Braden
© Scott Sinton
Aren’t the mind and body phenomenal things?
They are phenomenal. It seems like simple logistics, you train hard, you eat very little, you will lose this bit of excess fat, but the body will say no, this is my last reserve. And before I get rid of that, I'll take the bone density or the organs.