 Hello, it's Nick Behringer again here with the DOD Warrior Games and today I want to talk to you about carbohydrates. See carbohydrates is a macronutrient that is kind of like your body's high octane fuel. You can go harder and faster when you run off of carbohydrates which are stored in your muscle as glycogen. And why do you want carbohydrates is because you get more adenosine triphosphate or more of those energy ATPs per liter of oxygen from carbohydrates. So that's why it's kind of like the octane fuel. So what does that mean for you and how you should fuel for your competition? Well, if you're about three to four hours out of your competition, you can have more food. You can have more carbohydrate-rich choices like spaghetti with some sort of tomato sauce or bagels or a sandwich with maybe some light peanut butter or lean meats or some lean cheese such as provolone. So you can have a little more options. Now when we're two to three hours out, we want more carbohydrate. We want to avoid fat and protein, things that are going to slow down digestion. So here, you know, we might have some yogurt with some fruit. So yeah, a little protein in there but not too much. Some oatmeal, some pancakes with limited syrup and limited butter and then some bagels maybe with the light cream cheese. So that's about two to three hours out. And let's say we're one hour out from the competition. We want to keep it really, really simple because we don't want to put a lot of stress on our stomach because we're about to go get that blood flow to our muscles that's going to take away from our stomach. So we want something that's really easy to digest. So think about, you know, one to one and a half cups of some sort of fruit like watermelon would be a really good choice or, you know, you could do some sort of sports energy bar or maybe even a carbohydrate electrolyte beverage to get some of those carbohydrates in. So to get into the competition, this is where we want to keep it simple. So it gets into the bloodstream, you're not worried about digestion. So you take in about 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrates for every hour. And this is if you're in an event that's anywhere from one to two and a half hours, you want to do that so you stay fueled through that event. And if you remember from a hydration talk, that also helps you absorb that fluid. So you kind of get that double benefit of fueling and fluid. So again, 30 to 60 grams per hour, that can be a carbohydrate beverage that can be a combination of gel, shoes, some sort of carbohydrates, simple sports thing that you can get in that's really, really easy to digest. You don't want any really, you know, fatter protein at that point because that's going to slow digestion and hamper your performance. Now, what about after exercise? Well, after exercise, what we want to do is we want to replenish those carbohydrates that we just burn up. But we also want some protein because we've done probably some muscle damage, even running, even running, right? When we think about that, every time you land, that's about six times your body weight in a centric force, that's going to do some damage to those muscles. So we want to repair that. But especially if you're lifting things, same sort of thing. So you also want some protein. You want about 15 to 25 grams. So you want anywhere from 50 to 100 grams of carbohydrates with 15 to 25 grams of protein. So you're getting that glycogenery synthesis and you're up regulating that protein synthesis. So you can repair the tissue and you can recover and be ready for that next training session. What might that look like? A great delicious option that's available is chocolate milk. You kind of have that nice ratio where you're getting some protein, you're getting some carbs. So immediately after a training exercise, you could have that. Now, if you can't have milk or you're lactose intolerant, there's other ways to do it. We could go back to that pasta solution with maybe a little protein source on top of that, some sort of lean meat mixed in there. We eat that, we're getting our carbohydrates, we're getting our protein, we're ready to recover. So your training events are gonna go great. You're getting the most energy out of your training. You're getting the most recovery so you can perform your best when you get to the games.