Matt Fitzgerald’s “Racing Weight” promises to help endurance athletes “get lean for peak performance.” Divided into three parts, the book summarizes the importance of being lean, five steps to getting lean, and guidelines on maintaining leanness. All in the name of—you guessed it—peak performance.

The book is structured around a five-step process. First, Fitzgerald outlines how to improve diet quality using a scoring system he devised to rate food. Step two is learning to balance your energy sources by forgetting about any “magic ratio” you may have happened upon that promises to help you lose weight and stay trim. Step three covers timing your nutrition to consider the pros and cons of how certain foods will effect your training and/or recovery, and step four teaches you to manage your appetite in a way that keeps you feeling sated, rather than starving. The final step is learning to train right, taking a closer look at the ongoing debate surrounding the TRUE fat-burning exercise zone and what it means for endurance athletes to train at various intensity levels. 

Sorry, Double Stuff Oreos, but you don’t make the cut.

Following a precise nutritional plan is not my forté as an athlete, but I appreciate the reasons why I should be more mindful of what I’m putting into my mouth and how it effects my training. Peppered with loads of helpful tables, the book gave me get a fairly good idea of what my optimal performance weight should be by guiding me through a series of calculations using current body weight and body fat percentage. Of particular interest were the recommendations for what these measurements should be for men and women across a variety of endurance sports. (Note to self: ditch triathlon and stick to swimming—where a woman’s body fat percentage can be about 5 percent higher than in running and cycling!).

Doing these calculations to determine my unique “numbers” brought me back to those agonizing high school math exams, but Fitzgerald does a nice job of walking the reader through each step. Still, my recommendation is to make friends with a personal trainer long enough to recruit their help in taking measurements and mak sense of some of the calculations.

I felt comfortable again when the book moved back to a language I understand: food. In a section on measuring diet quality, I found myself intrigued by tables and charts that help you to “score” food based on how good it is for the body. I started to picture the foods I enjoy waiting in line to gain access to my plate. There I was, standing guard with my hand firmly clasped on the velvet rope: “Is this food worthy of entering my diet?” I asked myself while holding eye contact with the fresh asparagus (it was later granted VIP access), or would I have to politely turn it down and suggest the table down the road? (Sorry, Double Stuff Oreos, but you don’t make the cut.)

One of the strongest things about “Racing Weight” is its breakdown of how endurance athletes should change their eating in the off-season. I know I shouldn’t continue eating like a linebacker when my seven-hour training rides in the summer dwindle down to a spin class in the winter, but old habits (and appetites) die hard. I love food, but I love having a fit body. For me, and many triathletes I know, there’s an overlap period that happens somewhere around your last race and the first few weeks of  “off season” where you let yourself indulge in that high-calorie meal that would be fine for “athlete” you, but marks the arrival of Tubby McTubberson “off-season” you. Fitzgerald has a calculation to help determine just how much we need to modify our diets in the off-season to avoid gaining weight.

Finally, if you learn by example, the book includes a nice section that features the diets of many professional triathletes, based on some of the workouts they do on a typical training day. This is a nice feature if you (like me) grow cross-eyed after having to do too many calculations to determine what your precise food intake should be, or if you can’t bring yourself to uber-evaluate food in order to get that “peak performance” body.

Overall, I liked this book, and I wanted to believe I would make big improvements in my diet after reading it. My love of dark chocolate and chardonnay precludes me, however, from making any drastic changes—race weight be damned! I believe in moderation and portion control above all else, but appreciate Fitzgerald’s book for its specific focus on endurance athletes and their unique dietary needs. If you do nothing else but read the sidebars and pull quotes woven into each chapter, you’ll come away with a better idea of how you should eat.

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Lisa Barnes Dolbear is a USAT Level 1 coach and an Ironman athlete who lives and trains in upstate New York. She runs a popular “Dare to Tri” program at her local gym to help introduce new people to the sport, and strives to help athletes balance daily life with their passion for multisport. Follow her blog on mental training, Tri Mojo.