Maintaining a proper diet is just as equally important as training or practicing for an athlete. First of all, energy is needed in order to sustain the training. Second, eating the wrong food is tantamount to ruining all the hard work on your practice. Why is that so? Because the wrong food could be just make it harder for your body to store or grab energy, to burn and to digest. This may happen easily if the athlete in training is not trained enough, especially since there is an urge to have snacks instead of a healthy meal after practice (probably due to a decreased appetite or the excuse to reward themselves with a snack instead). With the wrong food, there may be impaired concentration, feeling of being bloated, limited or poor energy.
Asides eating every 3 to 4 hours to maintain energy, a healthy and balanced dinner can add to recovery and nutrition. However, there is an increased amount in the calories and carbohydrates compared to other people and their dinner. There should always be 1-2 servings from each of the food groups: Starches/grains, meat, fruits and vegetables and milk. For starches, one can consider bread, pasta, tortilla, bagel, bun or rice. For the meat portion, a wide variety of meatballs, chicken, Canadian bacon, chicken or beef burger is offered. In fruits and vegetables, any from tomatoes to bananas, pineapples, lettuce and even steamed vegetables is advised. For milk, you can either stick to the old school way of drinking milk or have cheese here and there. To top it all off, there should always be plenty of water for the athlete’s hydration. 16 to 24 ounces of fluid per hour is enough to last an hour of practicing. You can also drink energy drinks which can give you carbohydrates.
If you want to get down to more specific details, the average 150 pound athlete has 1000 to 2000 calories of stored carbs in their body, nothing compared to 80,000 to 120,000 calories of stored fat. Despite a big amount of fat in you, your body needs this in order for your muscles to have fuel. So don’t try a fat free diet. As tempting as it may sound and convince you to think you’re healthier without fat, you are not. Fat is an important source for your body to burn fuel. However, too much fat has its consequences as well. So, the balanced way for an athlete is to intake about 0.5 gram of fat per pound that you weigh per day. But think about the type of fat you take in. It’s good to store on carbohydrate fat such as pasta and bread but not on butter and cheese. Another is that there should be 2 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight a day, unless you are a hardcore athlete in training which means you need four to five grams of carbos a day. In this way, you are able to gain back the amount of energy you burned, and still give you energy to store.
It’s not just the physical training that matters, but what you take in to your body that will determine how well your training will go. Athletes should remember to eat healthy and not go on crash diets or binge eats after their training. Otherwise, all your hard earned effort will go to waste. Proper nutrition can aid you in the long run and keep your body fit and firm, for you to be at the top of your game.
