Answers to Your Questions About Sports and Nutrition
Q: What kind of diet should I follow to make me a better athlete? A: Diet can affect athletic performance as well as your growth and development. You are never too young to start developing and practicing good eating habits. We recommend that you follow the U.S.D.A.'s Food Guide Pyramid. In general, you should:
Your body's preferred source of energy comes from carbohydrates. You should be getting 50-55% of your total calories from eating carbohydrate foods. And most of these calories should come from complex carbohydrates. The protein in your diet should come from low-fat animal sources and dairy products and from a variety of plant foods. Good food choices for protein include: poultry, low-fat dairy products, fish, shellfish, eggs and peanut butter. Finally, you should get no more than 30% of your calories from fatty foods. Q: What is carbohydrate loading? Should I be doing this before I compete? A: Your body breaks down the carbohydrates you eat and stores them in your liver and muscles as something called glycogen. During physical activity, this is the first thing your body turns to for energy. Carbohydrate loading is a way of building up the glycogen stored in your body. It's done by changing exercise and eating habits the week before an athletic competition. It is only useful if you'll be exercising for more than 60-90 minutes and need more glycogen than your body normally stores. The way athletes carbohydrate load is to train hard for the first six days before an event, and eat mostly fat and protein. The last three or four days before the competition, the athlete switches to eating mostly carbohydrates and trains very little. Carbohydrate loading is not a good idea for young athletes, however, since their bodies have not finished growing and they need to maintain a balanced diet. Q: Should I be eating more protein while I'm training or competing? A: No. Eating more than the recommended amount of protein will not make you stronger or faster. In fact, if you eat more protein than your body needs, this extra protein will be stored as fat and could actually hurt your athletic performance. Contrary to what many people think, eating more protein does not make muscles any bigger. 
If you're a male, your muscles will not grow larger unless you've reached the stage of adolescence where your body is producing androgen, the male hormone. Even then, you can only build muscle by increasing the amount of "work" your muscles do. This holds for females, too. Without the extra androgen circulating in their blood, they won't get the larger muscles males have. But making their muscles work harder and eating the right foods will help strengthen them. Q: I'm a little overweight. Should I be dieting in order to do better at my sport? A: Generally, no. If you're concerned about your weight, talk to your coach, physician or a registered dietitian. They can help you determine what your appropriate weight range should be. The best way to lose weight is to exercise more often and to eat low calorie, high carbohydrate foods instead of high calorie, high-fat foods. Don't lose weight faster than 1/2 pound a week. And stop this weight loss several weeks before a competitive event. If you haven't reached your adolescent growth spurt yet, you may think you are overweight, but your body actually is getting ready for this period of rapid growth. It is storing the extra fat it will need. Q: Do boys and girls have different food needs? A: Growing athletes need to eat about 2,200 calories a day, perhaps more depending upon your sport and how frequently you are involved in it. Of course, this will vary if you are a 95-pound female gymnast or a 195-pound fullback! Between ages 7-10, girls and boys both usually consume about 1,600-2,400 calories a day. When girls start their growth spurts, around ages 10-12, they should add about 200 calories daily. Boys, who start their growth spurts two years later, add 500 calories a day. Your body size, how active you are and how fast you "burn" calories is what determines how many calories you need. Girls and boys, especially those who are athletes, always should have a balanced diet. But in general, during and after puberty, boys, due to their larger size and muscles, need more protein and calories than girls. Girls by this age, however, need more iron in their diet. 
Q: There are so many sports nutrition products out there. Should I be using any sports drinks, vitamin supplements, amino acid supplements, energy bars or salt pills? A: With athletes looking for "the competitive edge," sports drink manufacturers have found a willing public! However, most of the drinks cannot make up for poor eating habits. Sports drinks are okay if they get you to drink enough fluids before, after and during exercise, but cold water is still the best (and cheapest!) fluid to drink. Your body's vitamin and mineral needs can easily be met by eating the foods and servings found in the Food Guide Pyramid. Taking vitamin supplements won't help your athletic performance; getting too much of certain vitamins can actually harm you in some cases. Amino acid and other protein supplements are not recommended for young athletes. Most supplements have no more protein than a serving of meat or a glass of milk. They can be an expensive way to give your body extra protein, which it cannot use if you are already eating a balanced diet. Extra protein is stored as fat in your body. Energy bars and sports drinks that contain carbohydrate, protein and some fat are fine for young athletes in order to help meet calorie and protein needs. The bars are convenient ways to get quick energy before or during exercise. But these same needs can easily be met by eating right. Energy bars also are an expensive way to get additional calories - some cost up to $2 a bar. Never take salt pills. They can cause your body to become dehydrated and may irritate the lining of your stomach. Q: How much fluid should I be drinking before and during exercise?A: When your body gets hot, you sweat and need to replace this lost fluid. The best way to do this is to drink water during training and competing. Diluted fruit juice and sports drinks that contain between 6-8% carbohydrate are okay. Don't drink caffeinated or carbonated drinks during exercise. Before exercising, drink 10-14 ounces of water 1-2 hours before your activity. Then drink another 10 ounces of fluid 10-15 minutes before you begin. While you are exercising, drink an additional 3-4 ounces of cold water every 10-15 minutes. (Cold water gets absorbed more quickly.) Q.What kind of a meal should I have before competing? A. There are two kinds of meals before athletic events. The "pre-event" meal keeps you from getting hungry when you're competing, and provides additional energy. The regular meals are eaten up to 2-4 hours before the event. Don't eat less than one hour before competition or practice.
Try to avoid taking a candy bar or soda before exercising. You'll get a quick energy boost but it won't last.  Complex carbohydrates are starches like whole grains, corn, peas, lentils and beans, leafy green vegetables, potatoes and onions. Simple carbohydrates are in fruits and sugars. They are called "simple" because they are easy to digest. Just like it takes you longer to figure out a complicated algebra calculation than to simply add 2 + 2, it takes your body longer to digest the sugar from a complex carbohydrate. That means you have more energy in your body for a longer time. (And you can do more of those algebra problems or not get tired running races!)  Return to top of page Home | Contents | Search | Send Mail | Credits
|
