How Diets Affect Athletes
There are athletes all around the world who diet for their sports whether it’s to lose weight or to gain weight. Diets are key to helping one be an even better athletes it just takes a good diet and a committed mindset. The reason why diets are important is because it can affect how one plays as an athlete. As long as one finds something that fits them it will be easy.
Playing and training for sports requires lots of energy but, so if ones diet is not suppling them with the nutrition they need it will have a very negative affect on their performance as a player. According to healthyeating.sfgate.com “Strength training relies primarily on carbohydrates for energy. Your muscles break down their own protein to fuel themselves during intense training. Endurance training consumes both fats and carbohydrates”.
There isn’t just one type a diet one needs to find a diet; that works for them and sometimes one doesn’t need a diet. They can always try to eat better or cut off some foods slowly without getting committed to a diet. Somethings that would be good to stop consuming would be diet soda, sugary cereal, white bread, and pasta. These all cause negative affects because they will make one gain more weight but not with the right way and places also it can cause them to slow down and make working out harder.
If one does a sport that requires a lot of running like cross country and track, their diet should focus on getting around 60-65% of their calories from carbohydrates. This is because they burn a lot of calories. one should avoid eating a lot of high fat foods. But don’t avoid all fat because they aren’t all bad. Good fats include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Bad fats are Bad ones include industrial-made trans fats. And Saturated fats are just both.
If one plays a sport like football their diet isn’t going to be like every other football player because there is a lot of different things they can do in football. But ones diet should include a good amount of carbohydrates to give them energy, also protein is key to building muscle and can repair tissue damage to the muscle. Last but definitely not least one needs to drink lots of water drinking lots of water is vital to having a good diet.
If one is a swimmer which is a very involved sports it tends to burn lots of calories. instead of eats only a few large meals they should eats about 7 small ones because eating too much can leave you feeling tired. A swimmer’s diet should have a lot of healthy and organic foods because of how much they work out on the daily and they should be getting about 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day. One very important thing is to have a good source of protein so if they are a vegetarian swimmer, they will have to find healthy foods that has a good amount of protein to replace the meat in their diet.
A sport like basketball would require “A balanced diet consists of approximately 60 percent carbohydrates, 20 percent fat and 20 percent protein.” -Active.com. But that’s not the only thing one wants to do, they also should drink lots of water and keep themselves hydrated because even if one doesn’t play a sport, water is important. Just like swimmer a basketball player should stick to having multiple small meals instead of a few big meals. So, if they are taking in about 3500 calories a day and making sure one eats healthy.
