Are these foods keeping you from performing and feeling great?
07/16/11 Filed in: Nutrition
Food can either fuel you up or drag you down. The wrong foods make you feel tired, depressed, mentally weak and rob you of the performance you are trying so hard to increase. What good is spending hundreds of hours in the weight room if that pizza dinner is adding extra inflammation that leads to a weak ACL?
Think outside the gym!
Many athletes have eliminated one or all of these foods and watched their performance break through to new levels.
There are three groups of foods that you should take a look at and try eliminating from your diet to see if they are causing metabolic friction and keeping you from performing and feeling great.
Summer is a great time to experiment and tweak your diet. I don’t recommend making changes during your season unless, you are sick or injured and under supervision of a health care specialist.
OK. Here are the usual suspects.
Sugar - It seems like this one is a no brainer, but many college athletes succumb to the quick burst of energy provided by sugar and fail to account for the long term degradation of their performance. Sugar causes inflammation in the body and sets up your metabolism to burn only sugar. A sugar based metabolism requires constant feeding and sets you up for manic/depressive type energy swings.
Take Action - Skip soda, gatorade, candy, ice cream and sweet cereals for starters. Then start limiting desert to a special treat once a week. Then when you have got control of your sugar, ban it from your diet except for very special occasions. You’ll be surprised how little you miss it once you kick the addiction.
Dairy - milk and milk products have two problems. First is the most obvious, some athletes have some degree of intolerance. Food intolerances cause inflammation which robs your body of recovery. If you cannot recover from workouts, you cannot get stronger, faster or better. The second issue is too much milk and cheese can imbalance the calcium/magnesium balance in your body. This can also cause performance robbing inflammation and if it gets bad enough, muscle cramps and stress fractures.
Take Action - Remove all dairy from your diet for two weeks. See how you feel. If you don’t notice any improvement in your body, mind or spirit, slowly begin re-introducing milk into your diet.
Extra Credit - Raw milk from grass fed cows is a super food. Many people who are dairy intolerant are actually just intolerant of dairy processing. It’s amazing what they do to a glass of milk before you drink it. Many dairy intolerant athletes find they do just fine with the real stuff! I drink raw milk from our cows and love it! See if you can track down a source of raw milk at your local farmer’s market.
Grains - by now you know about gluten intolerance, but there are other problems with grains that can fly under the radar. You may not be officially allergic to gluten, but grains might be blocking absorption of nutrients critical to peak performance.
Take Action - See if grains are holding you back. Eliminate grains from your diet for two weeks. That means bread, pasta, pizza, wraps, cereal, oatmeal. Stick with fruits, veggies, meats and eggs.
For more information check paleo for athletes.
Think outside the gym!
Many athletes have eliminated one or all of these foods and watched their performance break through to new levels.
There are three groups of foods that you should take a look at and try eliminating from your diet to see if they are causing metabolic friction and keeping you from performing and feeling great.
Summer is a great time to experiment and tweak your diet. I don’t recommend making changes during your season unless, you are sick or injured and under supervision of a health care specialist.
OK. Here are the usual suspects.
Sugar - It seems like this one is a no brainer, but many college athletes succumb to the quick burst of energy provided by sugar and fail to account for the long term degradation of their performance. Sugar causes inflammation in the body and sets up your metabolism to burn only sugar. A sugar based metabolism requires constant feeding and sets you up for manic/depressive type energy swings.
Take Action - Skip soda, gatorade, candy, ice cream and sweet cereals for starters. Then start limiting desert to a special treat once a week. Then when you have got control of your sugar, ban it from your diet except for very special occasions. You’ll be surprised how little you miss it once you kick the addiction.
Dairy - milk and milk products have two problems. First is the most obvious, some athletes have some degree of intolerance. Food intolerances cause inflammation which robs your body of recovery. If you cannot recover from workouts, you cannot get stronger, faster or better. The second issue is too much milk and cheese can imbalance the calcium/magnesium balance in your body. This can also cause performance robbing inflammation and if it gets bad enough, muscle cramps and stress fractures.
Take Action - Remove all dairy from your diet for two weeks. See how you feel. If you don’t notice any improvement in your body, mind or spirit, slowly begin re-introducing milk into your diet.
Extra Credit - Raw milk from grass fed cows is a super food. Many people who are dairy intolerant are actually just intolerant of dairy processing. It’s amazing what they do to a glass of milk before you drink it. Many dairy intolerant athletes find they do just fine with the real stuff! I drink raw milk from our cows and love it! See if you can track down a source of raw milk at your local farmer’s market.
Grains - by now you know about gluten intolerance, but there are other problems with grains that can fly under the radar. You may not be officially allergic to gluten, but grains might be blocking absorption of nutrients critical to peak performance.
Take Action - See if grains are holding you back. Eliminate grains from your diet for two weeks. That means bread, pasta, pizza, wraps, cereal, oatmeal. Stick with fruits, veggies, meats and eggs.
For more information check paleo for athletes.
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