These are our 12 golden rules for you to develop your own eating model when you are already an advanced athlete and want to excel in competition:
- If you eat more than 2.000 calories a day, divide them into a minimum of 6 meals: 3 main meals and 3 snacks. For less than 2,000 calories, do it in 5 meals: 3 main and 2 snacks.
- Don’t let more than 4 hours go by without ingesting some protein.
- Within an hour after training, you should eat a meal with protein and carbohydrates.
- Keep your protein intake as high as 3 g per body Kilo – for men who want to gain muscle mass and train exhaustively- and as low as 1.5 g – for women who want to lose body fat and train lightly.
- All vegetable proteins are incomplete in their amino acid profile, so you must combine them to guarantee the necessary supply of essential amino acids.
- Do not take more than 30-35 gr. of protein in one meal.
- You need to take in fat especially mono and polyunsaturated fat. Lowfat diets cause decreased production of sex hormones, malnutrition, and immune deficiencies.
- Watch your carbohydrate intake. Continuous high consumption can lead not only to excess fluid and body fat retention, but it also increases the risk of diabetes.
- Choose your carbs not only by the number of calories but also by their Glycemic Index (their rate of conversion into glucose).
- At specific times you can opt for a ketogenic diet (a diet with hardly any carbs), for instance when preparing for competition.
- Choose your foods based on your blood group. There is evidence that shows that each group has a set of foods that make them perform better and optimize their nutrients.
- Eliminate empty calories. We’re referring to a good number of foods from which you’ll only accumulate calories, but not improve your appearance or performance, such as alcoholic beverages, ice cream, sweets, pre-cooked pizzas, processed meats, breakfast cereals, etc…
Check the full article on the September issue!
