Nutrition In Sports Articles & Resources

Low fat diets require that you cut out fat, making people fear all fat believing that any fat is bad, and causing the body to crave fat laden foods.

Why is the diet industry going to set you up for failure and not tell you that you have a 98 percent chance that you will come crawling back to them yet once again. To get your money. It’s been estimated that $46 billion was spent on diet products and programs last year alone. The average diet plan cost over $80 dollars each week. If 98 percent didn’t fail the diet industry wouldn’t be needed any longer. Nobody would be overweight and everybody would know what would work to lose weight.

Sports Nutrition: the Lifestyle that is not a Diet

Have you seen an infomercial that has ever told you to listen to your body, eat what it needs and not force your body into craving foods that would cause fat storage because your starving it of essential nutrients? Probably not, because most information on sports nutrition is available for free and it’s something that you do for a lifetime, not a diet you go on for a certain period of time then regain weight and then again hand over your wallet once more to somebody with the latest promise that won’t say that 98 percent will be back again within five years.

Your body needs carbohydrates, your body does need fat. The key to losing weight is to eat a balanced diet and not to poison your body with the junk food that is abundant in today’s world. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, complex carbohydrates, healthy fats and lean meats are the staple of sports nutrition. Fueling your body to be able to perform what you require of it during the day is what will help you lose weight.

Fueling Your Body Means Eat

Yes you can eat food and lose weight. Healthy choices and knowing how many calories that your body requires to perform at optimal efficiency will keep cravings for junk food away. The brain alone requires 380 calories per day for the average 150 pound man just to be able to lay in bed all day, the liver requires over 500 calories per day. You have many other organs that also require a certain amount of calories each day. To determine how many calories you need per day just for your resting metabolic rate take the amount you weigh in pounds and multiply that by 10. So if you weigh 160 pounds that is 1600 calories required for your body just to perform basic functions like pump blood. Just to be sedentary you need to add 25% of 1600 to your daily requirements, so that would make it 2000 calories per day just to sit and watch tv, get up and walk to the bathroom and do other basic things without doing anything that would require work The more activity you do the more calories your body requires. The key is not to give your body these calories in the form of candy bars, potato chip, soda etc. Feeding your body with foods that are lower than 30% in fat will amaze you how much food can make up 2000 calories.

Eating more often:

Instead of eating just breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Have the basic 3 meals per day with a healthy snack between them. This will prevent mid-morning and mid-afternoon raids on the junk food machine and help keep your energy up.

For more in depth information on a Sports Nutrition Lifestyle the following books can provide a wealth of information:

Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook
Avery's Sports Nutrition Almanac
Power Eating by Susan M. Kleiner

Any of these books will give you the information you need to stop supporting the diet industry and shelling over your money once again for a likelihood of 98% chance of failure. Enjoy food and don’t let anybody make you afraid of it, food is there for our bodies, it’s just the junk food that is bad and there are plenty of healthy alternatives out there that will satisfy any craving.