Whether good with ball games or cross country pushing to the finish line, your physical health plays a significant role in your active lifestyle. Your strength, endurance, and skills depend on how disciplined you’re training, your patience, and what you eat. Like any machine, you need fuel to keep your body functioning effectively.
Since you’re what you eat, you should take care of yourself and take the right amount of calories, vitamins, and energy-providing foods. As an athlete, your diet is different from people who aren’t striving to maintain a healthy diet and can eat anything anytime. That’s why you need to eat from healthy food groups.
However, you may need to eat more or less on specific foods to nourish your body depending on various factors. Some factors affect an athlete’s consumption of food, and they include
- Amount of vigorous training
- Type of sport
- Time spent in training
- Age, weight, and height of an athlete
If you’re an endurance athlete, stick here and learn more on what your body needs for optimal athletic performance.
Nutritional Tips Best for Endurance Athletes
Here are nutritional tips you should follow to live healthy with excellent athlete performance
You Must Eat to Fuel your Training
You must know the right food to fuel your body before training; it’s crucial. Most athletes can’t keep up, and they often deplete their glycogen stores before they finish their training. If you don’t balance your diet, you can quickly drain your glycogen leading to poor fitness performance or fatigue.
Watch what you consume before training since it greatly affects how well and how long you perform and maintain your energy. Before your workout, ensure you consume a carbohydrate-rich meal. The carbohydrates will help your body’s sugar levels stabilize before your exercise. It’s advisable to take 0.5 grams of carbohydrates for every pound of your weight.
Understand the Nutritional Demands of your Body when Exercising
Every endurance athlete must be cautious about how their body depletes glycogen stores during prolonged activities. With this, you can fuel your body with the right energy to help it perform well and sustain the exercise.
For example, consuming 0.7g/kg/hr of carbohydrates when exercising has positive performance In endurance benefits. This is the same as 30-60 grams of carbohydrates for an hour of exercise.
Consume Healthy Fats to Promote your Exercise Recovery
Most athletes concentrate on how many carbohydrates and proteins they add to their meals and forget to add healthy fats to their diet. You should know fats play an essential role in your exercise recovery.
Fats are an incredible energy source that helps in maintaining your body weight. If you don’t add enough fats to your meal, you may lose weight and fail to keep the energy levels you badly need for endurance training.
When taking fats, make sure you consume essential fatty acids and fats; they will help absorb fat-soluble vitamins. Here are examples of fatty acids; chia seeds, walnuts, salmon, and flax.
Ensure you Take a Balanced Diet
Most endurance athletes are looking for supplements to support their nutritional needs. But that shouldn’t be the solution to maintaining energy levels and ideal body weight; you need whole foods. If you restrict your diet, you are not eating adequate variety to support your body optimally, so you are going for mineral supplements.
Remember, you need food before adopting any vitamins or mineral supplements. Additionally, minerals from foods are absorbed better than those from supplementation.
Keep your Protein Intake in Check
How important is protein in pre-fuel and post-fuel nutrition for athletes? Protein plays a vital role in several functions of your body; thus, including protein in your physical exercise will help in fitness performance. However, you shouldn’t take large intakes of proteins because it can lead to digestive distress.
Here are proteins guidelines you should follow
- Take ½ to ¾ grams of protein during your training.
- Two hours before your event, consume 10-20 grams of high protein
- During an event or when exercising for a prolonged period of more than four hours, take 5 grams of protein every hour; it will support your performance.
- After your event, consume 10–20 grams of protein; it must replenish your body
Consume Endurance Training Superfoods
Incorporate superfoods in your healthy diet; you can eat them during training, on race day, and after your athletic event to support your athletic performance. The superfoods include foods like chia seeds, avocados, bananas, coconut, nuts, flax, sweet potatoes, and dark leafy vegetables.
They are nutrient-rich and can provide your body with essential vitamins, minerals, and energy which is necessary for an endurance athlete.
Don’t Forget to Hydrate
Just like food is vital in maintaining your health and fitness performance, hydration is equally important. It helps fuel your body during and after training, but lack of proper hydration harms your overall health.
As an endurance athlete, taking more than eight glasses of water daily is advisable because you’re active, and you lose fluid by sweating. That’s why you should take a lot of water to replenish what you lose.
How much you need to take water will depend entirely on how your body needs water. So pay attention to know if your body needs more hydration. If you get symptoms like dizziness, nausea, difficulty in concentration, fatigue, and a change of color of your urine to dark-colored, you need to add your water intake.
You also need beverages rich in carbohydrates and electrolytes during sporting events and competitions. Take it during the exercise instead of before and after to keep your body hydrated and to avoid electrolyte depletion. Adequate hydration ensures you’re at your best performance and feel good.
Wrap Up
Proper nutrition plays a vital role in your athletic performance. So it is advisable to fuel your body with quality food and supplements. Hydration is also vital in keeping your good performance and supporting your endurance. To have the best sports nutrition, ensure you create flexible and workable choices of healthy foods. You can also consult a knowledgeable coach to help you with the process.