Sports Nutrition Essay Research Paper I play

Sports Nutrition Essay, Research Paper

I play water-polo. It is a physically demanding sport. Sometimes during games I am exhausted and then there are times in other games when I m energized. I began to wonder why this happens. Could it possibly be because I live on bread. I have always thought what I ate didn t really matter. Could it be what you are is what you eat. I decided to do a little research on nutrition and the endurance athlete.

By far the most popular diet for athletes during the past fifteen years has been the high carbohydrate diet, otherwise known as carbo-load to the athletic community. The foremost authority on athlete nutrition and a big promoter of the high carbohydrate diet is Nancy Clark, a nationally recognized nutritionist and author of The Athletes Kitchen..

The main focus of the high carbohydrate low-fat diet is on calorie consumption. According to these nutritionists, the calories consumed need to be primarily in the form of carbohydrates. They state that the best fuels for your muscles are carbohydrates, either simple sugars (such as the naturally occurring sugars in fruits and juices) or complex carbohydrates (the unrefined grains and starches in whole bread, brown rice, bran cereal, oatmeal,etc.). According to Clark et al you store only carbohydrates, not protein or fats, in your muscles in the form of glycogen (muscle sugar). During hard exercise, you burn this glycogen for energy and if it becomes totally depleted you hit the wall and you feel overwhelmingly exhausted. These nutritionists preach that eating a high carbohydrate diet can help prevent early exhaustion.(1)

It is generally known that eating lots of sweets and sugary foods before exercise can hurt your performance. When you eat concentrated sugar, your body secretes insulin. Insulin is a hormone that carries the sugar away from your blood into the muscles. Therefore, the combined effect of the insulin with the exercise causes the sugar in your blood to drop abnormally low and you may feel light headed, shaky, tired and uncoordinated, a condition known as hypoglycemia.(2)

If you need an energy boost, these nutritionists recommend a snack of crackers or bread to perk you up. But the best thing to do is to avoid needing an energy boost. It is more important to eat properly earlier so your body has time to digest the foods. You ll be less likely to crave sweets because you ll already have adequate energy.

This group of nutritionists maintain that for health and performance reasons, you should try to choose wholesome carbohydrate rich foods for both daily training diet and for pre competition meals. A high carbohydrate diet eaten everyday should prevent chronic glycogen completion and ensure adequate glycogen replacement.

Theses nutritionists believe that carbohydrates such as cereal, bread, bagel, crackers, potatoes, pasta, etc., are the best choices because they digest quickly and are readily available for fuel. They say that protein rich foods (eggs, tuna, steak) take longer to digest and increase need to urinate. Fats (fried foods, peanut butter, burgers) stay longest in the stomach and may feel heavy and uncomfortable.(3)

The suggested diet from this group of nutritionists consists of 70% carbohydrates, 15-20% fat and 10-15% protein. The theory is that the endurance athlete wants to maximize glycogen storage in the muscles but needs to use stored fat along with the stored glycogen for fuel in order to have enough energy during the performance period to avoid hitting the wall. The athlete, by following the 70-20-10 ratio is supposed to create a constant training condition that will allow the body to access the optimum ratio of energy sources during exercise.

In recent years, a new diet theory has been promoted by other nutrition consultants such as Dr. Barry Sears. It is their belief that athletic performance and weight gain are not dependent on calories at all but on hormone levels. They believe that it is necessary to have the right balance of hormones.

The theory is that the food you eat is probably the most powerful drug you will ever encounter and that we must learn how to administer food at the right time, and in the correct dosage to keep the hormone insulin at the right level, not too high, not too low. One of the suspected side effects of the popularity of the carbo load mentality has been the huge increase in the incidence of diabetes among Americans. Many physicians fault the high carbohydrate diet adopted by many Americans.(4)

It is necessary to maintain a steady range of insulin in the blood stream. Dr. Sears maintains that previous diets have ignored the importance of protein and fat. Ten thousand years ago there were no grains on the face of the earth. During mankind s evolution, our ancestors had only two food groups from which to choose: Low fat protein and low density carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables). As a result, this is what we are genetically designed to eat. When grains were first introduced into the human diet 10,00 years ago, the archeological record clearly reflects three immediate and dramatic changes in grain eating societies:

A.) Mankind shrank in height from lack of adequate protein.

B.) Disease of modern civilization, such as heart attacks , first appeared.

C.) Obesity first became apparent.(5)

Dr. Sears believes that the reason ancient