Excess weight aggravates the potential for injury and adds to the strain on the joints. Lack of proper hydration, muscle strength imbalances, lack of strength in the muscles most stressed by your sport, and lack of muscle flexibility are other preconditions for being injury prone. Improper diet may provide inadequate fuel for sports, induce fatigue, and enhance the risk for injury. Let’s deal first with weight here.
First, there are 3,500 calories in a pound. Generally, a healthy adult will consume or metabolize 2,900 calories a day without activity. In order to gain weight, you would have to create a calorie surplus of 3,500. One meal where you indulge isn’t going to hurt unless you string together 20 indulgences in a row.
Let’s do the math. Let’s say, you eat one egg sandwich for breakfast (with hash browns), a big hamburger and fries for lunch with an apple pie, and do the same for dinner. Let’s also say you wash it down with a six pack. Give or take, you have consumed over 4,000 calories. Let’s further assume you didn’t feel like exercising, so you only consumed 2,900 calories. For the day, you created a surplus of 1,100 calories. In a week, continuing this eating pattern, you would have created a surplus of 7,700 calories or 2.2 pounds. OK. No problem.
It is a problem, because, if you continue this for a year, you would be a perfect sphere. To do the math, you would gain over 50 pounds. Bombarding your taste buds with the intensity created by a high saturated fat, high salt, and high sugar diet make healthy food taste so bland that it is difficult to escape the captivity of bad food.
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The consequence of this excess calorie consumption is either an early coronary, or a commitment to lose weight. Diets fads are a dime a dozen and most of them fail. Celebrity pitchpersons may sell the program, but they won’t make it successful beyond the financial aspects for themselves.
Here are the sad facts. Most diets involve calorie deprivation. If you reduce your caloric intake below 1,000 for a period of time (weeks, for example), your body’s aural metabolic rate will lower itself and make do with “hat you give it. When you cease the diet, and return to your normal intake, you will create bigger calorie surplus because it will take the body time for the metabolic rate to rise to meet the higher intake. In the meantime, you will experience the “yo yo”, where you gain back more than you lost.
To lose weight, you need to create calorie deficits. The best way to do this is twofold. First, reduce your intake below 2,500 calories, but above 1,800 calories (go much lower and you slow your metabolic rate). Second, stop eating processed foods. This means go to the produce section and get fruits and vegetables. Eat salads, fresh fruit and vegetables. Get your proteins from lean skinless sources like chicken or fish. Additionally, you can get protein from soy beans (Japanese Etemomi beans are great) or mixtures of rice and beans. Most sources of protein are derived from animals and animal by-products and are, therefore, high in saturated fat. During a period where weight loss is a target it is wise to consume non-animal protein sources.
If you are overweight and follow this common sense approach for one month in conjunction with a vigorous exercise program, you will lose weight and feel great. This type of program will make you lean and give you great fuel for your athletic activities.
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Here’s another two ways to approach nutrition. First, if it comes wrapped in paper or in a box with enticing pictures, it is probably bad for you. Second, don’t anticipate food for the way it momentarily titillates your taste buds. Rather, concentrate on how you feel the minute after the momentary titillation of the taste buds subsides. If you do, you will gravitate to carrots, not cake, fruit, not French fries, and pears, not pizza.
If you are moving from a junk diet, it will take a few days to purge your taste buds requirement to be bombarded by high fat, sugar and sodium diets. Soon, you create a taste and yen for fruit and vegetables, at the same time you are getting leaner, and more energetic.