Athletes, like everyone else, have specific dietary requirements that are dictated by their sport, age, health, lifestyle, training workload, and fitness levels.
Many athletes’ diets are insufficient due to wrong eating patterns, nutrition misconceptions, lack of awareness and knowledge, fad diets, and extreme deliberation on weight gain associated with foods.
At QUA Nutrition Clinics, we maintain monthly, quarterly, and annual data for athletes, identifying key working areas, analyzing the progress, and making necessary nutrition interventions.
We work on many parameters to identify the specific needs of athletes and customize diet plans accordingly. I am listing below some of the basic parameters for the readers.
If you are an Athlete or Coach, please note this and try to implement it in your routine.
1) Weight
Keep a track record of athlete’s weight throughout the season. Observe the trend and consult a nutritionist if you notice a significant deviation or sluggish progress.
Bodyweight consists of fat, muscle, water, and bone.
It is an alarming situation for a coach if your player is losing weight. There can be underlying conditions, or It can be self-inflicted as well, especially in the case of women athletes.
Women athletes are very conscious about their looks, so they don’t eat properly and trains a lot. When you do that, you end up burning muscles instead of fat. This proves to be counterproductive and affects athletic performance.
2) Muscle and Fat Percentage
We do body composition analysis at our clinic to measure Body fat percentage, muscle percentage, Resting Metabolic Rate, Body age, etc.
My suggestion is to invest a little to get a weighing scale that can measure fat and muscle percentage so that you can keep a track record of your data.
The data collected can be beneficial to gauge progress and take required actions. For instance, say you observe the data for 3 months and noticed that your muscle is dropping after every training and tournament:
a) you have now identified a potential problem area, which could have gone unnoticed
b) you can now plan your action points, consult experts and implement corrective measures.
3) Hydration level
Certain weighing scales available in the market can now measure water levels in the body. 60% water level in the body is considered to be normal.
Thirst isn’t necessarily a precise measure of how much water the body needs. An athlete might already be dehydrated still do not feel thirsty.
Measuring hydration status will ensure that you refill your body with the right fluids, more so during your competition days.
When players are training continuously or playing back-to-back matches, they are dehydrating internally. The brain cells in the body will shrink in size, disrupt the body’s function, and affect athletic performance.
If you wish to get yourself a data-driven customized sports nutrition plan, please contact us at +91-9743430000.
Ryan Fernando is an Award-winning celebrity Sports Nutritionist with 2GUINNESS world record and 2 Olympic medals under his belt. His client list include Olympic wrestler Sushil Kumar, cricketer Shikhar Dhawan & bollywood superstars Aamir Khan & Abhishek Bachchan. He is Chief Nutritionist at QUA Nutrition Signature Clinics.
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