What you eat and how you exercise are fundamental to your sporting success.
Clinical nutritionist Suzie Sawyer shares her three top tips for sporting greatness!
UP THE PROTEIN
When people take up new or enhanced exercise routines, they frequently assume that they need to ‘up’ their carbohydrate intake as well. However, unless you are ‘pre-loading’ (increasing carbohydrates a week before a major endurance event such as a marathon) you are likely to be eating enough carbs.
Conversely, most people don’t eat enough protein. As an example, an athlete exercising for 45-60 minutes, four or five times a week, at moderate intensity would need around 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. This amounts to around 90 grams of protein daily. If you think that an average salmon fillet or chicken breast contains around 20 grams of protein you can see how much is needed to perform at our peak. In order to eat sufficient protein you really need to include some protein at every meal, every day.
INCREASE ANTIOXIDANTS
Any kind of physical activity, particularly high intensity training, is going to increase energy expenditure. High activity and heavy endurance training increases your intake of oxygen, which makes you more prone to attack from free radicals, which are always present in the environment. However, the human body is very clever and has a number of in-built protective antioxidant enzyme systems, which are uprated with increased activity.
Ensuring a good intake of antioxidant-rich foods, particularly fruits and vegetables, together with a good daily multi-vitamin and mineral supplement, will provide the cornerstone of a healthy, protective diet. Fruits such as mangoes, papaya, watermelon and strawberries in particular all provide high levels of antioxidants, so enjoy them in your diet as much as possible.
HIIT IT!
The days of pounding for hours and hours on a running machine just to burn calories are now completely over. Granted, you’re going to always burn calories this way – an average body weight person will burn around 80 calories per mile. However, for a real calorie burn and to send your metabolism through the roof, you need to go for the HIIT (high intensity interval training).
It’s hard and your heart rate is high, but it’s the most effective way to burn fat. A HIIT circuit could burpees, star jumps, high knee-ups and twisted mountain climbers – there are so many mix and match options. Search online for lots of free programmes so there’s no excuse not to get moving!
