NUTRITIONS THAT BOOSTS THE PERFORMANCE OF ATHLETES

Nutrition helps to enhance athletic performance. Living an active lifestyle and engaging in a regular exercise routine, coupled with eating balanced diet, is the best way to stay healthy.
Eating a balance diet provides the energy you need to perform better, and finish a race, or to just enjoy a casual activity. You will more likely end up been tired and perform poorly during sports when you do not get enough of; calories, carbohydrates, fluids, iron, vitamins, and other minerals protein.
As an athletes, in the course of running a hundreds miles, engaging in vigorous trainings and exercises, you end up burning countless calories . Our bodies can be likened to cars that cannot run on without a well oiled engine and other components part, and which will perform at their best when properly fueled. So are you fueling your body properly in order for it to run and run well without breaking down?

Foods are made up of carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, and fat. Athletes in general should eat a diet high in carbohydrates, moderate in protein, and low in fat. Another key nutrient that is a must for every athletes is water. As an athletes, you should know how much of them you should eat and how much water you need to drink before, during and after exercise. You should ensure your body have all these nutrients adequately and properly fueled, hydrated and ready to perform at its best. There is no much difference in the ideal diet recommended for an athletes from the diet recommended for any healthy person. People are fond of overestimating the amount of calories they burn per workout so it is important to avoid consuming more energy than you expend exercising. To enable you perform better, avoid exercising on an empty stomach. Everyone is different, you need to learn; when best it is you need to eat before exercising; how much food you need to eat.
In addition, the amount of each food group you need depends on;
The type of sport
The amount of training you do
The amount of time you spend doing the activity or exercise

Important Nutrients for Athletes

Carbohydrates and glycogen
Why are they important?
Muscle glycogen is the body's preferred fuel for running. It serves as the body's storage form of carbohydrate. If breakdown of muscle glycogen is beyond its replacement, the amount of glycogen stores in the body become depleted, which eventually result into fatigue and inability to maintain training and racing intensity. In order to replenish and maintain glycogen stores, the athletes diet needs to be rich in carbohydrate.

Carbohydrates should contain 60-70% of total calories. To know the amount that's right for you, multiply your weight in kilograms by 7, or multiply your weight in pounds by 3.2; whatever answer you arrive at is the number of grams of carbohydrates you should consume per day.
The best sources of carbohydrate are grain products preferably whole grains; bread, rice, cereal and pasta, as well as fruits, vegetables, and low fat dairy foods. Carbohydrates should be eaten for more than 1 hour before beginning an exercise. Taking a glass of fruit juice, a cup of yougurt contains 245 grams, or an English muffin jelly. Carbohydrates is needed during exercise if you will be doing more than an hour of intense aerobic exercise. Approxiamatley, you should be needing:
150 to 300 milliliters of a sports drink every 20 minutes.
2 to 3 handfuls of pretzels.
40 to 55 grams of low-fat granola.
People exercising or training for more than 90 minutes should eat or drink more carbohydrates, if possible with protein, 2 hours later. Try a sports bar, trail mix with nuts, or yogurt and granola. Water is most often all that is needed for workouts lasting less than 60 minutes.

Protein Diet
When an athletes consumes too much protein, it tends to increase the body's water requirement which results into dehydration; the kidneys require more water to flush out excess nitrogen as a result of high protein intake.
If an athletes consumes excess protein than he needs, it is a two way thing; it is either he burns it for energy, or stores it as fat. Carbohydrates are quite more efficient and less expensive source of energy. Consuming a diet that is high in protein and fat after heavy training will cause incomplete replacement of muscle glycogen and impair performance. Unlike a high carbohydrate diet that is easy to digest, it is hard to digest a diet that's high in protein and fat and this will lead to low performance.

FAT
Fat breakdown cannot supply energy fast enough that is why muscle glycogen is preferred over fat for high intensity exercise of long duration. An athletes should consume less than 30% of total calories from fat and less than 10% from saturated fat. If, as an athlete, you eat 3000 calories per day, less than 1000 of those calories should be from fat. Fat should be limited in pre-exercise meals. Limit the amount of fat you consume in the hour before an athletic event.

WATER AND OTHER FLUIDS
Water is the most essential, yet many athletes overlooked this nutrient. Water and fluids are essential, they keep the body hydrated and at the right temperature. In an hour of vigorous exercise, your body can eliminate several litres of sweat. Having a clear urine is a good sign that you have enough water in your system and you are fully rehydrated. As an athletes, make sure you drink plenty of water whether you will be exercising or not. It is important you start your exercise with enough water in your body, drink about 480 millimetres of water 2 hours before a work out. It is advisable to sip water during and after each exercise. Just continue drinking fluids even if you are not feeling thirsty. Try pouring some water on your head, this will make you feel good and calm.