Tip #1:
Always have breakfast. Skipping breakfast only forces your body to dip into energy stores from your liver and muscles, not fat stores. Then when you finally eat, your body prepares for the next time you don’t eat by stockpiling fat. Breakfast is a great time to stock up on high-protein or high fiber/complex carbohydrate foods to keep you running through the day. Excellent choices include hot cereals (oatmeal, grits, etc.) with granola, nuts or fruit on top. Avoid cereal and too much fruit juice because they raise your blood-sugar levels fast, and then let them drop, leaving you with low energy. Eggs with cheese, yogurt, and bagels with peanut butter and honey are also good options.
Tip #2:
Have a small source of protein and carbohydrates within 15 minutes of a lifting workout, and a balanced meal within an hour. Your body is the most ready to assimilate energy supplies in the first 15 minutes after a hard workout. After you get your initial water supply to re-hydrate, it is a great time to take a small protein or meal-replacement type drink. Also, a banana with peanut butter is a good way to get potassium and other electrolytes into your blood along with the protein. Electrolytes are chemicals that help the body absorb water. Gatorade and Power-Aid are good sources, but fruit is better. Do not treat this snack as a meal. It should only be about a cup worth of a drink or a handful of nuts and raisins. If you take in too much, your insulin and blood-sugar levels are thrown off-balance and your body starts packing away fat again. The meal later on should be high in protein and vitamins and minerals. The best sources of vitamins and minerals are green leafy vegetables and brightly colored vegetables. Emphasis should be put on either protein or complex carbs, not both. If you have steak and potatoes, you have both a large source of protein and a large source of complex carbohydrates. Too much of both taxes your digestive system and lends itself to the spikes in blood-sugar level. Besides that, most meats have some carbs in them, and most good complex carbohydrate sources (potatoes, oatmeal, beans) also have some protein in them already. Proteins that fight off disease and sicknesses are best found in fruits and vegetables. Also buy an inexpensive daily multi-vitamin to ensure you have the vitamins needed to put the energy in your food to work.
Tip #3:
Drink lots of water throughout the day. Take in small amounts of water about twenty minutes before a meal. This helps your body get digestive juices ready, and keeps you hydrated as well. If you drink too much water during or right after a meal, the water dilutes your digestive juices and your stomach has a harder time doing its job. So plan ahead. Also, drink small amounts of water while lifting. Avoid a lot of water at one time. Your body will actually be more sluggish if the cells are flooded with too much water. Just like anything else, you must have balance. Click on the glass of water to read a great article on hydration.
Tip #4:
Look for sources of vitamins and minerals. Leafy green vegetables, brightly-colored vegetables and fruit carry all kinds of chemicals that your body needs. In fact, green vegetables are the best source for the minerals needed to unlock the usefulness of the protein you eat. Without those minerals, your body can only use a limited amount of protein, no matter how much protein you take in. Also, all the vitamins that fight off disease and sicknesses are best found in fruits and vegetables. Also buy an inexpensive daily multi-vitamin from CVS or IGA to ensure you have the vitamins needed to put the energy in your food to work.
Tip #5:
Find and eat good fats. Fats are essential for survival. They help your brain function and they supply a very important part of your body’s energy source. The problem is that most food now has saturated fat which takes forever for your body to use, ties in with cholesterol, and retains water that should be going to your muscles. Foods with good fat include all kinds of nuts and seeds(almonds, pecans and sunflower seeds being the best when unsalted). Tuna and other fish meat is also a good source of healthy fats that specifically help your brain and are ready energy sources. Tuna also has a very good protein to fat ratio in general. Chicken, rice and beans, and most fish are also healthy sources.
Tip #6:
Eat 5-6 small meals a day whenever possible. Eating small meals keeps your energy levels constant all day as long as you stay with foods that are not high in sugar, sodium or fat. Sugar raises your blood-sugar level, then lets it drop. Sodium causes your body to pull water away from the muscles. Too much fat takes a long time to digest and also withholds water from where it should be. All of these elements should be in your food, but at low levels. Look for high-protein foods, fruit or vegetables to keep you at an even keel. When you are in more intense training phases, it is a good idea to include some kind of protein in all of your meals and snacks. Protein takes awhile to digest and helps to even out your blood-sugar levels. Not to mention, it helps build muscle and other lean tissues like the tendons and ligaments that handle so much strain and take on damage whenever you engage in heavy running or lifting. Peanut butter is good with all kinds of fruits and vegetables. And fruit and vegetables are natural water sources as well as antioxidants which help your body get rid of unwanted chemicals and diseases. Small servings of meal-replacement drinks are good if you can’t get food in-between meals.
Tip #7:
Eat foods in their natural state whenever possible. If it didn’t come from an animal or grow from the ground, you can do better. It just so happens that all fruits and vegetables are best for you when eaten raw and unprocessed. They still retain a lot of good stuff when cooked, preserved or fried, but God gave them to us in the best form possible. Eat whole fruits and vegetables whenever possible instead of juice. Juices raise your blood-sugar too quickly and the fiber in the whole fruit will naturally regulate the rate at which the sugar enters your blood stream. When you eat more whole fruits and vegetables as between-meal snacks, you will notice that you are not as thirsty as normal since you will be getting water from the fruit as well as antioxidants which are helping flush the bad chemicals that the body would have needed extra water to flush anyway.
Tip #8:
Match your football goals with your eating habits. If you want to be a good football player, eat good food. If you want to be a great football player, eat great food. Unfortunately, technology has allowed us to be lazy when it comes to what and how much we eat. Most of what we eat in the modern world is not “bad” for us. But if you want to go above and beyond in football, you have to go above and beyond what most people do for food. Most people don’t have to run around for two hours a day and lift weights on top of that. So they can get by on doughnuts and coffee. But you do all those things, and if you want to do them at a high level, then you have to eat differently than the people who don’t run around and lift.