As you play sports, there are certain things you need to improve your skills in athletic performance. There are of course practice and practice and practice, but there are also nutritional diets you need to follow to keep your body as healthy as possible to excel. Let me suggest some tips to improving your health!
One important source of calories the body needs to fuel all our energy is complex carbohydrates. To boost your skills, you would need to increase your energy in the healthiest way possible. The best source of complex carbohydrates consists of whole grain breads; raw, fibrous, and green vegetables (celery and broccoli); and lentils. Having some of these in your diet could help increase athletic performance, but also improve your health.
Another important source of foods needed to help the body, in particular the muscles, is an intake of protein-rich foods. Some sources of protein could be from shakes and protein bars, but the best way to get healthy amounts of protein would be from low fat foods such as lean red meat, baked fish, beans, rice, and low fat dairy products. This would help our body rebuild muscle tissues that are broken down during athletic activities.
We also need vitamins and minerals to help our bodies recover from extreme athletic activities other than the important food needed for our bodies. Some vitamin and minerals essential to the body would be iron and calcium. Iron is drained from excessive sweating. To help increase iron, athletes should eat cream of wheat or lean meat. To keep our bones strong from any high-impact sports, we would need to increase intake of skim or low fat milk, orange juice, and low-fat or non-fat yogurt.
The substance athletes’ needs to cut down would be sugar. Although our body needs to have sugar to stay in function, excessive amounts could lead to a decrease in athletic activities. High in sugar can result in low blood sugar, leading to feeling weak or lightheaded. Instead of sugars from energy bar and drinks, replaces them with orange juice diluted with water, apples and bananas.
Fats are another substance an athlete should be very careful about. Our body needs fat in any diet, but we need to try and avoid saturated fat. To avoid saturated fats, you would need to stop eating potato chips and French fries, and replace it with carrot sticks and whole grain crackers.
The number one performance enhancer that will help all athletes and non-athletes is water. An athlete’s diet with water will keep the body hydrated and prevent overheating and dehydration.
Improve your health every moment you can, whether it is replacing one drink with water or taking a bag of carrots instead of potato chips. It will help you out whether you are trying to improve your athletic performance or just wanting to stay healthy.