THE #1 ISSUE WITH HOW YOUNG ATHLETES EAT

It’s not that they eat too little fruits and vegetables.

It’s not that they don’t eat enough protein.

While these tend to be common issues with young athletes, the main issue I see is under eating. What 99% of parents don’t realize, is that the fueling strategy for their young athlete on the brink of puberty is completely different from that of the average desk jockey.

The physical and mental demands of school-sports-training added to the demand of a growing body and brain requires a significant amount of calories. Competitive athletes, on paper, should be fueling every few hours to meet calorie demands. This rarely ends up being the case with class schedules, long practices, weight room and homework.

A common problem with underweight athletes is overestimating how much fuel they consume. These athletes come from two camps:

1) Health conscious parents who tend to add in tons of healthy fruits and veggies with lean protein every meal. Awesome strategy in theory, except that two cups of broccoli is the calorie equivalent of a tbsp of peanut butter. High fiber, filling foods make athletes “feel” like they are eating a ton. But a large amount of food, doesn’t equal a large amount of calories.

2) Athletes who skip breakfast, eat one or two giant meals per day and claim they couldn’t possibly be eating more. I was that kid. Cram as much as you can into one meal, usually from protein, feel super bloated for the next 4 hours, and make little progress.

Most athletes have a hard time fitting the calories they need into two or even three meals. Adding in multiple snacks, spreading out meal portions is a simple yet incredibly effective strategy for adding more calories , keeping satiety (fullness) down, and being ready for the next meal.

On top of making sure we are frequently fueling young athletes, we need to find a middle ground with healthy food and calorie dense food to hit the calorie demands. Like it or not, most young athletes need PB&J sandwiches, Ice Cream, Cereal, Gatorade, Smoothies, Fruit Juices, Pasta, Starches, Carbs and Fats in their diet. Especially during an In-Season nutrition phase, it is common for an athlete in our program to go eat a full pizza after playing 6 hours in a double header. The tradeoff of calories to fuel recovery-performance-and energy outweighs the potential negatives of a less-than-healthy food choice at this point of the year. Most athletes will end an athletic season right back where they started the previous off-season: under muscled, under-performing, and right back where they started.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but we usually need to plug in food sources that are lower fiber and highly palatable. Fiber is still important. We need to get in a certain amount, but we can accomplish this through smoothies, ground oats, smaller amounts of steamed veggies, potatoes, etc. We WANT athletes hungry by the next meal. Which means foods that process quickly, are in and out of the GI tract.

We also want to make it less work for young athletes to get the food down. While it may not change the AMOUNT of calories in a given food, it can impact HOW MUCH food an athlete can eat in a given time frame: Fruit Juices and Smoothies vs Whole Fruit/Veggies-Mashed Potatoes vs Baked Potato-Ground Meat vs Steak/Chicken Breast. Satiety (feeling full) signals will start setting in during a meal, if we can get through twice as much ground beef and mashed potatoes vs steak and baked potato, it can be a useful strategy.

Awareness is the biggest tool in managing a young athlete’s development. An athlete can eat Mcdonald’s everyday In-Season while STILL being in the 80% health food-20% junk food range based on their calorie requirements, and be absolutely fine. It would be very challenging for an athlete to eat 4,000 calories of “clean” food and not be miserable.

There are times of the year to prioritize Health Phases (immediately post-season), but In-Season, the focus is PERFORMANCE and RECOVERY. It is ignorant to think high level athletics are healthy as it is. Most upper level High-school,College, Pro athletes will be sacrificing their body and health integrity in pursuit of athletic excellence. Whether it’s today or twenty years down the road; old injuries, oxidative stress, and concussions will eventually rear their ugly head.

Our job as coaches is to keep athletes’ heads above water in-season with their health, while prioritizing the performance and recovery. Post-season we will add in more fruits-vegetables-micronutrients-lean proteins-extra sleep and recovery to prime the athlete for a productive off-season.

For now, focus on fueling. Add in an extra PB&J sandwich to lunch. Two chocolate milks during class periods. Dried fruit and nuts during the drive to practice. An extra burger patty and milkshake after practice. Pasta or Pizza post-game. If performance is the goal on the field, drive the calories necessary for it to happen.