Barging up and down a soccer field for 90 minutes places significant calorie demands on a player. The large muscles of the hips and legs -- led by the quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteus -- burn glycogen like rocket fuel to get you up and down the 100 yards or more of field and to swing your kicking leg to propel the ball. If you are a forward or a defender, you especially burn calories as you make one sprint after another in a game without timeouts.
Range
Calorie intake for soccer players tends to balance with calorie expenditure. A 100-pound youth player can need 2,000 calories a day, while a 160-pound professional could burn through 4,000, write registered dietitian Nancy Clark, board certified as a specialist in sports dietetics, and soccer author Gloria Averbuch in "Food Guide for Soccer." Games can demand the expenditure of from 500 to 1,500 calories, depending on player position and body size, they note. Youth players in tournaments in particular are "calorie-burning machines," the authors write, noting that players run from two to six or more miles per game, burning 100 calories per mile. An active young athlete can easily need 3,000 calories per day and need to consciously work to match her food intake to body demands.
Calculations
According to "Food Guide for Soccer," to calculate your calorie needs estimate the baseline of calories you need for your resting metabolic rate by multiplying 10 times your weight in pounds; say, 1,500 if you weigh 150 pounds. Add another 50 percent if you are active apart from soccer, or 750 calories. Add 600 calories for each hour of soccer training and if you play a full, highly competitive game, add 1,100 calories if you are female and 1,500 if you are male. Thus, an active player weighing 150 pounds on a day with a one-hour practice needs a calorie intake of about 2,850: 1,500 for his resting metabolic rate, 750 for daily activities and 600 for training.
Application
If you want to maintain the same weight, your calorie intake needs to match your total calorie expenditure, in this example, 2,850. Divide this into either three meals of just under 1,000 calories or four meals, including a second lunch, of a bit more than 700 calories, notes "Food Guide for Soccer." You'll need to educate yourself via food labels and online databases to the calorie contents of the foods you typically eat.
Sources
Soccer players are endurance athletes like marathoners. Carbohydrates provide a valuable source of calories needed to load the muscles with enough glycogen to get through a long match. Fatigue toward the end of the game can be related to depletion of glycogen in individual muscle fibers, write the authors of "Nutrition for Football," a document resulting from a nutrition conference sponsored by FIFA, the international governing body of soccer. To avoid this depletion, which can affect your sprinting ability, your eating plan needs to include high-carbohydrate foods spread out over the day.
References
- "Food Guide for Soccer: Tips & Recipes from the Pros"; Gloria Averbuch and Nancy Clark; 2010
- FIFA; F-MARC Nutrition for Football; September 2005
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