A sports diet, the type that prepares people for athletic endeavors, can be used for other reasons, as well. For most athletes, a sports diet is built around a foundation of good eating habits, combined with increasing and challenging physical activity. Even if you don't participate in an organized sport, you may be considering adapting your diet to more closely resemble that of professional athletes. If you're interested in a sports diet, no matter the reason, check with your doctor first.
Improved Control Over Blood Glucose Levels
Endurance sports such as marathons and triathlons require a sustainable source of energy in the form of glucose. According to the website MarathonTraining, sports diets that emphasize carbohydrate loading can be useful if you're training for an endurance event. Carbohydrate loading generally involves training to the point of exhaustion for a single day a few days prior to an athletic event. At this point, for three days after the day of exhaustion, you consume a very low carbohydrate diet. This pattern is repeated but with three days of eating a high carbohydrate diet. Theoretically, this method helps to increase the amount of time between the start of an event and the onset of hypoglycemic fatigue.
Increase Strength
In order to increase your strength, your body requires specific dietary changes that provide energy in the right proportions of fats, carbohydrates and protein. According to the American Dietetic Association, increasing muscle mass, and thus, strength, requires adequate amounts of carbohydrates to prevent fatigue and tissue damage. Additionally, fat is also essential, in reasonable amounts and from healthy sources. Finally, your body needs protein to increase the size of your muscles and strength to meet the increasing challenges you are introducing during resistance training. A sports diet that is specifically formulated for increasing muscle mass and combined with weight training can help you improve your strength.
Lose Weight
Arguably, many people start a diet in order to lose weight, especially given the health concerns that are associated with obesity such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. If your goal is to lose weight for an athletic activity or simply for better health, the American Dietetic Association explains that a combination of healthier eating and physical activity provides the best outcome. Choosing to follow a sports diet while becoming more physically active provides improved nutrition for better endurance and increased energy. Supplementing good eating habits with activity reinforces your motivation to continue, because your weight loss is more substantial than if you only chose to diet.
Increased Sports Performance
Perhaps the most obvious reason that people choose to do a sports diet is to increase their performance in athletic activities. According to Medline Plus, eating poor quality foods can significantly decrease your performance in sports. This is because your body requires high quality, nutrient-dense foods in order to have adequate energy for the demands of the sport. In addition, nutrient-dense foods provide vitamins and minerals that your body uses along with protein to repair and build lean muscle tissue. As an example, complex carbohydrate foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains provide more useful forms of nutrition that are digested more slowly than simple carbohydrates like sugar.
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