Healthy Food Choices for Athletes

Athletes should maintain a well balanced nutritional diet that's high in carbohydrates so as to ensure maximum performance. Learn how to start your own athletic diet in this video.

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Eat a high carbohydrate diet
Limit high sugar & high fat diets
Fuel your body before & after working out

About this Author

Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.

ALICE MERRITT: Now I'm going to talk to you about healthy nutrition for athletes. Nutrition is very important for optimal performance in giving you that competitive edge. Athletes should follow a high-carbohydrate diet consisting of about 60% to 70% of their diet. Good carbohydrates to eat are things that are complex, higher in fiber, things like whole wheat, brown rice, whole wheat pasta. You really want to limit high sugary foods and high fat foods because these things can decrease your performance. Another thing that's important with athletes is you want to make sure you practice a good, well-balanced nutrition plan all while you're practicing, so that you're ready to go when you have a competition or an event. It's also important with athletics to make sure you have proper fueling before, during, and after exercise or your event. So, for example, you want to make sure you have a high carbohydrate snack, moderate in protein, about an hour or so before your practice. Then during your practice, if it lasts longer than 1 hour, you need to supplement your hydration with some kind of carbohydrate sports replacement drink, in order to ensure you can give yourself consistent carbohydrate, to keep your energy levels and to keep you training at a high level. You also want to make sure that you fuel up after your training or after your event. You want to make sure you have a high carbohydrate snack and a moderate in protein within 30 minutes after you finish training or your competition. In these 30 minutes after you finish training, your body is the most sensitive to rebuilding everything that you broke down or used up during your activity. So a good example of a high carbohydrate, moderate protein source would be something like a granola bar and a piece of fruit, or peanut butter crackers and a sports drink. So remember, when you're an athlete, you need to have a high carbohydrate diet, adequate amounts of protein, lean sources like chicken, turkey and fish. You want to make sure you stay well hydrated and if you are practicing for longer than an hour or competing for longer than an hour, you want to replace the carbohydrates lost with some kind of sports drink. And then fueling afterwards is very, very important. Within that 30 minutes, make sure you get a high carbohydrate source, moderate in protein. All these things are healthy recommendations for athletes.

Healthy Food Choices for Athletes Video

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