HEALTH
Breakfast (and Lunch and Dinner) of Champions Columbus Olympic athletes talk nutrition By Mallory Arnold
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cityscenecolumbus.com | July/August 2021
lower carb, and then other times it was higher carb, lower protein.” Blaine, on the other hand, didn’t start truly focusing on what he ate until later in his 12-year competitive career. When he was younger, he ate everything he wanted without repercussions, he says. Later on, he began concentrating on a high protein, low carb diet. “Once in a while, you sneak in your pizzas or whatever,” he says. “I ate carbs the night before a competition so I’d have more energy. I ate a lot of vegetables.” For Alaine, the most difficult part of maintaining an Olympic-structured diet was travel. She says if she were competing in Egypt, for example, she didn’t have the foods she normally did and didn’t know how the local food would affect her per-
formance. She remembers packing lots of energy bars and nut mixes. “One of our sons is in gymnastics and they’re doing a really good job of telling kids how to be healthy, especially on a training day where you exert a lot of energy,” Alaine says. “They bring them to the kitchen and show them how to cook healthy, balanced meals.”
Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
BLAINE AND ALAINE Wilson (maiden name Barquerot) tumbled into each other’s lives during their time as Olympic gymnastic competitors. Columbus native Blaine is a five-time U.S. national champion, a three-time Olympian and a silver medal winner in the team competition at the 2004 Olympics. Alaine competed at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and won a silver medal in group at 1995 Pan American Games. The two met through gymnastics and reconnected in 2008. They began dating shortly after. In 2009, the pair aquired Integrity Athletics, a Plain City-based youth gym that focuses on giving kids the space to have fun, hone athletic ability and improve overall health to become well-rounded, happy adults. And while their competing days are in the past, the Wilsons remember one of the most important parts of training for the Olympics: nutrition. Fueling your body properly is the best way to get the results you want, Blaine says. Alaine’s nutrition was different than Blaine’s, as her specific gymnastics style (rhythmic) used to consist mostly of small, lean athletes. During her Olympic training days, she was flown back and forth to meet with a nutritionist in Atlanta to discuss her diet. “I never sat down and ate huge meals,” she says. “But I ate high-quality foods throughout the day. It was all balance, depending on the intensity of your workout that day. Some days were high protein,
