Gassed Up Athletes discuss the importance of nutrition in overall performance

Natalia Zavaleta | Co-Editor

Months spent in training, maxing out personal records in the weight room, early morning drills in the cold, coaches yelling constantly. These are all things athletes go through in order to succeed. Though all are essential to creating the perfect athlete, there is also another key factor involved— nutrition.

“I take nutrition pretty seriously because if you don’t fuel yourself with the correct nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that you need, it can definitely affect your sport,” sophomore Stephanie Oiesen said. “If you just eat junk food all the time, then you can’t really perform at your best because you’re not fueling yourself correctly.”

According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), nutrition plays an important role in athlete health, performance, and recovery. Building a healthy diet ensures that all nutrients are being processed correctly in the body and are able to be distributed to all the needed organs and muscles.

“Nutrition really helps you as an athlete,” junior Sebastian De Lara said. “It leads a lot to the way that you feel when you’re actually about to go compete or train or anything. If you eat bad, you’re gonna train bad because you feel bad. So I try to eat the cleanest and balance my eating times.”

The ideal diet for a student athlete consists of 45% to 65% carbohydrates, 10% to 30% protein, and 25% to 35% fats. Carbs fuel the body and provide energy to compete, proteins help muscles grow and strengthen, and fats are essential for vitamin intake.

“It’s a thing of dedication,” De Lara said. “You really just gotta know what’s best for you and what you like. There’s some things out there that are good for you but you won’t like at all, so you have to figure out the perfect mix between what you like and what’s best for you.”

Snacking after exercise is essential as well, as it aids in the recovery process. It is recommended that athletes consume recovery foods within 30 minutes of the activity, preferably carbohydrates. “Usually when I’m training I don’t eat before I run,”

De Lara said. “Then within 20 minutes of finishing running I try to intake protein to try and get a good breakfast.”

While some athletes watch what they eat, others make the effort to surround themselves with nutritional foods without worrying about diet.

“Honestly I don’t think too much about it,” senior Hannah Jayes said. “I just happen to surround myself with things that are all nutritionally healthy so I don’t actually really think about whether the things I’m eating are good.”

And then there’s some who have to constantly change their diet in order to be in the best shape possible for the season.

“During football, I had to get a lot of calories in and low protein to try to maintain muscle,” senior Cash Deibert said. “When I was training for wrestling, I quickly switched my diet to lose 50 pounds over the course of a month, which included a lot of spinach and a lot of brown rice. Or at least very small portions of those things.”

Though nutrition and diet are tailored differently for each athlete, they all share a common strategy: know what’s best for your body.

“Make sure your nutrition game is extremely personalized to you,” Deibert said. “Don’t listen to all these other people on the internet who tell you certain things about diet because it doesn’t work for everyone.”

Cutting out excess sugars, finding ways to “hide” vegetables and fruits in meals, doing sufficient research on needed intake and asking coaches what’s best— nutrition is universal in athletes.

“Eat in general because if you don’t eat anything you’re not going to keep your athletic performance as good,” Jayes said. “Eating anything is better than eating nothing.”