EATING FOR PERFORMANCE

Ever wonder why bodybuilders look better than almost all athletes, but wouldn’t be even at a fraction of their athleticism?

Here are 3 reasons

1. Athletes eat to perform better

2. Athletes eat to recover from their performance

3. Athletes care more about their performance than how they look

What does this mean for you?

First make the decision on what is more important to you

Performance vs aesthetics

You are able to do a little bit of both but make sure to keep the main thing the main thing

Now that you have made the decision lets try to make the most of it

Lets take the example of a 150 lb active male whos daily calories burned would be the equivalent of someone who walked 20k steps

He needs to consume a certain amount of calories to do one of 3 things

1. Lose weight

2. Maintain weight

3. Gain weight

Lets say he just wants to maintain

Ball park he needs to eat around 2,550 kcals a day

The next step is deciding the nutrients that make up this amount of calories

Lets start with protein

It is suggested that athletes who partake in a mix of activities including strength, endurance, and their specific sport need about 1.4 to 1.7 grams of protein per their body weight

That means the 150 lb male would need at least 210 grams of protein daily

There are 4 calories per gram of protein so now we have the equation of

210×4 = 840

We take that back to our original daily caloric intake and subtract it to get the remaining calories we need from our other macronutrients

That gives us a remaining 1710 kcals for our fats and carbs

For reference there are 9 calories per gram of fat and 4 calories per gram of carbs

The reason I am not suggesting the break down of the amount of fats and carbs you have because that is dependent on preference

Some people prefer higher fat, lower carb and vice versa

As I have said before there is more than way to skin a cat

What I have found that works for myself and others is carbs before during and after workouts and during non active periods of the day more fat

Play around with it and see what works for you because first and foremost YOU are the common denominator