Whenever I ask an athlete how their nutrition looks, the age old response is: “Oh, I think I eat pretty healthy.”
Cool story, bro…
Let me ask you this:
What does eating healthy even mean??
It’s not clear. It’s not measurable. And it’s sure as hell not sufficient to fuel optimal performance and allow you to reach your true potential as an athlete!
For example, most would consider a salad with chicken breast and plenty of veggies to be pretty “healthy” right?
Yeah, I’d say so too…
But, should that be a high-performing athlete’s pre-competition meal?
Hell no.
Where are all the calories (specifically from carbs) that will help fuel your performance? They’re essentially nonexistent…
Starting to see why just “eating healthy” doesn’t quite cut it?
Of course, food quality is important. But, as an athlete you must be more organized and systematic with your approach to nutrition in order to ensure that both food quantity and food quality are on point.
It’s really quite similar to your training…
As a basketball player, you could totally go shoot around at the park half-assed, but that wouldn’t be nearly as effective as showing up to the gym with a well-written workout plan…
As a runner, triathlete, obstacle course racer… You could run the same route over and over again or toss different runs together haphazardly throughout the week. But that won’t be as effective as following a well written plan…
Why should nutrition be any different?
Sure, you could eat lettuce and chicken breast all day and think you’re eating healthy (although I wouldn’t even classify that as healthy), or you could have a well formulated plan designed specifically for you that takes into account your sport, training intensity, schedule, preferences, lifestyle, etc…
You can probably guess which approach would be more effective…
Let me tell you about the perfect example of this scenario…
My dude, Ante Markoc, is playing professional basketball over in Europe. When he came to me, his food quality was pretty damn on point. Looking at his food, you’d probably consider it very “healthy.”
But, he didn’t have a strategic plan around it. He was already killing it in his pro league, but as soon as we got him eating enough food to actually fuel his multiple training sessions and allow him to recover from it…
It was game over.
[To learn the exact process I used with Ante, click HERE to grab your copy of my free eBook The Athlete’s Guide to Nutritional Periodization]
Ante suddenly went from feeling gassed after a full game of all out defense (as one normally would be), to feeling like he could go another whole game without an issue. No joke, those were his exact words on the podcast episode that we recorded together.
What was the X factor?
It’s quite simple. We were just much more deliberate with how he structured his eating habits. He continued to eat very high quality foods most of the time, but now he made sure he was eating enough of them to support his level of output on a daily basis (which is otherworldly).
And guess what:
This approach is ever evolving. Unlikely if you’re just “eating healthy,” when you have a plan you can make appropriate adjustments based on what part of your training cycle you’re in (more on this in the free ebook).
There’s absolutely no reason why you can see the same results as Ante, whether you’re a hooper, soccer player, football player, CrossFitter, runner, etc…
Simply be a bit more deliberate with how you plan out your nutrition, and you’ll be shocked at the changes you see. For everything you need to now on exactly how to apply this idea, just click HERE to grab your free copy of The Athlete’s Guide to Nutritional Periodization.
And also, be sure to reach out and ask me questions if there’s any way that I can help you out personally! You can find more of my free content by following me on IG, Facebook, or here on my email list.
Thanks for reading and I’ll talk to you soon!
P.S. Don’t forget to grab your free copy of the ebook here ;)
