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Importance of Healthy Eating for an Athletic Teenager

The Importance of Healthy Eating for an Athletic Teenager is very important because without supplying your body with the right nutrients the athlete will possibly have growth problems which will affect their performance in their sports and their extracuricular activities. Your body is like a machine. In order to get the energy or fuel that you need to power your machine is through the food that you eat. Teenagers like us burn so many calories everyday because our bodies are still growing while using a lot of energy through sports and other activities. Teenage athletes are required to have about 2,000 to 5,000 calories a day to maintain the energy level that they need.


A teenager is always growing, and we are always looking for food or energy to supply our bodies. Our body is like a machine. In order to get the energy or fuel that you need to power your machine is through the food that you eat. Eating a healthy meal will help you perform better and keep our bones and muscles strong and healthy. By doing that we need to keep our bodies in the best condition that we can by not abusing it with drugs and alcohol. Everybody should have an idea on the damage that drugs and alcohol do to our bodies. As teenagers we can get pressured into trying one of them someday, but it is up to you to choose the right thing. 


Keeping our bodies in the active mentality, we need the right amount of sleep. Getting the right amount of sleep helps our bodies focus better when we are both playing the sport and in school. But getting the right amount of sleep can be interpreted in many ways, either 3 hours a night (which I would not recommend) or the 7-8 hours a night (which is highly recommended). I can't express how important sleep plays in your diet. We also need to keep our bodies hydrated an full of liquid to make sure that our bodies function the way that they are supposed to.


Eating healthy, drinking, and sleeping is the importance of having a healthy diet. These three elements are what lead to what our bodies behaving the way that an athlete wants it to, and they all make us happy.

Links:

http://www.mom-going-organic-sensibly.com/importance-of-eating-healthy.html

http://www.livestrong.com/article/74741-eating-teenage-athlete/

Recommended Daily Caloric Intake

What is a calorie? A calorie is the total amount of energy that a food contains. What is the recommended daily caloric intake for an athlete? The number of calories that an athlete should consume varies from athlete to athlete. Some leading factors to determining YOUR caloric intake would be age, weight, height, gender, activity level, and other factors. Many female athletes should consume 1,845 - 2,110 calories per day, and males should consume between 2,220 and 2,745 calories daily. But when you are consuming the calories you want to make sure that they are spent on what is good for you and not what you shouldn't be eating, in other words the better choice for you. For example you can either choose the bag of chips or the oats and honey granola bar. Which one has a better nutritional value? The granola bar!

When you choose the foods that you do, you can look at the nutrition facts and see what percent of the daily value that the food or drink contains. When you are looking at the nutrition facts under the ingredients, remember that the ingredients are listed based on what is the greatest amount in the food to the least. Sometimes when you look at the nutrition facts you blow yourself away, and you can't believe what you just ate, and change that for the next time.


I would have to say that athletes have to be a conscious  of the number of calories that they intake because if they consume too little then they won't meet their requirements for the activity and will feel a fatigue, or if they have too much and they don't get used then they are just unused packets of energy that are in your body.

Importance of the Three Macronutrients

Macronutrients; definition: "Nutrients needed by organisms in relatively large quantities." The opposite definitions would be Micronutrients; definition: "Nutrients needed throughout life in small quantities." For Macronutrients, there are 3 types known as, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The three of these macronutrients play an important role in the daily life of an average teenager, to a diabetic teen, and also, it's very important in the daily diet of an athletic teenager.

Carbohydrates, one of the three macronutrients. Out of all of the three, this specific nutrient is important in providing fuel the body, as well as maintaining/ increasing the glycogen in the body which is important for endurance. According to faqs.org, "carbohydrates are the body's main energy source for all types of exercise." For athletic teenagers who play sports that require a lot of running, and sprinting, being able to have that stamina and endurance to last is all dependent on the amount of carbohydrates that are stored in the body. Carbohydrates are composed of sugar and starches and fiber. Simple sugars fall under the category of monosaccharides, and disaccharides. The monosaccharides are the basic unit such as fructose and glucose. As for disaccharides, it includes sugars such as sucrose, and table sugars. Then, starches and fiber fall under the category of polysaccharides which include food such as bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, just to name a few. For each macronutrient, there are the maximum limit the body can take until the excess amount serves no purpose. So, the recommended daily intake is 300 grams, and when converted to calories, it is 1200 calories.


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Protein, the second of three macronutrients, composed of amino acids; essential and non-essential. Aside from providing energy, this macronutrient is very important in "growth and repair." For athletes, these serves an important purpose because protein is crucial in growing and helping to repair the bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. For instance, in soccer, the chances of getting injured are very high due to the continuous sprinting, and also for the fact that it is a contact sport. Therefore, protein plays an important role in strengthening the muscle, helping it grow, and repairing the muscle tissue. For a strength and endurance athlete, the caloric intake is based on a lot of things. Not only for protein, but for carbohydrates, and fats as well. But, the range is from 40 (160calories) - 70 (280calories) grams. Great sources of protein come from milk, fish, poultry, lean red meats, eggs, nuts, beans, just to name a few.




Protein, last of the three macronutrient composed of glycerols and fatty acids. This macronutrient is especially important in protecting the vital organs, supports strong bones, vision, brain, heart, just to give a few facts about the benefits of fats. However, there are a variety of fats, some good and some bad. There are saturated fats, monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats. The bad fats include saturated fats which clog arteries, and raise bad cholesterol levels. The remaining fats are the good fats. Good, healthy sources of fat can be found in coconuts, almonds, beef, salmon, avocados, just to name a few. And, just like the other 2 macronutrients, fats as well have a recommended daily amount. The recommended amount for fats is 65 grams, which is converted into 260 calories.




Links:

http://lowfatcooking.about.com/od/lowfatbasics/a/goodfatsbadfats.htm

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09362.html

http://www.freefitnesstips.co.uk/the-3-macronutrients-explained.html

Choosing Food to Fit your Diet (What to Eat?/ What Not to Eat?)

            Everybody is different and we all know what makes us perform well. Choosing food to fit your diet depends entirely on what you prefer. But there are basic needs that everybody needs daily and that would be everything on the food pyramid. But as an athletic teenager you need to consume a reasonable amount of carbohydrates, not too much or not too little, because this macronutrient is the one that will fuel you muscles during your workout. You want to consume 3-5 grams of carbohydrates to every pound of body weight, but if you were to consume a lot of carbohydrates and you didn't use them, they would turn into sugars.  Americans lack the amount of fiber that we should consume; fiber is a carbohydrate that helps to slow the digestive system so then we know what the feeling of full is, so then we don't over eat. Fiber also helps to slow the absorption of sugar into the blood stream so then the sugar level in the bloodstream is equal and we don't get those sugar rushes.

            Even though carbohydrates plays a big role when we are active, we also need to get all the other nutrients that we need, and those would be found in the other groups on the food pyramid. The thickest part on the pyramid is what we should eat the most of and the skinnier the line gets the less amount of that food you should eat. When we are deciding on what to eat we want to make sure that we have all to most of the good groups on our plates. We want our plate to be as colorful as possible and not plain neutral colors. Because if it has neutral colors, that means that you are not supplying most of the food groups in that serving.

            We want our eating habits to be based on what we know is healthy and what we know is unhealthy. In order to know if our diet is balanced, we should ask ourselves, are we including carbohydrates? Protein? Fruits? Vegetables? Healthy fat? We want our diet to be as healthy as we can, because as athletes we don't need a lot of sugar to keep us going, that is what the carbohydrates are for, or you can substitute the refined sugar for fruits. Fruits can help reduce our cravings for sugar, and vegetables contain a lot of vitamins and minerals. (note when cooking vegetables, we want to keep them as close to fresh as possible, steam them, but don't over steam them). We often think of red meat as the kind of meat that we need to eat, but there are lean meats out there that contain less amount of fat, and it is a wiser choice, it is good to have red meat once in a while but we don't need to eat it every day. And we can substitute red meat in for chicken, pork, turkey, or fish for one of the days. Salt-water fish contain a high source of omega-3 that we lack as well. We should also stay away from the processed meats, they are often contain a high source of sodium and junk stuff that an athlete wouldn't' want in their body.  Dairy products contain a high source of calcium, that help keep our bones strong, if we happen to break a bone and have to sit out for a while, at least we would know that we would have a fast recovery if we ate dairy every day.

            When you are snacking, make a note to yourself that we don't want to eat a lot of the calories in a snack, because those calories are more useful during a meal. We want to eat the whole foods like fruits and vegetables, not much of the chips and cookies. We can eat chips sparingly but not every single day, they contain a high amount of cholesterol. Another thing that can contribute to snacking is skipping meals and every meal is important, just like how every play in a game is important. Skipping a meal can cause snacking later in the day, because we are asking our body for more energy because we can't function. But if we were to have breakfast, we could last through the morning because we have the energy from breakfast to function. Staying hydrated can prevent us from snacking.

            Every person is different, but we all have the same expectations that we need to meet daily in order to keep a well balanced diet. As athletes we do sacrifice more than an average teenager, because we need to keep our muscles strong, and keep our bodies feeling good.

Three Day Meal Plan

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When you are planning out a meal, MAKE SURE THAT IT IS A BALANCED MEAL.