Key Dieting for Wrestlers and Other Athletes

I am making this post in an attempt to increase the popularity of my blogging. This, however does not indicate that I lack experience with dieting. As a wrestler whom has to maintain a certain weight class, I know a good deal about dieting. There are many different categories of dieting. If a category doesn't apply to you, feel free to skim over to the others. 
     
Category #1- Staying in Shape
The easiest way to manage your meals is to never break the rules. This is monumental if you wish to make any forward progress whatsoever. Plainly, you must have a healthy environment, meaning no junk or binge food anywhere in the house. Three "meals" a day may still apply, but not alone. You need to have balanced meals as well as small healthy snacks in between. These snacks may include: Banana chips and crisps, wasabi peas, dried fruit such as kiwi, pineapple, coconut, and peaches. Six eating sessions a day with regular excercise should do the trick, but if it fails you should make sure your workouts are burning enough calories and if your not building muscle you may only be losing tissue, not fat. This is directly resulting from lack of calorie intake. Consume enough calories, workout the right amount, and space out your meals and snacks.


Category #2- Maintaining Weight
All of the steps in the previous category are helpful here, but others are necessary as well. This step is extremely crucial to your confidence. If you work all the way down to a slimmer you and then gain it all right back, it can be quite depressing. Healthy meals need to be a constant, you can't be lax in your diet, or you'll feel its okay to break later on. Eat lots of low burning carbs such as pasta and noodles for your dinner, but protein meals and red meat is okay every once in a while. If you plan on building muscle, you should not be surprised if you gain a little weight, because muscle does in fact weigh more than fat. 


Category #3- Cutting Weight for a Weigh-in
Nutrition is still important but all meals and snacks throughout the week must be reduced. Additional salt must be added to all food in order to absorb water weight. Eat low burning carbs for lunch such as pasta and spaghetti. Lean red meats for dinner including steak and liver are a few good choices. Water weight should not be cut until the day before and the day of weigh-ins. 

Scholar-Athleticism, The Perfect Balance

If your an athlete trying to balance both your school life and your sports life in the seemingly tiny amount of time in our lives, this post is for you. I am a scholar-athlete myself and know how difficult balancing the two can prove to be, so I decided to help others who may share my struggles. The number one rule is to stay dedicated, to do both your schoolwork and exercising. Habits are hard to break, so you want to start with the right choices and everything will get steadily easier over time. If you need to wake up a bit earlier or go to bed a bit later, do so and you will be grateful. Practice is often in the evening so I would suggest working on homework upon arrival from school for at least some time. Put everything you have into practice, eventually you'll come out stronger and won't feel as drained when you need to do homework. If you don't have practice everynight, you should still work out in the time period where practice would normally fall. This moulds your habits at a much faster rate than doing otherwise. Hopefully your not overloaded with homework, but if you are you should consider waking up 20-40 minutes later. It may not seem like much, but it can be extremely helpful if you work efficiently. The smartest way to obtain your energy is by eating small but healthy meals as well as healthy snacks in between meals. These steps made my life so much easier and I hope they can do the smae for you. This was my first blog and I would like some feedback on what you guys think.