Imagine being able to eat as much food as you want and not being able to gain any weight. Sounds good to everyone, except athletes. This is an athlete’s biggest nightmare, especially college athletes trying to get to the next level. Having to force oneself to eat 4,000 extra calories daily is exhausting. Not extremely helpful for trying to be a college offensive lineman playing against grown men who weigh over 300 pounds. As part of weight management, the food you eat plays a huge role. College athletes or any athlete in general must start to understand about eating right. It is much easier once they can create meals for themselves. Once they can add specific foods to achieve their target body, it will allow them to feel energized and allow their body to properly recover to push their athletic ability in order to perform at an elite level. The struggle of weight management is one of the least talked about parts of being an athlete because there are so many different steps in the process that include understanding nutrition, load management, and recovery.

Understanding food and what the labels mean is the first part any athlete should consider doing when trying to control their weight. Eating the right number of calories per day is the most important part of the weight management process. Calories are the amount of energy in an item of food or drink. Everything put into the body is either burned off into energy or stored as fat in the body. Coach Brennen Fleming, the head strength and conditioning coach at Saint Anselm College, provided me with key details about the correlation between nutrition and the body. He informed me, “Macro wise, high protein and keeping carbs up will help build muscle and keep your energy up. Fats are important as well, so you want to make sure you’re keeping fats at a moderate level.”  Looking deeper into food, there are good foods and bad foods, meaning that not everything put into the body is helpful… Trying to track all these daily can seem difficult, but the technology in the world today allows one to do this with ease… 

Another step to learning about nutrition is that everyone’s body is vastly different. The average person consumes around 2,500 calories. In just 30 minutes of walking at 4 mph, a person who is 185 pounds will burn off 222 calories. However, this is completely different for athletes. My own weight goal is to gain almost 20 pounds by next fall. This is the deal for many college athletes to be able to compete at such a high level of competition. Due to this weight goal, I am placed on the weight gain program by my coaches. I am expected to send pictures of every meal I eat, along with snacks and shakes. This way I am showing them that I am on top of my diet… I am given double of everything at team meals and protein scoops after our workouts. I eat around 7,500 calories a day to achieve my weight goal. Some days are easier than others, but the hard days are extremely difficult. Many times, I am left eating a full meal even though I am not the slightest bit hungry. This diet is called a lean bulk, which is a diet that consists of strictly healthy foods, but the calories exceed the amount needed to maintain my current weight. In order to make it easier for myself, I usually eat the same meals every day rather than learn from others how to cook recipes; however, I need to start watching tutorials and switching up my meals as I learn more about what is best for me. A cheat meal at Chipotle or Chick-Fil-A every now and then helps me stay consistent. My diet consists of around 280 grams of protein daily, which is achieved by drinking three protein shakes a day on top of the food I eat. This allows my muscles to recover for the next workout or practice. This could be completely different for someone else, such as athletes who play wide receiver in football, they must be quick and agile to get open and get past defenders trying to tackle them. I know many receivers on my team who are vegans, some who do not eat red meat, and some that eat in a surplus due to being underweight. It is solely based on their goal set by themselves or the coaches. Once an athlete can understand their own body, they can succeed much more than they would just eating like the average person. 

An athlete can work out every day of the week and eat loads of food; however, if they fail to aid their body in the recovery process, they will hurt themselves. The recovery process is extremely misunderstood by many athletes because they believe they are out-working others by getting multiple workouts in a day while others are getting only one per day. The truth behind this is that the body needs a break. Muscle fibers need to rebuild. While working out, the body’s muscles are micro tearing to get bigger and stronger. These microtears need nutrition, sleep, and hydration to recover. Coach Brennen Fleming says, “You make gains in the recovery process, not the lift itself. If not recovering properly, your gains will suffer.” 

Weight management will forever be around, no matter what kind of technology comes out. With the world progressing into increasingly more processed foods, due to the fact they are cheaper, the population will continue to purchase them. In contrast to healthy foods, these processed foods are extremely affordable to the average consumer. On the other hand, healthy foods are becoming less affordable… Not everyone in the world has the privilege to go and shop at a whole food store to buy expensive groceries. This translates into athletes especially because they must eat more food, which costs more money for them. Most athletes come from struggling families because they are trying to make it to the highest level to take care of their families. Despite the inflation in the world today and how money is worth less than it used to be ten years ago, once an athlete can defeat their battle with weight management, they will be able to dominate in their respective sport.