If you want to get as fit as an Olympic athlete you need to dedicate your entire life to training in your sport. You can also eat a whole lot of meat and nuts for breakfast. And when we say meat, we mean real meat—the kind you can’t get in basic grocery stores.
Screw the half a grapefruit strategy. A week-long breakfast schedule was posted on Strength Sensei and it details what a professional strength coach would consider to be a healthy breakfast. It includes one or two Buffalo meat patties on one day with a handful of macadamia nuts, a large venison steak and cashews on another, and eight or ten gluten-free chicken sausages on another.
That is so much meat you might just become pure protein.
But there is a reasoning behind this regiment. It was put together by Charles R. Poliquin, who is a strength coach that has trained professional and Olympic athletes, including Adam Nelson, who has the most medals in the history of the shot put event, according to Bodybuilding.com.
According to Poliquin, this is for “optimal leanness, energy and sustained mental focus” when it comes to training. A breakfast that starts off your day with foods that bring attention to these goals are a great idea for hardcore athletes. He writes,
“The meat and nuts breakfast raises both dopamine and acetyl-choline, the two most important neurotransmitters for focus and drive.
The meat allows for a slow and steady rise in blood sugar. The nuts provide a great source of healthy smart fats that allows the blood sugar to remain stable for an extended period of time.”
After breakfast, he then recommends a teaspoon of fish oil to reduce inflammation in the body and mitigate the insulin response.
Without access to these meats, he also suggests eggs and fish, such as lox, to be a part of the morning diet. Eggs are one of his favorite foods, as detailed ina previous post, where he says they prevent heart disease and improve insulin sensitivity (a resistance to insulin can cause an increase in blood sugar).
It makes sense. In order to train you need to burn a lot of energy. Meat and nuts provide protein but are also high in calories, among the reasons Poliquin listed above.
Poliquin also has suggestions for people who are allergic to nuts, which includes low glycemic and low fructose fruits such as avocado, blackberries, apricots, and… those grapefruits.
Seriously, we’re never going to escape them.
However, if you’re not looking to become Michael Phelps, you probably want to stick with a breakfast that has a balance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Athletes’ breakfasts are also high in calories, giving them tons of energy to train, so that’s also something to take into account if you plan on restructuring your diet.
Another thing to note: We at Gizmodo (mostly me) are not to be trusted when it comes to food. I’ll basically tell you to eat pizza and burritos until you feel happy, but I’m also not in the best shape myself. Please consult the experts.
[Source: Gizmodo]
