Building Your Nutrition Foundation

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that every athlete had to start from the beginning, and learn his or her sport from the bottom up. There is a pretty good chance that Lance Armstrong struggled to conquer his training wheels before he took over the world of competitive road cycling. At the heart of every sport are critical skill foundations that are absolutely essential components for being a great athlete.

The same notion rings true for athletes when it comes to nutrition. A solid foundation of healthy eating needs to be the base on which more technical sport nutrition strategies can be built.  That solid foundation comes from yes, you guessed it, Canada’s Food Guide. Don’t roll your eyes or stop reading. If I could get a celebrity or a Hollywood trainer to endorse the rainbow, so people would take the guide more seriously, trust me, I would.

Analyze Yourself

The interesting part is, about 50-70% of the athletes that I work with in my practice (from developmental, National and professionals levels) often are not meeting their basic guidelines from the food guide. In my mind, this means, from a nutrition perspective, they are still eating with the “training wheels on”.

So, I challenge you to take a look at the food guide and track your intake for about 3-5 days, to see if you are meeting your baseline requirements.

You can obtain a copy of the food guide here [Health Canada]

Check out your daily requirements. You can even set up a free private profile and use an online analysis tool to analyze your intake here [Eat Tracker]. It is true that generally, athletes need more than these guidelines. Refer to the chart below for that reference. Identify your areas of improvement and you will be moving closer to achieving your own personal best.