Eat Like It's Your Job
by Marie Spano, MS, RD, FISSN, CSCS

Aside from being purely entertained while watching the Olympics, I learned something: People are equally fascinated with the quality and quantity of food Michael Phelps eats everyday, as they are with his historic number of gold medals.

One story quoted Phelps saying: "Eat, sleep and swim, that's all I can do." It's clear from his interviews that Phelps was on a mission and knew what he had to do to reach his goal.

Could he have chosen better foods? Sure! But eating sugary and high fat foods made meeting his caloric needs a whole lot easier. Is he keenly aware of the fact that he must consume large quantities of food throughout the day to meet his energy needs? You bet!

Phelps diet reminds me of another great swimmer from years past — Janet Evans, who retired in 1996. A 1988 Sports Illustrated article depicted the typical diet of this 5'5 1/2" swimmer. Large quantities of fried eggs, hash browns, griddle cakes and cinnamon buns were frequent breakfast choices.

Though the food choices of both athletes may astound Olympic fans (especially those who've eliminated these foods to lower heart disease risk and for weight loss), there's one critical thing both athletes did right: They ate enough to meet their energy needs.

That's no easy task when you require over 7,000 calories per day. Like Phelps said, eating is literally part of his job.

Most Figure competitors don't need an education on why cinnamon buns won't give you abs of steel unless you swim for five hours a day; but many women do forget just how much food they must eat in order to meet their caloric needs — along with their goals.

If you follow a schedule, eating the same foods over and over and on time, you're much more likely to consistently eat the same total amount of calories daily (though varying your diet is beneficial in its own right, for a variety of different nutrients). You do still need to be cognizant of the quantity of food you're consuming, so here's a quick checklist to get you thinking about the quantity and quality of the foods you're eating:

• Do you get sick often?
• Do you feel tired frequently, or ever feel like you could take a nap in the middle of the day even after 8-10 hours of sleep?
• Do you get spaced out sometimes and feel like your brain is foggy?
• Are you progressing well with your workouts, or are you lifting the same reps/sets and weight you did months ago?
• Do you have the energy to do other activities of daily living like washing your car, painting, garden work etc.?
• Are you unusually short tempered or grouchy (skip this one if you're nearing competition!)
• Do you still get your period? (Note: Some birth control pills such as loestrin Fe or its generic microgestin Fe may make cause you to lose your period independently of any other factors.)
• Have you noticed major changes in your sleeping patterns?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider your diet and whether or not you're meeting your caloric needs. If you work out hard and eat the same amount of calories as a 60 year-old woman on Weight Watchers, you aren't eating enough, and it's time to slowly increase your food intake.

Our bodies are very adaptable. If, for instance, you take in 1500 calories for years on end, I'm betting your body has adapted to this intake. But the great thing is, you can inch up your daily calorie intake, and your body will adapt to that without putting on extra layers of fat (if you do it right and without the help of cinnamon buns).

So take a page out of Phelp's and Evan's playbook by ensuring that you're eating enough of each macronutrient, coming from a variety of food sources. And while it's great to get most of your nutrition from high-quality whole foods, it doesn't hurt to supplement if that'll help you reach your daily requirements.

A former Olympic track star I know resorted to taking one tablespoon of straight canola or olive oil twice daily to ensure that she was meeting her essential fatty acid needs (she also ate fatty fish a few times a week, the only other source of fat in her diet). Her diet was so clean and low in fat that she knew by doing this combined with her fatty fish intake, she could rest assured that she was obtaining the fatty acids she needed.

So how do you figure out whether you're meeting your caloric needs? First, keep a detailed record for a few days and calculate your total macronutrient and calorie intake.

Next, have your resting metabolic rate calculated. Some high performance training centers and universities have the equipment (BodyGem or MedGem) to do this and they typically charge anywhere from $35 to $80.

Now add your activity factor to your resting metabolic rate — this is where a well versed trainer/exercise physiologist can help — and compare that number to the totals from your food journal.

I remember eating massive quantities of pretty clean foods as a collegiate cross-country runner. My teammate Heather and I would finish off a typical dinner of tuna, brown rice, salad and a bowl of fruit with two bowls of raisin bran cereal and skim milk.

Amazingly enough, as a dietitian, I can now look back at my training load and food intake and I realize that I didn't even come close to meeting my protein and caloric needs! I truly believe that it was nothing but sheer determination that got me through my training and coursework (though I admit that I'd fall asleep in those huge lecture classes).

Consuming enough total calories and macronutrients will make a huge difference in your daily life and help determine whether or not you'll meet your training goals, so take a close look at where you are now compared to where you were a year ago, answer the questions above, and evaluate your dietary intake.

Consider these steps as input to your personal GPS. Remember, only after we develop a good sense of where we've been and critically examine the roads that lie ahead can we meet our destination.

© 1998 — 2008 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.