When I'm coaching one of the things I like to do in Spring or Summer
practice is to have each of my players write down everything they eat or
drink for a week. It's a simple food diary.
I make it clear to them that they aren't going to get into trouble
and that it will only work if they're honest. I also make sure
they understand that for the purposes of this exercise it's not
important that they measure things precisely. A sample day's entry
might look like this:
Monday
8AM: Bowl of Cheerios with milk
10:15A: small bag of pretzels
12:30P: quarter pounder with cheese, large fries, large coke
3:00P: Snickers bar and a coke.
6:00P: Couple handfuls of Doritos, can of coke.
7:30P: Plate of Mom's Spanish Chicken with rice, glass of iced tea.
Couple handfuls of chocolate chip cookies.
10:00P: Could handfuls of Doritos, glass of water.
and so on. The purpose of this exercise is not to
analyze their caloric intake or their trans fat consumption. The
purpose of this exercise is to get the players to think about what
they're eating. I can't count how many times a player came to me
after doing the food diary and said "Geez Coach I never realized I ate
that much!"
After we've looked over their food diaries we can suggest some
substitutions or improvements. The hypothetical player above
should drink more water and also should consider healthier snacks.
The other thing we hope to get from this is to make them give some
thought to what they're going to eat. Maybe they really don't need
the large fries, maybe small fries will do. Maybe they might try a
Diet Coke or a fruit juice instead of coke once or twice.
This exercise isn't going to turn any of them into vegetarians and
it's overly optimistic to think they'll stop eating pizza. But if
it gets them to eat an apple instead of some chips once in a while;
drink more water and less soda, and really think about what they eat
(and how much of it) then it's been a success. And all it costs is
a little time for you to counsel them on wise eating.
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