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Active Athlete needing help


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Please help. I am doing Whole30 with my girl friend and having a good bit of trouble with my energy. I am 33 years old, six foot three inches and weigh about 195 to 200, ex college tennis player. I play tennis at least five days a week and do high intensity training at least five days a week as well. At one point during high school and college I was on a 6,000 cal diet, basically just eating as much as possible. What would you suggest with me always being hungry and searching for sources of energy? Thanks so much for your help!

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How much are you eating now?  Do you follow the high end of the template? Are you having pre and post workout meals?  Do you add fat?

Can you give us some more detail on what your current intake is like so we can help?

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I can tell you what i had yesterday. my day started at 5am and i wasn't able to eat dinner until after a tennis match around 9pm. 

1 hour HITT Workout 

Breakfast: 2 servings of sausage, spinach, tomato frittata

Lunch: 2 cups of mixed green salad, with a serving of tomatoes, a serving of mushrooms, and a serving of cucumbers. serving of turkey. an apple, coconut water. 

Snack: LaraBar

2 1/2 hour tennis match

Dinner: Egg roll in a bowl. Sausage, cabbage, carets

I normally have protein shakes, i include beef collagen, http://greatlakesgelatin.com/storefront/buy-products/hydrolysate-single-can.html, and greens. i have lots of yogurts and peanut butter. but i have cute these out.  

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Okay so that's not a lot of food... do you notice that when you're eating that it seems pretty slim?  I can tell this because of the snack... so lets talk about how you can tweak this.

Breakfast... was there any fat?  You would probably also want to add additional veggies to this meal... when they're all mixed into the fritatta it's not much per serving (assuming you're making this in a regular baking pan... I've made it before and tried to jam the world's supply of veggie in and it's still not usually enough).

Lunch... I don't see fat but assume you had salad dressing of some sort?  Greens when they're chewed down are not much, so your salad was probably a bit on the lacking side.  I don't know what a serving of turkey is... was it palm sized?

Snack... the fact you need to have a snack tells me that you're not eating enough... while you get this sorted, if you need to eat between meals, protein, fat and ideally veggies... Larabar and other bars are for emergency stuck on the tarmac, ready to eat the seat... 

You have no pre or post workouts... I assume you're working pretty hard at both the HITT and tennis... you need to put those meals in.

Dinner... still not seeing mention of fat...

Protein shakes are not recommended.  We want you to eat real food that requires chewing.  You can put that collagen in your coffee in the morning if you still want to use it, but shakes should go to the back burner until you're done Whole30.  Your body does not digest liquid food in the same manner as chewed food and it can lead to poor satiety signals, being hungry quicker etc... 

For the way you describe yourself and your activity, you're not eating nearly enough.  Take a look at the meal template (linked in my signature below or searchable using Google 'whole30 meal template') and make your meals match it to the high end and include the pre and post workout meals.  If you have a long time between two meals, eat a mini meal of protein, fat and ideally veggies.

 

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In addition to the excellent suggestions above about fat, think about your protein and carb sources.  Think of it this way:  You need to replace all, or at least most, of the nutrients you were getting with the highly concentrated sources of calories you had with the shakes, yogurt, and peanut butter.  So how about a baked sweet potato or two with some ghee on it?  Or a beef stew with carrots, onions, taters of various kinds, parsnips, etc.?  Add avocado and olives to every salad, double the chicken too.  Etc.  So yeah, more food, definitely.  Get used to chewing a lot!

ThyPeace, remembers the days of college -- swimming three hours a day and growing two inches at the same time -- and the eat-all-the-food part.  Never going to see that again, but it was fun while it lasted.

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