That's it! No more junk food! .. Now what do I eat?

I'm not convinced that your once a week fast food habit is to blame for your "horrible" meet results. Maybe our resident speedster/fast food connoisseur, can comment about this. Here I am!! Fast Food makes for Fast Swimming!! I eat fast food, slow food, Mexican, Chinese, taco truck food, home food, free food, whatever food. It doesn't matter what you eat, especially if you're training A LOT! Your body just needs food. In college, I ate with my roommate and his buddy a lot. He was a starting offensive lineman, and we ate just about the same amount of calories. He stayed about 260 or so, and I stayed around 185. Currently, I just eat what I can, and whatever is easiest. That usually comes to fast food, or whatever is left after feeding the kids if I make a home cooked meal (like mac 'n cheese) :applaud:. I'm a soda junkie...hardcore!! Ask my dentist...I'm the reason he stays in business. I know I could really cut back on my crappy food and soda, and probably lose 10-15 pounds, but would that make me happy? Probably not. I'm currently about 10-12 pounds over my college weight at age 34, so I'm happy with that. Moral of the story...just eat and be happy. And then swim fast and have fun!!! :applaud:

The last meet recorded you didn't even swim the 200 fr or 500 fr, or did you just neglect to record the times because you thought they were so horrible? In general it looks like your 500 time has been coming down steadily. I have some coments, but I am not a coach, just a guy who likes to swim and think about swimming. A good coach should be able to advise you on training. My comment is that I wonder if 6 swims per week is a little light for a HS swimmer, especially if you swim the 200 and 500. My recollection from the stone age is that we did 10. We did very little with weights though, mostly just pre-season weight sessions. Would you be better served by more swims and fewer weights/xtra? You state that your big meet is in May. You do have a few more weeks to really push hard before taper I would think. I urge you to seek good coaching on this. If you don't have a coach, (or even if you do) you can get good info from ande's SFF and from querying him. The last meet which I did not log yet because I don't know the exact time I went a 6:07 in my 500 and a 2:10 in my 200. Last time I swam those I went a 6:02 and a 2:09 and I didn't even feel it! Yesterday I was really going for it, hoping for something around 5:49 and 2:04 but it just didn't happen. The wieghts/xtra are just is just part of my weights class and sports/fitness class, so those won't be going away till taper. I could add in one more swim in my schedule, but it's early early saturday morning in a 15 meter pool which just gives me no motivation what so ever :afraid:. I could double up on fridays though I might have to check that out. So maybe 7 swims max correction: I work out 13 times a week (5 times swimming, 4 times weight lifting, 4 times xtra) Jeeze I'm bad at math and I wanna be an engineer?? XD

Whoops, I misread this and thought you wanted to lose weight. Deleted my earlier comment. Anyway: no. There's a reason Michael Phelps' diet looks "bad"; it's because people who train with a large amount of volume simply need to eat a large amount of food. That's all. Amount of food. You're probably not going to have deficiency in any nutrients, especially if you are smart enough to eat fruits and vegetables regularly. I know what I'm saying is not going to be popular, but you're asking for a cluster**** of ignorance with nutrition questions on a masters swimming forum.

My motto is to make fresh fruit and veggies your friends and eat as much of them as you can. Try to cut out as much sugar(and sugary drinks) from your diet and that will already improve your diet by 1000%:D The rest can be whatever makes you full. Eat more natural food and less processed in general. Example: natural = apple, unnatural = Twinkie

I'm not convinced that your once a week fast food habit is to blame for your "horrible" meet results. Maybe our resident speedster/fast food connoisseur, can comment about this.

Not horrible, off by 0.5s/100 in the 200 and 1s/100 in the 500. Use it as motivation to train smarter/harder, but don't freak out about it. It's not a crisis. It's something to contemplate. One idea is to work on turns in that 15m pool, that's probably more useful than running 5k. Still, I'm just trying to throw ideas out there and encourage you to figure out what makes the most sense. Don't just because I said so, get some real expert advise. a worthy occupation. Are you off to university in the fall, or another year at HS? Yesterday was definitely a wake up call. lol lost the 500 to a swimmer from our rival school by less than a second and being my last year I will take an extra look into more swimming opportunities. My swim coach did say the turns were killing me so maybe the 15 meter pool will be worth it. Since it is my last year in HS I want to give it my all, hence the little freakout over my add. I will attend a university next year but sadly they don't have an NCAA team. Who knows maybe I'll join a Colorado Springs area Masters team in the near future? :D

Here I am!! Fast Food makes for Fast Swimming!! I eat fast food, slow food, Mexican, Chinese, taco truck food, home food, free food, whatever food. It doesn't matter what you eat, especially if you're training A LOT! Your body just needs food. In college, I ate with my roommate and his buddy a lot. He was a starting offensive lineman, and we ate just about the same amount of calories. He stayed about 260 or so, and I stayed around 185. Currently, I just eat what I can, and whatever is easiest. That usually comes to fast food, or whatever is left after feeding the kids if I make a home cooked meal (like mac 'n cheese) :applaud:. I'm a soda junkie...hardcore!! Ask my dentist...I'm the reason he stays in business. I know I could really cut back on my crappy food and soda, and probably lose 10-15 pounds, but would that make me happy? Probably not. I'm currently about 10-12 pounds over my college weight at age 34, so I'm happy with that. Moral of the story...just eat and be happy. And then swim fast and have fun!!! :applaud: Exactly how my diet is now :D except for the soda part, can't do that. I do like that story though, we'll talk again if I have another drastic add of 5 seconds haha

So far what I have seen is that you are probably training too much, equating into being tired at your meets instead of rested and ready. Don't worry about food, your body will tell you what it needs. Soda and anything carbonated will rob your body of energy, if you only lose those things, you are miles ahead. Train specifically for your races now. Being so close to May, I would only say to stop weights and outside sports until your big meet, taper for at least 3 weeks with a plan and you will be fine. Lots of rest and lots of visualization (yes, it works) of your big race will go a long way to fulfill your goals. Good luck!

So far what I have seen is that you are probably training too much, equating into being tired at your meets instead of rested and ready. Don't worry about food, your body will tell you what it needs. Soda and anything carbonated will rob your body of energy, if you only lose those things, you are miles ahead. Train specifically for your races now. Being so close to May, I would only say to stop weights and outside sports until your big meet, taper for at least 3 weeks with a plan and you will be fine. Lots of rest and lots of visualization (yes, it works) of your big race will go a long way to fulfill your goals. Good luck! That's what happens when you post tired, great advice but a little late :)

Sounds to me like you may be tensing up and not going out with smooth and easy speed. Sometimes you just have a bad swim. Don't let that get into your head so much. Do work on your turns. Do focus on technique. Relax and make sure you are swimming efficiently and not spinning your wheels (especially at the beginning of a 500). With some rest you sound like you are on your way to a good swim at the end of the season. :)