I have a 17-year-old son who is a professional swimmer.
I’m wondering, does he need to follow a particular diet or can he eat anything?
In this photo from Michael Phelps’ Instagram it looks like his diet isn’t too restrictive.
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Former Member
Yep, 5K calories a day seems like a restricted diet. Anyone athlete over 200 lbs probably consumes almost twice that just to maintain weight.
...I had a few buddies (four brothers) who all swam on our AAU team. (For the whipper snappers, that's the medieval term for organized swim club) lol ...anyway their house had a commercial meat locker in the pantry just to keep them fed.
But as Elaine said...once the swimming , or whatever stops, so should the calorie intake. If you look at any athlete after their career is over, they blow up like balloons. Basketball players who were once long and lean can get huuuge. I ran into the infamous Shaq at our local grocery store a few summers ago, and his afternoon "snack" was two pounds of deli ham, and a jumbo size bottle of root beer!
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Former Member
Yep, 5K calories a day seems like a restricted diet. Anyone athlete over 200 lbs probably consumes almost twice that just to maintain weight.
...I had a few buddies (four brothers) who all swam on our AAU team. (For the whipper snappers, that's the medieval term for organized swim club) lol ...anyway their house had a commercial meat locker in the pantry just to keep them fed.
But as Elaine said...once the swimming , or whatever stops, so should the calorie intake. If you look at any athlete after their career is over, they blow up like balloons. Basketball players who were once long and lean can get huuuge. I ran into the infamous Shaq at our local grocery store a few summers ago, and his afternoon "snack" was two pounds of deli ham, and a jumbo size bottle of root beer!
