Don't forget to hydrate!

During high school my choices of eating were very influenced by sports. During the Spring I ran Track, and I always had to be aware of what I was putting in my body. Our team signed a contract not allowing us to drink alcohol for the season. There were also common unspoken rules- two nights before a track meet- carbohydrate load for dinner; drink the amount of at least two nalgenes bottles of water a day, don’t drink coffee or soda, and obviously don’t eat foods high in fat or saturated fat whenever could be avoided. I really stuck by these rules, and after a while they became a routine. I mentally felt so much better running when I knew I had eaten healthy the night before. Some highly successful athletes on my team didn’t follow such rules. The best male sprinter on my team would often chow down a McDonald's big Mac the day of a meet. This made me look at food intake as having a mental aspect to how it affects an athlete. Of course drinking the right amount of water and staying away from unhealthy foods is important, but there is no one way of eating that worked for each individual athlete.

Every year during a middle season tournament in Spokane, the team would always eat at the Spaghetti house, but not without some ground rules: no ordering any alfredo, buttery, or cheesy anything! This was non-negotiable seeing as the coaches were paying for our meal. I always craved alfredo sauce so much on those spaghetti nights: I wanted to food that wasn’t an option. The final hurrah of track ended at our annual Mexican Restaurant dinner with parents at our state meet. We would always arrive at the restaurant still in our sweaty uniforms and fill ourselves full of salsa, enchiladas, and burritos. I remember grossly overstuffed walking back to the bus. We were celebrating by eating foods that we had avoided all season, and it felt great. The food tasted so good to me because it had been such an untouchable during the track season, and I could relax and think about food as celebration and congratulations- not as a diet or a regimen. I felt that I deserved to eat the food.

It was and has been really important for the food I eat to be in accord with my mentality. When I am focusing really hard on accomplishing a goal whether this be physical or not- it is always important eat healthy and hold back on foods that are celebratory. During track the food I ate was such an easy thing to control, when other things were so out of my control- like how the weather would be or how I was going to perform at a meet. Its interesting for me to think about the Track contract I signed and the dinners that we ate- always involved resisting or enjoying food and drink. This is why eating unhealthy food or consuming unhealthy drinks was so special- it was done when my mental attitude was in check; in my case I was trying to relax and celebrate after working hard. I have no gone back to the total “track diet” but it has served as an important experience for me regarding how the harmony of positive mental state and healthy food.

Academic Journal:
Harris, Marvin, and Eric B. Ross. Food and evolution : toward a theory of human food habits. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.