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Evgenia Medvedeva: a little bit of chocolate and just before training
Two-time Olympic silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva, a participant in the Ice Age show, said on her Instagram that the ideal morning for her is to wake up at any time, turn on your favorite music and eat delicious cereal for breakfast. But in the competition mode, everything was much tougher.
– Before the World Cup, I always had tea for breakfast. And definitely carbs. Buckwheat, for example. At lunch, there are only a couple of hours between workouts. Cutlets, soup. There was basically no dinner: it was either a salad or a fruit. And before the Olympics … I won’t even tell [I practically didn’t eat anything]. Before training, of course, there were chocolates. This is sacred. I follow diets from time to time, ”said Evgenia on the YouTube show Laysan Utyasheva.
When the coronavirus pandemic began, Evgenia lived in Canada and trained at home.
According to the figure skater, who has always admired her petite figure, the secret is that she ate three meals a day, did not eat after 18, and excluded sweets and pastries. Is that a little milk chocolate and a couple of slices of marmalade.
Ronaldo: cod on holidays and cyclical sleep
When Cristiano Ronaldo moved to Juventus in the summer, Italian doctors were shocked: there was no excess fat in the body of the famous football player. Without exaggeration – not a gram! To understand this, athletes are given certain tests, measuring body composition, and it turned out that Krish has a body fat of only 7%! (usually footballers have this figure of 10-11%), and muscles make up 50% of all Ronaldo! And of course, everyone was wondering what the 33-year-old Portuguese eats to stay in such amazing shape.
It turned out that Cristiano eats 6 times a day, and does not consume sugar and alcohol at all. But his diet is full of vegetables and seafood. And most of it is grilled. And the standard menu for the day at Ronaldo looks quite simple:
| Breakfast | juice, eggs (but only proteins!), cereal |
| Dinner | whole wheat pasta, green vegetables, baked potatoes, chicken fillet |
| Afternoon snack | tuna roll with fruit juice/lemon juice |
| Dinner | chicken breast or turkey with rice, beans, fruit |
And Cristiano Ronaldo loves cod, and its special kind is bacalao. It is very salty, and not to say that it is completely healthy, and it has a lot of calories. So Krish cannot afford to eat such fish too often, he generally has a rule – no more than 3000 kcal per day! The interval between meals is from 2 to 4 hours. In addition, the famous football player drinks a lot of water during the day, trains a lot in the gym, takes hot and ice baths, and uses cyclic sleep for relaxation – he goes to bed several times a day. Moreover, he sleeps only on clean linen, on a mattress 10 centimeters thick at an air temperature in the room of 16-18 degrees.
Where does Yulia Efimova get such a figure from?
But sometimes the main rule in a sports diet is no rules! Amazingly, water queen Yulia Efimova doesn’t seem to have a rigid diet! She herself admits that she loves sweets, that she can even commit a “crime” against her luxurious figure – eat a burger, or even – oh horror! – crisps. But of course, then you have to pay for everything in the pool with training.
From useful, like a real water queen, Yulia loves seafood, eating vegetables and fruits, chicken, and loves avocados. And pizza and pasta are generally frequent items in the diets of many athletes.
How did Khabib lose weight?
Mixed martial arts fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, at the peak of his sports career, went through a real torture of hunger before each fight. With a height of 1,72 m, in order to fit into his category, he had to weigh no more than 70,3 kg. But in between fights, Khabib could gain 10-15 extra pounds. And most of them are not fat, but muscle mass. And I had, as the fighters say, “to drive weight.”
A month before the fight, Khabib sat on a strict sports diet developed by experts. The basis is still the same – chicken breast, vegetables, some fruits, grapes, sometimes nuts, egg whites … A week before the control weigh-in, the fighter began to drink a lot of water – from 8 to 10 liters a day – and a day before getting on the scales , stopped. “The body is already used to processing such a large amount of water, and it draws everything it can out of the body,” said the undefeated fighter of the mixed style. But sometimes this method does not help, and then you have to sit for hours in the sauna – but this is very harmful for the heart.
Diet in sports is not always about staying slim. In some types, on the contrary, it is more important to gain mass. American strongman Brian Shaw, four-time winner of the title “The Strongest Man on the Planet” revealed the secrets of his diet. And it turned out that in order to pull car tires, weighing 520 kg, and reap a barbell of 238 kg, Show must consume 12 thousand kilocalories per day. For reference: in order not to get fat, it would be good for an ordinary man not to sort out more than 2,5 thousand kcal.
So what does Brian Shaw’s 12000 calories look like? His day is divided into 7 meals.
| Breakfast | 8 eggs, cereal, and a spoonful of peanut butter |
| Lunch | a couple of cereal bars, milkshake, peanut butter |
| Dinner | meat with pasta and tomato paste. A single serving of a meat dish is approximately 500 g |
| Afternoon snack | almond milk protein shake, frozen berries |
| Afternoon snack | broccoli, boiled rice, turkey |
| Dinner | asparagus, potatoes, meat |
| Second Supper | protein shake and two slices of cheesecake |
Can you imagine how much you need to train so that this abyss of food is burned in the stomach, and the guy does not turn into a huge ball? However, “the strongest man on the planet” is already rather big: with a height of 203 cm, he weighs 197 kg.
But how many athletes, so many techniques. For example, the heaviest sumo wrestler in the world, Anatoly Mikhakhanov, whose weight is 293 kilograms, admitted that two meals a day are enough for him.
“Contrary to myths, we eat twice a day: lunch and dinner are obligatory,” Anatoly told KP. – As for the diet, it is quite common for a Japanese: a lot of rice, vegetables, fish, meat, sashimi. I really miss my favorite homemade buuzes (dishes from the athlete’s native Buryatia – ed.), there’s nothing better than them anyway!
You just need to understand that a sumo wrestler eats at least 5-6 regular servings at a time. His daily diet is 20 thousand calories, 10 thousand per sitting. But in order not to keep the fighting weight and not lose weight, after each meal you need to sleep for a couple of hours.
Tips from Larionov
In sports, it is important not only to set records, but sometimes to extend your career. And here again, everyone has their own recipes. The legendary Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon made unprecedented sacrifices. Being a great lover (and by the way also a manufacturer) of wine, he was forced to limit his alcohol consumption from 10 glasses a week to just two.
And the famous hockey player Igor Larionov, who played until the age of 43, has his own advice.
“The main thing in an athlete’s diet is vegetables,” he said. – When I was still competing, after training I poured myself a glass of clean water, took out carrots and greens. So I replenished vitamins and minerals. And only after that he ate chicken, pasta, fish or meat. And I always ate small meals. When I played, at 9 I had breakfast, and at 4-5 I had lunch with dinner, and that was it.
Diet from Irina Viner
In gymnastics, every extra kilogram equates to disaster. Therefore, gymnasts adhere to a certain diet and know how to quickly get in shape. Irina Viner, President of the All-Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, has developed her own method for quick weight loss in three days for gymnasts. This diet consists of two components – buckwheat and green tea. For breakfast – buckwheat, previously poured with boiling water and infused for 2 hours. During the day – only green tea, 2-3 liters. After 18 hours – no food, no liquid. On such a diet, you can lose up to 5 kilograms in three days.
So, by and large, there is no general secret. Yes, almost all athletes value vegetables, eat whole grain pasta, make egg white omelettes, try to drink plenty of water, and prefer seafood and chicken to meat. They can even break the regime at times and eat something harmful. But still do not abuse calories. Well, unless, of course, they are not going to become sumo wrestlers.
What cheered up Djokovic
The first racket of the world, Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic refused meat and gluten. The reason for this was health problems. After the examination, it turned out that Djokovic’s body does not tolerate foods containing gluten, milk and tomatoes. For a year on a gluten-free diet, the tennis player not only lost more than five kilograms, but also felt much more cheerful. This immediately affected the results – a victory in 43 matches in a row, 10 titles, including Wimbledon and the US Open.
“I avoid high insulin levels, which means giving up not only wheat, but also sugar and sugary foods – chocolate, carbonated drinks,” says Djokovic. – Osahara, I will say something important, especially for people who lead an active lifestyle and athletes. I use a specific form of sugar – fructose. Natural sugar found in fruits and honey, and I carefully monitor how much fructose I eat.
The athlete admitted that during the match he would not mind eating dried fruits or a spoon or two of honey. And during dinner, he prefers grilled meat or steamed fish.
What Djokovic advises for those who want to become healthier through nutrition:
- try a gluten-free diet, even if you’re not allergic to gluten.
- Stay gluten-free for 14 days and see how you feel. On the 15th day, eat some bread and listen to your reaction, the tennis player shares.
- with lactose intolerance, refuse dairy products, and calcium, which they are rich in, for example, from broccoli and fish.
Direct speech
Yury Postrygay, rower-kayaker. Olympic champion, two-time European and world champion:
– An example of my daily diet at the training camp, where I train several times a day: 250 grams of steamed fish, a portion of chicken soup, about 150 grams of rice, vegetable salad with olive oil, about 200 grams of tuna and two slices of black bread … I have their golden rule: if you want to eat a chocolate bar, drink water (kayakers are allowed up to 150 g of sweets per day – ED.).
Alexander Maltsev, four-time world champion, six-time European champion in synchronized swimming:
– My breakfast every day consists, in this or my combination, of porridge (all kinds), scrambled eggs, pancakes and cottage cheese casserole. Be sure to have a glass of milk or tea. For lunch, there can be soups (borscht, cabbage soup, Norwegian, chicken and others), salads (vegetable, with squid and others), for the second – turkey, beef or fish with a side dish (this is mashed potatoes, pasta, buckwheat, rice, celery with carrots or potatoes). Plus compote. Dinner is about the same as for lunch, only without soup. At night I eat cottage cheese or cheesecakes, drink tea. Snacks during the day include fruits and dried fruits. After training, I always drink a protein shake.