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Thoughts on Nutrition by Derek Perera Everyone I am sure, has heard the saying “what you put in. is what you get out”. It’s just as simple as that when it comes to eating and nutrition for aspiring athletes. Good nutrition and eating habits for cricketers is just as important as going to the gym or working on your sprinting to improve running between the wickets, in fact it is all inter-related. When I was in Australia, I had a good friend (teammate) who used to go to the gym habitually. He trained hard and performed well enough to be playing a decent level of cricket. However, his eating habits were poor. When I say poor, I am referring to fast food and take outs. In fact, if you look at it, it’s pretty funny to say “poor” because eating out all the time is pretty darn expensive! Anyways, he didn’t have good, “performance supporting” eating habits. One day after consulting with the team trainer, he decided to cut out all the ‘junk food’ and take outs and pay more attention to healthy, “performance enhancing” nutrition. Now although he was in visibly good shape to begin with, the change in his daily eating helped him mounds. He said firstly, he felt more energy. He also noticed that he was getting more results in the gym. He was starting to see a lot more muscle than he had ever seen before. Also, the discipline in taking control of what went in to his body made him stronger mentally. My advice to younger players coming up, is to get into good healthy eating habits now. You will see the difference. It doesn’t mean restricting yourself completely or starving yourself. Definitely not. Instead choose healthier snack choices. Cut out the chips, sweets, high sugar, high salt snacks and replace them with healthier choices. Your performance will show. Even then, why not just give yourself the advantage? I wish I had more knowledge and guidance available to me when I was growing up, when it came to nutrition and sports performance. You may have noticed that I have spoken about “performance supporting” and “performance enhancing” eating habits. Well I am definitely not referring to anything illegal or banned substances. Performance enhancing eating as I refer to it, is eating the foods and liquids that will help you to increase and support your physical and mental performance. Foods high in sugar and fat, low in protein and vitamins are definitely not performance enhancing. They WILL make you slow, lazy, tired and will make you lose concentration and the ability to think clearly. If you want to be on top of your game and/or look and feel great, think of your body as a Ferrari (even though it might look like a VW Beetle right now). You can’t put regular gas in a Ferrari, only the cleanest, high grade gas. Now don’t get the wrong message, good healthy eating habits is not necessarily more expensive, but more selective.
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