Thoughts on Diet
by Steve McGill
The purpose of this article is to provide an update on my recovery after my hospitalization in April, but also to provide some thoughts on diet — for myself but mainly for athletes — inspired by some realizations I’ve had as my own health continues to improve as I continue to travel on the road to full strength.
In last month’s issue, I wrote an article in which I discussed going to the emergency room of the local hospital because of a deep pain in my upper thigh/groin area of my left leg, and how I was told I had blood clots in the leg. On the same day, I was diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure. For much of the article I talked about my eating habits — particularly my addiction to sugar snacks — and how I had known I’d been flirting with disaster by allowing these habits to continue so far into my adulthood, especially when considering I wasn’t exercising with any consistency in the last year or two. In the article, I also discussed how my recovery was going well, mainly due to the diet my wife put me on.
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My rapid improvement over the last seven weeks or so has got me looking back at my life and wondering why it took a medical crisis to get me to finally change my ways, how much faster I might’ve run (in my hurdling days and in my road racing days in my 40s) had I been more conscious of the importance of dietary choices back then, and what I should be telling my own athletes in regards to what they should be eating regularly throughout the year. Prior to my crisis, the idea of not having a dessert after a meal, or not grabbing a brownie or a donut if someone offered one to me at work, or not loading up on snacks during the weekly grocery run, felt pretty much impossible. My routine was my routine. And although there had been times over the years when I’d break the routine for maybe a few weeks or a stretch of a few months, I always came back to it. Back when I was training for half-marathons in my early 40s was probably when I had the best eating habits. I didn’t want any cookies or muffins messing up my chances of running a personal best at the next race, so I would limit myself to one snack a day. I lost weight and actually got back down to my freshman year of college weight. My aim in the back of my mind in recent years was always to get back to those habits and work my way down back to that weight. But something happens in the mind when the competitive flame starts to flicker, when there are no races to prepare for, when you know your best days as an athlete are behind you. You start thinking, what’s the point? I’ll never get back to who I used to be, so what’s the point of denying myself and disciplining myself when there’s no end goal in mind?
But now that I’m on the road to recovery, and am maintaining a healthy lifestyle with healthy eating habits, I can clearly see how much I was lying to myself before. I feel a new me emerging, one who doesn’t want to settle for being an overweight granddad type of figure as I’m edging toward my 59th birthday. I miss being an athlete, I miss having that athletic mindset. I want to get back in shape.
For the past couple months I have not eaten one sugar snack. Not one donut, not one brownie, not one cookie, not one butterscotch krimpet, not one chocolate junior, not one chocolate chip muffin, not one anything. My wife has replaced all of that with sugar-free jello, sugar-free pudding, and similar items. The meals she prepares for me are heavy in vegetables, heavy in protein, and low in carbs. Not only have I not missed the foods I used to crave, but I kind of look back in disgust at that version of myself. Almost every time I see someone who hasn’t seen me in a while, they mention that I look like I’ve lost weight, although I haven’t consciously been trying to lose weight. And I have been losing weight. I’m already able to fit into some dress shirts I had omitted from my rotation this past school year because they were too tight. And because I’m getting in good walks every day, the thought that I could get myself back into shape and actually feel like an athlete again feels like a real possibility.
The other day while scrolling on YouTube, I came across a video of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts talking about his dietary choices in an interview. Hurts emphasized meals heavy in protein — fish, chicken, and meat. He also said he tries to eat a light breakfast and a light lunch. In addition, he said the amount of carbs he wants to intake varies depending on the time of year. During the season, he said he wants to eat a heavy load of carbs because he needs it for fuel, since he’ll be running a lot. During the off-season, however, he keeps the carb intake low because he doesn’t need them as much and he wants to maintain a lean, fit frame. Although Hurts is a football player, the basics of his diet would seem appropriate for hurdlers as well. While he might treat himself to ice cream or something like that during the off-season on occasion, he stays away from such indulgence during the season, which would be a good practice for hurdlers to follow.
But it’s not that easy. One thing I’ve noticed since my great awakening is that the food we see advertised in commercials is almost always food that is heavy in sugar and/or carbs. Everywhere you turn, someone is encouraging you to eat foods that aren’t healthy, or are minimally so. I don’t eat any fast food anymore because it’s too much work to find something on the menu that won’t set me back. Young athletes today arguably need a dietician in the household if they want to eat healthily as part of their training. Many professional athletes and sports teams do have dieticians on their staffs.
Because I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I rarely talk to my athletes about their diet unless they ask me, and that usually has to do with what they should eat on the day of a meet, or the days leading up to a big meet. I’ve always been surrounded by coaches who know more about diet than I do, so I’ve always let them handle those discussions. But now, because of this experience of the past couple months and having conversations about diet with my wife and watching videos like the one on Hurts, I feel like I can talk about diet with my athletes and speak from a position of authority.
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