Can you help a junk food loving athlete change her diet?

October 10, 2011 5:37 AM

I am a junk food eating endurance athlete looking for books and other resources to inspire me change my diet and eating habits.

I am not interested in stories of folks that went from sedentary to athletic. Nor am I interested in the super elite athlete that went from eating a basically healthy diet (by my standards :-) to eating super cleanly or some other extreme regimen. I am your typical age-group adult endurance athlete that eats non-nutritious foods and I want to be inspired to change my ways by reading about others similar to me and my situation. I want to hear from other athletes that changed their really bad nutrition habits (fried foods, pizza, very few fruits & veggies, etc) to eating healthily, why they did it, and how it impacted their athletic performance. I have come across scientific or biology focussed resources, but I am more interested in more of the laymans reasoning and cause and effect personal account type stories to inspire me to change.

posted by Gadgetie to health & fitness (5 answers total)

Start small. One piece of fruit for your morning snack.
posted by notsnot at 6:31 AM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Have you tried "The Primal Blueprint" . You can get the basics from reading the webiste "Marks Daily Apple". He was a triathelete I beleive.
posted by Busmick at 6:38 AM on October 10, 2011

Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook is a great place to start - no-nonsense guidance and she gives real life examples of people just like you.
posted by coffee_monster at 6:50 AM on October 10, 2011

\I would suggest learning how to cook for yourself or if you already can cook, doing so. I have found that when I am cooking for myself it is activly more difficult to eat poorly.

For example, if you make it your goal to learn one healthy recipe a week, boom! That's two heathy meals (assuming leftovers). After a three months, you're going to know a dozen healthy ways to feed yourself. It will also help to consider it in terms of "I'm learning how to cook!" vs. "I'm changing my diet and have to eat salads all the time."
posted by daniel striped tiger at 9:28 AM on October 10, 2011

You could take a look at sparkpeople. It focuses on living more healthily through gradual lifestyle change and includes a lot of nutrition articles and community features.
posted by medusa at 1:09 PM on October 10, 2011