INTRODUCTION

Welcome to athleticdieting.com. The information available here is an online sports nutrition manual, specifically designed for athletes who wish to optimise their diet in order to improve their performance. Nevertheless, I believe it can also be useful for those who, while not desiring an athletically performing physique, would like to increase their nutritional awareness and aspire to have a healthier diet. It should be made clear that, unlike most of the content available on the web, Athletic Dieting is an organic treatment, and therefore, for optimal enjoyment, should be read from beginning to end, just like a book.

The text is designed to have a very practical slant, as well as one that does not require any preparatory knowledge in order to be understood: biology and biochemistry are reduced to a minimum and where they are considered, each concept is always explained as easily as possible, without, however, lapsing into trivialisation.

This particular choice has sometimes forced me to sacrifice scientific rigour in favour of an easier comprehensibility of certain contents. I hope this does not imply excessive frustration in those who, being already familiar with the biology and chemistry of the human body, would have preferred me to do otherwise. In terms of content, within the site, an attempt is made firstly to shed light on the theoretical principles that should form the basis of the process for creating an optimal diet protocol; a more immediately practical part will then be introduced, namely a guide to the final drafting of a functional diet programme to achieve every possible objective that an athlete can set himself and which can be achieved through diet manipulation. Both the theoretical and practical parts are based on my studies of food and nutrition, as well as the experience I have accumulated as an athlete and as a coach.

THE THEORETICAL PART

More specifically with regard to the theoretical part, I have tried to highlight the pros and cons of each dietary solution being as unbiased as possible. In fact, my intention is to distance myself from any particular dietary philosophy, in the belief that each one presupposes a limited approach to the problems of dietetics for athletes. Indeed, as I have studied, I have realised that many of the authors who advocate a particular solution to the problems of dietetics tend to highlight only those aspects for which their choice would be the best, while neglecting to inform on all those which, if known, would lead one to consider other approaches. For example, some tend to emphasise how the intake of foods rich in carbohydrates, a particular class of nutrients, tends to stimulate the secretion of the hormone insulin, which promotes weight gain. For this reason, these authors tend to suggest a limited consumption of carbohydrates to those wishing to lose weight. I am referring, in this case, to admirers of the protein diet or the so-called ketogenic diet, in all their variations. In expounding these arguments, however, information is often omitted on all the properties of carbohydrates that facilitate the slimming process. For example, there is no illustration of how insulin positively influences the secretion of leptin and thyroid hormones, substances that are all favourable in the long term to weight loss rather than weight gain. On the contrary, promoters of carbohydrate-rich diets, such as the Mediterranean, insist on how such a diet can improve the blood cholesterol profile (i.e. the ratio of so-called good to bad cholesterol in the blood), neglecting the negative influence that an excess of carbohydrates might have. Of all the particular biased approaches that I wish to warn my reader against, the vulgar ‘fuel tank’ model (vulgar in the sense that it is the one taken for granted by most people who have never read nutrition books) stands out in particular. For such a model, the human body is equated to a vehicle and food to its fuel, crammed in the form of fat. According to the fuel-tank model, the more you eat, the fatter you get; and the more you exercise, the more you lose weight. This model is extremely simplistic and offers a very trivialised view of the problems of dietetics. Rather than proposing a particular dietary philosophy, therefore, the theoretical part of this manual explains how any manipulation of diet can unleash multiple forces, sometimes opposing each other.

THE PRACTICAL PART

As for the practical part, however, it consists of as explicit and simple a guide as possible for bending these forces to one’s own rigorously identified goals. The practical solution proposed here is not meant to be ‘the best’, still less the only one that is effective. Instead, it is the one that has been personally tested by me and that has brought me satisfactory results, but all those that refer correctly to the theoretical principles illustrated will certainly be taken into consideration.

LIMITS

Reading the work will not instantly turn you into a sports dietetics expert. The information given here is not intended as an encouragement to dispense with the advice of a professional, but can be a valuable aid to more effective communication with one. The absolute beginner, in fact, in producing his first food protocol, might make mistakes that could damage his health. For instance, he might omit to include in his diet certain foods that are sources of certain vitamins, nutrients that are essential for the proper functioning of the human machine. It goes without saying that any sense of being able to be autonomous in the production of a diet that might result from reading the manual implies the responsibility only of the person who chooses to rely on such a feeling and no one else.