Starving yourself, dehydrating and substituting food for supplements are the wrong ways of going about weight loss for an athlete. The demands of wrestling are more physically vigorous than most sports, due to the high expectations of maintaining your weight according to the classes in which a wrestler competes. Each week, wrestlers must maintain certain weight requirements in an effort to prolong their expected weight. Tracking a food plan is one of the most common techniques to fulfill nutritional goals. Here is a list of options that wrestlers can add to their food plan to maintain a steady weight.

#1 Fluids- Lots of water and skim milk

Water and weight loss go hand in hand. Drinking water is necessary for losing weight. As a wrestler, your body depends on water. As you work out, your body uses the water that you have consumed to help you take care of your body and its functions. Replenishing your body with water before, during and after an event is an essential way to lose weight for many reasons: drinking water raises your metabolism, water helps you feel fuller, water aids in digestion and cleansing your body of toxins and water helps regulate bowel functions. Water is crucial to everyone’s diet, but to a wrestler, it could be the ticket to excess weight loss.

#2 Daily Fruit and Vegetable intake

Adding fruits and vegetables to a diet can be an important factor to consider. The benefits of fruits and vegetables vary by which types you consume. Fruits and vegetables provide many essential nutrients that are under-consumed by the common athlete. The vitamin C intake found in many fruits is important for growth and repair of body tissues, which is important for a wrestler. Eating foods such as fruits and vegetables are lower in calories and provide many vitamins and minerals, that are vital for health and the maintenance of your body.

#3 Protein

Protein is an important building block for your body. Proteins help the growth of many bodily functions such as bones, muscles, cartilage, skin and blood. Eating enough protein is essential to build and maintain healthy muscle mass, while supporting and repairing tissue all throughout the body. Grilled chicken is a great source of protein that wrestlers should consider adding to their diet. Grilled chicken has a significant source of not only protein, but B vitamins as well as minerals such as, iron, phosphorus and selenium.

#4 Dairy- Low fat and calorie

Including dairy products three times per day has been proven to help increase your bone-building calcium and vitamin D levels, as well as helping to fuel your body with the protein it needs to compete. The nutrients supplied through dairy foods helps ensure normal body functions along with lowering the risk of developing a variety of health problems in the future.

#5 Complex Carbs

Complex carbohydrates are foods that provide many vitamins, minerals and fibers that are important to the health of a wrestler. Complex carbohydrates are often found in foods such as peas, beans, whole grains and vegetables. The majority of carbohydrate intake should come from complex carbohydrates in natural sugars, rather than the processed sugars which lack nutritional values. Complex carbohydrates are essential to the diet of a wrestler because it is where energy is sparked. Both simple and complex carbohydrates are broken down and turned into glucose in the body which then gets transferred into energy.