Players must keep their fat mass down by avoiding fatty foods and committing themselves to never skip a meal and eat carbohydrate, protein balanced meals to preserve and build muscle mass.

The third principle is to ensure that you choose to eat more Fiber foods. Choose whole wheat bread instead of white maida bread. Choose Tandoori (atta) roti or phulka (dry chapatti) instead of maida naan, maida parota, rice or pasta. Whole wheat pasta instead of white pasta. Eat pulses - channna, rajma, moong sprouts, baked beans, etc., when ever available. Eat plenty of raw salad with both lunch and dinner. Try to eat fresh whole fruits - apples, oranges, musambi, pomegranate etc., instead of juices daily. Fiber makes your body work harder to digest the food and this helps to burn excess fat in your body. Secondly when you eat a salad with your meal if the meal contains 10gms oil for cooking the salad will see that the whole 10gms fat is not allowed to be absorbed into your body. The fiber hinders fat absorption.

The fourth factor is exercise. We have observed that cardiovascular exercise like regular walking or jogging for 20-30 minutes, 6-7 days a week is the most efficient way to burn fat and tone and build muscle. When you walk or jog you exercise 90-95% of the 500 odd muscles in your body all together. This helps in overall muscle building regularly. We would advice those of you who have a regular workout planned at the gym to try and do an additional 20 minutes brisk walk or slow jog at a separate time in the days, on all days except match, tournament or event days (or include a 20 minute treadmill session at the gym daily). We have seen that this keeps the BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) high, the oxygen and fuel capacity of cells high and the lungs also become strong. This improves your total performance tremendously.

Last but not the least is water. All Sports people must measure and drink 3-4 liters water daily. When you don’t water a plant sufficiently it droops. When we don’t drink sufficient water our bodies, muscles etc., are drooping and slow. From the blinking of our eyelids to all other muscle movements, throughout the day, will be slow and sluggish. If you drink plenty of water you will be alert and quick and muscles will move fast and burn excess fat in the body. Also research shows that mental concentration and calculations – which is a vital part of sport is far more efficient when the body is fully hydrated (watered).

Those who want to gain weight must also be conscious of a good body composition.
Please note the biggest miss conception in weight gain efforts is to eat lots of butter, ghee, cream, chocolates, icecream and fatty foods. You will only build more and more fat cells. We recommend that you concentrate on building muscle and tissue so here are some guidelines.

First and foremost you too must make a commitment never to skip meals. Many thin people rush out for training etc., with just a glass of milk. Some when tense about an event, skip breakfast or lunch. Often you eat a heavy snack at 6pm and then skip dinner. This is very, very harmful.

Secondly every meal and snack is important for you. Again every meal must be a properly balanced carbohydrate and protein combined meal.

Thirdly you must consciously cut down fat intake and increase the intake of the carbohydrate and protein food e.g. If you are eating only one cup rice with half cup dhal plus 2 tsp ghee, you must completely cut out the ghee but try to eat 1 and a half or 2 cups rice with 1 cup dhal. Reduce butter on bread, ghee on chapatti and eat more slices or more numbers of chapatti. Also increase milk intake to about 3-4 glass daily and eat as much fruits as you can. Plenty of dhal at both meals and an egg daily is also recommended.

Last but not the least however balanced your food may be if you tend to eat the heaviest meal of the day at night, it has a greater tendency to deposit as fat when you sleep. We recommend a 40% food intake of bed milk, breakfast and 11am fruit. 40% food at lunch, tea and 6pm fruit and only 20% at dinner. The world today follows 10% breakfast, 20% lunch and 70% dinner, most of this 70% becomes fat. This is very dangerous and destructive to your body.

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