A Healthy Diet for A Football Player
consists of
60% Carbohydrates, 25% Fat and 15% Proteins.

What You Eat and Drink Counts

Playing football requires energy and a healthy body.  Good nutrition will help you maintain your performance and enable you to recover between matches and training sessions.

Good eating and drinking habits should be part of your general lifestyle, and should be able to meet the energy demands that you place on your body.  If you consume more energy producing food than required, this will store as fat and your weight will increase.

Meet Your Energy Demands.

To ensure sufficient energy is available to meet your performance demands, you should organise your eating and drinking to fit the demands of training sessions or matches.  Reduce the amount of fatty foods eaten, eat plenty of complex carbohydrates and maintain a high fluid intake by drinking water or fresh fruit juice especially before and after activity.  It is important that you don't wait until you are thirsty before taking onboard more fluids.

Try to eat a balanced diet all the time to improve and maintain your general health.  To get the maximum benefit from your training, it is important you don't eat too much junk food.

Prepare Yourself for a Match.

In the two or three days before a game, try to eat more carbohydrate-based food.  This helps build up your glycogen and glucose stores and provides you with more energy when you play football.

Make sure you have a carbohydrate based pre-match meal about three or four hours before the game.  You need to allow enough time for the food to be digested, or you may feel sick and uncomfortable.

Eat another carbohydrate-based meal within a few hours of finishing a game.  You will have used up a lot of energy and you need to replace it as soon as possible.  Isotonic drinks will help too.

As you sweat, you lose salt as well as water. 'Isotonic' drinks give you energy and help your body to replace salt.  Water mixed with fruit juice is a good isotonic drink.

Water is a good basic drink to have before, during and after a game of football to keep your fluid levels up.  Avoid fizzy water as the gas may make you feel bloated.