After knowing what to eat, vegan athletes should also know how much to eat. The quantity of food consumed should be based on the daily energy expenditure. During a rest period, athletes shouldn’t consume more than 1800 calories and during a highly active day, they may need to consume up to 3500 calories. Depending on your level of activity, you may burn up to 30 calories each minute. Vegans should be aware of their resting metabolic rate, as well as factoring in the type and intensity of training. This is essential if you want to formulate the proper daily caloric expenditure. Many athletes need to gain or lose weight depending on sports requirements, so they need come up with proper strategy. They need to have the right blood glucose level for the next training session.
Athletes should be aware of their own base, recovery and transition phase. If they have 200 calories deficit or surplus each day, it means that they burn or accumulate nearly 1500 calories each week. In general, one pound of body weight is equal to 3500 calories burned or accumulated. Vegan diet should allow athletes to come up with proper balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat intake. A good proportion may include 50 to 65 percent carbohydrate, 20 to 30 percent protein and 15 to 20 percent fat. This should be an optimal balance for endurance athletes, so you need to have proper daily calorific requirements. It is important to know that if you consume too little protein, it will be burned into energy and there’s not enough protein for muscle growth.
Carbohydrate is still the main energy source during high intensity or endurance sports, such as 10k races. It is important to accurately predict the depletion of the muscle glycogen. The amount of macronutrients, such as protein, fat and carbohydrate will depend on the intensity and frequency of your workout sessions. Another factor to consider is to know when to eat. Vegan athletes need to properly time their eating schedule to ensure that they feel their best during long endurance workouts. You should consume food with complex carbohydrate about one hour before intense physical activity. During the waiting period, athletes could choose high-energy food with simple carbohydrate that can be converted to energy more easily.
After properly planning their vegan diet, athletes should also better manage their electrolyte and fluid intake. Both are essential during the refuelling process. You should know that everyone’s body is different and you need to consume water equal to your swear and urination rate. During high physical activity, athletes may need to drink about 25 ounces of water per hour. However, athletes should avoid drinking too much water, because it will bring alkaline minerals out of our body. Again, although water has zero calories and good for our body, moderation is still an important factor that we should maintain. There are different types of natural electrolyte. As an example, coconut water is a great electrolyte with perfectly balanced proportion.
