Avoid This Nutrition Mistake I Made When I was Younger

When I was in high school, I ate whatever I wanted to. I’d start my day by adding sugar to my sugary cereal, go eat a processed sandwich in the school cafeteria for lunch, and have some kind of 15 min oven ready casserole for dinner. That was the life, but I haven’t even got to the best part yet: the snacks. Little Debbie’s cookies topped with ice cream and a candy bar on the side.

You don’t have to be an expert to know that stuff was killing me, even though I didn’t know any better. The food I was fueling my body with was affecting my athletic performance and wasn’t allowing me to reach my potential. I was becoming more and more unhealthy, which affected my gains in the gym and my power on the field. I wish I had someone who would’ve told me how much my nutrition was affecting me.

Thankfully in college, I began to change. With a new environment and the ability to make more meal choices independently, I decided to educate myself on how to eat better. I began eating five plates of food for lunch and massive meals at 11 or midnight with the boys. Am I telling you that I was eating healthier? Yes, to an extent. The biggest difference was that I was fueling my body with protein rather than sugar. I wasn’t perfect, but I was beginning to form great meals built around protein.

And the results? I gained a fast 15 pounds of muscle after 9 weeks of eating and lifting. This allowed me to be more explosive and stronger playing basketball or soccer. I’m so glad that I decided to switch up my eating habits in college, because they helped pay dividends in the future. Nowadays, I’m honing even more on my protein. I eat chicken, beef or pork in most of my meals and prefer home cooked meals over eating out.

You can make a difference in your nutrition too. “Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Yard by yard, life is hard.” You can take a baby step today by tracking how much protein you’re eating and looking at the nutrition facts of an item to see how much sugar is in it. Go out and compete!