Make the most out of meal planning with these tips specifically for sport families and youth athletes.
Are you a sport family that is overwhelmed with the idea of meal planning?
Are you unsure how to fuel your athlete to ensure they are getting the nutrition they need to excel in their sport?
Meal planning is essential for athlete success. Sport families should have a plan for meals and snacks to ensure proper calorie intake. Quantity, variety, and timing of nutrients is necessary to perform.
When our body lacks adequate calories and energy, this can be detrimental to performance. Signs that one is underfueling includes fatigue and feeling tired, difficulty concentrating, feeling run down at the end of a training session, extreme muscle soreness, just to name a few. Efficient meal planning can combat these symptoms to support athletic performance, recovery and overall health.
Ask yourself: What do you struggle with most when it comes to meal planning?
Is it time? Meal planning, shopping, and cooking takes up a lot of time! You may be having difficulty making or finding the time to implement a solid meal plan.
Or maybe it’s a lack of creativity and motivation in the kitchen. Buy a new cookbook or follow a new blogger to spark that creativity!
Reflect on a few challenges and barriers when it comes to meal planning success. The last thing you want to do is set yourself up for failure. For example, it is not realistic to write out an extensive meal plan for the upcoming week but your athlete has an out-of-town tournament. This would leave you with limited time to shop and prep the items and ultimately failing the plan.
You need a meal plan that is unique, effective, and thoughtful. Check out the tips below to make the most out of meal planning
Sport Family Meal Planning Tips
1. Create a Meal Planning system that works for you
Rethink how you are currently meal planning and update the process that works best for you and your family. Here are three
- plan one month in advance: Print out a calendar of the upcoming month and write down your dinner ideas on specific days. What you’ll find is that this takes just as much time as it does planning for one week. Keep in mind that flexibility is key and if a schedule change occurs, it is okay to switch up the meal for that night or have to rearrange throughout the week.
- have themed nights: This is a great way to draft out what you will have each night. You can keep the recipes the same each week or mix it up!
- Meatless Monday
- Taco Tuesday
- Pasta Thursday
- Pizza Friday
- Breakfast for dinner Sunday
- Use recipe box app I recently downloaded this app and love it! The app allows you to save blog posts and social media posts to one central location. For blogs, the app condenses the ingredients and cooking instructions so you don’t have to read through the entire blog post for the recipe. (and the best part, no ads!) It also includes a picture of the food which is really helpful since we “eat with our eyes”
2. Involve your athlete with meal planning
Your athlete needs to be invested with the plan. Just as they are motivated at sports practice, they need to be motivated with their nutrition as well.
Here are a few ways to involve your athlete with meal planning and in the kitchen:
- Encourage them to pick out a recipe they want to try!
- Have them write down their school and practice schedule to identify
- Complete a 3 day food journal
- Assign them a small piece of meal planning – this could be washing or slicing veggies, or pre-portioning out snacks
3. Keep a stocked pantry, fridge and freezer.
We all know that schedules change and flexibility is key. Having a stocked kitchen allows you to still have a backup dinner option just in case the day doesn’t go as planned. Also, each day is never the same, some days athletes are more hungry and they need the extra food. Or the training session was more intense than usual so the athlete needs more fuel for recovery. Having items readily available for athletes encourages them to stay fueled all year long!
Download my Athlete Kitchen checklist to get started!
Conclusion
There are many benefits to meal planning, especially for sport families. Planning out meals and snacks ahead of time allows athletes to optimize performance, enhance recovery, maintain weight, and prevent injury.
A meal planning system that works for you may not work for a teammate’s family, and that is okay! Each family is going to have their own plan – just as each athlete has their own nutrition plan.
Finding and utilizing digital or electronic resources can be beneficial and a time saver! Don’t be afraid to try out a new app or use social media to research recipes and meal ideas.
Athlete involvement provides a sense of ownership. If they are working toward a specific goal, then they need to work at it from every angle, especially in the kitchen and with nutrition.
When you have a stocked pantry and fridge, this allows you to utilize items that you already have to make meals. This is especially important when coming home from a late game or travel day. So even if you don’t have a detailed plan for that meal, you have the ingredients to put something on the table.