Eat Well For Better Sports Performance

Your level of physical activity and your body composition define your energy needs. By entering these 2 data points into the calculator for each member of the family, you will get the number of servings required by each of you for the different categories of recipes. In general, this calculation is done only once at the beginning of the training season, or when there are changes in activity.

All recipes in the Sport meal plan are sorted according to the time of consumption. You just have to choose them according to your training plan. To guide you, you can follow the following basic principles:

Before Activity

• 3 to 4 hours: Full meal
  and/or*
• 1 to 2 hours: Energy rich snack

During Actity

• Water
  and/or*
• Snack for quick energy

After Activity

• Full meal
  and/or*
• Muscle builder + Energy-rich snack + water

These menus are suitable for children, teenagers and adults weighing between 40 and 120kg and practicing one or more sports activities from level 1 (low intensity) to level 3 (training of at least 1 hour per day with at least 25% of the time at intense level).

Whatever the sport, the basic rules are similar and you will benefit from these meal plans. If you want to go further, you will need an individual follow-up by a sports nutritionist, as offered with our VIP Dietitian package.

Our menus reflect sports nutrition guidelines for high performance athletes, tailored for recreational athletes. Key sources include:

• American College of Sports Medicine
• Dietitians of Canada
• Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

In several studies, nutrient timing (in other words timing when you eat) can directly impact your body’s response to exercise. Your body can be leaner (1), more energized (2), and more performing (3) when the right proportions of food are eaten at the right time.

Sources:

1. Trommelen, J., & van Loon, L. J. C. (2016). Pre-Sleep Protein Ingestion to Improve the Skeletal Muscle Adaptive Response to Exercise Training. Nutrients, 8(12), 763http://doi.org/10.3390/nu8120763
2. Ormsbee, M. J., Bach, C. W., & Baur, D. A. (2014). Pre-Exercise Nutrition: The Role of Macronutrients, Modified Starches and Supplements on Metabolism and Endurance Performance. Nutrients, 6(5), 1782–1808.http://doi.org/10.3390/
3. Porcelli, S., Pugliese, L., Rejc, E., Pavei, G., Bonato, M., Montorsi, M., … Marzorati, M. (2016). Effects of a Short-Term High-Nitrate Diet on Exercise Performance. Nutrients, 8(9), 534.http://doi.org/10.3390/nu8090534

Our ACTIVE FAMILY meal plans comply fully with the recommendations of the following expert sources in the field:

1. Health Canada, Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide - January 2019
2. Health Canada, Dietary Reference Intake Tables
3. USDA - USA, ChooseMyPlate
4. National Health Service (NHS) - UK, The Eatwell Guide

The nutritional data is from the Canadian Nutrient File, and completed by the French food composition table Ciqual (France), the USDA Food Composition Database (USA), and the Fineli base (Finland).