Retiring from competitive sport: Helping former athletes avoid unhealthy weight gain

Helping former athletes avoid unhealthy weight gain

An overview of weight loss during Competitive Sport Age

Active competitive sports entail a constant practice of Exercise to ensure keeping fit at all time . Functional exercise is administered to ensure perfect strength for competition , to balance various body functions . Early exercise practices result in a good recovery for a beginner in sporting activities . A retiring athlete is faced with the challenges of post-weight loss feedback effect resulting from years of weight regulation and control through nutrition watching and regular exercise . Athletes normally require

an increased intake of calories relative to non-athletes . This is dependent on the body 's height weight , Body mass index , age the sex the stage of growth and the fitness level characterized of the sporting involved . Often times people take weight management into their own hand and render their whole loss unfit (Astrand

.O . 1992

Studies have shown that the physical look had a relatively low influence on performance . Professional handling of weight loss is recommended in the sense that only the fat are burnt off without reduction in the lean muscle mass which may cause dystrophy or atrophy . Uncontrolled weight loss will rapidly result in a significant reduction in the lean muscle mass affecting an athletes ' whole efficiency . The uninformed athletes would rather face the poor out come on non-performance . Weight loss reduction is recommended not to be more than 1 .5 percent of the body weight (1 .5 . Averaging about 1 to 2lb per week (Fox , Matthew 1976 37 pp332 -339

Over 14 ,700kJ of calories would require burning 1lb of fat in a controlled weight loss . An appropriate nutrition for an active athlete usually consists of about 8400kJ per day . This gives a rounding of 55 to 65 of carbohydrate in a diet , 15 to 20 calories from protein and the remaining 20 to 30 calories as fat in a standard diet . It is professionally advice to rather maintain a certain level of weight to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases with higher metabolic rates (154 .6 kJ /m2 per hour

Unhealthy Weight Gain Practice

This is a common challenge to athletes who have reached the peak of their career , retiring into other activities . They have lost the usual consciousness of weight watch and the expended energy per day is drastically reduced . Overweight post-athletes are embattled with a high risk of hypercholesterolemia , obstructive and non-obstructive gall bladder disease , wide ranges of cardiovascular diseases , malignant and benign hypertension , and non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus . Some athletes in their active season before retiring , are addicted to the use of certain supplements that minimizes weight gain and enhance competitive performance , their later life do no longer require the supplements , hence , predisposition to overweight . Some athletes have their weight controlled earlier in life after professional evaluation of their genetic composition , this form the basis for keep-fit prescription . A career out of competitive sporting would equally require a second professional consultation which many decline . Hence , unhealthy weight gains results

Towards a...