When Dr. Kleiner and I first collaborated on a series of Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper columns about the Good Mood Diet, we talked about her career path. She was long identified as a sports nutritionist in the media and her client list — the Seattle Seahawks and Cleveland Browns pro football teams, the Seattle SuperSonics pro basketball team, the Cleveland Indians major league baseball team, and Olympians — reflects her reputation in the world of performance athletes.
“But I came to realize my eating plans were all about boosting energy,” recalled Kleiner. “I was helping athletes feel better and more focused. If they needed to lose weight, the eating plans were helping with that too.”
Soon enough, team executives, neighbors, friends, family and others were asking Kleiner’s diet advice. We all have an inner athlete, right?
OK, no shaking your heads.
What Dr. Kleiner and other pioneering sports nutritionists accomplished was teaching athletes to eat more food throughout the day. For instance, it was not uncommon for pro football players to skip breakfast to make sure they got to practice.
Bad idea. The body needs fuel to get through the day, especially when some 300-pound guy is making himself a nuisance during work hours.
These days, pro teams make breakfast available at their training facilities so players can grab a pre-practice meal or snack. Same goes for lunch as players often spend a whole day on site between practice, film sessions and strategy sessions.
Trust me, there are nutritionists and other team officials hard at work this week to make sure Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts players are getting the right foods at the right time during the hectic week of preparation before next Sunday’s Super Bowl.
A key element for those players—and the rest of us—is not skipping meals and, even when you don’t have an ideal Good Mood day, to still make sure you eat foods from the Feel-Good list, such as drinking the nightly hot cocoa or munching on almonds and dried fruit mid-afternoon after a celebratory lunch.
“It’s all about what fits into your life,” said Kleiner. “Usually when people go on diets, they feel lousy, not mention cranky and starved. My goal for people is to let mood be their guide. The weight they want to lose will come with it. It worked for my athlete clients and it can work for you too.”
Go Bears!
Bob