Eating plan gets athlete through Ramadan fasts
By CHRIS ROSENBLOOM
Published on: 09/21/06

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/living/food/fit/stories/2006/09/19/092106.html

College athletes often find it hard to eat healthfully
while juggling all the demands on their time. Classes,
homework, team meetings, practice and games can leave
little time for cooking and eating. However, athletes
know that proper fueling can improve performance.

So what's an athlete to do when religious beliefs call
for fasting from sunrise to sunset for a full month
during the competitive sports season? Muslim athletes
will be facing that challenge as Ramadan, the month of
fasting, begins this weekend. Athletes who adhere to
the tenets of Islam avoid all food and drink at
daybreak until sunset.

Weiss Tahmass, a Georgia State University soccer
player, met with me last year to develop a plan to get
adequate nutrition for the two meals a day he consumed
during Ramadan. Tahmass is a midfielder who typically
runs five to six miles during practice that occurs in
the middle of the afternoon, when heat and humidity
are at their highest. We devised the following
strategy to keep him running strong and performing at
his best.

• We determined his calorie needs or energy
expenditure, based on his height, weight, age, sport
and workout schedule. Tahmass needed slightly more
than 3,500 calories a day.

• We devised meal options based on his usual eating
habits for the pre-fast meal (called suhoor) and the
post-fast meal (called iftar).

• He was encouraged to eat about one-third of his
calories and drink one-half of his fluids before
sunrise and two-thirds of his calories with the
remainder of the fluids after sunset.

• We determined the official times of sunrise and
sunset using data from the U.S. Naval Observatory
found at www.usno.navy.mil (click on sunrise/set).
Athletes travel, so identifying the precise times of
sunrise and sunset in various cities helps identify
when it is time to eat.

• I encouraged him to alert his athletic trainer if he
got dizzy or lightheaded in practice or in a
competition. It is permissible to break the fast for
illness, and heat exhaustion is an illness that must
be monitored to ensure the athlete's safety.

Tahmass had competed during Ramadan in high school,
but this was the first time a specific plan was
developed for Ramadan. This year, Ramadan is later
than last year and falls right in the heart of the
competitive season for soccer.

"Ramadan is always tough for the first couple of days
because you forget that you can't drink water during
practice," reports Tahmass. Following a specific
eating plan "helped me have the energy when I needed
it and allowed me to compete at a high level." He says
that his teammates are amazed that he can get through
a two-hour workout in the heat of the day without
water, "but with discipline and dedication, it gets
easier after the first three to five days."

Chris Rosenbloom, Ph.D., R.D., is a professor of
nutrition in the College of Health and Human Sciences
at Georgia State University. She'll answer nutrition
questions of general interest. Send your questions to
her c/o The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Eighth
Floor, 72 Marietta St. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30303. Or
e-mail her at dietitian@....
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http://www.islamawareness.net/Ramadhan/