It might be a cliché, but you are what you eat. Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that you become what you eat, so getting a surfing diet nailed down is important to keep you riding waves into your old age. What we put into our bodies is what our bodies use to grow and our source of energy. The nutrients, minerals, fats and acids contained in our diets build our bones, muscles, hair, everything on the inside and the outside. Think of your diet it as an investment in yourself and your health. Surfing demands a lot from your body, so you need to give your body what it needs. Here are some pro tips from some of the best surfers in the world for eating your way to better surfing.
Learn from the Best
You only have to look at surfers like Laird Hamilton and Kelly Slater to see how a good diet combined with surfing day in, day out can get you into awesome shape. Everyone interested in diet and health try out and test their own ‘health hacks’ and these guys are no different.
When Hamilton spoke to GQ magazine he revealed that he drinks a glass of water with dissolved baking soda each morning. The reason behind this routine is that research suggests baking soda reduces the build up of lactic acid in your muscles. Lactic acid is responsible for soreness and fatigue in muscles after exercise, so we could all do with less of that.
As for Slater, he sticks with a cleansing glass of hot water with lemon. This combination wakes up your liver and gets any toxins that have built up overnight quickly flushed out of your system. It also stimulates your digestive system, helping your body to absorb all the nutrients that you ingest throughout the day. Listen to the man talk about diet, exercise and his approach to staying in good shape…
Be Mindful of What You Mix
Everyone knows the dangers of mixing your drinks on a night out, but what about mixing your foods? Ok so the results are not going to get you dancing on the bar and give you a killer hangover, but mixing different types of foods can give your digestive system a hard time. For example, eating carbohydrates and proteins together makes digestion more complicated for your system. These two different types of food require different digestion processes, so your body ends up taking much more time to digest them when they are eaten together. The same goes for non-acidic fruit, like an apple, and acidic citrus fruit, like a grapefruit, as they don’t combine well for digestion. Your stomach deals with different foodstuffs in different ways, so to read more about this check out this guide from TrustedHands.
Natural Foods All the Way
Just because something on the supermarket shelf says it has natural ingredients it doesn’t mean it’s actually natural. Sticking to real whole foods, completely unprocessed, is the best way to go for any healthy diet, and that goes for a surfing diet too. Fresh fruit and vegetables, grains and nuts, real meat and fish, not pre-packaged sausages or fish fingers. Maybe it means you’re going to have to learn a few more recipes, but it’s worth it. When you open your fridge it should look something like this…
A few of the women on the Championship Tour shared some of their easy surfing diet tips in this WSL article. Keeping the right balance of different foods and eating at the right time are just a couple of the things covered, all important stuff that you should incorporate into your own surfing diet. If you want a definitive guide to the best recipes from the world’s best surfers then you should pick yourself up a copy of Surf Food: The Ultimate Surfers Cookbook, it’s full of delicious meals to fuel the stoke!
Featured image: @madamequirit via Instagram