ods can lead to a number of disorders, including diabetes and hypoglycemia (low sugar). Yet another problem is that foods high in refined simple sugars often are also high in fats, which should be limited in a healthy diet. Carbohydrates are the best fuel for athletes because they take less oxygen to burn than protein or fat. You'll be able to exercise harder, both during training and competition, when you eat enough carbohydrates. Each gram of carbohydrate provides 4 calories.A high carbohydrate diet allows you to train harder by rebuilding your carbohydrate stores and decreasing your recovery time. Your training diet is particularly important because if you can train harder, you can achieve higher levels of performance during competition. Everyone should get 50 to 60 percent of their calories from carbohydrates. As an athlete, you need even more: 60 to 70 percent of your calories, or 3 to 5 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight. If you are an endurance athlete, your carbohydrate needs could be as high as 70 to 90 percent of your calories. Skipping meals will deplete your carbohydrate stores and drain your energy. Similarly, if you fill up on a lot of high-fat and high-protein foods instead of carbohydrates, you won't have the energy to train and compete at your best. So as you can see we need carbohydrates because they supply us with energy. They are found in plants....
