In our last segment, we showed you the national team as they practiced in the stadium where they will compete against the US team.
Well, as we told you, they are going back there tonight, but Jules Vasquez was with them yesterday and today, where he saw what their nutrition is like. It seemed a bit strange to him, and he asked the nutritionist about the reasons behind it.
Here's what she told him:
Jules Vasquez reporting from Portland
This is the Belize team's Sunday breakfast. If it seems a bit much, it should be because the team is consuming a diet designed to make them perform. Their travelling nutritionist Karen Rosito who is one of the 12 non-player personnel accompanying the team says explained the science behind carbo-loading:
Karen Rosito, Nutritionist, Belize Jaguars
"I kind of encourage them to pack up on the cookies and the brownies and all that for right now because seriously they are carbohydrate loading meaning trying to get the body used to storing energy in the liver so that when they need it on game night - it is right there. What will happen in time when they are actually playing - the body will need energy - there won't be huffing and puffing but they will be okay because they have some stored and it will come out then."
Now, all this means that players are encouraged to eat, almost to excess:
Karen Rosito
"This was a little bit of a challenge to get them to eat a potato with the skin but we don't usually eat potatoes with skin in our world. They've been like 'wow are we going to eat all that!' Because these guys - we come from a third world country right and most of them are not used to eating this amount of food so when I thought it would have been heaven, a lot of them had problems eating the food. So what we had them do is take extra food with them - maybe to their rooms or anywhere they go to relax and to eat extra the entire day. So if they've been eating like 8 small meals."
Jules Vasquez
"Now this almost sounds counter-intuitive because we know that well we think that athletes have to look at what their eating and be very judicious about what they're eating but you have them eating carbs and sweets."
Karen Rosito
"To get them literally ready for when game day comes to let the liver stores glycogen so that when it's called up - it's there."
And more than just eating all they can - they also have to drink nonstop.
Karen Rosito
"We have them drink approximately 2 1/2 to 3 gallons of water per day. We are trying to train the bladder to hold more - the benefits of being hydrated is 1 - this is almost 1200 feet higher than Belize, 2 - the air is thin, 3 - they are going to have problems keeping up in the field. We watched them in practice yesterday and sure enough we didn't have to ask them to drink water. What I noticed yesterday in that long practice is that it was hot and humid and we're on artificial turf - not one of them got a cramp because they were hydrated."
We'll have more from the team in Portland in tomorrow's newscast.
