Taking a diet regularly without meat could be a difficult practice to imbibe for several athletes as well as their fans. The nutritional demands of laborious activity of matches or games or routine training sessions could require up to six thousand (6000) calories of energy and two hundred (200) grams of protein on a daily basis, based on the player in question coupled with the type of sport they are engaged in. These points now bring to mind an important question – how do vegetarian athletes cope with these demands without meat consumption? The answer to this lies in the lifestyles of the vegetarian athletes expatiated below.
Martina Navratilova
Martina Navratilova is a retired tennis player. In the world of tennis where the majority of players retire in their early thirties or at most, late thirties; Navratilova was able to increase her life of competitive tennis playing to 50 years of age, a feat she credits to her a regular vegan diet. The athlete recommends the consumption of organic foods that are fresh, raw, unprocessed, whole and plant-based. Navratilova won 18 major international tennis championships and finished as runner-up in 14 competitions.
Joe Namath
Namath is a football legend, who became a famous vegetarian for a number of years during his football career in the National Football League as well as American Football League. That he was able to cope with the huge physical demands of the games then shows that one does not need to eat meat to be a football player.
Ricky Williams
Shortly before the 2005 season of Ricky Williams as a player of the Miami Dolphins, he decided to become a vegetarian. He used to frequently eat vegan dishes like salads and others, which gave him huge amounts of energy. After went vegetarian, he had 5amazing seasons and, in 2009, carried the ball 1121 yards. This was a phenomenal achievement for any player in the National Football League. Williams attributes his longevity as a football player to his vegetarian diet, meditation, and yoga. He played for the League for 10 seasons.
Carl Lewis
In the buildup to the 1991 World Championships when Olympic track star Carl Lewis knew he needed to put up a sterling performance in the event, he reached the decision to go vegan. After he took that life-changing decision, he stated that he had the best racing performances of his whole career. Other athletes and fans also recognized his feat, and he was honored as the Athlete of the Year by ABC in 1991. Furthermore, Lewis went ahead to win 9 Olympic gold medals. He remarked that he had realized that one did not require protein from meat to become an accomplished athlete, adding that the most successful year of track competition was in 1991 when he took a vegan diet.
Mike Tyson
This iconic boxer was also a vegan. He decided to go adopt the method to flush unhealthy cocaine or drugs out of his system. Also, Tyson achieved a phenomenal weight loss of one hundred since he did the transition.
