Authors Help Athletes Tip Scales Safely: Help Determine and Reach Optimal Weight

When determining whether to gain or lose weight, build muscle, cut fat, or control water weight, athletes often don't know how to help their bodies comply with their performance goals. Now experienced registered dietitians Michele Macedonio and Marie Dunford answer athletes' questions and put them on the road to achieving their optimal weight with the upcoming The Athlete's Guide to Making Weight (Human Kinetics, April 2009).

Champaign, IL (PRWEB) May 20, 2009 -- When determining whether to gain or lose weight, build muscle, cut fat, or control water weight, athletes often don't know how to help their bodies comply with their performance goals. Now experienced registered dietitians Michele Macedonio and Marie Dunford answer athletes' questions and put them on the road to achieving their optimal weight with the upcoming The Athlete's Guide to Making Weight (Human Kinetics, April 2009).

The book explains how to avoid quick fixes, crash diets, or shortcuts in order to safely achieve weight loss or gain. "Athletes try these methods and find they don't work and often even hinder their performance," Macedonio says. "Those who want to gain or lose weight and change body composition to improve performance need to understand that achieving that end is a process."

Macedonio and Dunford have created a four-step process to help athletes achieve improvements in performance.

Step 1: Assessment. Athletes need to compare their physical characteristics with those of successful athletes in their sport, specifically those who play the same position, to determine whether change in body weight or body composition is needed.

Step 2: Goal setting. Competitors should set broad goals to stay focused on improving performance. However, they must also take small steps to reach those broad goals by setting specific objectives. Ideally, athletes should set several major goals and numerous objectives. Realistic goals and objectives in performance, weight, and health are the basis for creating an action plan.

Step 3: Action plan. Any action plan requires a basic knowledge of nutrition and how muscle is gained and body fat is lost. Understanding these principles will prevent changes that impede progress toward goals or interfere with training and performance. Dietary intake is also a primary focus of any action plan because changing weight or body composition requires modifying the diet. An action plan should include the specific amounts of calories, carbohydrate, protein, and fat that need to be consumed daily.

Step 4: Evaluation and reassessment. The last step in the process provides valuable feedback that can lead to adjustments in goals and objectives and modifications to the strategies for meeting them. Changes in weight and body composition cannot be precisely predicted, and even a well-developed action plan will need some adjustment along the way.

According to Macedonio, many athletes are unsuccessful in their attempts at weight loss or gain because they jump into an action plan that is not based on their personal needs or they set goals that undermine rather than enhance their performance. She warns against starting with an action plan since each step of the process builds on a previous step.

For more information on The Athlete's Guide to Making Weight or other nutrition resources, visit www.HumanKinetics.com or call 800-747-4457.

ABOUT THE BOOK                                        
                                        
The Athlete's Guide to Making Weight
by Michele Macedonio and Marie Dunford

Now available

Paperback · 272 pp
ISBN 978-07360-7586-2 · $17.95

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Michele Macedonio, MS, RD, CSSD, LD, a nationally recognized dietitian and board-certified specialist in sport dietetics, is the team dietitian for the Cincinnati Bengals and Cincinnati Kings. A freelance nutrition writer and editor, Macedonio has authored many articles and educational materials on nutrition and has contributed chapters to Sports Nutrition: A Guide for the Professional Working With Active People (fourth edition) and Sports Nutrition: A Practice Manual for Professionals (fourth edition). She has spent 25 years working on the nutrition of high school, collegiate, and professional athletes and other active people. Macedonio, the owner of the consulting firm Nutrition Strategies, is a frequent lecturer on nutrition and serves as the nutrition consultant for Ignition Athletic Performance Group. She is also an active member of Sports, Cardiovascular, and Wellness Nutrition (SCAN) and the recipient of their 2007 Achievement Award. She holds master's degrees in health sciences education and nutrition from Case Western Reserve University. Macedonio lives in Loveland, Ohio.

Marie Dunford, PhD, RD, is a freelance author and editor of nutrition education materials, including textbooks, consumer books, online courses, continuing professional education courses, and magazine and newspaper articles. She is coauthor of the textbook Nutrition for Sport and Exercise and editor of Sports Nutrition: A Practice Manual for Professionals (fourth edition). A former professor and chair in the department of food science and nutrition at California State University at Fresno, Dunford has extensive experience with NCAA Division I athletes. She is an active member of SCAN and recipient of their 2006 Achievement Award. She received a PhD in education from the University of Southern California and a master's degree in home economics from California State University at Fresno. Dunford lives in Kingsburg, California, and is an avid tennis player.

CONTENTS

Part I: Optimal Weight, Optimal Performance
Chapter 1. Tipping the Scales of Sports Performance
Chapter 2. Identifying the Priorities for Your Sport
Chapter 3. Analyzing Your Body, Assessing Your Weight
Chapter 4. Charting Your Course for Success

Part II: Strategies for Achieving Your Target Weight
Chapter 5. Building a Solid Nutritional Base
Chapter 6. Adding Muscle, Gaining Mass
Chapter 7. Losing Fat, Winning Results
Chapter 8. Weighing in on Water Weight
Chapter 9. Sizing Up Supplement Use

Part III: Meal Plans for Making Weight
Chapter 10. Building Muscle
Chapter 11. Losing Fat
Chapter 12. Building Muscle and Losing Fat
Chapter 13. Precision Meal Planning System

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