Former Scotland international swimmer Cameron Brodie shares his diet as a professional athlete
Recently retired Scotland swimmer Cameron Brodie has been involved in some of the biggest sporting events throughout the world.
From winning silver in his home Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 2014 in the 4x200m Freestyle Relay, Brodie has achieved some incredible moments through dedication and practice.
However, one of the most important processes in preparing for competition for Brodie is diet.
Due to strenuous training regimes, Scottish swimmers are expected to eat more than three times the intake for an average person.
And the 25-year-old - who left competitive swimming in September - gives Outside Performance an insight into the diet of a professional swimmer.
He said: “It’s a big diet. Alongside the help of the strength and condition people as well as the psychologists, we also have nutritionists.
“There is times during the season where we would be calorie counted. This was just to see if we are all eating enough or not because if you’ve not eaten enough then you can’t performance as well as you need to – or if you have eaten too much.
“We will usually take 8,000 calories plus a day so it’s a lot and that means the food budget for the week is quite a lot as well.
“You’ve got to eat all your vegetables and have all your vitamins and have enough protein during the week as well.
“It’s an area I have really focused on for a few years. Those skills will now be with me for the rest of my life now and I know what makes a good diet.
“It can be hard when you’re tired and going into shops and picking up the right things but it’s just about making the right decisions and working hard on it.
While the amount taken in by swimmers is substantial, Brodie admits it does change depending on the distance of race that they compete in.
He added: “It does change. The group in Stirling I trained with was all 100m and 200m swimmers so we were comparable. We all roughly did the same training schedule so had the same nutritional plan as well.
“We would do two hard weeks and on easier. We would go up to 90,000m in the pool in the harder weeks and then the easier week would be about 40,000m.
“During the easier weeks you take away a lot of the carbohydrates as it’s half the demand on your body. But you have to make sure you continue to eat all the protein as your body is still recovering from the two weeks of hard training.
“It’s all about managing your body through those demands and that’s tricky but it’s important to get educated otherwise you can make mistakes.”
Read Cameron Brodie on the importance of psychology training here