For student-athletes, juggling school and sports can be hard enough. On top of that, finding time to eat a balanced diet and supplying your body with the proper nutrients can be a whole new ball game.

Regardless of your level of physical activity, everyone should try and eat healthy and get as many of the four main food groups as possible. Although Huskie athletes are training up to five times weekly and playing highly competitive games twice a week, their diets aren’t too out of the ordinary.

University of Saskatchewan nutrition professor Gordon Zello says that following the Canadian Food Guide is the healthiest choice for everyone, including athletes.

“Following Canada’s Food Guide is a good idea, that’s a really good place to start. By following that, you’re going to get your vitamins and nutrients that an athlete requires,” Zello said. “An athlete doesn’t actually need more specific vitamins then an average person, just protein. However, when an athlete eats more calories they actually get more protein — your protein need is dependent on your body size. Most people in Canada get much more protein than required, just by eating normally.”

Aside from the extra calorie consumption required to fuel their workouts, the only extra requirements Zello recommends is a high water intake — due to the large amount of water lost when sweating — and more iron in the diet.

Even though athletes can get their high calorie intake from other sources like cheeseburgers and poutine, Zello says establishing good eating habits now will pay off in the long run.

“One of the problems with elite athletes is they need a lot of calories and you tend to only eat foods that will give you lots of calories, like Gatorade or McDonald’s. This predisposes you to bad eating habits once you stop being an athlete. Some athletes become a little chunky after they finish their sports career, which could be [because] they never learned how to eat right,” Zello said.

While protein shakes and meal replacements are a popular fad today, Zello says there are no health risks by having such a high protein intake — but there are also not many benefits to be gained. The protein powders and supplements are “unnecessary and expensive” if you just eat healthy and regularly throughout the day.

Zello says meal replacement beverages are much more efficient, especially when an athlete needs to consume so many calories.

“It’s often hard for an athlete to consume 4,000 or 5,000 calories a day. It’s hard to eat that much food, especially healthy food. So if you can take a nutrition drink that has your carbs, fats, vitamins and minerals that’s perfectly fine, but it might cost a bit. It’s a better alternative than eating hamburgers and french fries,” he said.

Zello and Phil Chilibeck, a fellow university professor in the College of Kinesiology, have been studying local crops grown in Saskatchewan in the hope that they can become the new pregame go-to food for athletes.

“We study pulse crops — lentils, beans and chickpeas — we’ve been looking at them as kind of a super food for athletes because they’re low in fat and have a low Glycemic Index, which means they don’t raise your blood sugar. These pulse crops balance your blood sugar and maintain your stores.”

Zello and Chilibeck’s research involved four Huskie soccer players, and they tested to see if the pulse crops would help maintain energy levels for longer periods of time.

The studies have “shown eating pulses before an activity is just as good as eating your typical high-carbohydrate meals that athletes like — we’ve shown that pulses work just as well. We fed them pulses two hours before the game and then studied if they could maintain their level of physical activity longer. By providing them lentils, for example, we hope they can perform at the same level for longer,” Zello said.

This isn’t just important for athletes, but for everyone. Try eating pulse crops before going to the gym, a recreational sport or an intense shopping trip, and your energy levels should stay higher for longer. Between that and following Canada’s Food Guide, you’re putting yourself in the best shape possible.