Refeeding Days Strategies Applied in Elite Soccer Player Week Dietary Intake: A Short Communication

Abstract

Even knowing that elite soccer players body fat mass does not undergo major changes and remains stable and similar across all age groups they ever want to reduce their body fat percentage because, according to their own reports, by doing this they felt light on the pitch. However, during the off-season soccer periods, the elite soccer players tends reduced you performance after training and matches cessation [1], something that could put into question the need for a diet rich in carbohydrates on this moment due increasing body fat percentage fear. However, there is a strategy for prescribing hypocaloric diets commonly used by resistance athletes during reduce body fat percentage phases, which is called refeeding days. Basically, the strategy consists of a calorie-restricted diet during the week and two days during weekends with 100% energy requirements, something that correlates performance maintenance at body fat percentage reduction [2]. And thinking about, it is something that could correlate with elite soccer players reducing caloric intake and training level during soccer off-seasons with diet strategies that can help them maintained sports performance and low body fat percentage during this phase. A study can prove scientifically that hypocaloric diets on low carbohydrate consumption during short periods were able to decrease body fat in elite soccer players without to harm their performance [3]. Thus, it becomes necessary to understand some methodology that leads the athlete to a low-carbohydrate diet, does not make him lose performance over time and maintains his body composition as desired by him. Thus, knowing that the refeeding days strategies can be used implementing one or two days at high carbohydrate and energy intake (generally at or slightly above body weight maintenance levels), thereby providing a break on the another five consecutive days of low carbohydrate and hypocaloric diet [4], this diet model would add as one more strategy to be recommended for soccer players who try to lower the body fat percentage without worse the performance, becomes this proposal for these athletes interesting. Furthermore, dietary prescriptions for athletes who want to reduce body fat percentage remain within the range of less than 45 kcal/kg-1 lean body mass/day-1, carbohydrates between 3 and 5 g/kg-1 body weight/day-1, proteins between 1 and 3 g/kg-1 body weight/day-1 and the dietary fat prescription percentage comprising 20 to 30% of the total energy value of the diet [5-7]. And for athletes who need to optimize performance, the carbohydrate recommendation is within the range of 5 to 10 g/kg-1 body weight/day-1 and in this case the protein can reach the highest range of the recommendation and go up to 4 g/kg-1 body weight/day-1 [8,9]. This way, a strategy refeeding days model was proposed by the author in Table 1, as a strategy that can be used to decrease the body fat percentage of the elite soccer player with the possibility of not harming his performance.