The figure season is over, and beaches and swimming pools have appeared in the social networks of our collections instead of ice and skates... and food. And not the usual low-fat yoghurts and salads, but pasta, fruit and ice cream. There have been legends about the strict diet of figure skaters (and especially figure skaters) and their struggle with weight for a long time, and no one is in a hurry to share the secrets of keeping fit. So what do athletes really eat - and do they really eat what they put in stories? In principle, big sport is a story about total self-control and limitations, but it is in complex coordination sports - gymnastics, acrobatics, synchronized swimming and figure skating - that the athlete's weight seems to be especially important. Complex jumps, supports, acrobatic elements - and now no skater can do without weighing in the morning. In the era of ultra-si in women's skating, every 100 grams has Olympic significance. The difficulty is that girls have problems with weight begin at a transitional age - when they are expected to get results, and the main starts of life are at stake. How many are ready (and can afford) to go through puberty smoothly and patiently, without breaking into strict diets, magic powders and other unsafe ways not to get fat - in order to preserve the youthful twist? Sports nutritionists are sure that if an athlete manages to pass puberty without disturbing the natural metabolism and without earning health problems, it is easier to control weight further. Experienced figure skaters are able to hear the body and treat it carefully, understanding that they have to pay for unsuccessful experiments with nutrition with a career. But who will believe it at 15? In 2018, Alina Zagitova generally believed that puberty does not bring any problems with weight: "And in terms of puberty, when you get fat, it seems to me that this is all fiction. You just need to close your mouth and not eat! Or at least a little bit. I eat, but in small quantities."
We understand what figure skaters actually eat - and how their views on diets change with age. Boikova: cashews and coffee for breakfast, "normal" meals only on weekends and on vacation. "My diet mainly consists of fats and fiber. Breakfast is a handful of cashews and a cup of coffee. For lunch I eat an apple, a "twix" and again drink coffee (it's too hard without it). Why such a strange set - the answer is simple: I can't train on a full stomach. In the evening, I most often have a salad of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado with olive oil. On weekends, however, I try to have lunch normally - eat baked red fish, for example. On vacation, of course, I eat more varied, but precisely because of this, I just can't afford to just lie on the beach. I have a tendency to be overweight, and as soon as I add meat, fruit, cheese, and fish to my diet, I start eating more, then I have to compensate for this - and run for 30-40 minutes every day. But I refuse sweets even on vacation - maybe that's why I don't get better so much on vacation," she said Sports.ru European champion in pair skating Alexandra Boikova. Stanislava Konstantinova admitted that she had to struggle with weight all her career, without leaving thoughts about ordinary food: "When I eat two percent yogurt at dinner, I dream of normal food. My parents laugh at me and call me a "slave of the stomach." Stanislava shared her menu for Sport24, in short it looks like this. Breakfast: • buckwheat or oatmeal (whole grain, on water) porridge, soft-boiled egg and cheese, or a piece of cheese and buckwheat bread; • toast with avocado. When you don't need to keep yourself in shape - with grain bread, at other times - with loaves; • scrambled eggs or omelet (less often); • tea or a large glass of water. Second breakfast: • coffee and yogurt without additives, without sugar. Rarely - glazed cheese or a piece of chocolate. Lunch: • soup, piece of meat, cucumber; • buckwheat with meat and salad (tomatoes + cucumbers or just cucumbers). Between lunch and dinner - yogurt. Supper: • kefir or yogurt.
Konstantinova recalls daily weigh-ins before training and how persistently the coaches advised her to lose weight. Therefore, even after standard work in the gym and on the ice, she went out for a run every day - for an hour or even more. The hardest thing, according to her, was at the end of the season: "Sadness can cover - and then the weight can creep up to 55-56 kg. This is very bad." World champion in dancing Victoria Sinitsina recalled that the most acute issue of weight arose for her in America (in 2014, she and Nikita Katsalapov went to Michigan for two years to coach Marina Zueva). Then there were hungry days, and the famous rice diet of figure skaters, even food wrap was used. "To eat - it was necessary to finish with it. In America, the food is completely different. I ate the same way as in Moscow, but I immediately noticed that you can get better there even from the holy Spirit. Marina constantly put me on the scales, I was possessed by fear of them. Before weighing, I took off all the hairpins, elastic bands, chains, ran to the toilet so that, God forbid, an extra gram would not appear. I was crying. When the ice training was over and evening came, I put on pants, three sweatshirts, and once a week I also wrapped myself in a film - and ran continuously for an hour. I arranged a hard drying for myself. Yes, I did it only once a week, it's not very good for the heart, but it helped me a lot." Anorexia or other eating disorder has not reached: "I was on one diet, on another, on the third, then I started eating one rice. Then I just went crazy on this topic, starting to weigh myself four times a day. This is not normal for a person. Thank God, I have a head on my shoulders, and I have not reached the real problems. Soon she excluded many foods and began to eat a little differently. Marina told me like this: "Do you want French fries? Eat one stick. Do you want chocolate? Break off the square and eat it." If something is banned forever, I will have a breakdown. In fact, I did not limit myself radically in something, I just began to eat rarely and a little." In the diaries of Sinitsina of those years, however, you will not find any chocolate. But the recordings themselves, posted by Vika in the telegram, give a rare chance to peek at what Olympic-level athletes actually eat. Smoothies, salads from fresh vegetables, lean protein in the form of fish or chicken, restriction of carbohydrates and, most importantly, portion sizes are a fairly predictable recipe for keeping fit not only for figure skaters.
Today Victoria has moved away from strict diets, and found an individual style of nutrition - without radical restrictions. Her choice is interval fasting, in which meals take place in a strictly allotted window. In the case of Sinitsina, this is scheme 18:6 - she eats 1-2 times a day for 6 hours, the remaining 18 hours without eating. "I don't limit myself in anything. Of course, I don't eat pizza, pasta, potatoes, or fast food all the time - this happens very rarely. Most often - salads, meat, fish, fruits. I have a crazy sweet tooth, I love chocolate. I can allow something unusual after the competition - you can say it's a way to celebrate the results, relax. You prepare for competitions for a month, keep yourself in shape, and then exhale - you still lose weight under stress, so after tournaments you can easily afford everything. Juices are too sweet for me, I will choose them only if there is nothing to drink at all. I stopped buying soda - I only drink water or mineral water with gas. Athletes have an expression that soda makes their legs sit down: they get clogged up quickly, get tired. And at some point I quit. I thought it would be hard without these drinks, but I'm out of the habit, I don't even want to buy again," Sinitsina said. By the way, life in America has taught Victoria to drink cold tea and coffee. Cold black coffee is her favorite drink in the heat. The same magic film that Sinitsina mentioned, apparently, is also in the arsenal of the Olympic champion-2022. In the photo, which Anna Shcherbakova posted in early February, there was a roll of film and cans of sports nutrition. One of them guesses "squizi" - German protein powder, which was drunk by Yulia Lipnitskaya during the Olympic season 2013/14. The world then learned about "squizi" and his role in the form of Yulia Lipnitskaya from Eteri Tutberidze - the coach herself told what it cost Yulia to fight with weight before the Olympics: "I've never encountered this in my work - she just can't eat at all. And I'm very sorry that she has to endure so much, but I can't do anything about it. She's doing a great job coping with it. When she needs to lose weight, she eats only squizi powder - it's fiber that gives energy. It's hard for her, and the weight goes down very slowly - 100 grams a day." What is this mysterious "squizzy"?
A sports pit that can be bought in specialty stores. Its advertising slogan is Lose fat, not power, that is, "lose fat, not energy." For athletes who have been taught that fat is the enemy, and who know that it is impossible to win without endurance, it sounds attractive. The manufacturer's website says that the powder "gets rid of fat, without loss of muscle mass; serves as an additional source of energy, protein, essential micronutrients, reduces consumption to 900 kcal per day, and its composition allows you to use the product instead of conventional nutrition." The problem is that the temptation to eat "squizi" (dissolving it, for example, in kefir, as Lipnitskaya did) instead of any food can become so great that it is not easy to return to the usual diet. As a result, instead of being overweight, figure skaters receive worse diagnoses - for example, anorexia in the case of Lipnitskaya, and general eating disorder (RPP), which many suspect. We return to Shcherbakova. She, however, did not mention special sports nutrition in the interview - the replicas revolve around the standard "I eat everything, but a little." Here is her story: "Have I ever lost weight? Globally - no, just a little bit. I try not to gain much weight so that I don't have to throw it off later. Usually I do not limit myself, I try to eat the right food so that I have the strength to train. At the same time, I understand that if I forbid myself to eat something, I will have moments of breakdowns. I try not to eat at night - so it turns out to keep weight. Of course, the coaches know that I don't eat only salads - they weigh us, watch us. We do not have a complete exclusion of sweets. In general, I think they know what I eat - we often go out to eat together at competitions, and I have never been severely restricted in food. There is no food that I can't eat." After one of these joint dinners, the phrase that "Anya will eat two shrimps for dinner - and she's full" went to the people. Daniil Gleichengauz confirmed that Shcherbakova was lucky - she is not crazy about food, unlike many. But judging by the videos that Anna publishes in the telegram, she still goes to the competitions with personal weights - so as not to lose control of the situation.
On the eve of the Olympics, Shcherbakova admitted that the issue of weight is directly related to jumping, but diet is still not her story: "I don't go on diets, I just try to eat right and balanced. It is important for me to maintain a certain weight in order to be in shape, to perform jumps. I spend a lot of calories in training, my appetite wakes up. Some athletes refuse to eat before a performance, but I, on the contrary, feel better when I have lunch." Jumping technique and weight were also connected by Alina Zagitova: "When you gain weight, the technique of jumping immediately changes. The fat on your arm has grown - you can't jump anymore." She also admitted that during the Olympic season, the weight problem was so acute that she weighed herself three times a day. They also limited water consumption, because every 100 grams were critical. So Alina came up with the idea to take a sip before weighing - and spit it out. As a reward for winning the Olympics, she got ice cream. One. Zagitova admitted that her diet on vacation and at competitions differed little - she watched her weight seven days a week: "In the morning I get up on the scales. If there is a plus, I limit myself during the day. If the weight is normal, I eat only lunch and a little for dinner. I hardly have breakfast." But Sasha Trusova, apparently, has a calmer relationship with food. She says she eats whatever she wants, there is no diet. However, according to her, it is better not to eat certain foods at night, it is better to pamper yourself in the morning. "I don't have a special diet, but I try to eat more protein food. There are no prohibitions as such. But I don't like fast food myself and am completely indifferent to cakes. Therefore, nothing like this happens in my diet. My diet does not change at all during the competition, I eat the same as usual. I don't know who does it, but my mother most often cooks food for me. Traditional dishes?
Thanks for sharing this. Sports-nutrition is a topic you can really lose your head about. Very interesting to learn how the young athletes are coping with this subject.
To keep a competitive edge without a long term adverse consequence, a skater’s diet must be constructed strictly based on nutrition science with a few treats. Otherwise, the skater’s health will deteriorate rapidly after the age of 30 years old. Чтобы сохранить конкурентное преимущество без долгосрочных неблагоприятных последствий, диета фигуриста должна быть построена строго на основе науки о питании с небольшим количеством угощений. В противном случае здоровье фигуриста будет стремительно ухудшаться ПОСЛЕ 30-летнего возраста.
The figure season is over, and beaches and swimming pools have appeared in the social networks of our collections instead of ice and skates... and food. And not the usual low-fat yoghurts and salads, but pasta, fruit and ice cream.
There have been legends about the strict diet of figure skaters (and especially figure skaters) and their struggle with weight for a long time, and no one is in a hurry to share the secrets of keeping fit. So what do athletes really eat - and do they really eat what they put in stories?
In principle, big sport is a story about total self-control and limitations, but it is in complex coordination sports - gymnastics, acrobatics, synchronized swimming and figure skating - that the athlete's weight seems to be especially important. Complex jumps, supports, acrobatic elements - and now no skater can do without weighing in the morning. In the era of ultra-si in women's skating, every 100 grams has Olympic significance.
The difficulty is that girls have problems with weight begin at a transitional age - when they are expected to get results, and the main starts of life are at stake. How many are ready (and can afford) to go through puberty smoothly and patiently, without breaking into strict diets, magic powders and other unsafe ways not to get fat - in order to preserve the youthful twist?
Sports nutritionists are sure that if an athlete manages to pass puberty without disturbing the natural metabolism and without earning health problems, it is easier to control weight further. Experienced figure skaters are able to hear the body and treat it carefully, understanding that they have to pay for unsuccessful experiments with nutrition with a career.
But who will believe it at 15? In 2018, Alina Zagitova generally believed that puberty does not bring any problems with weight: "And in terms of puberty, when you get fat, it seems to me that this is all fiction. You just need to close your mouth and not eat! Or at least a little bit. I eat, but in small quantities."
We understand what figure skaters actually eat - and how their views on diets change with age.
Boikova: cashews and coffee for breakfast, "normal" meals only on weekends and on vacation. "My diet mainly consists of fats and fiber. Breakfast is a handful of cashews and a cup of coffee. For lunch I eat an apple, a "twix" and again drink coffee (it's too hard without it). Why such a strange set - the answer is simple: I can't train on a full stomach. In the evening, I most often have a salad of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado with olive oil.
On weekends, however, I try to have lunch normally - eat baked red fish, for example.
On vacation, of course, I eat more varied, but precisely because of this, I just can't afford to just lie on the beach. I have a tendency to be overweight, and as soon as I add meat, fruit, cheese, and fish to my diet, I start eating more, then I have to compensate for this - and run for 30-40 minutes every day. But I refuse sweets even on vacation - maybe that's why I don't get better so much on vacation," she said Sports.ru European champion in pair skating Alexandra Boikova. Stanislava Konstantinova admitted that she had to struggle with weight all her career, without leaving thoughts about ordinary food: "When I eat two percent yogurt at dinner, I dream of normal food. My parents laugh at me and call me a "slave of the stomach."
Stanislava shared her menu for Sport24, in short it looks like this.
Breakfast:
• buckwheat or oatmeal (whole grain, on water) porridge, soft-boiled egg and cheese, or a piece of cheese and buckwheat bread;
• toast with avocado. When you don't need to keep yourself in shape - with grain bread, at other times - with loaves;
• scrambled eggs or omelet (less often);
• tea or a large glass of water.
Second breakfast:
• coffee and yogurt without additives, without sugar. Rarely - glazed cheese or a piece of chocolate.
Lunch:
• soup, piece of meat, cucumber;
• buckwheat with meat and salad (tomatoes + cucumbers or just cucumbers). Between lunch and dinner - yogurt.
Supper:
• kefir or yogurt.
Konstantinova recalls daily weigh-ins before training and how persistently the coaches advised her to lose weight. Therefore, even after standard work in the gym and on the ice, she went out for a run every day - for an hour or even more. The hardest thing, according to her, was at the end of the season: "Sadness can cover - and then the weight can creep up to 55-56 kg. This is very bad." World champion in dancing Victoria Sinitsina recalled that the most acute issue of weight arose for her in America (in 2014, she and Nikita Katsalapov went to Michigan for two years to coach Marina Zueva). Then there were hungry days, and the famous rice diet of figure skaters, even food wrap was used.
"To eat - it was necessary to finish with it. In America, the food is completely different. I ate the same way as in Moscow, but I immediately noticed that you can get better there even from the holy Spirit. Marina constantly put me on the scales, I was possessed by fear of them. Before weighing, I took off all the hairpins, elastic bands, chains, ran to the toilet so that, God forbid, an extra gram would not appear. I was crying.
When the ice training was over and evening came, I put on pants, three sweatshirts, and once a week I also wrapped myself in a film - and ran continuously for an hour. I arranged a hard drying for myself. Yes, I did it only once a week, it's not very good for the heart, but it helped me a lot."
Anorexia or other eating disorder has not reached:
"I was on one diet, on another, on the third, then I started eating one rice. Then I just went crazy on this topic, starting to weigh myself four times a day. This is not normal for a person. Thank God, I have a head on my shoulders, and I have not reached the real problems. Soon she excluded many foods and began to eat a little differently.
Marina told me like this: "Do you want French fries? Eat one stick. Do you want chocolate? Break off the square and eat it." If something is banned forever, I will have a breakdown. In fact, I did not limit myself radically in something, I just began to eat rarely and a little."
In the diaries of Sinitsina of those years, however, you will not find any chocolate. But the recordings themselves, posted by Vika in the telegram, give a rare chance to peek at what Olympic-level athletes actually eat. Smoothies, salads from fresh vegetables, lean protein in the form of fish or chicken, restriction of carbohydrates and, most importantly, portion sizes are a fairly predictable recipe for keeping fit not only for figure skaters.
Today Victoria has moved away from strict diets, and found an individual style of nutrition - without radical restrictions. Her choice is interval fasting, in which meals take place in a strictly allotted window. In the case of Sinitsina, this is scheme 18:6 - she eats 1-2 times a day for 6 hours, the remaining 18 hours without eating.
"I don't limit myself in anything. Of course, I don't eat pizza, pasta, potatoes, or fast food all the time - this happens very rarely. Most often - salads, meat, fish, fruits. I have a crazy sweet tooth, I love chocolate. I can allow something unusual after the competition - you can say it's a way to celebrate the results, relax. You prepare for competitions for a month, keep yourself in shape, and then exhale - you still lose weight under stress, so after tournaments you can easily afford everything.
Juices are too sweet for me, I will choose them only if there is nothing to drink at all. I stopped buying soda - I only drink water or mineral water with gas. Athletes have an expression that soda makes their legs sit down: they get clogged up quickly, get tired. And at some point I quit. I thought it would be hard without these drinks, but I'm out of the habit, I don't even want to buy again," Sinitsina said.
By the way, life in America has taught Victoria to drink cold tea and coffee. Cold black coffee is her favorite drink in the heat. The same magic film that Sinitsina mentioned, apparently, is also in the arsenal of the Olympic champion-2022. In the photo, which Anna Shcherbakova posted in early February, there was a roll of film and cans of sports nutrition.
One of them guesses "squizi" - German protein powder, which was drunk by Yulia Lipnitskaya during the Olympic season 2013/14.
The world then learned about "squizi" and his role in the form of Yulia Lipnitskaya from Eteri Tutberidze - the coach herself told what it cost Yulia to fight with weight before the Olympics:
"I've never encountered this in my work - she just can't eat at all. And I'm very sorry that she has to endure so much, but I can't do anything about it. She's doing a great job coping with it. When she needs to lose weight, she eats only squizi powder - it's fiber that gives energy. It's hard for her, and the weight goes down very slowly - 100 grams a day." What is this mysterious "squizzy"?
A sports pit that can be bought in specialty stores. Its advertising slogan is Lose fat, not power, that is, "lose fat, not energy." For athletes who have been taught that fat is the enemy, and who know that it is impossible to win without endurance, it sounds attractive.
The manufacturer's website says that the powder "gets rid of fat, without loss of muscle mass; serves as an additional source of energy, protein, essential micronutrients, reduces consumption to 900 kcal per day, and its composition allows you to use the product instead of conventional nutrition."
The problem is that the temptation to eat "squizi" (dissolving it, for example, in kefir, as Lipnitskaya did) instead of any food can become so great that it is not easy to return to the usual diet. As a result, instead of being overweight, figure skaters receive worse diagnoses - for example, anorexia in the case of Lipnitskaya, and general eating disorder (RPP), which many suspect.
We return to Shcherbakova. She, however, did not mention special sports nutrition in the interview - the replicas revolve around the standard "I eat everything, but a little." Here is her story:
"Have I ever lost weight? Globally - no, just a little bit. I try not to gain much weight so that I don't have to throw it off later. Usually I do not limit myself, I try to eat the right food so that I have the strength to train. At the same time, I understand that if I forbid myself to eat something, I will have moments of breakdowns. I try not to eat at night - so it turns out to keep weight.
Of course, the coaches know that I don't eat only salads - they weigh us, watch us. We do not have a complete exclusion of sweets. In general, I think they know what I eat - we often go out to eat together at competitions, and I have never been severely restricted in food. There is no food that I can't eat."
After one of these joint dinners, the phrase that "Anya will eat two shrimps for dinner - and she's full" went to the people. Daniil Gleichengauz confirmed that Shcherbakova was lucky - she is not crazy about food, unlike many. But judging by the videos that Anna publishes in the telegram, she still goes to the competitions with personal weights - so as not to lose control of the situation.
On the eve of the Olympics, Shcherbakova admitted that the issue of weight is directly related to jumping, but diet is still not her story:
"I don't go on diets, I just try to eat right and balanced. It is important for me to maintain a certain weight in order to be in shape, to perform jumps. I spend a lot of calories in training, my appetite wakes up. Some athletes refuse to eat before a performance, but I, on the contrary, feel better when I have lunch." Jumping technique and weight were also connected by Alina Zagitova: "When you gain weight, the technique of jumping immediately changes. The fat on your arm has grown - you can't jump anymore."
She also admitted that during the Olympic season, the weight problem was so acute that she weighed herself three times a day. They also limited water consumption, because every 100 grams were critical. So Alina came up with the idea to take a sip before weighing - and spit it out.
As a reward for winning the Olympics, she got ice cream. One.
Zagitova admitted that her diet on vacation and at competitions differed little - she watched her weight seven days a week: "In the morning I get up on the scales. If there is a plus, I limit myself during the day. If the weight is normal, I eat only lunch and a little for dinner. I hardly have breakfast." But Sasha Trusova, apparently, has a calmer relationship with food. She says she eats whatever she wants, there is no diet. However, according to her, it is better not to eat certain foods at night, it is better to pamper yourself in the morning.
"I don't have a special diet, but I try to eat more protein food. There are no prohibitions as such. But I don't like fast food myself and am completely indifferent to cakes. Therefore, nothing like this happens in my diet. My diet does not change at all during the competition, I eat the same as usual. I don't know who does it, but my mother most often cooks food for me. Traditional dishes?
Thanks for sharing this. Sports-nutrition is a topic you can really lose your head about. Very interesting to learn how the young athletes are coping with this subject.
Yes, you're right! Proper nutrition is everything!
Where did they get such willpower?!
When you know you will get punished physically and mentqlly by your trainers if you don't get in the podium, you find the willpower.
When you are a child it is not willpower only enforcement
To keep a competitive edge without a long term adverse consequence, a skater’s diet must be constructed strictly based on nutrition science with a few treats. Otherwise, the skater’s health will deteriorate rapidly after the age of 30 years old. Чтобы сохранить конкурентное преимущество без долгосрочных неблагоприятных последствий, диета фигуриста должна быть построена строго на основе науки о питании с небольшим количеством угощений. В противном случае здоровье фигуриста будет стремительно ухудшаться ПОСЛЕ 30-летнего возраста.
A cutting edge Nutritional science Has Nothing to do with a dietitian. ПЕРЕДОВАЯ НАУКА Наука о питании Не имеет ничего общего с диетологом.
I think they strictly monitor their nutrition!