See how the top Lowell athletes are chasing their professional idols... in the kitchen.

Swimming

Bruce Lee once said, “If you want to learn to swim, jump into the water.” However, jumping into the water is not the only thing 14-time gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps does to win his bling. Phelps’ high-caloric diet that allows him to be the fast swimmer he is with 37 world records under his belt, along with proteins and carbs.

His daily diet includes a whopping 12,000 calories, composed of breakfast, which includes fried eggs, French toast and pancakes; lunch, which includes pasta and ham and cheese sandwiches; and dinner, which includes pizza and a pound of pasta. This may sound unhealthy to the average athlete, but given how frequently Phelps exercises he simply would not be able to swim without making his diet compensate for the amount of calories he burns.

According to Mark Kilon, a sports medicine doctor and orthopedic surgeon at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Phelps’s worry is not ordering salads and skipping desserts, but eating enough calories to replenish the amount he has burned. If he does not then “his body won’t recover, the muscles will not recover, there will not be adequate energy stored for him to compete in his next event,” Kilon said.

Senior varsity swimmer Nicholas Kwan’s diet, however, is not quite as drastic as Phelps’s. But like Phelps, Kwan’s diet is helpful in leading his team to victory in the AAA Championships, getting first in the Varsity Boys’ 50-Yard and in the Varsity Boys’ 200-Yard Relay with his fellow teammates, juniors Chioke Bautista and Henry Quach and senior Anthony Li.

Kwan eats three meals a day, with only snacks before swimming practice. His lunch is usually fruit plus a cheese and turkey sandwich because it is the most convenient to make. For dinner he usually eats a balanced amount of carbs, vegetables, and meat. “I don’t need to consciously think about my diet because swimming burns up a lot of calories,” Kwan said.

Track

His name and achievements have earned him the nickname “Lightning Bolt.” He holds the world and Olympic records for the 100-meter, 200-meter and, along with his teammates, the 4x100 meter relay. He has three Olympic gold medals and became the first man to hold the 100 and 200-meter world and Olympic records at the same time. Usain Bolt is currently one of the most recognized names in sprinting.

As a professional athlete, Bolt has to watch what he eats closely to ensure that he will be ready to compete. Unlike other athletes, he does not take supplements besides Vitamin C. He relies on keeping tabs on what he eats in order to maintain a high energy diet ensuring that each of his six daily meals contains 60 percent protein, 30 percent carbs and 10 percent fats. Sprinters should consume the recommended one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. According to this, Bolt has to put away 169 grams of protein and he accomplishes this by eating fish, pork, and chicken fillets. Bolt also loves yams, which are a good source of energy-transporting carbohydrates, digestion-aiding fiber and Vitamins C and A. 

Senior sprinter Safa Mannah is easily comparable to the great “Lightning Bolt.” Appropriately nicknamed “Static Shock,” Mannah can run 400 meters in 50.68 seconds. Even with his great speed he runs towards three main goals for the season; to make it to All-State, improve his running form and to beat his own time for the 400-meter — his plan is to run it in under 50 seconds.

With endurance as his greatest strength, he does not do anything out of the ordinary diet-wise to improve. “I basically eat whatever I want to and what is available to me, with my mother making sure I am eating a healthy diet,” Mannah said.

He does not follow a certain diet regime because he feels like his parents already provide him with a healthy diet that provides him with needed nutrients. However, he occasionally strays away from his diet with his guilty pleasure of Mexican food. He is an exception to the rule of athletes who attach themselves to a specific diet to meet their needs.

Football

Even rookies get their time to shine when they play like Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings. Peterson was named the NFL Rookie of the Year his first pro season.  In the 2008 NFL Pro Bowl he rushed for 129 yards and two touchdowns, the second highest rushing total in Pro Bowl history. Peterson made history, becoming the fifth player in NFL history to achieve 3,000 yards within their first two football seasons.

Peterson’s diet changed drastically between his time playing college football and his time playing professional football. He eats a lot of baked foods such as fish, chicken and potatoes. He is also addicted to drinking Cytosport’s Muscle Milk in Cookies N’ Cream flavor.

Each member of Lowell’s football team tries to reach 4,000 to 6,000 calories a day. Although senior linebacker Faheem Carter does not stress about counting every calorie, he consciously eats enough to compensate for the calories he loses from charging down the field. He starts off his day with a breakfast of eggs, grits and toast. For lunch he usually eats a large sandwich. And for dinner he will eat meat, usually his favorite of steak, with bread and some kind of soft drink. He specifically uses his diet to gain and maintain weight.