Food recording and hydration habits of amateur participants of a long-term cycling test

Abstract

Introduction: Cyclism is considered a sport with great physical and nutritional needs, with contests and trainings with long duration and routes and variations on difficulty and intensity. The adequate consume of liquids before, during and after the exercise and balanced alimentations are nutritional practices of great importance to the athlete's health and well-being, also improves the physical performance. Objective: Assess the dietary consume and the hydration habits of amateur participants on a long term cycling contest. Materials and Methods: Transversal study realized with amateur participants on a long term cycling contest through the secondary data analysis. The hydration data was gathered using an adapted questionnaire on the day before the contest. Weight, height were taken to evaluate the Body Mass Index (BMI). Food ingestion was evaluated using a 24 hours food reminder on the day before the contest and the calculation was performed using Dietwin®. Software SPSS version 22.0 was used to perform statistical analysis with 5% of significant level. Results: 22 male individuals were assessed, with average age of 34.7 ± 6.3 years, average BMI of 25.95 kg/m2 and average consume of 2277.77 ± 690.37 kcal on the day before the contest. The macronutrients ingestion was in accordance with recommendations, but the micronutritional and hydric ingestions were below DRI recommendations. Conclusion: Based on gathered data is concluded that amateur cyclists present adequate energetic ingestions, thou have inadequate ingestion of some micronutrients and liquids.