I once had an Easter meal at the Ramada Plaza Fargo Hotel. One of the top five best meals I’ve had. Salmon, steak tips, bacon, waffles, fruits, breads, vegetables and more. The presentation was fabulous.
Yesterday I ate a bag of Chex Mix, two packets of ramen and a few glasses of water. I ran a few miles at the Wellness Center, too.
Count my meals up and it’s just under 800 calories. Doctor says I need to be eating around 1,750 – 1,950 calories a day. So I missed the mark a bit.
Ben Tynan, a junior wrestler for North Dakota State, said when he goes to McDonald’s he “eats at least 1,000 calories, easily.” Some say that’s easy, some say disgusting, but he has to maintain weight to compete at his 285-pound weight class.
For sophomore golfer Natalie Roth, she eats a little healthier than Tynan.
She doesn’t count her calories, but said her diet is “really clean” eating mostly organic foods, and she is gluten-free.
“I stay away from breads just because it’s an inflammatory thing to the body, and I’ve had a history of getting tendinitis, so taking wheat and gluten out of my diet doesn’t inflame anything,” Roth said.
The reining Summit League Newcomer of the Year eats a lot of protein and loves eggs.
On tournament days, Roth and the other Bison golfers need to eat foods “that will sustain (their) energy throughout 10 hours.”
In the hotel before tee time, the ladies will eat protein for breakfast, and around lunch time Matt Johnson (women’s head coach) will hand out bag lunches, usually containing a sandwich or an apple to keep their energy up throughout the second half of the tournament.
Another NDSU student-athlete that enjoys her breakfast food is senior middle-distance runner Erin Teschuk.
“Sometimes I eat breakfast three meals a day,” Teschuk said.
For Teschuk, it’s key to have a “calorie-balanced” diet. Middle-distance runners are burning a 1,000 calories a day, “so that’s an extra 1,000 calories to maybe your typical 2,000-calorie diet,” she said.
Depending on when Teschuk races on meet days, she eats a solid meal three hours before she starts to warm up. If the race is in the afternoon, Teschuk will be eating oatmeal and keeps “it pretty basic on meet days.”
But she makes sure she doesn’t eat anything that is going to upset her stomach.
On meet days for thrower Conrad Schwarzkopf loads up on the noodles and bulks up on the proteins.
“Anything that can give (me) enough energy to get through the day,” the junior said about his eating habits.
Schwarzkopf eats near 3,500 calories a day of the “right stuff.”
That right stuff includes vegetables and fruits; he always makes sure to eat a few blackberries a day.
“(I) try to keep low on the carbohydrates, potatoes, starches,” Schwarzkopf said. “Pretty much what they teach you in health class.”
What health class doesn’t teach is how to eat like a Bison defensive tackle.
Sophomore Nate Tanguay eats 7,000-plus calories during NDSU’s football season. He will wake up, and have five eggs, unless he has biscuits and gravy.
Tanguay weighs 290 pounds, and, to maintain that weight during the season, he has to “eat two to three times at a meal.”
“You have to find this balance, which is really tough for me because if I eat just a little bit too much I’ll gain three pounds like it’s nothing, and my coach will be pissed off,” Tanguay, who had 45 tackles this season, said. “I hop on the scale twice a day just to know where I’m at all times or else he will make me run, and if I don’t eat enough he yells at me for being too light.”
When it’s game day, Tanguay doesn’t like to play on a full stomach; however, his pregame meal ritual keeps food in his system.
For an 11 a.m. kickoff, the student-athletes have to be up 7 a.m. for a pregame meal.
Tanguay eats spaghetti and meat sauce every pregame meal, 7 a.m. or not.
During the season Tanguay can eat ice cream and a whole Uncle Maddio’s pizzas.
But now that the NDSU football team is in the off-season, Tanguay can’t eat everything in sight.
“I have to eat way less because otherwise (my weight) will shoot through the roof,” Tanguay said about his off-season diet. “It’s hard because I’m eating chicken breast after chicken breast, kind of whatever I want during the season, but then off-season … not only by lightening things up by eating some yogurt and cottage cheese or salad, I don’t eat anything after 7 p.m.”
Calories aside, if Tanguay could just go all out and order whatever he wanted without facing the consequences, it would be an appetizer, main course meal and of course desert.
“Appetizer, calamari, that’s my favorite. Then I would want my mom to make some chicken pot pie and mashed potatoes, and for desert, peanut butter pie.”
I’ll stick to ramen.