My oldest son is getting ready to play in the Alberta Summer Games representing our city on a soccer team for his age range.  We’re all very excited.  He’s worked hard and practiced lots to get to this point.

The coach told us to feed him lots of high energy foods the 3 days leading up to the games and get him to drink LOTS of water, too.  They have to play 3 games on Wednesday and another game, possibly 2, on Thursday.  And it’s going to be pretty hot.  So we need to make sure that they are well fed and hydrated.

We also have to provide him easy-to-digest foods during the day on Wednesday and Thursday – so his body can use the energy to play ball, and not to process his food.

This is trickier than I thought, but I think I’m getting a handle on it now.  We actually usually eat a pretty good balance of healthy food, so we haven’t had to change a lot over the last few days for the high energy food part.  We’ll just have to have a few different things on hand for the game days.

These are the times when I’m glad that we’ve worked hard to get our kiddos to NOT be picky with their meals – they eat what we put in front of them for the most part.  And they are all good veggie and fruit eaters.  We don’t eat a lot of junk food at all, and drink almost no sodas (pop) – only for a treat every once in a while.  That means that all the things he needs to be eating he will like eating and not feel deprived of other things that he’d rather be eating.  A good foundation has been laid and it’s easy to build on that for these kinds of things.  That is a VERY good feeling for me as a mom!

It will be a bit weird to have to pack Jell-O, soup and plain cereal (among other things) instead of our regular selections for filling up the cooler on game days.  But it’s OK.  If it will give him what he needs to play well and feel good doing it, then that’s what we’ll do.