Q: What is a suitable dietary guideline for a power athlete such as a weight lifter?

A: Power and strength atheletes most often compete grouped by weight classes where all competitors weigh in the same range. Therefore a typical power athlete will first of all want to keep in the range, preferably at or near the top of it since extra weight equals extra muscle and strength. For athletes such wrestlers, especially, it's common to be slightly above their competition weight and then in the last few days go on a very intensive cardio program and even intentionally dehydrate themselves to make the competition weight.

A power athlete's diet and training program would typically be structured around the competitions. If, say, the athlete has only one competition a year then his training program will go through hypertrophy, strength, and power phases of several months each with power peaking right before the competition. During the hypertrophy phase the athelete's objective will be to gain new muscle and his diet will be a bulking diet, not dissimilar to the sample muscle-building diets given here. During the other two phases, the athlete will have a maintenance diet (aimed at keeping the weight constant) or possibly a slight fat-loss diet if too much weight was gained during the hypertrophy phase.

A maintenance diet for a power athlete need not be as strict as muscle-building or fat-burning phases in the number of meals and the types of foods since their body composition is not expected to change during the maintenance periods anyway. They will most likely structure the meals of the maintenance phases around their training sessions and eat such foods and at such times as to give them the most energy for their training without weighing them down.