Ds1 is 8 and swims 4 times per week for an hour each time. He is built like a swimmer, very slim and muscly and as he's growing I can see his shape changing. He has the typical wider shoulders than waist.
He can put away more food than me and is eating an adult mans portion every meal. If I ask about this on the main board as I'd be roasted alive for the amount he eats.
What sort of things do you feed your children and how much is too much? I've started doing him omlets for breakfast with chicken and mushrooms as the portions in school dinners are just not enough. So in effect he's having 3 cooked meals a day.
He loves meat and fish, not too keen on carbs but will eat them if I don't put too much on. He will eat as much veg as I put on the plate but it's not exactly filling. I know that if he carries on to the next stage he will get nutritional advice from the squad but I'd like to know what I should be doing for now.
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Any Swimming parents about, what do you feed your children?
Lunar1 · 16/01/2017 12:52
Have a look at the swimming.org website as that has some good ideas for competitive swimmer's meals and snacks.
My son is a few years older and swims 5or 6 times a week. He has omelette or scrambled egg with baked beans and toast for breakfast and at least a pint of full fat milk to drink. He'll sometimes have cereal such as weetabix as well.
He too complains that school meals are insufficient (hence the large breakfast)and will always have seconds if available.
As soon as he's home from school he will graze on things like fruit, bagels, fig rolls, malt loaf, Jaffa cakes etc. Then after training he'll have a cooked meal, usually pasta or jacket potato with chicken/beef/tuna (not all at once
) and plenty of veg.
He also has a high protein snack within 15 minutes of training to help with muscle repair.
All that has changed since he was younger is that the portion sizes have increased. The best measure is keeping an eye on his weight and not having an excess of sugar in his diet. Hope that helps.
Pretty much ditto what Cheryl has said. My DD is 13.5 and eats like that on 5/6 x sessions per week. The only thing I am not sure of is her evening meal post swimming which ends up at circa 9.15pm which means sleeping on a relatively full stomach. I hate this. But, she can't survive on a toast/sandwich type snack then and doesn't count the school meal as 'proper'. Also eats in-between school and swimming en route ranging from a toastie to a wasabi type take out.
Full fat chocolate milk drink straight after swim is really key for her.
Posting the food intake on the main boards will get as much ribbing as the time spent in the pool from some, but when we have children that are swimming up to 4 - 6k sets at a time, then it's no wonder they have a ravenous appetite
Madcats 
I've started to prompt mine to chew more at guests' houses to try and slow her down before she gets offered seconds before anyone else...
I've been wondering about this as well. DD is almost 9, only swimming 2.5hrs a week at the moment but has always had a big appetite (and fast metabolism, so is still v slim). The problem is she is also very fussy, so I struggle to fill her up on healthy food. The big change this term is a 1.5 hr session early in the morning, too early to have a proper breakfast beforehand. So I have been boiling a couple of eggs that she can eat on the way there (whites only, she won't eat yolks 
), then a choc milkshake in the car on the way back, and beans on toast when we get in. The rest of the week my main issue is dinners; basically all she will eat is fish fingers, chicken nuggets, sausages or pasta, the only veg is carrots, sweetcorn or baked beans. I'm hoping as she gets older she starts to realise the importance of good nutrition to swimming performance.
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