This Is How WNBA Player Skylar Diggins Eats Clean
This Is How WNBA Player Skylar Diggins Eats Clean
When juggling busy careers and lives, it's not always easy to find the time to hit the gym or prepare a healthy meal. For inspiration, we're asking influential women in a variety of fields to share a typical day of food and fitness. Dallas Wings player Skylar Diggins–whom you might recognize from countless Nike campaigns (or perhaps from fanboy Drake's Instagram feed)–has only been in the WNBA for three years, but is a five-time USA Basketball gold medalist, two-time WNBA All Star starter, and the only woman represented by Jay Z's Roc Nation Sports. Here, ahead of the start of the WNBA's 20th season, one of its brightest stars lets us in on a day in her busy life.
I get up around 6:30 a.m. For my breakfast, I am an oatmeal and eggs girl—boiled, poached, scrambled. I think it's so important to get, you know, protein in before I get up and go to practice since I have to work out and stuff like that so I'm not burning off any muscles. To me, that's the one thing I need to start my day. If I'm in a rush, I'll eat fruit and scrambled eggs, with avocado.
[In my omelet] is veggies, it could be anything from onions to peppers to tomatoes, and egg whites. I could add some chicken or some brown turkey or any protein that I may have, it just all depends on how much time I have and what day it is. My recipe is forever changing.
Breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day for me. As the day goes on, you just never know what's going to happen so I think you should get the adequate amount of fuel in your system, [otherwise] it's like having a car on "E."
A lot of my rehab [after I tore my ACL last year] had to do with low-impact cardio: spin bike, StairMaster, and really trying to sustain my body to last throughout this long WNBA season, and also to return to form and be able to play. I warm up on the spin bike, stretch, and I use stability balls a lot. I use [resistance] bands a lot, and do a lot of core strength and balance exercises or functional movement training with body weight, like push ups, pull ups, battle ropes, the list goes on and on.
I'll come in [to the basketball court] and shoot, and then we start practice. When we finish practice, I'm stretching and things like that. Yeah, when it's not a game day, that's what it is. Typically, in the off-season, it's probably an hour and a half off the court, an hour on the court.
On game day, we come in and we pack up and do specific drills depending on who you're playing and things like that. Shooting around takes an hour and we practice for about two hours. Anywhere between an hour and three hours a day, we'll work on various things from ball handling to shooting to conditioning and strength. I've incorporated most of these things in my workouts.
Around 12:30 p.m. or 1 p.m. after practice, I'll have lunch. I try to incorporate it 30 minutes after I work out. For this chicken salad, I try to incorporate different veggies that I like such as tomatoes, peppers, sometimes asparagus, kale, or mixed greens. I just mix it up. I have Bodyarmor to keep my body hydrated, to refuel it to get the most out of it for my performance. It has a lot of vitamins, coconut water, and it tastes good, too.
I don't pay attention to numbers [like calories or grams]. I'm not a nutritionist. [I just go by] however I'm feeling and I try to keep it super clean, especially now when I'm training for the beginning of the season. We're practicing now and we're about to start our games up.
I don't pay attention to numbers; I just go by
however I'm feeling and I try to keep it super clean.
A lot of [eating clean] has to do with meal prepping. That's something that I really learned when I got out of college, the importance of meal prepping, and being able to bring certain meals to practice. It varies week by week. I think being out of town is the toughest for keeping up those habits. For me, Sundays, Wednesdays, twice a week, [I will meal prep]. I keep it healthy, but allow myself to have those cheat meals, like pizza. I also love turkey burgers and French fries.
Here with the salmon, I got my healthy carbs in with the quinoa. I love potatoes. I love sweet potatoes, red potatoes. Those are really easy to make too, just pop them in the oven. You can mix it up and put them on the stovetop, you can make a sweet potato casserole, roasted potatoes, and that's also a healthy carb.
When I tore my ACL, I had a lot of downtime. I was not able to practice like I wanted. I couldn't be on my feet. But, I watched a lot of Food Network, [looked at] Pinterest recipes—you name it. I was trying to find different recipes that I wanted to try, and trying to incorporate more clean eating into my diet and learn how to do it myself. It was a more inexpensive way to go about clean eating, learning how to do it myself, being more self-sufficient.
I always have people on social media asking me about learning how to cook or teaching myself how to cook, and people ask me for recipes or to share some ideas for how to meal prep or what have you. I love that–sharing the message about leading a healthy and fit lifestyle.
source: http://www.elle.com
however I'm feeling and I try to keep it super clean.
A lot of [eating clean] has to do with meal prepping. That's something that I really learned when I got out of college, the importance of meal prepping, and being able to bring certain meals to practice. It varies week by week. I think being out of town is the toughest for keeping up those habits. For me, Sundays, Wednesdays, twice a week, [I will meal prep]. I keep it healthy, but allow myself to have those cheat meals, like pizza. I also love turkey burgers and French fries.
Here with the salmon, I got my healthy carbs in with the quinoa. I love potatoes. I love sweet potatoes, red potatoes. Those are really easy to make too, just pop them in the oven. You can mix it up and put them on the stovetop, you can make a sweet potato casserole, roasted potatoes, and that's also a healthy carb.
When I tore my ACL, I had a lot of downtime. I was not able to practice like I wanted. I couldn't be on my feet. But, I watched a lot of Food Network, [looked at] Pinterest recipes—you name it. I was trying to find different recipes that I wanted to try, and trying to incorporate more clean eating into my diet and learn how to do it myself. It was a more inexpensive way to go about clean eating, learning how to do it myself, being more self-sufficient.
I always have people on social media asking me about learning how to cook or teaching myself how to cook, and people ask me for recipes or to share some ideas for how to meal prep or what have you. I love that–sharing the message about leading a healthy and fit lifestyle.
source: http://www.elle.com