Want to eat like an Olympic competitor...

Aileen Morrison:

“I’d get up in the morning at 4.55 and have something really light like a pancake with butter because I’m going to the pool to do a two-hour swim. While I’m at the pool plenty of water with some sports drink.

“When I get back home from there, porridge with blueberries, nuts and honey, with a protein drink. From there it’s out and about for three hours and I might have a bar on the bike. I’ll stop at a café and have some coffee and a big scone. Home then for lunch which would be a toasted sandwich or a wrap with spinach and chicken or something like that.

“An apple at some stage through the day and a protein bar if I get peckish. I might have another lunch at four o’clock, similar to the first one, or a scone or toast. Dinner would traditionally be meat and veg or stirfry, or maybe salad and chicken or steak and salad. I’ll probably have a bowl of cereal before I go to bed and if I haven’t had something naughty during the day, I’ll sneak it in somewhere.

“If I was doing a track session though, for breakfast it would be light because you don’t want to feel heavy, sometimes you aren’t hungry on the days you are doing loads of training but you are really hungry when you aren’t training because you are sitting in the house. But my general thing is lots and lots of healthy food. ”

Gavin Noble:

“I’m a big coffee man. I’ll always have one before I go swimming. I’ll come back then and have a big breakfast because I like to eat quite a lot early in the day.

“Then less as the days go on. If I eat early on in the day, I build up for the day as with so many sessions it’s hard to fit a lot of food in between. So I’ll start with porridge and bananas and sometimes a scrambled egg with that.

“The second session I’m out in the bike I’ll eat some energy bars, I’ll be drinking water. After that it’s more small meals. It’s just normal food and I don’t try and do anything special. I’m having soup and sandwiches for lunch. It’s never meat or anything heavy because I’ve an evening run. About an hour before a session, in that period of rest I’ll nearly always have another coffee and I’m always with a biscuit or a banana.

“Dinner then is veg with a little bit of carbohydrate through pasta or rice. If I’m adventurous I’ll try do something special — chicken. I’ve to watch my iron a lot and I’m getting regular blood tests so I’ve to keep an eye on if I’m eating the right nutrients. That may need me to meet more red meat.

“I’ve a sweet tooth too so I like ice cream and jelly after that. I eat everything and sometimes for me it’s a case of I’m not eating enough. Given the training we do, we need a huge intake as we are burning a lot of it off. But I don’t go out for random pints, or anything like that. No chips at night. ”

Rob Heffernan:

“Normally in the morning, I will have a porridge, toast and a cup of coffee. Luckily, I am sponsored by Kinetica. I started losing weight while training in Spain and I didn’t want to be losing any protein so I was taking their recovery drink. It is like a meal replacement. I throw that in after training in the morning. Lunch then is a salad, a pasta or rice with fish, with meat and with vegetables.

I need to horse as much carbs and protein into me as I can and I try to balance it. You need high levels of anti-oxidants because your body is toxic when you are training. You need supplements: a good fish oil, multi-vitamin and anti-oxidants.

I have two dinners a day – I will get up about five o’clock, have a sandwich and a cup of coffee and go training again. Then I would have another dinner in the evening. You have to adapt. I started training (one day) and was hungry and I knew I hadn’t taken on enough carbs and I was fair stressed over it. It can hit you.

I was absolutely wiped after it so then I was literally drinking pure carbs, 90% carbs. I had a litre and a half of that, just to make sure my glycogen stores were replenished and it worked. I did 40k and I was fine. I have to replenish my glycogen stores all the time because my glycogen runs low and that’s like letting a car run out of petrol.

“You want good meat and good fish to help your muscles recover. I have the protein shakes, all this stuff from Kinetica too, just for recovery.”

Chloe Magee:

“My nutritionist is very good. She gives me a lot of options and doesn’t make it too strict. But I do try to keep to a pretty strict diet as much as I can.

It is tough at times because if you’re having a really bad time and want to go off the rails you can’t really. You’re doing it with a Coke! Especially when you don’t want your weight to change too much, you can’t be eating too much crap. So it’s lots of pasta dishes, rice, brown bread.

A lot of carbs. I get up at about half-eight, I have my breakfast at quarter-to-nine, and I’m on court at ten. I have two slices of brown toast with raspberry jam, coffee, Rice Krispies, banana, flax seeds, milk and sometimes yoghurt if I’m feeling good. After training, I go home and eat again. That will be some kind of pasta, chicken and vegetables. Training in the evening time is weights, running, something like that. That’s pretty hard so I need a good dinner in at around half-twelve or one. I train until about three. Then I go home and eat again. It’ll be something similar. It’ll be pastas or rice… I try to mix it up. I won’t have the same thing twice in the one day. I’ll eat again around nine o’clock so that I don’t have such a long period of not eating. If you wake up hungry that’s not a good thing. I was doing that for a while because I don’t really like eating after six but I always felt really low in the middle of the day. So my nutritionist said to put in a little extra meal at the end. So I have the same as breakfast and it works a treat.”

Scott Flanigan:

“I work quite closely with my strength and conditioning coach Colin Gaffney. Our weights go up and down a lot. For the world championships in Perth I had to build up from 68 kilos when I started sailing 470s up to 75. It’s a case of balancing the protein and carbohydrate diet. “Regardless of where we are in the world, I’d eat the exact same thing.

“I have porridge and a chopped up banana, with a small bit of honey in it for breakfast. Throughout the day, I’d have a plain wheat wrap, which has a lower glycemic index and is a lot healthier than bread.

Then it might be salami or ham, maybe a slice of cheese. After sailing, I’d have a recovery shake.

“I’d take quite a lot of glutamine supplements, just to stop the breakdown in muscle.

“For dinner, it would normally be a big pasta dish with a lot of chicken, or spaghetti bolognese.

“If I was putting on weight, I’d take two or three protein shakes a day.

Though in the 470 class, we’re the skinny lads in sailing, you still need to get a lot of calories in.

“On a standard training day, I’m burning almost 4,000 calories so you need to be able to cover that to make sure you have the energy to train.”