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"  Brianna Decker Despite improvements to technology and equipment, the most important tool an athlete has is her body. How she fuels and trains is specific to her sport and integral to how she performs. For example, an aerial skier will defy gravity a little easier if she&amp;#039;s light and lean whereas a luger will benefit from a few extra pounds. Although Olympic athletes are capable of things the rest of us can&amp;#039;t even imagine, they&amp;#039;re still human, and when it comes to their diets, they sometimes struggle with cravings, body acceptance and fad diets too. Seven female athletes spoke to Cosmopolitan.com about their eating habits. Brianna Decker, Hockey Player: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m 5-foot-4, and as a forward there are a lot of the defenders that I&amp;#039;m going up against who have a lot of size to them so I have to muscle through a lot people. The stronger you are the better, but you have to be careful about how much muscle you put on so you can keep your speed up. I play a more physical game, and I have tested my game out at different weights. I didn&amp;#039;t like how I played when I was seven pounds lighter because even though I felt a little faster, I felt I was being pushed around. I don&amp;#039;t let &amp;quot;ideal image&amp;quot; affect me. Plus, some guys are really into athletic girls and some guys aren&amp;#039;t! I&amp;#039;m surrounded by such a mixed group of people \u2014 to us the ideal body type is being athletic and being fit. For breakfast I&amp;#039;ll eat eggs with vegetables mixed in, like a scrambler with some type of meat like ham, chicken or steak from the night before. Also some berries or banana. After my morning workout, I&amp;#039;ll have a protein shake to recover my muscles from weight training. Then I head straight to practice, and throughout that I&amp;#039;m constantly drinking water and those little gummies, Shot Bloks. Between periods I&amp;#039;ll have half a banana and peanut butter or almond butter to tied me over for the rest of the game. For dinner I like chicken with asparagus or any type of green vegetable. Sometimes a baked potato. The meal I&amp;#039;m most looking forward to is a home-cooked meal from my mom. I really like her enchiladas or her shrimp jambalaya.&amp;quot; Heather McPhie, Freestyle Skier: &amp;quot;My issue with food is that I under-eat. I can be a little bit particular in that I do like to eat organic. I like to eat fruits or vegetables. I like to take care of my body, and if I&amp;#039;m in some place where that&amp;#039;s not an option, I tend to not eat. Obviously I know this is not good for me. Sometimes calories are better than no calories. I need to be a little bit gentler on myself when we&amp;#039;re on the road and I&amp;#039;m in places that are different. I just need to try to eat and it will be okay. It&amp;#039;s not exactly what I&amp;#039;d eat at home \u2014 or anything close to what I&amp;#039;d eat at home \u2014 but it&amp;#039;s something. I almost always have oatmeal in the morning \u2014 organic slow-cooked oats, which keeps me full for an entire morning. I usually throw in some fruit and some sort of protein like peanut butter or sunflower butter. I&amp;#039;ll snack on carrots and hummus. For lunch I&amp;#039;ll have a quinoa salad with greens and sunflower and pumpkin seeds. After training I&amp;#039;ll have a Luna bar. For dinner I enjoy red meat with cooked broccoli and steamed veggies. And ton of water throughout the day. My diet won&amp;#039;t change too much after the Olympics. I don&amp;#039;t have a craving for junk food because I&amp;#039;ve taken out processed foods. When I took those things out, all of a sudden a carrot tasted sweet. You have some raspberries, and it&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;Whoa, those are really sweet!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; \u00A0 em&amp;gt;Jessica Schultz Jessica Schultz, Curler: &amp;quot;Curling is often still considered a beer-drinking sport, so the importance of diet is still up and coming. At the last Olympics there was a lot of talk about eating pizza and McDonald&amp;#039;s all the time, so that&amp;#039;s definitely changing. We have to make sure we&amp;#039;re getting the best nutrition to keep our brain fueled so we can focus for the two and half hours we&amp;#039;re on the ice. We&amp;#039;re also training a lot more off the ice with weight lifting and making sure the body is getting the vitamins. For breakfast I&amp;#039;ll eat a two-egg-white omelet with spinach, tomato and a little bit of cheese and a coffee. For a morning snack I&amp;#039;ll have a protein bar and orange slices. Lunch is a turkey burger \u00AD\u2014 no bun \u2014 and quinoa salad with tomato. During a game I&amp;#039;ll eat a protein bar or have a chocolate milk and a banana \u2014 I will bring a coffee mug full of chocolate milk into the rink with me and drink it between games. For an afternoon snack I&amp;#039;ll have a meat stick and a pear. And shrimp with green beans for dinner.\u00A0 During competitions we don&amp;#039;t drink \u2014 we wait until after and might have a bottle of wine. The last two years there&amp;#039;s been no alcohol during training or during competition. My goal is to continue what I&amp;#039;m doing after the games. I don&amp;#039;t want to fall back into my old ways. I might have a big bowl of pasta but then get back on track.&amp;quot; Kelly Clark, Snowboarder:\u00A0&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m 30, and I&amp;#039;m probably the most comfortable in my skin that I&amp;#039;ve been. I think when you&amp;#039;re younger, your self-image can be dictated by society and culture a lot, but as I&amp;#039;ve gotten older, I&amp;#039;ve gotten more comfortable being me. Our sport is so new, and it has elements that are lifestyle and elements that are sport. Recently it&amp;#039;s transitioned more into a sport as the tricks have progressed. I thought, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m a successful snowboarder, but perhaps if I treat my body like an athlete treats her body, pay attention to what I put in it and condition it, perhaps I could achieve my dreams better and chase down these things that I&amp;#039;ve always wanted.&amp;#039; When I&amp;#039;m home, I have the luxury of juicing, which I do every day. When I&amp;#039;m on the road, I make smoothies to replace that. I&amp;#039;m getting the bulk of my vitamins and veggies in the smoothie or juice format. Every morning I either have a smoothie or fresh juice and eggs and toast and bacon. A very traditional breakfast. And coffee. When I&amp;#039;m on the hill, I have at least one snack bar in my pocket. Like a protein bar. Even if I don&amp;#039;t feel like eating, I know it&amp;#039;ll give me more energy. As a post-workout snack, I&amp;#039;ve started drinking chocolate milk as a recovery drink. From what I hear from my nutritionist, it&amp;#039;s the right balance of fats, carbs, and proteins. Lunch is a turkey sandwich or tacos \u2014 some sort of meat mixed in with carbs and veggies. I&amp;#039;ll usually have toast with almond butter and a banana after a workout. For dinner I&amp;#039;ll usually end up eating chicken or beef \u2014 a big chicken pasta meal or red meat with sweet potatoes and spinach salad. When I go to and from the airports, I do it up at In-N-Out. My favorite pastime.&amp;quot; \u00A0  Ann Swisshelm Ann Swisshelm, Curler: &amp;quot;Since February I&amp;#039;ve lost 40 pounds in a concerted effort to attack the podium in Sochi. As the oldest player on our team \u2014 I&amp;#039;ve been competing for 20 seasons \u2014 this was a pretty significant change to how I approached nutrition in the last half a year. Being on a strict regime has simplified things for me because instead of a large variety of choices, I&amp;#039;ve got less. Plus, athletes are built around setting goals and attaining them, so it was actually a little freeing. Everyone talks about it being a hardship with diet and nutrition, but I think if you look at it in a different way, like by considering how it feels for your body, it wouldn&amp;#039;t be those things. I always make sure I eat breakfast. I&amp;#039;ll have Greek yogurt with fruit, one or two eggs \u2014 every third or fourth day I&amp;#039;ll have the yoke as well instead of just the white \u2014 and almonds or something a little salty. I&amp;#039;ll have a cup of coffee and sometimes some fresh orange juice. For snack I&amp;#039;ll have an apple every day. Lunch will be a salad, nothing fancy. Dinner is a protein and vegetables. I keep things pretty low-carb. Between games we have a five-minute break, and I&amp;#039;ll always have a chocolate milk \u00AD\u00AD\u2014 it&amp;#039;s quite frankly a very positive food and makes me feel younger! What I&amp;#039;m really looking forward to when I get home is this little pub. They make the best cheeseburgers, and they are humongous. I&amp;#039;m not going to share it with my husband.&amp;quot; Caitlin Gregg, Cross-Country Skier: &amp;quot;My husband [Brian Gregg] is also training for Sochi and we always cook together, but he was out of town and I have always been curious about how I would feel if I eliminated gluten from my diet, so I experimented and I have to say I really liked it! Let me be clear, I have no intolerance, no allergy, and no underlying medical condition. I started eating good quality whole foods because I&amp;#039;ve eliminated a lot of the highly processed foods, since a lot of those are made with wheat. It&amp;#039;s been about three months. I&amp;#039;m not 100 percent perfect and I&amp;#039;m sure I would insult people who [have] celiac [disease], but I am excited about it. We still totally have bread and pasta in the house for my husband but he eats less of it by default. I will say his performance has been pretty solid these last couple years, and I definitely think it&amp;#039;s because of my cooking \u2014 I am a good influence on him. For breakfast we&amp;#039;ll have a bowl of oatmeal with this high-density flax meal, which adds fiber and good omega-3s, and I&amp;#039;ll mix in some frozen berries and some milk and a bit of protein like a soft-boiled egg. We work with a nutrition company called Infinit \u2014 it&amp;#039;s recovery drinks, so it helps with electrolyte depletion and I&amp;#039;ll drink that after a training session. For lunch we&amp;#039;ll have a big salad and we&amp;#039;ll throw garbanzo beans or tuna on it and some good fats like avocado. As a snack I&amp;#039;ll have veggies and a yogurt dip. For dinner we eat good quality protein. We actually have a sponsorship with a wild-salmon fisherwoman, Misty Fjord, who sends us wild salmon she catches and flash-freezes. It&amp;#039;s so rich, I feel like a bear in some Alaskan river when I eat it. This is always our pre-race meal. At night, if I get a craving, I&amp;#039;ll run out and get some gluten-free chocolate. \u00A0 This whole no-gluten thing was only supposed to be for a week, then it was two weeks, now it&amp;#039;s been a few months, so I might stop after the games. I have a soft spot for apple pie. And as my husband says, &amp;#039;Everything that&amp;#039;s fun has gluten in it!&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  Erin Hamlin Erin Hamlin, Luger: &amp;quot;For luge, it helps to be heavy. It&amp;#039;s a gravity sport so we want to have as much mass as we can. Obviously we want it to be good weight \u2014 we&amp;#039;re not going to sit on the couch and fill our faces with donuts all day. I&amp;#039;m trying to eat as many healthy calories as I can take in. One of the biggest parts of my training is eating, which can become so painful sometimes because a lot of times I&amp;#039;m just force-feeding myself. I&amp;#039;m probably bigger than I normally would be, but I&amp;#039;ve been doing this since I was 12 so I&amp;#039;m not really sure what my natural weight would be. I may be bigger than the average person, but it&amp;#039;s muscle and I&amp;#039;m proud to be a strong female. There are certain things you can&amp;#039;t get away with wearing when you have &amp;#039;man shoulders,&amp;#039; but I&amp;#039;m totally OK with that. When I&amp;#039;m training, for breakfast I&amp;#039;ll have an array of cold cut meats, two or four boiled eggs, bread of some form, some yogurt with muesli or granola and an orange or a banana. Lunch might be a plate of pasta. If I had my choice, I&amp;#039;d have chicken and veggies, but sometimes in Europe that can be hard to get. Dinner is similar to lunch, but the portion will be a little bit bigger. I also normally have a protein shake after dinner to give myself some extra calories. If it&amp;#039;s a race day, my breakfast will be a lot lighter because I don&amp;#039;t want to feel uncomfortable while I&amp;#039;m racing. Once the games are over, I&amp;#039;m really excited to do a bit of a detox. I got one of those crazy juicers for Christmas so I&amp;#039;m excited to do some stupid smoothie diet for a week!&amp;quot; Related: 7 Olympic Athletes&amp;#039; Most Bizarre Stories of Peeing in Cups Follow Darla Murray on Twitter. Photo Credit: Getty Images \u00A0 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/news/a18881/olympic-athletes-food-diets/>