Simple And (Not So) Sweet

What keeps one of Canada’s best athletes ever at the top of his game?

Steve Nash, now 36, is currently dominating the NBA playoffs thanks to his mostly sugar-free diet.

“The difference was instantaneous,” he wrote in a Men’s Journal column. “I slept better, I recovered from workouts more easily, and I had more energy. When we started training camp in September, we were doing two-a-days — four or five hours on the court — and I never got sore.”

It came down to more than athletics, too — his day-to-day lifestyle shifted dramatically:

“Even more telling is the fact that this summer I travelled all over the world for my foundation, bringing team sports to war-ravaged countries. I was missing out on sleep and still training the whole time, but I never got sick. I’ve got to think it’s because sugar wasn’t wearing me down.”

Nash said he visited a naturopath who told him the average American eats 92 grams of sugar a day — when the body only needs eight. That’s an amount that should and can be satisfied by entirely natural foods. According to this naturopath, one teaspoon of refined sugar suppresses white blood cells for up to six hours, making it much easier to catch a cold.

It’s a battle to avoid Gatorade, juices, energy bars and the odd snack, but Nash says after a few months he “stopped craving sugar entirely.”

Sugar also gets packed into almost any product, so if you don’t have a personal chef it does mean packing your own lunches, but the results are worth it.

Nash is a seven-time NBA all-star and two-time MVP, and he’s frequently ranked as the best point guard in basketball. And, according to the percentages, he’s the best shooter in the history of the game. This season was one of his best shooting years, while a book called Stumbling on Wins argues most players suffer a decline in play after age 24. That means Nash is 12 years late.

He does still admit to steak dinners and the occasional night of brews as well, so going sugar-free definitely doesn’t have to take the enjoyment out of your consumption.     

The only goal that has eluded him has been an NBA championship, but yours don’t have to be so difficult. If your goal is to take your health or conditioning to an extra level, a sit-down with a naturopath could be a big first step towards victory.

Or, for the rest of us, it may just help a lot more than we think to have water instead of a Coke at lunch.• 



Photo by Ayelie

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons