What Kelly Slater Eats For Breakfast
What Does Kelly Slater Eat For Breakfast?
If you know anything about professional surfing, you will know that the 11-time world surfing champion, doesn’t do anything by halves as his long winning legacy and competition know, he will do almost anything to win. His desire and determination to win is so high that Kelly has almost become an enigma of the sport, transcending from an actual competitor to more of a living legend or myth, Kelly employs powerful psychology known as “Kelly Slater mind games” and the look of death. But out of the water Kelly is training just as hard on his nutrition to get that physical edge.
Kelly like a lot of pro athletes these days make sure his diet is on point, he is known to be one of the healthiest guys on the pro tour, but as a kid Kelly said it wasn’t always that way, as he ate lots of fast food and sugary snacks, but in his early 20’s he made a conscious decision to get healthier. Kelly is renowned for his knowledge about nutrition, he actively seeks out the latest nutrition research and advice, and as Kelly says “it all starts from the morning breakfast”.
(1) Smoothies
Kelly has long talked about his love affair with smoothies, Kelly loves a smoothie especially as a quickly absorbed breakfast that doesn’t take much time to digest. Perfect for a pre-surf meal and full of energy to last the session, smoothies are perfect nutrition choices for Kelly’s breakfast. Kelly makes keeps his smoothies pretty simple and the ingredients can be found almost anywhere which fits in with his nomadic lifestyle travelling from place to place all year long. All you need is a blender some fruit and veg and you’re done.
Kelly likes to build his breakfast smoothies like this…
- Coconut water/ almond/ soymilk as a base
- Fruits and berries
- Bananas
- Chia seeds
- Veg(sometimes)
The idea of a smoothie in the morning is perfect for a surfer, as a smoothie is quickly absorbed giving you instant energy after you fasted for 6-8 hours sleeping, also helps give you some readily available sugars for your body to use as energy in surfing for those early dawn patrol sessions. There is nothing worse than having a great big breakfast with all the trimmings just to feel bloated and lethargic afterwards, especially if you plan on surfing after, you might find yourself in chunder city pretty soon.
Why Smoothies are great for surfers.
Smoothies are almost the perfect food for a surfer, many would argue that tacos and burritos are the prefered surfer snacks, and your not wrong those are pretty good, but pound for pound the smoothie wins every time for what it can do for your body. Now like Kelly you may surf in a variety of conditions throughout the year, warm and cold water, and in those winter months having a high volume of fruit and veg can really help keep those colds at bay especially after a post-surf when your feeling run down.
Smoothies are a perfect way to get a nutritional blast and a massive energy boost on those early morning rises, really helping to give you get hat instant energy you need to paddle out-back, so keep that blender handy and ready to go.
Smoothies can help improve nutrient absorption especially when mixing dark green leafy vegetables like kale, spinach, collard greens, these nutrient powerhouses can be absorbed up to 3 times faster than chewing alone. Along with those greens, the fruit you add in can give you a real boost on energy and help improve your digestion because of the large amounts of fibre from the leafy greens, over time this can massively help improve your digestion process, as well as help to grow your good gut bacteria.
As a UK surfer, you are in a constant battle to stay healthy after a winter surfing session, loading up on phytonutrients, abundant in dark green leafy vegetables and fruits, can help fortify your immune system and keep you illness free all year long. Dark green leafy veg is also great for overall body health. The calcium and vitamin K from the veg helps keep our bones strong over time and as we age, vegetables are also packed with antioxidants such as vitamin A and C, which can significantly lower your cholesterol and help to decrease your risk of heart attack or stroke.
(2) Fasting
Kelly also might skip breakfast and go straight for a surf, sometimes he doesn’t eat at all, fasting trying to detox his entire body of toxins and bad food through 3-5-day fasts, which can be great for gut health. Kelly, of course, eats other foods for breakfast from time to time but as he says in the videos these are his staples every morning if he’s going to eat anything,
(3) Chia Seeds
Kelly has been a long-time advocate of chia talking about their benefits and ability to make you feel full, these tiny seeds of goodness have been in Kelly’s staple daily diet for a long time.
Because of Kelly’s natural nature, he reads everything especially food labels and ingredients, he likes to make sure what he’s eating is good for him and eat as many whole foods as possible. Chia seeds are perfect as they are High in omega-3, protein, fibre and a great source of antioxidants, not to mention they fill you up so much more than a big greasy burger. So if you want to stay trim try adding chia to foods like oatmeal or smoothies you will find it soon fills you up with energy.
(4) Kombucha Tea
Kelly has long talked about his experiences with different cultures and his thirst for nutritional knowledge, that thirst has led Kelly to be a long-term advocate of the well-known Chinese fermented tea called Kombucha. Kombucha has been around for almost over 2000 years and first used in China as a cure-all tea, to help heal and cure people of their ailments, Kelly drinks it because of its many health benefits including properties that help fight arthritis and cancer.
(5) Eating A Sustainable/ Clean Breakfast
The 11-time world champ isn’t just a favourite with his fans because of his surfing ability and blue eyes, he’s a really lovable guy who really cares about the planet and the world we live in. Kelly talks about knowing the damage of what you put in your mouth, and the effects of the food you eat.
Clean Eating & Sustainability are all about knowing where your food comes from and feeling comfortable putting that food in your body, respecting the food chain and making sure your food is sustainably sourced and the process should be a goal for anyone. Do you know how your food was produced? Knowing how it was produced treated and how that affected the local ecosystem is really telling and a better way to live your life.
Kelly tries to always opt for whole foods, staying away from highly processed foods that often have unnatural chemical based ingredients and low nutrient content. If you check out Kelly’s Instagram you will see the majority of his meals are more plant-based and raw, based around fresh produce and not too many variations of food, keeping it simple.
Adding variety of the same nutrient is the best way to attain great full body health, for instance if you get all your protein from chicken why not try and get all of the other amino acids from a whole range of food sources like beans, chickpeas, lentils, quinoa, peas and hemp, you will get none of the saturated fat or cholesterol but all of the benefits of eating a variety of different nutrients.
Would you eat like Kelly Slater for breakfast to improve your surfing let us know in the comments below?
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