It was a diet of eggs, chicken and milk that helped Satish Sivalingam, the gold medal weightlifting champion at the ongoing Commonwealth Games in Scotland retain his stamina during the rigour of workouts while preparing for competitive games.
"Two omelettes with four idlis in the morning, 250 grams of chicken with rice and 1/2 litre of milk in the night and moderate quantity of mutton once a week. This is his normal diet," N Sivalingam, father of the CWG winner told PTI.
"Imagine, providing quarter kilo of chicken every day was a bit difficult...Now there is recognition and we are happy," Sivalingam, who works as a security guard at VIT University here, said.
Explaining how diet was so crucial for weightlifters, Sivalingam, who is also Satish's mentor and himself a former weightlifter and ex-serviceman said," the challenge is to avoid excessive fat while still taking nutritious food to stay fit."
Another big challenge was to be very cautious and avoid food supplements that had performance enhancers, he pointed out and recalled how he and his son used to "check, double check and verify" at multiple levels about ingredients in food items, including supplements.
"You need to be cent per cent sure that there are no enhancers in any form. Even I have not allowed him take coffee as it has some caffeine" Sivalingam says, adding that years of effort and careful preparation had now paid off.
Interestingly, the CWG winner who has also been a winner at the sub-junior and junior national level events dropped out of his BA Degree course while in his third year.
Luckily, he got a job in the Southern Railways.
