I was always a chubby kid playing soccer on a daily basis. I always wondered why I wasn’t getting any slimmer.  I’ve always played at least an hour’s worth, and that was on a daily basis. I was playing soccer every day, solely running for about 15-20 minutes every two days I went to practice, doing push-ups, crunches, squats, and doing sprint drills. Despite all that work, I still had a gut and was a few pounds overweight.  It wasn’t until I got older that I realized I could lose weight playing soccer, just as long as I changed my diet.

According to the authors Nancy Clark and Gloria Averbunch of Food Guide for Soccer, a player like the LA Galaxy’s Landon Donovan, who weighs 160 pounds, can burn up to 4,000 calories a day. Calories and fat aren’t the same thing. Calories are the energy we get from food; fat is the extra calorie intake our bodies store away. So burning calories does help you lose fat, because by losing calories, you’re also losing fat.

So if you want to lose those unwanted extra pounds by playing soccer, how do you do it? Averbunch and Clark recommend that you eat a little bit less at the end of the day. A person uses most of their energy throughout the day, so it’d be logical that you consume the majority of your calories early on in the day. Cut back on fat foods like fried food, butter, or sugar. Eat foods that will help you improve your health so you can improve your workout. Beans, red meat, fish, and rice all contribute to better health.

In a soccer game you’re always running, whether it’s with a ball or not. Training for soccer and playing in games can be physically demanding, you should definitely see an improvement in your health. But if your goal-no pun intended-is to lose fat by playing soccer, you have to eat better so that your body could more easily reach your fat. So soccer will help you lose fat, but with the help of a good diet.

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