What is a good meal to eat before playing a sport that will keep my stomach settled?

Saltines are great! Not really much of a meal, though. You might try oatmeal!

Why not just plan to finish eating at least an hour before you play whatever sport it is?

You should always wait at least 30 minutes after eating before physical activity. I usually don’t eat anything greasy 2 hours before any rigorous activity. If you must eat I suggest a light snack of nuts and fruit. This will help give you an energy boost for those sports.

eat carbohydrates, like pasta, a few hours before. It will give you energy, trust me

My soccer coach had us on a regimen where we ate complex carbs the night before (spaghetti, potato dishes, other starches) and “hydro-loaded”. Complex carbs are a more valuable source of energy than simple carbs (sugars), and don’t have the upper/downer effect.

Hydro-loading is the act of drinking water until your urine is clear, and just replacing what you expel thereafter. (ie, after you go to the bathroom go and immediately drink a glass of water). This is just a healthy practice.

Actually you (squirbel) are right, the night before seems to be the way to go. I that when I do this before I run long distances I have much more energy

I’ve always been a fan of bananas and bagels. They are portable, eat anywhere type things that provide the energy you will need for the event.

I swam competitively for eight years and our meets would be hours long. For me, I couldn’t eat a lot before or during the meet, but I would make sure to have fruit, usually a banana and a bagel in the morning. Through the meet I made sure to keep up with water intake and usually some Gatorade too.

My coach also preferred the “hydro-loading” for us only he called it “fooling the dog”. He would say that we should drink so much water that a dog wouldn’t know the difference between the urine and regular water. Kind of disgusting but a funny way to put it.

Haha yeah… Every coach calls it something different.

I also didn’t eat much on game days outside of fruits – I was a banana person too. (peeling oranges etc was too much effort and bananas have the most potassium to help with the Na/K muscle energy exchange. Food always felt heavy and I risked cramping because I ate.

We had guys on our rowing team who swore by spoonfuls of peanut butter.

And bananas are perfect. They help with/prevent the lactic acid buildup.

I swear by peanut butter. I banana topped with peanut butter is unbeatable for perfectly balanced nutrients and energy – you get the fast and slow delivery.

I take physical fitness tests regularly through the military, so….if they physical fitness occurs first thing in the AM, eat nothing. If it’s in the middle of the afternoon, like my last test was, I ate something light 2 hours before go time. The night before I eat chicken and pasta. The day off, I had a small serving of pasta to keep me energized. I agree with the responses about nanners and PB. You can’t go wrong with those :)

a lot of good answers about what & when to eat b4 sports, but the question is “to keep my stomach settled”…i go with toast, or vanilla protein shakes. almost anything else would make me burp (especially bananas!), give me heartburn, or make me feel like hurling…last summer i was going to roller derby practice in a rink w/NO a/c…even though i was doing an hour or more of cardio several days a week b4 i tried out for the team, pretty much anything, even eaten 4 or 6 hours before practice, would be super-bad news…i guess it depends on how intense your sport is, or if you get nervous before competing! i just think about how bad something would be coming back up, or burping it for hours…the first answer, saltines or oatmeal, sounds better than spaghetti with tomato sauce. eat well the day before, and after the competition, and maybe you can live on crackers until the event!