The following excerpt, from Gladys Cox’s book entitled Youth, Sex, and Life, does kinda sorta prove that mom wasn’t lying when she told you not to swim after eating lunch. So after you finish reading this, get off the computer, pick up the phone, and call your mom. It’s time to thank her for saving your life.
1946: Diet in Training
In the old days of the prize ring, training was usually preceded by a violent purging; and the diet consisted largely of huge quanitites of half-raw steak. Experience has shown this to be utterly wrong. If you are taking a clean, varied, and moderate diet, you probably need not vary it at all; though you may find benefit from cutting down some items and increasing others, such as fruit. If you are not already on a clean, healthy diet, then you should be; and the sooner you put yourself on to it the better!
It may be worth while to remind you that few of us drink as much plain water as we should; and you may well correct this error.
It should be unnecessary to warn any one who knows anything about the working of the body against the folly of being strenuous too soon after a meal. Yet in spite of warnings in the Press, numbers of swimmers commit suicide every year by going into the water shortly after a heavy meal; and a few die at other sports through the same error of judgment. It is best to have noheavy meals at all; but if you do have heavy meals, give them two or three hours to ‘settle’ before you do anything violent ~ and particularly before you go into the water. It is worth while to try for yourself, by actual experiment, whether your wind is better and whether you last longer, if you take nothing but the lightest food on the days when you are going to be really vigorous, and nothing at all for at least two hours before the actual exertion begins. You will not suffer from any lack of strength through undernourishment; you ‘run’ on yesterday’s food, and on the stores laid by before yesterday. Try this and other experiments, for individuals vary greatly; but don’t trouble to try whether a heavy meal just before exercise suits you ~ it
won’t.
Source: Cox, Gladys M. Youth, Sex, and Life. London: George Newnes Limited, 1946.
~ pp. 93-94 ~