Please don't encourage them Cross country (running) season started this Monday. Most of the beginners are skinnyfat/smallfat and can't run continuously for more than a few minutes. The coaches started preaching to the team about getting adequate nutrition for running. "Some of you may need 4000-5000 calories a day", they said. I probably run the most distance out of everyone on the team (3-7 miles a day; the beginners would be doing 3 or less) and 2000 calories is plenty for me. The muscular varsity boys may need closer to 3000, but I don't think any high school athlete would be needing 4000. Professional athletes maybe, but not high school (especially our high school).  Some of the kids on the team are already fat and lazy; we shouldn't be encouraging them to eat even more than they normally would. Still, at every race, there are boxes of doughnuts, cookies, giant muffins, and a couple gallons of chocolate milk, so they can "replenish" themselves by eating back 3 times the calories they burned running.