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To most, Thanksgiving is a day filled with food and family merriment.

To New Jersey scholastic wrestlers, it is often the last day of life before weight-cutting – i.e. wrestling season – begins.

These days, though, the rules (both written and unwritten) for losing weight are changing, spurred mostly by the weight-cutting deaths of college wrestlers Billy Saylor, Joe LaRosa and Jeffery Reese in 1997 and 1998. But for many wrestlers, proper nutrition is still as foreign as stress management is for most college freshmen.

“It’s hard to drive out the mindset of ‘Starve myself to get down to the next weight,’” said Steinert High School wrestling coach Chris Holcombe. “I’ve done it the wrong way. There’s something tragically glorious about walking around school not eating and everybody knows.”

“If they’re honest,” said Hamilton High School coach Ralph DeLibero, “we can tell them what they should be eating more or less of. We’re not on top of them like hawks, though, it’s kind of impossible.”

At least one coach tries to keep tabs on his wrestlers outside of the gym, though, keeping parents abreast of weight and nutritional issues.

“We have a meeting where we talk to the parents,” said West Windsor- Plainsboro North High School head coach Bill Mealy. “By talking to the parents, we hope it helps [the wrestlers] not to have to cut weight the wrong way.”

So, while most high school coaches say they discourage the old weight cutting methods, such as rubber suits, saunas, laxatives and vomiting, the process to effect change actually moves much slower. Only three Colonial Valley Conference schools hand out written dietary regulations with pre-planned meals to their wrestlers, although many say that the training and coaching staffs are available to help athletes on an individual basis.

When the wrestlers reach college, though, there are more rules. Over the last few seasons, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has instituted a new system for determining the weight at which wrestlers may wrestle, combining new ways to measure body fat, body density and hydrated weight to ensure the proper physical state of the wrestler. Although the newer NCAA regulations make it more difficult to cut large amounts of weight during wrestling season, nutritional guidelines have not changed much. None of the three NCAA wrestling programs in Mercer County have set specific dietary guidelines or meal plans for the teams, according to their respective trainers.

“We don’t have any written guidelines in the training room to deal with that,” said TCNJ head athletic trainer Joe Camillone. “Everything they’ve added in the last few years has really cut back on how much people can lose.”

“We pretty much control what they eat on the road,” said Rider University athletic trainer Tim Lengel. “But we don’t really track them and really keep an eye on what they eat individually because you can’t have them eat at the training table.”

“The NCAA has set up a pretty extensive weight-loss program,” said Princeton University head trainer Charlie Thompson. He also said that the training staff deals with athletes on a personal, individual basis, so that eliminates a lot of the big weight losses.

“Actually, we deal with football players (asking how to regulate their diet and weight) more. Wrestlers have spent so much of their life regulating their intakes; they feel like they have a pretty good handle on what they can eat.”

But if most of the time they’ve spent regulating intakes has been the “wrong” way – starving, then bingeing – what is the right way?

Staying hydrated is a large part of it, as demonstrated by the NCAA’s demand that teams measure the specific gravity of a wrestlers’ urine in order to make sure that he is properly hydrated. In the case of each of the three wrestling-related deaths, the athletes were found to be at some stage of dehydration.

What, then, can a wrestler eat to ensure he can stay hydrated without gaining weight?

West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South wrestling coach Keith MacDougall supplies his athletes with a packet of nutritional information that includes a bull’s-eye chart of foods to target during a diet.

“It’s like putting a high-octane gas in your car,” he says. “You can eat whatever you want in terms of quantity, but the quality has to aim toward the bull’s-eye. You want the most nutritious type of milk, and so on. For instance, I have some kids who are hunters or know hunters, and they’re eating deer meat now because it’s so much leaner.”

Other coaches, though, turn to Northern Burlington High School head athletic trainer Eileen Bowker. Bowker has written a book, “EAT, Wrestle, and WIN: A Nutritional Guide for Wrestlers,” and gives lectures on athletes’ dieting. In one week alone, Bowker gave lectures at two different high schools, Collingswood and Northern Burlington High, and she planned on speaking at Rancocas Valley High School in the future. Her materials are also available on the National Wrestling Coaches Association Web site (www.NWCAAonline.com). Bowker is no stranger to the wrestling mats, either. She started her research while attending Castleton State College, VT in the early 1980s while her brother -- whom she helped make weight -- was wrestling for Nottingham High School. She is married to Brian Bowker, wrestling coach at Rancocas Valley High School.

“The question is, ‘Where are you most effective?’” says Eileen Bowker. “A lot of wrestlers don’t need to go down to seven percent (body fat, the lowest a scholastic wrestler may drop to during the season). I found that the average (for optimal performance) was around 10 percent to 11 percent, even with throwing out the heavyweights. The ones that are nutritionally sound are typically winning more than those doing it the inappropriate way.”

“You can see it at the college level; their injury rate has gone down 85 percent (since the implementation of the new standards).”

So what are some of the tips Bowker suggests?

Her book starts with the basics: avoid too much fat, sugar and sodium, eat adequate starch and fiber. The most important item for wrestlers, though, is a simple mathematical formula.

“The average adolescent male uses 19 calories per pound per day,” she
writes. With that knowledge, the average wrestler can simply multiply his weight by 19 to find the number of calories he would need to eat per day to maintain his current
weight. Slice off 500 calories a day from that projection, and a normal male loses one pound per day. For wrestlers, who are consistently active in workouts, it might be two pounds. Dieting itself, though, is simple, according to Bowker.

“Weight Watchers is actually a very good system for a kid that is trying to decrease his weight,” she said. “It’s based on well-rounded, balanced, moderated nutrition. There’s very little gray area.”

Theories like that are behind the movement that is sending the sport of wrestling past the old mentality and into a new, more health-conscious outlook.

“The sport of wrestling is ready to change,” Bowker says. “And when I speak to teams, I ask the kids if they have any friends who won’t wrestle just because they’re afraid they won’t be able to eat. And at least 50 percent of the kids will put their hands up.”

Most coaches could not be happier with Bowker’s findings. She cites her husband and Freehold Township High School wrestling coach Carl Schaaf as just two of the coaches who believe they get more kids on the mats because the weight issues are not as daunting.

“The drastic cutting weight isn’t good for kids anymore,” said Allentown High School head coach Ed Dunckley, who provides Bowker’s information to his wrestlers. “That’s not something that’s needed. When they get their chance to get to eat, they should be strong, wrestle and have fun.”

For those athletes afraid of never being able to eat again, wrestling is becoming much more fun.

***This article originally appeared in the Trenton Times.