GF Eater Novac Djokovic Wins
French Open & A Career Grand Slam
by Melissa Diane Smith, author of Going Against the Grain
Novak Djokovic, who has credited a gluten-free diet he adopted five years ago with dramatically improving his health and tennis performance to become the number one tennis player in the world, just won a career Grand Slam. By winning the French Open in Roland Garros in France, he is only the third man to win four consecutive major titles and the first man in nearly a half-century to hold all four major championships simultaneously.
“This is something that is so rare in tennis,” his opponent Andy Murray said in his on-court interview. “It hasn’t happened for an extremely long time, and it’s going to take a long time to happen again.”
As The Telegraph reported last autumn:
Novak Djokovic’s body used to be broken. He had a reputation for collapsing on court at crucial moments and being forced to drop out of tournaments because of his poor health.
This all changed in 2010 when he was approached by a doctor from his home country, Serbia, during a Davis Cup match in Croatia. The doctor said Djokovic’s diet was the root of his problems and advised him to take some food intolerance tests. Armed with a new health regime, he went on to win Wimbledon in 2011 – and to become the best tennis player in the world.
The diet Djokovic now follows is free of gluten and milk products, and he avoids tomato products and sugar as well. For Djokovic whose parents owned a pizza restaurant, nixing those foods wasn’t easy, but he was willing to give it a go.
Going gluten free turned his career around. He experienced health benefits immediately, feeling stronger, automatically losing excess weight, and experiencing more energy and mental sharpness. In every year since then, he has been the number one ranked tennis player on the men’s tour.
As a nutritionist, I say that Djokovic’s success with changing his diet – something many men don’t like to address – should make us all take notice.
If you constantly feel drained or not well, your diet is the first place to look. If you have not yet removed gluten from your diet, take the two-week challenge that I pose in Going Against the Grain: Avoid gluten for two weeks and see how you feel. You’ll undoubtedly feel a profound difference, take control over your health and life, and more easily be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish just as Djokovic did.
Copyright 2016 Melissa Diane Smith
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