How to Eat Like an Olympian, According to Gymnastics Sensation Aly Raisman

At just 17, Aly Raisman became a household name during the 2012 Summer Olympics as the captain of the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team, dubbed the Fierce Five. Raisman went on to become the most decorated American gymnast at the London Games after winning gold medals in the team and floor competitions, as well as a bronze medal on the balance beam.

Now 21, Raisman is gunning for a spot on the team for this summer’s Olympics in Rio, Brazil. The Massachusetts native has been gearing up for the games by training up to seven hours a day and serving as a face of #PBJ4TeamUSA, a partnership between Smucker’s and the U.S. Olympic Committee. Every time the aforementioned hashtag is used on Twitter, Smucker's will donate $1 to the U.S.O.C. in support of athletes training for the Games. “A lot of people don’t realize that Olympic athletes’ training isn’t funded by the government, so it can get really expensive, between traveling, paying for a trainer, and even maintaining a healthy diet. It adds up,” explains Raisman.

Below, the talented gymnast gives us the scoop on her pre- and post-competition routines.

How do you prep for a competition?
I like to take my time getting ready. I do my hair and makeup, which really relaxes me; it’s calming. We usually have roommates when we’re getting ready for a meet, so we’ll put on some upbeat music.

What do you eat to prepare for a meet?
It depends, because sometimes we’re out of the country, so we can’t have a specific meal each time. Usually I try to have carbs before the meet, like a banana and maybe some kind of whole-wheat toast, or granola with Greek yogurt and fruit—something that’s filling but will also give me enough energy throughout the competition, since the meets are typically at least two hours long.

And what about after the meet?
After the meet, the girls and I just want pizza or something! We worked hard so we want to splurge. And cheese is protein! People think carbs are the enemy, but when you work out, you need the carbs for energy. A few slices of pizza isn’t going to kill you.

What do you like to eat when you’re off-duty?
We don’t really have an off-season, but I always try to eat healthy. I’m always tired from training, and when I eat well, I feel better.

What’s on your playlist right now?
My teammates and I like Alessia Cara, especially her songs Wild Things, Scars to Your Beautiful, andOverdose. And we like Jason Derulo’s Try Me. The songs remind us of each other when we’re apart.

Favorite TV Show?
I love Gossip Girl.

What’s your PB&J style?
I’m an open-faced, crust-on girl. I like whole-wheat toast, and then I usually do peanut butter and strawberry jam on both sides. And I weirdly like the end piece of bread—it’s a different texture! It works out because no one else likes it, so I always get it.

Simone Biles and Aly Raisman have their own DIY spa day at training camp

Ahead of this weekend's Pacific Rim Championships, the U.S. women's gymnastics team is at training camp. And while the team members are pretty busy between practice sessions and collecting some new hardware from their world championship victory, it's not all work.

On Monday, Simone Biles and Aly Raisman decided to have a spa day. Or spa afternoon, anyway. The talented duo wasn't able to go to an actual spa, but they got their DIY on and had some fun from the confines of their dorm room.

You know what they say: The team that does facials together, slays together. Or something like that.

See something entertaining on social media that you think deserves to be shared? Let me know on Twitter, @darcymaine_espn.

Aly Raisman

Working hard... Trying to increase strength and flexibility at the same time is often a challenge!! Thanks to my girl Khazia for helping me out! (The black thing on my foot is a weight) Staying healthy and fit with Good Food Made Simple Vermont maple oatmeal. I personally love having oatmeal before workout and the Vermont maple one is my favorite because it is sweet! I definitely have a sweet tooth... Who doesn't?

5 fun facts about once (and future?) Olympian Aly Raisman

JTA — Here’s what to know about Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman as the Jewish gymnast trains for next summer’s Rio games.

She’s into Spandex.

Like many top gymnasts, Raisman has her own leotard line (with the brand GK Elite) and sends leotards out to her gymnastics competitors (and some figure skaters) abroad. To thank her for the gifts, the athletes take selfies in them and post them to Instagram.

She’s a (relative) klutz.

“She always jokes that she’s so uncoordinated,” her mother, Lynn Raisman, said. “We can be walking somewhere, shopping or to a restaurant and she’ll trip over nothing.”

Jewish Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman in an ESPN photo shoot. (YouTube screenshot)

When Raisman posed nude for ESPN’s “The Body Issue,” she confirmed as much, telling the magazine that she “pulled a Jennifer Lawrence,” when she and some of her fellow Olympians attended the 2013 Golden Globes.

She’s messy.

And that’s by her own admission. She told Glamour magazine that on the road she often bunks with Olympic champion Gabby Douglas, who complains about Raisman’s disorderliness.

She has an excellent memory.

As her mother told JTA: “I’ve been with her on the beach, and she’ll say to me, ‘That’s the judge from Level 4, and this is the score she gave me on beam.’”

She’s quite the box jumper.

NFL star J.J. Watt may currently own the world record in the box jump, but Raisman’s is far more impressive than his 61-inch vertical jump. Though she jumps up on a shorter box, she does a back flip off of it. And she repeats this feat four more times

Aly Raisman has her eyes on Rio

GLASGOW, Scotland — Once the music started playing — not “Hava Nagila,” which made her the Jewish poster child of the London Games, but something equally folksy — Aly Raisman tumbled right out of bounds. On her first bit of gymnastics at her comeback World Championships here last month, she had quickly incurred a major setback.

This certainly was not how the 21-year-old defending Olympic champion on floor exercise saw the start of her first World Championships in more than four years. The competition, after all, comes less than a year before the Olympic Games in Rio, where she hopes to compete, and at a time when she faces her stiffest competition yet — from her U.S. teammate and two-time world champion Simone Biles.

After winning two gold medals in London, including one with the U.S. team, Raisman, then 18, took time off from gymnastics to enjoy opportunities that had come her way. She performed on tour with her teammates, competed on “Dancing With The Stars,” and was a special guest at the 2013 Maccabiah Games in Israel, the global Jewish sporting event.

It was a departure for Raisman, who is careful about preserving her energy while she is training.

“There will be in the times in the summer we’ll go to the Cape, and she’ll be like, ‘It’s going to be too exhausting driving to the Cape. It’s too much. I’m just going to stay home,’” said her mother, Lynn, who raised Raisman in a Reform Jewish home in Needham, Massachusetts. “That year off, everything that came her way she could say ‘yes’ to because she wasn’t training.”

According to Lynn Raisman, a mother of four, her eldest child always had this focus and intensity, even when she was a young girl.

“I look back at some of those times when we didn’t do things as a family and she stayed home, like, you were so young, you were such a low level. … She just always was like that, very devoted, very regimented with the training,” she said.

According to her mother, despite all the fun she was having, Aly decided that she would come back very early into her year off.

“Initially, two weeks later [after the Olympics], she was like, ‘Yeah, I’m done,’” Lynn recalled. But then a couple months later, she told her mother, ‘I want to come back.’”

Aly Raisman took it slow.

Though she resumed training in the fall of 2013, just more than a year after her Olympic performances, she didn’t start competing again until this spring, at a friendly meet in Jesolo, Italy, where she won the bronze medal behind two of her U.S. teammates. She won bronze again in the all-around at the U.S. Championships in August.

But these are not the medals she’s after in her comeback. Raisman is chasing the one that got away — a podium position in the Olympics all-around competition, after she was bumped to fourth place in 2012. She thinks about that missing medal “all the time,” she said, and now that Olympic disappointment is motivating her to try to make her second Olympic team. That’s no mean feat in the United States, which has such a deep bench that it could send more than one medal-worthy team to Rio.

Perhaps Raisman simply wanted it too badly in Glasgow. After her disappointing floor exercise, her afternoon went further downhill. There was a botched landing on vault. On the bars, she peeled off on a release move. She appeared to be stunned momentarily as she picked herself up off the mat and remounted the event to finish her routine.

“When you fall at a meet, you just kind of black out,” Raisman said. “It’s the worst feeling. It’s almost traumatizing. I can’t even explain. It’s like the worst feeling in the world.”

The results were even worse. She did not qualify to make the all-around finals.

But in the team finals in Glasgow, with no individual medal opportunities on the line, Raisman redeemed herself. On the beam, her nerves were gone; she moved quickly and aggressively. And on the floor, she managed to contain her power and stayed in bounds, helping the United States to a five-point victory over China and Great Britain. Raisman and her teammates celebrated on the sidelines, hands clasped and raised in victory after Biles’ floor score was posted. It was a similar scene to the one that played out in London, when the five members of the Olympic team waited for the final mark to make their victory official.

For Raisman, the hardest part of her gymnastics comeback seems to be learning how to control the nervous energy.

“I was just a little too hyper,” she said.

Physically, despite no longer being a teen, Raisman says she has been able to recoup every skill she had in London. She’s even added new elements to her repertoire.

“I almost feel like I’m stronger than I was last time,” she said.

Douglas, Raisman take another step forward in comeback bids

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman traded their golden touch for some golden gloves this weekend in Indianapolis.

The Olympic champions showed more grit than grace at this weekend's U.S. women's national championships, fighting off some shaky moments while re-establishing themselves among America's elite.

Raisman, a three-time medalist at the 2012 Olympics, finished third behind winner Simone Biles and Maggie Nichols. Douglas, the all-around champion in London three years ago, was fifth.

''I've got to work on coming out and being more confident and not letting stupid mistakes, like wobbles, knock me out of the competition,'' Douglas said. ''Overall, I'll take it. But I'll learn from the mistakes. I'll take this meet as a stepping stone.''

For now, that will have to suffice.

Nobody expected Douglas or Raisman to be perfect after taking prolonged breaks following their triumphs at the O2 Arena. There is plenty of work ahead as they try to land a spot on the world championships team this fall.

Douglas had similar issues. A few minutes after Raisman's miscue on vault, Douglas spent most of her beam trying to survive bobble after bobble. A small hop on the landing didn't help, either, and the disgusted Douglas settled for a score of 14.2, ending any remote chance of challenging Biles.Raisman shocked everyone Thursday night when the 2012 Olympic bronze medalist on beam lost her balance and hopped off. In Saturday's vault, she took another deduction for a big step on her landing.

But in a sport where youngsters tend to rule, the 19-year-old Douglas and 21-year-old Raisman used their experience, guile and perseverance to come back.

Douglas rebounded from the poor beam performance with a confident, energized floor routine that earned a 14.8. She closed the weekend with a 15.5 in the vault as she slowly works to regain the form that sent her to the top of the Olympic podium.

Raisman followed a similar script. She used a solid routine on the uneven bars to earn a 14.1 and finished the night with a 14.95 on her modified beam routine in her third meet since returning to competition in March.

Douglas and Raisman seem to be back on their feet.''I think the fall (on Thursday) kind of woke me up a bit,'' Raisman said. ''I realized that you have to be aggressive out there. If you let your legs shake and wobble, you'll fall.''

With two months left to train before the world championships in Scotland and nearly a year before the Rio Olympics, where Douglas is hoping to become the first woman to repeat as all-around champ in nearly 50 years, both Olympians have time to get things right.

Both insist they are probably ahead of where they were at this point four years ago when Douglas struggled at nationals.

Raisman, meanwhile, believes she's stronger and in better shape, as she continues to build momentum and confidence.

''I had a 15.7 on the beam in a training camp and a 14.9 (Saturday), which isn't even close,'' Raisman said. ''Hopefully in the next couple of months I can get up to that.''

But with everyone chasing Biles, the real question is whether anyone - including the 2012 Olympic fan favorites - can catch up.

While Raisman and Douglas used this weekend as a gauge of where they are against the world's best gymnast, they believe they'll be closer to their vintage selves when they face the next big sparring session in October.

''I'm going to up my difficulty and be more precise and clean,'' Douglas said. ''I have a plan.''

Aly Raisman Begins Olympic Ascent with Comeback at US National Championships

At the age of 21, Aly Raisman is the elder stateswoman of the United States gymnastic team. Over the weekend, she began her mission to prove that younger is not always better on the beams.

Making her return to competition, Raisman placed third at the U.S. Women's National Championships, finishing behind first-place Simone Biles and second-place Maggie Nichols. Biles has now won three straight national championships, and the 18-year-old will enter the 2016 Rio Games as a prohibitive gold-medal favorite.

Raisman, meanwhile, had a weekend filled with highs and lows. Thursday's nadir of falling off the beam was followed by an otherwise strong weekend, as Raisman looked far better than most would have expected after her long layoff.

"I think the fall (on Thursday) kind of woke me up a bit," Raisman told reporters. "I realized that you have to be aggressive out there. If you let your legs shake and wobble, you'll fall."

Raisman, who took two golds at the 2012 London Games, made her return alongside all-around gold medalist Gabby Douglas. Douglas, who would be the first repeat all-around winner in decades, placed fifth at the national championship. She consistently struggled on the beam, earning a score of only 14.2.

Raisman's floor exercises have long been among the best in the world, so she'll need to continue improving her scores if she qualifies for the Olympics. That's no guarantee. Douglas, Biles and Nichols loom as near-locks, and McKayla Maroney's status is still up in the air. 

"I'm 21 and I'll be 22 in the Olympics year [2016 Rio Games]. If I make the team, I'll be the oldest U.S. gymnast," Raisman told Morty Ain of ESPN.com. "My body is a little bit more achy than it was before, but at the same time I feel like I'm smarter now and able to understand the recovery process. I always joke that I'm 21 going on 50."

There is still time remaining for Raisman to get back into full form, but not as much as it may seem. The Worlds in Scotland are two months away, and we're less than a year away from team trials for the Rio Games.

"I have to learn when I’m actually competing to feel a little more confident," Raisman said, per Team USA's Chros McDougall. "Hopefully that will come with a little more experience being back. Even though I have a lot of experience, I kind of feel like a little junior for the first time out there."

In that way, this weekend proved to be a solid barometer of where Raisman is at among her competition. Third-place finishes in the Olympic stage are admirable, while third place inside her own country leaves something to be desired. Given the fact that her difficulty scores were still relatively high and she has two months to clean up her mistakes, look for Raisman to make a statement at the World Games