College athletes often find it hard to eat healthfully while juggling all the demands on their time. Classes, homework, team meetings, practice and games can leave little time for cooking and eating. However, athletes know that proper fueling can improve performance.

So what's an athlete to do when religious beliefs call for fasting from sunrise to sunset for a full month during the competitive sports season? Muslim athletes will be facing that challenge as Ramadan, the month of fasting, begins this weekend. Athletes who adhere to the tenets of Islam avoid all food and drink at daybreak until sunset.

CHRIS ROSENBLOOM FIT TO EAT Have a question of general interest? E-mail Rosenbloom Related: • More on food and drink • Restaurant reviews and search More Rosenbloom You can work '101 Foods' into your diet  Know your nutrition: A quick quiz for fall  Three to be careful with in healthy diet  Grapefruit, cancer link considered preliminary  Beta carotene powers orange fruits, veggies  Our levels of the 'sunshine' vitamin decrease as we age  'Repair' muscles after long-distance running  Food-drug interaction an important issue  • Chris Rosenbloom, Ph.D., R.D., is a member of the nutrition faculty in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University.

Weiss Tahmass, a Georgia State University soccer player, met with me last year to develop a plan to get adequate nutrition for the two meals a day he consumed during Ramadan. Tahmass is a midfielder who typically runs five to six miles during practice that occurs in the middle of the afternoon, when heat and humidity are at their highest. We devised the following strategy to keep him running strong and performing at his best.

• We determined his calorie needs or energy expenditure, based on his height, weight, age, sport and workout schedule. Tahmass needed slightly more than 3,500 calories a day.

• We devised meal options based on his usual eating habits for the pre-fast meal (called suhoor) and the post-fast meal (called iftar).

• He was encouraged to eat about one-third of his calories and drink one-half of his fluids before sunrise and two-thirds of his calories with the remainder of the fluids after sunset.

• We determined the official times of sunrise and sunset using data from the U.S. Naval Observatory found at www.usno.navy.mil (click on sunrise/set). Athletes travel, so identifying the precise times of sunrise and sunset in various cities helps identify when it is time to eat.

• I encouraged him to alert his athletic trainer if he got dizzy or lightheaded in practice or in a competition. It is permissible to break the fast for illness, and heat exhaustion is an illness that must be monitored to ensure the athlete's safety.

Tahmass had competed during Ramadan in high school, but this was the first time a specific plan was developed for Ramadan. This year, Ramadan is later than last year and falls right in the heart of the competitive season for soccer.

"Ramadan is always tough for the first couple of days because you forget that you can't drink water during practice," reports Tahmass. Following a specific eating plan "helped me have the energy when I needed it and allowed me to compete at a high level." He says that his teammates are amazed that he can get through a two-hour workout in the heat of the day without water, "but with discipline and dedication, it gets easier after the first three to five days."

Chris Rosenbloom, Ph.D., R.D., is a professor of nutrition in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University. She'll answer nutrition questions of general interest. Send your questions to her c/o The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Eighth Floor, 72 Marietta St. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30303. Or e-mail her at dietitian@ajc.com.