Performance Nutrition Without Dieting: Fueling Athletes
For high-performing athletes, obtaining adequate nutrition and hydration can often be challenging. Many athletes constantly seek new diets that will propel their performance to the next level. Yet strict diets often eliminate entire food groups, leading to low energy levels and nutrient deficiencies. They also often lead to obsessive thoughts about food and disordered eating patterns, increasing the risk for eating disorders. Intuitive eating, however, offers a balanced approach, allowing athletes to focus on nutrition without obsessing over every bite of food.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive Eating, a non-diet approach coined by Registered Dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, teaches ten principles. These principles encourage tuning into hunger cues, rejecting diet mentality, eating for satisfaction, and adopting body-acceptance behaviors. Tribole and Resch, recognizing the harm in caloric restriction and vilifying food groups, authored ‘Intuitive Eating’ to help people break free from diet culture. The ten principles are:
Reject the diet mentality
Honor your hunger
Make peace with food
Challenge the food police
Respect your fullness
Discover the satisfaction factor
Cope with your emotions with kindness
Respect your body
Movement – feel the difference
Honor your health with gentle nutrition
These principles are not meant to be hard and fast rules. The authors describe intuitive eating as a lifelong journey of connecting with your body’s physical and emotional cues. Currently, intuitive eating is often used in the later part of eating disorder recovery since research shows that it helps people move away from disordered eating behaviors while respecting their bodies more. For more information about intuitive eating, visit their website or read the latest edition of their book.
Why Intuitive Eating Might Be Helpful for Athletes
With the high pressure for performance placed on collegiate and professional athletes, it’s not surprising that eating disorders are seen at higher rates in athletes than in non-athletes. Up to 60-70% of athletes show general disordered eating and orthorexic behaviors at some point in their athletic careers. Intuitive eating may be a valuable tool to help athletes reject strict diet culture rules that they feel they must follow to be a successful competitor.
The principle, “Respect your body,” can help athletes focus less on motivators related to the physical body and more on other aspects of their performance, such as strength, speed, stamina, and power. This can help reduce body shaming and decrease destructive weight-changing behaviors.
“Challenging the food police” and “Making peace with all food” can help someone accept that all foods can fit into daily routines. Recognizing that no food has to be “good” or “bad” is crucial for establishing a healthy relationship with food and overcoming food fears. While all foods should be treated as morally equal, that does not mean they are all nutritionally equal. There is a time and a place for all foods, even sugar! Consider the energy gels that people use to fuel their runs. They don’t contain many vitamins or minerals, but they provide instant energy and therefore serve a purpose.
The final principle of “Gentle nutrition” can help guide their eating habits from meal to meal, learning which food groups are important to eat and when can help with performance and recovery. Registered dietitians can provide valuable nutrition advice and education to athletes on building their plate at every meal, highlighting the vitamins and minerals that are particularly important for athletes, and help integrate knowledge of brain and body nutrition. Knowing that food intake can also be flexible is key to helping fuel their sport for life.
One principle that may be difficult to follow at all times might be “Feel your fullness” and “Honor your hunger.” After a hard workout, hunger cues can be diminished for a longer period. This may be due to a decrease in ghrelin (our hunger hormone) after periods of exercise. It may be challenging for athletes to fully trust their body's ability to know when to eat and when to stop. This is where practical hunger comes in. Practical hunger occurs when you know you aren’t physically hungry right now, but if you wait to eat, you may become overly hungry or not have food available. Athletes can practice this by having a snack after a workout that contains both protein and carbohydrates, as they know it will help their body recover more effectively. Research has shown that 45-60 minutes after exercise, cells are most receptive to absorbing protein to build muscle and replenish glycogen stores. Another example might be eating before a morning workout, even when you’re not hungry, because you know your blood sugar will be in a better place to fuel your muscles.
Creating a Lifelong Healthy Relationship with Food
Athletes are likely to benefit from the concepts of intuitive eating. Being connected to the body and fueling regularly and adequately are keys to optimal performance. This will help ensure the preservation of muscle mass, as well as provide optimal enjoyment and comfort during your sport. Ultimately, being a high-performing athlete requires a significant amount of time and dedication. Fueling the body adequately while enjoying a healthy relationship with food will honor the time and effort invested in this commitment. Practicing intuitive eating can help an athlete set themselves up for success in their athletic career and beyond. It's all worth it when you treat your body with the respect it deserves.
Whether you're hitting the trails, the slopes, or the water, our New England-based dietitians are here to help you fuel your body with confidence. Schedule a call today.