Diet Culture and the effect on athletes

Yesterday was a great day. Karel, me and our friends Carley and Alvi went for a 64 mile gravel ride in Walhalla. The ride included gravel, road, single track and a lot of climbing. The route took us a little over 5 hours and we covered around 7300 feet of elevation. Carley encouraged me to go for one of the QOM climbs - a 9-ish mile gravel climb that took me 48 minutes. It was super tough to stay on Karel's wheel but I was relieved when it was complete (and I secured the queen status - at least for now). As I was riding, I couldn't help but think about how my body was able to perform. I was so tired and sore from the previous week/weekend of training yet my body was continuing to impress me. This got me thinking about how athletes view and treat their bodies, especially as it relates to food. 

One of the most common New Year resolutions is losing weight or changing body composition. This is very likely due to diet culture. If you are tempted to lose weight fast, it's easy to get sucked into one of the many endless popular diet endorsements.

Diet culture focuses on size, shape and weight. It has an obsession with thinness. Even if it comes across as a 'lifestyle' or 'health-promoting' there is an expectation that if you change the way you look, you'll be more attractive, loved, accepted, happy, valued, healthy and successful.

Diet culture does not prioritize health and well-being. It focuses on thinness, leanness and muscles. Diet culture is everywhere and it requires a daily fight to ignore the constant messages that you are not worthy unless you look a certain way.

With so much pressure to change the way that you look through restrictive eating, you must remember that diet culture is not responsible for the side effects of dieting. These include feelings of guilt and failure, lowered self-esteem, destroying your relationship with food and your body and putting you at risk for disordered eating or an eating disorder. Diet culture glorifies extreme weight loss. It also shames people in larger or non "ideal" bodies.  According to the National Eating Disorders Association, 35% of dieting becomes obsessive and 20-25% of diets turn into eating disorders. 

But this blog post isn't to talk just about diet culture. There is a subculture within diet culture. One that normalizes and even encourages disordered eating habits and body preoccupation. 

Athletic diet culture. 

The general population isn't alone when it comes to buying into diet culture. It's not uncommon for athletes - training 10+ hours a week for an athletic competition - to have an off-limit food list, restrict food groups, avoid carbohydrates, skip snacks and fast - because there's the belief that....

• You'll be faster if you lose weight
• You'll become a better athlete if you lose weight
• You'll be healthier if you lose weight
• You don't look like an athlete, you should lose weight

It's almost impossible to exist happily in your own body when dealing with sport specific pressures around body weight. Many disordered behaviors like excessive training, fasted workouts, avoiding carbohydrates, not consuming sport nutrition, skipping snacks, restricting calories and a preoccupation with food are perceived as normal or even encouraged in the athletic population. Although disordered eating behaviors are unhealthy for the general population, they can be somewhat dangerous to the athlete population. 

For athletes - no matter your current size, age or fitness ability - your ability to stay consistent with training and absorb training training depends on the fuel and nutrients that you give it. Like a car, your body will not run without fuel. However, unlike a car, your body will begin to struggle when fuel supply begins to drop below half a tank. The nutrients in the food that you eat plays a vital role in your body's ability to withstand training stress and function in daily life. Poor nutrition can lead to fatigue, hormonal issues, compromised immunity and bone health, slowed metabolism, injury, poor performance, difficulty concentrating, low motivation, burnout and restless sleep. 

While certain diets may look appealing for health, weight loss or performance, consider what may happen to your body when it doesn't receive adequate vitamins and minerals due to calorie/food restriction: 

Gluten Free - low in fiber, iron, folate, vitamin D, B12, magnesium, calcium, zinc. 
Clean eating (no processed or fortified foods) - low in calcium, iron, folate, B12, potassium, calcium, sodium. 
Keto/low carb- low in fiber, carbohydrates, vitamin D, calcium, folate, magnesium, vitamin D.
Vegan - low in protein, iron, calcium, vitamin D, B12, Omega-3.
Low calorie - everything.

Whether you choose to change your diet for medical, health, ethical or performance reasons, it's important to consider what your style of eating does or doesn't provide in order to ensure you can stay healthy and perform well as an athlete. 

Don't downgrade your training by dieting in order to attempt to achieve a specific body composition. Upgrade your diet to support your training. Performance improvements come from taking care of your body, not from simply existing in a smaller body.

Stress and disordered eating

We are all experiencing challenges during which words just can't describe what we are feeling.

Politics, police brutality, a pandemic and an international human rights movement - alongside other ongoing issues like global warming, animal rights, LGBTQ discrimination, wage inequality, homelessness, human trafficking, disability discrimination, deforestation, weight bias, air pollution - may make it impossible to make sense of our emotions.

No matter how hard you try, you can't avoid stress. And sometimes it gets the best of us. Stress can become a problem when you are unable to cope. Without a productive and healthy outlet, stress levels can escalate.

Poor body image and an unhealthy relationship with food can cause stress but it also works the other way around. The relationship between stress and disordered eating is a vicious cycle.

When you feel overwhelmed or out of control, it's natural to find ways to cope with those unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings. Feeling stressed and overwhelmed can trigger disordered eating behaviors, which are used as a coping mechanism. In turn, compulsion, obsession, fear, stress and negative thinking raise stress levels. You can trick yourself into thinking you are alleviating stressful emotions, feelings and thoughts but in reality, those issues are exacerbated. Disordered eating can cause stress levels to spike. When you are so fixated on food, weight and your body, it can overtake everything in your life.

Because people who struggle with disordered eating habits are highly susceptible to stress (and the other way around), stress can contribute to the development of an eating disorder.

In case you missed it, I recently had the opportunity to have a healthy conversation with Registered Dietitian and elite runner Kelsey Beckman on body image, dieting and disordered eating. I hope you find it helpful. I provided a few options for your listening/viewing pleasure.

If you are struggling, please reach out for help. You don't have to suffer alone.

Facebook discussion 
YouTube discussion 
Audio only 

Food trend - plant strong athlete

If you are like most individuals, you are not surprised by the number of new, trendy, hip or cool foods on the market. From fresh to processed, our culture loves to eat trendy foods, companies love to profit it off of them and the media loves to talk about them. (perhaps I have reversed this timeline as the media has a major influence on how, what and why we eat). 

Coconut, kale, gluten-free, greek yogurt, juicing, quinoa. Just a few that come to mind when you think of the recent foods that are most talked about when discussing "healthy eating" or dieting. Anyone remember Olestra?

Did you know that there are over a dozen types of lettuces? I wrote a blog a while back on the many types of green leafy options that you can add to your current diet. 

How come the media isn't obsessing about Mâche, Mesclun or Mizuna and how come the grocery stores aren't carrying them for us to enjoy? 

When I work with individuals on the diet, specifically for performance or health purposes, it is very important to me that I treat each athlete/fitness enthusiast as an individual. But in our quick-fix society, it is so easy to want to be like the masses - do like others to receive the same results. 

In the past 20 years, I have "worked" on my diet to create a diet that gives me food freedom and peace with food. Comfort with my food choices without obsessing about calories or portions or food preparation. I have worked on mindful eating the most in that keeps me constantly in the moment when it comes to eating. I know how it feels to overeat and it doesn't feel good. So I don't do it. I don't get cravings or drops in blood sugar because I have tweaked my diet in a way that prevents these issues from happening. It may not work for others how I eat but my body is happy and my body is healthy. Why should I try to  follow a food trend or diet if I have created my own diet that allows me to function well in this world (and performance to the best of my ability during training/racing)? 

 At age 10-11, I decided to not eat meat for animal reasons and since then, I have learned how to eat as a healthy and active athlete/health conscious individual. I call myself a vegetarian because I don't and will never eat meat. It isn't a fad or a temporary trend. 

I know how to maintain my diet when traveling, eating on the road, eating at events and eating at home. I am always excited to better myself with my food choices, especially when it comes to bettering my health and performance but I am not "trying" new ways of eating as if I need to fix what is not broken. I have never fasted, cleansed or detoxed for my body never gets out of whack. 

I see nothing wrong with trying new things and tweaking the diet. Some styles of eating that are trendy (Ex. Mediterranean, vegetarian) actually come with a host of health benefits but that doesn't mean that you have to follow them strictly to still receive health benefits. That is how I work with others for I believe that learning how to create a healthy relationship with food is best mastered when you recognize what foods make YOU feel the best and enhance your lifestyle. Although adding kale and greek yogurt to your diet will not override other dietary choices, certainly there are many great foods out there that without the media, perhaps we would have never seen in the grocery store or recognized at farmers markets. 

When you think about the food trends in 2012, I am sure you have tried those foods or have adopted a diet that includes those foods (some or all). Nothing wrong with that as I hope that you are still working on your diet to support your individual needs and goals and not eating something temporary or for a quick-fix because the news, a celebrity, coach or nutrition guru told you that if you eat this, you will be "healthy". 

As I mentioned above, my plant-strong diet is with me for the rest of my life. It is not something that I will deviate from but instead, enjoy it as it helps me live an active lifestyle. But in the past 20 years, I have worked at it and I invite you to do the same for your own diet. 

Elimination diets are very trendy and I am not a fan. I feel that spending your energy on what not to eat is only going to set you up for failure and restriction in the diet and lack of flexibility with eating (especially around others). Banning food is not the way to go if you want to "be healthy" so instead, I invite you to think about what you aren't eating, possibly what you could be eating instead, as a way to create a positive relationship with food and perhaps, stop blaming the outcome or effect and instead, direct your positive energy to the missing link(s). 

I love writing about plant strong eating because not only do I practice what I preach in consuming a plant-strong diet for health and performance benefits but also, because we all need to do a great job, every day, of making sure we nourish our bodies with real food, mostly plants. If you feel you have "bad" food in the diet, perhaps you just don't have room for other foods (or not making room or the time to consume them) and it is within those other foods that you can make a positive impact on your health, mood, body and performance. It isn't as if one food is better than the other and certainly, no food is "bad" when consumed on occasional eats/treats but take some time - a few weeks at the minimum, to give a little thought to your diet to make sure that you are not "working" on your diet to be like others or to "fit-in" but instead, create a diet that works for you and is here to stay.

Is Plant-Strong "Healthy" for an Athlete? By Marni Sumbal

Healthy eating can be confusing when it's aimed to the masses. With many research-supported guidelines for "healthy" eating, a plant-strong diet is often celebrated as the most effective way to reduce risk for disease and manage a healthy weight. Although it is not required that you give yourself a dietary title as to what you don't eat, consider a variety of health promoting plant-strong foods to fuel and nourish your active lifestyle.

Protein is essential to assist in growth and repair of muscles, bones and tissues, keeps hair, skin and nails in good health, is helpful for the immune system and helps to keep the metabolism, digestion and brain in optimal health.

For most athletes, meeting recommendations for protein (1-1.5 g/kg/d) can easily be accomplished through a varied diet. To ensure a decrease in fat mass (and not lean muscle mass) if striving for weight loss/body composition changes, do not neglect quality, portioned controlled protein at meals, snacks and for workout recovery. 

For proper digestion and absorption, satiety and control of blood sugar with carbohydrates, all individuals should aim for around 20-30g of protein per meal and addition protein with workout recovery/daily snacks to meet your individual daily recommend protein intake.

Nutrition plays a major role in your training regime and the choice for a specific dietary regime (or any variation) should not sabotage your training plan. Because you can't out-train a poorly planned diet, your diet should keep you healthy, active and happy. If your eating today is restrictive based on how you ate yesterday, ditch the diet plan mentality. 

Maintain a healthy relationship with food and consider a more plant strong, balanced diet as you enjoy the creativity, freedom and flexibility that come with eating a variety of whole foods.

Meat or no meat, choose foods that are simple to prepare, convenient, safe, wholesome and pleasurable as you support your healthy lifestyle with consistent fitness/performance gains.

Here's a protein-rich, plant strong meal which has an extra bonus:  many valuable vitamins and minerals within this meal aside from protein!

1 cup mushrooms - 2 protein
2 cups cooked broccoli - 8g protein
1/2 cup farro - 4g protein
1/4 cup black beans - 3.5 g protein
3 ounce tofu - 7g protein
1 cup cherry tomatoes - 1g protein
1/2 cup peas - 3.5g protein
1/2 ounce pumpkin seeds - 2.5g protein
Total: 31.5g protein

Read more: Iron Girl