What is healthy eating?

Healthy Eating -  A way of eating that maintains or improves overall health and makes you feel good. There is no one-size-fits-all definition when it comes to "healthy eating." While similar methods and ideologies may work for the masses, every individual is on his/her/their own nutritional journey. Depending on who you are, "healthy eating" could mean..... Making homemade almond milk, grinding your own nut butter, or picking produce from your home garden Only eating GMO-free and organic foods Not eating meat, dairy or fish Doesn't eat meat but eats dairy and fish Portion control Not eating out of boredom or emotions Not restricting food in order to prevent binge eating Eating enough to support training for a long distance triathlon Making nutrition changes to reduce the risk of a cancer recurrence Making nutrition changes because a disease runs in your family Practicing intuitive eating after overcoming a decade of disordered eating or an eating disorder "Healthy eating" is not a diet plan. It's a way of eating that works for your mental and physical health, right now in your life.  Healthy eating is not..... Buying food that you don't like (or don't know how to prepare) just because someone told you it was healthy.  Following food rules and avoiding "off limit" foods. Following a diet plan, despite not liking how the "diet plan" foods make you feel Ignoring hunger cues  Selecting food with the primary goal of weight loss. Purchasing expensive specialty foods just because they are trendy As you progress in your individual life journey, be mindful that your definition of healthy eating will/may change overtime. You may go from being extremely rigid and strict in your diet to allowing more food freedom and food flexibility. Or, you may celebrate that right now, you are "at least" eating breakfast and consuming a few veggies throughout the day. Or, you may find that you are in a food rut and you are eating out a bit more often in order to get inspiration from different cuisines.  If you are trying to eat more healthy, here are a few suggestions to get you started: Create a plan for what you will eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks, before that day happens. You can keep this extremely simple by eating similar foods each day to get started. Be mindful of your hunger and fullness cues to help with portions. Don't bring a diet mentality (or off limit food list) to your food choices. Allow for flexibility and avoid having an all-or-nothing approach.  Spend 30 minutes each day planning for tomorrow's eating. Reflect on today and what worked/didn't work and make small tweaks so you feel more control, satisfied, energized and comfortable with your eating choices. The more food that you have prepped and available in advance, the easier it is to follow through with your plan.  Consider your life obligations (ex. work, family, exercise, extra-curriculars) so that eating is not too complicated, time consuming or difficult. Don't let meal and snack time become an afterthought or pushed aside because it's something you don't have time for. A well-nourished and energized body functions well in life. Give yourself time to eat a meal (at least 20 minutes). Give yourself a life pause to be present at meal and snack time. Don't rely on willpower to initiate a change. Set yourself up for successful eating behaviors.  Always maintain a healthy relationship with food and your body.

Changing eating habits without fear of weight gain

Are you tired of living with a rigid and restrictive style of eating?

Do your food-related habits affect your relationships?

Do you want to stop feeling so anxious, stressed, overwhelmed and conflicted around food-related events and decisions? 

Are you wanting to make food choices that help fuel your active lifestyle, help you feel good physically and satisfy you mentally? 

Are you ready to break free from food rules and build a healthy relationship with food and your body? 

If you said yes to any or all of the following, you may find that there is one thing that is holding you back from feeling controlled by food.....you are worried about gaining weight/body composition changes. 

Unfortunately, we live in a world saturated with diet culture. We are conditioned to group food into "good" and "bad" categories and it's almost universally acceptable to fat shame. Even worse, nutrition experts often encourage disordered eating strategies as a way to improve health, lose weight or enhance fitness/performance. 

Trying to maintain a lifestyle with food rules, rituals and restrictions means you are not living to your fullest potential. The more energy you expend on your food choices, the more distracted you become mentally and physically. Letting go of food-related fears is how you can live a more fulfilling lifestyle. 

But if you are worried that a flexible and varied style of eating will result in a body type that would be seen as unhealthy, unacceptable, unattractive or performance limiting, I must remind you that as an athlete, you need full physical and mental freedom to perform at your best and to keep your body in good health. Restricting the food in your diet, placing food rules on when, how much and where you eat and obsessing over your body will not allow for that freedom. To truly put this 'diet' mentality behind you, you must get over your fear of weight gain. 

• Identify the source of your weight-related fears
  -Comments made by coaches, athletic outfits and performance, a culture that emphasizes leanness.... it's important to identify who or what is making you feel how you feel about your body.
  -Most weight gain fears initiate from cultural weight stigmas. 
  -Success, beauty, attractiveness, ability, happiness, social standard are often tied to what the body looks like. 
  -Food is often used to control stress and to reduce anxiety. Rituals and regimes around food may give you the illusion that you have more control over a situation, making you feel more at ease around eating. Being able to eat without feeling restricted, regimented or ritualistic is a way to challenge the fear of weight gain. 
  
  
• Rewire your thoughts
  -The brain can be retrained. If you constantly think that if your body changes, you will no longer be successful, happy or attractive, it will be difficult to change your behaviors. 
  -Positive affirmations and mantras can help build new thought patterns. 
  -Recognize the triggers for when your thoughts become self-sabotaging. 
  
  
• Change behaviors
  -The purpose of the first two steps is to recognize that there's a close connection between how you think you will look, perform and be treated if you step away from a rigid and restrictive style of eating. 
  -Take a step back to consider how your current style of eating is helping or harming your heath, performance or quality of life. 
  -A healthy weight supports the metabolic demands of your training, while protecting your physical and mental health. It's not controlled, it just happens. 
  

You may be wondering what will happen to your body when you get rid of the food rules? 

The truth is, I don't know and you don't know. The unknown can be scary - thus the constant need to feel controlled by food. While the idea of not being able to tightly control your weight can be scary, your reasons for giving up control over food must be stronger than your fears over weight gain. 

And if that is too hard for you to think about right now, I'll remind you where that fear of weight gain came from.....diet culture! 

Diet culture is constantly selling you methods for how you can and should control your weight to be leaner, lighter or smaller. This puts great pressure on you that your moral obligation as a human being in this world is to control your weight. And if you fail, it's a personal failure. With every diet, restriction, regime and ritual, it's the illusion of control. You must trust yourself that when you eat enough to fuel and nourish your body, while also feeling food freedom and flexibility, your body will be at the weight that it needs to be to function at its best. 

There are many layers to your relationship with food, weight and your body. And these layers change in different times of your life.

But now is a great time to start learning (and unlearning) your food, body and weight related thoughts and behaviors, while challenging those thoughts and deciding what food related decisions are helping you and should stay, and which ones need to be tossed out as they are keeping you from living a meaningful and quality-filled life. 

How to build your daily diet

An optimal athlete diet is made of many inter-related parts that are constantly moving - all in an effort to support your training. In other words, every meal and snack that you consume during the day is an essential part of your training plan. Many athletes fail to construct the diet in a way that supports the demands of training and supports health. There’s no value in putting all your effort and energy into your training if you lack a solid foundation of nutritious eating. As the saying goes, you can’t out-exercise a poorly planned diet. Your diet is the foundation in which your body can function optimally in life and during your workouts. 

Just like a training plan, your diet requires nutrition modifications throughout a training season. There will be many times throughout the year when you need to build from your “normal” style of eating. This increase in calories, carbohydrates and more energy-dense foods allows you to support the more rigorous times of training (higher volume and intensity). 

On the bottom level of your many different variations of eating, your diet should be designed in a way that reduces your risk for disease, supports a healthy functioning immune system, optimizes a healthy body composition (this shouldn't be confused with a "race weight") and provides a source of energy so you can perform daily activities. This is your foundational diet. The diet is made of primarily wholesome or real food to supply your body with a variety of vitamins and minerals, as well as carbs, protein and fat – all to support metabolic and hormonal processes and to keep the body in good health.

But this diet alone can not support your training demands - specifically when training volume and intensity increase. If you fail to adjust your diet in times of added training stress, your health will be compromised and you will perform below your athletic capabilities.

When your training volume/intensity increase, your diet should remain nourishing. The foundational diet should not change. But, there needs to be extra emphasis on what and when you eat (nutrient timing) and the addition of sport nutrition products. Although anyone can get by with subpar nutrition for a short term, overtime, if you fall short on your daily and sport nutrition requirements and you can sabotage your physical health and your psychological well-being – this is where the hormonal, endocrine and metabolic disruptions occur.

You must first build a solid foundation of eating for your "sport specific" diet to work for your body, health and performance. 

To help you build a solid foundation of eating, it's important to determine your daily nutrition needs to support a low level of physical activity (~1/hr exercise a day, a few days per week). From there, you can add in additional calories, primarily in the form of carbohydrates and protein (these added calories will be prioritized around workouts to support the added training stress and fuel requirements. Often these foods are more energy dense - lower fiber/fat and packing more calories per bit - and are consumed in the 1-4 hours post longer or more intense workouts). 

Build your foundational diet
1) Take your weight in lbs and divide by 2.2 to determine your weight in kilograms. 

2) Take your weight in kilograms and multiply by 3 to determine your daily carbohydrate needs. 
3) Take your weight in kilograms and multiply by 1.5 to determine your daily protein needs. 
4) Take your weight in kilograms and multiply by 1 to determine your daily fat needs. 

Example: 140 lb = 64 kg
Carb intake = 64 x 4 = 256g/d (or 1024 calories)

Protein intake = 64 x 1.5 = 96g/day (or 384 calories)
Fat intake = 64 x 1 = 64g/day (or 576 calories)
Total = ~2000 calories/day

This would be the minimum amount of calories (and carbs/pro/fat) to consume to support a low intensity workout regime of one-hour of exercise a day, a few times per week. This diet also applies to off days of training. If you exercise more than this, you will need to increase your carb needs to at least 4-5g/kg/day and increase protein needs to around 1.8g/kg/day.

Example: If you are working out for 2-3 hours a day, your carb needs will go from 256g to 384g (or 1536 calories). By focusing first on your foundational diet, you can do a better job of ensuring that you meet your daily nutritional needs when your training volume increases in volume and intensity. 

Many athletes fall short on fueling the body properly on higher intensity and higher volume training days because of falling short on calories from the foundational diet. 

Build your foundation diet now to maintain a healthy and strong body in your more rigorous times of training.

Eating healthy while working from home

For those who are used to working in an office, it can be a big struggle to transition to a "work from home" environment. With so many interruptions, the biggest WFH (work-from-home) distraction is........you guessed it.....the refrigerator.

As it relates to nutrition, when you work in an office away from home, there's the need to plan ahead as to what, when and where you will be eat. While this lifestyle skill is still a work in progress for many, bringing your lunch (and snacks) to work helps you control what you are eating.

At home, you may find yourself mindlessly snacking or forgetting to eat all together. To help you eat healthy while working from home, here are a few tips:

• Meal prep - Even when your office is (now) in your home, meal prep is a must. Making a meal from scratch - and when you are hungry - can take up a lot of time, cause you to lose momentum during a work project/emails and force you to resort to quick and not-so-nutritous options. With a bit more flexibility with your meals, prep food in advance so that you either have your lunch meal ready to go or you have stuff to throw together for a balanced meal. Don't forget to plan for and prep nutritious and satisfying snacks to keep you from grazing on processed food throughout the afternoon.
  
• Set a schedule - Set your day like any other day - plan your workout, breakfast, when you will stop to eat lunch and a few small recharge breaks. While it's good to stick to a schedule, understand that things may not always go as planned and sometimes you have to adjust your schedule. Approach each day with an open mind and flexibility. But most of all, have a plan.
  
• Eat away from your desk/office - Having a total break from work can help you clear your mind and refocus. It also allows you to eat more mindfully. Resist the temptation to keep working as you eat in order to save time. Give your day structure by stepping away from the computer/desk in order to eat.
  
• Stay hydrated - With less distractions and a bathroom nearby, you may find yourself overly hydrated on caffeine. Limit yourself to only a cup or two between 9-11am and be sure to keep a water bottle nearby - filled with water to keep yourself well-hydrated throughout the day. The bottle of water can also help you avoid unncessary snacking when you aren't truly in need of food.
  
• Do a check-in - It's important to snack between meals but not overdo it when you find yourself bored, emotional or stressed. Before you grab an unplanned snack, check in with yourself. Are you eating because you are biologically hungry and need to eat to satsify hunger or because you are bored, lonely or stressed?
  
• Journal - With a temporary new normal, don't be so hard on yourself. During the first few weeks of working from home, keep track of your mood, hunger signals, energy levels and productivity. See if you can notice any patterns related to your food choices. Give yourself permission to learn from each day, without feeling like your eating habits are pass or fail.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

-Charles Darwin

For more nutrition, lifestyle and exercise tips, as well as delicious and nutritious recipes, subscribe to the Trimarni weekly Newsletter HERE

Optimize your diet

When it comes to sport success, diet is a big piece of the puzzle that many athletes fail to master (or appreciate). Creating a healthy diet to optimize sport performance is not as confusing as many people make it out to be. Although intense and prolonged training increases energy, carbohydrate and fluid needs, the essential nutritional needs of active individuals are very similar to sedentary people in order to help maintain a healthy weight, reduce risk for disease, improve physical and mental health and live a longer, healthier life. Despite the strong relationship between good nutrition habits and athletic success, many athletes overlook consistent nutrition habits in favor of training harder or longer. However, it’s only when you supply your body with optimal nutrition can you perform at optimal levels.

With many strong opinions on nutrition, it’s easy to fall victim to extreme dogmatic nutrition approaches. But the truth is that every human being responds differently to different foods, making it impossible to prescribe a ‘one size fits all’ diet plan. Nonetheless, the essential component to a healthy diet is very simple - prioritize minimally processed, whole foods. It's important to take the time to personalize your diet so it works for your health and fitness goals. Say good bye to food rules and dieting as you learn realistic, healthy and sustainable eating practices - tailored to work for you physically, psychologically, culturally, financially and socially.

• Create YOUR diet - If you really want a sustainable way of eating, plan your meals and snacks ahead of time. Healthy eating is best accomplished in this order: plan, shop, prepare, eat. When you know where your food is coming from and how much of it you will/want to eat, you will feel more control over your style of eating with less temptation to indulge.
• Emphasize real food - Almost every diet plan has one thing in common - eat.real.food. And to no coincidence, those who eat a mostly real food diet tend to have the best quality of life. Sadly, farmers have a quiet voice in a food industry overpowered by food companies. We live in an unhealthy nation that stresses healthy eating. Take a look inside your daily meal and snack choices to determine if you can make a few tweaks each day to move toward a more real food-based, locally sourced, and wholesome diet. 
• Create a positive food experience - Eating should not be a miserable, dissapointing and time-consuming experience. It is important to have a good relationship with food so that meal time is a njoyable and positive experience. Let your life stop for a brief moment when you eat. Make peace with food and as much as possible, eat at a table and not in the car/behind a computer/on the go. Be grateful for the food you get to it as it should not be taken for granted. 
• Make a lifestyle change - A healthy lifestyle is more than just what you eat (or choose not to eat). Embrace the many components that bring happiness and good health. A healthy lifestyle means managing stress, sleeping well, staying active, moving the body as much as possible, and reducing sedentary time. It’s important to surround yourself with positive people while always making room for “me time”. Create happiness by finding joy in a career choice, exploring nature, traveling and learning, and emphasizing a real food diet that offers flexibility rather than restriction. 

Eating for the spring season

Spring has arrived to Greenville, SC! The warm weather is here and our furry crew is soaking it all in. Although Campy gets plenty of time outside in his backyard, our 16.5 year old cat (Smudla) is allowed to enjoy some time outside in the warm sun. At this phase in her life, she pretty much gets whatever she wants.

In case you missed it, here's an article from our weekly newsletter (subscribe HERE) on springtime eating.

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With winter behind us (hopefully), warm and rich soups, stews, casseroles and drinks are replaced with brightly-colored produce and hydrating beverages. Eating what's local, available and in-season is a practical choice, especially when you are trying to optimize your nutrient intake. To keep you on track with your springtime nutritional needs, here are a few key tips.

Loss of appetite – Warm weather has a dramatic effect on appetite. Whereas cool temps increase the appetite, hot temps have the opposite effect – it zaps your desire to eat. Dehydration also encourages a loss of appetite, especially when you experience a headache and nausea from not meeting your fluid intake needs. Make sure you stay up on your hydration and nutrient needs to keep the body in good health.

Excuses – The list of reasons as to why it’s too hard to eat healthy in the springtime are endless, especially when the days are longer and you try to pack more into each day. But if you think about it, eating healthy is not that hard when you choose fresh/real food. It’s the conflicting information that makes healthy eating so confusing. Foods that are heavily processed provide less nutritional value than fresh foods. Generally, the more cooking you can do from food in its natural state, the healthier the meal will be for your body.

Travel - Between the vacation getaways and weekend outings, it’s easy to slack on nutritious eating in the springtime. For an all-day excursion at the pool, park or beach, pack an ice-cold cooler with water, sandwiches, hummus, chopped veggies, sliced fruit and yogurt in order to resist the vendor/fast food temptations.

CSA - Take advantage of fresh, local produce at the grocery, farmer’s market or CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Seasonal summer fruits, like watermelon, berries, oranges, corn, peppers and tomatoes are in their prime, bursting with flavor and packed with nutrients.

Plan ahead - When you are hungry, your cravings will guide your food choices. By preparing your meals ahead of time, you will improve your health, save time and money, decrease meal-time stress and make better food choices.

Start your garden - Now is a great time to start planning your garden. Determine the best spot, get the soil just right, plan the layout and select what you want to grow. Don't forget to water your garden. Growing food can be a very rewarding experience as you benefit from the healthful food you produce.

"In the spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.”

— Mark Twain 

It's time to break up with your food rules

I am a huge proponent of guidelines. By definition, a guideline provides boundaries. A guideline provide direction to take action. In contrast, a rule tells you what you are and are not allowed to do. Rules must be followed or else there will be negative consequences. Rules bring anxiety and stress.

Most of the time, there are no real consequences to breaking a guideline. However, rules are typically set as a way to enforce the right way that things should be done. If not, there are serious consequences.

In your everyday life, you likely adhere to both rules and guidelines - at work, in society, at home, with your family, etc.. For example, when you race in an athletic event, there are rules to ensure safety and fair play. At work, you may have guidelines to ensure a positive, safe and supportive work culture.

But what about food rules? Do you constantly live life following rules as to how you should and shouldn't eat?

As a board certified sport dietitian, I don't believe in food rules. I couldn't imagine living my life with rules as to how I have to eat unless it was for medical reasons. Sure, I have healthy eating patterns that I adhere to on a daily basis but I also know that nothing bad will happen when I enjoy the occasional treat. Sadly, many athletes don't live this way.

With good intentions, you may be adhering to food rules as a way to eat better and to improve performance. For example, a rule to always refuel after a workout is great advice. But a rule of "no carbs after 7pm" or "fruit is off-limit" is worrisome. When you live with food rules, every food-related situation or decision becomes stressful and brings anxiety and stress. Seeing that athletes often take guidelines too the extreme, there can be great consequences to adhering to food rules.

Following strict and unrealistic rules can result in physical, emotional and psychological issues, including nutrient deficiencies, hormonal disturbances, anxiety, depression and obsessive thinking.
Food rules can result in extreme preoccupation with food and body image. This can be exhausting - mentally and emotionally. For an athlete, the stress you place on your body through training is more than enough for your body to handle. Food rules have no place in an athlete's diet.

Do you feel as if you are a prisoner to your self-imposed food rules? 

Is the thought of deviating from your strict food rules causing you great anxiety, fear, worry and stress?  

Food rules create structure, order and control. This is why diets, like Whole 30, work.....temporarily. Food rules keep you "on track" by taking out the guesswork of eating. At first, food rules make eating easy, but eventually they come with a consequence. Either you break your food rules and go back to unhealthy eating habits or you become even more obsessed with eating, which increases the risk for disordered eating, which may develop into an eating disorder.

Breaking food rules can be very difficult for you've likely become rather accustomed to your food rituals. During your break-up period, it is very important that you do not focus on your body as your body is likely in a state of undernourishment. You've probably become out-of-tune with your body signals. Your digestive tract may be compromised due to disordered eating. When you've ignored your body cues and signals for fear of breaking a rule, the first step in your break-up is giving your body the nourishment it needs to heal from the damage that has been done by restrictive eating and disordered eating patterns.

Eventually, likely with the help of a professional, you will be able to engage in healthy, structured and enjoyable eating patterns that are not rigid, strict, controlled or obsessive. Health should improve, alongside body composition and performance. Once the break up is behind you, you'll be on your way of creating a personalized style of eating, free of guilt, anxiety and worry.

Are you ready for a break-up?

Top 10 Nutrition tips for athletes - link to video and recap

The human body is an amazing machine. In our daily life, we only use a very small part of our true physical capabilities. 

But as athletes, unlike our daily life, our training is a big stressor on our body.

Understanding that training for an athletic event places such a high demand on the cardio, respiratory muscular, immune and other organ systems, it’s important to recognize that preparing your body for an athletic event is so much more than just checking off workouts.

I am sure I don't have to tell you this but your athletic success depends on proper nutrition. 

Last night, I had the opportunity to give a presentation at Run In on my Top 10 nutrition tips for athletes.  

Before getting into the talk, it is important that I tell you a little about myself and why I am so passionate about nutrition and sport nutrition. 

As a Board Certified Sport Dietitian with a MS in Exercise Physiology, I have dedicated much of my educational career to studying the human body and how food, or nutrition, affects physiology. I love learning about the science behind training and nutrition.

But, I am also an endurance triathlete. For the past 11 years, I have pushed my body to great physical and mental limits by completing 11 Ironman distance triathlons, including 4 Ironman World Championships and I have place overall female amateur at several half IM distance events. 

As a motivated, disciplined, competitive and goal-driven endurance triathlete, you can say that my activity routine is quite punishing and what I do with my body is very extreme. More important than any personal best, podium placement, overall win or World Championship qualification is my health. This hobby is a choice and seeing that you may also choose to do something similar with your body, it is important to remember that your ability to perform well with your body is dependent on good health.

I invite you to listen to my 1-hour presentation which discusses the following topics:

1. How to organize youd diet as an athlete
2. Incorporating whole grains into your diet
3. Daily hydration needs
4. Natural anti-inflammatory foods
5. Incorporating more vegetables into the diet
6. Easy to digest pre-workout snacks
7. How to master post-workout nutrition
8. Tips and tricks for dialing in sport nutrition and hydration during workouts 
9. How to make your own energy bar out of real food
10. Why it is important to create a healthy relationship with food and the body

I selected these ten topics because I felt they were important to discuss at this time of the year. There is a lot of misinformation and unsafe dietary advice regarding nutrition for athletes and unfortunately, many athletes get sick, injured or burnout because they lack the require energy and nutrients to adapt to training stress.

As a nutrition expert who is qualified to give nutrition advice to athletes, I feel it is important to stress that I encourage a mostly real food based diet with absolutely no off-limit foods, I believe in the use of sport nutrition products during training and never do I prescribe “magic bullets”, quick fixes, make claims for fad diets or encourage rigid and extreme styles of eating and fueling. 

When I work with athletes, health, well-being, longevity and enjoyment for sport are most important to me because I want you to keep your body in amazing health AND perform amazingly well with your body on race day, and for many more years to come. 

I hope that you find my tips practical, easy to implement and effective for your upcoming training and racing journey.

Any questions, don't hesitate to send me an email via the contact form on my website. 

Don't miss my next Facebook live chat - Top 10 nutrition tips for athletes

You are invited to attend my "Top 10 nutrition tips for athletes" presentation, on March 6th, 2017 from 7:00-8:00 pm EST. This is a FREE presentation for all fitness levels.

Are you bummed that you are not local and can't attend? Well, not to worry!

This is a Facebook live chat so yes, I will be live, you don't need to show up to the store and you can watch it from anywhere in the world!

This also means that you can ask me questions anytime during my presentation. No matter what you are doing, you can "join in" on this interactive nutrition presentation.

To access the live discussion, just refresh the Run In Facebook page at 7:00 pm and turn up your volume. I will be speaking and my friend Dane (manager of the store), will be alongside me to read off the questions from the comment section as they roll in.

For the presentation, I will be discussing: 

1. How to organize your diet as an athlete
2. Incorporating whole grains into your diet
3. Daily hydration needs
4. Natural anti-inflammatory foods
5. Incorporating more vegetables into the diet
6. Easy to digest pre-workout snacks
7. How to master post-workout nutrition
8. Tips and tricks for dialing-in during workout fueling and hydration (for triathletes and runners)
9. How to make your own energy bar out of real food
10. Why it's important to create a great relationship with food and the body

Be sure to LIKE and follow Run In on Facebook. 

"See" you on Monday evening! 

M2M expert night wrap-up: The role of sport nutrition in a healthy diet

I couldn't be more excited to support and promote our local half ironman distance triathlon, here in Greenville, SC. Mountains to Mainstreet (M2M) is not just a triathlon event but a full festival weekend of events, with a 1K, 5K and half marathon on Saturday, followed by the half ironman distance triathlon (and relay/aquabike) on Sunday.

For a limited time, you can use the discount code tri35 to receive a $35 off discount code for the event. We hope to see you there and we can't wait for you to enjoy our gem of a triathlon playground, here in beautiful Greenville, SC.

For more info about the event:
Mountains to Mainstreet

In conjunction with the event, the M2M team is bringing together the triathlon community with a series of educational talks on all things triathlon - nutrition, swim, bike, run, injuries, race preparation, etc. I just love our triathlon/cycling/running community here in Greenville and I could not be more proud and excited to be a triathlete, living here in Greenville, SC. 

Earlier this week, I spoke alongside two other experts in the community for the first community expert night. I was joined by Dr. Kyle Cassas, Orthopedic Sports Medicine Doctor with the Steadman Hawkins group and Scott Kaylor, Physical Therapist at ATI sports therapy. It was an honor to speak alongside these experienced and knowledgeable experts and I feel we each brought something beneficial to the triathlon community as it relates to helping endurance triathletes safely and effectively prepare for an upcoming triathlon event. 

My talk focused on the importance of sport nutrition and daily nutrition planning for athletes but specifically, I educated the group on the role of sport nutrition in a healthy athlete diet. I thought it would be beneficial to share some of the nuggets of information that I provided the group, to ensure that you don't miss out on the health and performance benefits of proper fueling and eating in your endurance sport lifestyle. 

• It doesn’t matter what type of education that you have or your fitness level, proper nutrition is critical for optimizing performance and for keeping the body functioning well.
  
• For almost every athlete, there’s going to be a point your athletic development when your daily diet will no longer give you all the energy that you need to prepare for your upcoming athletic event. You may even get sick, injured or burnout if you don't adjust your current style of eating. In order to help your body safely continue to adapt to training stress, you will eventually have to take in some type of supplemental form of energy during your workout in order to meet the training demands that you place on your body.
  
  
• Nutrition advice is very conflicting and confusing but it's critical that you understand and accept that sport nutrition products can fit in with a healthy diet.
  
  
• Sport nutrition products are often linked together with sugar loaded foods, like processed foods, candy bars and junk food. Although sport nutrition products do contain sugar, these engineered products are formulated in a way to provide your body with a specific amount of carbohydrates, electrolytes and fluids to be properly digested and absorbed during exercise. In
  other words, these products are just as convenient as they are functional. 
  
  
• The reason why there are so many sport nutrition products on the market is because these products are designed to be used by athletes, dependent on sport, during intense and long workouts in order to help you properly adapt to training stress and to keep your body systems functioning well.
  
  
• Sport nutrition has a specific application, in which these products are designed to be used during intense and long workouts. In other words, if you are eating raisins, a banana and almonds during a long bike training session but eating a sport bar and sipping on an energy drink at work at 3pm in the afternoon, you are missing the application focus of sport nutrition and where it fits in with a healthy diet.
  
  
• Athletes should prioritize a real food diet throughout the day so that sport nutrition can be well tolerated during training.
  
  
• As it relates to the daily diet, your eating should always be well organized and planned. You will constantly feel like you can't "eat right" if your food choices just randomly happen.
  
  
• As a sport dietitian, I always consider an athlete’s unique situation when developing a solid foundation of eating and fueling. Every athlete comes from a different athletic background, with different dietary needs, a learned relationship with food and the body, training regime and body composition needs, that will all impact what type of nutrition guidance will work best in your individual situation.
  
  
• Every athlete can agree that triathlon training and recovery are enhanced by paying close attention to the daily diet. As an endurance triathlete, you need to meet specific daily nutritional needs to support your training. This nutrition planning should not start a few weeks out from your big race but instead, when you start your training after the off-season. As training demands shift during the year, you will need to adjust your eating style, caloric intake and macronutrient distribution, while still maintaining a high nutrient dense diet to support your health and athletic needs.
  
  
• As for finding the best sport nutrition product, I am a big proponent of powder sport drinks because they are easy to adjust to your unique needs and they make fueling and hydration incredibly easy as you can monitor your intake and also meet your fluid, electrolyte, calorie and carbohydrate needs all in one bottle. Because most sport nutrition powders tell you how to mix your drink into water, this is helping you create the perfect osmolality of the drink to be suitable for gastric emptying. To avoid those awful and annoying GI issues on race day, not to mention how scary and unhealthy it is for the body to experience dehydration and bonking, it’s important that whatever you consume on the bike and run for “fuel” that those products are easily digested from the stomach and absorbed from the small intestines. There's not point taking in nutrition/fuel if those products are just sitting in your gut as you are training/racing.
  
  
• The sport of triathlon is fun, challenging, confidence and skill building and above all, it can enrich the life to make a person a better human being. But sadly, there are far too many athletes who are abusing this three-sport lifestyle in an effort to simply lose weight. If you feel like you are using triathlon training as a punishment for eating "too" much, for being “too" fat or for earning something to eat that is “off limit” in the diet, consider if your unhealthy thoughts about food and the body are helping you become a better triathlete, and above all, keeping your body in good health. Since I specialize in working with athletes who suffer from disordered eating and body image issues, I’m sensitive to the fact that many triathletes do justify their extreme triathlon lifestyle with excessive exercise and restricting energy and sport nutrition in the diet, due to body image issues. Far too many age groupers are manipulating training and the diet for “weight control” versus learning how to eat well and use sport nutrition properly in order to adapt well to training and to properly prepare for race day.
  
  
• As a triathlete, it is important to always ask yourself if you are eating "enough", organizing the diet to support your training and timing your nutrition well with your workouts. I am extremely passionate about helping athletes improve nutrition and fueling habits, but I am also dedicated to helping athletes improve healthy living strategies to create athletic excellence while keeping the body in good health.
  
  
• For most athletes, working with a sport dietitian to help you structure the daily diet to meet your unique needs and to learn how to use sport nutrition properly, will be extremely advantageous to your performance and health. Having a trained professional will take the guessing away from what, how much and when to eat, so that you can put your energy into your training, meal planning, work and family life.

Get back on track with healthy eating

What does "healthy food" mean to you? 

To me, healthy food is included in a varied, nutrient dense diet which keeps my body functioning well. 

But in a world where unhealthy food is so available, it can be difficult to define and follow through with healthy eating. 

Busy schedules, misinformation, poor planning and low motivation can make healthy eating extremely challenging. 

Here are a few tips on how you can get back on track with healthy eating. 

-Stop the dieting and food rules. Restriction and deprivation doesn't work as it's not a sustainable style of eating. 

-Plan and prep ahead. When you are prepared, you make better food choices. Plus, by learning how to be a great meal/snack planner, you will create long-lasting "go-to" strategies for maintaining healthy eating habits even during your most busy, stressful and exhausting times in life. 

-Don't make your meals too complicated. Keep healthy eating simple and eat to feel satisfied and energized. 

-Eat with a purpose beyond weight/body composition. Learn to eat mindfully. You deserve to eat enough food to honor your biological hunger but you also deserve to eat food that you enjoy. Eating should be pleasurable experience. You should love your diet. Healthy eating is so much more than just eating to look a certain way but instead, eating to do amazing things with your body. Define your eating purpose behind every meal and snack in your diet. 

-Create one new "healthy eating" goal each week and don't set a new goal until your previous goal becomes a habit. For example, your goal can be to eat breakfast every morning, to bring an afternoon snack to work everyday, to have a recovery snack after every workout, to drink more water, to cook dinner at home two nights per week or to more vegetables at lunch. The idea behind a healthy eating goal is to create new strategies for change. If you have a goal of making dinner, you must figure out how you will make this happen. Stop the saying and start the doing. The only way you can sustain healthy eating is by creating a new lifestyle. 

-Leave space in your busy day for meal planning, prep and cooking. If you tell yourself that you do not have time to eat healthy, you need to adjust your priorities. Healthy eating may feel overwhelming if it is not yet a priority in your life. You can use a food delivery meal prep service or search through cookbooks for inspiration, but in order to eat healthy, healthy food needs to be available. By prepping and planning ahead, you will find yourself eating food that you love and feeling great about the foods that you put inside your body. 

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Nail your 2017 nutrition goals

There is a lot of information available to athletes on the topics of nutrition, specifically as it relates to how food can change your body composition, improve your health and boost your performance.

I think it is safe to assume that most athletes view food as a naturally safe way to boost athletic performance and the diet as a method of changing body composition.

But with so much information available to athletes, the topics of eating for health, eating for fuel, eating to change body composition and so forth, can make the simple topic of "diet for athlete" so confusing and overwhelming.

Due to information overload, I wouldn't be surprised if you are one of the many athletes who have explored (or tried) a dietary trend or fad at least once a year (likely around January) in an effort to get your diet under control in order to change body composition.

The interesting thing about a diet trend is the unique marketing of the dietary strategy which accurately identifies everything that you are doing wrong (insert you saying "this diet is exactly what I need!") and finds a sneaky way to convince you that this diet is the only way to fix your issues.

At Trimarni, we do not restrict food in any way.
We do not diet or jump on any hot sport nutrition trends or fads.
We apply research to real world settings but we always put our health before performance.

We eat a balanced diet every day of the year, we use sport nutrition products properly and we eat before and after our workouts.
Food has a positive role in our life and it enhances our performance and keeps us healthy.
There's no extreme method of eating (or not eating) and absolutely no food rules or off-limit food list.

Doesn't this sound peaceful and reassuring that this style of eating really does exist?

Sadly, you may still be searching for a diet plan.

If you want to create a sustainable style of eating, there's no better time than right now, when your training volume is low and you have extra time in your day to spend on your lifestyle habits, to focus on yourself and your own nutritional needs and to create a great relationship with food and the body.

As a qualified nutrition expert (Board Certified Sport Dietitian), it's important to me to remain a great nutrition role model to my coaching athletes but also to the public, as I know many athletes follow Trimarni and obtain services from Trimarni.

If you insist on changing your diet in 2017 without the help of a nutrition expert, I hope you find value in my latest Triathlete Magazine article (pg 56) as I share a few simple smart nutrition tips to kick start your nutritional success in 2017.

For the picky eater: Spaghetti squash with marinara, basil and cheese

When I was young, I wanted cheese on everything. I also loved starches. Cheesy french bread, lots of cheese on pasta, pizza topped with extra cheese, bagel topped with cheese and Cheeze-its were some of my favorites.

When I became a vegetarian at the age of 10, not much changed in my diet except the removal of meat and fish. While it's not a rule that vegetarians have to eat more veggies than the carnivore, it wasn't until mid college when I learned the nutritional value of veggies and that I should be eating them on a daily basis.

I transitioned myself to a very plant-strong diet around the age of 20 and I noticed a lot of great changes. While my focus wasn't on my body composition, I did notice a body composition change when I made a few dietary swaps and additions into my diet.
As the years went on and I transitioned myself from a competitive college swimmer to distance runner, I had to do some tweaking in my diet, once again, to make sure that I was eating enough to support the new demands that I was placing on to my body. I also incorporated sport nutrition (and better fueling before/after workouts) into my daily diet to support my new training regime (it didn't hurt that I was in graduate school and I was learning/researching all about exercise physiology and sport nutrition).
Then,when I transitioned from distance runner to endurance triathlete, I had to really make sure that I eating enough. It was a new daily diet to make the effort to eat a variety of foods to support my metabolic needs, to eat plenty of nutrient dense foods to keep my immune system healthy and to eat the right foods at the right times to ensure that I had energy for my workouts and that I recovered well from workouts.

For the parents out there, it's important to be a good role model for your children when it comes healthy eating. As a parent, your good behaviors around food support the development of good eating choices for your children.
Children learn as much from what you say as from what you do. While children may listen and repeat what you speak to them, children really pay attention to the way that you eat.

If you don't eat breakfast and simply rush out the door in the morning, your children will not see the importance of eating breakfast. They may even grow up with the tendency to rush out the door in the morning, simply because they assume that is how the day needs to be started.

More than anything, your attitude around food and your body is contagious and your children can easily pick up on your eating habits.

When you talk about good vs bad foods, children understand this concept. Although I don't have kids, I work with teenage/young athletes (ex. 12-18 years) on their diets/fueling and many of the kids that I speak with tell me about what foods are bad. When I ask why they term these foods bad, there's a list of reasons - explained by parents/teachers.

While it's great to teach your children to identify a healthy snack as a piece of fruit and a not-so-healthy snack as a candy bar, it's extremely important that you are careful with how you speak about foods....especially if you call a food (ex. sugar, carbohydrates and processed food) "bad" for you.

 Guiding your children to smart eating choices (foods that offer nutritional value) is important but it's equally important to encourage your children to diversify their food choices and to always have a great relationship with food (it's ok to have a treat or dessert!).

If you always use the word "bad" and have a category for what foods go into this subgroup of foods, your child may associate some type of shame or harm when he/she is presented with these foods and may see these foods as a never-eat food (this doesn't include foods which cause an allergy or need to be avoided for medical reasons).
While eating cake every day is not healthy, eating a small piece of cake at a birthday party is not "bad." If your child hears that cake is bad, he/she may feel extremely uncomfortable at events/parties because he/she shouldn't eat bad food.
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I have the perfect dish to help your picky eater make smart decisions with food.
There are a few reasons why I selected the ingredients in this dish for the picky eater. For parents, this is a great role model dish to talk about food.

-Spaghetti squash is often termed low carb and is used as a replacement for pasta. Children should not be hearing about low carb diets or terming starches as bad. Instead of using the words "low carb" or saying "pasta is bad", let's have you talk about the vitamin C and B vitamins found in squash and why these nutrients are important for overall health (ex. vitamin C protects your immune system to reduce your risk for getting sick).

-Cheese is a fantastic source of calcium. But a little goes a long way. Talk to your kids about how cheese is made. Fun fact for your kids - did you know that aged cheese, like cheddar, Parmesan and swiss can be tolerated by lactose intolerant individuals? When your child explains lactose intolerant, explain that too!

-Tomatoes are rich in lycopene and when tomatoes are cooked, the bioavailability of lycopene increases. Lycopene is the carotenoid pigment that gives fruits and veggies a red color. It's a powerful antioxidant which can help reduce the risk for many diseases. Save the science talk to your kids and tell them that tomatoes have a lot of powerful nutrients to keep the body healthy. Lycopene is a great nutrient to improve eye sight which can help with reading.
Go the extra mile and instead of buying tomato sauce from the can/jar, make your own sauce with the help of your kids, and add in lots of chopped veggies for a vegetable-rich tomato sauce.

-Herbs, like basil, provide great flavor to food. They are also a lot of fun to grow as children can pick their own herbs from an at-home garden (how cool - you can make the food that you eat!). Herbs can give a nutritional boost to any meal. Did you know that basil has anti-inflammatory effects? Next time you have sore muscles, tell your kids that you are eating basil (instead of popping a pill) to help reduce the inflammation to you can feel strong again at your next workout.

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While there's nothing extravagant about this dish, it's a great meal to talk about food. And really, that's what we should be doing when we eat. Talking about the goodness found in food - not terming food good or bad.
I hope it will please your picky eater.
This dish goes great with your choice of protein and a beautiful hearty salad....for those who aren't so picky and need more substance to a meal than just squash, marinara sauce and cheese. 

Spaghetti squash with marinara, basil and cheese

Small spaghetti squash
Marinara sauce

Fresh Basil
Shaved Parmesan 

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly oil a casserole dish with olive oil. 

2. Cut squash in half (lengthwise) from stem to tail and scrape out the seeds. Drizzle with olive oil and a pinch of salt.
3. Place squash (cut side down) on casserole dish. Roast in oven for 30-45 minutes. 

4. Use fork to scrape out the flesh (to make "spaghetti") into the casserole dish. 

5. Spread the spaghetti on the dish along with another drizzle of olive oil. Mix together and then press down lightly.
6. Top the squash with marinara (spoon over) and spread chopped basil on top of marinara.
7. Bake for 10-15 minutes.
8. Top with cheese. 

Enjoy! 

Consistent healthy holiday eating

Picture source

This is the time of the year when it's so easy to make bad decisions with eating choices.
But I'm not talking about devouring a dozen pieces of Halloween candy in one sitting, eating an oversized portion of Pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream or choosing 3 holiday cookies for an afternoon snack.

Nope, I'm talking about dieting.
A diet is a restrictive way of eating, designed to help you gain control over previously unhealthy eating habits.

Although it may sound like exactly what you need around the holidays, a diet is a big change in your eating routine - it's rapid, it's extreme and it provides temporary results. 

Healthy and mindful eating is a learned habit and once achieved, it makes it possible to enjoy the holiday season without guilt, anxiety or fear. 

A few tips come to mind when it comes to eating healthy around the holidays. 

1. Don't be locked down to one style of eating - having freedom with your eating choices will keep you from the overindulging and binging that often occurs from food restriction. 

2. Have a plan - it sounds so simple but if you have a plan as to how you will navigate holiday parties and events, you will be more likely to feel in control over your food choices. It's encouraged to include some treats in your plan as this strategy teaches you how to indulge responsibly. 

3. Don't exclude, include - trying to control/limit calories in order to save room for the off-limit, bad or calorie dense foods will backfire. It always has and it always will. When a holiday meal (or dessert) is in your near future, be sure to include healthy foods in your diet (which also will help support good immune system and metabolic health) to help promote satiety, stabilize blood sugar and steady your energy prior to your indulging eating experience

4.  Think long term, not short - short term thinking is why you feel like a failure when you indulge. This is no way to live your life. Instead, think long term so that you have a clear path as to how you will maintain a healthy body composition and your good health throughout the holiday season. Note, a clear path includes indulging as one or three spread-out occasions of eating a little more than normal will not keep you from reaching your long term health/body comp goals. 

5. Patience with body composition - your ability to stay consistent with food choices throughout the holiday season will enable you to feel great in the New Year. Don't get discouraged if your body doesn't look the same as it did a few months ago and certainly don't convince yourself that the holidays is the time to have the "why bother" attitude because you are already doomed for failure with all the bad food choices. Be patient over the holidays as your motive for healthy eating should be to keep yourself healthy - not for a look. 

Far too many people become irrational around the holidays, assuming that the only way to survive the holidays (or to feel better after a big meal) is to follow a diet strategy (ex. juice, detox, avoid carbs or starve yourself). 

The holidays are a special time of the year to be around family and friends. 

Not a time for deprivation and dieting.

While the holiday food choices are irresistible, the best approach to consistent healthy holiday eating is to remind yourself that one meal will not keep you from maintaining great health or reaching your body composition goals.
Learn to eat in a way that makes you feel better after you eat, than before you started. 

Performance-focused nutrition

As an athlete, you have special nutritional requirements compared to your fellow exercise enthusiasts.
You do incredible things with your body on a daily basis and you have high expectations for what your body will do on race day. And unlike research laboratory studies, you are not exercising to see how long you can go but instead, you train to see how fast you can cover a specific distance on a specific date.  

As an athlete, you probably experience many challenges when it comes meeting your extreme training needs through the daily diet because you are not like other people who must only meet basic nutritional needs - you must have great nutritional habits on a day-to-day basis but you also have an extra responsibility to your body to ensure it has the right foods, at the right times to give you extra energy, to delay fatigue, to promote recovery and to keep your body in good hormonal and metabolic health.

First off, if you are reading this right now, I want you to own-up to your "athlete" status.
If you are training for an event, you are an athlete. If you are taking a break from training for an event, but you have completed an event in the past, you are still allowed to call yourself an athlete as nobody took away your past accomplishments - you just may not be able to eat like you use to as you are no longer in need of the energy that helped you train for your events.

 For this very reason of being "an athlete" you are not like other people who can afford to make drastic changes in the diet (like restricting specific food groups for 30 days or excessively cutting back on carbs or calories) or experiment with different diet fads or exercise programs.
At the same time, just because you are an athlete, you can not abuse food because you will burn it off in training.
If you bring poor past dietary habits to your new training regime (or pick up on poor habits as you find that you have less time for meal prep because you need to train longer), you will learn that a dietary change is needed. 

Even though you are training for an event, your extreme active lifestyle should not compromise great health. And for this very reason, performance focused nutrition is your style of eating. 

It is important that you understand that nutrition is very important in your development and in order to achieve personal success in your sport, you need to stay on top of your daily and sport nutrition. 

Far too many experts provide plans for eating which are not practical or feasible at this phase in your nutrition journey. Sure, they may be what you need to kick-start a new style of eating but gaining control over "healthy" eating is more than simply following a plan. You must learn how to eat as an athlete, without feeling deprived, denied or low in energy. 

It boggles my mind that athletes think it's ok to follow the same diet as someone who is not active or has serious clinical health issues. And if a significant amount of weight loss is a necessary goal, training for an event alongside dieting may be a challenge as losing weight through a diet while trying to train the body for an event comes with risks if not done carefully with great supervision by a professional.

As an athlete, you have high energy costs to ensure that you can stay healthy and consistent with training.  If you do not meet these needs, your body begins to fatigue, your motivation for training subsides, your hormones/metabolism change and you may increase risk for injury. 

As an athlete, you must spend more time than non-athletes to strategically plan your meals and your snacks and learn how to time those meals and snacks around workouts.  Busy schedules can interfere with normal eating (and healthy eating) but do not let this be an excuse as to why you are unable to eat well and fuel smart. 

Through a well-chosen, varied diet it's important that you put an extra emphasis on providing your body with the nutrients that will most used (and needed) around workouts. 

As your season progresses, you have many opportunities to fine-tune your nutrition strategies to help you prepare for your upcoming events but you must be consistent for a specific period of time to ensure that what you are doing is working or not working. If you are training harder or longer, don't believe that food restriction and elimination will help you get through your workouts better.

As an athlete, you need the opportunity,  desire AND appetite to consume adequate nutrients and fluids in recommended amounts around workouts and throughout the day. This makes it rather hard for some athletes to easily meet nutritional needs whereas for others, there is lack of passion, awareness or knowledge. 

As you continue to train and advance your fitness, understand that loss of appetite, fatigue, poor access to suitable (or healthy foods) and distractions from proper eating can all negatively affect your ability to train consistently. If your nutrition is keeping you from meeting your training expectations, it's time to reach out to a professional to help. 

Remember that there are no magic bullets or quick fixes when it comes to keeping your body at a healthy body composition, meeting your energy and hydration needs around workouts and staying healthy as an athlete.
The same healthy living strategies that apply to the "normal" population apply to you as well.
Don't assume that you can just out-train poor lifestyle habits and still be a healthy athlete. 

As a performance focused athlete, you must apply the basic healthy living and more specific sport nutrition fueling principles to your active lifestyle on a consistent basis and be sure to learn what works best for you as you slowly create your own performance-focused nutrition plan. 

If you are willing to push your body to new limits and make the investment in every other area of your life to be the best athlete you can be, consider the importance of taking the time learn how to eat and fuel like an athlete.

Healthy eating - getting started

Most athletes will come to me for nutrition help with the goals of:
-Improving performance
-Improving their relationship with food and/or the body
-Changing body composition

All three goals require dietary changes (in some capacity) and depending on the athlete, he/she may want to achieve all three goals listed above, or just one or two.
Oddly enough, sometimes changing body composition can improve performance but so can improving the relationship with food and the body. And sometimes focusing on nutrition limiters and strengths in order to improve performance, with a great relationship with food and the body can change body composition. 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to dietary changes as every individual is on his/her own nutritional journey.

Furthermore, every athletes may have his/her own personal limitations when it comes to the "best" approach to changing the diet - this can be anything from lack of healthy food options, unrealistic eating/body/performance goals, disordered eating or body image dissatisfaction, training routine/fitness level, motivation, family support, self-confidence, etc. 

Similar methods and ideologies may work for the masses but ultimately, every athlete is in his/her own journey.

Healthy eating for one person may be making homemade almond milk, grinding his/her own nut butter, picking produce from an at-home garden and never using sport nutrition because no workout exceeds 70 minutes in length.
Whereas for another person, healthy may be better portion control and controlling the emotional eating.

And for another individual, healthy eating may be not restricting calories from the daily diet and learning how to use sport nutrition properly to help adapt to endurance training while preparing for a half or full Ironman.

Or, healthy eating could be making changes so that cancer doesn't return for a second time.
Or, healthy eating could be overcoming years of disordered eating (ex. orthorexia) or an eating disorder.

As you can see, you may have a goal of improving performance or changing body composition but in order to eat "healthy" it's important to create healthy eating patterns which work for you....right now in your life.

The goal of "healthy eating" is to not try to eat like someone else who may be more along in his/her nutrition journey.

Healthy eating doesn't mean buying food that you have no idea how to prepare (or you hate).
Healthy eating doesn't mean eating “perfect” like what you read and see on the internet nor does it mean eating food that doesn't make you feel good inside your body.

And healthy eating doesn't mean feeling the need to eat differently, at any/all costs, because you hate your body image.

Healthy eating means setting yourself up for good eating patterns - eating patterns that are sustainable, realistic, healthy and performance enhancing.

As you progress in your individual journey, be mindful that your definition of healthy eating will/may change overtime. You may go from being extremely rigid and strict in your diet to allowing more food freedom and food flexibility. Or you may be proud that you are "at least" eating breakfast now and eating a few veggies throughout the day and you may find yourself learning how to plan a more balanced breakfast and even eating a hearty salad as a meal. 
And as you adapt to your training plan, your physiology will likely change, thus allowing you to train harder, longer or stronger. Your body will require additional energy and electrolytes and fluids and you will begin to understand that a well-planned sport nutrition plan is very important to keeping your body healthy. 

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

-Create an eating plan for what you will eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day of the week as well as for snacks. When you have a plan, you will find it easier to be proactive and plan ahead. You can keep this extremely simple by eating similar foods each day to get started. Be mindful of your hunger and fullness cues. 

--Don't bring a diet mentality (or off limit food list) to your eating patterns. Allow for flexibility and avoid having an all-or-nothing approach. You have enough education and knowledge to know what foods are "healthy" (hint - prioritize food made in gardens and grown on farms).

-Spend 30 minutes each day planning for tomorrow's eating. Reflect on today and what worked/didn't work and make small tweaks so you feel more control, satisfied and comfortable with your eating patterns. The more food that you have prepped and available, the easier it is to follow through with your plan. 

-Consider your life to-do's so that eating is not too complicated, time consuming or difficult. Never let eating be an afterthought (or pushed aside as something you don't have time for) as a well nourished body functions well in life.

-Give yourself time at time-out to eat a meal (at least 20 minutes) before continuing on with the rest of your day.
-Don't aim for perfect - allow for flexibility.

-Consider how your workouts impact your appetite and food choices.

-Consider how your pre/during/post workout nutrition can positively or negatively affect your workouts as well as your eating patterns throughout the day. 

-Don't try to use willpower, discipline or being strict to initiate a change. Be proactive with your eating patterns so you set yourself up for good behaviors. If you have trigger foods that are too tempting to eat right now in your journey, remove them from your environment.

-Always maintain a healthy relationship with food. Food is not for managing stress or emotions and it is not reward for a great workout or punishment for a bad workout.

-If a body composition modification is a desired goal to enhance performance or to improve health, the methods should not be strict, limited or extreme. You should allow for gradual weight loss (not a quick fix), without extreme food restrictions, excessive exercising, unsafe behaviors (starving, purging, laxatives) or use of weight loss or performance-enhancing supplements.   

Healthy eating patterns

It seems like every day there is a new diet telling us what not to eat and a scientific article for reference.

A nutrition expert, doctor, celebrity, professional athlete or personal trainer touting a diet plan.
A book, blog or website telling us what foods are destroying our health. 

And a food company excited to grab the market share by introducing a new “healthy” re-engineered processed food alternative which has the opportunity to be highly profitable.  

And with all this information - people are still confused how to eat. 

Whether it’s lack of confidence, common sense, passion or effort for healthy eating, much of our society relies on diet plans as the easiest or quickest way to lose weight, improve performance or to improve health.

In America, eating habits are unstable. 

When it comes to the mention of food, people are confused. You may have even found yourself grocery shopping and saying "I have no idea what to buy or eat!"

In our society, we have such an unhealthy relationship with food.
Without the use of labels, numbers, measuring cups, grams, apps, spreadsheets and journals, many people experience great anxiety, fear and stress regarding what and how much food should be consumed.

Some people would rather not eat than to eat with the fear of "messing up."

We have a very serious problem with a very simple solution.


It's not high carb, low carb, high fat, low fat, high protein or low protein.Prioritize real food - primarily prepped at home and consumed with a great relationship with food.

There are many cultures around the world who have been eating similar meals and foods for generations. There's structure to eating as well as in life.
They don’t count calories or follow eating plans yet they live an extremely healthy, active and happy quality life.
They also walk a lot more and limit sedentary time.
Eating means nourishing, not dieting.

In other countries, eating is a pleasure. 
Food is not complex. 

People eat to please their palate. 

People eat with their senses – tasting and smelling food.
They stop their day and slow down to eat. 

And what do they eat? 

Mostly real food..... not factory made food products.
And most of the time, they eat with other people.
Meals are visually appealing and food is locally sourced.
Do you eat this way?

Our society is infatuated with food yet the“off-limit” food list keeps growing every year (especially around the month of January).

Regardless if you are an elite athlete or a fitness enthusiast, eating well provides your body with energy and key nutrients that you need to support metabolism and to keep your body systems working properly and has the ability to reduce risk for disease and improve quality of life. 

Healthy lifestyle habits

It’s quite the paradox but America is obsessed with eating healthy yet we are one very unhealthy nation.
Although what we eat (or don't eat) affects our health, healthy eating is simply part of a healthy life.

And a healthy life requires healthy lifestyle habits.

 If you are constantly looking for quick fixes after you realize that your unhealthy lifestyle has become a problem, it's time to stop the diet mentality so you can (finally) create good lifestyle habits to improve your health, body composition and performance/fitness.

Believe it or not, but by addressing your lifestyle choices you can actually improve your fitness, achieve/maintain a healthy weight/body composition, minimize GI distress (especially during workouts), improve recovery, have more natural energy throughout the day, reduce risk for injury and sickness and enjoy your athletic lifestyle a lot more without following a diet plan. 

I realize that it's much easier to gain control over your life by following a diet plan as it's easy to feel great anxiety, fear and stress around food.
Of course, a diet plan takes away the guessing and being told what not to eat is much easier than putting in the work to make better choices with your eating, training/exercising and lifestyle but you can't live your entire life obsessing about what to or not to eat.
It's time to make peace with food and live a more healthy lifestyle. 

If you feel like you need a change in your life, I want you to select three of the following lifestyle habits that need improvement in your life.

-----------------------------Restful sleep
Healthy relationships - spouse/significant other, family and friends
Healthy life, work and family balance
                                          Stress management                                     
Strength training and mobility work
Following a smart training plan
Following a smart training plan that fits into your life
Reduce sedentary time
Nutrient timing - timing food with workouts
Using sport nutrition wisely
Better recovery routine
More time warming up before workouts
Learning to say no more often
Prioritize real food variety - reduce junk food
Improve coping skills (stop using alcohol or food for emotions, stress, anxiety, etc.)
Meal planning/prepping
Staying hydrated
Developing a healthy relationship with food and the body
Goal setting
Mental strength/skills
Create structure with your life
Give yourself "me" time--------------------------------------------

I want you to dedicate this entire week to exploring these three lifestyle habits. 
1) Why did you select these habits?
2) What's keeping you from making a change in this area? 
3) What will help you make a change (education, professional help, accountability, motivation)?
4) How will you maintain your changes for long-term success?5) What will you do when a set-back occurs? How will you get back on track?

A positive experience while dining out

For Karel and myself, eating out is typically reserved for special occasions and traveling.

This pic (above) was taken a few years ago when we were in Athens, GA for the Athens Twilight Crit. Campy looks so young!

Of course, we love dining out at pet-friendly restaurants. 

I have ordered a few meals in my time that did not meet my nutritional needs and I was hungry after I ate (not a good experience especially when paying for food outside the home). I have also ordered meals outside the home that did not give me a memorable experience. 

I don't stress about eating out or try to change everything on the menu so that I can order a "healthy" meal but what I don't like is when the flavors of my meal do not meet my expectations, the presentation lets me down and I am not inspired.

And I still have to pay for it. 

No chef or menu item knows what I need as a vegetarian endurance athlete and health conscious individual, on any given day or meal. 

But this doesn't mean that Karel and I don't eat out on planned occasions and really, really enjoy our meals.

If we are going to eat out, we want to enjoy a meal that leaves a positive impression in our mind and tummy. 

I do feel strongly that eating at home (or preparing meals at home) should not be a typical daily/weekly occurrence but if you have the opportunity to eat out, make it one to remember and enjoy it!

Rather than repeating from the internet and giving you a dozen tips on how to order/eat healthy meals, here are three factors that are important to me while eating out. 

Perhaps you can carry these tips with you at your next dining out experience. 

1) The flavors - 

I'm no trained chef so my creativity in the kitchen is simply based on my learned culinary skills. I love it when I have a bite of something for the first time and it's a flavor explosion in my mouth. I read a menu option and it sounds delicious but I have no idea what it will taste like when it reaches my mouth. I just love the experience of tasting new flavors. 

2) The presentation - 

It's no surprise that I love to take pictures of my food/meals. I love to capture the meal before it meets my mouth. When eating out, I have no idea how a meal will taste yet I take a picture of it before I even have the opportunity to yum over the first bite. There's something to be said about a beautiful food presentation. 

3) Inspiration - 

Karel once told me that it is rude to tell someone that a home-cooked meal tastes like restaurant quality. Of course, I think he was speaking about someone who lives outside of the US (perhaps in Europe where he grew up with 99% home-cooking for all of his life while living in Czech). When I eat out, I love trying something that I can attempt to re-create at home. Having a trained chef at a restaurant, inspire me, is exactly what I seek when eating out. There's no need to order a plain salad when I can eat/make that anytime. Instead, I order something that sounds amazing but challenges me to find a way to prepare it at home.

4) Healthy relationship with food - 

I'm not going to enjoy my eating out experience if I go into the meal starving and I am not going to enjoy my meal if I fill my belly with appetizers before a meal. And I am not going to remember my positive eating experience if I leave a restaurant stuffed and uncomfortable. I find it extremely valuable to bring a healthy relationship with food to dining out experiences because I always want food to make me feel great when I eat it and feel better after I eat it - always. Because eating out is not typical for us, I do enjoy eating foods that I don't typically eat. But this doesn't mean that I bring guilt and anxiety with these meals. I actually order with good intentions and eat with great intentions so that when I finish my meal, I can go home and continue on with my life and not feel pressure to adjust my diet the next day. 

Athletes, please don't diet.

A few things are going to happen in the next few months.

In a few weeks, you will see and hear a lot of people trying to kick-start a new way of "healthy" eating in order to lose weight. People will say they are ready to get "back on track" and may say other things like "I'm going to be so good" "I'm so tired of being fat" "I ate so bad over the holidays" "I need to get beach body ready."
Sometimes, people will talk about making a lifestyle change for a health improvement.

In a few months, I can assure you that most of these people will find it difficult to maintain their "healthy" eating plan if the plan was not realistic, flexible or non-extreme.  But if the plan was extreme and strict, they will likely say "I couldn't follow it any longer," feeling like a failure (crazy how diet plans make you feel like that) and move on to the next diet plan.

But for you, the athlete, you don't need to do anything drastic and you certainly should never ever think like this.
Why?
Because your lifestyle choices keep you healthy. Even if you indulge a bit, eat too much at times or occasional stop for fast food, in general, you probably live a lifestyle that is conducive to health improvements.

But if you think like the normal population and try to diet (restrict food, mega calorie restriction, don't fuel/hydrate properly), as you advanceyour training, your body may not be as healthy as you think.

So let me remind you of one very important thing before you begin to bash your body and seek a quick fix to feel better in your skin.
First off, your body is amazing. Don't forget to thank your body every now and then. You ARE allowed to to experience a change in your body composition throughout the year and you should NOT be going into every workout seeing it as a weight loss intervention.

Secondly, in a few months, you are going to experience an increase in your training intensity and volume as you begin to prepare your body for you upcoming races. Guess what, without even trying, you will be burning more calories than you have been in the last few months and there's a good chance that if you fuel and eat according to your metabolic and health needs, your body will change naturally - without dieting!
In order to experience the performance gains that you aspire to achieve this coming season, it is critical that you stay healthy and not get injured and you can do this with a healthy diet and understanding how to fuel properly before/during/after workouts.

Only consistent quality training will take your fitness to the next level so if your body is not fueled properly, you are not going to sleep or recover well, have the motivation or energy to train, strength to keep good form or energy to tolerate your training load.
And if you aren't fueled well, you will find it hard for your body to respond well to training and get faster, stronger and more powerful (because this is what you really want, right?
I hope you aren't signing up for racing just to try to get lean???)

So in all honesty, any diet plan that you are thinking about following in a few weeks will likely increase the risk for inconsistency in training as you need a very healthy, strong and well-fueled body to tolerate all of your planned training stress.
And you DO NOT need to change your body composition in January (and even if you tried, you probably won't see results for several weeks and this may leave you frustrated, forcing you to make more extreme choices with your eating and working out).

So, if you want a change with your health, body composition, performance or quality of life, why keep doing the same things over and over and over and over again?

If you want a different result, you have to make a long-lasting change.
Respect your sport.
Respect your body.
You are an athlete.
Not an exerciser who needs to diet.

Are you ready to make that change?

No more diet plans.
No more quick fixes.
No more body bashing.
No more just getting by.

Don't you think 2016 is a great year to see what you are truly capable of achieving as an athlete AND stay healthy and strong?

If so, start thinking about how you can make 2016 great for you and your body.

If you don't know where to start with your diet in order to make sure that you are not over/under eating, that you maintain a healthy relationship with food and your body all season long and that you fuel properly to support your training load, consult with a sport RD who can help.