The short answer to this question is ABSOLUTELY! If you want to know the long answer, follow along below!
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive Eating is a non-diet approach to health and wellness that supports you with getting in touch with your body’s needs; using rational thought (ie: understanding your individual requirements) combined with body wisdom (ie: hunger/fullness, likes/dislikes, intolerances/allergies, emotions) as opposed to external influences like diet culture and food rules associated with it. The Intuitive Eating framework was created by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, and this framework has been used in over 150 studies to date showing improved physical and psychological outcomes.
Intuitive Eating is not a new thing. We are all intuitive eaters at birth. We are born with the instinct to know when we are hungry and how much we need to eat in that moment. Think about a baby – it will cry when it is hungry and will feed until full and turn away from the bottle or breast. This cycle continues throughout the day. Where we begin to lose touch with this intuitive eating instinct and start to judge the way we eat is when diet culture creeps in. This is where we begin to view certain foods as “good” or bad” or maybe even our own bodies as “good” or “bad” based on what we are hearing or seeing in our environment, such as on tv, magazines, in school. These external influences make it incredibly difficult to connect back to our body and trust in it.
Nutrition for Sport
When it comes to nutrition for sport, we are looking to enhance performance by fuelling appropriately for sport-specific needs (ie: a wrestler will have different needs compared to a ultramarathoner) so they can succeed in their training and competition. However, athletes are not immune to the influence of diet culture – they too feel the pressure to look a certain way to be accepted or to succeed. When they are cutting calories/dieting in order to fit this “ideal look”, they often are unable to implement sport specific recommendations and their performance takes a hit. This is where taking an intuitive eating approach can support an athlete in quieting the diet culture noise so they can succeed.
The Intuitive Eating Principles and How They Relate to Athletes
The Intuitive Eating Approach utilizes 10 main principles that help us listen and respond to body sensations and remove obstacles in our path that prevent us from either being able to notice body sensations or prevent us from trusting them. Below are principles of the Intuitive Eating approach that are supportive to athletes on thier journey to fuelling there best!
Reject the Diet Mentality and Respect your Body
Intuitive Eating helps us recognize how diet culture shapes our ideals around body/shape and size and shifts our focus towards treating our body with respect and accepting our genetics. Sports often teach athletes to manipulate their body, whether that is recommending weight targets or body composition changes. In some cases this may be helpful – such as increasing upper body strength for climbers, increasing quad muscle strength in soccer players or increasing overall mass for football. In other sports, the pressure to change body shape is related to aesthetics or the myth that thinner bodies are faster/more agile/preferred. We often see this in sports like gymnastics, figure skating and wrestling. Regardless that losing weight may have an effect on athletic performance, it is not without risk. Whether that is on our physical and mental health with having to restrict calories or it may even harm your athletic performance. Under-fuelling can, and in most case does, impair performance at the expense of a body ideal. At the end of the day, your body may not be able to fit the mold your sport is requesting of you and that is okay. It is often more supportive to revisit your goals when it comes to athletics and shift towards performance-based as opposed to aesthetic based goals. Thin does not equal fit and we have plenty of examples of athletes to prove that:
Martinus Evans (Marathoner)
Sarah Robles (Olympic Weight Lifting)
Alana Smith (Olympic Skateboarding)
Leisel Jones (Olympic Swimmer)
Honor your Hunger and Respect your Fullness:
Intuitive Eating teaches us to recognize hunger and fullness cues and utilize these to guide amounts we need day-to-day to keep ourselves adequately nourished. This can help to instill trust in our body especially if there is a history of using external influences to guide intake (ie: meal plans, tracking apps, amount of food on a plate). These body cues are important for athletes to pay attention to however training, especially high intensity and/or high loads, or underfueling, can impact hunger/fullness hormones.
Athletes may experience a lack of hunger after exercise due to a suppression of our hunger hormone ghrelin. In athletes that have gone through periods of under-fueling, they may find themselves always full and not experience hunger pangs when trying to eat more. In athletes with high loads of training (such as rowers and triathletes), they may find that listening to hunger/fullness alone impairs their ability to meet such high calorie needs.
In order to keep ourselves adequately nourished we want to be more intentional with eating for sport and recovery after exercise regardless of whether hunger is present. In this case we are using a mix of rational thought and body wisdom to make this a priority. An example of this is experiencing a lack of appetite post training, but knowing that your body would benefit from having some protein and carbohydrates to help repair muscles and top-up glycogen stores therefore you choose to have a balanced snack within 1 hour of the training completion and continuing with regular meals every 3-4 hours.
Make Peace with Food and Challenge the Food Police:
Intuitive eating supports us in reducing black and white thinking around food - labelling foods as “good” or “bad” – by challenging previously held beliefs around food and encouraging eating all foods. Rules around food can be apparent in athlete circles due to fad diets followed by team members or coaches, social media accounts that discuss what to eat vs what not to eat, or youth athletes witnessing their parents on various diets. Often this aspect of Intuitive Eating gets misconstrued as meaning we should ignore nutrition information however this is simply not true! The focus is on adding in nutrition as opposed to restriction of favorite foods or snacks. Making food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel good – physically and mentally. Based on a vast amount of research, restricting foods (whether physically in your environment or mentally by saying you “shouldn’t” have it) can lead to food pre-occupation, over-eating, binge eating and fear of foods therefore we want to create a healthier relationship with food for the athlete. All foods serve a purpose – some may support nourishing our body, some may give our muscles energy, some may help with keeping us full, and others may be for pure enjoyment. All are valid reasons for eating food. When building meals and snacks, I encourage eating for all these reasons. An example might look like making oatmeal at breakfast and stirring in hemp hearts, soy milk, a mashed banana and peanut butter to supply enough carbohydrates, protein and fat for your athletic goals and then topping it with some chocolate chips for enjoyment!
Another example might look like a runner choosing to eat more refined grains such as white rice, white pasta and white bread. By not following the diet rules set by society, this athlete can meet their carbohydrate needs without experiencing high levels of intestinal discomfort that they likely would have experienced if they ate only high fibre grains.
The goal is to reduce guilt and shame around food which allows for more variety, enjoyment and ease of meeting sport nutrition needs – especially carbohydrate containing foods which are a main source of energy for many sports.
Discover the Satisfaction Factor:
Intuitive Eating not only focuses on hunger and fullness when it comes to eating but also emphasizes the importance of pleasure and satisfaction. You do not need to eat chicken, broccoli and rice to meet your needs as an athlete. The goal is to find ways to enhance enjoyment at meals such as determining which carbohydrate-rich foods you enjoy or adding sauces/favorite dressings to vegetables in order to meet needs without feeling bored.
Coping with Emotions Without Food:
Intuitive Eating recognizes the importance of self care and coping strategies. It is common for athletes to be juggling work schedules, academic schedules, family and friend commitments along with their training schedule which may lead to stress. Food is a common coping strategy athletes may use to help relax, unwind or cope with other difficult emotions. Alternatively, some may turn to food avoidance during periods of stress which can impair performance and may feed into disordered eating behaviours in some circumstances. In order to support physical and mental health, the goal is to broaden coping strategies in order to prevent food being the only tool in the “toolbox”.
Gentle Nutrition:
Intuitive Eating recognizes the importance of understanding how different types of foods, patterns of eating, and amounts of nutrients can be beneficial or negatively impact health. For athletes, we are looking at how it impacts health as well as performance. The goal is to arm athletes with the necessary nutrition information for them to fuel and nourish their body as opposed to controlling it with food. We are eating with self compassion and curiosity at the forefront.
Overall
Being an athlete requires prioritizing training to succeed in what you love. Intuitive eating is a tool in the toolbox to support meeting sports nutrition needs without sacrificing your relationship with food! If you are wanting support with blending together sports nutrition research with your individual body wisdom without a side of diet culture, then select a nutrition package that works for you and let's get started today!
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