4 things student athletes continue to teach me about nutrition and how we need to think about it differently.
Diane Johnson
Empowering youth athletes with simple and strategic nutrition & wellness support.
A quick 4 minute read today.
I’ve spent the last 4 weeks coaching volleyball camps and as usual, student athletes continue to be my teachers.
Despite my own knowing of nutrition and how the body works, they show me the realities of...
(If you've been following along, you'll know that I tend to think about nutrition for student athletes differently.
PS - If you don’t regularly follow, you can do that easily at?Diane Johnson ).
Before we can help student athletes eat in a way that truly supports their health and performance we have to stop thinking we can just walk into the lecture space, tell them to eat their veggies and hand them a meal plan.?
We need to have some real conversations and connect nutrition to them as individual human beings.
And make it relevant to them and their values.?
Here’s a few insights to what they’ve taught me so far this summer.?
1) What nutrition means to them.
I ask every student athlete group that I work with what nutrition means to them. Or what they think about when they hear the word ‘nutrition’.?
(If you need some support getting your athletes to consider nutrition, email me at [email protected])
Their answers have ranged from:?
To:
One thing is for sure,
Unless I can make them think differently in the first moments of my conversation about nutrition, most of them have checked out.?
One of the things that we do that is different for them, is getting to think about what nutrition means to them, how they feel about it and why that is important. Most have never been asked this before and this small step peaks their curiosity and gets them thinking.?
Which brings me to the next item…..
2) The importance of being curious.
CURIOSITY is the first pillar of all of the nutrition work we do with student athletes because the reality is that most of them enter the nutrition conversation with a judgmental mindset.?
(You can check out our program here .)
Judgment initiates the stress response and very quickly they will shift into ‘fight, freeze and flee’ mode.?
The result is that nothing changes.?
(Sound familiar? Adults...we do this a lot too! And if you are trying to make nutrition changes, judgment is getting in the way. Message me if you need some help with this.)
Curiosity on the other hand is all about asking questions. It’s about wondering. And it allows us to get out of the ‘it’s good or bad’ or ‘right or wrong’ framework, and simply explore.?
Curiosity is what opens the door to student athletes making changes to their nutrition habits because our brains are programmed to answer questions. So when we get student athletes to ask themselves questions like:
Their brains go to work looking for answers and solutions. And it isn’t about if the food they ate the day before was ‘good or bad’ or that they haven’t been doing ‘good’ at nutrition, it’s just about wondering and noticing.?
Now most individuals are judgmental most of the time and so curiosity is also something that we need to practice with student athletes. We must coach them on if it’s going to take hold in their life. For a while, their natural response to situations or to their own choices will be judgment first, because it is what they know. But by listening to their words and paying attention to their conversations and body language, we can get a pretty good idea of what they are thinking and encourage them to wonder about things instead.?
(Curiosity is one of the biggest game changers for student athletes and it impacts their perspective of learning on court too. Message me if you are curious about helping your athletes to embrace a more curious mindset.)
3) How stress impacts their eating habits
The pace of life student athletes live today and the pressure they face to perform well in all aspects of their life is actually insane.?
Ask a group of student athletes to lay still for a short relaxation and you will see just how foreign feelings of ease, stillness and ‘doing nothing’ really are to them. It is evident that feeling the pressure and always doing is the norm and it is what is comfortable to them.?
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However, this constant doing in the body and mind is a constant pressure and stressor in their lives and our bodies are not programmed to eat, digest food or recover under pressure.?
One of the biggest challenges student athletes share with me is eating in the morning before a morning competition or training session, or even just before school.?
(Addressing stress, nutrition and recovery is what we do in our 4th pillar at GUTS. We call it 'Expansion'. You can check it out here .)
They tell me that eating in the morning doesn’t feel good, it makes them nauseous and if they force food in (because they think they should…’should’ indicates judgment), they feel gross for the rest of the day.?
And because they can’t ‘do this right’ they get into that judgemental space again and think that something is wrong with them, which actually creates more stress. And really, their body is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
We aren’t designed to eat when we are under stress. Digesting food is not important when we are trying to run away from a tiger. Survival is. In fact, our body might even get rid of food in our system in order to save energy and divert it to the extremities so we can run away faster.?
And while there isn’t actually a tiger chasing them, their brain doesn’t understand the difference. Pressure of any kind, like they would feel when they get up early in the morning, start immediately rushing around getting ready, thinking about the future or present, feeling nervous about their competition, etc. can all very quickly shut down the desire to eat.?
Ask your athletes if eating on the weekend feels the same as it does on a busy weekday and they will burst into tales of all of the amazing big breakfasts they ENJOY on the weekends when they get to sleep in with no agenda in the day.??
If we want to help student athletes develop the ability to really nourish themselves, then we have to address the constant ‘doing’ and give them simple strategies they can practice to reduce feelings of pressure and stress.?
(If you are looking for some simple strategies to help your athletes be more mindful and calm, check out this free document we put together.)
4) How family impacts nutrition choices
When it comes to student athlete nutrition, this is one of the elephants in the room.
We can offer information to student athletes and support them through their seasons with nutrition content and support, but parents need to be a part of this conversation as well.?
(We include resources to engage parents in the student athlete nutrition journey in The Coaches Easy Nutrition Playbook. )
They are the ones buying the food, providing the snacks, sourcing meals on the road and volunteering with teams to help feed the players. And despite all that they are trying to do, most of them never learned about nutrition in a way that was meaningful either.?
As a Coach, I’ve preferred keeping parents at an arm’s distance. But the reality is that they are a key player when it comes to keeping student athletes nourished. So inviting them into the space with the athletes, to learn about how nutrition is unique for student athletes, provide them with resources, set parameters for appropriate food options during competition and provide guidance for optimum fuelling habits is really important.?
The response that we have had in opening the nutrition door for athlete’s parents has been so positive. Allowing them to sit in on sessions with their kids, providing sessions just for parents, offering resources and support have been received with open arms and we have absolutely seen how it has supported the choices that their kids are making.?
A side benefit has been that parents themselves get a fresh perspective on nutrition too.
(Most people know me for my work with student athletes, but I help adults feel better and perform better too. Message me if you need some help with this.)
The more time I spend in the nutrition space, the more I understand that before any changes can happen with the actual food, we need a few things.
I often refer to the quote from Albert Einstein that says that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.?
This is certainly relevant in the nutrition space.?
We’ve been putting bandaids on student athlete nutrition habits for a long time, but we haven’t helped them (or their parents) address the root causes of why their nutrition habits are as they are or why nutrition feels hard, limiting and boring.?
This is where the key to change lies.?
When you are ready, there are a few ways that I can help you.
Until next week.
~ Diane