What happens when the playing is done?!... And 3 things Moms and female coaches can consider to reclaim their health.
Diane Johnson
Empowering youth athletes with simple and strategic nutrition & wellness support.
An easy 4 minute read today.
Despite mounting evidence of the importance of nutrition for student athletes health and performance, nutrition still seems to be the least prioritized element of their training and ‘development’.?
They aren’t learning about food, how it works in their body, what 'quality' means or why it’s important and nutrition isn’t something that is correlated with how our body works.?
(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)
For the many female student athletes who either overlook the importance of proper nutrition, or who are simply never given the opportunity to learn about it, it’s impacting more than just their physical and mental health as an athlete.?
It’s impacting their LIFE later on down the road.?
Consider youth sport, but zoom the lens out…..
Look at the thousands of adults who parent and coach student athletes.?
Many were athletes themselves, ‘back in the day’.?
Able and active with energy to burn.
But sadly, you’d never know it to see some of them 20 years later.???
And I’m not only talking about mid-life weight gain and blood sugar imbalances that many retired athletes experience.?
I’m talking about:
And for many women….raging symptoms throughout perimenopause and menopause that detract from their enjoyment of some of the best years of their life.?
(If you'd like me to show you how women around the world are actually thriving through perimenopause, DM me.)
Working with student athletes allows me to interact with many Moms and female coaches.
Many of them have come to me expressing,?
(GUTS empowers student athletes to understand and use nutrition).
They never learned what food did.
What their unique needs were.
How their needs would change when they finished playing.
And through different stages of their lives.?
“I have no idea what I’m doing.”?
“I think what I’m eating is healthy, but I can’t seem to lose any weight.”
“I constantly feel like I’m guessing.”
“I feel like I don’t even know my body anymore.”
“I want to set a good example for my athletes.”
Feeling like this all the time is HARD. This is not how we are meant to spend the best years of our lives. And it is certainly not what women who were once high performing athletes in their younger days EXPECTED life to feel like at 40.?
(You CAN get your old self back. Message me if you'd like some help with that.)
(Most of my articles are written for student athletes.?
But this one is for the other key players in youth sport.?
That I have a particular connection to because I’m of them.?
The Moms and the female Coaches out there. ??)
The most powerful thing anyone has ever said to me about nutrition was my doctor when he told 21 year-old me,
“Diet has nothing to do with your disease.”
I know there are many women out there who have come to their own ‘health crossroads’ and who have been told the same thing.?
(I'd love to hear your story. Email me at [email protected])
But as I tell student athletes every day, NUTRITION is one of the most powerful opportunities you can harness in your life.?
And in today’s complicated nutrition landscape and with rates of disease skyrocketing, it is obviously a missed opportunity for many. But that doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way.?
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So here's 3 critical things for women in midlife to consider if your health isn’t shaping up as you imagined.?
1) Your symptoms are a message for you.
We spend a lot of time focussed on the things that we don’t like about our bodies. But your symptoms, inconveniences and pain points are actually there FOR you.
Get the magnifying glass out and observe your situation and symptoms without judging them.
Ask yourself what your body is trying to show you because your body can’t talk to you in words. It is however, always communicating with you.
Start an internal dialogue with your own self.
And when an answer bubbles up. Trust it.?
(We've been taught for a long time NOT to listen to our bodies. If you'd like to UN-learn this, message me.)
2) Accept you are actually seeking an ABNORMAL life.
It is now more NORMAL to live with disease and symptoms than it is not to.
Over 60% of the US population has 1 chronic disease.
(Over 30% have at least 2).?
This means that it is ABNORMAL to be well.?
Accept that what you actually want then is to be abnormal!
When you try something new with food or lifestyle and it isn’t the same as what your coworkers, friends or family are doing, you are on the right track.???
Abnormal is actually where you want to be.?
3) Stop wishing and hoping!
Take action!
Because, although wishing and hoping sound nice, THEY SUCK!!!!!
We WISH that we’d get better.
We HOPE that our symptoms will go away.?
Gahhhh….even writing that makes my hackles stand up.???
There is nothing more frustrating than waiting and hoping for something to change and feeling powerless in the process.?
You must take 100% responsibility for your current state of health (even though you might actually not fully believe that).
When you do this, then you will finally in a place to take 100% responsibility to change it.?
(You can check out testimonials from women who've taken this kind of responsibility here.)
We continue our mission at GUTS to ensure that all student athletes learn to use and understand nutrition so they can feel great and perform their best.???
The adults in student athletes' lives deserve this too and the chances are good that nutrition wasn’t something they learned in their younger sporting days.?
But that doesn't’ mean that it can’t be now.?
We are NEVER too old to learn something new!
When you are ready, there are a few ways that I can help you.
Until next week.
~ Diane