Intuitive eating is a great way to honor your health by listening to your body in order to meet its physical and psychological needs. This approach can be beneficial for many people, including athletes!
Why eat intuitively as an athlete?
Intuitive eating can help athletes improve their relationship with food and their body within the context of their sport. It also makes it easier to transition between different phases of their athletic career, such as in-season, off-season and during extended periods of break such as injury, retirement, pregnancy. Additionally, it allows them to easily adapt for different food situations, such as traveling, eating out or sharing meals with others.
Difficulties of Intuitive Eating for athletes
Although intuitive eating is a great approach for many athletes, it can often be difficult to meet their body’s increased needs solely by respecting physical hunger. That’s because they might not always have the opportunity to eat when they are physically hungry due to time constraints from training and competition schedules. Also, their hunger signals might be reduced by high levels of activity. For these reasons, athletes would also benefit from timed eating and considering their high energy expenditure to help them decide when, what and how much to eat.
Principle #1 – Practice flexibility and variety within food groups while prioritizing energy-dense foods
A simple way to get all the nutrients you need as an athlete is to follow the athlete’s plate. This includes the easy, moderate and intense days plates depending on individual needs. Read more about the plate system here! Be flexible with your food choices by choosing from a variety of those you enjoy. And don’t worry too much about sticking to this guide all the time – it’s okay not to have all food groups at every meal but it is something to take into consideration when/if possible!
Principle #2 – Create floating snacks or meals to meet needs in a flexible way
Floating snacks or meals refer to meals or snacks that aren’t associated to a particular time, or even part of the day, but exist for athletes to engage in when it’s useful and ideal for their fueling or recovery. For example, an athlete could have two daily floating snacks that they implement sometime before their evening workout – this could be 2 snacks in the afternoon, or one in the morning and one before their training. The athlete chooses when to eat the snack, and can adapt the timing based on their daily experiences. This allows flexibility with when they eat it, but still benefiting from the pre-workout fueling strategies to help them give their best at their workout!
Principle #3 – Learn to recognize when hunger and fullness are reliable signals, and when following a structure is more important
Athletes should prioritize eating foods before and after exercise as well as during long competitions to make sure their bodies are adequately nourished and fueled, even if they don’t feel the hunger signals at those moments. If an athlete feels no hunger when the “smart” time to eat comes, they can consider having smaller snacks, more digestible snacks or fun foods that are easier to eat.
Principle #4 – Incorporate aspects of pleasure and mindfulness into food
Pleasure is key to sustainable habits. Consider setting ambiance with favorite music, lighting candles and choosing favorite tableware to make the eating experience more enjoyable. Also, make sure to choose foods that one truly enjoys to increase satisfaction at meals! Food isn’t just meant to nourish your body, it’s also a source of pleasure.
Principle #5 – Allow convenience items to make life easier
Convenience items such as protein-enriched items, packaged snacks, pre-cooked grains or proteins and delivery or catering services are always great options. Athletes can get the fuel and nutrients they require when they have less time to cook or when they simply just don’t feel like it!
By: Annie Trudel, Registered Dietitian
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Sööma is a bilingual company that operates in both English and in French. We will provide blog posts, recipes and articles from various sources that are sometimes written in English and sometimes in French. If you feel unable to access a specific article or topic due to a language barrier, please reach out to us at info@sooma.ca and we will be happy to translate the content for you.
References
- https://www.rachaelhartleynutrition.com/blog/intuitive-eating-for athletes#:~:text=Intuitive%20eating%20teaches%20you%20to,when%20your%20tank%20is%20full.
- http://www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/
