Do you ever feel sluggish, tired, slow or unable to perform at your best during your workouts or competitions? Have you been trying to lose weight or lean out but struggling to make progress? Have you been trying hard in the gym to make some gains it's simply not working? If so, you may be under-fueling your body.

What is Under-fueling?

Under-fueling is when you are not consuming an adequate amount of calories to support your body's needs. Your needs are based on your activity level each day.  Under-fueling can have detrimental effects on your sports performance as an athlete, but it can also have deleterious effects on your overall health. Eating too little is what is making you feel sluggish, slow and tired. It is also what's hindering you from losing weight, building muscle and feeling energetic, strong and powerful! Under-fueling will result in a lack of energy, poor concentration, slower recovery time, increased risk of injury, and decreased performance.

If you...

You are an athlete. You frequently train at a high volume and high intensity day in and day out.  Did you know that intense training puts you are risk to have a lowered immune function? Constant activity coupled with sub-optimal nutritional intake will cause your immune system to weaken. If your immune system is not optimized, you will become sick more often and the illnesses you contract, will last longer.

The topic of immunity is not talked about enough in the world of sports. Low immune function is a negative side effect of poor nutrition that many athletes don't recognize. It is yet another argument for ensuring that you learn how to eat well and fuel your body appropriately. You lead a busy lifestyle as an athlete and may not have learned about the impact of nutrition on performance AND on overall health. It's not your fault. No one taught you how to eat in school. You learned as you went and...

Sports Nutrition is simple. Society, social media, supplements salespeople, coaches, teammates complicate it. The foundation of Sports Nutrition is simple: Fuel your body well and it will do what you want (and need) it to do. I'll simplify is even more by telling you THE ONLY 2 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SPORTS NUTRITION:

1. Making good decisions about what you decide to put in your body will maximize your performance.

2. Making poor decisions about what you decide to pup in your body will hinder your performance. 

As an athlete you know that eating healthy will help you. It's pretty much common sense that by providing your body with the nutrients it needs to perform will benefit your performance. So many of us do not, however make the connection that by eating an inadequate amount of nutrients that our body's require...our performance will suffer. It's commonplace to think "I'm an athlete-so I can eat junk food because I'm just going to burn  it off". Trust me-I...

 EAT BREAKFAST!!

Is breakfast the most important meal fo the day?

No.

All meals all equally important. BUT...breakfast is the one meal that sets us up for success throughout the day by fueling our bodies and regulating our blood sugar. If you have practice in the afternoon or evening  it's crucial to begin the fueling process right away. If you have practice in the morning it's also crucial to fuel for that practice. Fueling for a morning practice, however, may look a little different in terms of how much you can eat or the types of foods you can eat.  

Don't like eating in the morning? It's likely that is due to the fact that you trained your body not to like it. Guess what? You can train it back! Start with something small or even just a few bites and start the process of training your GI system to take in food. Doing this will re-set your hunger cues!

Below are some examples of healthy balanced fueling breakfasts for athletes! Try the ones that sound good to...

Tip#3

Nutrient-Rich Eating 

Eating a nutrient rich diet is all about optimizing the quality of the foods you eat. You can make a choice between eating a meal packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, anti-inflammatory properties, fiber, water, protein, fats and carbohydrates....or a food with very little of any of those. Athletes who choose to eat a diet filled with powerful and health enhancing nutrients will have the energy available to them to perform at their best.  

Making  the most of the foods you choose to eat will ensure that you will perform at your best and recover the most efficiently!  Whenever possible, choose foods, combinations of foods and meals that contain nutrients that will help fuel your body and/or help you recover from the high level of training that you are doing on a day to day basis.

For example, instead of grabbing a rice cake in the morning for breakfast, choose whole grain toast with avocado, arugula and flax seeds....