An Open Letter to My Former High School Athlete Self (and all other athletes out there)

Yup, that was me, running the fastest race of my life. Sub 18 for high school cross country.

When I was growing up, nutrition was not talked about like it was now. Not to mention, I did not have instagram, youtube and facebook screaming 7 million life hacks into my face. I had my family, health class, coaches and friends to tell me what to do. Let’s see how that panned out for me…

First let me let you in on a little secret. Looking at the two images above, would you describe this athlete as large, small, or gauntly skinny? I choose the latter. I was gauntly skinny, like disgustingly. But the saddest part is, I thought I was chubby. Blame something someone said to me once when I was 10 or an adult making a joke about my baby fat when I was 13, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is I hated myself in my own skin. Add into the mix the fact that I ran cross country (filled with little skinny ripped kids) and I competed in pole vaulting which if you did not know is a weight class sport. You have to use a certain pole that is meant for an individual of certain weight. These poles also have specific levels of flex and length. Long story short, you do not want to show up on meet day, heavy, and not be able to use the pole you have practiced with all season. Enter a classic case of body dysmorphia and disordered eating. To paint the picture even further, let’s take a look at a side by side view of then and now.

Like most things in life, there are so many concepts I wish I would have understood a long time ago as a high school athlete, heck, even as a college athlete.

Let’s fly back in time to a sixteen year old Lauren that was a cross country runner, a basketball player, a pole vaulter, and a 800M runner. I think my family did what they could to instill positive and ‘healthy’ eating habits into my psyche as a kid, but the information we were (are) given from the FDA, the government, and “nutrition experts” is sadly skewed, incorrect at best and misleading. So I ate frosted mini wheats for breakfast, which were an excellent source of iron and calcium, I think? Some days I would mix it up with flavored oatmeal and a side of sugar, I mean orange juice. Unaware of what I was doing to my body I would be starving by 10:00am and slam a nature valley bar, mmm, so many carbohydrates, sugars and marvelous additives. At this point in my day I probably had consumed 100g carbohydrates, 10-15g of protein if I was lucky and maybe 3g of fat. Because well, fat is evil right? WRONG.

The current state of my body? My insulin levels are through the roof unsure how to signal the uptake of the copious amounts of sugar swimming around in my blood, my mood is all over the place and soon enough it is time for lunch. I never brought lunch to school, I lived for school cafeteria food. I knew protein was important, or so I was told from someone who knew what they were talking about (I think) so I would always have some type of meat (sausage on your pizza counts right?). Vegetables were gross, so I would force them down on rare occasions, but fruit was always a top choice. And well, carbohydrates were one of my staples, so I would always get a healthy serving of them, with a side of school chocolate milk, obviously. I do not think I need to continue this confessional novel; my point has been made. I had no idea what I was doing. I was never told about the correlation between my athletic performance and my eating habits.

Health class tried to teach me, and we all know how that goes, EAT MORE BREAD oh and CORN, because its cheap, I mean healthy. Needless to say I grew up, experienced the body dysmorphia and hate that all growing and developing girls feel at some point and began to “watch what I ate”, which lets be real, that meant I just ate less, binged, felt bad, and ate less again. I experienced quite a few injuries throughout my athletic career, this continued into college as well, with chronic stress fractures and shin splints. I was always in pain and being forced to sit out from what I loved to do.

I never thought that my nutrition could have been the root cause of these issues, but now that I know what I do, it makes the most sense to me. I was underfed, over sugared, chronically stressed and over trained (3 sport athlete in the summers with multiple practices/miles/games). According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, girls aged 11 to 13 need 1,800 to 2,200 calories per day while those between the ages of 14 and 18 need 1,800 to 2,400 calories per day. These guidelines are not even acknowledging how these numbers change if these girls are extremely active or involved in a strength training program. That could add on another 500-1,000 calories depending on the intensity, duration, and type of exercises they perform. With the above life reflection in mind, I want to help current high school athletes understand the importance of nutrition to their health, longevity, and overall athletic performance.

Not to scare anyone, but I want to start with the concerns.

1. Growth Stunting

2. Menstruation Irregularities

3. Reduced Bone Mineralization

4. Malnutrition

5. Increased Injury Risk

6. Decreased Recovery

As a high school and college athlete I experienced five of these six concerns listed above. I did not begin menstruating until I was 17 years old, once I did begin it was extremely irregular and would stop for months at a time. I had four different stress fractures while running cross country likely from my decreased bone mineralization, lack of proper nutrition (micro and macro nutrients), bad sleeping patterns and over training tendencies. I frequently got denied for giving blood because my iron was too low, just another correlation to my lack of proper nutrition. I say this not to brag about how bad I used to be, but to show that these concerns are real, I lived them, and I want to help as many athletes as I can avoid them.

So where do you start if you want to make a change? Knowledge. Understand your body, how it processes food, how macronutrients affect you, why this all matters, and what you can do to manipulate food to be your fuel. Make food work for you, not against you.

Food. What is it and how does it affect me?

We will keep this fairly simple. When we look at food overall, we have three different types of macro (big) nutrients that we consume on a daily basis which makes up the majority of our calories.

Carbohydrates

Proteins

Fats

Let’s take a quick look at what they are, what they do, and how we process them.

WHAT THEY ARE:

Carbohydrates are organic molecules described as simple or complex based on their shape. Simple carbohydrates are classified as mono- or di- saccharides which means they have one or two sugar molecules linked together, while complex carbs are classified as polysaccharides with multiple sugars linked together. To make it more complicated we have two ways to link together monosaccharide units (the simplest form of carbohydrates that cannot be broken down any further) as either short unit chains (oligosaccharides) or long unit chains (polysaccharides).

WHAT THEY DO:

Once we have carbohydrates touch our tongue the body begins to break them apart through specific enzymes in our saliva. These carbs must be broken down into their mono (single unit) parts for our body to utilize them effectively. The liver is the first organ to be filled with these mono sugars, from there they float in the bloodstream waiting to be directed to other cells in the body. This is where insulin is released into the body to deal with the sugar that has bombarded the bloodstream.

HOW WE PROCESS THEM

Everyone will respond to carbohydrates differently depending on a multitude of factors, some universal truths that are important to note include the following

· Refined (processed) carbs are known to increase our blood triglyceride levels, bad cholesterol, and insulin resistance

· Conversely, slowly digested carbs (whole grains, fruits, vegetables) are known to control our insulin response, energy levels, body composition, and blood sugar levels. Additionally, complex and unprocessed carbs are found to increase our vitamin and mineral uptake, increase satiety, and give a higher thermal effect of feeding.

SO NOW WHAT?

The minimal recommendation for carbohydrate ingestion is 130g a day, but the more muscle mass one has and activity one performs the more carbohydrates they may require for performance. Overall, for increased health, the majority of carbs should come from complex carbs including fiber (around 25g at minimum) while simpler carbs could be consumed pre and post exercise. It is important to note that excessive carbohydrate consumption is stored for future use as glycogen and fat within the body.

PROTEIN:

Protein is an essential nutrient, which means we cannot survive without consumption of it on a daily basis for extended periods of time. It’s primarily found in animal sources but can also be found inside other sources, like wheat, oats, nuts and legumes.

Protein as a molecule is made up of amino acids, which are known as the building blocks of protein. In order for protein exist, the amino acids must exist. Think of peanut butter without peanuts, its just butter, one cannot exist without the other.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Protein is the foundation for muscle tissue, it causes us to grow muscle (actin and myosin which are made of protein) and retain current muscle tissue. Protein also keeps you satiated and full. Who wants to be hungry all the time? But more importantly, as an athlete, protein is going to help you rebuild your muscles after all the long hours you are putting in at practice.

AND

If you want to perform better, it would do you some good to gain some muscle mass. I speak from experience, once I started eating better and lifting some weights the performance gains were unreal!

FAT:

Fat is crucial for hormonal health, which is one of the biggest and most recognized reasons to consume an adequate amount of fat. This is one of the reasons why this is an essential nutrient, one you cannot live without. Fat is primer for the nervous system and the axon, which is a major part of the nerve that transmits electrical signals from the brain throughout the body to initiate all functions, it is made up of 80% lipids (fats). This means for full neurological capabilities and optimization, we need adequate fats in our diets. As an athlete this is crucial to your development and ability to perform. Do not demonize fat, it helps you perform at the highest levels!

NOW YOU KNOW THE BASICS ABOUT FOOD AND WHY EACH NUTRIENT IS ESSENTIAL FOR ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE

Time to dive into what steps you can start taking to ensure you don’t have the same experience I did.

1. Eat throughout the day w/ protein dense foods

Athletes need fuel all day. It is a good idea to go no longer than 4 hours without eating, maybe even three. This can count snacks, you do not need to do full meals.

Every time we eat, we’re bringing nutrients and energy into the bloodstream, this influences our ability to think because our brain uses glucose, and it’s also the primary fuel for any muscle group. We want to keep your muscles fueled and ready to go so you can perform when you need to.

A common problem for student/athletes is going too long between meals or snacks. By eating more frequently, you give your body the sustenance it needs to perform well.

2. Eat immediately after waking up in the morning

Each day, you are creating a foundation for building your energy stores back up to where they were the day before. So don’t skip breakfast. A lot of teenagers and college students do, but it’s a bad habit, especially for athletes.

Skipping breakfast puts you in a serious deficit and you can’t catch up. If athletes go to practice at 3 o’clock – even though they’ve had lunch – they are falsely operating on the idea that their energy levels are high. (If they skip breakfast), their energy levels are actually very low. Many recent studies have proven that high levels athletes who skip breakfast, versus athletes that have breakfast underperform due to lack of energy and available fuel sources.

3. You must plan to succeed – timing matters, and doesn’t happen on its own

You need to pay close attention to how your day is going to unfold. Be an adult and look at your schedule. Know when you will have a break or when you will be away from food for 5 hours.

You’ve got to look at your day as if it matters that calories are available to you. You have to eat before a workout. You have to. (When you eat before a workout), you’ll get more out of the workout because you’ll have available energy. We want there to be energy in the bloodstream. If you’re working out, you don’t want to go into your bank account and dredge out the energy. You want to have high energy in the first part of your workout, and that means having good sugar or carbohydrates in your blood.

Start by eating one hour before a workout, and let the meal be heavy on carbohydrates. Some options: fruit and half of a bagel, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, yogurt and fruit, dry cereal or trail mix.

Keep in mind, the first half of your day is usually filled with classes, so eating an hour before practice or a workout means planning ahead. You need to know where you’re going to be, and you need to carry the snack with you.

4. Drink before you’re thirsty

You all know water is important, the hard thing is you wait too long to drink the water. IF you are thirsty it is really too late.

Think about it like this 12oz before 8AM, 12oz before 12pm, 12oz before 3pm, 24oz at practice, 12oz before 8pm.

5. Eat a balance of carbs and proteins after your workout

Muscle-cell repair occurs at the fastest rate within the first two hours after a workout. Eat as soon after exercise as possible to facilitate maximum muscle-cell repair.

Aim for eating within an hour after practice. If you have long practices, or doubles, bring a fast digesting snack.

So many athletes don’t understand that their muscle cells have undergone some microscopic damage during an intense practice. There are hormones, one of which is cortisol, that are elevated during intense exercise. The second protein is ingested the cortisol levels drop which allows muscle cell repair to ensue. If protein is not introduced, cortisol (which is inflammatory) stays high and your muscles are not allowed to recover.

You have your entire life to worry about your weight. And believe me you will.

Instead of focusing on who is skinnier, who has a better six pack, who looks better in that outfit… Focus on performing. You are an athlete right? Instead of restricting yourself from pop, cookies, bread, pop tarts, etc.

GIVE TO YOURSELF protein, micronutrients, healthy fats, fiber filled carbohydrates, fulfilling water..

Because you are a HIGH PERFORMING ATHLETE and you need FUEL to perform. You cannot be restricting yourself and eating like a bird. It will not work. You will fatigue, you will break, you will mess up your hormones, your sport will suffer and most importantly your quality of life will suffer.

Focus on the good things your body needs and the rest will come. Better yet, find a trusted coach or mentor to talk to about all of this.

My door is always open.

An open letter to my former self (the high school athlete)