How to Talk to Your Athlete About Nutrition

Nutrition is a foundational piece in the puzzle of performance enhancement and helping athletes utilize nutrition can be extremely beneficial. Communicating this information, however, requires caution and great care as diet-culture and social media have promoted varied misunderstandings and misperceptions of what healthy eating and a healthy body look like. Female athletes in are especially likely to have been influenced by incorrect nutritional information. Sometimes this information comes from social media or sport culture but sometimes it can come from family or friends. 

When talking to an athlete about concerns regarding nutrition, whether it has to do with weight or not, a coach must first consider what the goal is of the conversation. Many athletes have spiraled into disordered eating or eating disorders from conversations regarding nutrition that were intended to help the athlete. Thus, considering carefully what the goal is and being very careful with the words used is imperative.

There are a few words to avoid when talking with an athlete regarding nutrition. The words “clean eating” or “clean foods” are far too vague and lead people toward a misconstrued image of healthy eating. Eliminating the categories of “good food” and “bad food” is necessary to remove the burdens of guilt and shame that can become crippling to athletes. Allowing “guilty pleasures” or “cheat meals”, while mostly intended to relieve the burden of being tied to health food, create negative ideas towards foods the athlete enjoys. “Calorie” is a word that, thanks to diet-culture, has an incredibly negative feeling for most people and again, can carry guilt and shame with it. Avoid the word “diet” and replace it with “meal plan” or “how <so and so> eats”, as diet has come to mean restriction of food rather than intake of food. Finally, words referring to body shape such as “thin”, “skinny”, “fat”, or any word referring to shape can be triggering. 

The best way to approach talking about nutrition with athletes is in regard to their performance. Communicate how NOT eating well will affect their performance compared to how their performance will be affected when they do eat well. Body shape can not be the focus, as body type does not determine performance ability. Educating athletes, and coaches and parents, about how their bodies use food for performance is helpful in adjusting the mindset of food as fuel. Most athletes are chronically under-fueled due to either schedule constraints, or ignorance or misunderstanding of the function of food and energy processes of the body. Educating the athlete on the needs of their body in their sport can be received with shock, resistance, or complete acceptance. Many athletes don’t understand how much fuel they need to support their body, some athletes don’t understand how food affects their body and are afraid that eating more will result in weight gain, and for some athletes it clicks and they wonder why they hadn’t thought of supporting their performance with nutrition before. 

Using visuals to communicate nutrition goals with athletes have been found to be more effective than just using text materials. Educating athletes on their performance and recovery needs for hydration, eating throughout the day, eating macronutrient balanced meals and snacks, reading food labels, and the detriment that excluding food groups will have on their performance (barring an allergy) will help them make better choices for better reasons. 

Something to communicate clearly is that there is not a single body shape that is “healthy”. Athletes need to be fit, not skinny, and to be fit you must feed your body enough fuel for everyday function AND athletic performance. Trying to achieve a body shape by under-fueling will cause hormone system damage and physiological detriment that could be long-term and terminate participation in sport. Therefore, it is critical for athletes, coaches and parents to understand the demands of a sport on an athlete’s body and how to support the body nutritionally. This may require meeting with a sports nutritionist or a registered dietician.