Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

As an athlete, you know you need to fuel properly to train, recover, and stay healthy. And to help, there are apps, experts and articles to keep you accountable to eating enough. But if you struggle with your relationship with your body, that dissatisfaction can silently interfere with your ability to eat enough, fuel your workouts appropriately and support your body with the nutrition it deserves. In simple terms: 👉 When you respect your body, you give it what it needs. 👉 When you dislike your body, you withhold fuel. A healthy body relationship removes emotional roadblocks so that fueling can be based on science, health, and performance. 

For many people, November begins the season of gratitude. Starting with Thanksgiving - whcih literally has THANKS in the name, it's important to ask yourself how often do you thank your body? Learning to quiet the body bashing and negative body thoughts is not easy. The mental picture you have of your body is constantly compared to an image of what you think you should look like. This is due to the social impact of body image. Seeing images over and over again is linked to poor body image and feelings that your own body is not normal. As a result, you may shame, criticize and hate certain parts of your body.  Body image refers to how you see your body. What you believe about your appearance, how you feel about your body and how you move, nourish and use your body.  Gratitude is the expression of appreciation for what one has. It involves being thankful.  The human body is incredible. Just think about all your body can do and has done for you - crossing finishing lines, br...

An eating disorder distorts the way you think about food and your body, causing you to eat and exercise in a way that can be harmful to your mental and physical health. A critical step in eating disorder recovery is working through counterproductive and destructive thoughts, emotions and behaviors - not just relating to food and the body but also with self-esteem, confidence, control and perfectionism. To fuel, nourish and train in a way that will optimize performance and to become more comfortable and confident with your body image, it's necessary to break away from unhealthy food and exercise-related behaviors and to challenge and fight against disordered thoughts. Keep in mind that the weight/body image that you think you need to perform well in sport will likely be different than the body composition/weight that allows you to train and race in a way that supports your physical and mental health. An eating disorder is not about food. Body weight is also not the issue. The body c...

  "Too big." "Too small." Your body is not an object. Let's stop shaming the body of an athlete. Including your own body.  It's crazy to think that so many athletes believe that they must attempt to train the body to succeed in sport while simultaneously maintaining a specific body type idealized by social media. Whether you criticize your own appearance through comparison or judgement, criticize another's appearance in front of them or criticize another's appearance without their knowledge, this is a form of abuse. The first step in overcoming body shaming is to appreciate your body just as it is. We can all do better to love ourselves and our bodies just as we are. When you have a healthy relationship with your body, you are more likely to respect and value the bodies of others.

We live in a society where we are constantly being told that losing weight is good and gaining weight is bad. Although segments of the population may benefit from dietary changes that will promote healthy weight loss to reduce the complications from metabolic syndrome, many individuals (particularly athletes) are constantly striving for a smaller version of themselves.  Often times - as a result of undereating, dieting, overtraining and underfueling - physical health gets destroyed and emotional well-being becomes compromised.  You are not born hating your body. You are not born fearing weight gain. You learn to feel fat. Thanks to a society that believes that gaining weight in any context is shameful, unhealthy and bad, you grow into hating your body. Society is constantly trying to sell you the idea that you will never be good enough the way that you are. That you would be happier, healthier or fitter if you weighed less, had less fat around your stomach or toned up your arm...

The New Year is flooded with ways to improve your health - specifically through diet and exercise.While there is nothing wrong with embarking on a new journey, the first step to improve your health is to learn to be kind to your body. To start the New Year, I wanted to share a few of my thoughts on the topics that I feel athletes become vulnerable to as it relates to diet and exercise. Athletes are very disciplined, dedicated and hard working individuals but tend to function on the side of extreme. Many athletes are so focused on an outcome that they forget to be kind to the body. Most diets and exercise plans require a lot of willpower and discipline. People fall in and out of programs because they are exhausting - mentally and physically. In turn becomes body shaming, critical judgement, self-hate and unrealistic body ideals. In other words, in a quest to become healthier, you lose sight on the first step of improving your health - being kind to your body. I hope you find the...

Nearing the 2-3 months out from a key race, many athletes start paying close attention to any limiters that could potentially sabotage race day performance. Weight is typically one of those "potential" limiters that comes to the front of the mind for my athletes. Although weight can play a positive or negative role in performance, it's not the only way to improve or destroy performance. Sadly, when athletes start looking at performance and how to get faster, stronger or go longer, weight becomes the only focus. It's not uncommon for the athlete who wants to achieve a specific body composition to look for strategies and behaviors that are extreme in order to make for quick changes. Because most people won't keep up with new habits if they don't result in quick changes or feedback, many of the strategies that athletes take to change body composition adversely affect health. Fasted training, restricting fluids and calories during prolonged sessions, not focus...

Picture source For much of my career as a Board Certified Sport Dietitian with a Master of Science in exercise physiology, I have spent a great amount of time and energy helping athletes with their relationship with food and the body. Knowing that athletes feel a strong relationship between food and body composition relating to athletic success, I have never refrained from speaking about this topic openly and honestly for many years in an effort to help athletes stay healthy throughout a sporting career (and for many more decades to come). I have even reached out to many magazines (and publishing companies) to write more about the topic of body image and athletes but my pitches are often denied and in exchange, I am asked to write about the latest diet fad or nutrition strategy to help athletes gain the competitive edge. In light of another recent social media  post involving a professional athlete discussing body image struggles and restrictive eating measures, I am remind...

Today is International Day of Peace, which is " devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples." The theme for this year is “The Sustainable Development Goals: Building Blocks for Peace." In honor of making peace, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about making peace with your body. Ultimately, when you are at peace with your body, you are a better human. When you hate your body, you may find that you also hate life. This is not the way that you should be living. Accepting and appreciating your body will improve your quality of life as you are not spending your days trying to fix yourself, but instead, you are focusing on doing things that really matter in life - like your career, your hobbies (ex. sports), your close friendships, your family and personal life experiences (ex. traveling).   Here are a few tips to help you make peace with your amazing body. 1. Figure out your internal dialogue - Every day, we have t...

We live in a culture that emphasizes, rewards, worships and celebrates lean, toned and fit bodies. Individuals with an unhealthy relationship with food and the body may seek extreme events to train for and restrictive methods of eating and fueling in an effort to control weight and to justify excessive exercise patterns.   Many athletes succeed in sports (especially endurance events) because they are great at doing things in extreme. But extreme thoughts, attitudes and beliefs about food and the body (especially as it relates to performance improvements) can become obsessive and may lead to more serious disordered eating habits. If your self-imposed rules, regulations and guidelines about what to eat and not to eat around and during workouts are taking precedence of what your body actually needs (and even with alarming symptoms like low blood sugar, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, blurred vision, headache, dehydration manifesting into your workout or day), you are manip...

Some people exercise and some people train. Either way - moving your body is great for the mind, body and soul.   Regardless if you are exercising to improve your health or training to improve fitness for an upcoming event, you know that if you eat better, you will perform better.  For athletes, when you fuel your body optimally you have more energy, your fitness improves, you are happier, you think better, you delay fatigue, you sleep better and you have a more positive outlook on life.  I hope that every athlete and fitness enthusiast is on a mission to be at peace with food. Food should enhance your life and should energize your body and mind.  I encourage you to think about your current eating and fueling habits to decide if what you are doing right now is working for you.  It's important to have a great plan for good nutrition because good nutrition habits bring great workouts. And when you are consistent with your training, you can look forward to...

If you have been trying to train your way to great fitness with a dieting mentality,  you better believe that in your attempt to improve performance, you may actually be becoming less healthy. Don’t assume that just because you are an athlete, that health and fitness are interrelated because for many athletes, they are not. Just because you can run for 2 hours, swim 4000 yards or bike 100 miles, perhaps all in a weekend, this doesn’t mean that you are healthy, especially if you are not fueling and eating adequately and making smart lifestyle habits (like good sleep, good stress management, etc.).   I have witnessed many athletes who are extremely active, look fit or are dedicated to training, yet when it comes to making smart choices with their diet, they are either too extreme and restricted or too careless and negligent.      Have you or someone you know, experienced one or more of the following while training for an event?  ...

When was the last time you thanked your body? When you look in the mirror, how do you talk to/about your body? When you train and eat, does your body image dictate your choices in a positive or negative way? An unhealthy body image in athletes can increase the risk for disordered eating habits.  Avoiding major food groups (carbohydrates), not fueling around/during workouts, skipping meals and snacks and dehydration are some of the examples of unhealthy strategies that athletes often take to gain control over eating in an effort to change body composition/image. Whether you are an athlete who seeks weight loss/body composition changes to improve overall health, you are an athlete who struggles with body image due to comparison with other athletes, comparison to a past you or overall discomfort with your body image, or you are an athlete who follows a very restrictive diet and extreme exercise routine in an effort to maintain a specific body composition/image whi...

In sports like running and triathlons, there will always be a focus on body composition and for many athletes, a desire to be leaner. Specific to running economy, speed and aerobic capabilities, leanness in athletes, as it relates to performance improvements, is a topic that will never go away. There's nothing wrong with athletes seeking weight loss, a decrease in body fat or an increase in lean muscle mass. This could be for aesthetics and self-esteem, to experience and improvement in performance and/or for overall health.  Every year, I see my body composition change as I prepare for my peak races. But my race weight is unintentional as it is simply the weight on my body that I bring to race day.  And I don't know that number because I don't weigh myself.  I have never been against the idea of athletes changing body composition, especially if it improves overall health but there are many ways to improve performance and not always is weight loss the c...