Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

  Why do people comment about bodies and food around the dinner table? You may be surprised to hear that people bring up body and food talk for reasons that usually have nothing to do with you and everything to do with culture, habits, and their own insecurities. 🍽️ Many people grew up in a family where talking about weight, diet, or appearance was considered normal conversation. 🍽️ Diet culture is deeply ingrained. Society has treated body size as a moral issue and food as “good” or “bad.” 🍽️ Holidays heighten food anxiety. When someone feels guilty or worried about eating, they often comment on what someone else is eating to cope or deflect. 🍽️ Unsolicited comments about health or weight are often framed as “concern.” 🍽️ For some, commenting on others’ plates or bodies is a way to feel superior or justify their own choices. ➡️ Negative comments about bodies or food are usually a reflection of the person saying them—not the person hearing them.  Understanding that can ma...

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...

There's not a day that goes by that I don't thank my body for what it allows me to do. I may be an athlete, but I am also a coach. As a triathlon coach and Board Certified Sport Dietitian, my job is to help athletes optimize performance for race day. Although many factors contribute to performance improvements, many coaches (and nutrition experts) believe that losing weight will aid in performance improvements. Unhealthy weight control/loss practices are a serious problem in sport, especially in the two sports that I specialize in - triathlon and running. Too often, athletes are pressured by media, coaches and competitors to change body composition in order to boost performance. If losing weight was a guarantee to performance improvements, than any athlete who has lost weight would find it easy to succeed in sport. But this is far from the truth. Many athletes are told (or assume) that they would be more successful in a sport if they lost weight or changed body compo...

         In our recent interview with the  Intelligent Racer Podcast, I talked about my passion for helping athletes with nutrition. A lot of my nutrition counseling is helping athletes with the application of using food and sport nutrition properly in order to improve health and performance. But another aspect of my nutrition services is helping athletes overcome an unhealthy relationship with food and the body in order to improve athletic performance, health and quality of life.  From my experience, by improving your relationship with your body, you can actually improve your relationship with food, which will enhance your athletic performance. When you begin to thank your body (instead of bashing it), respect your body (instead of starving or overexercising it) and appreciate your body (instead of wishing you looked differently), you begin to make better lifestyle choices that actually promote health and performance. It is through these c...

As an athlete, you make a lot of daily lifestyle choices which are likely not "normal" compared to your non-athlete counterparts. Your standards for daily exercise and healthy eating are far from the norm. For example, when was the last time you said, "I only ran 90 minutes today, but it was just an easy run" or brought a cooler of foods to a work conference because you enjoy being in control of your portions and how your food is prepared? To reach your athletic goals, you make a lot of daily choices to maximize your performance and many times, to an outsider, your dedication to your athletic lifestyle looks absolutely crazy and unnecessary. But when you surround yourself with your like-minded athlete buddies, you suddenly feel part of the crowd. Your decisions, actions and choices are praised, admired and sometimes needed to "fit in" among your athletic partners. You may even go out of your way on social media to follow nutrition experts who...

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...

Have you been told that if you want to be faster, you need to lose weight? Well let me tell you that athletic performances cannot be accurately predicted based solely on body weight and composition, assuming that if you are "less", you will gain "more". I have seen and worked with many athletes who don't recognize their past/current successes in their healthy and strong body. Despite good, great and/or better race results through proper fueling/eating, the athlete feels he/she does not have "an athletes body" and is constantly trying to lose weight through overtraining and underfueling in an effort to train for a lower body composition.....not for better performances.  We must also understand that to race "fast" we have to consider how you physically and mentally prepare for your races. Ultimately, the athlete who remains in the best health throughout a training cycle will out-perform a lean, yet underfueled, injur...

Before a race, after a workout, at work, around your training buddies, in the bathroom, with your family/kids, when trying on clothes..... How often do you criticize your body? Before a race, after a workout, at work, around your training buddies, in the bathroom, with your family/kids, when trying on clothes..... How often do you feel guilty or hate what/how you are eating?  There are millions of people affected with an eating disorder at sometime in their lifetime however, eating disorders are often termed a silent epidemic. Some individuals never get the help they truly and live decades feeling overwhelmed or anxious around food or feel uncomfortable in their own skin. Others choose to remain quite in treatment and eventually gain the strength, tools and support they need to recover and to live a quality filled life with a healthy body and mind.  It's no surprise that in a body and food obsessed society, it's not very easy to maintain healthy rela...

Hello 2015!!! The best time of the year to start a diet!!  Big feast, lots of treats/sweets, off your typical routine.  You have gone a bit overboard and now feel as if you have sinned with overindulgence or enough is enough and you are tired of your flaws and you have self-criticized yourself enough that you now have all the motivation in the world to finally start that diet plan.  Sure, these are all things associated with the holiday season but they are also associated with individuals who seek diets.  And let me tell you about diets these days...they are all over the place in terms of the rules, guidelines and promises that they make.  What's always the same?  They offer best-seller books and cookbooks because the media loves the attention that the diet is getting. You know about the diet because it's all over social media. Of course, those who aren't on the diet don't talk about it and those not on social media, w...