Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition

One of the most common New Year resolution is weight loss (or changing body composition). If you are feeling dissatisfied with your body, wanting to improve your health or feeling tempted to lose weight fast, you may be thinking that a diet, calorie restriction or extreme exercise is the solution. A desire to lose weight coupled with body dissatisfaction can easily turn unhealthy and dangerous. It's easy to take a diet too far. It's not uncommon for people to make extreme changes - like not eating grains, dairy, sugars and processed foods - severely restricting calories and nutrients all in the name of weight loss. A "diet" may offer quick fixes and a black and white method of dictating what you can and can not eat, but the truth is that these methods are extreme and impossible to maintain in the long term. Plus, they teach you nothing about changing your lifestyle habits which is how long lasting weight loss is achieved. You can take a pill, injection, supplement, pu...

The way you feel about your body can fluctuate over time. So can your body shape, weight and size. It's normal for your body to change throughout your lifespan. However, at any one time, more than 160 million Americans are on a diet. The human body is designed to protect you from extreme weight loss and starvation. Losing weight is not easy because it is a complex and multi-faceted journey.  I am a anti-diet, body positive sport dietitian. I accept all bodies and I never tell athletes that they need to lose weight in order to improve performance. Even if an athlete comes to me wanting to lose weight, I never make weight the primary focus.Before you set out on your effort to lose weight, make sure you keep the following in mind.  You may long for a flatter stomach, leaner arms and slimmer thighs but looking a certain way or dieting your way to a smaller version of yourself will not make you happy - or happier. You can lose weight and struggle with your mental health, experience...

  When it comes to eating, it's not uncommon to have developed a few unhealthy habits over the years. For example, relying too much on caffeine to survive work, using alcohol as a reward after a stressful day or frequent eating out because you forgot to meal prep. When it comes to the New Year, it's not uncommon to want to make a dietary change, especially if there is a desire to change body composition or to lose weight. However, it's not uncommon for athletes and fitness enthusiasts to make radical dietary changes. While short term weight loss may result, fad diets and extreme dietary methods are not linked to long term weight loss or health benefits. Rather, following a fad diet increases the risk of disordered eating which increases the risk of developing an eating disorder. And eating disorders are mental illnesses that have serious physical consequences. If you seek a dietary change for health, performance and/or weight loss, it's important to take a mindful appro...

  Coaches are influential role models for athletes and can impact how athletes perceive and feel in and about their bodies. Unfortunately, as was recently courageously shared by  @skyemoench , it's not uncommon for coaches to focus on appearance over body functionality. Body weight is a sensitive and personal issue yet far too many coaches share a belief that a lower body weight will improve performance. If you are a coach, you have a responsibility to take care of your athlete - physically, emotionally and mentally. Every athlete has his/her own optimal body composition where the body functions the best and this body is achieved through consistent training, nutritious eating and proper fueling and hydration. Acknowledge an athlete’s strengths beyond a look, for an athlete is a human - not an object. Making remarks about body composition and performance (even if well-intentioned) can trigger or exacerbate disordered eating thoughts and behaviors. Having a diverse representatio...

  With so many ways to enhance performance and to optimize health, two of the most popular sought-after strategies include diet and body composition changes. When done correctly, performance may improve. However, it’s not uncommon for athletes to engage in unhealthy weight control methods, resulting in great emotional and physical consequences. Whether for aesthetics, competitive leanness, body dissatisfaction or in pursuit of an ideal “race weight,” athletes often place unrealistic expectations on performance and their bodies. What may start as an innocent attempt to lean-up or to lose a few pounds, can easily spiral out of control, undermining health, training, recovery, performance and mental well-being. If you are a coach, you have a responsibility to take care of your athlete - physically, emotionally and mentally.  When your athlete feels pressure to achieve a leaner body composition, an increased fascination with nutrition, body fat, weight and calories can develop into...

Picture source Body positivity challenges the ways in which our society presents, celebrates and views bodies.  Sadly, far too many body shapes and types have been shunned by the mainstream media or not classified as beautiful. Our society has a fixation on the "tiny" ideal and encourages everyone to fit the social standards of being lean. This is why there are so many movements promoting body positivity. Because many people feel discriminated against because their body doesn't meet the "ideal" image, the body positive movement challenges social norms and promotes the belief that all bodies - regardless of size, shape, gender, physical abilities or skin tone - should be accepted. The body positivity movement is a necessary movement but it can also be controversial - can you have a positive relationship with your body and desire weight loss/a change in your body composition?  First off, it is a myth that large bodies are unhealthy. Being bigger doesn't mean b...

We all come in different sizes and shapes based on our unique genetic make-up. However, it’s common to turn to exercise to change the way that you look. Some athletes may desire a body composition change to help improve endurance, speed, strength, power and agility. Others may want to improve health. While health and performance may be of interest, athletes are often heavily invested in appearance - wanting to look leaner or more like the idealized image of an athlete in their sport. Keeping in mind that athletic success cannot be predicted based solely on body weight and composition, athletes come in vastly different body compositions. Because no two athletes are alike and sports invite athletes of all different sizes and builds, your body weight should not be your sole focus for sport enjoyment.  Due to pressure from society and coaches, it’s not uncommon for many athletes to have body image struggles, despite not being overweight or over fat. In turn, many athletes resort ...

A common focus (or struggle) for athletes is losing weight (or changing body composition) while trying to improve fitness. It may seem effortless for an athlete to lose weight while training for an endurance event because of the extreme energy expenditure experienced on a day-to-day basis but in truth, many athletes struggle to lose weight despite exercising 8-20+ hours a week. In my opinion, there's no shortage of proper education on how to nourish and fuel the athlete. The problem lies in application. Athletes often fail to properly time nutrition with training and plan out a well balanced diet and thus, there's always a struggle to maximize fitness, health and body composition throughout a training/racing season. In other words, most athletes don't eat enough of the right foods at the right times. I also blame the lack of time, focus and energy that athletes give to the daily diet relative to the time, focus and energy that is given to training. Most athletes fail to ...

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...

As an athlete, you probably feel that you work very hard to develop the necessary skills, resilience, stamina, power, speed and endurance to help you prepare for your upcoming athletic events. Developing the fitness to participate in a running or triathlon event requires a lot of training and it takes commitment and requires patience, so it's assumed that skipping workouts, being "all in" all the time, not caring, deviating from your training plan to do what other athletes are doing, or haphazardly guessing your way through training are not effective ways to reach your race day goals. You simply become inconsistent with training, you lose confidence in what you are doing and you may compromise your health. Is nutrition an important component of your training? If you don't work at healthy eating, you miss out on one of the best opportunities to improve your performance and to keep your body in good health. To perform at your best, your body needs to function at it...

Writing an article for a magazine usually goes like this.... I pitch a lot of articles to a magazine and a few (or one or none) gets selected OR a magazine reaches out to me with an article topic for me to write about. Back in December, after I received confirmation that I would be writing three articles for Triathlete Magazine for the May ( Fueling the Vegetarian athlete ), June ( Sport Nutrition - progressing from short to long course racing ) and July ( Common fueling mistakes ) issues, I was asked to write a 2000-word, feature assignment for the March/April issue on "How do I fuel if...." with the following topics discussed: -I don't have time to cook -I'm trying to lose weight -I'm (going) gluten-free -I'm a female athlete -I bonk in races The article would include 5 different scenarios (each around 200-300 words or the equivalent of a short article) with specific advice, tips and suggestions for each topic, in addition to a sidebar of c...