When on vacation, on holiday, or even on tour, dancers must learn how to navigate a new environment while listening to and trusting their body’s cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. This articles teaches you how to eat healthfully and intuitively while traveling.
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How To Create A Healthy Relationship with Food
Dancers can create a healthy relationship with food by using this 5-step guide. As a dancer, your relationship with food plays a key role in the sustainability of your career. Learn how to ditch the dieting mentality, give yourself unconditional permission around food, use food neutrality, practice food flexibility, and integrate mindful eating.
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Sustainable Cross-Training for Dancers
Featured post by Maya Marian Bryant, MPH Candidate, NASM-CPT, Certified Barre Instructor. Founder & CEO of Raise The Barre Fitness Has your dance teacher suggested that you cross-train? Perhaps, it was a suggestion to strength train? With a rigorous dance schedule, this may seem like a daunting task. This article teaches dancers about building a […]
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Dancers and Body Neutrality
Dancers at all levels struggle with poor body image and/or body dysmorphia, which further leads to disordered eating and/or eating disorders. With the #balletbodiesunite movement making waves throughout our industry, dancers worldwide are speaking out against unrealistic body ideals. But how can dancers truly overcome the desire to fit such an unrealistic mold when the industry continues to exemplify instances of body criticism?
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Body Image Support for Dancers
Body image is created starting at a young age and often reflects internalized messaging, which sets the stage for the development of either a positive or negative body image. Dancers at all levels struggle with poor body image and/or body dysmorphia, which further leads to disordered eating and/or eating disorders. This is a direct result of antiquated body ideals that unfortunately saturate the industry.
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Dancers and Dessert- is it okay?
Dancers often question whether dessert can be a staple in their diet or not. This article will not only answer this question for you but also, shift your perspective in a way that supports your abilities on stage and off. Gentle nutrition and food flexibility, as tools of The Healthy Dancer® framework, can help you in your decision-making around dessert. This includes those deemed “healthy” (like fruit) and those more indulgent options (I’m talking about that brownie sundae with EXTRA fudge!)
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Navigate Cravings while Intuitive Eating
As a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, I want you to learn how to fuel your body in a way that supports your health. And as a Certified Counselor of Intuitive Eating, I want you to do this in a way that supports the entirety of your wellbeing. This article will dive into why dancers experience cravings, what are the different types of cravings, and how dancers can navigate them in a way that doesn’t derail the work of both performance nutrition and their relationship with food.
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What Does It Mean to Have Unconditional Permission To Eat?
Relying on “willpower,” striving for “moderation,” “avoiding trigger foods,” and “crowding out” foods are divisive forms of deprivation. Intuitive eaters, however, learn how to demolish the point of deprivation. To do this, let’s address three steps for how you can begin to gift yourself unconditional permission to eat your favorite (and yes, more “triggering”) foods.
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The Best Breakfast Cereal for Dancers
If you’re a dancer who is debating breakfast cereal as an option to start the day, then you’ve come to the perfect place! A culturally-constructed fear of carbohydrate-rich foods makes breakfast cereal the target of debate. But breakfast cereals (and carbs in general) can be a nutrient-packed addition to a dancer’s diet. This article will […]
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Dancers & Disordered Eating
Has your interest in healthy eating become more of an obsession? Dancers are at risk to perfectionism, which can drive rates of disordered eating and eating disorders. Orthorexia describes the unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. Learn more about orthorexia and disordered eating among dancers.
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How to Handle Rejection at Your Dance Audition
How can dancers navigate audition disappointment and rejection? With diet culture especially prominent in the dance industry, the urge for dancers to regain any semblance of control often translates into unsustainable behaviors like restricting food intake or partaking in excessive cross-training routines. But using food as a tool for self-control, rather than self-care, quickly backfires as restrictive dieting leads to exhaustion, burnout, and even injury.
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A Dancer’s Complete Guide to Protein
The benefits of protein are vast: protein is essential for rebuilding and repairing muscle tissue, which undergoes a natural level of wear and tears from intense activity (like dancing). Because dancers are more vulnerable to perfectionism and disordered eating, I don’t encourage them to calculate nor track daily protein intake. If concerns exist, such as a dancer feeling worried that they are eating too little (or too much) protein, then it’s recommended they consult with a licensed Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.
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What Is Thin Privilege?
As a society, increasing awareness of our privilege(s) can help us better understand the world around us and how others, not just our immediate circles, perceive it. I experience thin privilege because I live in a body deemed acceptable by a fat-phobic culture that stigmatizes those in larger bodies. Because my set-point weight allows me to live in a thin body, I do not experience the same systemic oppression that is faced by those in larger bodies.
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Dancers and Overeating
Whether you call it “overeating” or “binge eating,” you may be familiar with the experience of eating to the point of physical discomfort. Eating past fullness can result from a variety of reasons, and before we discuss how to stop “overeating,” we should first identify why you’re “overeating.”
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Nutrition for Dancers
A dancer’s diet should consist of at least 55–60% carbohydrate, 12–15% protein and 30% fat. Carbohydrate is the major energy source for an active dancer. Honoring cravings and prioritizing a dancer’s relationship with food is essential.
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How To Spot Diet Culture & The Truth Behind Noom, WW, & MyFitness Pal
The diet industry exhibits a large influence over how consumers comprehend health and wellness. To truly ditch diet culture, we need to know how to spot the dieting mentality and identify the red flag of lifestyles like Noom, WW, and My Fitness Pal.
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Dancers and Emotional Eating
Society often views emotional eating negatively. A healthy relationship with food means that we honor personal preferences that often stem from emotionally pleasant memories and experiences.
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Food Freedom & Intuitive Eating- Practice or Privilege?
In the United States alone, more than 38 million people, including 12 million children, experience food insecurity, with more than 23.5 million people in the U.S. living in food deserts. Food insecurity is even more apparent in marginalized communities where rates of hunger, poverty, and unemployment are much higher when compared to white communities. The same goes for those who live with one or more disabilities, who face higher rates of employment discrimination and higher medical costs.
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Dealing With Dancer Burnout
Dancers can feel burn out from a high-pressured environment that is unfortunately coupled with impossible food and body beliefs. In this instance, a dancer’s relationship with movement feels less joyous and more punitive. Learn more about how to prevent dancer burnout.
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Healthy Recipes for Dancers
Enjoy these favorite power combos from The Healthy Dancer and To The Pointe Nutrition (TTP) Ambassadors! We offer delicious meal and snack options for busy dancers, including healthy, delicious recipe ideas and ways to meal plan for the week ahead.
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