I often stress the importance of making time in your schedule to sit back, relax, and enjoy the mindful experience of a meal. However, busy days are bound to fill our schedules, especially during the summer intensive season. It’s in these instances when meal planning becomes key to a dancer’s diet. Since intense dance schedules can leave hunger cues unnoticeable, planning meals and snacks is critical for preventing energy dips and appetite surges later in the day.
Read More...
Starting A Journal- A Guide for Dancers
Do dancers benefit from journaling? When it comes to food, is it possible to keep a journal without turning to obsessive behaviors like calorie counting and macro tracking? In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of journaling. We’ll also decipher between food journaling and meal tracking and how dancers can utilize a journal in a helpful (and even intuitive) way.
Read More...
How To Understand Nutrition Research
Nutrition research plays an integral role in how we understand the impacts of various foods and/or behaviors on our health. In an ideal setting, researchers conduct experiments with the hope to draw conclusions based on direct interventions. But nutrition research gets messy. This article will dive into the reasons why. Christy Harrison is a fellow dietitian who covers these facts and more in her book, Anti Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating.
Read More...
Hydration for Dancers: Fueling Strategies
While recommendations vary among dancers, most pre-professional and professional level dancers should aim for a planned approach to staying hydrated throughout their day. Dehydration is one of the leading factors negatively impacting our performance, whether it’s in the studio or in class. Keeping your body hydrated can even help with balance, flexibility, and muscle recovery.
Read More...
The Truth About Processed Foods
I’m guilty. As a Registered Dietitian (a board-certified EXPERT of nutrition!), I’ve used the phrase “limit processed foods” time and time again. I’ve previously unraveled the harms of clean eating in an article that you’ll need to read and bookmark ASAP. I’ve even given you three reasons why the idea of “empty calories” is a total sham. But what about processed foods? Should we really be avoiding them?
Read More...
Brain Health: 7 Foods to Sharpen Focus and Support Retention
First, let’s uncover the obvious: diet culture likes to use this idea of “brain food” to sell us an eating regimen that oftentimes moralizes some foods and demonizes others. Honestly, there’s no single food that can completely make or break your brain health and functioning. But we can utilize aspects of gentle nutrition to ensure that our body receives a variety of building blocks that support focus, retention, and overall mental clarity. Let’s dive into 7 foods that can help to provide the building blocks of brain health.
Read More...
15+ Plant-Based Breakfast Recipes for Dancers
For dancers choosing a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, focusing on abundance and variety helps to ensure that that you’re eating enough to support your performance. But for some dancers, choosing a lifestyle that is 100% plant-based can risk vitamin and mineral deficiencies (if not well-planned) and even trigger disordered eating (if not implemented with the help of professional support). Here are our favorite vegan breakfast recipes!
Read More...
Is Clean Eating Healthy?
What I didn’t know at the time, was that my pursuit to “eat clean” was actually a guise for disordered eating. But how could eating ample amounts of “whole” foods not be healthy? Colorful fruits and veggies, a variety of unsaturated fats, and antioxidant-rich dark chocolate… if “clean eating” isn’t actually healthy, then why does the research draw conclusions between these nourishing foods and a number of health outcomes?
Read More...
A Dancer’s Diet: Nutrition Supplements
Should dancers use protein powders? How about multivitamins? If not consuming a well-rounded diet that is sufficient in both calories and nutrients, dancers are at risk for developing key micronutrient and macronutrient deficiencies. Before deciding whether or not you can benefit from a nutrition supplement, consider the following 5 tips.
Read More...
How To Stop Eating When You Feel Full
Are you having difficulty honoring your fullness cues? Are you frustrated about constantly eating past a comfortable fullness? Do you find yourself “overeating” more times than not? In this post, we’ll discuss what it actually means to feel full after eating and how to regain the ability to feel when enough is actually enough.
Read More...
Mindful Eating For Dancers
When you begin to utilize the tool of mindful eating, you add back a major nutrient to your balanced plate: experience. From that experience, whether it is positive, negative, or neutral, blooms a unique learning opportunity that allows you to move forward with building trust with your body’s intrinsic cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction.
Read More...
Diet for Dancers: Are Foods High in Fat Bad?
The war against dietary fat (AKA the fat in our food) was declared nearly a century ago when the American Heart Association published findings of a suspected association between dietary fat and heart disease. But instead of promoting positive health behaviors, associations between food and disease have only led to a landscape of food guilt, stress, and anxiety. And we know that weight cycling (a product of yo-yo dieting) is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Here’s another one for your evidence library.
Read More...
Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
Nourish Your Body and Soul There’s only one remedy for overripe bananas: baking. Bananas add a well-known but subtle flavor to almost any recipe. Enjoy this banana bread straight from the oven, or store it for another day. The extra-moist center makes it especially delicious even when packed in your dance bag. Ingredients 3 bananas, […]
Read More...
Diet for Dancers- The Truth About Gluten and Dairy
For over a decade, wellness culture has deemed gluten and dairy as the foes of “health.” When it comes to health, diet culture likes to point a finger at food as having a direct impact on various health and lifestyle outcomes. Interestingly, the obsession over gluten and dairy surfaced back in the early 2000s. But what can seem like an innocent “lifestyle change” can often be a slippery slope into disordered eating.
Read More...
How Can Dancers Set Boundaries?
Setting boundaries is incredibly important for guarding ourselves against diet culture and for living a life of food freedom. When stuck in the trenches of diet culture, boundaries go out the window. Our needs and our opinions around food become dependent upon an unattainable goal (like a “perfect” diet or an “ideal” body type). We’re made to believe that our self-worth is defined by the foods we eat and by the size of our body.
Read More...
Meet Christina
I am SUPER excited to introduce you to the newest member of the TTP team! Christina Chagaris graduated from Montclair State University with a BS in Nutrition and Food Science Dietetics concentration with a minor in Sports Nutrition.
Read More...
20+ Healthy and Delicious Snack Recipes
What exactly is a healthy snack? Convenience, variety, flexibility, and balance. With busy schedules, snacking is a must for dancers. Here are our 20+ favorite snacks to prep and pack for your week!
Read More...
Battle Belly Bloat – FREE Download
I’ve previously discussed what dancers should consider when struggling with stomach discomfort and functional digestive disorders (you can read about them here). Today, I’m gifting you a FREE downloadable guide (click the image below) that dives deeper into one of the five steps provided: implementing gentle nutrition for alleviating discomfort. Here’s what we cover: The […]
Read More...
A Dancer’s Guide to Bloat & Digestive Health
For most, bloating involves a certain level of stomach discomfort that translates into difficult decisions around food. Interestingly, research shows that those who struggle with disordered eating and/or eating disorders might also be more prone to struggling with digestive disorders and the discomfort that goes along with them.
Read More...
Nutrition for Dancers: What You Need To Know
Dance nutrition maximizes a dancer’s capabilities both in the studio and on the stage. Dancers learn how to supply calories that fuel movement, support endurance, and build strength. Dance nutrition is key to a strong, successful, and sustainable dance career. But while nutrition for dancers is an important topic, it might need to take a backseat to a dancer’s need to heal their relationship with food and body. A Registered Dietitian Nutritionist who specializes in nutrition for dancers can help to assess the degree to which your lifestyle is supporting your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.
Read More...
