Mental Health

It’s common for dancers to find themselves exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally. Balancing a packed dance schedule with academic coursework is hard enough. Chronic fatigue can be detrimental to your health, well-being, and your ability to perform to your greatest potential. While a dancer’s schedule is notoriously difficult to manage, you owe it to your mind, body, and soul to find moments to breathe.

There was a time in my life when I avoided dessert because I believed, “the guilt just wasn’t worth the bite.” My food guilt was so severe that thoughts about eating the bag of M&Ms consumed me for DAYS after eating them. And while this mental parade of guilt was exhausting, it always made its way into my brain, especially after another bout of “failed willpower” from an otherwise “clean” diet. But in my pursuit away from restrictive eating behaviors I overcame this food guilt, and today, I’m going to teach you how to do the same.

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.

During a layoff or time spent not dancing, it is possible that you’ll gain weight. It’s also possible that you’ll lose weight and maybe even maintain your weight. If you’re coming from a place of extreme food restriction, it’s likely that you’ll experience weight gain upon healing your relationship with food. Coming to terms with a few truths is often part of the puzzle. Here are 10+ truths about dancer weight gain.

What is The Orthorexic Identity? Dancers who experience a history of disordered eating, including orthorexia, commonly face the struggle of overcoming the orthorexic identity. Perhaps family members have labeled you as “the healthy one”. Or friends consider you the “good dancer” for eating “right” and keeping up with your demanding cross-training schedule. For dancers who […]

Rest days provide your body with the time needed to recover; this means your muscles heal from intense training, your energy replenishes to prevent chronic fatigue, your mindset resets to prevent the onset of burnout, and ultimately, you reduce your risk for injuries (especially chronic overuse injuries). Here are key strategies to effortlessly navigate time away from the studio.

With at least 10-12 percent of dancers weighing below ideal body weight for health, it’s critical to take steps to reduce your risk of RED-S and thus, your risk of injury. Here are 3 effortless strategies to ensure your meal plan supports energy balance.

Actionable tips for a healthy and balanced approach to eating on the holidays. Consider these 5 tips to not only build confidence around your dinner table but to also find more freedom and enjoyment throughout the season.

Since we cannot control or prevent all instances of criticism, it helps to equip yourself with the tools to educate and set boundaries as needed. But how? The first step is to decide if it’s worth the energy to educate others about your lifestyle decisions.

As a dance parent, your role in fundamental to the success of your dancer’s career. This article provides first-hand experience and 5 key strategies to consider to support your dancer’s passion.

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.

From pre-performance snacks to post-performance recovery, nutrition education is essential to a dancer’s training. But as I’ve discussed previously, dancers must juggle aspects of performance nutrition and meal planning, both of which can hover the realms of diet culture, with the goal of avoiding restrictive eating habits. To balance the importance of performance nutrition with the fundamentals of a non-diet lifestyle, we must recognize the tenth principle of intuitive eating: “gentle nutrition.”

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.

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.”

As a nutritionist for dancers, my work goes far beyond meal plans and portion guides. It’s about advocating for a healthier, more sustainable dance world— one where artistry isn’t sacrificed for body image, and well-being is prioritized alongside technique. I’ve made it my mission to help shift our industry away from outdated, harmful standards. So naturally, I was apprehensive when I hit “play” on Tiny Pretty Things. Here’s my review of the Netflix drama.

Most “Type A” dancers have something in common when it comes to his or her relationship with food. Especially for those with a sparked interest in nutrition: Type A dancers love sticking to safe foods. Often times, these are highly nutritious, plant-based, and minimally processed (like the ones I mentioned above).