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WHEN I FIRST started working as a nutritionist in elite sport
over a decade ago, the most common thing I would hear from
athletes was: ‘James, I’m here because Coach says I need to
lose weight.’
Fortunately things have moved on just a little since then.
Nutrition has become an integral part of every professional
sports organisation, an area of substantial investment for the
leading teams. We work within the sports medicine and science
teams to produce nutrition plans that give the athletes the best
chance of success when it matters most. We help them fuel
their bodies in harmony with their training and competition
schedules, boost their energy levels, recover effectively from
regularly putting their bodies on the line and maintain a robust
immune system.
And outside of sport, ‘weight loss’ (or, as we should say,
reducing body fat) might be the reason many of us first start
looking at our nutrition, but there’s much more to it than that
now. As a nation we are more engaged with the nutrition
advice and information that fills the pages of newspapers,
lifestyle websites and social-media feeds than ever before. But
the pressure to constantly look good means that there is often
a trade-off with energy levels, mood and productivity each day. |
