Improving Metabolic Efficiency Series (PART 1) I began talking about the importance of metabolic efficiency more than 5 years ago (back in 2017). At the time I held a number of workshops on the topic and planned to offer an online course that went into detail on how to become more metabolically efficient. Over the next few years, I went …
Sleep is an essential component of our health and well-being. There are significant impacts on physical development, emotional regulation, cognitive performance, and quality of life when we don’t sleep well. Sleep is also an integral part of the recovery and adaptive process between training sessions. We work so hard during training so shouldn’t we put that same effort into sleeping as well?
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that cognitive sports training can also play a role in sports performance enhancement. Cognitive sports training encompasses a broad range of mental tasks designed to improve various aspects of athletic performance. We’ve all had those moments when you didn’t think you could run one more step or lift one more rep but somehow you almost always area able to do so. So much of our sport performance is psychological, so it makes sense to support that aspect of your training as well.
In my day to day work, I often receive questions from clients that I think are just such good questions. And I have such fun answering them. I figured I might share a few with you today that are general enough I think you might also be interested in the answers to these questions… SUGAR – Question: I have a …
Have you noticed that your menstrual cycle affects your workouts, your hunger levels, and your sleep? I sure have, and as an athlete and sports nutritionist, I wanted to understand how best to train and nourish my body during each phase to achieve optimal training results. Understanding your cycle will allow you to adapt your training and eating to support your sport and athletic performance. In this week’s blog post, I will discuss how to do this based on the role of each hormone and when it is dominant.
We know that how you train and nourish your body plays a huge part in how well you adapt and ultimately perform. But did you know that those factors also affect your gut microbiome, and why should we worry about that? Well, your gut microbiome influences sleep, mood, body composition, absorption of nutrients, inflammation, our immune system and so much more. You work really hard during training and want to make advantageous adaptions to improve sport performance, and supporting your microbiome is an integral part of that.
I contemplated quite a bit about how to begin this blog post. Speaking about injuries can be a sensitive subject for many runners, myself included. So, I decided to set for a long run a few weekends ago, and let my thoughts come to me organically. I was running along a beautiful river, here in Colorado, and noticed the movement …
With the decline of estrogen overall during perimenopause, we also have reduced anabolic stimulus for building lean muscle mass and bone density. So along with increase visceral fat deposition there is less hormonal drive to build and maintain lean muscle mass. But luckily, we already know that we have strength training methods and strategies to help with building and maintaining lean muscle mass and bone density. To set ourselves up well for the decline in our hormones and to have a plan to support our bodies once those hormones flatline, we need to look at how to use nutrition and nutrition timing in conjunction with strength training.
No matter where you are in your menopause journey, we can look at strength training in the same way. If you still have some hormones, even though they are fluctuating and declining [or perhaps you have chosen to use menopausal hormone therapy (MTH)] it is important to remember that you still need exercise stress and a protein to actually stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Let’s discuss how to utilize different training modalities to build and maintain lean muscle mass and bone density during perimenopause and beyond.
Hi, are you like me, wondering why your midsection is expanding and why you’re having trouble hitting performance targets? I know that I train hard, eat well and do my best to get sleep, minus a few TikTok rabbit holes every once in a while. So, what’s going on? I decided to do some research and it appears that I’m …
