Episode 209: How to Schedule Meals and Snacks for Back-to-School

And I'll give you a good example.

If your gymnast doesn't wake up on time and doesn't have time for breakfast, they don't eat breakfast, they then go to school and they may or may not have a mid-morning snack.

And so then their first meal of the day is lunch.

And then they have a pre-workout snack, then they go to gym, then they have dinner, and then they have a bedtime snack.

With that pattern right there, it's hard to get enough nutrition in them.

They're probably going to fall short in terms of their overall calorie needs.

And even if they were able to fit in all their calories, let's say they just eat a massive post-workout dinner and they're just snacking the entire rest of the evening, that is not optimal for repair recovery and for body composition.

That's actually something that we call within-day energy balance, where they've done research studies where people have eaten the same amount of calories on two different days and Day one, the calories are evenly distributed with meals and snacks throughout the day.

And day two, they save all of them up for the afternoon and evening, which is very common for adults even, right? Like we wake up, we don't want breakfast, we go to work, we're stuck in meetings, you then have a salad for lunch because you're trying to be healthy.

And then when you get home at four or five o'clock, it's just like nonstop snack fest all night, right? That is not optimal for anyone.

And it's certainly not optimal for a gymnast.

And the bigger problem besides just that body composition piece is if your gymnast wakes up and does not have enough at breakfast, if she doesn't have enough protein to restart repair and recovery, if she doesn't have enough carbs to start refueling her muscles, we are going to be the barrier to her body actually optimally repairing and recovering, not just from the training the day before, but actually the two previous workouts, your body or gymnast body is constantly trying to repair and recover.

And it does that for up to 48 hours post workout.

And so I cannot stress this enough.

And I know some of you have gymnasts that they are up before the alarm clock.

They don't need any help.

They're downstairs, you know, they're waiting for breakfast.

They make breakfast themselves, right? Like I know for some of you, this is not a problem.

Um, I also know for others of you, and this is probably even variation within your own household, you may have a gymnast where they snooze their alarm three times.

You're yelling at them four times to get out of bed.

This is how it was with me and my sister.

My parents literally had to go into her room so many times to try and get her awake versus I was already out of bed and making my own breakfast and didn't even need an alarm clock.

And so regardless of where your gymnast falls and all of that, If we don't start the day with breakfast, we are getting in the way of repair recovery.

We are not going to be fueled going into the workout that morning or that afternoon.

They're going to have a hard time focusing in school.