Episode 216: Your Gymnast Ate Breakfast, Lunch + a Snack…So Why Is She DONE by 6:30?

And I want to chat about why so many parents have a really hard time reconciling that their gymnast could be under fueled or is under fueled, even though it seems like they eat all the time.

And obviously, as parents, you're generally paying attention, right to what your children are eating, especially if they're an athlete, you care, you know, it's important, you're wanting to make sure they're eating enough.

And so when you're kind of sitting back and observing, you're like, wait, my gymnast is eating breakfast, I know she ate lunch at school, I brought her a snack before practice, and she might have even eaten the snack I gave her for practice.

But then practice starts at four and by 630 or seven, she's done her legs feel heavy, her Skills she had earlier in the week now aren't working right, and she's frustrated, emotional, and maybe even telling you that she feels weak.

And you're sitting there thinking, I don't understand.

She ate today.

It must be something else.

And honestly, nutrition is probably not even going through your head.

You're probably thinking about the coaching or the conditioning or her sleep or her mental block or is she getting sick, right? One of the most important and biggest misconceptions I hear from parents is I know she's not under fueled.

She eats, but I want you to hear me say that eating and adequately fueling a gymnast training 20 plus hours a week are not the same thing.

And if your gymnast consistently falls apart halfway through practice, I do not want you to automatically assume it's conditioning, it's motivation, it's strength or mental toughness.

Sometimes the problem showing up at 6 30 PM actually started at breakfast.

And a lot of times, parents will say, yes, my gymnast is eating breakfast, but breakfast is a bowl of cereal.

Or they'll say she's eating lunch, but then what they don't share is that lunch is coming home half eaten, right? Your gymnast only had a few bites of her sandwich.

She had two bites of her fruit.

She maybe ate her goldfish, but she didn't eat anything else that you packed.

Pre-workout, yeah, she might have a snack, but it's just a granola bar.

And so we're expecting her to go to perform for four to five hours in a high intensity sport like gymnastics, but meal frequency.

So whether or not she ate breakfast and lunch and snacks, like that doesn't tell us whether your gymnast is adequately fueled or not.

Three meals and three snacks sounds great, but I have a lot of questions about that.

I would literally want to visually see her meals and know how big are they? How much carbohydrate is there? How many calories are there? Did she actually eat what you packed? Or did she leave a few bites or leave half of it or leave all of it? How long is she going between her meals? Obviously, what is her training schedule? What are her nutrition needs? How is growth and development? Are we on track? Are we not? Are we going through puberty? Are we not? Are we coming back from injury? Is the body able to repair and recover? I don't just care whether or not your gymnast ate her meals and snacks.

I care about, and I want to know, is what she's taking in nutrition-wise actually calorically sufficient for for the work her body's doing today in the gym, for the ongoing costs of repair and recovery, and for the ongoing costs of growth and development.

And that is the number one thing that is overlooked when it comes to fueling pediatric and adolescent high-level gymnasts.