Are you eating well?
We are constantly bombarded with the focus of nutrition being, whether we look bikini-ready or do we fit into X-small leggings. Everything is aesthetics driven; therefore, it is no wonder we as women are constantly fighting to find the perfect diet and training regime that makes us look photoshoot-ready year round. What would happen if we instead focused on how our food made us feel and how well we functioned?
You see, our nutrition directly impacts our health; it fuels our brains, emotional well-being, and physical capabilities. It can even directly impact your ability to procreate. An optimal diet can even add ten years to our life expectancy!
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the importance of nutrition on our health, women are still being pressured into restrictive diets in order to conform to societal norms in ways that men are not. It’s not healthy to consume fewer calories than you need; it is not beneficial to cut out whole food groups (like removing carbs) or deprive yourself of certain foods you enjoy.
Making sure you are active and a healthy weight is essential for your overall health; being cover model ready year-round, looking like you have fallen from the cover of Vanity Fair, is not only an unrealistic goal for most women, it is an unhealthy goal to have. In this online capitalist society we live in, it is no surprise that different pills, potions and miracle elixirs are being shoved down our throats at every turn, playing on our insecurities that being online only helped to exacerbate in the first place.
Most of the nutritional advice we are given to enhance our body composition and performance comes from research conducted on men. Then, the results and subsequent recommendations were extrapolated for women. Given the biological differences between the
sexes, doesn’t this seem odd? As Dr Stacy Sims writes, “Women are not small men. Stop eating and training like one”.
At the Curve, we think it is vital to approach your diet and training routine with this in mind.
I list a few of the considerations to consider below.
1. During exercise, women tend to use more fats and fewer carbs to fuel their workouts. This fat-preferring physiology is even more pronounced during your cycle’s luteal phase. This means at this time, you will perform better with lower-intensity workouts and steady exercise rather than high-intensity workouts.
2. Prioritise carbohydrates and protein soon after finishing your workout to maximise recovery. At this time, you are primed to transport the carbs you eat straight into your muscle stores and shuttle amino acids into your muscles, where they can repair the damage and build you back stronger. As a woman, our recovery window to take advantage of all these benefits is short—about 30 minutes (whereas men may have up to 3 hours). Withholding recovery fuel can put your body in a catabolic state that stalls your recovery and dims your metabolism.
3. Active women are also more at risk of iron deficiency. Research shows that one in ten women will have anaemia at any point in time, and about a third of women suffer from anaemia at some point in their lifetime. Optimise your iron absorption by consuming your iron-rich foods with vitamin C-rich foods and avoiding taking them with foods that impair iron absorption (calcium-containing foods).
4. Women are more likely to reduce their calories/carbohydrates to dangerously low levels, which can directly impact their mental and physical health. For women, this also carries the risk of disrupting or completely stopping their menstrual cycle, which in turn will cause more hormonal disruptions. LEA or low energy availability caused by reducing calories too much can cause many health problems (depression, brain fog, depressed immunity, loss of libido, GI issues) and interfere with our ability to gain muscle. Reducing calories dangerously to attain a photoshopped figure is the quickest way to set yourself up for failure.
You can only be expected to be at the top of your game, whether in work, personal life or physically if you are fuelling yourself correctly. As women, we must adopt good eating habits that work with our physiology to support our goals.
If you are interested in learning more about how our programmes can help you balance your nutrition and help you achieve your goals. Book a free 15 minute Discovery Call with one of our Female Health Coaches today.