Athletes, Food & Fear of Weight Gain

As a sports nutritionist, I spend too many counseling hours resolving the weight concerns of athletic people. Females and males alike come to me trying to figure out how to lose weight. The “eat less and move more” paradigm doesn’t always work. Weight is more than a matter of will power. Despite restricting their food […]

Ten Things You Need to Know About Sports Nutrition

athletic woman eating bowl of fruit

He literally wrote the book on sports nutrition, now Dr. Dan Benardot shares ten crucial things that you need to know about nutrition for athletic performance. Ready to learn more? Check out ACSM’s Nutrition for Exercise Science, second edition! Dan Benardot, PhD, DHC, RDN, FACSM, is Teaching Professor in the Center for the Study of Human Health […]

Is Healthy Weight Gain in Athletes Realistic?

As a dietitian in the United States Army, many soldiers have sought nutritional advice from me with the goal of gaining muscle or bulking up before going to Ranger School. Many professional and recreational athletes likewise want to intentionally gain weight for reasons that include increased strength or power or being at a heavier body […]

Understanding the Energy Requirements of Paralympic Athletes

With the growing participation of athletes with disabilities in competitive sports, there is an increased need for specialized nutritional support tailored to their unique physiological differences. These athletes often exhibit distinct body compositions, metabolic rates, training loads and activity patterns compared to their peers without disabilities. Sports nutritionists, especially those working with Paralympic athletes, have […]

GSSI Webinar Q&A: An Update on Caffeine and Exercise Performance

Miss the webinar? Access it below. Webinar Recording Q: Do you know caffeine’s impact on the fascia I’ve seen some things saying caffeine has negative effects of fascia system? To be honest, I have not seen any peer-reviewed scientific papers on the effects of caffeine ingestion on fascia. Q: There has been a lot of […]

Dietary Nitrate and Women’s Athletic Performance: A Call for Further Research

Nitrate supplementation has consistently been shown to benefit exercise performance due to its capacity to increase nitric oxide (NO), a signaling molecule that plays an important role in skeletal muscle function during exercise. Once ingested, nitrate is converted to nitrite via anaerobic bacteria in the oral cavity and nitrite is converted to NO especially under conditions […]

GSSI Presented Webinar Q&A | The Female Athlete: Energy and Nutrition Issues

Miss the webinar? Access it below. Webinar Recording Q: In the carb loading studies, what method did they use to measure the glycogen stores? In the two studies described in the presentation muscle biopsies were used to measure muscle glycogen stores. The references for the two studies are listed below, if more information is required: Tarnopolsky […]

Optimal Race Weight for Endurance Sports: A Complex Issue

Sports performance is simple and definite. Someone wins, and someone else loses or comes second. Therefore, it is tempting to think in binary terms about other aspects of sports performance. The laws of physics predict that an increase in power-to-weight ratio will increase the speed of a body moving against gravity. If body fat (or […]