Welcome back to the raising unstoppable girl athletes podcast. This is a special athlete tip podcast, episode athletes. On these special tip episodes, I bring you tangible ways that you can increase your confidence level up in your play. And also like today, just practical tips on how to be the best athlete that you can be. So in this episode, we are talking all things, nutrition and how to fuel before and after games. So specifically answering that question that I get all the time. What should I eat before I go out and compete so that I can play my best? What should I be eating afterwards so I can recover. So I actually bring in Amy Dirks, she is a registered sports dietician. Who's going to talk all about what you should be prioritizing in that pregame or pre-competition meal and what you can be prioritizing after you compete so that you can play your best. So I can't wait for you to get into that before we do I want to give a shout out to an athlete in our community. That's experiencing some wins as she is going through our signature and mental training program, the elite competitor program. So Hudson is the athlete that I am giving a shout out today. Hudson, if you're listening, I hope you know how awesome you are. She texted me the other day and said, Hey, ECP is going really well. I actually used some of the breathing techniques from last week's trainings during my pole vault. And they were super helpful. And this is actually one of the two athletes that I heard from just recently that we're talking specifically about the breathing exercises that we teach inside the program. So. If you're like most athletes, you potentially feel a little bit like anxious or nervous before you compete. And if you don't have any skills or any tools to be able to handle some of that anxiety and those nerves, it can be kind of scary and it can also impact how you show up and how you play. So it was really cool is that Hudson learned, we have actually eight breathing techniques that we teach inside the program. So she used one of these. I'm not sure exactly which one she used, but like box breathing is an example of one and sounds like it really helped her during her competition. So good job Hudson for not only learning that, but also applying it and getting some great results from it. Alright, athletes. I'm excited for you to listen to this episode. I'm actually going to hand it off to Amy. She's going to be talking all about how you can fuel yourself to play your best and compete your best before and after you compete. Enjoy this episode. I'll see you in the next one.

Hey there, I'm Amy Dirks, a sports dietician nutritionist, and I wanted to answer a couple questions that I get asked often. One of them being, how should I feel before and between games? So first, let's talk about the before games. Typically, you're going to have your largest meal before an event about four hours prior to. Now, if you have a early morning event, then that might look a little different, right? You just wanna make sure you get something in the tank to fuel yourself. But if you have that four hours, then you're going to want to build your performance plate. And I try to keep this as simple as possible for athletes. The way you build a performance plate is that you take the plate, whatever it is, you divide it in half and half of it should be some of your favorite vegetables. You know, maybe it's a salad, maybe it's some mixed vegetables that you roasted. The other half is going to be divided in half further. So you have a fourth that is your protein source. And I'm speaking to those of you that are more carnivores than vegetarians obviously. So that's kind of a different that that performance plate might look a little different, but you have a fourth of it as your protein source, and then you have a fourth of it as your starer. Type carbs such as sweet potato or maybe your wild rice or brown rice or quinoa or a regular potato. Now, don't feel like you have to stay confined within, okay, so if I'm eating in the morning, I have to eat breakfast foods or if I'm eating mid-afternoon, it has to be like lunch or dinner type foods because that's just not the case. You can. whatever works for your body and whatever you feel like in that moment as long as you're, you're providing the components that your, your body needs, which is those complex carbs. Again, like your rices, quinoas sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, maybe it's squashes, and then your, your lean protein. So more Turkey. Salmon chicken. One thing I do tell athletes to avoid prior to a big game is beef. Grass-fed beef definitely has its time and place for athletes if, if you do eat beef, but it takes a long time to digest. So it's better to save the, the beef for maybe as your recovery meal after the fact, or a meal that you have on. an off day. So keep that in mind. Beef takes a long time to digest in the gut, so it could kind of slow you down a little bit. When you have too much food in the gut that your body's working so hard to digest, you know all the blood is going to your stomach, and when you're playing soccer or basketball or volleyball or whatever your sport is, you want all that blood flowing to those muscles to work for your muscles. Some other ideas of what could be a good pre-game meal four hours prior to could just be something as simple as grilled chicken, a baked sweet potato, and a cup of roasted vegetables. Maybe it's it's fish instead of chicken and you have quinoa. You have a side salad of spinach and, and maybe a, a three-four cup of fruit like pineapple. If it's more breakfast based, you could do like oatmeal with and you can always cook your oatmeal in like almond milk if you want a little extra calories or just water. And then add like a trail mix to it or add some almond butter and some blueberries. Or any nuts and seeds that would, would give it a little more protein and fat. And then maybe have like a little bit of fruit or some a drink of OJ with it. An egg omelet or frittata is also a great option. Or even just having scrambled eggs with, with spinach, you know, cooked in or maybe some mushrooms or onions granola is also a pretty high energy dense type food. There are some not so great granolas out there, so making your own or finding a good brand of granola that doesn't have a lot of added arfi artificial ingredients would be a good idea as well. So those are some, you can also do a Taco bowl. most, That I've met Love Chipotle. And so that was always something that we tried to replicate so that you could have that type of meal as well. And you could just do ground chicken or shredded chicken instead of beef or ground Turkey. Some corn could be like your starchier carb non GMO corn, preferably. And, or some brown rice or wild rice or even white rice before a match thrown in some veggies with that as well, like, you know, peppers and onions and maybe some lettuce, a little bit of avocado as your fat, some salsa's gonna be good as well. So the main thing though is never eat. Or supplement with something that you haven't had prior to game day. So I just had an athlete this weekend that ate a fiber bar. Before one of our matches, and this was an all day volleyball tournament and her stomach was killing her after that. And she literally had to go to the bathroom several times. And I asked her if she had ever eaten that before and she said no. And so that is one of the first rules is if you're going to try a new food of any sort, make sure that it's on a practice day, not on game. between games. So you can always top off that pre-game meal right before you play about an hour even 30 minutes prior to, but you don't want anything heavy. Of course, you could do like a few bites of trail mix, maybe a trail mix that you make yourself. It can be some, some grapes and a handful of nuts or a piece of Turkey, maybe a banana with apple butter. And you can drizzle a little honey on there for a little bit of extra glucose applesauce with collagen protein powder mixed in. I've had people who can tolerate dairy cottage cheese with some fruit or even tomatoes that sometimes is a good one. Gluten-free pretzels with hummus. Again, as long as you are used to having some fiber, because since hummus is made from garbanzo beans, it's going to have a little bit more fiber. So, or maybe you just have a couple energy balls, like, you know, two protein balls and, and that's all you have is your pregame snack At halftime. Let's say you have a halftime, or maybe it's sometime during a long match or or game, you can always kind of re. During, it doesn't just have to be water or like an electrolyte drink. It can also be orange slices, it can be frozen grapes. It can be a, a little bit more of like an applesauce packet or half of a fruit bar or maybe a couple dates or figs that you just pop in your mouth. So again, it can look different for everyone cuz everyone has their preferences and what kind of works for them. Quick snacks. Again, it doesn't have to be snack foods, right? So you can use hard boiled eggs as a snack. You can use a good brand of beef jerky. You can do any veggie sticks like carrots, bell peppers, celery and again, dip those in hummus or guacamole. Trail mixes are great. Trail mixes have all the macros in'em, so they're gonna have some carbohydrates from your dried fruits, or maybe there's some dark chocolate in there. You're gonna have good fats from your nuts and seeds. And then also those provide some protein as well. So those, that's a good snack for pre, during post recovery because it has all of those. Again, like your natural peanut butters, almond butters with, with fruit, those work really well. Greek yogurts, coconut yogurts with fruit. Those are good. Snacks, maybe adding a little cinnamon in there, or even some extra honey or maple syrup. If you get the plain kind the plain kind is the best for you cuz it has the least amount of sugar. But there are some okay flavored ones as well. Any, there's a lot of protein bars, a lot of energy bars like Chis bars, la bars, perfect bars. those can be decent for you as well. You can't go wrong with, with your fresh fruits. Maybe you have a little coconut or shredded coconut with those because that's a really healthy fat. You can do like Turkey rollups or lettuce rollups. You can do olives. You can do kale chips. You can do smoked salmon with cucumber slices salsa with a handful of tortilla chips. Shrimp cocktail peanut butter crackers, like using gluten-free crackers and natural peanut butter. Popcorn with, with some nuts on the side. There's lots of options, you know, for snacks. And more and more we have convenience snacks, right? So just be careful with what those ingredients are. Make sure they're not using a lot of like bad fats, like trans fats and canola oil, vegetable oils, those aren't great for you. And then tons of artificial ingredients. Make sure you can pronounce and know what those ingredients are. And then, let's see, the last question was anything I should avoid? We've kind of already talked about that. Nothing new on those days. And then just watching if you have a steak or a burger of some sort that maybe it's after the fact and not beforehand.

Athletes. I hope that tip was helpful to you and something that you can utilize. Right away. Remember that these athlete tips are for you to help you level up, play with confidence and compete to your potential. You got this, I believe in you. I'll see in the next episode.