If you’re afraid of eating more in order to get your menstrual cycle back, maybe you need to ask yourself why that is. Making a change is hard, even when it’s a good change. Sports nutrition and performance expert Rebecca McConville shares advice on working through what may be holding you back.

 

Read the transcript

[Tina] I’m just not prepared to gain weight or let go of restricting myself. What can I do?

[Becca]  Sit with that for a little bit. So ask yourself, what would it take for you to be comfortable with a changing body? And I don’t diminish that. Change is hard. Change is change. Whether we know it’s good or bad, that’s how our brain works. It doesn’t necessarily categorize what’s good or bad, it just can sense that there’s something different. And then I always think about the messages that we get from our culture, right? We’re taught, that thin idea is glamorized and that having a strict control over your body is a mark of health, when we’ve come to learn the exact opposite, that a lot of times that disconnects us from our body and not listening to what it needs. And I think the more that you’re able to express that, that helps you start to process what it is that has you hung up on that.

 What you might be potentially fearing, again, as I said in another video, is it a feeling or is it a fact? A lot of times there is a fear of facts around the change in the body, that they feel like might hinder their performance or hinder their relationship with their body, when in truth, it’s a feeling. And those feelings we can learn to work through. 

 [Tina]  I remember feeling this way, of kind of the warning signs coming in, that my relationship with my body was unhealthy and knowing that I was a train gonna crash at some point, but not being able to get there.  If you’re aware of this is that, even if you can’t start to do it yourself, is that a sign that start looking, be curious about who maybe you would go see? Or  where you would start?  I think for me, that’s where it began. I started just digging a little bit, even though I knew I wasn’t ready to take the step. It was just the curiosity of trying to rule things out.

 [Becca]  Absolutely, because curiosity again kind of keeps us connected. Sometimes we can have these thoughts and they’re not really our own, they’re just things that get kind of planted and I would love that question, “Do I know this to be true?” And if I don’t, where could I possibly find that fact or what could I experiment with, because especially in the world of sport, everybody’s an N equals one. We’re always trying to kind of jump into knowledge and categories are following those that are very influential in sport, but I’m sure you can allude to this, Tina, how many athletes can we think of that probably do some things that were unorthodox, but yet they perform at such a high caliber, so we can’t dismiss that. 

[Tina]  Yeah, so true. Thank you for that; that’s helpful.

check it out

Recovering from RED-S is hard. It’s even harder if you’re working through it alone. Even if you have professional support, they’re not available 24-7, and that can lead to going down search engine rabbit holes that have the potential to derail everything.

Our online resource, RED-S: Realize. Reflect. Recover, will answer all those questions swimming around in your head about recovery. It will give you the opportunity to connect with the experts you’ve come to know here, and to surround  yourself with a community of others who are going through it too. THANK YOU! to Athletic Greens and Tracksmith for supporting this YouTube series and RED-S: Realize. Reflect. Recover.

Go to athleticgreens.com/reds to get five free travel packs of AG1 and a free one year’s supply of vitamin D3+K2 with your subscription!

When you go to https://tracksmith.com/tina and use the code TINA15 at checkout, you’ll get free shipping and Tracksmith will donate 5% of your order to Rising Hearts, the Indigenous-led nonprofit founded by Jordan Marie Daniels.

more about becca:

Rebecca McConville, RD, LD, CSSD, CEDS, is a sports nutrition and performance expert who helps her clients explore and strengthen their relationship with food, weight, body image and sports performance. Her book, “Finding Your Sweet Spot,” helps athletes maximize their potential while avoiding the dangers of RED-S. You can find Becca at https://beccamcconville.com.

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