94: Recovery As A Plant-Based Athlete

In this episode of the Female Athlete Nutrition podcast, I talk with a client of mine, Alli Armstrong. We hear how Alli found Rise Up Nutrition through this podcast, finding herself resonating with the stories shared and topics discussed. Alli opens up about her spiral into disordered eating, orthorexia, and over-exercising while studying nutrition in college and in yoga training. Growing up as a dancer, Alli shares how the culture of certain body ideals and “lighter is better” followed her as she began running and triathlon. Increasing her training coupled with restricting her intake to only “clean” foods led Alli to requiring inpatient eating disorder treatment. She speaks to her experiences and how that higher level of care was what she needed at the time. Alli and I discuss her diagnosis of orthorexia, an obsession with healthy eating, and signs of energy deficiency she noticed in everyday life: Alli was able to push her body to train for a marathon but had no energy left for the rest of the day. We hear how Alli transitioned from inpatient treatment to our Rise Up Nutrition Female Athlete System of Transformation (FAST Track) program, looking to learn how to fuel as an athlete as well as a whole person. We talk about her personal struggles with exercise and training, wanting to do more, and how she benefited from the accountability provided by the Rise Up Nutrition program and community.  Alli chooses to eat a mostly plant-based diet, and we hear about how this choice fuelled her restrictive eating disorder. Through our FAST Track program and working 1-on-1 with our other amazing sports dietitian, Jenna Stranzl, Alli learned to fuel her body properly on a plant-based diet. She shares how she optimizes her nutrition today, and the importance of freeing yourself from rigid labels and messaging promoted by some vegan communities. Alli and I talk about adopting a flexible mindset and dealing with challenging food situations when eating out. Alli has been able to slowly increase her exercise and build a healthier mindset around movement as she began fuelling appropriately. Alli shares about her goals of completing half- and full Ironman triathlons, and why she is taking a long-term approach to her goals to ensure she reaches them healthy and injury-free: nutrition is part of the training! Learn more about Lindsey's Services and the Team at Rise Up Nutrition: www.riseupnutritionrun.com Worried that you have RED-S? Curious to know how we could help or how you can recover fast?! Download the RED-S Recovery Race & see how you place for more support:www.riseupnutritionrun.com/reds