Body Image in Sport: What Athletes Get Wrong About Weight & Performance with Sports Dietitian Adena Neglia

Body image isn’t just a “women’s issue” or something that affects aesthetic sport. It shows up across all athletes, from elite professionals to everyday runners.

In this episode, I’m joined by sports dietitian Adena Neglia, who’s worked with elite teams like the Brooklyn Nets and New York City Ballet, to unpack the complicated relationship between body image, fueling, and performance.

We dive into why athletes are uniquely vulnerable to body image struggles, how one small comment from a coach can stick for years, and why the belief that “leaner = faster” isn’t backed by science. Adena also shares what she’s seeing behind the scenes with elite athletes and how it’s not so different from what everyday runners experience.

If you’ve ever thought, “I’d be faster if I just lost a few pounds,” this episode is a must-listen.

Apply to work with Natalie for 1-on-1 nutrition coaching! 

Have questions or want to request a show topic? DM us @greenletes

Check out Natalie's book 📕: Planted Performance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi everyone, welcome to the Green Leaks Podcast. I'm your host, Natalie Rizzo, and I have an awesome guest today, a fellow dietician, Adina Neglia, who has a really unique background. She was a competitive figure skater for a long time, and she has worked with elite athletes like the Brooklyn Nets and the American Ballet Association. And I really wanted to chat with her about body image in sports. So, Adina, welcome. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. I kind of gave your background a little bit, but do you want to go a little more into, you know, you as an athlete and then also what you do now? Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah. So I, when I was younger, my parents started me off probably at like three or two or three years old, like getting into dance or like figuring out what I wanted to do. And I thought dance was boring, then I thought gymnastics was boring. And then my dad took me figures like ice skating one day. And I was like, oh, this is challenging. Like this is really fun. And that went into early mornings of like four to 4 30 a.m. wake ups, getting to the rink, training, competitions. And yeah, it was a huge, huge part of my life, huge part of my childhood. I actually went on to compete on the collegiate team in college. I wasn't ready to like let it go quite yet. So yeah, uh a big, a big part of of why I do what I do as well, being an athlete. And I think being in that environment in terms of like, you know, figure skating. And I feel like the stereotypical kind of thought process around like thinking about body image and food is like figure skating, just XM Ballet. And, you know, it is for a reason. It's just what that atmosphere was like. So it really led me to be curious about okay, what is actually the correct way to fuel my body and seeing other people do things that were more harmful to their health and people having to leave skating because of their eating disorders really just like kind of got me really, you know, thinking in terms of nutrition and psychology around that. But anyway, so I went to school. I graduated with a degree in nutrition. I became a registered dietitian. And shortly after that, I kind of went directly into private practice, which is the opposite of what I feel like most dietitians wind up doing, is usually like maybe some type of clinical, but I really wanted to do private practice. And from there I started working with the New York American Ballet Theater and a lot of athletes in my practice, along with clients with eating disorders or disordered eating. In 2019, I wound up working with the Brooklyn Nets for five seasons, which was a really, really cool experience. Um, and it's been various teams since then. I'm I'm more so actually in the female athlete space now, which is I think where I'm I was more meant to be, but currently working in women's soccer. I'm working with the New York City ballet. I've done actually some body image training for US figure skating and uh women's hockey, which is really exciting. Our team just played for the first time at Madison Square Garden. So really cool to be a part of the women's sports as it grows.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, that's awesome. And actually, as I was reading your bio, we went to the same grad school. I went to Columbia and got my you were in teachers college? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, me too. Um, I graduated in 2015. I don't know if I was before or after you.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

We might have crossed paths. Let me think. I think I I might have finished there, I want to say like 2012, because then I think my dietetic internship I did my dietetic internship after grad school. So I think I graduated from that in like 2013, 2014. Technically still enrolled because I still had to do, I guess, my thesis at the time. So like I finished my internship, finished my thesis at Columbia. So I think my actual graduation date was maybe like 2013.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah, it's funny because I oh I feel like I meet a lot of dietitians in New York City who have gone there and I had no idea. But yes, it's and they have a sports nutrition program, which I was just talking to someone yesterday about how a lot of schools still don't have that. It's very unique for dietitians to be able to study sports nutrition. And I feel like most sports dietitians I talked to were athletes as kids and kind of got into it in that capacity because they wanted to learn more about fueling. And now I think it's more prevalent that younger athletes will have access to a dietitian, but back then that was not a thing at all.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

No, I've never heard of a sports dietitian until like I maybe when I graduated college. I don't even know. Um, but that wasn't that wasn't a thing. So it's really cool to see how the sport has, I'm not the sport, how the um field has grown. I even think back to when I started with the Brooklyn Nets in 2019, not every team had a dietitian. And I don't think anyone was full-time. Five years later, when I left, just about every team had a full-time dietitian.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah, it's great. It's been great to see that in the 10 years that I've been a dietitian as well, that that's becoming more prevalent and common, which I feel like is amazing. And also we're seeing those dietitians featured in the media a little more. I recently just saw, I can't remember exactly what it was. It was like a certain team that was like, here's the day in the life of our dietitian and what they actually do. And it was so cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

But um I wonder like this the devil when the devils did it with Amy Martinez.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yes, I think that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, it was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Small world, but like Amy, I was working with the Devils, and at the time I was also working with the Nets, and the Devils went from their first dietitian ever, which was me, um, like maybe three and a half hours a week, to okay, we're ready for full time. And I was like, I can't do both. So I helped them with the interview process. Amy was the sports dietitian at Columbia, and then she came, I know, but it's like such a small world. So it really is. We worked together for a bit with the Devils, and then, you know, I moved on and she took over full time. So I was so excited to see that the other day. I posted it on my story.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

I was like, this is amazing. It's so cool, and I love it. And I hope everyone, I mean, a lot of people listening here aren't dietitians, but they're athletes and they're interested in this. And I think that they should know that like fueling is becoming more common. So probably if you're listening, you're you want to fuel. But since we're kind of talking about body image stuff here, I the reason that I propose this topic to you was because of your figure skating background and because of your work with ballet dancers. I know that that's a huge topic that comes up a lot. I remember early in my career, someone who was a competitive, I don't know if you call it a competitive ballet dancer, but like a perform she performed. Professional came to me and wanted to basically lose weight, and she was already almost like a hundred pounds. And it was just not I ended up referring her out because I didn't think that I was equipped to deal with whatever was going on there. But I know that that's so common. And it was because her coach or her teacher was telling her that she had to lose weight, which sounds insane, but I know that that also happens too. So I guess my first question is just about like what are your experiences with body image in these types of sports?

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, I think the first thing that I've realized now working across a variety of sports, both male and female, is body image, we'll call them body image issues or concerns exist across all sports and all genders. Um, and I think it's definitely when we're thinking about sports, right? Our body is our tool, it's our instrument. So it is often going to be part of the conversation. Uh, and as you said, there's some people that go about it in a way that can definitely be more harmful than helpful. Unfortunately, coaches, even parents, including not just their sport coach, but maybe strength and conditioning, there are these comments that I'm sure you've heard like into our office, they're sometimes stuck on like this comment that my coach said to me five years ago, right? And then that started all of my eating concerns and all of my. So it could be as small as that one little comment that you think is just harmless or that is going to be somehow motivating that then triggers them to question themselves in their body. And we start young in sports usually. So it's also a time where there's so much growth and development happening that I also see a lot of people getting stuck, especially when you're thinking about gymnastics, figure skating, and dance, where they're performing in a certain body and they want to maintain that even though their body's trying to grow, right? Because there's there's just so much around like keeping the body small, even though that's not exactly what's going to help with performance. It's a big misconception.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah. And I I also think with the sorry, the performance aspect of things, people do think lighter is better. Like light, lighter, leaner, because I deal with runners a lot. So race weight comes up a lot and they think that that's better, but that's not the case all the time.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah. And I often tell people like, find me the literature and the evidence that says that that's gonna help, right? When you look up, there's a really good kind of graphic. Um, and I'll I could maybe send it to you. Um, it's called the 40 factors, um, and it's all the factors that affect performance. While like weight and body composition are in there as one of the 40, there are 40 other things. So it's like, are you not jumping the same because, you know, you don't have enough strength in your legs because you've been underfueling, or did you not sleep well? Or, you know, there's so many other factors that go into performance that it's almost ridiculous for us to focus in on one part.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, I'm sure. And I feel the same. I have always said, like, I don't know that being lighter leads you to perform better in any capacity. I've never seen any studies on that. And what I do is try to always be science-based. I'm sure, you know, I'm sure that there's anecdotes of someone who lost 20 pounds and gained a lot of muscle and, you know, increased their performance. And that does happen, but that's not everyone. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

And especially for like the athlete that's been in the sport for a really long time. So yeah, no, absolutely. It's just, it's something that, again, in sports, we're going to discuss bodies, but it's not just the body weight and the composition that's going to impact performance.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah. Why do you think it is that athletes are so uniquely vulnerable to this body image struggle?

SPEAKER_01 10:45

I think I think there's a couple of things from more of like a personality standpoint, although I think it does affect everybody because we all have a body, we all have different feelings about our body, how we feel in it, how we feel about it, how we see it. But a lot of times, like serious athletes can tend to be perfectionists. So when they're perfecting their sport and they're trying to perfect their body and they want every outcome to be great, they're willing to, you know, sacrifice certain things to do that. I think it's also, and and this might be more in the dance and skating realm, and probably even just female sports, to be honest. We want to be coachable. We want to be likable. So if someone of authority is telling us, or, you know, you're looking sluggish or you're too, you know, you need to lean up or, you know, or puts out this idea of what an ideal body type for the sport would be, we're much more likely to internalize that because not only do we want to just be coachable and likable and agreeable, we wanna, yeah, please, please our coach and do the best that we can in our sport. So I think there's that. And I think it's very interesting because there's some athletes that I speak to that feel confident in their body image in their sport, but they don't outside of their sport. So for an example, I had a gymnast or an even a dancer that's like, I love my muscles when I'm doing my activity, doing my sport, but I feel really self-conscious when I'm at school with my peers in the lunchroom and my muscles are out. Um, and then even flip aside that because it it happens to, you know, men as well, where like, again, I think of like gymnastic sports and dance, where it's not only the only one, but feeling like they maybe don't have as much of like, because I get athletes from every place. It's like, I want the biggest muscles in the world, I want to be super lean so I could jump. So it's like when they're feeling smaller in their sport, they feel good in their sport, but then they're self-conscious when they go out into the real world because they're not big and tall and broad and muscular. So it's an interesting thing with body image with athletes, depending on what they're in. But yeah, I think it's like there's this perfectionism, there's this ability to sacrifice, not just like maybe you're like being as social as you normally would be as a teenage athlete, or you know, they're not probably drinking and partying. Like there's a lot of like life, not that you need to do that for life, but like life sacrifices that they're just okay, I'll do everything that I can, or anything that my coach thinks I should do. Or if you're just seeing people in the sport that are excelling, you're thinking, okay, I need to look like them, do what they're doing, eat like them, warm up like them. So I think it just makes us makes athletes more vulnerable.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And I think it's interesting because you clearly work with very elite athletes, but I also come from the other side of it where I'm working with everyday athletes, but they're still athletes. Like they're people who training for marathons and have nine to five jobs. And and I still think that there's body image things that come into play there. I can tell you from my own perspective. Like I'm have two kids, you know, I'm not the same weight I was before having kids. Sometimes I look at other runners and I'm like, how are they so fid? And, you know, it does get in your head, and maybe it's just because we live in a diet culture society type of thing. But I've also heard it from, I mean, I worked with a woman recently who was in perimenopause and her body was changing and she hated that. And it's hard. Like I think it's it it affects everyone. And I love athletes because they are very in tune with their body, but sometimes that could be a detriment.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think, I think one thing that's important for people to realize is I think we don't have everybody is going to have everybody has their own body image, right? And it's on a spectrum and it can kind of move and shift from negative to positive, depending on so many different things. But there's probably not one person in the world that wakes up every day, looks in the mirror, and be like, I love what I see. This is amazing. I am amazing. I love how I love my body, right? I think it's gonna ebb and flow. And I and I to make it more realistic for people, I say, at the very least, we want some body neutrality, right? Where you are not beating yourself up or sacrificing health or mental or physical over how you feel in your body, how you look in your body. So none of us are immune to having the ups and downs of body image. It's just when it gets to the extremes that it's affecting how you move in the world and think about yourself and your self-esteem and then therefore performance that it becomes an issue. So I think it's like we all want to feel really good. And when we do have that, that's great. But if we can, you know, have some neutrality at the very least around it, I think that's a win.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Absolutely. And I'm sure that you've worked with some athletes of these professionals like the Nats or the Devils who come to you and say, you know, I want bigger muscles, or not, not in those simple terms. But and then I assume that you probably helped them get that and work towards that.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, that one is more it's interesting because everybody's so different in terms of like how your body is going to change and shift. It's never like, oh, I want a bigger bicep. It's like, okay, we're gonna eat this and it's gonna write to your body, you know? So it's, you know, it's more so like kind of getting when they do approach me with something like that. And, you know, talking about basketball or even hockey, a lot of guys do want to have more mass on them because it's a contact sport and they want to be able to be strong against their opponent. Or and I've had a lot of people that one of the goals was to put on muscle mass and put on some weight. Yes, that is something that we can definitely work towards. Genetics are genetics, also. Like we have to take all of that into account. And I I think of one person in particular that I I always felt for because his body type was just not the type to put on massive amounts of muscle, but he was getting so much pressure from the organization to develop that muscle. And it was just like, you know, there's there's only so much you can do with genetics in the way and and either either direction.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Oh yeah, no. And I've said that before in the past when people come to me uh in in interviews or whatever, talking about weight loss and comparing themselves to other people and ask like people will, you know, as dietitians will ask you, like, what do you eat? How do you stay so fit? And I'm like, one, my mom is five foot and my dad is five five. So I am five three and I am just a small body frame, and I always have been. So that's like just the way I was born. And I can recognize that, but not, but you know, I have friends who are five ten and they are much bigger, and that's just how it is. Like, we can't change how we were born and the size of our parents.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Exactly. Exactly. And it's, you know, we could eat, like even you and I could eat the same exact way and do the same exercise, and we're still gonna look completely different. And that's what I always tell some of my younger, you know, younger clients as well. Like they're looking, they're comparing on whatever Instagram, TikTok. And it's like, even if you follow what that person does exactly, which is probably not entirely accurate from an online perspective, um, and probably also not healthy because most of these people are not experts, you're not gonna wind up looking like that. You know, you're you and our our bodies are our home, and we've got to figure out how to take care of it in our own unique way.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

That's such a great point. And I had a question about social media and how it influences body image, but you kind of just said it. Basically, people are coming to you with things they see on social media, and you're telling them that's not even realistic.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah. I owe it so there was a study done like months ago, maybe last year or the year before, that basically said less than 2% of the nutrition information on TikTok was accurate, which is so believable because I TikTok, I always feel like it's gonna make me really angry to go on there. Um, and I'm not ready to like have a social media platform and like debunk a bunch of things. It's just not not on my bingo card this year. But it's yeah, I, you know, Instagram, TikTok, even YouTube. There's so many people like follow me in a day in the life. I'm gonna be healthy now and I'm gonna start my exercise routine and you know, X, Y, and Z. But I always tell people like, you don't know what happens behind closed doors. And I also think there was a vegan, famous vegan influencer, like years ago, probably like 10, 12 years ago, when like Fitzpo was in style, whatever that that was. And she was promoting her vegan diet and her recipes, and she had so many followers, she was probably selling a program. And it came out years or months later that she had an eating disorder, that she was severely malnourished. And then even at some point, and maybe she was trying to recover, she was actually eating meat most of the time. So it's like I always like don't believe everything that you see, right? And again, you don't know what's going on behind closed doors. Maybe this person ate a salad with grilled chicken for lunch and a yogurt cup with a banana for breakfast, but maybe they were starving and they have, you know, they went and had a whole pizza for dinner because obviously you're gonna be hungry if you only ate that. So we don't see the behaviors, we don't see what's really going on behind the scenes, and to take something online at face value is just not helpful.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

100%. And I I'm also not on TikTok because I feel I'm too old for it at this point. But I have been doing more YouTube lately, uh, putting obviously this podcast out on things. And it's funny because sometimes the comments you get from YouTube, someone recently commented on, because I'm plant-based, saying something like, oh, you must only eat trees. And I just laughed. But, you know, if I was a younger self and I had a body image issue, that may get to me. And you have to kind of consider that when it comes to social media, that that like it can affect how you feel about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

I always say, like, I don't think I would have survived with social media when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Like, I just I don't think I would have made it. I know, I know. It's like really makes mental health very important now because it's it's rough out there sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah, it's super rough, I feel, for kids. And you know, a lot of times with my younger clients, I'm like, let's do a social media purge. Like, let's go through and like if you're watching something and it triggers you in some way, immediate unfollow. Right? No matter what it is, like it may and makes you want to change the way you're eating or it makes you feel better about your body. If it's your friend and you feel bad unfollowing them and you really don't want to do it, mute them. Whatever it is to help protect your mental health around this, especially if you're struggling with it in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

That's so great to hear because I don't think people realize even what dietitians do sometimes. These are some of the things behind the scenes that are happening. If you meet with a dietitian, it's not just like putting together a meal plan for you. It's sometimes talking about these things and realizing that it's external factors that are maybe coming into how you feel yourself. It's not always just following a prescriptive meal plan.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah. And it you know, nutrition is is also it's behavioral, it's emotional. We all have a relationship with food in our body. It's really not serving anybody if we're not also addressing if there is any body image issues or um. you know, food issues, right? So it's it's kind of like sometimes I, you know, I don't cross the line in any way out of the scope of practice, but it's sort of like nutrition therapy, right? And, you know, body image goes sometimes hand in hand with our work. So yeah, it's it's a lot more than just sometimes I don't even have a full meal plan with somebody because we're just not ready for that yet. Um, you know, and that's why I love what they did with Amy with the Devils because everybody asked me like, why do you travel with the team? Like what do you do on game day? Like what's the point of having you there? And it's like when you see all that stuff laid out, it's like, oh, that dietitians like we have like five jobs.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I I interviewed two of the dietitians who went to the Olympics with the Olympic team and they were telling me how one of them packed a suitcase, it was like 50 pounds full of snacks and things because you can't trust what's there. I mean, this is different because you're going to a different country and whatever, but there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes in terms of if you are an elite athlete. But I also think with body image there's a there's a spectrum, right? So there's people who have eating disorders, there's disordered eating, and then there's just people who are maybe underfueling, which is kind of what I deal with I still come up against people who don't want to include added sugar in their diet. Yeah. When I'm telling them to take in gels or gummies or things like that. So how do you how do you navigate all of that in your work with clients? Maybe they're just underfueling. How do you kind of get them to see the light?

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yeah, you know, gosh, our job is such an uphill battle. I say this every day. Because it's also like when we do, you know, recommend some of those things that won't be in like diet culture's realm of like healthy with things like maybe the honey stingers or the gels and sports drinks. My gosh, you talk about a sports drink and parents go crazy. But it's like there's a reason behind these things. These are you know based in science and something that's going to help your sport. There's a there's a time and place for all foods and all things and especially when we're trying to be strategic with performance. So when I have someone pushing back, you know, maybe they're really valuing their health and they're getting information from different places that are not giving them the correct information. But you know people are like, oh, should I not have sugar? Should I not have dairy? Should I not, you know so I think even the average person can just get caught up in that and maybe unintentionally be underfueling. So you know I I just try to provide education like kind of get more curious about where did you hear that from you know what what is your concern around that and just try to educate and answer those questions. And a lot of the time when I do that, they're like, okay. And if they're not actually covering up an eating disorder or disordered eating, they will happily go ahead and try it. But it is one way to see if there's any flags there that are more instead of unintentional underfueling, more intentional underfueling.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned where people are getting their information. Do you find I know that this was prevalent in the past do you find that coaches, teammates, people like that giving nutrition advice to other athletes 100% like is it not is it not has it gotten better than it was in the past or is it kind of like more of the same of a lot of misinformation?

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I want to say it has gotten a little bit better. I've been involved in a series where um I've been helping to coach coaches or bring some awareness and use of language and actually a team that I work with said hey we're hearing some really unhelpful things from some of the staff and we'd love for you to provide some education. So we're keeping food neutral. And I was like amazing. So I am seeing there's a lot more people especially like younger coaches that kind of maybe went through some not so helpful things with some of the older coaches that they worked with that are still around and they're trying to make it different for their athletes. So I do see movement. I do still see though like definitely you know I I think from peer to peer some things happening but I I you know I hope and I want to believe that it's getting slightly better. It's still there. It's still there. We still got diet culture loud and strong but I think more teams and more athletes are getting a bit more nutrition support and psych support.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

And I think that's helping the overall you know let's talk about kind of the everyday athlete who doesn't work with a dietitian who wasn't on a on a team who just does their sport and is really into fitness are there what are some signs or red flags that they can look for that maybe they are struggling with body image and they didn't even know it.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah because again it's so normalized to like especially as like women to be do you remember that episode Sex in the city I don't know if you watched it where Charlotte was like I hate my thighs and so and like everybody's expected to say something because it's just part of the culture. 100% yeah and so I think it's easy to get sucked into and I think some of the signs like that might not be as obvious or I don't know if they you know I'm trying to put myself in their shoes of like not obvious signs, but I think it's when maybe you're starting to get stressed out around making food choices or how your body looks like if it's really becoming something that is on your mind a lot or if you're starting to check the scale a bit more often, if you're doing different types of measurements, if you're body checking right like maybe you're walking past every time you walk past somewhere where you can get your reflection like you're checking it. Yeah. And like different ways to kind of like, you know, some people like grab their stomach or you know again take measurements get on the scale and if that starts to increase and it's starting to create some anxiety in terms of like making food choices and how you feel about your body, that's a pretty good warning sign that things are getting it's a good time to maybe ask for some support.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

So what are some practical strategies that athletes can use to improve their body obviously meeting with a dietitian is there anything else they can do outside of that?

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yeah so I think it's it depends on the person. I think it's super individual a couple of things I mean number one if they're getting triggered a lot or getting a lot of information from social media we need to figure out a way to shut that down, pause it, unfollow, right? We need to create a supportive environment for you that's going to help you. So if you are noticing you're doing a lot of body checking, we're going to start talking about okay, how can we reduce some of the body checking sometimes we do have to like have the exposures and do it and sit with the feelings and and change how we're responding to those. So also it could be listening more to the dialogue that's going on in your head and if it jumps to my thighs look too big in these shorts, right? We can start to just re-rewire that even if we don't believe it at first to be like, okay, but my thighs are really strong and they allow me to do X, Y, and Z, whatever their sport is. So starting to kind of have more of those like positive associations with body and caring for it. I think self-care, right? Like just taking the time to say, all right, this is the one body I got for the rest of my life right and our bodies always want to support us. They always go go towards healing right like we get a cut, it puts things into action to to heal that cut. If we're sick, it's getting all those things out to try to push us to get better. So it's always there for us. How can we start showing up and taking taking care of it in a way that is nourishing and you know helping you know our our body function. Yeah I think a lot of it is like understanding what are my behaviors and how does that align with my values maybe so if you're also like I I do value like a healthy relationship with food and body, okay, so now we really need to look at some of these behaviors and think about our goals and what we you know what we're aiming for here.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yeah that makes a lot of sense. And I would also tell people obviously before you do anything extreme, you should definitely talk to someone and an extreme doesn't necessarily mean an eating disorder but it could be a bit like you know you can easily get weight loss drugs now in the mail. Like please talk to someone before we start doing that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

And that also like that's unbelievable because half the time like sometimes I'll get people that come in and say oh I started these and I you know listen I don't judge anybody for anything but I'm realizing more and more people are not getting education about this at all. Like what are the side effects? What are the long-term consequences? What are like there's you know in so many ways these drugs are mimicking eating disorders and we're normalizing it. It's tough. But yeah, I think getting help is probably the most important thing because you know and and whether it's starting off with a sports dietitian or a dietitian if you're not an even if you're not an athlete and and psych, right? Because it's all this like influence internally and externally that compounds to create this feeling around food and body. So we have to explore that we have to be open and curious about it. Um because it bleeds into every other area of our life believe it or not. So like as I have people healing from eating disorders and disordered eating there's so many other areas of their lives that open up that they never imagined possible.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

So 100% yeah yeah no and I I also I just I know I keep going to the other side of it where it's like maybe it's just a small body image thing where like you want to lose five pounds, 10 pounds. Whatever it is, I still think that you'd benefit from addressing it in some capacity rather than just letting it kind of be in the back because I know this happens with a lot of women especially like I have a lot of mom friends. It's just a constant in the back of your mind like oh just the 10 pounds just the 10 pounds of I'd be faster because I'd be a faster marathoner or you know I'd be I'd have really nice arms and that still is a body image thing. It's not necessarily always a figure skater who wants to be super light or whatever. It can be either sides of that.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

100% yeah I it's everywhere and no person is gonna go unaffected to a point. And and and again I think that's where like even if you feel like it's small and it's something that's bothering you, talking it out and maybe understanding it from a different point of view too because like I have so many people that are like oh I just want to, you know, I I weighed myself and the next day I was up three pounds and I'm just gaining weight. And it's like that's a whole that that's just like the body shifting and fluid shifts and whether or not you went to the bathroom that day. And there's so many things in the day to day of those like smaller fluctuations that I think people also don't understand, like hormones and you know, we're never going to be this one weight. It's always going to move and shift a little bit. So understanding also the normal body shifts and even for a woman like across the cycle like our body's gonna look a little different at different points of our cycles. So it could be just helpful to learn more about how that works versus kind of fighting yourself on these five pounds at come and go. And it might just be normal and it's just your body and it's meant to do that.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Absolutely. And I'll I'll end kind of with this I just interviewed Michaela Schiffin for an article I wrote and she we talked a lot about nutrition and she was amazing but she never once talked about her weight. She never once talked about she talked about fueling her body. She talked about that she had tried at one point to eat less carbs I guess because she got pressured into doing that and she was like it was terrible. I felt like my brain was suffocating and she just talked about kind of like healthy eating and how she fuels herself and how she feels good. And I think that that's what I want people to realize is like the elite athletes who are really doing this well understand that they need the food to fuel and they're not worried about the actual maybe some of them are behind the scenes and they don't want to say it, but they're understanding like food is fuel and this is what I need. And that's what gets them, you know, to the top of their sport.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

100%. Yeah. You're not gonna make it I mean I don't want to say that but it's just gonna be really difficult to perform at such high a level mentally and physically when you don't have the fuel to do so. Right. You're just putting yourself at a disadvantage.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Yeah totally so if there's one message you wish every athlete could hear about their body is there one thing you would tell every single athlete yeah you know two things you know two things come to mind I think I think it always hits a little bit to like remind people like your body is your home like going back to that and um you know treat it like you care about it.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Uh I think I I also kind of want to say like it's normal it's for the body to change and things to ebb and flow um when it pertains to when we're thinking about body image and our bodies throughout our life. It's the one one thing we've got for for our whole time here on earth. So if we can find ways to be kind to it and have a better relationship with it, you know, it's like having a friendship. You've got to work at it sometimes. If it is not a great relationship you you want to work on it. So I know that was kind of a couple but I I guess I think main theme here is like your body is your home and figure out how how you guys can get along or maybe even love each other.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

That's a great way of thinking about it. And honestly I think that's helpful for even me as a dietitian to hear because like we said everyone kind of struggles with this at some point in their lives and I think that that's a good thing to keep in mind. So do you work with everyday people or is it mostly elite athletes? Can people work with you if they're listening here? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

No yeah I don't work with just elite it's and it could be like I've had people that are like oh I'm gonna train for my first marathon. So it's anything from you know recreational athletes pro athletes anyone with body image concerns or disordered eating concerns to relationship with food if they just want that to be better. And then I also separately work in um I specialize in GI, which actually goes hand in hand with eating disorders and sports. It sounds out of out of the realm of of things, but it's all very similar.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

I'm gonna have to have you come back and talk about that because that comes up a lot too how can how how can people find you if they want to work with you?

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Yeah so okay good question. So I'm not super active on social media at all um but it could be a good way to reach me I guess like I I think we or maybe we did LinkedIn. Maybe LinkedIn's the best one it's just Adina Neglia N-E-G-L-I-A. LinkedIn's a good one my Instagram's just my name but you won't find anything super exciting on there. And those would probably be the two best. Keeping your mental health in check is staying off of social media.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

But anyway thank you so much for chatting with me today. I I I think that people will love this and find it so interesting and I appreciate you taking the time.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Yeah this was so fun. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Thank you