Diet and nutrition for dancers and athletes

As a dancer, it is very important for me to maintain my body and stay fit, because our bodies are our tools. Constant training, rehearsals, workshops can be very draining and can take a toll on us if we don’t feed our bodies the right nutrition. Here’s how I maintain my body and what I typically eat to stay fit.

I tried to keep my dinner on the lighter side because I usually have about 1.5 hour or less after I finish dinner and before I go to sleep, I keep my carbs light at night and eat more protein and veggies. I am a huge green vegetables lover, honestly I could just vegetables and nothing else, but that’s not enough for building muscles nor does it give you enough energy to sustain for my trainings.

Breakfast I typically do some sort of protein with a little bit carbs to give me energy during my practice. This also depends on the day because some days I have to get up really early in the morning for dance classes (thanks for time difference between here and India), and that early in the morning, my body isn’t ready for food, so I would have a couple of Kefir (drinkable yogurt) before class, then have protein and fruits after class along with my chai :) (can’t live without it). I love my fruits. I sometimes will also have a piece of toast with hummus on it because carbs give you energy.

Lunch is the biggest meal of my day, I will typically have protein of some sort (Chicken or eggs), lots of greens and some sort of carbs (rice, pasta, paratha, couscous, noodles usually).

I keep snacking light because I noticed when I was snacking on crackers or snacks with slightly higher content of sugar, my weight was higher, ever since I cut that sugar and unhealthy carbs out of my life, I lost about 4lbs. These days if I am really hungry in between meals, I would eat nuts, a few slices of cold cuts, a boiled egg or a small low fat greek yogurt. My energy has also become better since I cut out of sugary snacks. It’s very important to do healthy snacking because binging on sugary or high carbs snacks not only doesn’t give you the energy or nutrition your body needs, it will also build a bad habit as we have to train our bodies and mind of to not give in to tasty but unhealthy snacks.