Forbes Performance Nutrition

So, I finally got round to writing the summary of my MSc research and thought I’d turn it into a post 🤓

Aim: To understand if social lockdown impacted the nutrition behaviours and training practices of female athletes in the UK.

Methods: During Feb-May 2021, 132 female athletes competed an online cross-sectional survey. The questions compared their training practices and nutrition behaviours prior to the first social lockdown in the UK (23rd March 2020) to the time of survey completion.

Results:
🍰The majority of participants reported that lockdown resulted in negative changes to their current eating habits, no matter which level participants competed at.
🍰A third of participants gained weight.
🍰Participants reported a significant increase in consumption of homemade sweets/biscuits/cakes/chocolates, coffee and snacking.
🍰 Lack of motivation, boredom and stress were main reasons for change in behaviours.
⚽️Training habits were severely negatively affected.
⚽️Participants reported significant reductions in quantity, quality and type of training.
⚽️Team players experienced a greater decrease in quantity of training.
⚽️A larger proportion of individual sport players received self-reported adequate coaching support compared to team sport players.
⚽️Lack of future competition dates negatively affected motivation, as well as general effect of the pandemic on mental health.

If you want to read more, check out the blog post I’ve written about this - link in bio ☝🏻