http://www.performancenutritioncollective.com.au/

Performance Nutrition Collective, Berry (2026)

02/09/2026

ADHD MEDICATION + ATHLETE FUELLING: WHEN “JUST EAT MORE” DOESN’T WORK 🫣

Recently, I’ve had quite a few athletes come through clinic who are taking ADHD medication while also trying to meet the fuelling demands of training.

And there can be one very practical problem:
They simply aren’t hungry.
Particularly with stimulant medications, appetite suppression can make meeting energy requirements across the day really difficult.
So rather than repeatedly telling an athlete to “eat more”, we build the nutrition strategy around the appetite windows they actually have.

💊 BEFORE MEDICATION
If they’re taking a long-acting medication and appetite is better in the morning, we make breakfast count.
A substantial, nutrient-dense breakfast before the medication takes effect can be one of our biggest fuelling opportunities of the day.

🫣WHEN APPETITE IS LOW
We stop expecting huge meals.
Instead, we use smaller, nutrient-dense options that require less effort to eat things like energy bites, baked oats or smoothies.
Liquid carbohydrate can also become incredibly useful around training when eating feels difficult.
And sometimes we literally use timers.
If hunger cues aren't reliably reminding an athlete to eat, an external reminder can.

💦 HYDRATION MATTERS TOO
Sometimes plain water just isn't getting drunk.
So we make it more appealing different flavours, fruit slices, juice or electrolytes where appropriate.
The best hydration strategy is still the one the athlete will actually drink.

AS THE MEDICATION WEARS OFF
We take advantage of appetite returning.
Dinner becomes a significant fuelling opportunity, followed by a pre-bed snack where needed to help close the energy gap and support overnight recovery.

The goal isn't to fight the medication.

It's to work with the athlete's appetite pattern and build a fuelling strategy around it.
Because telling an athlete who has very little appetite to “just eat more” isn't really a strategy.

Sometimes performance nutrition is about finding the windows where we can get fuel in and making those windows count.

13/08/2026

Your recovery meal might be doing more for hydration than your sports drink. 💧🍽️

Recent research found that when athletes consumed a recovery meal, water was just as effective as a sports drink for restoring hydration.

Hydration doesn't happen in isolation.

A recovery meal naturally provides nutrients that support fluid restoration, including:
✔️ Sodium to help retain fluid
✔️ Carbohydrate to support sodium and water absorption
✔️ Protein, which contributes to fluid retention as part of a mixed recovery meal while also supporting muscle repair

When we think about hydration, we often focus on what's in the bottle.
But your recovery plate is doing plenty of work too.

For many athletes especially young ones... water alongside a balanced recovery meal can be an effective post-exercise hydration strategy.

Sports drinks still have an important role particularly after prolonged exercise, heavy sweat losses or when rapid recovery between sessions is required but they aren't the only way to rehydrate.

Sometimes the smartest hydration strategy starts with what's on your plate.

10/08/2026

🚨 What is Functional Hypothalamic Amenorrhea (FHA)?

Every week female athletes come into clinic and tell me:

"My period has disappeared."

But often the problem started long before that.
FHA occurs when the brain senses that energy availability, recovery, or stress levels are not optimal and begins turning down reproductive function.

One of the first hormones to be affected is LH (Luteinising Hormone).

LH acts like a messenger from the brain to the ovaries.

When LH falls:
📉 Ovulation becomes disrupted
📉 Progesterone production falls
📉 Menstrual cycles become irregular
📉 Periods may eventually disappear

The grey zone nobody talks about
Many athletes think:
🚫 Period gone = problem
✅ Period present = all good
Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.
Early signs can include:
⚠️ Longer cycles
⚠️ Frequent cycles
⚠️ Spotting between periods
⚠️ Lighter periods
⚠️ Low progesterone
⚠️ Poor recovery
⚠️ Recurrent injuries
This is often the stage where I start paying attention.

Why does it matter?
Because FHA isn't just about periods.
Over time it can affect:
🦴 Bone health
😴 Recovery
🦠 Immune function
💪 Adaptation to training
🏃 Performance

The reality
Many athletes don't realise there is a problem until they develop a bone stress injury.
By then, the menstrual cycle has often been giving clues for months.

Your period isn't just a fertility marker.
For female athletes, it's one of the most valuable health and recovery markers we have. 💡

06/08/2026

🩸 We talk about iron a lot in sport.

Ferritin.
Iron deficiency.
Iron infusions.
Performance.
But do you actually know what each biomarker on an iron panel is telling us? 🔬
Every biomarker provides a different piece of the puzzle.

🧩 Ferritin = Iron stores (but remember, it can also increase during inflammation)
🧩 Transferrin = The protein that transports iron around the body
🧩 Transferrin Saturation (TSAT) = How much of that transport protein is carrying iron and how much iron is immediately available
🧩 Haemoglobin = The oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells
🧩 CRP = Helps identify inflammation and provides important context when interpreting ferritin

On their own, each marker tells only part of the story.

Together, they help build a much clearer picture of an athlete's iron status and whether iron availability could be influencing health or performance.
Think of an iron panel like a puzzle.

Each biomarker is one piece.
The more pieces you have, the clearer the picture becomes.

So before celebrating or worrying about a single blood result, remember that interpretation goes far beyond one number. We must consider
📈 Trends over time.
🏃 Training load and training phase.
🤒 Illness and inflammation.
🩸 Blood loss, diet and other sources of iron blocking.

Because when it comes to athlete health and performance, it's rarely one biomarker that tells the story.

It's how they fit together. 🧩

29/07/2026

🚨 "But I thought sports nutritionists tell us to eat fast carbs before exercise?"
We do.

For most athletes, consuming fast-digesting carbohydrate before exercise increases carbohydrate availability and can improve performance.

But not everyone responds the same way.

Some athletes consistently report feeling:
😵 Shaky
😵 Light-headed
😵 Flat
😵 Heavy legs
😵 Suddenly fatigued
😵 Hungry despite just eating

One possible explanation is rebound hypoglycaemia.
Here's what may happen in some athletes:
🍹 Fast carbohydrate is consumed
⬇️
📈 Blood glucose rises rapidly
⬇️
💉 Insulin is released
⬇️
🏃 Exercise begins
⬇️
💪 Muscle contractions rapidly increase glucose uptake
⬇️
📉 Blood glucose temporarily falls
⬇️

⚠️ Symptoms develop
The athlete often thinks:
❌ "I need more carbs."
❌ "I need more caffeine."
❌ "I'm just unfit."
When the issue may actually be the timing, amount or type of carbohydrate consumed before exercise.

What can help?
✅ Experiment with the timing of your carbohydrate intake
✅ Adjust the amount you consume before exercise
✅ Find your individual "sweet spot" for pre-exercise fuelling
✅ For some athletes, a more moderate GI carbohydrate source may provide steadier energy

It's important to remember:
This doesn't happen to everyone.

Many athletes tolerate sports drinks, gels, juice and other fast carbohydrates extremely well and perform better because of them.
This is for the athletes who consistently experience symptoms shortly after eating before training.

💡 The takeaway
Fast carbohydrates remain one of the most effective ways to increase carbohydrate availability before exercise.

But sports nutrition is never one-size-fits-all.
One athlete thrives on a bottle of juice 10 minutes before training.
Another feels better with a banana 30 minutes beforehand.
Neither is wrong.

It's finding the right carbohydrate, in the right amount, at the right time for your physiology.

speedcoaching

22/07/2026

For those of you who are new around here, meet Leila. 👋
She's my daughter.
She's also the athlete who inspired me to take a deep dive into Low Energy Availability (LEA) and RED-S.
The athlete I've spent years teaching about fuelling, recovery and performance.
But also the athlete who has taught me just as much in return.
As practitioners, it's easy to become focused on the science, the numbers and building the "perfect" nutrition plan.
Leila taught me something far more important.
A nutrition plan is only as good as an athlete's ability to put it into practice.
Over the years, she's shown me what works, what doesn't, what teenage athletes actually eat, what they avoid, and where the real barriers to fuelling exist.
She's taught me that education has to be practical.
That athletes don't need perfection.
They need strategies that fit around school, training, friends, travel, family life and the realities of being a teenager.
Together, we've learned that sports nutrition isn't about creating the perfect plan on paper.
It's about creating a plan an athlete can follow consistently.
As much as I've taught her about nutrition and performance, she's taught me how to communicate those lessons in a way that young athletes can actually understand, trust and apply.
She'll probably never realise just how much she's shaped the practitioner I've become.
For that, I'll always be grateful. ❤️

06/07/2026

🏉 Now that the rugby season is underway, nutrition priorities often shift.

The focus becomes less about driving body composition, strength, and fitness adaptations and more about supporting:
💥 recovery from repeated collisions
😮‍💨 managing cumulative soreness
💪 maintaining lean mass
🦴 supporting tendon and connective tissue health
🔁 recovering between games and field sessions
Rugby is not just metabolically demanding - it is mechanically demanding.

Repeated contact, accelerations, decelerations and high running loads create significant recovery requirements across the week 🏃‍♂️💨

This is where strategies such as:
🍚 adequate carbohydrate availability
🍽 sufficient total energy intake
🐟 omega-3 intake (EPA/DHA)
🫐 polyphenol-rich foods
🟡 turmeric/curcumin
🍊 collagen + vitamin C protocols
😴 sleep support nutrition
…may become useful additions within an overall recovery plan.

Emerging research suggests these strategies may help support:
✔ recovery
✔ connective tissue health
✔ muscle soreness management
✔ adaptation during periods of high training and collision load

In-season nutrition is not just about performance on game day.
It is about keeping athletes robust enough to back up and perform again next week 🔁🏉

29/06/2026

HYROX is still a new sport, but emerging research is already starting to reflect what many practitioners are seeing clinically every day

This is NOT just “feeling tired.” 😰

The latest HYROX research showed athletes spent the majority of the race working at VERY hard intensities, with extremely high cardiovascular and metabolic stress.

The functional stations also created substantial metabolic strain, with the highest physiological stress occurring toward the end of the race.

Now combine that with:
→ multiple weekly high-intensity sessions
→ running load
→ strength work
→ poor recovery
→ lifestyle stress
→ under-fuelling

…and it becomes easier to understand why many athletes end up feeling “wired but exhausted.”

These demands do not just create muscular fatigue they also place significant stress on the nervous system. When athletes repeatedly train at very high intensities without sufficient carbohydrate availability or overall energy intake, the body is forced to continually mobilise stress hormones to support training demands.

In clinic, this often looks like:
👉🏽 persistent fatigue
👉🏽 disrupted sleep
👉🏽 flat training sessions
👉🏽 increased soreness
👉🏽 reduced recovery capacity
👉🏽 recurrent illness
👉🏽 menstrual dysfunction
👉🏽 difficulty tolerating intensity

The body can compensate for stress remarkably well… until eventually it cannot.
Athletes often interpret the warning signs as needing more discipline or harder training, when in reality the system may simply be underpowered for the demands being placed on it.

@ trainedtogosquad

15/06/2026

One of the trickiest conversations in youth sport is body composition.

Because there is a BIG difference between:
✔ performance-focused nutrition support
…and
❌ aggressive weight-focused behaviours in growing athletes.

The reality is that many young athletes are still:
🌱 growing
🦴 developing bone mass
🧠 developing neurologically
🏃 trying to recover from high training loads
…all while balancing school, sport and life stress.

This is why weight-focused approaches in adolescent athletes need to be handled extremely carefully.

In clinic, one of the biggest mistakes I see is athletes trying to:
❌ slash carbohydrates
❌ skip meals
❌ remove snacks
❌ “eat clean” but unintentionally under-eat
❌ aggressively chase aesthetic goals during heavy training periods
Often this creates:
📉 poorer recovery
📉 reduced performance
📉 fatigue
📉 increased injury risk
📉 menstrual dysfunction
📉 low energy availability

Ironically, many athletes perform and physically look BETTER once energy availability improves and recovery capacity returns.

When body composition goals are appropriate, the focus should remain on:
✔ supporting training quality
✔ maintaining adequate carbohydrate availability
✔ preserving lean mass
✔ structured meal timing
✔ improving food quality where needed
✔ gradual sustainable changes
✔ protecting recovery and health

Not simply “eating less.”

Because in developing athletes, under-fuelling is rarely a performance advantage long term.

11/06/2026

🥶🍊 It’s officially cold + flu season… which means the cold-pressed juicer starts getting an absolute workout in our house.

Current athlete combinations on repeat:
🍊 mandarin + carrot + ginger
🍍 pineapple + turmeric + ginger
🍉 watermelon + cucumber + ginger
🍐 Pear + kiwi + mint

One thing I love about juices for athletes is that sometimes drinking your nutrition can feel

MUCH easier than eating it especially during:
🏃 heavy training blocks
😮‍💨 suppressed appetite
🤧 illness
📚 busy school weeks
⏰ early morning sessions

And while juices are not “magic,” they can be a really practical way to:
✔ increase overall micronutrient intake
✔ support hydration
✔ add extra carbohydrates
✔ support athletes struggling with food volume

Sometimes athletes do not need more restriction.
Sometimes they simply need more practical ways to get nutrition in consistently.
Also… the sound of the juicer firing up at 6am has become the unofficial soundtrack of winter sport season in our house 😂

Performance Nutrition Collective

02/09/2026

13/08/2026

10/08/2026

06/08/2026

29/07/2026

22/07/2026

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