The Purpose and Values of Sports Nutrition Explained

At Sports Nutrition Explained we exist to "flood the feed" with free evidence-based sports science and nutrition content and advice to cut through misinformation and breakdown the pay wall to high quality support. We exist to improve and spotlight athlete health, longevity and wellbeing and open up conversations around mental health, female health and neurodivergence within sport.

Health struggles and helping others

I founded Sports Nutrition Explained after my own experiences as a young athlete. My drive for success within rowing led to overtraining and under fuelling ultimately resulting in 8 years of Amenorrhea (absent period). The stress this put on my body was immense and led to me giving up rowing due to health issues and injury. However I kept exercising (triathlons) and under fuelling.

When I was in my second year of University I experienced my first major injury- a stress fracture in my inferior pubic rami (sit bone). This led to me being on crutches for over 4 months and a gradual increase in exercise (gym work then cycling) before I was finally able to run again 10 months later. This was a shock to the system and I decided I needed to make some changes. I needed to regain my period. To do that I needed to gain weight. But it wasn't that simple. I was lucky enough that my parents could afford to pay a Sports Nutrition to support me and I learnt that meal timing and macronutrient content was also essential to regain my health. Unable to afford regular check ups I spent 2 years using my Sports Science knowledge to try and fix myself. Ultimately it payed off but the paywall to health support for athletes and exercisers was extremely evident. If my parents hadn't have been able to pay for that nutritionist I may never have regained my health! This realisation inspired me to complete a MSc in Sport and Exercise Nutrition and ultimately is the driving force for setting up Sports Nutrition Explained. The free content I produce is aimed to support athletes and exercisers and spread awareness of the importance of nutrition. I hope to use the profit from paying clients to support the production of this content and enable me to provide free or subsidised support for those who need it.

Advocacy and Awareness

A large part of Sports Nutrition Explained brand identity is around the advocacy and awareness of neurodivergence, mental health and the acceptance of difference.

Personally I am autistic (and exploring the possibility of also being an ADHDer) with experiences of Anorexia, Anxiety and Depression (obviously I like to collect labels!). In addition to this one sister is an ADHDer and the other has complex physical disabilities. I grew up around differences and am fortunate that my home life was excepting and supporting of these. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the school environment where, in my experience, differences are not celebrated. From fellow students to teachers and the curriculum in general school was a difficult time for me and i know for many others as well.

My experiences outside of school were not much better with a lack of understanding for Neurodivergence present in Health services, work places and sports clubs. I like to believe the majority of people and organisations are not doing this from a malicious place but from a lack of understanding and awareness outside of buzz word mandatory training sessions. Therefore it is important to me to use any platform I have to show the realities of my differences in the hope this may help others or inspire change.

The Values of Sports Nutrition Explained

Everything we do is with the below values in mind.

We stand for...

·       Evidence-informed and respecting scopes of practice (accurate reliable information)

·       Accessibility, inclusivity and equality

·       Additive, collaborative messaging in conjunction with others (conversation not argument)

·       Understanding and kindness- no judgement, meet people where they are at

·       Always learning and developing knowledge and understanding, take responsibility.

Future directions

It feels a bit scary writing my hopes and dreams for Sports Nutrition Explained were anyone can read them. They are big. And bold.

• Provide an alternative avenue for researchers to disseminate knowledge and access funding opportunities.

• Provide placement opportunities and connections for undergraduate and master’s students within sport, marketing and editing/ graphics to uplift and educate the next generation of science communicators/ artists.

• Open up conversations around mental health, neurodivergence and sport.

• Make athlete health and longevity a priority for sports clubs and National governing bodies.

Summary

At Sports Nutrition Explained everything we do is with the aim to help and support athlete health and longevity alongside fostering acceptance and understanding of difference.

Accurate reliable information is key and our mission is to make learning fun and accessible to as many as possible.

If this is something you would like to support feel free to get in contact (rb@sportsnutritionexplained.com)

It would be great to connect!

Rachel Baker (CEO, Founder and Head Nutritionist)