How Nutrition Connects Us, Part 2: Lolly Steuart
“What’s the number one mistake you see from clients and athletes you work with?”
“Not eating enough or often enough throughout the day to support their activities and adventures.”
Hey, we’ve all been there, and we’ve all under-fueled our bodies. Lolly and I have experienced the consequences of chronic low energy availability, and both of us truly want to prevent other athletes from experiencing the injuries and hormonal imbalances that come from not providing our bodies with adequate nutrients.
While I was competing as a collegiate athlete at Texas A&M University, I experienced secondary amenorrhea (loss of menstrual period). A team physician recommended that I go on birth control my freshman year to regulate my period. I had recently moved from Georgia to Texas, far from my family and my home, and my period was coming every 2 weeks. As was recommended to me, I started birth control and stayed on it for a few months. I felt miserable. I stopped taking the birth control the second semester of my freshman year. I didn’t have a period again until my senior year due to my body being in a state of low energy availability. I actually thought this was “normal” for active women, to not have a period. “Oh, that just means you are lean!” Nope. Wrong. It means something is off. It means your body is shutting down certain systems in order to prioritize others. It means you are not taking in enough overall nutrients for your body to produce hormones that are vital to reproductive health.
Lolly had a similar experience as a collegiate athlete as well. She was overtraining, under-fueling, and only had a regular period because she was on hormonal birth control, which masks the effects of low energy availability.
Keep reading below to hear how Lolly overcame this and how she uses her previous experiences to inspire her in her path to become a registered dietitian.
Lolly Steuart - future dietitian, skier, trail runner, Kate’s Real Food Ambassador, maker of the best homemade hummus you’ve ever tried, and new dog mom to Oslo.
Nutrition can elevate or degrade your life, and I am driven to make it an elevating factor for anyone’s life I can reach. The answers I’ve discovered within the field of nutrition for myself are a motivating element for why I am pursuing a Master’s Degree in Nutrition to become a registered dietitian to help other individuals.
In my undergraduate years, I studied psychology in addition to indigenous cultures in America. I focused on food-sovereignty and culturally relevant food-based practices. Historically, indigenous peoples subsisted off of the land, and their connection to the Earth was rooted in respect and relationships. A result of the invasion, conquest, and relocation was assimilation into Euro-American society, which yielded the disintegration of their cultural food-based practices. The indigenous were given commodity rations and from this, diseases have emerged in native cultures where there were originally very few diseases. My interest in nutrition in part spurred from this question – why did these diseases appear after merging with Euro-American culture?
While in college I was eating healthy, so I thought. During this time, I was experiencing Relative-Energy-Deficiency in Sport Syndrome (RED-S) from an eating disorder I had developed from being consumed by trying to eat healthy. I wasn’t aware of it being an issue because I felt great. The only symptom I had was lack of menstruation due to low energy availability; however, this was masked by birth control, which induces fake menses. I was exercising often, running long distances, and ‘eating well’. The problem: I wasn’t eating enough to fuel my adventures and training sessions. This imbalance was creating more harm than good, despite ‘good’ being my goal.
In my final year of undergraduate studies, I had a skiing accident. I decided knee surgery was my best option for the long-term health of my knee. The recovery was 6 weeks non weight bearing, and about 8-9 weeks with crutches. Though this isn’t the worst thing that has happened in the world, it was a turning point in my life. My surgeon told me it would take 9 months to return to normal. I was determined to beat this. I researched foods to assist the healing process and incorporated this into my eating patterns. This was the first time I was using my knowledge of food for function. I was dedicated to physical therapy and listened to what my body needed. My dedication paid off, and I was back to ‘normal’ well before the surgeon said I would be. I attribute this in part to normalizing my eating patterns, resting, and incorporation of the knowledge I had sought out.
Living in Jackson, Wyoming, I’ve found myself reading science-based nutrition books and incorporating this into my life for longevity, performance, and daily living. Though I am still chasing many mountain adventures, I have begun fueling myself properly to prevent ‘bonking’, injuries, and to aid the recovery process. While manipulating and experimenting with my own diet, I realized that I desire a greater education in nutrition. I discovered that elevating people’s lives with nutritional guidance is my purpose.
I am passionate about nutrition for numerous reasons. I want to open people’s minds to eating for their bodies while diminishing the influence of social media’s diet culture. I want to help individuals reach their peak performance through their diet and relationship with food and show them that proper fueling for life is essential. Nutrition is key to everyone’s lives, it can either elevate or degrade your life. My goal is to make nutrition an elevating one.
