If you want to get strong, stop avoiding food [Beuzz]

• Elite athlete Dani Speegle said she learned to appreciate the foods she loved to fuel her strength.
• As a young athlete, she struggled with the pressure to lose weight and the stigma of strong women.
• Now she said she wants to empower women to eat more, lift weights and enjoy their lives.

If you want to build muscle and get strong, you need to pay less attention to the scales and give yourself more room to eat the foods you love, according to the elite CrossFit athlete Dani Speegle.

Speegle, a four-time CrossFit Games athlete, won two events last year in lift a 250 pound sandbag on his shoulder, and a 215 pound log above his head — and said she didn’t get there by cutting out carbs or skimping on calories.

“You’re not going to put one and a half times your body weight on your head if you live on salads and starve yourself,” Speegle told Insider during an interview about his partnership with TYR Sports.

She said she fuels her training with a balanced diet that includes foods she loves like cookies and pizza, and hopes to empower other women to do the same with her “Girls Who Eat” campaign.

“For a very long time, a lot of women have been afraid to eat and have been so concerned about the number on the scale,” she said. “I want them to learn how to fuel their bodies for health and performance versus unattainable aesthetics.”

“Whether you want to be strong, you have to eat”

Speegle has already made a name for himself on social media by showing that you can work hard in the gym and still enjoy a treat. An image of Speegle from the 2022 Games live stream has gone viral among CrossFit fans and shows her happily eating a piece of pizza, watching another athlete propose to his girlfriend at the award ceremony awards (“I was so in the moment. He was like reality TV,” she said of the shot).

However, building a healthy relationship with food takes time, and Speegle said she struggles with body image and the pressure to conform to unrealistic ideals of thinness.

She grew up competing in gymnastics, where her muscle and power helped her excel on vault and floor, but she said the pressure to lose weight was intense.

“One of my biggest memories as a young athlete is being lured into the gym office at age 11 and being told I needed to lose 15 pounds to be at the top of my game. elite level,” she said. “At that age I was like ‘well, it’s the adults, I guess they must be right.’ I had no model to follow to be strong and healthy.”

Since then, she said she’s learned that eating enough is crucial to building muscle and strength, and maintaining it for peak performance (although Speegle said her large genetics and natural muscle mass also helped him).

Now she is working to make sure women, especially young athletes, know they can prioritize strength and health over weight loss.

“So many young girls find themselves in these situations and accept just because they don’t know better. I want them to know better. I wish I knew better,” Speegle said.

She also wants to get rid of the stigma around strength, including the myth that weightlifting makes women “bulky”.

Ultimately, Speegle said her goal was to take the conversation away from women’s bodies completely, freeing up time to focus on accomplishments instead.

A flexible approach can help you enjoy food and reach your fitness goals

Overanalyzing food choices or obsessing over calorie counts can be counterproductive, says Speegle, because food is not only essential for fueling your body, but also something you should enjoy.

“My thing is to be in the moment. Just eat the cookie,” she said. “Thinking that you have to completely cut everything is not living.”

She said her approach to eating is to listen to her body and focus on what she needs to recover, following a generally nutritious plan with lots of goodies like Friday night pizza and “Wing Wednesday” with his friends.

While she remains mindful of macros like protein, fats and carbs, Speegle said she doesn’t let them rule her life and doesn’t stress out if an indulgent day or two isn’t part of her plan.

“You’re not going to be on your deathbed wishing you hadn’t eaten those Oreos,” Speegle said. “But you might think, ‘I wish I hadn’t wasted 10 or 15 years of my life worrying about what people would think of me if I ate this.'”