Your brain wants carbs too

As dancers we strive for perfection. Perfectly straight legs in a grand jeté, pointed toes anytime they leave the ground, and perfect bodies. In the dance world it's common to want to be thinner and thinner and thinner, but how far is too far? When do you start losing strength and thus losing technique.







Let's face it- dancers talk to each other about different things they have tried to get to their 'goal weight.' However, a lot of these 'amazing diet secrets' are not always the most correct information, including a very low-carbohydrate diet, which we will consider to be 60 grams of carbohydrates or less.
Here are the facts; for your brain and body to work properly you need 160 grams of glucose a day, 120 of those grams go to your brain. When you do not get the needed glucose your body goes into something that we nutrition people like to call gluconeogenesis. All that big word means is that your body starts making glucose from protein reserves in your body. This affects fat breakdown, only partially breaking them down and making ketones as a byproduct, and after 3 days of starvation these ketones then become the brain's new fuel source.

The bottom line is this; eating a very low carb diet not only affects your body, but your brain too! And after you start eating normally again your body wants to restore its fat deposits, so you end up gaining more fat back.

Welcome!

Welcome to The Dancer's Diet! I'm a Dietetic student at Oregon State University and also a dancer myself. My professional goal includes working for the Oregon Ballet Theater or another ballet company and work with the dancers themselves. I find this issue to be important because dancers, especially ballet dancers, are one of the biggest risk groups for eating disorders, but we are athletes so it's necessary to have a healthy diet. This blog is going to be a great resource for not only dancers but for all athletes. I'll discuss what to eat and when, meal planning, and much more.