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Performance Dining

• 43% of Americans made eating healthier, dieting or weight loss their New Year’s Resolution (Rocketto, 2018). Only 8% of people actually keep their resolutions (Gregoire, 2017).

• For those who achieve their weight loss resolution, only 20% to 30% of individuals maintain their loss after 1 to 3 years, and that percentage is even lower after 3-5 years (Perrish, 2017) (Provencher, 2007).
• Americans spend 60 billion dollars each year on diet related items (Perrish, 2017).

Based on these facts, as a Registered Dietitian I suggest ditching the restrictive diets (that is right the DIETitian does NOT recommend dieting) and focusing on fueling your body to optimally perform in your daily life.

What you really need to know about dieting!

Ditching dieting does not mean giving up on health, it is a shift from scale to body as the guide to your eating. Performance Dining is a flexible resource that empowers you to choose what your body needs in the moment.  Nourishment is a main goal of eating, but community and pleasure are important objectives as well.  That is why any eating plan you follow should stress that all foods fit within a healthy lifestyle and should improve both mental and physical quality of life—not diminish it.   Enjoying a meal with friends on campus is an important part of the college experience and a great way to build community.  A flexible eating plan allows you to enjoy pizza with friends at Zick’s (GUILT FREE) or confidently fuel your body with long lasting, high energy foods at The Pit before a stressful exam.

Fueling well is important across the life span, and nutrition goals change with age.  Bone health is important in college aged individuals.  There is a limited time in which we can influence our peak bone mass. The best time to build bone density is during years of rapid growth (childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood).  At these times we can significantly increase our peak bone mass through diet and exercise. Most people will reach their peak bone mass between the ages of 25 and 30. Not surprisingly, we can also make choices that decrease peak bone mass, such as smoking, poor nutrition, inactivity, and excessive alcohol intake (Fischer, 2019). Understanding your body helps guide the foods you fuel with (i.e. eating sufficient amounts of bone boosting foods containing calcium and vitamin d). Performance Dining classifies foods based on function. You will find 9 icons in our dining locations that symbolize functions such as bone support, protein, anti-inflammatory, etc. which will help guide your choices (Focusses Letter).  We have also created a Performance Dining plate and snack build to help you create well balanced meals and sncaks.  (Plate and Snack Document)

Examples of Performance Dining Meals on Campus

– Zick’s Pizza with side salad

– Subway 6” turkey sub with all the veggie toppings and apple slices

-Shorty’s Mr. Wake Forest Burger with a side of steamed vegetables

-The Pit at the Performance Dining Station grab a bowl and place spinach or kale as your base, top with high energy farro, Monterey bay certified salmon and garbanzo beans.  Make your own dressing with Olive Oil Balsamic Vinegar and your favorite spice.

You have enough to be anxious about without adding the worry of deciphering how to eat well.  Performance Dining is a great way to reduce that anxiety.  If you have questions or need more help eating on campus call health services to schedule an appointment with Brooke Orr MS RD LDN.

Learn how to make a meal in a mug in under 3 minutes! More meal in a mug recipes here.

Plant Powered Performance

The Blue Zones project assembled a team of medical researchers, anthropologists, demographers, and epidemiologists to search for evidence-based common denominators among all places where people lived the longest at their healthiest.

They found 9, one of which is Plant Slant.  This principle is seen in the Mediterranean Diet, which won the gold as 2019’s best overall diet in rankings announced 1/16/19, by US News and World Report.

At Wake Forest University we apply this plant forward concept in our Performance Dining Program.  Performance Dining’s mission is to educate you on picking foods for function that support and fuel your physical and mental performance.  One aspect of the Performance Dining Plate is to reduce the portion sizes of meat consumed and increase total vegetable intake.  This is not a diet, or perfection focused program, the goal is to provide education on healthy eating within an all foods fit context. Click HERE for more Performance Dining information.

There is a student dining committee who meets to further this plant forward performance focused approach, for more information contact Brian Cohen