Kelsey HigginsonSports Nutrition Coach and Founder at Clutch Day Coaching

Full day of eating for female athletes

20 Sept 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:24

In this instructional video, the speaker outlines a comprehensive nutrition plan tailored for elite female athletes. The talk begins by encouraging athletes to view food positively—as fuel—and to discard any fear surrounding eating. The daily schedule is broken into timed snacks (typically at 6 am, 10 am, and 3 pm) that align with common training sessions, with flexibility to remove a snack if the athlete’s schedule differs. Three main meals are emphasized, with a strict rule not to skip breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Each meal should follow the speaker’s “Performance Plate” framework: half the plate filled with carbohydrates (e.g., pasta, rice, quinoa), one‑quarter with protein (meat, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt), and the remaining quarter with colorful fruits and vegetables, plus an added source of healthy fat (avocado, nuts, olive or avocado oil). For athletes training more than three hours per day, an additional bedtime snack is recommended—typically a protein shake made with milk, banana, and protein powder—to support overnight recovery. The overall message is a structured, nutrient‑dense eating plan that fuels performance and recovery.

Chapters

Female athlete nutrition. This is what a full day of eating needs to look like for elite female athletes. First of all, we need to get over the fear of food. Food is your friend. Food is fuel. Got it? Good. So we've got snacks and we've got meals. The snacks are usually timed around different trainings throughout the day: 6 AM, 10 AM, and 3 PM. This is assuming that you have an early morning training session, a midday weights session, and then another practice in the afternoon. If you don't, then you can wipe one of those snacks out. Then we have 3 meals. Do not skip breakfast. Do not skip lunch. Do not skip dinner. These are so important. The way that we want to structure these meals is what I call the performance Plate method. What you're going to do is you're going to have half of your plate be carbohydrates. This is going to be pasta or potatoes or rice or quinoa or anything like that. A fourth of the plate, we want it to be protein, so meat, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt. The rest of it, we want colors, so we want fruits and veggies on the plate here. And then I want you to add fat on top of the plate. Throw on some avocado or extra nuts, or cook your protein in olive oil or avocado oil or something like that. This is going to give your body the nutrients it needs to freaking perform like a beast. So you want to do it here here and here. Last but not least, if you are in a season where you're training more than 3 hours a day, you need more than these additional snacks. I would do a bedtime snack as well. Most the time I would recommend this being a protein shake with milk, banana, and protein to give you good carbs and good protein before bed so that your body can repair itself and wake up the next day ready to crush it.