Diving Into Female Athlete Specific Fueling with Maddie Alm

Nordic Nation

This podcast is part of a series on female athlete specific physiology and sports nutrition. With the help of experts and novel research in this area, this series unpacks how the menstrual cycle might influence training adaptations and provides female athletes and coaches with the information to help optimize fueling and training schedules accordingly.

Based in Boulder, Colorado, Maddie Alm is the face of Fueling Forward, a sports nutrition business helping athletes of all levels improve their nutrition in and out of training to help optimize their training adaptations and health. In addition to being a registered dietician with a masters degree in nutritional sciences, Alm is a professional track athlete specializing in the 5k. Alm is a member of the Team Boss running team. She is currently working toward the goal of competing in the Olympic track trials.

After joining the renowned team at Colorado University Boulder as a walk-on, Alm was introduced to a nutritionist who helped her improve the quality of her diet and add in additional fuel between workouts to help her get more out of her training. By fueling herself properly, Alm developed into an All American, sparking her own interest in sports nutrition and her desire to help others optimize their own athletic performance through proper fueling.

To Alm, this means developing and sharing an “all foods fit” philosophy which makes eating a high quality diet that matches your training load simple and sustainable. Collaborating with other experts in the area, Alm has also recently taken on a side project in the area of female athlete physiology and nutrition.

In this episode, Alm breaks down how hormonal fluctuations during each phase of the menstrual cycle impact nutritional demands and offers specific suggestions on how athletes might tweak their diet accordingly to ensure their body gets the fuel and hydration it needs. She also discusses how athletes who are negatively affected by PMS symptoms might experiment with their nutrition to reduce the severity of these effects, thereby lessening the extent to which they take away from training or performance.

For more from Alm, you can follow her business account on Instagram @fuelingforward or her athletic profile @madsalm12. The specifics of her sports nutrition services and her “Simple Start: 28 Days to Fueling Better” program can be found on her website: https://www.fuelingforward.com/.