Laura's Story

As part of our focus on Nutrition for the past month, we have relied on Laura Tricarico’s expertise to guide our message on what to eat.  Laura also hosted a Q&A that delved into how much to eat for optimal performance in the gym, as well as supplementation for recovery.  Laura has a wealth of knowledge and we are lucky to have her as a member and subject matter expert.
But how did she come across this nutritional wisdom?  We asked her to share her personal journey with food for our blog this week, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.  Laura has developed herself into a formidable CrossFit athlete that fuels her body with the right foods at the right time, but it wasn’t always that way.  Please give this a read and join me in thanking Laura for her courage in sharing a very personal story.
I have always been amazed at the power of food on the body, but for many years, I used that power against myself. Thankfully, my health journey included a few pivotal moments that led me to my food freedom today, but that wasn’t always the case.
Like many of us, I grew up during the low-fat craze of the 90s. Villainizing fat, our culture boomed with frankenfoods – my house included. Foods began to be labeled as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For me, that label carried emotions about how I viewed myself when I ate them. I began to view food as the enemy; on a quest to eat as little as possible to become the smallest I could manage. As you can imagine, this led to a horribly unhealthy obsession around food and how I felt about my body. In my early teens, while I dove into the mantra of ‘move more, eat less’, I began experiencing abnormal digestive issues and intense migraines. Doctors assured my parents my health struggles were due to teenage hormones and I would outgrow it eventually. I assure you, that was not the case.
As my dysfunctional relationship with food grew, so did my career as a competitive athlete. I moved away from recreational sports year-round, to focus my energy solely on softball. I joined a local travel team and began competing around the East Coast. Outside of school, my time was spent at practices, skill clinics, camps, and tournaments. I became intensely focused on playing softball in college at a high level. During my junior year, I had an opportunity to play on a national team, widening my exposure to Division One colleges coaches and move me towards my goal. I spent a year traveling the country with my team and eventually was offered a scholarship for the catcher position at University of North Carolina at Wilmington. What I find fascinating today is that nutrition played such a small role in this incredibly physical journey. Very little information about what to eat for recovery or performance was provided outside of the typical eating guidelines at the time.  
Playing at a high level in college was one of the most physically and emotionally challenging experiences in my life. I discovered how hard I could be pushed on the track, weight room, as well as the field. As a catcher, I was often doing extra conditioning and additional practices outside of the 3-4 hour team practices each afternoon. Our season was hectic; I would often catch 3-5 games a weekend, putting a high demand on my body. Unfortunately, lack of nutrition knowledge continued and I was drastically undereating to avoid getting too ‘bulky’ (as were all my teammates). My teammates and I were constantly dieting or on the treadmill to battle the muscle we needed to play. Looking back, I think it is safe to say that the highly emotional team I was a part of could be boiled down to ‘hangry’ females! I played for three seasons before burning out and choosing to graduate early rather than finish my last season.
Shortly after college and starting my career as a teacher, Tristan and I made plans to move to New York together. I began teaching in Brooklyn while Tristan worked midnight shifts as a fire dispatcher. We were piecing together careers while we built our new life. The many changes and loneliness brought on a depression that I fueled with over exercising and under eating. It was the only part of my life I could control in a world that felt very chaotic and new. I began to obsess over calories and poured over magazines that promised a fitter, smaller body. Slimfast became my main source of nutrition and you would often find me on the treadmill at 4 am before work and taking fitness classes in the evening. Anxiety was at an all-time high, constantly on the verge of falling apart. As you can imagine, my health began to spiral out of control and my digestive issues intensified. I ignored the intensity until my body had enough. Getting ready for work one morning, I blacked out, smashing my face on my apartment floor. That got my attention, but it wasn’t until I started getting dizzy and blacking out from standing up too fast or going up a set of stairs that I knew I needed help. I felt like a prisoner in my own body.
I spent many months searching for answers to why my body was no longer functioning normally. I visited specialists who couldn’t give me answers that could explain why my twenty-two-year-old body was struggling. They simply labeled me as having Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) which is the diagnosis you receive if they can’t explain your symptoms. It was during this time that Celiac Disease became more well known and a diagnosed family member put it on my radar. With nothing to lose and no patience for more tests, I removed gluten from my diet. I saw some improvement; my digestive issues decreased in intensity and my nutrient levels began to return to normal (the cause of my blackouts). Great news, but it didn’t solve the entire problem. I continued to struggle with IBS and became determined to identify the cause of my illness.
The most amazing friend introduced me to Mark Sisson and his blog, Mark’s Daily Apple, where I first learned about the primal diet. I read everything I could get my hands on. I started implementing some additional dietary changes and seeing improvements (mostly due to removing processed foods from my diet). I was moving in the right direction. Mark’s Daily Apple let me to Whole30 where I continued to learn about the importance of whole food, but now started to see the connection between mind and body. I took my whole food, primal diet and removed additional potential allergens based on the Whole30 protocol and saw my IBS disappear within the month. My horrible relationship with food started to heal as well. I no longer saw food as the enemy, but as a healing factor. It felt amazingly powerful to take control of my health without medication; however, I was still viewing food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ while following the guidelines of Whole30. There was still more work for me to do to find my food freedom.
During this time, Tristan urged me to try CrossFit (he may have been trying for about a year). I was immediately hooked to the intensity of the program (but please don’t tell him he was right), but also loved the feeling of pushing my physical limits. It wasn’t until I started CrossFit that I figured out I had been missing this intensity since ending my athletic career and was the reason I tended to over exercise. CrossFit gave me an outlet for my competitive nature but gave me parameters to keep the competition healthy for me. It was also the first time as an adult where I was surrounded by people who made their health a priority. Like myself, I saw people in the gym conquer major health issues and I wanted to know more. I understood food was a powerful tool, but I wanted to know why. I didn’t understand body mechanics or systems so I enrolled in a nutrition certification program to fill in those gaps. The program changed what I knew to be true about nutrition (yet again) and gave me a set of skills to not only improve my own health, but the health of my family and friends.
During my year-long study program, I started to see that my low-carb Paleo diet was not supporting my performance in the gym. What was I missing? I ate whole foods when I was hungry and stopped when I was full. Turns out there is more to performance nutrition than that. Quantity does matter, and muscles need more than what I was giving them before and after intense activity. Its now clear to see that my low-calorie starvation diet broke my internal knowledge of what my body needed to thrive; I couldn’t rely on intuition as humans were designed to do. I began to learn about macro tracking and my individual fueling needs. All my performance and aesthetic goals became possible for the first time; my quest for smallness stopped. My size and weight were no longer my sole sources of validation and worth. I wanted to see what my body was capable of. I know tracking isn’t for everyone, but for me it helped me find the food freedom I desperately needed.
Between CrossFit and macro tracking, I was armed with ways to quantify my progress. Looking at food as fuel for my performance healed my relationship with food, giving back energy and brain space I was wasting on my preoccupation with food. The journey will constantly evolve as my goals change, but I now have the foundation to build. As dramatic as parts of it felt, I am extremely grateful for this emotional journey. I am now armed with the tools to teach my children the power of real food while also showing them the strength and power the body is capable of when fueled properly. The potential is endless.