Your Eating Plan for Dance Reimagined

Create a Vision for Your Relationship to Food

What is a Vision?

This is a big picture view of what you would like to achieve and experience in life. It helps to create a vision before you craft goals in order to make goals that are truly aligned with where you hope to go.

When you have a clear vision, you’ll be able to take consistent action towards that end. A vision allows you to see what’s possible. You’ll have an easier time finding solutions instead of seeing problems.

I’m putting a new spin on this and want to encourage you to create a vision for your relationship to food and meal plan for dance. Relationships to food and your body are closely intertwined. If you need support in shifting your relationship to your body, check out this post on rewriting your body story.

How you can apply vision writing to food…

To create a vision for your food relationship, first focus on why this might benefit you. Are you struggling with food, experiencing food guilt, or unsure how to best fuel yourself? If you find you’re questioning your food choices whether it’s in the moment or after the fact, a shifted vision will be extremely helpful.

What do you want your food relationship to look like? Use your imagination and see yourself in future scenarios. If you’re out to brunch, what will you order? How will you feel as you eat and engage with the people around you? What will your experience of the food be?

Use this vision concept to imagine yourself in food situations that stressed you out in the past. Some common times to consider might be holiday eating, eating out at restaurants, or managing treats in the dressing room before or after performances.

Creating a vision can help you transform your relationship to food…

By getting clear on how you would like to feel around food and what you would like your food experience to be, you’ll bring attention to that approach. This will help you discover and define what a “balanced” approach to food might be for you. Balance looks different for everyone, and it’s important to really connect to yourself to craft a vision that’s all about you.

A vision allows for flexibility. It should be aspirational and achievable. Allow it to be an analysis of how you’re making food choices now and how you’d like to make them and feel about them in the future.

What will I include in my meal plan to help me feel my best?

Think about some tenets of a healthy, balanced, adequate meal plan and what you can do to ensure that you’re covering all of your nutritional bases. Here are some suggestions for starting points with food:

1. Plan to have 3 meals and 2 snacks each day.
2. Include protein, carbohydrates, and fat at each meal and snack.
3. Aim for variety in your eating plan; don’t eat the same things every single day.
4. Pay attention to how your food is making you feel.
5. Notice your energy levels throughout the day and after eating certain things.
6. Allow for flexibility and fun in your food choices.
7. Ignore how your friends eat; needs and preferences vary.

A food vision for all dancers…

When you think about this concept, stay very aware that you aren’t bringing rules or restrictions into your ideal vision of your relationship to food. Having worked with so many dancers to achieve a balanced approach to food, I have some big opinions on how I’d love for your relationship with and vision for food to be.

Most dancers undereat; I want you to fuel yourself adequately. So often, dancers think there needs to be strict rules about what you eat, when you eat, and how much. When you release the rules and listen to your body, you’ll find balance. You don’t have to obsess over macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fat), but you do have to make sure you include them all.

Use this vision exercise as a way to consider your current approach to food and how you might shift things to find greater balance. When you start to feel less stress around food and food choices, you’ll free up headspace for possibility. You’ll allow for self-love and true nourishment. That’s where your best dancing lies.