That’s what everyone told me when I cut added sugar out of my diet when I was eight years old.

It started when I was in competitive gymnastics. We were told that our mid-practice snacks were supposed to be healthy. And what did healthy mean? Low amounts of added sugar. So I decided that if I was going to become the best athlete I could be, I would cut added sugar out of every aspect of my life.

About five years later, I quit gymnastics, but the "no-added-sugar" mentality stayed with me. I wasn't even doing it for performance anymore. Honestly, I didn't even know why I was doing it. All I knew was that it had become part of who I was.

When I got sugar-free frozen yogurt, my friends praised me. When I skipped dessert, everyone told me how incredible my willpower was. When my own birthday cake was fruit while everyone else enjoyed cake, I was told how strong and disciplined I was. When I ordered a salad at a restaurant, people would tell me how healthy I was.

Looking back, I don’t think anyone was intentionally trying to teach me restriction. But they were teaching me something anyway.

Every compliment reinforced the idea that restriction was something to be proud of. Over time, those compliments stopped rewarding a behavior. They started shaping an identity. And once restriction became part of my identity, it became much harder to let it go.

One of the things I’ve realized over the past year while researching RED-S and Low Energy Availability is that we don’t just teach female athletes about nutrition through presentations, books, or formal conversations.

We also teach them through what we celebrate in everyday moments, often without realizing it’s a teaching moment at all.

Nobody ever said:

Instead, we constantly hear:

Looking back, that's a fascinating difference. The behaviors most closely tied to performance, such as fueling well, recovering well, and eating enough, are often invisible.

Restriction, on the other hand, is visible. And because it's visible, and because it aligns with what society has labeled as “healthy,” especially for women, it’s often what gets praised.

No one was intentionally promoting food restriction. They were simply celebrating what they believed was healthy. But that's exactly what made it so impactful.

We don’t just teach athletes through structured education. We teach them through what gets noticed, what gets praised, and what gets repeated.

Young athletes don’t just internalize nutrition advice. They internalize what earns approval.

It often looks something like this:

This doesn’t happen overnight, and it certainly doesn’t happen to everyone. But it’s a pattern worth paying attention to because it quietly changes the way athletes think about food, and eventually, the way they think about themselves.

This is where another concept enters the conversation: Orthorexia Nervosa.

Orthorexia is often described as an obsession with healthy eating. At first glance, that doesn’t sound harmful. How could healthy eating ever become unhealthy?

The problem isn’t prioritizing nutritious foods. The problem is when “healthy eating” becomes a rigid identity that no longer supports health or performance.

Orthorexia is characterized by restrictive eating patterns, rigid avoidance of foods perceived as unhealthy, and an obsessive focus on eating “correctly.” Research has shown that these behaviors can contribute to nutritional deficiencies, medical complications, and reduced quality of life (Koven & Abry, 2015).

One indicator stood out to me:

“Violation of self-imposed dietary rules causes exaggerated fear… accompanied by anxiety and shame.” (Scarff, 2017)

That sentence immediately brought me back to my younger self.

I remember feeling guilty when I broke my “streak.” I remember questioning my discipline. I remember believing that eating certain foods made me a worse athlete.

Looking back, it wasn’t the sugar that had power over me. It was the identity I had built around avoiding it. And that’s what makes this so difficult to talk about.

Most young athletes who begin restricting foods aren’t trying to harm themselves. They’re trying to improve. They’re trying to become healthier, faster, more disciplined.

Which is exactly why the environment around them matters so much.

I was talking with my coach recently after a workout when I caught myself saying, “I feel like I’m less disciplined than I used to be.”

As we talked, I realized something.

I wasn’t measuring discipline by consistency in training. I wasn’t measuring it by recovery. I wasn’t measuring it by resilience in hard workouts.

I was measuring it by how well I could tolerate restriction.

That realization completely changed my perspective. The discipline I actually needed wasn’t avoiding food. It was fueling enough. It was recovering enough. It was letting go of an identity that was no longer serving performance.

And ironically, once I started doing that, everything improved with more energy, better recovery, and higher training capacity.

Health and whole foods absolutely matter. Performance nutrition matters. But there’s a difference between encouraging healthy habits and attaching identity to restriction.

Instead of praising restriction, what if we praised behaviors that actually support long-term health and performance?

Instead of:

“You’re so healthy.”

“You have so much willpower.”

“I wish I had your discipline.”

What if we said:

“I’m proud of how consistently you fuel before practice.”

“You’ve done a great job prioritizing recovery.”

“I love how you’re taking care of your body so it can perform at its best.”

The words seem small. But words shape identity. And identity shapes behavior.

If you're a coach:

Pay attention to what you praise. Celebrate fueling, recovery, consistency, resilience, and strength, rather than restriction.

If you're a parent:

Avoid labeling foods as “good” or “bad.” Instead, help athletes understand how food supports training, recovery, and performance.

If you're an athlete:

Ask yourself an honest question: Is this food rule helping my performance, or is it protecting an identity I built around being “healthy”?

The most disciplined thing you can do isn’t eating less. It’s finally giving your body enough fuel to become the athlete it’s capable of becoming.

Because athletes don’t just become what they practice. They also become what we applaud.