8 Ways Functional Nutrition Can Elevate Your Health and Performance as an Outdoor Athlete

Last Updated: July 21, 2024

As a sports nutrition professional, my practice differs from many others in the field. I specialize in functional nutrition, a unique approach that distinguishes my practice from conventional sports nutrition. Specifically, I use functional nutrition to help outdoor athletes, including trail runners, hikers, mountaineers, climbers, and cyclists, optimize their health and performance!

If you’re unfamiliar with the term’ functional nutrition,’ you’re not alone. This innovative approach to nutrition is poised to shape the future of nutrition care and can significantly benefit athletes!

In this blog, I’ll describe functional nutrition, explaining why I’ve chosen this approach for my practice and how it can be a game-changer for athletes. Let’s get started! 

What is Functional Nutrition?

Functional nutrition is a branch of functional medicine that takes an evidence-based, holistic, and personalized approach to optimizing one’s nutrition to address health problems and optimize whole-body health and well-being. 

Functional medicine is a science-based, comprehensive approach to preventing disease and promoting optimal health and well-being that looks at the body as a whole rather than a collection of disparate parts. Functional medicine providers seek to identify the underlying causes of their patients’ or clients’ health issues to address health dysfunction at the source. Functional nutritionists seek to uncover the underlying causes of their client’s health concerns and use nutrition to help correct underlying imbalances and build optimal health. (Source

My educational background, including my Master’s program and supervised practice experience (SPE) for the CNS credential, leaned heavily into functional nutrition. As a result, I am passionate about using this approach to help my active clients optimize their health and athletic performance. 

The key features of a functional nutrition approach include:

  • A personalized approach to nutrition
  • Takes a root cause approach to addressing health challenges
  • Takes a holistic perspective on nutrition and health
  • Emphasizes “food as medicine,” whole foods, and nutrient density
  • Incorporates functional foods and supplements
  • Emphasizes evidence-based practice
  • Emphasizes client education and empowerment

Let’s discuss each of these features in turn!

Personalized Nutrition Approach

Functional nutritionists like myself provide personalized nutrition plans for our clients. 

Unlike conventional nutrition guidance based on government-produced dietary guidelines, we recognize each client’s bioindividuality. We tailor our nutrition recommendations to meet their unique needs, considering their health conditions, labs, lifestyle, and genetics, among other factors. This personalized approach ensures that each client feels understood and catered to. 

Root Cause Approach

A functional nutritionist takes a root-cause approach to addressing health challenges. Rather than seeking to “Band-Aid” health problems with fad diets or excessive amounts of supplements, we aim to uncover and address the underlying causes of health and performance challenges.

For example, let’s say a female runner presents with iron deficiency anemia. A review of her food log indicates that she’s undereating iron; however, a detailed interview reveals she’s also dealing with heavy periods that are driving excessive iron loss each month. In this situation, a functional nutritionist would seek to help the client increase her dietary iron intake and incorporate nutrition changes to help the client regulate her menstrual cycle, alleviating her heavy periods and allowing her body to maintain a healthier iron balance. 

Holistic Perspective

Functional nutrition l looks at the body as a whole, composed of many systems that influence each other, rather than as a disparate collection of body systems. For example, functional nutritionists recognize that gut health lays the foundation for the health of nearly every other body system, from the skin to the brain. As a functional nutritionist who works with outdoor athletes, I use a holistic perspective to help my clients improve their health and athletic performance by “connecting the dots” between their nutrition, gut health, energy, strength, and stamina. 

Food as Medicine and an Emphasis on Nutrient Density

In functional nutrition, food isn’t just a source of fuel for the body – certain foods and dietary approaches are used as nutritional “medicine,” helping to repair, heal, and optimize the health of your body. 

In addition, functional nutritionists emphasize the benefits of eating whole, minimally processed foods that are as close to nature as possible. 

In addition, functional nutritionists often emphasize nutrient-dense eating; that is, eating foods that provide an abundance of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and essential fatty acids relative to the number of calories they provide. High-nutrient-density foods supply abundant nutrients; for example, red meat, seafood, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds are nutrient-dense. Low-nutrient-density foods provide many calories without micronutrients or phytonutrients; examples include bread, pasta, and “junk food.”

Functional Foods and Supplements

Functional nutritionists recognize the power of functional foods and supplements to help clients repair and optimize their health. Functional foods provide health benefits beyond their vitamin and mineral content. (Source

For example, I often recommend fermented foods like raw sauerkraut and kimchi to help my clients restore their gut health or bone broth to help support tendons and joints. 

There is a time and place for supplements, too! As a functional sports nutritionist, I incorporate supplements such as probiotics, specific nutrients, fish oil, and creatine into my nutrition plans for clients, depending on the client’s unique needs. 

Evidence-Based Practice

Functional nutrition relies on scientific research and clinical practice to guide nutrition recommendations and interventions. I scour scientific research regularly, reading numerous journal articles each week and subscribing to research updates so I can stay up to date on the latest nutrition science to better help my clients! 

Client Education and Empowerment

As a functional nutritionist, I strive to educate and empower my athlete clients. My goal is to help them make informed decisions about their health and nutrition, and ultimately, to reach a point where they feel comfortable and confident steering their nutrition ‘ship ‘! 

What’s the Difference Between Functional Nutrition and Conventional Nutrition?

So, now that you understand functional nutrition, how does it differ from conventional nutrition care? While the significance of nutrition in healthcare is undeniable, the approaches taken by conventional and functional nutrition differ significantly.

Conventional nutrition care, often encountered in hospitals, frequently lacks personalization and primarily relies on government dietary guidelines such as the U.S. Dietary Guidelines and MyPlate. These guidelines, however, usually fall behind the latest nutritional research. As a result, conventional nutrition advice can be outdated and not optimally tailored to individual needs. Conventional nutrition care is often provided in a hospital or outpatient setting and is typically not personalized. Conversely, functional nutrition is highly personalized, accounting for the individual’s unique nutritional needs, health concerns, and food preferences.

Furthermore, conventional nutrition care often adheres to government dietary guidelines like the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. These guidelines are often out of sync with the latest nutrition research and clinical practice. As a result, conventional nutrition recommendations frequently lag many years behind the most cutting-edge nutrition research. Conversely, functional nutritionists strive to keep up with the latest research and weave it into their nutrition practice. 

8 Ways Functional Nutrition Can Help Outdoor Athletes

Functional nutrition can help athletes in many ways. Health is the foundation of optimal athletic performance, and functional nutrition enables you to build optimal health! 

A functional nutrition approach for athletes can help with:

  1. Gut health: Identifying underlying gut imbalances, such as SIBO and leaky gut, can help athletes experience less gastrointestinal distress during exercise and better absorb the nutrients they need to fuel their bodies. Functional nutritionists may use tests such as the Genova GI Effects stool test to identify underlying gut imbalances in their clients and develop personalized nutrition and supplement plans to support gut health. For example, I help many of my trail runner clients improve their gut health to experience less GI distress, allowing for more enjoyable runs and better race times! 
  2. Increase energy: As a functional nutritionist, I use nutrient timing strategies, nutrition principles for blood sugar control, and nutrient testing to identify potential causes of low energy in my athlete clients and ultimately increase energy. I will have clients work with their doctor to check their thyroid function and run labs to look at nutrients like vitamin D, vitamin B12, and iron that impact energy. 
  3. Support hormone balance: Many premenopausal and peri/postmenopausal women experience hormone imbalances that compromise their health and athletic performance. Functional nutrition strategies, including dietary changes, focusing on gut health, and specific supplements, can help female athletes achieve a healthier hormone balance. 
  4. Weight loss and body composition: Functional nutrition employs evidence-based strategies to help clients lose weight and improve their body composition. Most functional nutritionists avoid fad diets and use whole-food-based, sustainable strategies to help their clients reach their weight goals. 
  5. Performance: Consuming the proper nutrients at the right time and optimizing nutrient status can help athletes achieve optimal health and performance. 
  6. Recovery: By reducing excessive chronic inflammation and optimizing nutrition, functional nutrition approaches can support exercise recovery, helping you keep at it! 
  7. Immune function: Every athlete knows it’s no fun to get sick and be set back in your training or, worse yet, miss a race or event! Functional nutrition can help us optimize our immune function, making us more resilient in the face of immune stressors. Functional nutrition strategies that can support immune function include optimizing your vitamin D level, zinc, and vitamin A intake and taking care of your gut health. 
  8. Healthy aging: Chances are, you want to stay healthy and strong and engage in the outdoor sports you love for as long as possible. Functional nutrition can help you optimize your aging process, supporting muscle mass maintenance, bone density, and immune function so you can stay strong and vital! 

Functional Sports Nutrition Case Study

Since many of my readers are new to functional nutrition, I thought it would be helpful to feature a case study from my nutrition practice in which I helped one of my clients with a functional sports nutrition approach. Let’s dive in!

Case Study: Perimenopausal Trail Runner Struggling with Fatigue and Poor Recovery

This client, a perimenopausal woman in her mid-40s, came to me struggling with fatigue and feelings of heavy legs/flatness during her runs, poor exercise recovery, non-restorative sleep, and heavy periods. She had recently completed an iron panel with her doctor; while her doctor told her everything was normal, the client’s ferritin (a storage marker of iron) was actually quite suboptimal, especially for an athlete living and exercising at altitude. I also noticed that her vitamin B12 level was functionally low; a functionally low B12 level (B12 that is still within the “normal” reference range but at the low end of the optimal range) can cause fatigue, muscle weakness, and mood changes. According to her food tracking, her protein intake was also too low to optimally support her training.

I recommended that my client increase her protein intake to approximately 120 grams/day, incorporated iron and vitamin B12 supplements (including the most stomach-friendly, bioavailable forms of these nutrients), and provided recommendations for optimizing her iron and B12 intake through food. I advised her to retest her iron panel and vitamin B12 levels within 6-8 weeks with her doctor so we could adjust her nutrition plan accordingly, if needed. Within a couple of weeks, she already felt better! She felt stronger on her runs, recovered faster from her training, and began to experience higher energy and more restorative sleep. Now that’s a win!

As you can see, I utilized functional nutrition approaches with this athlete, including evidence-based dietary changes and interpretation of biomarkers from an optimal standpoint (not a conventional standpoint).

The Bottom Line on Functional Nutrition for Outdoor Athletes

While there is a time and place for conventional nutrition approaches, functional nutrition has the potential to truly up-level your whole-body health and athletic performance. 

By taking a personalized, root-cause approach to nutrition and health, emphasizing whole foods and nutrient density, and engaging in evidence-based practice, education, and empowerment, functional nutrition can help you reach new heights in your daily life and your sport! 

If you want to take a functional nutrition approach to optimizing your health and athletic performance, I can help! Schedule a complimentary discovery call to learn how I can help you. 

Did you find this blog helpful? Consider sharing it with an outdoor athlete friend!

The content provided on this nutrition blog is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have read on this blog.

The information and recommendations presented here are based on general nutrition principles and may not be suitable for everyone. Individual dietary needs and health concerns vary, and what works for one person may not be appropriate for another.

I make every effort to provide accurate and up-to-date information, but the field of nutrition is constantly evolving, and new research may impact dietary recommendations. Therefore, I cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information presented on this blog.

If you have specific dietary or health concerns, please consult a qualified nutritionist or another healthcare professional for personalized guidance.

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lindsey alpine nutrition dietitian

Hi, I'm Lindsay

I help mountain athletes improve their performance through a holistic and inclusive approach to nutrition.
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