Nourishing The Nation’s Athletes
I was raised in a family where the parental thrust was almost entirely on academics. At school, we had the athletes and the sports “B-Division”. Those of us who were clumped into the B-Division, according to the school’s classification, exuded little athletic promise. Relegated at an early age to that sorry lot, I recall watching the sports kids with admiration and envy – the manner in which their taut bodies rippled through inter-house relays, or thumped across basketball courts with agility and slyness. Or how their spiked shoes, slung casually on sweat-kissed shoulders, glinted at the B-Division with steely mirth, while we being were chided for not polishing our rain-sloshed keds. More enticingly, the top athletes seemed engaged in groupie behavior that the uncool set was excised from: stadium meets, inter-school competitions, after-school practices. All this while the B-division was accorded tiresome drill exercises.
As a writer, I relish dwelling in worlds that I can no longer physically inhabit. So it was enchanting to talk to Shona Prabhu, the co-founder of NutrifyMyDiet, an enterprise that provides nutritional advice to intense sportspersons. In the past, Shona worked as the official sports nutritionist for the IPL team, Delhi Capitals, and for the Indian Hockey Team. Her startup, based in Bangalore, currently advises swimmers, athletes and other sports aspirants on one of the critical elements to up their chances: their diets.
One of her successes includes a young swimmer called Aneesh Gowda, who approached her to modify his diet. Shona reports, that unlike weight-loss diets, where the focus is on curtailing intakes, athletes need to be fed. Much more than the average human being. As a highly-qualified nutritionist who also understands food psychology, Shona found foods that could fuel his swims while also being flavorful. After all, the emerging field of neurogastronomy reinforces that dietary changes rarely work without considering “taste” – a sensation that emerges from an interplay of all five senses and the brain, and not merely from molecules that flood our mouths.
By deftly adding a few food groups and increasing the quantity of nutrients in a manner that his digestive system could absorb, Shona boosted the swimmer’s medley of moves: “We did this with a “food first approach” – first making sure that basic foods are given and then adding supplements if necessary.” At the recently held Khelo India in Ambala, Haryana, you can watch Aneesh whip through the water to snag six gold medals, emerging as one of the top Indian athletes.
While athletes subject their bodies to grueling levels of practice, sports nutritionists strive as hard to imbibe the latest methods in a cutting-edge field. Shona points out that most nutritionists are highly-qualified, with many like her wielding advanced Master’s degrees to fuel aspiring swimmers, cricketers or hockey champs. How did Shona herself land inside a field that has only recently started emerging as a felt social need?
A Summer Abroad Arouses Shona’s Interest
Since her family moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when Shona was still a baby, she was schooled in the Middle East. Even as a child, she realized that she always loved being around people. A visit to the U.S. in the eighth grade sparked off her lifelong fascination with food. That year, she was permitted to spend three months abroad, over her summer vacation. Conversations in the foreign setting revolved around food, with friends and relatives deconstructing nutritional values in a manner that Shona hadn’t encountered till then. They discussed oils and vegetables or unusual frying processes; moreover, their reflective cooking and eating was preceded by equally attentive shopping. Shona was struck, too, by the sheer variety of grocery produce. On her return to Riyadh, she sparked off changes into her own diet, bewildering her parents’ with her sudden insistence on this or that food type.
She had also been a keen sportsperson through her school years. She even played at the Badminton Nationals in India. Later, when she moved to Bangalore for her PUC and Bachelor’s at Mount Carmel, she felt she couldn’t combine serious sports with academics. She cites this as one of the ongoing obstacles to professional sporting careers: athletes are often compelled to make a tricky tradeoff between education and sports, with many being understandably fearful about relinquishing academics altogether.
She chose mainstream science subjects for her PUC. She was very clear that her mind worked best when wrestling with scientific problems. After her PUC, she opted for a Bachelor’s in Nutrition, Dietetics, Zoology and Chemistry at Mount Carmel College. “This was the only stream that interested me and this was the only college offering it in Bangalore. I also love animals, so I didn’t mind studying Zoology.”
Later, she headed to Manipal for her Post Graduate Diploma in Nutrition and Dietetics. Around then, she decided to focus on Sports Nutrition. Keen to glean the latest international knowhow in the field, she augmented her PG Diploma with a Master’s in Sports Nutrition in the U.K, while living in a small student town called Loughborough. She could have searched for job opportunities in the U.K., but her heart was set on bringing her expertise back to India, to lift the performance of the nation’s athletic strivers.
Garnering Experience Before Founding Her Enterprise
At first, she joined Qua Nutrition. Right after her first year with the company, the Qua team was keen on expanding their footprint by opening out their services to trained franchisees. By then, Shona had forged strong relationships with clients and with the internal team at Qua. Besides, her parents were willing to fund her own setup, so she morphed into a Qua franchisee at Koramangala. Over time, she found she was handling more Admin and HR work than she would have liked to, and could not interact as much with clients, “which is what I really liked doing.”
Eventually, she realized that she also needed more autonomy and flexibility, so she founded NutrifyMyDiet, her own nutrition enterprise. Her husband pitched in as a co-founder to handle the business and strategic aspects. “He takes care of the operations and sales side of things, and sometimes he even plays the role of an office boy. With a startup, if you think you will only handle the big things, it doesn’t really work like that. You also need to sweat the small stuff,” says Shona, with a chuckle.
Nutrifying Olympic Potentials
Besides Aneesh Gowda, the organization has fostered many other sports successes. Like Vishal Kumar, a state level cricketer, who approached her at the age of 13, since he felt his height and weight needed to be enhanced. Till then, Kumar says in a video testimonial, “I would eat when hungry, stop when full. I did not eat at fixed times.” Shona not only fixed his food schedules, she also structured his pre and post-training meals. Sure enough, his height and weight started increasing at a faster clip. More significantly, the new diet also reduced the rate of injuries and prodded faster recoveries from the few that still occurred.
With a keen sense of the manner in which the sporting ecology is currently being enhanced, Shona remains optimistic about the nation’s future Olympic hauls. She is certain that many sportspersons are poised to win medals, with organizations like hers propelling their journeys.
References
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/04/taste