What Is a Weight-Inclusive Sports Dietitian?
A weight-inclusive sports dietitian focuses on fueling adequacy, performance markers, and an athlete's relationship with food, rather than weight or body composition targets. The underlying belief is that athletes of all body sizes are capable of high performance, and that health and performance outcomes are better predicted by how well someone is fueled than by a number on a scale.
How this differs from traditional sports nutrition
Traditional sports nutrition has historically leaned on body composition metrics: target weights, target body fat percentages, skinfold measurements tracked over a season. None of that is inherently wrong information to have. The difference is what it's used for.
In a weight-inclusive approach, the metrics that matter most are things like energy availability, recovery quality, injury and illness frequency, menstrual function where relevant, sleep, and how an athlete's actual performance is trending. Weight isn't ignored as a data point if it's clinically relevant, but it's not the target, and it's not the primary way progress gets measured.
The case for this approach
Research on weight and health outcomes has increasingly moved away from the assumption that weight itself is a reliable, independent predictor of health, and toward a more nuanced view of what actually drives outcomes: behaviors, access, and biology, of which weight is one downstream marker among many, not a cause on its own (Bacon & Aphramor, 2011). In sport specifically, a review looking at body composition and competitive success found that the evidence linking specific body fat percentages to performance was limited, and that factors like training experience, age, and competition exposure were often equally or more predictive (Mathisen et al., 2023).
There's also a real cost to the alternative. Athletes coached to chase a body composition ideal that isn't well-suited to their own physiology are at meaningfully higher risk of sliding from a reasonable performance goal into chronic restriction, and from there into a diagnosable eating disorder (Sundgot-Borgen & Torstveit, 2010). A weight-inclusive approach is, in part, a way of protecting against that slide before it starts.
What this looks like in practice with athletes
Sessions don't include routine weigh-ins as a default. There's no standard restrictive meal plan handed out at intake. Instead, the early work usually focuses on understanding an athlete's training demands, their current eating patterns, energy availability, and their relationship with food, then building a fueling approach around that picture rather than a generic template.
For athletes with a history of disordered eating or at risk for REDs, this often means specifically working against restriction, not adding more of it, and rebuilding trust in the body's own hunger and fullness signals alongside solid fueling knowledge.
"Doesn't this mean ignoring performance?"
This is the most common misconception, and it's worth addressing directly. Weight-inclusive doesn't mean outcome-indifferent. Performance still matters, and fueling for it still matters. What changes is the assumption that manipulating body weight or composition is a reliable lever for improving performance. In many cases it isn't, and treating it as though it is can actively undermine both health and performance at the same time.
Who this approach helps most
This way of working tends to matter most for athletes with a history of disordered eating, those at risk for REDs, and anyone who's been through a cycle of chronic dieting in the name of performance. It's also simply a sound default for any athlete, since it removes an unnecessary point of pressure without removing any of the actual fueling rigor their sport requires.
I'm a sports dietitian and eating disorder specialist, which means this approach is grounded in both sports dietetics and eating disorder specialty training, not one or the other. That combination is part of why I work this way, and part of why I think it belongs more broadly in how athletes are supported.
References
Bacon, L., & Aphramor, L. (2011). Weight science: Evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition Journal, 10(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9
Mathisen, T. F., et al. (2023). Best practice recommendations for body composition considerations in sport to reduce health and performance risks. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(17), 1148-1160. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2023-106812
Sundgot-Borgen, J., & Torstveit, M. K. (2010). Aspects of disordered eating continuum in elite high-intensity sports. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 20(Suppl 2), 112-121. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01190.x
