A Dancer, Who Yearns for Lunch
I would bet my piggy bank that most college students have felt the impending doom of deciding what they’re going to eat for their next meal. Now, add being a student athlete, whose entire class schedule consists of primarily physical activity … for at least six hours a day.
As a dance major in my final semester at Webster University, my peers and I have consistently struggled with finding time in the day to eat a proper meal.
A dance major’s daily routine consists of multiple dance classes, possibly one sit-down class and rehearsals at night, as well as over the weekends. On average, the day could go from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. with just classes and rehearsals alone. A 12-hour day that includes maybe two hours’ worth of breaks makes it nearly impossible to find the time or energy to eat. Considering the hours that dining halls are open, dancers do not have time in their schedules to make it to the dining hall to purchase meals – leaving us with the responsibility of packing our own food for the day.
For some, they enjoy packing food and have no problem doing so. But at 7 a.m., trying to pack food that will last you 12 hours seems impossible. Pack it the night before, you say? What if I told you that sometimes students do not get home until 10 p.m. or later?
I typically have four to five dance classes from 8:30 a.m. to 5:20 p.m., and in-between each of those classes, we only have a 10-minute break when the locker rooms are flooded with sweaty and exhausted dancers attempting to change clothes, use the bathroom and eat a snack. Since these breaks are in-between classes, we average about three to six 10-minute breaks per day. Let me just say, trying to squeeze tights and a leotard on a sweaty body while trying to inhale four green grapes totally sucks.
Our class schedule leaves us only an hour to shower, eat dinner and do homework (yes, dancers have homework) and it normally involves more movement – great! If we dancers want to get the full eight hours of sleep, then we need to be in bed no later than 11 to 11:30 p.m., which is impossible, considering all of our nightly responsibilities. God forbid, a girl wants to wind down at the end of her day!
The little “free time” that we have requires us to be in other places that pull us away from what we need to survive: food.
About a year ago, my curiosity rose and I calculated how many calories dance majors need to eat in a day to remain full and strong. Due to our intense schedules and high-stress commitment, we have to eat just over three times as many calories as a normal 20-year-old, in order to fully fuel our hardworking bodies.
As someone with ADHD, I forget to eat sometimes (even on days I’m not active); therefore, adding an intense schedule with very little breaks makes it impossible for me to reach my ideal calorie count for the day. Last semester, I was extremely stressed for about a week straight. Soon, I realized I was barely eating any food because I had zero appetite. Stress is an appetite suppressant, for sure, but mixed with long days filled with driving and dancing … I forgot to eat!
Halfway through my jazz class at 11 a.m., I can hear my stomach gurgling, but I have to ignore it, which throws off my hunger cues. Due to the lack of ability to eat full meals during the week, I have noticed that on weekends, my eating patterns are all out of whack. Unfortunately, due to the lack of sleep and constant movement, many of us heavily rely on caffeine to get us through the day. It’s a miracle I did not pass out my sophomore year because I was having a coffee and two Red Bulls a day – don’t worry, I only have one caffeinated drink a day now (yay!). I wake up hungry, I go to make myself breakfast and suddenly, my body cannot finish a whole meal anymore.
Dancers have to remain resilient, strong and innovative to make our schedules work, yet we are still barely making it through. We are deprived of sleep, food and everything in-between. The difficulty in finding time to eat remains supreme in a dance major’s daily struggle.
