The Performance Pantry

25/11/2025

🥬From Home to Bowl! 🥣 My fav is a beautiful recipe from and I think the whole company at enjoyed it too! Bursting with flavour, texture and colour, and a suitable plate to bring to the dinner celebrating another year at Royal NZ Ballet year! 🎄🎅🏼

21/11/2025

🙌😍

18/11/2025

🇦🇺🐨🦘Sports Dietitians Australia Conference! A great time topping up the 🧠in all things sports nutrition and geeking out, BUT an excellent time hanging out with friends, colleagues and making new connections with some awesome humans 😍 So much so, limited 📸evidence!

30/10/2025

✅ Recommended Uses for Electrolytes

Before exercise in hot environments when large sweat losses are expected (>1-1.5L per hour)

Targeted replacement of large sweat losses
(long duration sweating, or high sweat rate > 1L per hour, or “salty sweater”)

Rehydration when losses are high (>2% body mass loss or limited recovery time)

❓ Uncertain / context-dependent

During continuous exercise >180 minutes
(depends on individual fueling/electrolyte/hydration needs)

❌ Not necessary

During exercise

17/10/2025

Don’t just eat more spinach 🥗There really are a tonne more (effective) ways to boost your iron intake! Check them ALL out World Iron Awareness Week 🍽️

14/10/2025

Eating an iron rich meal post training in the hopes of it helping boost your ferritin levels? 🤞🤞

This may not be the best time!

You may not be absorbing it…🫣❌
Iron absorption is regulated by a hormone called Hepcidin. Levels of hepcidin rise after exercise, especially after endurance activities or high intensity sessions, peaking 3-6 hours afterwards. This rise blocks iron absorption.

Another kicker!
⏰Hepcidin levels also follow a rhythm across the day; being lower in the morning and higher late afternoon and early evening- not great news for evening exercisers & iron absorption!

SO, YOUR FANCY STEAK DINNER IS KINDA WASTED
Unless, you adjust your training times or meal times to help with better absorption, like so:
✅Prioritise iron rich foods during the day before training, on rest days, and on lower intensity training days.

TRAINING IN THE MORNING OR AT LUNCHTIME?
✅Avoid fasted training (more on this later this week), include an iron breakfast ASAP, like eggs & iron fortified toast & tomatoes, snack often during the day, and include a high iron food option at dinner. Having more iron rich foods on rest days, and lower intensity training days also helps.

12/10/2025

Is a bit of a long video (3 mins), 😅oops! Anyway! Enjoy learning some new facts about in the body, especiallly the last one….

World iron awareness week - athlete edition

3 facts you may not know about iron.

Why we need Iron: Iron is fundamentally important to the optimal function of all athletes, given its crucial role in functions like, oxygen transport, cellular energy production, incorporation of iron into new tissues and cells from training, but also for cognitive processing, and many other essential functions.

1. Athletes lose iron from body stores from exercise-associated iron losses including the following that contribute to the high prevalence of low iron stores commonly seen in athletes:
* Sweat
* Haemolysis including (footstrike or repetitive landing)
* Urine & poo
* Gastrointestinal bleeding from high intensity exercise
* Menstruation losses

2. Male athletes are also at risk of low iron stores! Low iron stores or low ferrin levels are NOT just a female issue. Research suggests that 3 to 20% of male athletes have lower than optimal iron stores. It is more commonly seen in endurance activities like running and triathlon.

3. Low iron stores and iron deficiency are linked with higher incidence of bone issues, like stress reactions and stress fractures. When iron stores are low, it affects the bone remodelling process, and bone is not made as quickly as it is being broken down. Over time this leads to weakness and thinning of the bones.

Later this week, we’ll give you our 3 top strategies for optimsing iron intake as an athlete, that go beyond just eating more red meat (although this is also helpful!)llubtye

10/10/2025

🙌 Lucy getting ready for her nutrition workshops today with High Performance athletes at a camp in sunny Hawkes Bay ☀️

10/10/2025

⁉️Does weight loss improve performance⁉️

Does it help? If so, how? Are there other factors at play? Is it more nuanced than just simply having less body mass? Are there any risks to pursuing in hopes of a better performance?

A constant topic of conversation in the sports world, whether that’s at a recreational level, competing as a weekend warrior or the high performance level.

Well, we wrote a blog about it! Otherwise we’d be here all day! Head to the link in our bio 👆

18/09/2025

❤️THIS QUOTE ❤️

Quotes all resonate with people in different ways, for us right now, this weaves in magically with the work we are doing in the space in high performance sport in NZ right now.

Asking questions of sports and dance environments to help athletes, dancers and all humans, thrive in their places of work.

Shifting the dial to a more positive food and body environment. Educating and crushing myths 🕵️ Raising awareness about

12/09/2025

⚡️FRIDAY FUELLING⚡️

Yum! These went down a treat this week Super simple, yum & fun! Give them a try this weekend as a neat snack to add into your or toolkit

09/09/2025

We are super stoked to be supporting the Harcourts Hawkes Bay Women’s Triathlon in October! Our wonderful Sports Dietitian Lucy is talking all things female nutrition for life and training with the amazing Catrina Specialist Nurse Women’s Health Practitioner- what a team! 💪

Come along this Thursday at 5.30pm! We’ll also be offering all participants a sweet little discount code for a Nutrition Appointment with Lucy.

🌟 Nutrition for Every Stage of Life & Sport

Join Lucy Burrows - Sports Dietician from The Performance Pantry, Triathlete & Mum and Catrina del Rosario - Specialist Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner & Mum for an empowering workshop on nutrition through every stage of life.

They’ll be diving into practical advice for:
👶 Pregnancy & Postpartum
🌸 Peri/Menopause
🏃 Everyday performance as an athlete or active woman

Getting your everyday nutrition right lays the foundation for energy, recovery, and performance and is the first step in setting yourself up for success on race day!

📅 Thursday 11th September
📍 Heretaunga Women’s Centre
🕠 5.30pm - 6.30pm

✨ You can either join us in person at the Centre or tune in via Facebook Live where we’ll be streaming the talk.

👉 If you’d like to attend in person, please register (spaces are limited!) by emailing admin@hwc.nz or calling the Centre on (06) 878 5401.

Don’t miss this chance to learn from two experts who understand the unique challenges women face at different stages of life - as athletes, as mums, and as wāhine striving to feel their best.