retired from professional road cycling in 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\nShe has released a book telling her story and sharing her favourite recipes, and said: “My point is that enjoyment is a really big part of healthiness.”<\/p>\n
Looking back on her time as a champion cyclist, Pooley said: “At the elite level, the idea that thinner is faster is wrong… and I think it’s quite damaging.<\/p>\n
“I had some problems in the sport but.. I’m fine now and I wasn’t that bad. <\/p>\n
“But I know other athletes have had problems and it affects your health long-term, so it is something I’m concerned about.”<\/p>\n
She said she addressed those issues in her book and said it was important that the sport “gives a healthy impression on the viewers as well, so that it should inspire people to cycle”.<\/p>\n
Some of her recipes were meals she “learned to make to support my training, but now I eat as part of a healthy lifestyle”. <\/p>\n
However, she said attitudes had “changed for the better and there was a lot of really well-founded science-based thinking in cycling and other sports about a balanced diet and a healthy body”.<\/p>\n
“Some people are naturally very slim and some aren’t and you can’t force everybody to look the same,” Pooley said.<\/p>\n
“No-one forced calorie restriction upon me, it was because I was told it was better to be thin and I looked around me and saw lots of thin people so I inflicted it upon myself, but I realised… the more I ate the faster I went.<\/p>\n
“Now I realise that I was over-restricting and so a lot of people realise it’s not about restriction, it’s about healthy fuel.<\/p>\n
“My point is that enjoyment is a really big part of… healthiness.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Olympic cyclist Emma Pooley has spoken about how her relationship with food was coloured by the idea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-9825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}