Service: Nutrition Support for Injury and Rehabilitation

Neil Livemore
Aug 26, 2024
4 min read

Updated: Jun 12

A footballer on the grass injured — From setback to comeback. Fuel your injury recovery and path back to performance with specialist nutrition.

Optimising Recovery & Performance: Nutrition Support for Musculoskeletal Injuries

A musculoskeletal injury can significantly set back an athlete's progress, whether recreational or elite, with poor nutritional strategies often prolonging rehabilitation and delaying a return to sport or daily activity. Our expert nutrition consultants specialise in evidence-based support for injuries and exercise rehabilitation, including bone, ligament, tendon, and muscle.

We provide the immediate, targeted nutritional strategies crucial for optimal healing, alongside the long-term education to empower athletes to take ownership of their recovery, build future resilience, and even return to activity or sport in a stronger, more knowledgeable position than before.

Neil Livemore Consulting Injury nutrition poster showing services — Optimise your recovery. Specialist nutrition support to help you heal effectively and return to your best.

Navigating the Injury Continuum: Your Key Nutritional Goals

During injury rehabilitation, energy demands and nutritional needs are often deceiving and complex. While reductions in training may lower energy expenditure, the healing process itself increases metabolic demands, and assistive devices like crutches or a boot further elevate calorie requirements. Our focus is on providing precise nutritional guidance to support your unique needs throughout the entire recovery journey.

Our key goals in supporting your injury healing include:

Optimal Tissue Repair: Supporting optimal healing of bone, muscle, ligament, and tendon.

Minimising Lean Mass Loss: Actively combating muscle wastage and tissue breakdown, especially in immobilised limbs.

Maintaining Body Composition: Ensuring energy intake supports healing without excessive fat gain, aligning with your health, recovery, and performance objectives.

Sustaining Function & Preventing Detraining: Implementing strategies to minimise loss of fitness and strength in non-injured areas.

Enhanced Return to Activity: Maintaining an optimal timeline from a nutrition perspective for a safe and effective return to daily living and sport.

Our Personalised Approach to Injury Nutrition

Understanding your unique needs and the specific phase of your injury is paramount. We cut through the noise and provide clear, actionable insights tailored to your individual injury, rehabilitation demands, and any additional goals. Our expert-guided process combines in-depth personalised analysis with practical, time-efficient strategies that genuinely fit into your challenging recovery period.

Here's how we work with you to optimise your recovery:

Rapid, Comprehensive Assessment: We collect all relevant information about your injury, current rehabilitation, phase of recovery, specific goals, personal barriers, lifestyle constraints, and active demands. Our detailed nutritional analysis goes beyond planning, as it reveals any nutritional risks to optimal healing and recovery, and flags key areas for enhancing your general health and performance, allowing us to reduce assumptions and build truly bespoke recommendations.

Example Nutrition Analysis: Uncovering Deficiencies for Optimal Healing & Performance

Optional Advanced Analysis: Our London clinic provides advanced physiological assessments for an even deeper insight into your unique needs. These may include body composition (fat mass, lean mass, BIAS), anthropometric skinfolds, resting metabolism to help inform recommendations and monitor progress.

Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) Analysis: Accurately determining energy needs to support optimal injury healing and recovery.
Targeted Nutritional Strategies & Education: We pinpoint current nutritional barriers and problem-solve to educate you on the 'what, why, when, and how' to achieve your individual recovery goals efficiently.
- Energy Balance: Recommendations on calorie needs to support healing and maintain ideal body composition, accounting for the dynamic energy demands of different phases of healing and rehabilitation.
- Macronutrient Focus: Ensuring adequate protein targets to aid tissue retention, support healing and combat anabolic resistance from potential immobilisation, alongside appropriate carbohydrate and fat intake for fuelling and repair.
- Micronutrient Optimisation: Avoiding deficiencies to support healthy bodily function and tissue repair.
- Supplement Protocols: Evidence-driven, lab-tested supplements strategically selected to support injury-specific healing and additional recovery goals.

Bespoke Support During the Injury Process: Receive crucial ongoing support and adjustments as healing phases and activity levels change.
- Progress Monitoring: Track key metrics such as body weight, skinfolds, girths, and bioimpedance spectroscopy (where applicable) to view your healing timeline and trends in lean mass and fat mass.
- Direct Feedback: Upload meal photos for feedback from your consultant, ensuring adherence and real-time adjustments.
- Access Bespoke Resources: Receive high-quality materials including injury-specific recipe books, detailed nutrition guides, and informative infographics. Our library includes resources like our High-Performance Recipe Book and example educational infographics designed to enhance your understanding.
Optional: Long-Term Nutritional Development & Resilience: Beyond acute recovery, we offer optional development to refine all areas of your nutrition. Our focus is on equipping you with the knowledge and sustainable habits needed to manage your health effectively long-term, minimise future injury risk, and enhance overall health and performance, so you truly come back stronger than ever. You'll gain the tools to understand your unique needs, implement effective strategies, and develop the autonomy to apply and adjust nutrition plans for future injury prevention and sustained athletic performance.

Ready to optimise your recovery journey?

Don't let an injury sideline your goals. Discover how targeted nutrition can significantly enhance your healing process and empower your return to optimal performance. Get in touch today using the form below to learn more about our expert remote injury nutrition support.