Just about everyone has heard the phrase: “You only get out what you put in.”

It could be in reference to a number of things: school, a new job, or perhaps some kind of training. The phrase is thrown around a lot with athletes, as coaches implore them to practice harder or spend extra time on their conditioning. In the case of SMU’s new sports dietician, Brittney Bearden, MEd, RD, LD, it takes on a more literal meaning. After earning her bachelor’s degree in nutritional science from Texas A&M, she earned a Master’s degree in exercise physiology from Auburn before spending a couple of years working with student-athletes at Indiana University.

When he was hired as the Mustangs’ new football head coach, Chad Morris made no secret of his desire for the addition of a dietician, having seen the progress his former players at Clemson University made when working with the university’s strength and conditioning staff while getting nutritional advice from a qualified sports dietician. Or, as SMU strength and conditioning director Trumain Carroll put it, the finest performance vehicles won’t run at their optimal level without the right fuel.

Two others held the position temporarily before Bearden’s arrival in April. Contracted through Ben Hogan Sports Medicine in Fort Worth, Bearden brings a wealth of experience to her new position, and visited recently with PonyFans.com to discuss her approach to working with SMU’s student-athletes.

(photo by PonyFans.com).

PonyFans.com: You have been SMU’s athletic nutritionist for a few weeks. What drew you to this as a profession?

Brittney Bearden: I grew up playing sports, I love the sports environment, I love the competitive environment, and I like being a part of a team. I love those aspects and I also enjoy food and nutrition so wanted to combine the two. I thought it would be cool if I was able to do nutrition for sports teams.

Initially, when I first thought of the idea, I had no idea what kind of job opportunities were available in the field, and then as I progressed through my education, I was able to get more and more experience with it and was fortunate enough to end up here.

PonyFans.com: You’re going to design and create nutritional programs for the student-athletes at SMU. How much of that is done in the offseason, and how much is altered as a season goes along?

Bearden: Athletes are always eating, so regardless of whether it’s in season or offseason, nutrition is always important. There are going to be different goals with different seasons and I want to make sure, consistently, that they’re fueling well and recovering properly.

So the two primary things that I do are provide food for student-athletes and also educate them on their food choices. That looks different — per team, per athlete, per day, per season — and so, day to day, we have the fueling station in the weight room where we provide fruit, oatmeal, protein shakes, etc. That helps ensure they’re fueling properly for their workouts and throughout the day, recovering properly post-workout, so they can maximize each and every training session.

So that’s the part about providing, and then the education piece is going to involve a lot of different components. We’re going to involve some team approaches like team talks, team educations, and then I’ll have individual meetings, develop meal plans so I can help them meet their goals individually. So with a couple of teams particularly, you have different position groups with different needs — you know, O-linemen have different needs than wide receivers — so teaching them about nutrition is important because different athletes have different bodies and nutritional needs. So that could be giving them individual meal plans or just giving them better ideas for snacks and also providing those snacks here, as well.

Team meals — we’ll do that, as well, a lot of meal planning, and that’s one way it’s going to change a little bit between in season and offseason. A pre-game meal is going to look a little bit different than a post-game meal. Another thing for team meals that helps with education is food labeling — something that’s easy and shows them “hey, this is the best kind of protein to get, the leanest kind of protein that’s going to help build muscle more than the fattier ones.”

Other educational pieces we do, that are relatable to the student-athlete, include our new Twitter account, so we can tweet stuff out that way. We have an information screen that we can run things through, just little, quick nutrition snippets that they can pick up on without me giving them an hour-long seminar or something — just quick things that are always out there for them.

PonyFans.com: You mentioned the difference between, to use your example, offensive linemen and receivers. But you’re working with all sports at SMU. You got your Master’s at Auburn and then worked in a similar role for the last couple of years at Indiana University. Is that — working with all sports — something you did prior to working at SMU, too, or will that aspect be new to you?

Bearden: I do have experience working all the sports we have at SMU, however my involvement with each team is always a little bit different. With the difference in sports, that’s part of the reason that I like my job so much, because there’s a lot of variety, so you never get bored and there’s always tons to do. With the women’s soccer team versus the football team versus the golf team, what I do is going to look very different. So part of it is learning the culture of the team and what’s important to the coaches and what’s important to the athletes. So learning to incorporate that team culture and bringing in nutrition education in ways that are team specific.

PonyFans.com: How much of the nutritional plans you’ll implement are all yours, and how much will be based on (strength and conditioning head coach) Trumain Carroll and his staff weighing in with their thoughts?

Bearden: I work closely with Coach Tru and his staff. We all want the players — in every sport — to be the best athletes they can be, and there are a lot of different components to that. So we’ll talk about athletes who need to gain some muscle, some weight, about the ones who need to lean out or lose some weight, and then there are some who just need to improve their eating habits. So we’ll sit down and talk about those guys, and from my side of this — the eating side — I’m going to be on those guys about making sure that they do what they need to do to reach that goal, and remind them about how to do that.

Part of it, too, is that it’s important for me to have good relationships with the athletes, so they know that I’m not the food police, that I’m here to help them be the best athletes they can be. I’m going to do that by asking them consistently about what they eat, remind them about the things we have talked about. If I’m at a team meal, I might remind them of “hey, let’s get more of this and less of that” to help them become the best athletes they can.

PonyFans.com: Will the coaches of the specific teams have input with you about who needs to gain weight or lose weight, or will they do that through the strength staff, who then would discuss it with you?

Bearden: It will be a little bit different per sport. With some, like football, it will be mostly through Tru and his staff, and in some other sports, I’ll talk directly with the coaches. But I think it’s always a little bit of a mix. You’re going to have some coaches who want to follow up with me directly others will communicate through Tru- and he and I communicate often. So it’s a little bit of a mixture, and it depends upon each individual coach.

PonyFans.com: Do you create a program for the year and ask athletes to stick to it, or do you change your nutritional program on the fly as a season goes along?

Bearden: There are three things that I think are important with student-athletes when it comes to nutrition: you’ve got to make it simple, you’ve got to make it practical and you’ve got to make it repeatable. The goal of a nutrition plan is to make it a behavior change. So making it simple, for example saying “hey, let’s get a third of your plate to be protein”. Making it simple, and being around at team meals and showing them as they’re eating, being there to tell them “this is going to be the best thing for you,” or “this is not going to help you as much as that” … and again, making it practical, so it fits into their schedules. Sometimes lunch can be a hard meal to get in, with their schedules, so looking at their schedules and what part of campus they’re at, or whether they’re near a dining hall or restaurant, giving them the best choices at those locations. Or if they’re in a dorm, teaching them some microwave meals that they can do.

We want it to be practical for their schedules, and then for it to be repeatable it needs to be convenient for them. That’s where our fueling station we have is helpful: they’re able to grab snacks throughout the day.

PonyFans.com: It’s easy for college athletes to say the right things about nutrition, and then do the opposite. How much of your job is getting them to buy in and practice what you preach, rather than merely offering lip service?

Bearden: That definitely is a big part of it. You have some athletes who really care about nutrition and some who don’t care at all. There are some athletes who are great athletes without paying attention to their nutrition, whereas with others, it’s going to help them more to pay more attention. But for everybody, eventually it’s going to catch up to them, so it goes back to that performance piece. This is another piece to the puzzle that is only going to help them perform better and recover better.

And it helps longevity. If they do want to go pro, it can help lengthen their careers by helping them prevent/recover from injury and illness. It’s only going to benefit them and the sooner they can buy in, the better.

Fruit and oatmeal are among the offerings available to SMU student-athletes at the fueling station in the weight room (photo by PonyFans.com).

PonyFans.com: How different is your program for an 18-year-old freshman, who in some cases is still growing into his or her frame and therefore can eat just about anything, compared to the program you might put together for a 21- or 22-year-old senior who is more mature and may have a slower metabolism? Does your program stay pretty consistent throughout a college athlete’s career, or does it change a lot as they physically mature?

Bearden: It’s definitely going to change as their goals and needs change. There will also be guys who change positions, get injured, etc that impact their nutrition needs. So their needs often vary throughout a college career. We do body composition testing, so say, if someone needs to gain 20 pounds, we want the majority of that weight gain to be muscle mass, because that will help increase power and speed, whereas fat mass doesn’t do a whole lot for you athletically. So the composition of the weight, whether it’s gained or lost, is important.

PonyFans.com: How does nutrition factor in to injury recovery?

Bearden: After an injury, for the rehab process, making sure you get adequate protein and adequate nutrients helps with that recovery process. It depends on the nature of the injury on what specific nutrients needs increase

but good overall nutrition is going to help speed up the recovery process.

PonyFans.com: Do you find it’s harder to help players bulk up or lean down?

Bearden: It just varies from one kid to the next, depending on their motivation. You know, if you have somebody that needs to bulk up but they’re not going to be disciplined enough to eat as many times a day as I tell them to, versus somebody who needs to slim down and they’re motivated and are consistent with it, then it comes down to the individual and how motivated that person is to work for it.

PonyFans.com: There are athletes who resist a coach’s request for considerable gain in size, simply because of the desire to look good at the beach. Where does vanity fall on the list of challenges you face when dealing with college athletes?

Bearden: There is definitely that aspect, whether you’re dealing with males or females. The relationship between food and body image can be a very complex issue. Food choices and body image vary from athlete to athlete based on their background, experiences, etc. Eating isn’t like a workout, where you can tell someone to do these 10 reps and you watch them do it because they have to do it. With eating, obviously I’m not with them every time that they eat. If a guy is told to gain 20, 30 pounds and he doesn’t want to, then again, it goes back to motivation. If he doesn’t have the motivation to do it, most likely he’s not going to do it. It’s more common in male sports for coaches to ask players to bulk up significantly, but you do have those issues with female athletes, too.

PonyFans.com: What have athletes told you are the hardest foods to give up, or the hardest eating habits to change?

Bearden: It varies, depending on the sport. I think a lot of the time it’s the convenience factor, so I think typically it’s the pizza, the burgers, the fried chicken fingers — that kind of stuff that’s convenient for them. Healthy food can be convenient as well, it’s just that some of them don’t see healthy food that way. Or they have to plan ahead, and they are busy, so they tend to not plan ahead. So that’s another part of the education aspect that’s important - helping them think ahead and if you know you’re going to be in class for six hours, bring a snack.

PonyFans.com: When a recruit comes on campus, in addition to seeing the school, meeting with coaches, etc., the athlete and family will come by the weight room to meet Trumain Carroll and his staff, and then youare the last part of the tour. What’s your sales pitch?

Bearden: I do meet with recruits on campus visits. I had experience at Auburn and IU meeting with recruits from various sports. Whether talking to recruits individually or addressing a group of recruits, the message is the same; “training for your sport at the college level is more intense than the high school level, and with that, your eating should change — to compete at a high level you have to fuel your body properly.” We have all the resources for that to happen. The fueling station offers pre-workout fuel, post-workout recovery and snacks to ensure consistent fueling throughout the day and proper recovery post workout. Individualized meal planning, body composition analysis, supplement education, grocery store tours and cooking demos all play a part in teaching student-athletes how to fuel their bodies to help them reach their highest athletic potential.