Jessica Isaacs, The Sports Dietitian

Jessica Isaacs, The Sports Dietitian A Registered Dietitian with a passion for performance nutrition, helping athletes fuel for sport and humans fuel for life.

I believe in creating easy to digest nutrition resources all can understand and apply.

This is my happy place ☺️
02/16/2026

This is my happy place ☺️

02/11/2026

All the pickle juice shots and mustard packets in the world can’t beat this cramp strategy:

Prevention!

If you’re relying on sideline fixes, we’re already too late.

Most of the leg cramps I see in athletes are not because they forgot mustard or a pre-game heavy dose electrolyte - they’re because they were under hydrating for days leading up to competition.

Electrolytes have a role, especially in long, high-sweat sessions. But fluids come first. You cannot out-supplement low total fluid intake.

Start with simple baselines:
• Aim for about half your bodyweight in ounces of fluid daily as a starting point. A 200 lb athlete should clear roughly 100 oz before we even factor in training.
• Add 16 to 24 oz for every pound lost during practice or games.
• Check your urine by mid-day. Pale yellow is the goal, not “I’ll chug at night and hope for the best.”

Most athletes I work with are not wildly deficient in sodium. They just consistently don’t drink enough.

Build hydration into your daily routine, not just your pregame routine. That’s the strategy that actually holds up in the second half.

02/11/2026

Thanks for this carb drop video and congratulations on your gold medal!! 🥇

02/10/2026

😫😫😫

02/09/2026

The Super Bowl featured a MAHA ad with Mike Tyson, framing processed foods as a major culprit behind poor health and weight gain. What makes this framing complicated is that Tyson has openly discussed decades of alcoholism, drug use, and other extreme behaviors that had profound impacts on both his physical and mental health. Those factors were not minor or peripheral. They mattered.

Now, those same narratives are being used to prop up Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s war on processed foods, as if food alone explains health outcomes. That is where the problem lies.

Processed foods exist on a spectrum, from frozen vegetables and bread to ultra-processed snacks. Health does too. People can be healthy eating no ultra-processed foods, or mostly whole foods with some packaged foods included. Outcomes are shaped by many variables acting together, including sleep, alcohol use, stress, substance use, access, and socioeconomic constraints.

As dietitians, the concern is not nuance. It is selectively demonizing food while downplaying or relaxing standards around alcohol and other well-documented health risks, and ignoring the full picture of what truly drives health.

🏀❤️📸:
02/07/2026

🏀❤️

📸:

02/05/2026

If you don’t eat enough, especially enough carbs, your body doesn’t just “power down” because you want to sleep. It sends signals. Hunger hormones go up, blood sugar can dip, and your brain gets the message that fuel is low.

That middle-of-the-night wake-up? Often not random. When blood sugar drops too low, your body releases stress hormones like adrenaline to wake you up and fix the problem. Translation: please eat something.

If you’re going to bed starving, waking up hungry at 2–3 AM, or suddenly inhaling candy and snacks at night, that’s usually not a willpower issue. It’s a daytime fueling issue.

Hard training requires real energy. Skipped meals, low-carb days, or “I’ll eat later” plans tend to show up after dark.

Eat enough earlier. Fuel around training. Let your hormones clock out on time so you can actually sleep.

02/02/2026

Pickle juice shots for mid-game cramps can look dramatic, but there is a plausible reason they may help. The relief often happens too quickly to be from replacing sodium or fluids.

Instead, the current theory is that the strong acidic and salty stimulus activates receptors in the mouth and throat, triggering a neural reflex that temporarily quiets overactive motor neurons driving the cramp.

The science here is still evolving and not fully conclusive, but the effect has been observed. Mustard likely works in a similar way, using that same intense sensory trigger rather than electrolyte replacement.

It is also important to zoom out.

Cramps are multifactorial.

They can be influenced by dehydration and overall fluid deficits, electrolyte losses, neuromuscular fatigue, muscles that are already warm or stressed, sudden spikes in intensity or volume, heat, and pushing harder than the body is conditioned for. Often it is several of these at once.

Anecdotally, athletic trainers, sports dietitians, and athletes consistently find that pickle juice helps resolve cramps fairly quickly. It is not always instant, but often fast enough to matter in-game.

When I see athletes rubbing calves or hamstrings, or when working with known crampers, I like to act early. Along with prioritizing fluids, I will preemptively offer a pickle juice shot to blunt a bigger cramp from developing.

That is also why, in-game, I prefer pickle juice over a packet of The Right Stuff. If the issue is primarily fluid or neuromuscular fatigue, more sodium alone is rarely the fix.

January Files 📁
01/31/2026

January Files 📁

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