Anna Ferro

In 2022, at twenty-six, I found myself with a lumbar hernia the size of a walnut and a dull, constant pain that wouldn’t let me stand: too much running, and a desk job that kept me still all day. I hung up my running shoes and started over at the gym, this time with a plan, and to do that I had to learn from scratch how to eat in order to build muscle and keep it.

I’ve always eaten mostly plant-based, no dairy and no gluten, with very little soy because I don’t tolerate it: the sports-nutrition guides I found were built on foods I can’t eat, and they let me down precisely because I wanted to be able to trust them. “Meal Prep for GF+DF Athletes” is the method I worked out on my own, one failed experiment after another, to train well without living in the kitchen. Four years on, the hernia is a distant memory and every week at the gym I lift a weight I couldn’t lift before.