Alicia Edge - Lead Performance Dietician Australian Women's National Football Team (Matildas) & CEO Compeat Performance.

Send us Fan MailAlicia is one of Australia's leading sports dietitians, with nearly two decades of experience working at the highest levels of elite sport. Her career has spanned the Australian sporting landscape, supporting athletes across a wide range of Olympic and Paralympic programs through the Australian Institute of Sport, while also consulting for organisations including the NSW Waratahs, FIFA, and Football Australia. For more than seven years, Alicia has played a key role within Football Australia, most notably as Lead Performance Dietitian for the Matildas during their historic 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup campaign and the 2026 AFC Women's Asian Cup. In this conversation, we explore the realities of nutrition in elite sport, from fuelling performance and recovery to navigating the challenges of implementing evidence-based nutrition in complex high-performance environments. Alicia shares why behavioural science can often be just as important as nutritional science when it comes to creating meaningful and lasting change in athletes. This is also a conversation about balance, resilience, and leadership. Alicia reflects on building a career at the highest level of international sport while navigating the demands of motherhood, family life, and running her own business.Highlights from the episode…Alicia shares her desire to go into sports nutrition during an era where the space was very new and there were not an abundance of roles in the industry.We discuss the turnover of dieticians in the industry and the challenge for some dieticians to even get full time work after graduating.After two previous attempts to secure a role at the AIS, she was successful on her third attempt and talks about the gaps she had to fill that eventually led to her securing a role.Her time at the AIS and how services were structured, funded and allocated to specific athletes in sports.The chase for lean muscle mass in athletes. Does body composition actually correlate with performance? and what Alicia does with the women’s national team.An athletes “relationship with food” and how this has more of an impact on decisions around nutritional choices than most other factors.The decision of stepping away from sport to start a family and the accompanying doubt of whether she will ever get back into the world high performance sport.When it comes to nutrition and high performance sport. What matters most “nutrition science” or “behavioural science”?Alicia provides an unprecedented insight into what's involved when providing nutritional support for the Matildas before and during major tournaments.“Covert Monitoring”…What monitoring tools Alicia uses to evaluate adequate dietary intake for performance and minimising negative connotations associated with nutritional monitoring.Managing the tension of being away from family all while doing the best job you can do in the role…how do you do that?Compeat performance what it’s all about and how it is changing the way dietician support is delivered affordably and at scale. People mentioned:Louise Burke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-burke-61923411/Matt Whalan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-whalan-5b59a939/Carmen Colomer: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Mn5jKSrO7mgzfrW9rEURC Alicia Edge contact details: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-edge/Compeat Performance: https://www.compeatperformance.com/about-us/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicia_j_edge/Host: Luis ResaContact me on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-resa-a975196b/Email: [email protected] for listening and please leave a review. If you would like more information on anything mentioned in this episode simply send me an email.