- Hey everybody, I'm Shawn Johnson,
and this is everything I ate
when I was in-season for gymnastics,
and now everything I eat out of season.
(upbeat music)
(crowd cheers)
- [Announcer] And Shawn Johnson's in the lead.
- [Co-Announcer] That's huge!
- [Announcer] You're looking at Shawn Johnson
with possibly a gold-medal smile.
- During gymnastics season,
what did a typical day look like for me food-wise?
I would wake up every morning
and I would eat like six egg whites
with cottage cheese and smoked salmon.
I was a big breakfast eater.
A snack of mine would be a chocolate protein shake
with raspberries, so it was like a mix,
and I would add a raspberry greens powder to it,
which was really good.
Sometimes I would add a banana.
My lunch was usually like lettuce wrapped sandwiches.
Lettuce bowls with turkey or grilled chicken,
homemade vegetable slaw.
I would do a salad on the side, and then sometimes quinoa.
A snack during practice,
I would drink some sort of electrolyte drink.
Or I really liked Maple Nut Clif Bars.
Those were like my jam.
And then for dinner, I used to eat
a lot of like grilled salmon,
roasted veggies that I still eat.
So I would have like sweet potatoes, green beans,
a lot of red peppers.
I needed like a lot of magnesium back then.
And then I would also eat a lot of red meat
like on and off because I was anemic.
And then a dessert, right before I went to bed
I would do frozen berries with whipped cream on top.
So, that was my thing.
That was my day.
Did that change during the off-season?
The thing with gymnastics is we don't have an off-season.
Ever.
For like 20 years.
I would try to have some like cheat meals
throughout the day or like throughout the week,
but...there's really no off-season.
What were or are my favorite indulgences?
Definitely, my favorite indulgence back when I was training
was ice cream.
That's all I wanted.
I wanted ice cream, pancakes, waffles, and french toast.
That's what I wanted.
It still is.
But, a new favorite indulgence is definitely wine.
When I'm of age.
Or, I am of age. (laughs)
When I became of age.
Share a story about one of your favorite wins.
Do you remember what you ate that day, what fueled you?
I actually remember being at World Championships
and I was on like a strict very clean
grilled chicken with like fresh veggies
with like no seasonings or anything.
A very clean, strict diet.
And as soon as I came home, I remember I went to Fudruckers.
♪ At Fudruckers ♪
♪ Come on over to the fun ♪
♪ And take your taste to a different place ♪
- That was like my thing back then.
And I had the juiciest, greasiest,
yummiest burger with fries.
And that was like my big win.
And I had just won Worlds, which was
like my biggest win to date.
Athletes are famous for being pretty superstitious.
Do you have any food-based superstitions during the season?
Actually, I do.
Before every single competition,
I had to have a piece of like those Dove chocolates.
I always had to have one piece
before I could leave my hotel room to go to competition.
That's maybe kind of embarrassing now.
- [Dove Announcer] My moment. My dove.
- What foods do you think helped you perform best?
I would be the first to admit I didn't eat enough carbs.
And I think carbs, whenever I did eat them,
really helped me perform because it gave more energy.
But I ate a ton of protein.
A lot of protein shakes
and just like anything to kind of fuel my muscles.
The chocolate helped me for sure.
What foods do you think slowed me down?
(laughs)
Hmm.
Honestly, I was a 16-year-old kid.
I was growing and burning so much,
so many calories, I don't think anything slowed me down.
I do remember because as a gymnast you're flipping
and kind of folding your body in half all the time,
if you ate anything too bulky,
you could like feel it in your stomach.
And I remember every time I ate trail mix or dried fruit,
it just didn't sit well.
And I like wouldn't be able to fold into a flip,
and I'd be like uhh, I can't like,
I couldn't do gymnastics.
I could like literally feel it in my system.
I really haven't eaten trail mix since then
because it
gave me PTSD from trail mix.
So I can't flip on the beam, so I can never eat this again.
Do you have any weird or unique food habits
we should know about?
Back when I was competing and training,
I mixed cottage cheese with everything.
Everything.
Like I put it in my eggs.
Like I ate cottage cheese,
I used to, as like a salad dressing.
Yeah, it was weird.
Oh, I used to (laughs)
I used to grill chicken, put it in a bowl of cottage cheese,
and then put Sriracha on it.
It sounds pretty nasty now.
But that was my weird thing.
I ate a lot of mustard.
Just plain yellow mustard.
I would use that as like a condiment on everything.
I've since outgrown that, especially after pregnancy.
Are there any food trends that you found helped
with your athletic performance?
Honestly, not really.
I would say the only like trend,
but I don't think it's a trend,
would be like protein bars or power bars,
or meal replacement bars.
For caloric intake, I used to eat a lot of them
just because, especially when we traveled,
we didn't have access
to like high-quality food all the time.
We used to go Costco and I would buy cases
of the Maple Nut Clif Bar.
And that was the only thing I would eat
when I was training and traveling.
What do you wish you could have eaten or drunk.
Is it drunk?
Or drink?
All the time, but just couldn't.
I mean, back in the day, probably like milkshakes.
Again, because it was this weird balance as a gymnast
and especially for me because I was so young
of you're a kid trying to balance like your kid palate,
wanting to eat ice cream and cookies and cake,
and also being an elite athlete,
and balance calories and nutrition
and peak performance food.
So for me, it was always just a balance of like,
I would have eaten ice cream for every meal of the day,
but I needed actual like good fuel for performance.
What are three foods we can always find in my fridge?
Eggs, I eat so many eggs every single day.
Almond milk, I have like an almond milk cappuccino
in the morning every day.
And I drink almond milk with everything.
And probably some sort of Sriracha still.
I love like a good hot sauce.
What's the most you've ever spent on takeout and delivery?
(ominous percussion music)
I have probably
My husband and I have indulged before
and gotten like an elaborate sushi meal with wine
and we spent a couple hundred dollars.
Maybe $300
on sushi.
Not proud of that.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you haven't yet, please check out my YouTube channel
and social media.
My husband and I document our lives,
and we'd love it.
So thank you guys for watching,
and I'll see you next time.
(upbeat dance music)