Don’t bother offering Ilona Maher a green juice.
The Olympic bronze medalist is one of the most powerful forces on the rugby pitch — but off it, she doesn’t follow the kind of restrictive diet you might expect from a professional athlete.
“I don’t like health foods,” Maher, 29, told The Post. “I’m such a hater on some things.”
For starters: “Protein bars that don’t taste good and just have a lot of stuff in it,” she said.
Juice cleanses don’t fare much better, she added, noting they strip the fiber out of the fruit they’re made from.
“It’s a sugar drink,” Maher said. “That always confuses me, because I’m like, we’re just drinking juice now.”
Then there are low-fat products people reach for, assuming they’re the healthier pick.
“Then you look at the ingredients, and it’s like, ‘OK, I hear you about the fat, but then you’re also sacrificing quality,’” Maher said. “You’re sacrificing all these things.”
Part of the problem, she believes, is our tendency to “demonize” entire food groups.
“We really hold onto something, even though, for thousands of years, this has been fueling people and has been making them strong and allowing them to survive,” Maher said.
The idea that you need to deprive yourself of certain food groups to stay in great shape, she said, is “crazy talk.”
“There’s a balance,” Maher explained. “There’s eating in a way to have enough fat, to have enough carbs, have enough protein, to not demonize one thing.”
In fact, she said, one of the most important parts of getting fit and strong is eating enough.
“The fittest people I know — and that’s why I love being on a rugby team, because we’re trying to fuel ourselves to be as great as possible and to be your strongest — you have to eat,” Maher said.
“I genuinely sometimes just wish more women could feel this way, or be working for strength instead of being as small as possible, because it’s different, it gives you a different feeling, a different energy about yourself,” she continued.
It’s a philosophy backed up by results. Back in 2024, Maher helped lead the USA Women’s Rugby Sevens team to its first-ever Olympic medal in Paris, making history for the program.
“It gets me sad that some people are so afraid to fuel properly, are so afraid to get bigger, because of what society has deemed not attractive, when really, they’re hindering themselves from being great in many ways,” she said.
For Maher, fueling properly means prioritizing foods with simple, recognizable ingredients over anything engineered to look “healthy.”
“I love bread. And I love pasta. And I love eggs. I really am just like a whole food person,” she said. “I like anything that is real.”
That doesn’t mean she skips packaged snacks altogether. After a hard workout, Maher reaches for a refrigerated Perfect Bar, a brand she’s partnered with for its latest campaign.
“Food is fuel, but it’s also comfort in many ways,” she said. “And thankfully, the Perfect Bar is actually delicious, because I don’t like eating things that aren’t good — that does not fill me with joy.”
And while she might be a “hater” when it comes to certain health foods, Maher said she can get behind any kind of workout.
“Move your body in whatever way possible,” she said. “If you feel like you’re getting stronger or getting fitter, do it.”
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