Ilona Maher reveals the eating habit of the fittest people I know and the diet crazy talk she wont stand for

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 differe...