By Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD — Most athletes want to perform at their best. They train hard and fuel up/refuel in a manner that supports the physique that’s best for their sport. Despite their best efforts, they sometimes end up disappointed. They then start to train harder and restrict food to get even leaner. And that’s where the problems often start. Are they overtraining? Why aren’t they losing weight? Are they eating the wrong combinations of foods at the wrong times? Should they be eating more to support their training? Or eating less to drop a few pounds? How can they lose weight?
At the American College of Sports Medicine’s Annual Meeting in Boston, May 2024, speakers addressed the questions frustrated athletes have about how much to train to achieve maximal performance, lose undesired body fat and staying healthy. Here is some food for thought on this topic of interest.
Restricting food intake while training hard might lead to leanness and lightness, but that might not make you a better athlete.
The “lighter is better” chatter that curbs many athletes’ food intake can easily hurt performance, if not by injuries of muscles and tendons than by crippling fatigue. When the calorie intake needed to support performance is higher than the diet provides, athletes can experience deleterious outcomes. Sometimes food restriction is purposeful, and other times, athletes struggle to simply find the time to eat enough food to match the demands of their training.
Exercising in energy deficit for prolonged periods of time often means the body gets deprived of important nutrients: adequate protein to heal niggling injuries, adequate vitamins and minerals to support health, and enough grains and other carbs needed to optimally refuel depleted glycogen stores. According to REDs and overtraining researcher Trent Stellingwerff PhD from the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, the literature has shown a wide range—0% to 70%. depending on the sport—of athletes can be under-fueled. Today’s athletes commonly report undereating (supposedly fattening) carbs. They instead focus on eating more than enough protein. “Athletes need to rethink that strategy because the immune system needs adequate carbs and calories to function,” says Stellingwerff.
When food intake is low and exercise volume is high, under-fueled athletes may not lose body fat as expected because the body can compensate for the imbalance.
According to Eimear Dolan PhD of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. two common examples of energy conservation include:
- Endurance athletes who train, let’s say, for six hours a day. They tend to spend the remaining 18 hours of the day resting, doing sedentary activity, and sleeping. They fidget less. This decreased activity helps the body cope with the high level of training.
- Male and female athletes who experience a drop in reproductive function. With too little energy available to fuel normal physiological functions, females stop having regular menstrual periods and male athletes experience reduced libido, sperm density, and morning erections.
An accumulation of stress related to training (and life) can result in Overtraining Syndrome and a long-term drop in performance.
According to Justin Carrard MD of the University of Basel, Switzerland, Overtraining Syndrome can take months or even years to resolve. He wasn’t talking about what happens at training camps, where athletes commonly overreach to improve performance. Rather, he focused on the Overtraining Syndrome—what happens when athletes push too hard for too long and performance drops. If you feel tired for weeks in a row and have a drop in performance, consider taking some rest days. Training needs to be balanced with recovery, which allows for improved performance. Get enough sleep, eat enough nourishing food, and spend time having some fun.
The zeal of some athletes outstrips their body’s ability to adapt to the workload.
Exercise physiologist David Nieman PhD of Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina has carefully studied the effect of exercise on the immune system and illness. He reported the immune system is very responsive to physiological stress. With moderate activity the immune system works effectively. With high exercise loads, such as marathons, immune function can decline but then bounce back. But when athletes push too hard for too long, the immune system can break down and Overtraining Syndrome sets in.
Because doing research that can harm an athlete is unethical, Nieman studies athletes who overtrain on their own. Many of these overtrained athletes report symptoms similar to chronic fatigue or long-Covid: lethargy, muscle/joint pain, easy fatiguability, exercise intolerance, brain fog, unrefreshing sleep. Some of these athletes take two to three years to recover. Is this because their immune system got exhausted?
Among ultra-runners doing the Western States 100-miler, Nieman reported many of the runners stay healthy, but some generate high levels of erosive metabolites (cytokines) that are as high as in a patient dying from Covid. Some athletes have high creatine kinase levels (indicative of high muscles damage) but others not much. Each body’s immune system has limits that are unique to that person. Hence, each athlete needs to find the “sweet spot” that enhances, not hurts, performance.
To minimize the development of Overtraining Syndrome, the IOC is initiating a surveillance system with guidelines for coaches and athletes. The guidelines encourage sufficient recovery time, sleep, nutrition, and hydration, as well as psychological strategies to manage stress. And of utmost importance, the guidelines emphasize: Don’t train when you are sick!
If you exceed what your body can tolerate, you will have to climb out of that hole by exercising minimally and keeping other stressors under control. Daily consumption of adequate fuel can invest is long term performance benefits, no doubts!
