Race weight, performance, and body image - conflicting statements

It's World Championship season for triathlon. Over the next three months, athletes from around the world will be competing in the Ironman World Championship in Nice, France (men), the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii (women) and in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain (men and women). There are also other events like the T100 in Qatar and the World Triathlon Championships in Australia. With the excitement of World Championship season comes extra attention on podcasts, YouTube videos, articles and forums. With so much hype around these sporting events, it's acceptable to discuss athlete favorites and dark horses as well as making assumptions for how the races may unfold. However, there's growing attention and discussion around the weights of many notable athletes. 

Commenting on an athlete's body image carries a significant risk of damaging mental and physical health. Publicly discussing an athlete's weight, size, or general appearance, even with good intentions, can inadvertently undermine their overall well-being and performance.

With so many discussions and conversations around race weight, there are so many contradictions.

“You should get leaner but don't get RED-S.”

“You need to be strong but lighter is faster.”

“Eat enough to support your training but don't gain weight.”

“Prioritize health but make sacrifices to win.”

“Be body positive but make yourself look ‘race ready.’”

“Performance matters the most but you’ll be judged on how you look.”

“Lose weight but don't look unhealthy."

“Be disciplined about your diet but don’t get an eating disorder."

“Long-term health matters, but you will be celebrated on short-term results from quick and healthy weight loss.”

"Get lean but don't look too skinny."

"Lose weight but don't risk your health."

"Your worth isn’t tied to your weight, but commentators will discuss your body." 

"How you perform matters but only if your appearance meets standards."

“Celebrate your body for what it can do, but only if it's at a 'race weight'.”

“You should be strong and powerful, but also light and lean.”

“Prioritize longevity in sport, but we will praise you for quick transformations.”

“It's all about how your body performs, but how you look matters.”

“Be confident in your skin, but your body will be compared to athletes faster than you.”

“Weight doesn’t define you, but your results will be linked back to it.”

“Train hard and eat well, but don't gain weight."

Commenting, discussing and highlighting an athletes' body weight is an ongoing problem, rooted in toxic sports culture, media objectification, and the widespread promotion of an ideal body image. Such comments - which are often conflicting and confusing - can significantly increase a fixation on weight and appearance. This, in turn, can result in under-fueling/eating, increasing the risk of injury, health issues, and burnout. 

The next time you hear a discussion on body weight, image or race weight, remind yourself that your body is your most valuable asset. It's not an object that needs to be manipulated to be made smaller.

Performance, health, and self-worth are not defined by a number on the scale.

Your race weight is the one where you feel energized, happy, resilient, and healthy.

Your performance is not defined by a number — it’s built on consistent training with a well-fueled and healthy body.

Celebrate what your body allows you to do and not how it looks doing it. 

Race weight, body image and performance (podcast)

In today’s culture, we are bombarded with artificially-produced, highly edited imagines of flawlessly sculpted bodies. As a result, achieving the “perfect” body has become the dominant measure of self-worth. Thinness has become a symbol of power, moral superiority, and even a measure of fitness/wellness. We have been taught that we can assume someone’s health status based on how they look or their weight. Weight stigma and anti-fat biases continue to strengthen these harmful beliefs. For example, how many times have you praised a friend or family member for losing weight? Are you more likely to follow health, diet and fitness advice from a fitness influencer who is lean or defined than one who may not have an “ideal” body? Has a doctor ever told you that losing weight will improve your health? Society has very strong views on how we should look, which impacts our thoughts about ourselves, which can then influence our food and exercise behaviors.

Poor body image is often linked to dieting, over-exercising and eating disorders, as well as the development of other mental health issues such low self-esteem, depression and anxiety.
Not all athletes who want to change their eating do so because they are dissatisfied with their body but because our society places a huge emphasis on appearance, many disciplined and dedicated athletes are vulnerable to the effects of diet culture. Athletes will often focus more on what the body looks like, rather than how it functions. Athletes want to feel included and accepted and constant exposure to idealized images of what an athlete’s body should look can bring on comparison and pressure to achieve a specific type of body, size or weight. Even when an athlete has good intentions to eat better for health or performance, unrealistic body standards and comments about weight and performance may increase body dissatisfaction and bring on unhealthy behaviors to lose weight. And when an athlete is told by a coach to lose weight, the athlete is likely to turn to a variety of restrictive eating habits set forth by diet culture.

When you feel dissatisfied with your body, it's typical to channel insecurities and body dissatisfaction through dieting as a way to gain control over uncomfortable feelings. But a safer - and more long-lasting approach - is through developing a better relationship with your body. Building a positive body image can counteract the negative stream of images and messages that you are constantly encouraged to compare yourself to.

Be smaller. Be lighter.

For our entire lives those messages have been drilled into us from every angle, including very often from those in our sports. 

We hear we need to be at “race weight.” 

We’re shown “idealized” images of what female athletes “should” look like.

It’s all incredibly damaging, especially as we hit menopause and midlife and our bodies start to change. It’s also based on BS. Women with cellulite and extra body fat win races. Women who are well-fueled outperform those who are not. There is no one magic number on the scale or body fat percentage that makes us a success. All the destructive messages that make us hate our bodies feed the diet culture machine. T

Check out my recent podcast interview with Selene at Feisty Menopause to dismantle that machine and help you find body peace, so you don’t spend the next chapters of your life in an endless war with yourself. 

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Maximize performance without overemphasizing weight

Whether you are an athlete or coach, you know there are constant conversations in sport discussing weight and performance. The constant narrative says that you must lose weight in order to improve as an athlete.  It's as if the only way to be a successful athlete is to be a smaller version of yourself. Although there are truths in the weight and performance discussion, there are also many false beliefs and misunderstandings. While there are healthy ways to optimize body composition and to improve health, the influence and pressures of diet culture, social media, old school coaching methods and beliefs and sport body sterotypes make it difficult for many athletes to maintain a healthy relationship with food, the body and exercise. 

Self imposed beliefs about being "too heavy" for sport are reinforced by the media, coaches, influencers, "experts" and commentators who often highlight an athlete's body shape, size or weight over skill, performance or effort. These messages influence how an athlete feels about his/her/their body and as a result, a vulnerable, self conscious athlete may look to unhealthy, unrealistic and impractical methods to achieve an ideal "race weight" for sport. 

In today’s fad-diet obsessed society, it can be difficult to keep a healthy perspective on your body image. You can still be an athlete even if your body doesn’t match the unrealistic images seen on social media. Athletes come in all shapes and sizes. Every athlete has a "race ready" body weight weight where the body functions the best. This body is not determined by a number on the scale but achieved by consistent training, nutritious eating and proper fueling and hydration.

Weight (and body composition) is one factor of many that may influence your performance. Many factors impact how your body will perform in training and on race day. Sadly, the more time, mental energy and focus that you give to manipulating your weight in order to optimize performance, the less energy and focus you have on the factors that will actually have a direct and more powerful impact on your performance. 

Your training and diet should promote long-term mental and physical and longevity in sport. Eating is not cheating. If you need personalize nutrition assistance, reach out to a Board Certified Sport Dietitian for help. 

Source: https://www.mccallumplace.com/about/blog/optimizing-sport-performance/

Changing eating habits without fear of weight gain

Are you tired of living with a rigid and restrictive style of eating?

Do your food-related habits affect your relationships?

Do you want to stop feeling so anxious, stressed, overwhelmed and conflicted around food-related events and decisions? 

Are you wanting to make food choices that help fuel your active lifestyle, help you feel good physically and satisfy you mentally? 

Are you ready to break free from food rules and build a healthy relationship with food and your body? 

If you said yes to any or all of the following, you may find that there is one thing that is holding you back from feeling controlled by food.....you are worried about gaining weight/body composition changes. 

Unfortunately, we live in a world saturated with diet culture. We are conditioned to group food into "good" and "bad" categories and it's almost universally acceptable to fat shame. Even worse, nutrition experts often encourage disordered eating strategies as a way to improve health, lose weight or enhance fitness/performance. 

Trying to maintain a lifestyle with food rules, rituals and restrictions means you are not living to your fullest potential. The more energy you expend on your food choices, the more distracted you become mentally and physically. Letting go of food-related fears is how you can live a more fulfilling lifestyle. 

But if you are worried that a flexible and varied style of eating will result in a body type that would be seen as unhealthy, unacceptable, unattractive or performance limiting, I must remind you that as an athlete, you need full physical and mental freedom to perform at your best and to keep your body in good health. Restricting the food in your diet, placing food rules on when, how much and where you eat and obsessing over your body will not allow for that freedom. To truly put this 'diet' mentality behind you, you must get over your fear of weight gain. 

• Identify the source of your weight-related fears
  -Comments made by coaches, athletic outfits and performance, a culture that emphasizes leanness.... it's important to identify who or what is making you feel how you feel about your body.
  -Most weight gain fears initiate from cultural weight stigmas. 
  -Success, beauty, attractiveness, ability, happiness, social standard are often tied to what the body looks like. 
  -Food is often used to control stress and to reduce anxiety. Rituals and regimes around food may give you the illusion that you have more control over a situation, making you feel more at ease around eating. Being able to eat without feeling restricted, regimented or ritualistic is a way to challenge the fear of weight gain. 
  
  
• Rewire your thoughts
  -The brain can be retrained. If you constantly think that if your body changes, you will no longer be successful, happy or attractive, it will be difficult to change your behaviors. 
  -Positive affirmations and mantras can help build new thought patterns. 
  -Recognize the triggers for when your thoughts become self-sabotaging. 
  
  
• Change behaviors
  -The purpose of the first two steps is to recognize that there's a close connection between how you think you will look, perform and be treated if you step away from a rigid and restrictive style of eating. 
  -Take a step back to consider how your current style of eating is helping or harming your heath, performance or quality of life. 
  -A healthy weight supports the metabolic demands of your training, while protecting your physical and mental health. It's not controlled, it just happens. 
  

You may be wondering what will happen to your body when you get rid of the food rules? 

The truth is, I don't know and you don't know. The unknown can be scary - thus the constant need to feel controlled by food. While the idea of not being able to tightly control your weight can be scary, your reasons for giving up control over food must be stronger than your fears over weight gain. 

And if that is too hard for you to think about right now, I'll remind you where that fear of weight gain came from.....diet culture! 

Diet culture is constantly selling you methods for how you can and should control your weight to be leaner, lighter or smaller. This puts great pressure on you that your moral obligation as a human being in this world is to control your weight. And if you fail, it's a personal failure. With every diet, restriction, regime and ritual, it's the illusion of control. You must trust yourself that when you eat enough to fuel and nourish your body, while also feeling food freedom and flexibility, your body will be at the weight that it needs to be to function at its best. 

There are many layers to your relationship with food, weight and your body. And these layers change in different times of your life.

But now is a great time to start learning (and unlearning) your food, body and weight related thoughts and behaviors, while challenging those thoughts and deciding what food related decisions are helping you and should stay, and which ones need to be tossed out as they are keeping you from living a meaningful and quality-filled life. 

How to stop pre-race body bashing behaviors

Can you relate to any of the following body bashing behaviors? 

• Feeling "too fat" as you try on your race day outfit. 
• Seeing an image of a certain part of your body makes you feel "disgusting."
• Doubting your race day abilities because your stomach is "too big."
• Weighing yourself on the bathroom scale and feeling immediate distress over your weight.

If you can identify with any of the body, you are likely struggling with poor body image and this can sabotage your race day performance.

In each of the above scenarios is an athlete who believes one of two things: That looking differently will improve athletic success or a current look is the reason for lack of athletic success.

Despite putting in the training and being physically prepared for an event, actual acceptance of one-self can be a major athletic limiter. Inside, you have internalized feelings of being inadequate because of poor body image. Poor body image can wreak havoc on performance, physical health and mental well-being. There are great consequences to trying to conform to rigid societal ideals of what your body should look like as an athlete. 

Underfueling, fasted workouts, a low carb diet, eliminating certain foods groups and ignoring body hunger cues are some of the many unhealthy dieting and disordered eating strategies that athletes turn to when trying to achieve a specific body type ideal. Sadly, many of the above strategies are unhealthy (for the body and mind), yet encouraged by coaches, nutrition experts and the media as a means to an end to gain the competitive edge to achieve a desired "race weight."

Through the rise of social media and prejudgment statements from coaches/nutrition experts, the pressure to change how you look is almost inevitable. But that doesn't make it acceptable. Comparing your body to the body of another athlete can make you feel inadequate, unprepared and doubtful of your abilities. It's not uncommon to size-up your competition based on a body image. 

Pressure around body type can be detrimental to health (physical and mental), confidence and most of all, love of sport. It's not uncommon for an athlete to slip down the road of dieting, disordered eating and body image obsession only to reduce athletic longevity (and potential) in the sport that was once fun, enjoyable and health promoting.

The way your body looks and the way your body moves/performance are not necessarily correlated. How you think your body should look to perform well may not match what your body really needs to look like to perform well.

To escape the immense pressure of achieving body image perfection, body positivity is critical. What you think about your body matters. Without it, confidence and self-esteem are destroyed. How can you believe in your physical abilities if you don't appreciate your physical qualities?

Thankfully, you have power to change your body image. 
Body image has little to do with your actual body size but instead, it's related to your thoughts, beliefs, feelings and perceptions. Remember - feelings are not facts. 

In order to stop reinforcing your beliefs about your body, you need to stop the behaviors that are sabotaging your self-worth. 

• Stop the weigh-in. A number on a bathroom scale should not dominate your thoughts. More so, it's hard not to obsess over that morning number once its imprinted in your mind. 
• Stop picking apart your body. There's nothing wrong with looking at yourself in the mirror. But micro-examining each part of your body, looking for imperfections and perceived faults is not constructive. Body checking does not allow you to see your body as a whole. 
• Stop comparing. It's natural to compare yourself to others but it's detrimental to your mental health to constantly feel inferior, inadequate or envious of others. There's no winning at comparisons. It only destroys self-worth and prevents you from appreciating your individual strengths and attributes. 
• Stop the "fat chat." It's easy to bash your body in our image-obsessed culture. Thanks to the media and diet industry, we are surrounded by unachievable images and unkind messages about how ew should look. Basically, we have been taught to dislike our bodies and if we achieve the image were are sold, we will be happy, loved and successful. 

Stopping the body bashing and making peace with your body does not mean that you are giving up good health and self-care. It means treating your body with kindness and respect. It means giving up perfectionism and self-hatred. It means learning to accept who you are. 

It's not easy to overcome negative body image in a culture that's obsessed with body image. But you can disagree with the cultural messages about achieving the "perfect" athletic body image in the same way you would disagree with animal cruelty, racism or discrimination. Say no to the methods and behaviors of trying to achieve an unrealistic body type and stop the pre-race body bashing behaviors. 

To help improve your relationship with food and your body, check out my 6-series The Whole Athlete Course. 

The never-ending race weight discussion

Within certain sports (ex. triathlon, running, cycling, etc.) it’s not uncommon for athletes to manipulate the diet in order to achieve a lower body fat percentage - believing that a body that weighs less will lead to athletic success. Whether for aesthetics, competitive leanness, body dissatisfaction, or in pursuit of an ideal “race weight,” what may start as an innocent attempt to lean-up or to lose a few pounds, can easily spiral out of control - undermining health, training, recovery, performance and mental well-being. Although there are safe and healthy ways to change body composition, it’s not uncommon for athletes to engage in unhealthy weight loss methods, resulting in great emotional and physical consequences.
Disordered eating is a general term describing harmful, obsessive or extreme eating behaviors that are used in attempt to achieve a lower than normal body weight. Examples include rigid or righteous eating, fasting, anxiety, control or preoccupation with certain foods, food rituals, extreme concern with body size and elimination of food groups.

Unfortunately, comments made by coaches, social media, body shaming, fat talk, attributing poor performances on weight, and regular weigh-ins intensify body image concerns, leading to disordered eating behaviors.

Because many athletes are given a socially acceptable setting to justify excessive exercise and strict eating habits, it’s not uncommon for the performances by an energy starved athlete to be celebrated. However the initial performance improvement occurring from disordered eating is typically short-lived as nutrient deficiencies, fatigue, anemia, reduced cardio function, chronic illnesses or injuries and low motivation will eventually impair physical and mental health.

How you need to look to live a quality-filled life may be different than how you think you need to look. The process of developing a positive body image takes time but to love your body in motion is worth the patience and hard work.

Preparing for an athletic should never require obsessive training and restrictive eating. As you build your fitness, build a better body image. In today’s fad-diet obsessed society, it can be difficult to keep a healthy perspective on the look of your body. You can still be an athlete even if your body doesn’t match the unrealistic images seen on social media. Athletes come in all shapes and sizes. Every Athlete has his/her own optimum performance weight where the body functions the best and this body type is achieved by consistent training, nutritious eating and proper fueling and hydration. If you are concerned about body image, remember that a performance-ready body is more about how you feel and perform, not what the scale tells you.

Your training and diet should promote long-term health and longevity in sport. Eating is not cheating. If you need personalize nutrition assistance, reach out to a Board Certified Sport Dietitian for help. 

For additional reading:

Chasing Race Weight

Changing your perception of race weight

Still trying to reach your "race weight"?

Attempting to reach race weight

In pursuit of race weight

With January behind us, there's a good chance that you are getting a bit more serious with your training and diet. Motivation is high, all with hopes that this will be the season when you reach your BIG performance goals.

With an extreme drive to succeed, you may be looking for the many ways that you can optimize performance.

Body composition has and will always play a role in performance. Many athletes are on a never-ending pursuit to achieve the perfect weight for race day. However, being lighter isn't always better.

I've touched on this topic many times in the past but I don't think it can be discussed too much. In a media-driven world, body image has become an obsession among athletes - particularly how you compare your body image to the body image that you see on others. In today's "visual" society, it's not hard to compare how you look to other people. This may cause you to question your looks and lose confidence in your abilities. With this comes a strong desire to look for ways to "fix" yourself - often in hopes of becoming a better athlete (or to "look" more like an athlete).

Whereas you would think that athletes would be obsessed with eating "enough" to perform consistently well in training in an effort to become strong, fit and healthy enough to tolerate the demands of racing, athletes are often anxiously worried about eating "too much". However, lighter isn't always better.

Sadly, for many athletes, the attempt of reaching "race weight" becomes detrimental to health and performance. When an athlete is trying to train for an endurance event while attempting to lose weight/lean-up, it can be rather difficult to adapt to training and recover properly from workouts. This is why far too many athletes fail to improve performance when attempting to intentionally reach "race weight" and often become sick, injured or burnt out. And for those who are able to change body composition from increasing the training load and restricting calories, it's rare to see an athlete become a better athlete in the long-term. Overtime, they become the opposite - weak and fragile. In other words, just because you reach race weight, this doesn't mean you have achieved the fitness level necessary to perform to your physical, emotional and mental capabilities on race day.

I'm a firm believer that if you fuel and nourish your body properly throughout the year, your body can adapt to every phase of training and you'll arrive to your races with a fit, strong and healthy body. This idea of unintentional weight loss means not trying to proactively lose weight through restricting calories, watching every morsel of food that goes into your body, eliminating carbs (or food groups) and performing fasted training sessions. Understanding the changing demands of your training as you progress throughout the year, your nutrition should also change. There are going to be times when you need more calories and carbohydrates to support the energy demands of your training. If you restrict calories and carbohydrates, you'll eat too little to support your overall training load and your body will become compromised. Then there are times when you are burning a mix of carbohydrates and fat and overall energy expenditure is rather low. This doesn't mean that you should avoid carbohydrates and follow a low calorie diet but instead, you need to be mindful of what and how you are eating.

By matching your nutrient intake to the demands of training, you can maintain the quality of your training so you can optimize performance for race day. As you improve your sport-specific fitness through consistent training, your body will adapt by oxidizing fuel more efficiently. Naturally, your body composition will change - without extreme measures. Remember, sport isn't about body image. It's about performance. Every athlete has an optional body weight that allows for optimal performance. How you need to look to perform at your best may differ than how you think you need to look.

Chasing race weight - body image dissatisfaction

At Trimarni, we believe in setting a good example for our athletes by encouraging a healthy relationship with food and the body. Karel and I do not follow any extreme styles of eating and we don't strategically change the way we eat or train in order to change the way that we look. We don't weigh ourselves and we don't measure our food (or count calories). We see food as our fuel and as our nourishment and we firmly believe that when the body is well fueled and well nourished, it's healthy. And when the body is healthy, it can function well in sport. 

Sadly, we live in a society that focuses on competitive leanness. Many athletes are under the mindset that the leaner or more defined you are, the better you will perform in sport. Some athletes even care less about performance and more about achieving the "look" of an athlete. Rather than seeing the body as the vehicle that allows you to do the incredible in sport, many attempt to achieve a "race weight" through strict eating, fueling and dieting only to become injured, burnout or sick. 

When you have an "I feel fat" moment or feel the need to change the way that you look, first get to the root of this misinterpreted feeling. Who or what is making you feel unhappy about your body? Where did you learn that you need to lose weight in order to be successful as an athlete?

As an athlete, you have a very close relationship with your body. If you have a disordered relationship with food or unhappy thoughts/feelings about your body, you may not be aware of (or care about) the long-term damage that can occur by manipulating your eating and training in order to weigh less or change the way that you look. You may also be unaware of how the comments by a coach or advice from a forum/podcast/training partner may affect your mental health.

To think that you (or your coach) can equate leanness with speed and thus an increase in performance will occur when you are lighter is rather foolish if you ask me.  So you are telling me that if you go to the doctor and he/she sucks 10 lbs of fat from your body, you'll suddenly become a more mentally tough, resilient, strong, nutritionally prepared and physically fit athlete?

Successful athletes come in all shapes and sizes. To be successful, you need to be healthy and strong. You need to be consistent with training and you need to take care of your mental health, just as much as your physical health. Restricting food, eliminating food groups or overexercising does not make you a better athlete. It makes you weaker and more fragile.

Food is one of the easiest and most common ways for people to gain a feeling of control. Using food for a sense of control is a common strategy to deal with stress, anxiety, low self-esteem or poor self-confidence. As an example, if you feel stressed because you can't stay consistent with your training or you feel upset that you had a bad workout or race, you may turn to your diet to make you feel better. Turning to food (ex. restriction) to gain control over your body may seem like the only logical solution to remove these uncomfortable emotions but it doesn't have to be this way.

Your body is amazing. Health (mental and physical) should always be a priority when it comes to eating, fueling and training. For many athletes, this idea of "race weight" is not actually about a weight but why you feel the way that you do about your body.

As an athlete, it's important to direct your energy to more productive things in life besides the way that you look and the way you think you should look. Who or what is making you feel unhappy about your body image?

Recognizing that there is no perfect body image (or level of body fatness) that is required for athletic success or optimal health, the way your body looks to perform or function at its best may not match up to the way you think you are supposed to look and this is ok. 

As a human being, your closest and longest relationship in life will be to your body. Take care of your body and your body will take care of you. 

Attempting to reach your race weight - part II

A change in your body composition to ensure a performance improvement (race weight) should be the outcome of a well planned and executed fueling and training plan, alongside a healthy and balanced, non-restrictive daily diet. Just because you lose weight or achieve a certain body fat percentage, this doesn't mean that you are physically, mentally, emotionally and nutritionally prepared to perform well on race day. You may "look" a certain way but this doesn't mean you will preform a certain way.

When a healthy change in body composition is desired, it should not involve restriction, elimination and obsessive strategies. While some sports may reward a "leaner" build, this doesn't mean that you can't be successful in your sport with a little more cushion with your strong bones. As it relates to the sport of endurance triathlon, you are not penalized if you are carrying around a little more body fat on your frame for a strong body can better tolerate training stress versus a weak and fragile body that may be lighter. Furthermore, if you desire weight loss for a performance boost, you should not be unsupervised in this process as it can lead to performance and health declines. You should reach out to a team of professionals to help you safely lose weight without sabotaging your health. Most athletes do not take the "hard work" approach as they want a quick, inexpensive and easy fix to assist in weight loss.

When an athlete steps on the scale (or looks in the mirror) and responds with "I'm too fat/heavy" or "I don't look like an athlete" or "I will never perform well at this weight", this thinking may trigger the need to make an instant and drastic change in the diet and/or pushing harder or going longer than the workout calls for. When a vulnerable athlete feels uncomfortable in his/her skin or feels pressure to lose weight, the next step is not a patient and long-term approach. Typically, athletes will go the route of calorie restriction, carbohydrate elimination and improper fueling and hydrating strategies to try to gain control over eating and body composition - none of the former strategies assist in weight loss OR performance gains but instead, the body becomes weak and you lack the energy and motivation to stay consistent with training.

Let's consider two athlete scenarios as it relates to attempting to reach race weight:

Athlete A is motivated to lose weight in order to improve athletic performance for an upcoming endurance event. This athlete is not aware of how much energy is needed to support the metabolic demands of training and despite consuming around 1500-2000 calories a day, he/she is not losing weight and always feels as if he/she is "too big" for the sport.  This athlete only uses the scale to asses weight loss and each time she/he doesn't see the scale change, he/she makes more and more food restrictions during the day and around/during workouts in order to see a drop in body weight on the scale. Eventually, the athlete does lose weight through his/her tactics. But seeing that a number of key hormones play an important role in the regulation of body composition and energy production, the glands in the endocrine system (ex. adrenal, hypothalamus, ovaries, pancreas, parathyroid, pineal, pituitary, testes, thymus, thyroid) are slowly being compromised - unbeknownst to the athlete. Athlete A doesn't realize that his/her diligent dietary adherence to a restrictive diet and poor fueling/hydration strategies alongside strict dedication to training are actually destroying his/her health.  While this athlete may have arrived to race day at his/her "race weight", this athlete is in poor metabolic health and race day performance is likely to be compromised. There's also a good chance that this athlete will need to spend the next few months or year, trying to fix his/her overtaxed, overloaded and damaged endocrine system (and potentially poor bone health). It's worth mentioning that even for athletes who are not seeking weight loss but do not understand the great energy demands that are needed to support endurance or high intensity training, many endurance athletes may suffer from health issues during training as a result of unintentionally damaging hormonal or metabolic health by not "eating enough" or timing food appropriately with training, to support training stress.
Athlete B follows his/her training plan by keeping the easy sessions easy and hard sessions hard. She/he works with a sport dietitian to better understand how to time nutrition with training, to understand individual energy and nutrient needs (to eat "enough"), he/she always eats before/after workouts and learns how to use sport nutrition properly to support long and intense training sessions and to maximize recovery. This athlete can train consistently throughout the entire season and puts the focus on performance over weight. Although the athlete would like to lean-up or lose weight, she/he is not making it a focus. Ironically, athlete B notices a change in body composition over an extended period of time through sustainable healthy eating habits that support training demands (especially as the volume and intensity of training increase in the hot summer months). This athlete increases lean mass while reducing overall body fat without intentionally trying and has improved strength to create a more resilient and durable body to withstand training. She/he also has great training sessions to build confidence for race day and also has a great relationship with food and the body. There is little risk for injury or sickness because the athlete is properly supporting training stress with proper eating and fueling. This athlete arrives to race day in great health, with a strong body and feels prepared to perform and just like with training, can bounce back relatively quickly from the race to get back into structured training.

THE BIG TAKE AWAY
Intense/high volume training + extreme caloric/carb restriction places athletes at risk for losing lean tissue, bone mass, depleted energy stores and a possible gain in body fat. So why would any athlete want to compromise health with this approach? Isn't the point of training to become a better, stronger and faster athlete? Your race weight should not come at a cost of damaging your health and performance. If you are training 10+ hours a week and struggle to see a change in favorable body composition, there's a good chance that you are not eating enough to support your training demands and/or not using sport nutrition products properly and/or improperly timing food with workouts to delay adaptions to support lean muscle mass and strength gains.

If you are attempting to reach your race weight through extreme measures, you may placing yourself at risk for illness, injury, poor recovery, decreased performance and a host of hormonal, bone, cardiovascular and metabolic health issues. ....All of which will negatively affect training and can compromise overall well-being.

For you to perform at your best AND to adapt to training, while still functioning well in life, focus on lifestyle strategies to achieve/maintain a healthy weight and let your race weight take care of itself. With optimal fueling and hydration strategies, a healthy and well balanced diet, consistent quality training, good sleep, stress management, a healthy relationship with the body and food and great recovery habits, you will not only reach athletic excellence but your great daily habits will continue to bring you long-term health benefits with a body that you can be proud to call your own. 

For more on this topic of when to reach your body composition goals, check out a past Ironman article that I wrote on this topic. 

Still trying to reach your "race weight"?

In a media driven world, body image has become a critical issue as it relates to athletic performance and health. Whereas one would think that athletes would be obsessed with eating enough to perform well in training sessions to prepare for race day, athletes are constantly worried about eating too much, constantly obsessing with being "too big/fat" or not looking like an athlete. Far too many athletes are training for leanness instead of training for performance. With the idea of body weight and performance having an inverse relationship (the less you weigh, the better you will perform), you may be attempting to reach your race weight in order to be thinner, leaner and lighter for race day.

With so many misguided strategies on sport nutrition and daily eating for athletes, it doesn't surprise me when I see/hear athletes intentionally underfueling/undereating in an attempt to lose weight or change body composition. 

As it relates to your healthy weight, it's very hard to define a healthy weight as an athlete. Most charts (ex. BMI) do not account for the extra muscle and denser bones that you will develop through training. I know for myself, I am always on the high end of a "healthy" weight for my height because of my athletic build and from my genetics. As an athlete, for much of the year, a healthy weight is one that puts you at little risk for disease or illness, is a weight that allows you to function well in life without following dietary rules or restrictions, is one that allows you to have great energy throughout the day and is a weight that is easy to maintain with your activity regime. Only at certain times during the year will/should your body naturally change as you peak for your main event.

Unfortunately, many athletes try to maintain and achieve a weight that is based on a look or a number on a scale for much of the year.  Self-identity to a lean/strong body image (or race weight) is often a struggle for athletes because your healthy weight may not be the one that you accept for what it looks like, but it may be the best weight for you to maintain great health for much of the year. My advice for athletes is to work on body acceptance and to not try to fight for a certain "lean or defined" image, size or weight for the entire year. Let your body change as you maintain healthy lifestyle habits. Through good lifestyle habits and a great relationship with food and your body, a healthy weight will be easy to achieve and easy to maintain regardless how much or little you are training.

As it relates to race weight, far too many athletes are using a number on the scale to determine athletic readiness for an event. Unfortunately, this approach does not tell you what type of weight is being lost - is it fat, muscle or water?

Your body composition provides very specific information about your body make-up, much more than simply looking at a number on a scale. As it relates to body composition, you are focusing on the proportion of fat and lean body mass in the body.

Your body is made up of body fat and lean body mass.

Body fat can be found as storage fat and as essential body fat.

The human body stores fat in the form of triglycerides within fat (adipose tissue) as well as within the muscle fibers (intramuscular triglycerides). Through endurance training (without any dietary manipulation), there is an increase in fat oxidation from intramuscular triglycerides. As exercise intensity increases, fatty acid mobilization from adipose tissue slows but total fat oxidation increases due to the increase use of intramuscular triglycerides. Let's not forget that dietary carbohydrates influence fat mobilization and oxidation during exercise.

Storage fat is located around organs and beneath the skin, which protects the body and acts as an insulator. Excessive accumulation of visceral fat is associated with negative health issues, which is why it is important to keep your body composition within a healthy body composition range - not too high but not too low.

As for essential fat, this is fat found in the marrow of bones, the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, intestines, muscles and lipid rich tissues throughout the central nervous system. Essential fat is critical for normal body functioning. Women tend to have higher essential fat compared to men.

Your lean body mass represents everything in your body that is not fat - the weight of your muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons and internal organs. Certainly, you don't want to lose any of this "weight" through dieting or exercising.

As you can see, a healthy weight may be your race weight but your race weight is probably not your healthy weight. A healthy weight is not a number or a look but a feeling - it's a weight where you feel healthy. A race weight is where you perform the best. 

In my next blog, let's consider two athlete scenarios for achieving race weight and the big takeaway as it relates to "race weight" for athletic performance.

Body composition through the competitive year

Changing one's body composition will only offer a performance advantage, however, if we first establish the goals and methods uniquely suited to each athlete's individual needs. Numerous so-called "magic bullets" circulate in the health and fitness world for losing fat; triathletes should be cautious of "strategies" that promote quick results. These methods pose a great risk for losing lean tissue, bone mass, and gaining body fat, lingering fatigue, illness, injury, compromised recovery, and ultimately, performance decline. Perhaps even worse, a reckless weight reduction program can trigger disordered eating habits, paving the way to a dangerous eating disorder.

Although a certain perceived "leanness" may in fact be athletically advantageous, every athlete has an ideal body composition range where he or she will feel, function, and perform the best. It cannot be overstressed that the bathroom scale provides irrelevant information about your true body composition and should not be used as a method for measuring body composition for health and/or performance improvements. If you are still convinced that reduced body fat will offer you a distinct advantage, before your get started, it's very important to accurately measure the proportion of your body that is excess fat in relation to muscle, bone, and essential fat.

In an attempt to prevent the aforementioned evils of quick-fix weight loss and to ensure athletic longevity (a.k.a. continued enjoyment!) for cycling, running, and other endurance sports, planned body composition changes should be the direct outcome of a well-executed training plan, proper recovery, restful sleep, well-balanced eating, and effective fueling/hydration strategies.

In a past Ironman.com article, I outlined how you can use your entire season—however it looks for you—to build fitness while creating healthy eating behaviors and sustainable strategies to meet your unique nutritional demands.

To read my guide to making peace with your weight all season long, building your fitness, and creating healthy eating habits, read more HERE.

Changing your perception of race weight

Most athletes have heard that weight affects race day performance and the lighter you weigh, the better that you will perform. Or the opposite - the heavier that you are, the harder your body will have to work.

While it's easy to assume that you will perform the best when you are near the bottom of your weight range,  an "ideal" race eight is not a guarantee of having your best performance on race day. I can assure you that even if you lose fat from your butt, thighs or stomach, you won't become a better athlete on race day just because you weight less You still need fitness and good health to perform the best with your body so the idea of "weighing less" is not effective if you are just chasing a number on the scale.

Karel and I have never ever chased a "race weight." Our goal is always to arrive to a race with a body that is resilient, strong, healthy, injury-free, fueled and fit.  We have no rules in our diet and we never assume that weighing less will help us be better athletes.

I've always believed that a number on the scale does not define me or my athletic capabilities nor does it determine how well I will (or won't) perform with my body on race day. This is why Karel and I never ever weigh ourselves. We have a scale but it is only used to weigh our luggage when we travel. I see food for fuel and for nourishment and I really believe that if I use food and sport nutrition properly, my body will return the favor by helping me stay healthy and consistent with training. 

As a sport dietitian, I am not oppose to helping athletes reach a healthy weight on race day as many athletes will come to me asking for help to get them to their "race weight" because they were told (by a book, article or coach) that x-weight will improve performance. However, I am not for making extreme changes in the diet or training just to lose weight. My focus is always on performance and health. 

Some athletes may benefit from losing 10-30+ lbs as this will help reduce risk for injury. A loss in body fat and an increase in lean muscle mass can certainly improve overall health and performance in certain athletes, so long as the approach for weight loss is not quick, extreme or restrictive, this is a practical reason for working with a sport RD. 

If you have a weight goal in mind that is based on a past performance, you may find that no matter how much you train and how little you eat, you still can't seem to achieve the weight when you performed your best. Working with a sport RD can help you identify any trouble areas in your diet and you may be surprised that you need to eat more or change your relationship with food and your body in order to change your body composition. 

As an athlete, you must accept that your body will change throughout a season and year after year. Assuming that you must weigh the same (or less) to experience continual improvements in your sport may put you at risk for health issues and constant frustration with your body. The constant chasing of a race weight may also increase the risk for disordered eating.

To race at your best, consider that your "race weight" should occur naturally (and not forced) as you aim to meet your nutritional needs throughout the day, as you intentionally fuel before, during and after all workouts and consistently follow a well-designed, periodized training plan.

If you take the time to understand your basic nutritional needs, aim to eat well-balanced style of eating, maintain a healthy relationship with food and the body and understand how to use sport nutrition properly, all while timing your nutrition with training to properly adapt to training stress, you WILL achieve your "race weight" come race day as you will be racing with a healthy and strong body. 

If you are currently trying to reach your race weight through calorie restriction, food elimination, dieting, cleansing, fasting, low carb eating or eliminating sport nutrition, I encourage you to stop sabotaging your health and performance as your end goal is to be prepared for race day. There's not much you can do with a lean body if you can't do anything with it on race day. 

I give you permission to stop chasing a race weight. No matter how much you weigh, what you look like or what you think others think about your body, you can still do something amazing with your body on race day. Fuel your body, nourish your body and thank your body. 

Too focused on race weight?

Picture source

Are you counting down the weeks until your first triathlon race of the upcoming season? I am itching to race!!

As it relates to athletic performance, changing body composition will only offer a performance advantage if goals and methods are appropriately established. With many attractive approaches for fat loss, triathletes should be cautious of weight loss strategies that promote quick results as there is great risk for losing lean tissue, bone mass or gaining body fat, lingering fatigue, illness, injury, compromised recovery and performance decline.  Additionally, a weight reduction program may trigger disordered eating habits, paving the way to an eating disorder. 

Typically, low energy availability occurs when athletes consumes less than 30 calories per kilogram of fat free mass per day. For women to stay in good metabolic and hormonal health, this number is typically around 45 calories per kg of fat free mass per day.

I'd like to think that every triathlete understands that being in low energy availability will not promote gains in fitness/performance but time and time again, athletes will train through excessive fatigue from an energy deprived body and despite the red flags that the body is not in good health, athletes arrive to race day with an underfueled and undernourished body, expecting to perform well because they reached "race weight".
And we should not overlook the athlete who doubts his/her athletic race day potential because race weight was not reached. Who says that a weight will tell you how well or not well you will perform?

With so many endurance triathletes putting more focus on body image and training hours/miles than on making sure the body can perform high quality training sessions, while recovering well from every workout, I can't stress it enough that obsessing over a "weight" will not provide an athletic advantage if your methods and strategies for body composition change are damaging to your overall health. And plus, with so much energy that is needed to balance training with life, why spend that extra energy worrying about your weight?

As it relates to low energy availability, athletes can intentionally or unintentionally not meet energy needs. 

Intentionally - athlete wants to make “race weight”, get leaner or change body composition and goes about it in an extreme way, restricts certain foods/food groups, creates dietary food rules, limits carbs and fears consuming sport nutrition/food before, during and after workouts.

Unintentionally - athlete inadvertently does not meet energy needs due to poor nutrient planning, uneducated on proper fueling/hydration strategies, never learning how to eat like an athlete, busy schedule, poor meal planning, lack of appetite, lack of food availability, stress/exhaustion.

Knowing that an underfueled or undernourished body will not perform as well as a well-fueled and well-nourished body, understand that your ultimate athletic goal for every race is to achieve a race ready body. Your body becomes ready for race day through consistent training, good recovery, life balance, mental strength, great sleep, smart training, enjoyment for your sport and a strong and resilient body.

It’s pretty incredible what you can do with your body when it is healthy, injury free, properly fueled and well-nourished nourished.  

If body composition is your main goal, you are chasing the wrong athletic dream.

A trained, happy, confident and healthy body will always trump a tired, stressed and energy deprived body.

Considering that extreme, obsessive and ritualistic eating may increase the risk for disordered eating patterns and eating disorders, do yourself a big favor this season and focus on what your body can do, and not on what it looks like. With the entire season ahead of you, keeping your body in good health requires a lot of work. Not eating enough will not make it work any better. 

Healthy Weight vs. Race Weight? A must read for performing at your best.

Source

Athletes are constantly being told to lose weight.

Whether it's directly from a coach or from the messages and images viewed on social media and in articles and on TV, we live in a body obsessed society.

With so many different body types and so many different styles of eating (aka "diets"), driven by misconceptions about food, body dissatisfaction and misguided strategies for eating "right", it doesn't surprise me when I see the health and performance of competitive, body conscious, goal oriented and driven athletes, deteriorate.

Most athletes have no idea how much energy is needed by the body to perform at a high level. Most athletes do not feel they deserve to eat "that much food".

Now more than ever, most athletes are very obsessed with how much they weigh. Due to so many false statements relating to body weight and performance, athletes are constantly trying to be thinner, leaner and lighter, while trying to get faster and to go longer.

As it relates to your healthy weight, it's very hard to define a healthy weight as an athlete. Most charts (ex. BMI) do not account for the extra muscle and denser bones that you will develop through training. I know for myself, I am always on the high end of a "healthy" weight for my height because of my athletic build and from my genetics. For much of the year, a healthy weight is one that puts you at little risk for disease or illness, is a weight that allows you to function well in life without following dietary rules or restrictions, is one that allows you to have great energy throughout the day and is a weight that is easy to maintain with your activity regime.

Unfortunately, many athletes try to maintain and achieve a weight that is based on a look or a number on a scale for much of the year, often comparing this "ideal" image to one that was achieved in peak training. Self-identity to a body image is often a struggle for athletes because your healthy weight may not be the one that you accept for what it looks like, but it may be the best weight for you to maintain great health for much of the year. My advice for athletes is to work on body acceptance and to not try to fight for a certain "lean or defined" image, size or weight. Through good lifestyle habits and a great relationship with food and your body, a healthy weight will be easy to achieve and easy to maintain regardless how much or little you are training.

So now we get to the topic of race weight. As it relates to the topic of athletes being obsessed with weight, far too many athletes are using a number on the scale to determine athletic readiness for an event. Unfortunately, this approach does not tell athletes what type of weight is being lost - is it fat, muscle or water?

Your body composition provides very specific information about your body make-up, much more than simply looking at a number on a scale. As it relates to body composition, you are focusing on the proportion of fat and lean body mass in the body.

Your body is made up of body fat and lean body mass.

Body fat can be found as storage fat and as essential body fat.

The human body stores fat in the form of triglycerides within fat (adipose tissue) as well as within the muscle fibers (intramuscular triglycerides). Through endurance training (without any dietary manipulation), there is an increase in fat oxidation from intramuscular triglycerides. As exercise intensity increases, fatty acid mobilization from adipose tissue slows but total fat oxidation increases due to the increase use of intramuscular triglycerides. Let's not forget that dietary carbohydrates influence fat mobilization and oxidation during exercise.

Storage fat is located around organs and beneath the skin, which protects the body and acts as an insulator. I don't need to tell you this but excessive accumulation of visceral fat is associated with health issues, which is why it is important to keep your body composition within a healthy body composition range - not too high but not too low.

As for essential fat, this is fat found in the marrow of bones, the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, intestines, muscles and lipid rich tissues throughout the central nervous system. Essential fat is critical for normal body functioning. Women tend to have higher essential fat compared to men.

Your lean body mass represents everything in your body that is not fat - the weight of your muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons and internal organs. Certainly, you don't want to lose any of this "weight" through dieting or exercising.

As you can see, athletes should not be using a scale to assess a "healthy weight" and a number on the scale is an impractical method to determine "race weight." 

Let's continue on with this discussion for application purposes....

Athlete A is motivated to lose weight in order to improve athletic performance for an upcoming endurance event. This athlete does not want to hire a sport dietitian but has his/her own methods for weight loss. Let's not forget to mention that this athlete is not aware of how much energy is needed to support the metabolic demands of training and this athlete does not have a practice method of lowering body fat while retaining lean muscle mass. This athlete only uses the scale to asses weight loss. Seeing that a number of key hormones play an important role in the regulation of body composition and energy production, the glands in the endocrine system (ex. adrenal, hypothalamus, ovaries, pancreas, parathyroid, pineal, pituitary, testes, thymus, thyroid) are slowly being compromised. Athlete A has no professional guidance on his/her quest to weigh less and through diligent dietary adherence and structured intense and high volume training, this athlete loses weight. While this athlete may have arrived to race day at his/her race weight, this athlete will now spend the next few months or year, trying to fix his/her overtaxed, overloaded and damaged endocrine system. It's worth mentioning that even for athletes who are not seeking weight loss but do not understand the energy that is needed to support endurance or high intensity training, may end up unintentionally damaging hormonal or metabolic health by not "eating enough" or timing food appropriately with training, to support training stress.

So how about Athlete B. This athlete follows his/her training plan and works with a sport dietitian to better understand how to time nutrition with training, to understand individual energy and nutrient needs and to learn how to use sport nutrition properly to support long and intense training sessions and to maximize recovery. This athlete can train consistently throughout the entire season and notices a change in body composition over an extended period of time through sustainable healthy eating habits and a well-laid training plan. This athlete increases lean mass while reducing overall body fat without intentionally trying. This athlete recognizes that although the number on the scale has gone up by a few lbs, this athlete has actually lowered his/her body fat and has gained muscle. This athlete is in great health, has a leaner yet healthy and strong body and will arrive to race day confident and prepared.

THE BIG TAKE AWAY

A change in your body composition is the outcome of a well planned and executed fueling and training plan. When a healthy change in body composition is desired, it involves a team approach from a coach, sport dietitian and possibly an exercise physiologist for body composition testing and a doctor for lab work. Most athletes do not take this approach as they want a quick, inexpensive and easy approach to weight loss.

It's far too common that athletes will step on the scale and respond with "I'm too fat/heavy" or "I can never perform well at this weight". This triggers the need for control and immediate action and leads into overtraining, calorie restriction, carbohydrate elimination and improper fueling and hydrating.

Seeing that this approach places the athlete at risk for losing lean tissue, bone mass, depleted energy stores and a possible gain in body fat, why would any athlete want to compromise the body through this approach?

Isn't the point of training to become a better, stronger and faster athlete?

How can this be done with a body that you can't do anything with?

I hear about it all the time but unsupervised, uneducated and poorly guided athletes are most at risk for illness, injury, poor recovery, decreased performance and a host of hormonal, bone, cardiovascular and metabolic health issues. All of which negatively affect training and can compromise overall well-being.

For you to perform at your best AND to adapt to training, while functioning well in life, focus on achieving a healthy weight and let your race weight take care of itself. With optimal fueling and hydration strategies, a healthy and well balanced diet, consistent quality training, good sleep and great recovery habits, you will not only reach athletic excellence but your great daily habits will continue to bring you long-term health benefits.

Sources:
Fat metabolism during exercise
Metabolic adaptation to weight loss
Getting a grip on body composition
Diets gone too far

Changing your perception of "race weight"

104lbs - 2006 IMFL
Kona qualified


113 lbs - 2010 IMWI
Kona qualified

116lbs - 2013 IM Lake Placid
Kona qualified

112 lbs - 2014 IMWI
Kona qualified

9 years and 9 Ironman triathlons completed.
Never have I had a "race weight" because I race with a body that is healthy, well-fueled and well-trained on race day.
A number does not define me or my athletic capabilities nor does it determine how well I will (or won't) succeed on race day.
I don't chase a body image when I eat and train, I chase a body that is strong, healthy and resilient.

I often hear athletes talk about their "race weight" and many of these athletes come to me asking me to help them get to their "race weight."

Some athletes feel that losing 10-15 lbs will help them reduce risk for injury, improve health and recover better after endurance training. A loss in body fat and an increase in lean muscle mass can certainly improve overall health and performance in this athlete so long as the approach for weight loss does not go against the initial goals of being healthier and faster/stronger.

Then there are the athletes who tell me that they have raced his/her best at a certain weight and now the he/she explains it is nearly impossible to get to that weight despite exercising more and eating less.

As you can see from my past 4-Kona Qualifying Ironman race weights (in my 5-foot frame), I have never been close to my first Ironman race weight and I have raced well nearly 10 lbs over that first race weight. Can you imagine the stress, struggle and possible sabotaging performances I could have placed on myself if I always felt that I needed to achieve that first IM race weight?

Since I (or Karel) don't weigh myself and these weights are from pre-race weigh-in's before each Ironman, the biggest take away is just because my body raced well at 104lbs, that doesn't mean I need to be at that weight in order to perform well and keep my body in good health for the rest of my Ironman athlete career. Chasing an image or a weight goal is just not how I want to eat or train. I absolutely love using my body and seeing what I can achieve and in order to do that, I have to love food, eating and sport nutrition.

It makes no sense to expect your body to do more if you are intentionally eating less than your body deserves/requires or not fueling appropriately around/during workouts.

Would you believe me if I told you that your "race weight" is a natural result of meeting your nutritional needs throughout the day, intentionally fueling before, during and after all workouts and following a well-designed, periodized training plan. I have no way of determining my race weight because every year my training changes. Life changes and my race schedule changes and thus, that affects how I fuel and train for triathlons. But I never, ever, restrict food to achieve an ideal body composition or weight.

If you take the time to understand your basic nutritional needs and continue to focus on how to best fuel before, during and after your workouts, come race day you will be at your "race weight" which simply means - racing with the body that you have used through months of previous training and that has successful adapted to months of training stress all because you met your daily and metabolic dietary needs.

If this post hits home to you, I need you to stop thinking that you need to be at a certain weight come race day. You can absolutely be focused on weight loss as an athlete and lose weight and boost performance/health but if you feel pressure to look or weigh a certain amount on/before race day or feel as if you don't look the "athlete" part, you may feel so overwhelmed with this perceived (or past) weight/image that you end up taking extreme measures in your diet/exercise regime that ultimately sabotage performance and health. 

Nobody said achieving race weight involves restriction, food elimination, dieting, cleansing, fasting, low carb or eliminating sport nutrition so stop sabotaging your health and performance as you train your body to get stronger, healthier and faster.

There's no point having a lean body if you can't race strong with it on race day.

As a sport RD I spend a great amount of time giving the athletes I work with, permission to eat and to learn how to love their body. Many times, athletes will thank me when I say it's completely fine and healthy to eat grains, drink milk or use sport nutrition products or they are in total shock when I tell them they need to eat more food (often times, more quality food).
There is a large disconnect in athletes as they want their body to look or perform a certain a way but rarely does an athlete give their body the credit it deserves on a daily basis by appreciating their good health.

It makes me sad to see athletes who have stopped eating certain foods that worked well in their diet because someone else said it was "bad" food or seeing athletes restrict food to try to lose weight to get to an ideal weight/image. 

If you are currently experiencing worries, guilty feelings or anxiety when it comes to eating or your body image, take a deep breath....wheww.... and thank your body for being awesome.

Thank your body for being strong, for being durable and for being so impressive with every workout.
That is the body that is going to allow you to race strong on race day. 

I give you permission to race with a body that you are proud of because it's your body and that body is going to perform amazingly well on race day. 

Racing weight - do you have one?

Yes, I am pouring ice down my shorts at Ironman Kentucky (2009). This was one of my favorite races because it was great to be in my home state. I loved the rolling hills on the course and I always like to see nature/wildlife when I am racing. I have been known to say out loud "Hello" to the cows and horses that I spot along course - I am sure they say hello back but I am too busy riding fast on my bike. 

This was also a favorite race of mine because it was my Ironman PR - a hard definition to use in racing because I have PR'd in separate races for each the swim, bike and run but here I put it all together for a "fast" Ironman at 10 hours and 53 minutes. But as we all know, you can't compare race to race for every race is different. I will take my 10 hours and 57 minute finishing time as my "best" race at IMWI for it was super challenging and likely the hardest IM I have ever "raced". In Kona 2011, I PR'd on the bike but I have yet to learn how to "race" that race so hopefully I will have the honor to race there for the 3rd time in the future (hopefully with Karel).

As far as racing weight goes, I hear a lot from athletes who feel as if reaching a certain weight will allow them to race better. I understand that we should not be carrying more weight on our body than is needed for that can increase risk for injuries. But in terms of a healthy weight vs a racing weight, how can we figure out what is our ideal weight for performing well on race day?

Here's how I see it  - from both a coach, an athlete and someone who has worked with many athletes on race day/race week eating along with sport nutrition and weight loss. 

If you are a newbie, you likely have no idea what is an ideal racing weight. Focus on your training and getting stronger with consistent  performance gains. A number on a scale or comparing your body composition to others will not give you a PR. Your work in the pool, on the bike and/or while running will give you the race performance you trained your body to do by race day. As for wanting to lose weight and being a newbie? That is fine and likely why you started a new sport in order to "get healthy". Never should a workout be compromised or life be extreme just to "lose weight". Create a healthy foundation diet that will nourish your body and leave you satisfied and then prioritize nutrition around (before, during and after) workouts. This can be done best with someone (ex. sport RD) providing feedback to nutrition logs to tweak the diet for better nutrient timing and of course, learning how to not over/under-eat.

Here is the big reason why veterans talk about "Racing" weight. Someone who refers to a past weight and explains that "at x-weight, I performed the best ever so that is my racing weight" is simply identifying the weight as the highlight of the training. In other words, it wasn't the weight loss or change of body composition that happened first (or in the off-season or while doing nothing) and then the performance gains but instead, the change in body composition and "ideal" racing weight was the result of training. You didn't perform well on race day because you stuck to a diet plan and sat on the couch doing nothing but instead, you likely provided your body with the right fuels at the right time to make performance gains and your body took care of itself. It got stronger, faster and perhaps leaner and you performed well on race day. Now you are likely more efficient and may be struggle with getting back to that weight but in hindsight, it wasn't that specific weight that made you have a great race but instead the training that came with it.

IMKY was a PR but I was also at my "heaviest" for IM racing. I do not perform well with a low body weight and also, it isn't fun because I don't like to feel hungry or restricted so that's a choice I make as I will take performance over a number on a scale. I don't like my body weight going under 108lbs (I'm 5 feet "tall" and I create muscle very easily thanks to genetics and good nutrient timing) and that weight only occurs during IM training. Throughout the year I hoover around 111-112. I'm fine with that as I feel energized, satisfied and most of all, healthy and balanced. I know that if my weight gets to 115 - no biggie but more than that, risk of injuries goes up for me and I am aware of that so to be respectful to my body, I need to adjust something with training/diet to get back to a healthy weight. So although at IMKY I was heavier than most IM's, I performed the best ever and at the end of the day when writing my race reports, it wasn't the weight that hopefully inspired others to reach personal health goals but rather my attitude, performance and approach to a fun, active lifestyle. Hopefully you can do the same. 

If you are an athlete or fitness enthusiast, you likely are using your body to perform. If you are a swim suit, cycling shorts or running top model, you are using your body for a picture. There's nothing wrong with either one but from my perspective as an athlete, I would rather use my body in my swim suit, cycling shorts and running top to get to finishing lines and feel fueled and strong along the way. 

Since we are in a society that is stuck between "healthy eating for health" and "healthy eating for weight loss", I thought I'd share an article (or parts of it) from one of my favorite nutrition journals as athletes are always quick to remove food to lose weight or follow a fad diet (heavy on products or "bad" food) and I find that nutritional irresponsible and often times disrespectful for the body that we expect to be 100% all the time. For me, I'd rather work with an athlete to identify strengths and weaknesses in the diet alongside lifestyle habits that may be affecting the timing, amount and types of nutrition before assuming that that athlete has to go to any great lengths in terms of restrictive eating when it comes to meeting personal weight and performance goals. I have heard many athletes blame certain foods for GI upset and feeling 'unhealthy' but for me, I'd rather find any triggers for the reasons behind not feeling well during the day or during training rather than blaming a food source and removing it without it being the true cause.

Nutrition Action Healthletter Jan/Feb 2013 issue.
GUT MYTHS: Clearning up confusion in the GI tract.

(there are several myths listed on pg 3-5 so I will share one of them)

MYTH: Got gas? Beans, vegetables and milk are the main culprits.
Beans, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, milk, bran. Those are some of the usual suspects when people are trying to figure out why they're experiencing, ahem, gas. Ant those foods can cause gas.
But most of us overlook a growing source of the problem: inulin, or chicory root extract, one of the most popular ingredients in "high-fiber" foods.
"Of all the fibers added to foods, inulin is the one that probably causes the most intestinal gas, " say fiber expert Joanne Slavin, professor of nutrition at the University of Minnesota. "Inulin contains sugars that our digestive enzymes can't break down."
The enzymes do just fine with sugars that have only one or two basic units (called saccharides). Sucrose, or table sugar, for example, is a disaccharide, that is broken down in the small intestine into fructose and glucose.
But when it comes to sugars made up of three or more units - often called oligosaccharides - our enzymes are useless. So the sugars end up as food for the bacteria in the gut.
"Inulin is quickly and completely fermented in the large intestine," explains Slavin. And when your bacteria finish fermenting it, you get stuck with the gas they give off.
"Beans are notorious for causing gas because they have sugars like raffinose and stachyose," notes Slavin. Raffinose has three sugar units. Stachyose has four.
"If you look at literature on treating or cooking beans to make them less gassy, it's mostly t get the oligosaccharides out of there," she adds.
(Beano tablets can prevent gas because the contain an enzyme that breaks down raffinose and stachyose).
Whether inulin is a problem depends on how much you eat and who you are.
"Our review of studies found that inulin is generally well tolerated at levels up to 15g a day," says Slavin. But at around 20 grams, flatulence or bloating is more likely. "So does is a big issue and there is also individual variability."

Each serving of FIber One 90 Calorie Bronies, Fiber One cottage Cheese and Yoplait LIght with fiber has 5 grams of fiber and much of it is inulin.
Some Fiber One Chewy Bars have up to nine grams.
"If you have a serving of beans you'll get about 3 grams of oligosaccharides, not nine grams," says Slavin. "Any they're more manageable in a real food because they're digested more slowly and usually mixed with other foods."

Another hidden source of gas: sugar alcohols like sorbitol and maltitol. "They're low-calorie carbohydrates because they're not completely digested and absorbed," explains Slaving. "Typically if you are eating sugar-free candy or gum, your exposure to sugar alcohols is low, but if people eat the whole bag of candy, it can cause gas."
Sugar alcohols aren't all equal, though. In small studies, some people complain of gas when doses of sorbitol reach 10-20g but few complain unless they get at least 30-40 grams of maltitol.
Most foods don't have that much. Breyers Vanilla or chocolate CarbSmart and No sugar Added ice creams, for example, have 4-5 g of sorbitol per half cup, but many people start at a whole cup. And Baskin Robbins No sugar Added Caramel Turtle Truffle ice cream has 25grams of maltitol per scoop..

Of course, some people may eat more than one food with sugar alcohols during the course of a day. And people vary. "Most people can tolerate normal doses, but not everybody is the same," say Slavin.

On the plus side, sugar alcohols have fewer calories than sugar and inulin spurs the growth of Bifido bacteria, which may be good for gut health (that's why it is called a prebiotic). But the more bacteria in your gut, the more gas they give off.

"Scientists argue that gas isn't bad for you, but most people say it's not acceptable," say Slavin. "If you hve gas, you should definitely consider what you're eating. If it's a lot of fermentable fiber or sugar alcohols, that could be the explanation."