Race Day Overfueling

The unfortunate truth is that most endurance athletes underfuel in training and overfuel on race day.

Sure you completed your training sessions but did your physiology change? Did you get stronger, more resilient, fitter or faster? Were you able to recover properly to gain the necessary fitness for your upcoming event? Did you gain confidence in your race day fueling and pacing plan?

Underfueling can be from many reasons:

• Fear of gaining weight
• A desire to lose weight
• Trying to be more "metabolically efficient"
• Not knowing how to use sport nutrition products appropriately
• Worrying about the sugar from sport nutrition because its not "healthy" 
• Not feeling that (more) calories are needed during training session
• Getting by with minimal nutrition
• Not planning stops accordingly to refill bottles
• Poor meal planning/feeling rushed to get in a workout
• Not knowing how much energy/fluids are needed to support the trianing session 

Underfueling does not enhance performance and consequently, not meeting energy and hydration needs can sabotage health. You do not get fitter, stronger, faster or more resilient by underfueling in training. 

Yet come race day, athletes are so worried about running out of energy that suddenly, eating "enough" becomes a priority. Sadly, you can't outfuel a body that was not well-trained. If you underfueled in training, you spent months compromising your ability to maximize your fitness for race day. Loading up on carbs and sodium before and during the race will not give you the fitness that you didn't gain in training. 

Overfueling on race day is often due to fear of not having enough energy. Sadly, no amount of calories on race day can make the body perform at a sustainable effort that was not created in training. If you constantly underfuel in training, not only are you missing an opportunity to maximize fitness but a body that has been underfueled in training will likely underperform on race day because you never gave your body a chance to gain the necessary fitness for race day. Additionally, overfueling on race day will increase the risk for GI issues. 

Yes, you may be checking off workouts, making you think that you are getting yourself race ready but you an underfueled body will constantly underperform in training. A performance minded athlete recognizes that a well-fueled body can adapt well to training. 

Every time you go into a workout underfueled (or avoid sport nutrition or proper recovery), you are missing out on an opportunity to gain fitness and confidence for race day. 

Compelling evidence that you are overtraining

Training for an endurance or ultra endurance event is similar to a dose-response assessment. 
The goal of this type of scientific test is to determine the required dose to produce a specific outcome (or response). Sadly, when it comes to endurance athletes, far too many athletes are doing work without eliciting a positive or beneficial response. 

As it relates to training, the right amount of stress can produce significant fitness gains but too much stress results in high risk of injury, sickness, overtraining and burnout. Not enough stress is simply exercising and doesn't induce favorable change in physiology for race readiness. Training stress shouldn't be associated just with weekly volume as the athlete training 8 hours a week can be as vulnerable to overtraining as the athlete training 20 hours a week. 

So why is it that so many endurance and ultra endurance athletes are training so much and so hard but struggling with recovery, body composition, health issues and/or performance gains?

As training stress increases (often in the form of increased intensity, frequency and volume), your lifestyle choices must also change in order to respond to the added stress on your body. 

• Energy/calorie/nutrient needs to increase
• Recovery needs to increase (ex. easy workout, rest days)
• Sleep needs to increase
• Lifestyle stress needs to decrease (work, emotional, travel, relationship)

Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. 

Endurance athletes fall victim to green-box syndrome (checking off workout so the workout turns green or pass, instead of red or fail) and will prioritize the completion of workouts at the cost of poor sleep, poor nutrition and inadequate recovery in an already stressful and busy life. It's not uncommon for athletes to sleep, eat and recover less as training volume increases - talk about the contradiction of what is needed to optimize performance and to support health!

Overtraining is a physiological state caused by an excess accumulation of physiological, psychological, emotional, environmental and training stress. With overtraining being heavily misunderstood and misdiagnosed, there are strong links between overtraining and undereating. It doesn't matter how much/little you are training - if your body is not responding well to training stress and you are not balancing your training with lifestyle stress, you'll consistently struggle to make improvements and even worse, you'll experience setbacks related to mental and physical health. 

As an athlete, you have a responsibility to your body to provide it with proper nutrition, fuel, sleep and recovery in order to support all the physiological functions needed in order to maintain optimal health. Eating enough, timing nutrition with training and utilizing well-formulated sport nutrition products are critical to the healthy functioning of the nervous, metabolic, nervous, cardiac and musculoskeletal systems - all which must be at full strength in order to encourage adaptations. 

I constantly struggle to understand the reason why as training volume/intensity increases, athletes assume it's ok to eat, sleep and recover less.

A well-planned and organized diet, with enough energy (calories) and nutrients to fuel and refuel the body is essential to overall health as you train for an endurance event. Your daily diet provides the nutrients needed to rebuild and repair muscle tissue, restock glycogen (fuel) stores in the muscle and liver, maintain immune system health and keep vitamin and mineral stores within the recommended range. Because overtraining and overfueling walk hand in hand, if you are underfueling, your  body has to work harder to complete a workout. Many cases of overtraining attribute to underfueling. 

Signs of Underfueling (which are also common in overtraining)

• Fatigue, low energy levels
• Decrease in performance or fitness plateau 
• Low motivation and difficulty concentrating
• Decreased muscle strength
• Constant hunger or no appetite
• Irritability, mood changes
• Difficulty sleeping at night
• GI distress
• Muscle cramps
• Cold intolerance
• Frequent sickness or injury
• Stress fractures
• Changes in menstrual cycle (for women)
• Significant changes in body composition 
• Low sex drive

Why do endurance athletes undereat? 

• Unintentional - Not all undereating is intentional. Lack of proper knowledge about how much food/calories is needed to support endurance training can result in undereating. Additionally, limited time for grocery shopping/meal prep, dislike for cooking, financial reasons, poor meal planning, busy schedules and a loss of appetite can all impact undereating. 
  
  
• Desire to lose weight - You must fuel your current body, not diet in an attempt to try to achieve the body you think you should have. Forcing your body to lose weight from food and sport nutrition restriction adds extra stress to your body. By eating enough to fuel your specific training needs, you can make sure your body has what it needs to adapt to training and to rebuild during recovery. 
  
  
• Social pressures - Similar to the desire to lose weight, body dissatisfaction can increase the risk of disordered eating patterns. It's important to remember that the so-called "ideal" body doesn't exist. Bodies come in all sizes and shapes. Don't let social pressures to look a certain way cause you to undereat. 

Why do athletes overtrain? 

• Unintentional - Busy schedules and stressful lives leave little time to recover well from training. Remember - adaptations from training occur through recovery. Just because you complete a workout, this doesn't mean you are "gaining" anything from the session. If you are not making time to adequately fuel, hydrate and recover from your workouts, it will be very hard for your body to adapt.
  
  
• Training program - When a training program is appropriately designed, it will allow for gradual progression of volume/intensity and consistent adaptations. This will likely result in meaningful performance improvements. However, if training is rushed, developmental steps are skipped or too much volume/intensity/frequency is loaded on the body at once, the athlete has not built up resiliency and tolerance to training and thus, overtraining may result from too much training stress and fatigue. 
  
  
• Personality - Athletes who have a compulsive and perfectionist personality type are driven to work hard. While in moderation, these traits are beneficial to staying motivated to train, the concern is when athletes go to extreme. Additionally, a preoccupation with body image, food and exercise obsession can cause an athlete to push the body beyond healthy limits. 

Self Assessment

Do yourself a favor and look out for your mental and physical health. As an athlete, you are nothing without your health. Because overtraining (and burnout) is heavily linked with undereating, here are a few questions that may be helpful for a weekly check-in: 

1. Are my energy and mood levels stable throughout the day? 
2. Am I sleeping well (falling asleep quickly and sleeping restfully throughout the night)?
3. Is my HR elastic when I train (can easily increase and decrease dependent on the effort/intensity)?
4. Am I able to be present and focused to life outside of training (ex. work, family, relationships, etc.)?
5. Am I relying heavily on caffeine to stay alert throughout the day? 
6. Do I constantly feel hungry or no urge to eat throughout the day? 
7. Am I increasing my recovery, sleep and nutrition to support my increase in training load?
8. Am I enjoying my training load? 
9. Am I enjoying foods that I normally enjoy eating? 
   
10. Do I feel deep fatigue/soreness which is affecting my ability to execute workouts as planned?
11. Am I taking my recovery and easy days seriously? 
    
12. Is my mood significantly affected by my training?

An increase in training load requires changes to your lifestyle choices. Don't wait until it's too late to give more attention to your daily diet, recovery and sleep. 

How undereating impacts your health and fitness

 

Should we be surprised in our diet crazed, body image obsessed society?

Research shows that almost 75% of athletes do not eat enough calories to fuel workouts and to perform to full capabilities on event day. Some of this is unintentional as many athletes underestimate how much food/calories are needed to keep the metabolic processes functioning well with the added load that exercise brings to the body. But undereating is not always unintentional. For a large number of athletes, undereating is intentional and purposeful. 

Asking your energy-deprived body to perform doesn't make much sense but sadly, far too many athletes intentionally restrict food intake (specifically carbohydrates) - often to lose weight, become more metabolically efficient or to change body composition. 

Although it's clear that committing to adequately fuel your body can improve performance, reduce the risk for injury and enhance well-being, far too many athletes are more motivated to undereat - than to fuel for performance - in hopes of losing weight, changing body composition and decreasing body fat. In other words, intentional insufficient fueling is almost always related to a strong desire to look differently.... change body composition. 

Underfueling is a form of stress and that alone can negatively impact training, mental well-being and physical health.

A well-planned diet, with enough energy (calories) and nutrients to fuel the body and help it recover from workouts is critical to fitness gains and overall health. Food is the best (and easiest) way to provide the body with the nutrients it needs to rebuild and repair muscle tissue, replace glycogen (carbohydrate) stores, maintain immune health, and to keep vitamin and mineral stores stocked.

Let's look into some of the consequences of intentional underfueling and not eating enough to support your body and exercise regime.

Training on empty

Do you intentionally underfuel during workouts and/or on race day? 

Intentional calorie/carb/fluid/sodium deprivation is not uncommon. As a Board Certified Sport Dietitian, I often work with athletes who struggle with their relationship with food and the body. There's a fear of consuming calories around/during workouts and often train and race with the mindset of "how low can I go??" In other words, the athlete tries to complete a given workout or event with the least amount of calories/carbs possible. Although many athletes learn the hard way through a performance or health decline, it's a wonderful "ah ha" moment when an athlete experiences what a body can do when it is well fueled. 

For many athletes, the desire to lose weight and/or change body composition or to become more "metabolically" efficient are the primary motives for underfueling. Intentional insufficient fueling is often the result of a desire to lose weight (or to avoid gaining weight). 

While an athlete may be able to complete a given workout or race with less fuel/hydration than recommended, there are consequences. Ultimately, when an athlete is in a negative energy balance (expending more calories than consuming) during the day and/or not taking in adequate fuel/hydration before/during/after workouts, the many metabolic processes that allow the body to adapt to the stress of training are compromised. More so, the body struggles to recover between training sessions. Here are some of the consequences of underfueling. 

• Increased risk for injury and illness
• Inability to train at high intensity
• Lack of strength and power 
• Delayed recovery 
• Trouble concentrating
• Difficulty sleeping
• Moodiness
• Feeling run down
• Underperforming 
• Hormonal issues 
• Decreased mental function, increased depression

How can you improve your health, well-being and athletic performance? 

Eat enough. 

Don't let a season of training and/or racing become compromised or cut your athletic career short due to inadequate energy consumption. Underfueling sabotages your health and performance - it does not make you a better athlete. Restricting calories because of an irrational belief that performance will improve if weight is lost (or because you are afraid to gain weight) is not the strategy to becoming a better athlete. By fueling your body properly, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that you feel and perform better. 

With so many voices and sources providing you nutrition advice, there's one simple message to remember....

If you want your body to perform well, respect it by giving it the fuel that it deserves. 

The underfueling athlete

The goal of any training plan is to elicit performance gains which are best experienced on race day. 

Within any given training plan, there is a method and purpose to the workouts.

I often find that athletes have irrational and unrealistic approaches to fueling and it's now cool to not eat before or during workouts. This needs to change.

Athletes. you understand the importance of eating for fuel and for health but why is it that you can be so focused on your workouts but lose all good judgement when it comes to nourishing and fueling your body? 

I realize that a plant strong diet, rich in whole foods like fruits and veggies isn't very sexy. However, an extreme diet plan that restricts certain foods is really something to talk about with your training partners. 

Eating before a workout and consuming calories during workouts is now seen as bad. It's totally hard core to talk about how little you can consume during a workout and how much more metabolically efficient you are when you train by working out on an empty stomach. 

Interestingly, most fueling approaches come with risks and in my profession, athletes come to me when they express that they have "failed" with sport nutrition trends like trying to be a "fat burner" or sticking to a low carb diet (two of the most current trends among endurance athletes). 

So who are these athletes that contact me (not specific to any current athletes)? 

The athlete who has always struggled with body image issues is now training for an endurance event and is scared to eat more food. 

The athlete who is training for an event is wanting to lose weight but is struggling, despite training 10+ hours a week. 

The athlete who once lost weight by restricting sport nutrition before and during workout is now experiencing poor performance but is chasing a body image rather than performance gains. 

The athlete who was praised for being lean is now overcoming a stress fracture, amennorhea or an eating disorder. 

The athlete that once found success by restricting carbohydrates and sport nutrition is now struggling for low energy and lethargy and experiencing more sickness, injuries/niggles and fatigue than ever before. 

The athlete who tried to work out on an empty stomach for weeks is now afraid to eat before workouts for fear of gaining weight despite having low energy, bonking, dizziness and moodiness during workouts.

The athlete who has been wanting to lose weight is now struggling weight weight gain because the athlete feels sport nutrition isn't needed or doesn't understand how to fuel adequately. 

The athlete that tells me she/he needs to train more because they are not losing weight.

The athlete who tells me that weight loss will make him/her faster but the athlete is not consuming home cooked meals or getting adequate sleep.

The athlete who is spending 20 hours a week training is unable to find time to eat a healthy diet. 

As an athlete, your main focus is keeping your body in exceptional health while placing intentional training stress on your body to experience performance gains. To think that working out on an empty stomach or not consuming carbohydrates during a workout will help you perform better is absolutely absurd considering that the majority of athletes who train for an event have little understanding of how to plan and execute a healthy diet within an active lifestyle. Add in the extra time-commitment to training and now you have to make the decision on what is removed so that you can accomplish more miles each day.

The underfueling athlete will always underperform. Sadly, athletes get so accustomed to working out with a tired body from lack of consistent restful sleep and a body that is not properly nourished through daily diet and this "normal" feeling will never be fixed by eating restricting carbohydrates, working out on an empty stomach or not consuming sport nutrition during workouts.

If you want to perform well and consistently, you  must look at your lifestyle from the bottom up. If fat-burning workouts are on your mind, let's start at the bottom of the pyramid to evaluate what other areas in your life will physically, emotionally and mentally help you prepare for more quality workouts. 

If you are tired and sleep deprived, you will lose performance.
If your immune system is compromised from an unhealthy diet, you will lose performance.
If your hormones are disrupted from too much volume, you will lose performance.
If you underfuel during workouts and overfuel throughout the day, you will lose performance.
If your training plan can not be supported by good sleep and a good diet, you will lose performance. 

If you never get use to fueling before and during workouts, you will lose performance on race day. 

So, do you still want to debate with me and tell me that working out on an empty stomach, restricting sport nutrition during workouts or following a high volume training plan will improve your performance and help you change your body composition?

A well fueled and well trained body performs well. A conditioned athlete will accept training stress much better than a newbie athlete. Athletes must develop overtime and the training/nutrition methods of one athlete will not work for another if the athletes are in two different stages of their development and in life.

There are many lean bodies that can not perform on race day. There are also many undernouished bodies that you never see because the body is too tired, injured or sick to show up to the race. There are many bodies that perform amazingly well but do not fit society's image of an athlete's body.

If you want to perform well, you have to fuel smart and not chase a body image. You can  be extremely metabolically efficient and not be super lean and perform great and you can be super lean and feel as if not eating before workouts is helping you boost performance and fall short on this approach with an injury, sickness or tired body come race day.

 If you want your body composition to change, it can only do so if you have really great nutritional and training habits on a consistent basis.

The underfueling athlete is at risk for disordered eating. If you are trying to achieve or maintain a lower weight, you are likely not consuming enough calories or nutrients to allow your body to perform and function properly.

Just like any performance-enhancing tip, there will likely be favorable results at the beginning that some athletes experience and for others, poor results that frustrate the disciplined athlete. For athletes, bone loss/osteopenia, menstrual disturbances/hormone issues, amenorrhea (women), injuries, burn out and energy deficiency, result from weeks, months or even years of underfueling.

At first the diet change is sexy and hard core but the athlete that depletes their body's energy stores through overexercising is the cornerstone of the underfueling athlete.

Even worse, underfueling affects cognitive functions and can cause depression, anxiety, mood disturbances and inability to focus which can all cause serious health risks imposed by not fueling your body adequately. 

If you are underfueling, seek help by consulting with a Registered Dietitian who specializes in sport nutrition immediately so that you can reach your body composition and performance goals without compromising your health or performance.

Could you be underfuling?

-Anxiety/depression with eating
-Feeling fat and inentionally undereating throughout the day and before/during/after workouts
-Feeling obsessed with exercise/training
-Feeling controlled by food
-Always feeling hungry but not satisfying your hunger cues
-Never feeling hungry
-Difficulty concentrating during workouts
-Trouble sleeping, restless sleep (like your brain is awake and won't fall asleep)
-Preoccupation with eating, the scale or with the body image/eating habits of others
-Avoiding social situations relating to food
-Use of diet pills, cleanses, detox systems, energy drinks/pills or laxatives

-Ammenorrhea

-Hormone imbalances
-Dehydration
-Lethargy/fatigue
-Feeling cold, all the time
-Overuse injuries
-Stress fractures
-Significant weight loss
-Recent weight gain despite extreme calorie restriction and exercising daily
-Muscle cramps, weakness, heavy legs, fatigue
-Gastrointestinal problems

-Intentionally not eating for fear of gaining weight

-Trying to be a "fat burner" by not eating before workouts or consuming enough nutrition during workouts