I had a great question from a friend this week concerning how many calories she needs. (Check out her blog at www.foodsofapril.com)
Many people struggle with finding a balance between eating right, exercise, and still enjoying food and life. For many of us, the goal is to lose weight. For others, it’s to gain weight, whether that be in muscle or getting to weight that is healthy for our bodies. In this post, I want to address the hazards of eating too little.
In order to function your body needs fuel. Any fitness magazine you pick or website you visit will likely tell you “the best ways to lose weight” or “low calorie recipes.” But what about the person who is working out hard and eating right? While overall general health is still the goal, we need to keep in mind that a higher volume of exercise requires a higher volume of nutrients. Here are some effects and points about not eating enough
- Your body needs calories to function. Without them, you won’t have energy, thus won’t have effective workouts meaning you won’t be as fit as trying to be. So, less food=less results. Vicious cycle
- Lean muscle burns more calories and speeds up your metabolism. In order to gain muscle, you must break the muscle fibers down, i.e. resistance training. However, our bodies DON’T get stronger when we train, they get stronger when we RECOVER. Recovering involves eating right, eating enough, and resting and sleeping.
- When you don’t eat enough as an intensely training athlete, your run the chance of your body breaking down muscle for fuel. This catabolism of the muscle will quickly eat away at your strength.
- Too low of a body fat percentage can also be disastrous on health and performance. In women, a disorder known as the female athlete triad can develop where a female stifle her menstrual cycle and also creates hormonal imbalances. This is also similar for men. Too little body fat results wreaks havoc on testosterone. Testosterone builds muscle and well as is responsible for sex drive and having kids. So, in this scenario, for both men and women, the more you exercise and/or the less you eat, the less muscle you will naturally build, the less energy you’ll have to put towards your workout, and finally the less lean muscle you will have as your body uses it for fuel resulting a reduced metabolic rate. See this website for body fat levels and information on storage and essential body fat: http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/bodyfatpercentage.html. Remember–women have and NEED more body fat than men; it’s just natural that way. A body fat of 14-15% for women is really very low and should be monitored closely.
- Here’s an article I found online, “Your metabolism is in effect your body’s furnace. Calories are the fuel that heats this furnace; the hotter your furnace burns, the more calories it uses up just to keep up with basic functions like digestion, breathing and so on. Your activity level and the food you eat affect your metabolism. The more activity and exercise you do, the faster your metabolism runs, even when you aren’t being active. Activity also builds muscle, and muscle burns more calories than fat. In other words, the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism. If you don’t put enough food in your body, your “furnace” doesn’t have anything to keep it going. It goes into a sort of hibernation mode by slowing down and using fewer calories. So, yes: If you eat too little, you can slow your metabolism”
So, that’s all great, but how do I know if I’m eating enough. There are a couple ways. I think a great way is to just see how you feel and check in with you body: Am I tired? Am I enjoying my workouts? Am I getting stronger? Am I enjoying food? Try increasing your calories for a few weeks and see what happens. The rule used to be calories in= calories out, but this isn’t always true if you are eating high quality, nutrient dense food. You may be able to increase how much you are eating and see gain in performance without seeing any pounds added on the scale. If the scale does go up, its likely muscle, meaning your body requires even more calories to fuel you new muscle!
The other way is to use a calculator to figure out how many calories you need based on age, height, weight, sex, and activity level. This provides a very good picture, but keep in mind everyone is different. Also don’t sell yourself short when it comes to your activity level either–if you work out hard, enter that! After lots of searches and comparison, here is the best one I found http://www.fitnesspros.com/calculators/calorieneeds.html.
I also ask that you go back and read the post I wrote about athlete and food. I talked about how everyone in the world was so aghast at how much Michael Phelps said he eat. The guy swims like 9-14,000 meters a day; you’re damn right he eats that much! And the results? 12 Olympic golds and not an ounce of fat on him.
You are an athlete–treat your body right. The best advice I ever got, “Eat to exercise, don’t exercise to eat”
