Last weekend, we were excited to host our Wellness Sunday sessions with certified personal trainer and nutritionist Chloe Salter from ph Nutrition. Chloe’s topic of discussion was women’s nutrition for optimal sports performance and we had a full house! 

You might be shocked by the number of active women who overlook the importance of basic nutrition, but the reality is that your body is a machine, and, like any efficient machine, it needs the right fuel to run well. In this blog post, we are going to be sharing with you just why you need to ensure you’re eating enough and the benefits from doing so.

Why should we start eating enough food? 

A lot of us have grown up with a fear of eating a certain amount of food. The biggest mistake keeping you from gaining muscle is your fear of gaining fat!

We tend to shape our eating habits around the fear of fat gain. We’ll eat in a deficit or under maintenance, cut certain things out, but then if one day we end up ‘going over our calories’ or eating something that we see as ‘off limits, then we throw everything in the ‘f%&k it bucket’ and go in the complete opposite direction, eating everything in sight until midnight - then going on a fast or eating restrictive amount of food the next day to ‘make up for it’.

You feel happier!

Going for longer without food, or not eating enough food, causes cortisol to continually elevate - higher cortisol levels turn into chronic stress. In patients with elevated cortisol, there is decreased tryptophan (an amino acid) which is responsible for creating serotonin (happy hormone!). Restrictive diets and under-eating in combination with training hard (double stress!) is therefore going to inhibit the production of serotonin and cause you to feel more irritable and anxious. Tryptophan comes from protein, so combine this with a lack of enough protein in your diet and you are not going to be as happy as you could be! 

You will be more productive!

Your brain also requires fuel to work properly. Ever gone for a long period without food and found it hard to focus? Your brain is the main consumer of glucose in your body, using around 5.6mg of glucose per 100g of brain tissue per minute. Glucose metabolism in the brain is required for cell signalling, clearing out old cells, producing new ones… this means that our productivity, neurotransmitters (including things such as serotonin which we mentioned above), and work capacity, is reliant on a certain amount of glucose.

Your hormones will thank you!

Recent evidence has shown that not only a deficit across days/weeks/months can have an impact on relative energy deficiency disorder (RED-S), but a deficit just within one day can also lead to low energy availability and symptoms of RED-S. 

This means that day to day energy intake is so important especially if you are training hard, and even more so if you are doing more than one session per day. A within a day deficit could occur when your body is under fatigue and is using energy to recover and rebuild. RED-S in both women and men will lead to hormone imbalances in estradiol and testosterone, which in turn leads to increased stress response (higher cortisol), and danger of osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and gastrointestinal issues. To avoid low energy availability, you need to be eating at a maintenance level to support your sport, and then for your body to recover and support muscle protein synthesis, you need to be in some kind of surplus. 

You build muscle!

Okay, you might have read that and then said, 'well I'm not a powerlifter, weightlifter, runner, swimmer, or a fitness model etc... so why do I need muscle?'

 Having a decent amount of muscle mass is not just about performing in a sport. Lean muscle mass contributes to overall metabolic health because it helps to decrease our body fat percentage. 

In a culture where we have so much access to convenience food, and it is very easy to be lazy, the body fat percentages of the population are creeping up, correlating to much more prevalence of: 

• Obesity

• Heart disease

• Strokes

• Diabetes

• Mental health problems such as depression

• Other health complications and chronic conditions which degrade the quality of life.

Higher body fat percentage correlates with:

 A LOWER BASAL METABOLIC RATE (so you are more likely to store excess calories as fat too)

• Lower energy levels

• Daily tasks become more challenging (when I was overweight, I found walking up the stairs a challenge and never had the motivation to even go for a walk!)

• More pressure on joints leads to painful ligaments, tendons, and more knee pain

• Poor posture leads to issues doing daily tasks and more pain in places such as the lower back

• More susceptible to injury and a slower healing process when we do get injured.

• More susceptible to getting sick and a slower healing process when we get sick.

• Whereas if we increase our lean muscle mass we have:

A HIGHER BASAL METABOLIC RATE (we will burn more calories at rest!)

• More overall strength to complete daily tasks!

• More lasting energy throughout the day!

• More energy when we wake up!

• Much less likely to get injured and get knee or lower back pain

• Less likely to get sick and quicker to recover.

So as you can see, building muscle is not about 'being bulky' or 'being fit' or looking a certain way. Building muscle is about having a healthy body that is stronger to fight off illness and keep you on your feet. 

A calorie deficit is not for life. If we want to fuel our brain correctly, perform well, and build muscle, then we need to be eating at least at maintenance! With a little bit of a surplus, you can see that there will be benefits such as increased energy and mood, productivity, muscle growth… all the things you need to go and boss your life.

Get 10% off the female performance project with ph nutrition by using the code: STRONGHER