What Training Took From Me When I Wasn't Fuelling Enough

There’s something in the health and fitness world that we don’t talk about enough. We are hearing about it a little more now which is fabulous but still, not as openly as would be beneficial.

We're not talking 'over training', 'toughness', carbohydrates, HIIT...we're talking energy availability. Energy availability and what happens when you don't have enough.

I'm not a doctor or a dietician but I'm a nutritionist with a lot of lived experience in my own underfuelling while training. Mine was as a result of poor mental health and disordered eating but it certainly isn't always. You might have heard it termed RED-S or Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport.

To be transparent, I didn't know it was a problem until my body fired something at me that I couldn't ignore.

RED-S came about as a result of the IOC describing what happens to our clever old bodies when they don't have enough energy left over after our training load, to support what are essentially our basic physiological (and sometimes also psychological!) functions.

You might not be super duper lean, you might still have your period, it looks different for everyone but your energy availability can still be low.

So how can it show up? Sneakily is the answer, without us even knowing as I said previously. Hormone disruption, potentially chronically damagingly so, abnormal thyroid function, poor bone density, damaged metabolic rate, poor immunity, poor CV function, poor mental health...the implications of these things are sometimes irreversible. For what?!

The body has to go into what is essentially 'survival mode' over life performance when it doesn't have enough energy so it down-regulates the things it doesn't see as absolutely essential.

This does show up in men too, but from experience, for women it can arrive as what we call hypothalamic amenorrhea - irregular or missed menstrual cycles. This is often as a result of low oestrogen. Alongside also low moods (ask my family about that one!!), poor exercise recovery and performance (even if you don't realise it at the time, you might not realise your potential or how good you could actually feel!) constant fatigue and injury risk. All that talk about stress injuries and fractures online at the moment is screaming RED-S to me. Bone density is hugely impacted by low energy availability, the research is clear. Our stress hormones can be chronically high and our sex hormones chronically low - not at all fun or enjoyable for anyone involved.

Do you know what's the kicker though? When this is often presenting in people, 'athletes' or not, a lot of the behaviours that result in RED-S get praised. Leaness, 'discipline', 'willpower', 'lighter is faster'.

News for you - lighter isn't always healthier, or sustainable and I can tell you now, it definitely wasn't faster or stronger.

It might start as an eating disorder, it might start as just wanting to be better, it might be neither, it might be totally by accident due to lack of fuelling knowledge or lifestyle but under fuelling will impact your health short and long term.

So no medical advice here, not even any specific nutrition advice but I just wish I knew the implications of under fuelling on our health before I fell into a trap so hard to get out of.

If your period disappears or becomes irregular, if you're constantly tired, injured or ill, another biggie...if you're cold all the time! If food is taking up a big mental load...it could just be a signal. Your body might be adapting, protecting itself, shutting things down.

So go forwards, fuel those beautiful bodies, don't ever train fasted - you never know how good you could be.

Peace and love, A x