Posted: June 21, 2004

Nutrition: Changing Your Body Composition

From Endurance Sports Nutrition by Suzanne Girard Eberle

I find that many athletes struggle when it comes to achieving a healthy weight. Some need to gain weight, while others want to lose weight (or body fat). Whether you maintain, lose, or gain is primarily a matter of energy balance. You’ll maintain your weight if you consume roughly the same amount of energy, or calories, that you expend. To gain weight, you’ll need to consume more calories than you burn off. To lose weight, you must expend more calories than you take in. In other words, you’ll need to eat less and exercise more, or ideally, do both. It sounds simple, but in reality the process can be quite complex. You’re dealing with the human body after all, not a machine.

Strategies for Losing Weight

Before embarking on a plan to lose weight, be sure that you really need to. Don’t assume that your performance will automatically improve if you lose weight or assume that every time you weigh more on the scale you’ve gained fat. Determining your body-fat percentage or taking skinfold measurements can be particularly useful before you attempt to lose weight, especially if you’re an athlete sporting a stocky, muscular build or a female who tends to look heavier because you carry weight on your hips and thighs. In any case, if your body fat is at a reasonable level, you won’t gain anything from dieting or starving yourself to reach a new low on the scale.

You may instead need to concentrate on accepting your inherited body type or, if you’re a coach or trainer, on accepting the body types of the athletes you work with. One of my collegiate teammates, the best female cross-country runner in her state as a high school senior, is a perfect example. Tall with a lean upper body, she carried all her weight on the lower half of her body. Despite completing a successful high school career at a certain weight, our coach decided she would perform better in college if she lost five pounds. Living on salad, air-popped popcorn, and a small dinner (accompanied by a scoop of ice cream as a reward for making it through the day), she did lose the five pounds. But she was constantly battling an upper-respiratory infection and even pulled some intercostal muscles (between the ribs) from coughing so hard! She never fully recuperated and ran poorly all year.

Second, I always remind people trying to lose weight not to excessively restrict calories or attempt to follow a very low-calorie diet. These methods of losing weight are not an option, especially for a serious athlete. If you lose more than a pound a week (two pounds for males), you’re not losing fat—you’re losing water, muscle glycogen, and lean muscle mass. Your competitors are the only ones who benefit from this type of weight loss. Athletes who are chronically dehydrated and operating with low glycogen stores find it difficult to maintain their usual training pace, fatigue earlier in workouts and competitions, and suffer more injuries. It’s also difficult to be in peak mental shape if you’re depressed, anxious, weak, or preoccupied with food.

The long-term consequences of losing weight rapidly can be costly: loss of muscular strength and power, electrolyte disturbances due to dehydration, increased susceptibility to colds and other illnesses, iron deficiency anemia, amenorrhea (loss of menstrual periods), low bone density (due to hormonal imbalances and the lack of calcium), ketosis (an undesirable state the body enters when it must use its fat to fuel the brain), and potential kidney problems. You may ultimately end up losing training time or even missing competitions, so don’t try to lose weight during your competitive season or when you need to deliver a peak performance.

Repeated attempts to manipulate body weight or body fat below a level that is normal for you are counterproductive. Significant metabolic changes result from chronic dieting or the loss of critical fat stores. For example, if you restrict your caloric intake too drastically, your body resists your attempts to lose weight by immediately dropping its resting metabolic rate—that is, your body will require fewer calories to carry on essential vital functions and will store excess calories as fat. Because your body has no way of knowing how long this “starvation” will last, it attempts to protect itself by adapting to fewer calories.

Although this reduction in resting metabolic rate probably isn’t permanent in most people, it may play a role if you lose and gain weight repeatedly. It appears that the body receives messages via brain signals and hormones that help it become more efficient at extracting energy from food and storing it as body fat. Consequently, perpetual dieters often find it progressively harder to lose weight and must eat even fewer calories in the future to induce further weight loss. Muscles burn calories (fat doesn’t) and lean muscle tissue is lost every time you diet, especially when you drop pounds quickly. So, as your muscle mass decreases, your body requires fewer calories to remain at the same weight.

Set a realistic weight-loss goal. You can’t lose body fat over night. Focus on achieving a weight you can maintain at this point in your life through exercise and healthy eating habits. Perhaps you’ve added children to your family or picked up additional hours at the office that cut into your training time. If this is the case, don’t assume you can weigh what you did in college or even what you weighed last year!

Forget about diets and short-term fixes too. As long as you believe a quick, easy way to lose weight is waiting for you right around the corner—the next miracle diet, a promising new supplement—you’ll never fully commit to changing your eating habits. Keeping that in mind, read on for some guidelines on how to lose weight sensibly.

Strategy #1. Keep a food diary

A food diary serves the same purpose as a training log. It can help you or someone with a trained eye (like a registered dietitian) decipher your current eating habits—what works for you and what doesn’t. As in the exercise in chapter 1, simply write down everything you eat or drink from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed. It also helps to record the reason you are eating. For example, are you eating because you are hungry? Bored? Nervous about an upcoming race?

Writing down everything you eat can help you stay committed to your long-range goal of losing weight sensibly. One study followed 38 dieters who had been on a weight-loss program for a year through the “danger zone”; for example, two weeks before Thanksgiving until two weeks after New Year’s Day. The 25 percent of participants who consistently recorded all the foods they ate during this period managed to lose seven more pounds! The other 75 percent who weren’t so vigilant gained back an average of three pounds.

The very act of writing down your daily choices, not exactly what you record, is what counts. Self-monitoring forces us to be accountable for our daily actions. For example, you can’t as easily ignore the fact that you nibbled through a jar of peanuts while meeting a deadline at work if you write it down. You can also glance at a food diary to see if you’re eating enough of the healthy foods you need. Leave your food diary in a visible place as a visual reminder (for example, on your desk or in your kitchen) or record what you eat in your day planner or training log.

Strategy #2. Reduce your current intake by no more than 500 calories a day

Losing one pound a week requires you to create a deficit of 3,500 calories, or 500 calories a day, by exercising more and eating less. Drastically reducing the amount you eat isn’t realistic for most athletes. Dieting all day by skimping on breakfast and lunch and then beating a path to the refrigerator from dinner until bedtime doesn’t work. Starving yourself while working out as hard as you can isn’t something you can keep up for long either.

Trimming the amount of calories you currently consume by small increments (such as 200 to 300 calories for an athlete consuming 3,000 calories) shouldn’t suppress your metabolism and it helps protect against the loss of too much lean muscle tissue. You’ll also still have plenty of energy to train at a high level, which is essential if you want to keep the weight off permanently. Your family, officemates, and training buddies will appreciate this approach, too, as you won’t feel deprived and become a complete bear to live with.

Once you’ve met your nutrient needs (keeping the Food Guide Pyramid in mind) look for ways to trim extra calories. You may be suffering from portion distortion. Due to the “super-sizing” of America, an average bakery bagel now provides 320 calories—the equivalent of eating three to four slices of bread! Paying attention to serving sizes can be an easy way to reel in your calorie intake. Mega-sized cookies, muffins, and sodas may appear to be a good buy, but can you afford the 500 to 800 calories they provide?

If you eat out frequently, watch your intake of high-fat foods. Inquire about how foods are prepared before ordering them to detect hidden fats, such as cream sauces, olive oil, and cheese. And then ask yourself how many times you begin meals by eating a whole basket of bread! If the restaurant won’t honor special requests, such as serving the salad dressing on the side and having the skin taken off chicken, find a new restaurant. Getting a handle on how many calories you drink throughout the day can be helpful too. Cutting back on soda, alcohol, sports shakes, and even juice, may be all you need to do.

Keep in mind that losing weight is best done in stages. Once you lose a few pounds, let your body get used to your new weight, then decide whether you’re feeling weaker or stronger before trying to lose more. Incorporating even small changes into new habits takes time and effort. Stop and assess how you are doing at maintaining the healthy changes that got you to a lower weight. Can you realistically continue them? Will you be able to do more? You may find that you’d be better off directing your efforts elsewhere, into your training or accepting your body type, rather than continuing to try to lose more weight.

Strategy #3. Eat enough real food

Don’t throw the Food Guide Pyramid out the window because you’re trying to lose weight. You still need to consume foods from all five food groups, just like everyone else. Many female athletes I know wouldn’t dream of sitting down and eating a real lunch, a sandwich and a glass of milk, for example. Instead, they nibble their way though the day racking up calories from mini chocolate bars, candy, energy bars, nonfat frozen yogurt, oversize bagels and muffins, and soda or juice drinks.

If you find yourself constantly eating out of a box, in your car, or while standing up, consider that these unfulfilling actions may be sabotaging your efforts to lose weight. You’re more likely to feel full and experience less guilt or denial if you simply plan to eat meals (of at least three food groups) and snacks (aim for one to two food groups). You’ll likely eat fewer calories too.

You may lack skills in the cooking and domestic department. I met one college athlete who lived off campus and was responsible for his own meals. He routinely boiled four hotdogs for lunch, followed by four more for dinner! If you’re like me and can’t afford to hire a personal chef, invest some time and energy into learning basic cooking and meal-planning skills. Keep a variety of nutritious, easy-to-prepare foods on hand so you won’t have to rely on takeout and fast foods. Watch how much soda and alcohol you drink. These beverages contribute calories and little in the way of nutrients. You don’t want them to crowd out low-fat milk and fruit juices, which are more nutritious.

Strategy #4. Concentrate on eating your calories when you need them most during the day

Have you worked out today? Have you eaten today? Because most of us perform the bulk of our training, our work, and our family obligations between nine and six (even earlier if you train first thing in the morning), why do most of us insist on eating the majority of our calories after six o’clock? Our muscles and our brain cells thrive on having a steady, constant supply of fuel available. To avoid becoming too hungry and devouring everything in sight, divide your calories up throughout the day. Plan to eat a meal or healthy snack every three to four hours so your blood sugar doesn’t dip too low. Otherwise, you’ll be racing for the nearest vending machine or fast food outlet.

Be creative with your eating schedule. Even if you’re trying to lose weight, you still need to be well fueled before you head out the door, and you still need to replenish your glycogen stores following exercise. For instance, if you train after work, eat less at lunchtime and save some calories for an afternoon snack closer to your workout time. A sports drink or energy bar after you finish can take the place of that second helping or extra dessert at dinner. You can diet by eating reasonable size portions (a good reality check is the serving size listed on the label), selecting lower-fat items, and by eating fewer calories at night when you don’t really need them.

Strategy #5. Keep some fat in your diet

The fat you eat in foods doesn’t inevitably reappear as body fat. You can still obtain a desirable level of body fat if you snack on half a bagel spread with peanut butter or drizzle salad dressing over your greens. Besides supplying energy and essential fatty acids, fat allows your body to absorb and use fat-soluble vitamins.

Fat also heightens the flavors of food, curbs cravings, and helps you feel full. Without some fat in your diet, it’s easy to overeat in the carbohydrate department. How many times have you passed on eating a hamburger because it’s too fattening only to find yourself plowing through a box of fat-free cookies a few hours later? The fact remains that excess calories will be converted into body fat, whether those calories come from fat, carbohydrates, or protein.

Eating a diet that contains an appropriate amount of fat, at least 20 percent of total calories or 1/2 gram per pound of body weight, is not overdoing it. The key is to concentrate on eating the right kind of fat. Nuts and “natural” nut butters (those not processed with partially hydrogenated fats), seeds, avocados, and oils such as olive, canola, and flaxseed, are rich in heart-healthy monounsaturated fat. Of course, even these heart-healthy fats supply calories, so watch the amounts you consume.

Fats that you don’t need in your diet are saturated fats and partially hydrogenated, or trans, fats. To reduce the saturated fat in your diet, choose low-fat dairy products and lean cuts of meat. Limiting traditional “fatties” such as fried food, fast food, and processed foods containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils such as stick margarine, snack foods, and bakery goods will help keep the amount of trans fat you consume under control.

Strategy #6. Complement your aerobic training with anaerobic or strength training.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you must train at a slow pace to burn fat and lose weight. Although it’s true that exercising at lower intensities (aerobic exercise) uses a higher percentage of fat than high-intensity exercise (anaerobic exercise, such as interval or speed work), it’s not that simple. Exercise does more than just help you burn fat. It helps create a calorie deficit in the body; in other words, it helps you expend more calories than you consume. Remember that to lose a pound, you need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories, either by eating less, exercising more, or some combination of the two. No matter what fuel you burn during exercise, the body can pull from its fat stores at a later time to make up for the calories expended during exercise.

The amount of calories you burn during exercise depends on many factors—your body weight, the type of exercise you do, the intensity, the duration, and whether you are a novice or a trained athlete. As an endurance athlete, you’re most likely focusing on putting in the miles. But strength or resistance training and higher intensity exercise, such as intervals, tempo workouts, and fartlek training (breaking your normal pace up with fast bursts), can help you lose weight, as well as boost your performance. Don’t forget that during exercise you burn both fats and carbohydrates for energy. Given the same time period, lower-intensity exercise uses a greater percentage of fat, but it also burns fewer total calories than higher-intensity exercise. During faster paced activities, a greater percentage of calories come from carbohydrate than from fat, but the overall amount of calories you use is higher. What matters most is the total number of calories used, not the percentage of fat-to-carbohydrates. Higher-intensity exercise helps you lose weight because it uses more calories per minute.

Think about it this way: a large percentage of a small number can be smaller than a small percentage of a large number. For example, a 150-pound cyclist averaging a leisurely 12 miles per hour may burn 380 calories an hour, with about 70 percent of the energy derived from fat. The same cyclist may burn approximately 780 calories per hour riding at 18 miles per hour, with fat providing about 50 percent of the necessary fuel. However, 70 percent of 380 is 266, and 50 percent of 780 is 390, so the more intense ride burns over 100 more fat calories. More important, because few people have unlimited time to exercise, riding more intensely burns 400 more calories in the same period (780 versus 380).

Trained athletes burn more fat for two reasons. They use fat sooner during exercise (training helps you store more fat within muscles for easy access), and they have the ability to work at higher intensities (thanks in part to an elevated lactate threshold) than recreational athletes, thus burning more calories and proportionally higher amounts of fat. Of course, you can’t just go flying out the door and start training frantically every day in an attempt to lose weight. You’ll burn very few calories from the couch if you come down with an injury.

Working at lower intensities until you can handle more intense workouts helps you avoid injuries and prepares the body for future stress. As you work up to handling higher-intensity workouts, duration becomes a greater factor in losing weight not to burn more fat, but to burn more calories. In other words, you need to exercise longer to make up for the lower number of calories used per minute. Consider increasing your training volume by adding more miles to your weekly training program. Or simply become more active during the day, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator and walking instead of driving to complete errands.

Visiting the weight room while trying to lose weight is especially beneficial. Strength training builds muscle mass, which boosts your resting metabolic rate. This means you’ll be burning more calories throughout the day, even when you’re not exercising. Weight training also helps ensure that the weight you lose is from body fat, not muscle.

Strategies for Gaining Weight

Gaining weight can be an advantage if speed, power, leverage, or mass come into play in your sport or activity. Of course you most likely want to gain lean muscle tissue, not fat. Adding muscle mass can increase your strength-to-weight ratio, which ultimately increases your strength and power, enabling you to perform at a higher level. Depositing extra body fat does little to enhance power or strength. On the other hand, some endurance athletes find that carrying a little extra padding may help them fend off illness and better weather the rigors of hard training.

Like those athletes trying to lose weight, you need to be realistic about the amount of weight or lean body mass you can gain. Adding a few pounds before you head off to an ultrarun or adventure race is one thing, but expecting to transform your physique is a whole different ball game. Your genes, gender, diet, training program (including the amount of strength training you’re willing to do), and motivation all count. Look at the other members of your family, especially your parents, to get a clear picture of your potential. If you’re a well-trained athlete or simply a “hard gainer,” you may find it difficult, if not impossible, to gain weight without substantially increasing the amount of calories you eat or cutting back on your exercise.

The bottom line, of course, is that to gain weight you must consume more calories than you expend. In general, you’ll need to eat an extra 500 calories a day to gain about one pound of lean muscle in a week. Don’t look to supplements as a substitute for hard work and good nutrition. No magic nutrients exist that promote substantial gains in strength and muscle mass. (See chapter 4 for a complete review of creatine and other supplements that are touted for their potential to enhance lean muscle mass in athletes.) Keep the following guidelines in mind as you attempt to gain lean muscle mass.

Strategy #1. Calories and strength training count the most

Contrary to popular opinion, your calorie intake, not the amount of protein you consume, has the most impact when it comes to gaining muscle. Bulking up, or building muscle, requires you to have enough calories on board to meet your energy demands, as well as support the growth of new tissue. If you don’t take in enough calories, the protein you consume will be used to satisfy your energy needs instead of building new muscle tissue. You must also commit to a well-designed strength or weight-training program. Just eating extra calories or protein, or ingesting vitamins or other supplements, won’t magically do the trick. Strength training helps muscle cells become more efficient at using available protein to synthesize new cells.

If you’re training and eating appropriately, most of the weight you put on will be muscle. Of course, if you simply overeat (literally consume more calories than you burn off), then the extra calories from any source—carbohydrates, protein, or fat—will help you gain weight by increasing your body fat.

You may need to make eating a higher priority to ensure that you’re getting enough calories. Eat frequently throughout the day and eat meals even if you don’t feel hungry. Plan ahead by buying and keeping healthy snacks on hand at home, at the office, and in your car. You can also boost your calories by choosing heartier versions of foods, such as granola over cornflakes and split-pea soup instead of vegetable broth. Eating larger-than-normal portions of healthy foods, such as another helping of baked beans or an extra sandwich, will also add calories. If you’re crunched for time or planning to exercise shortly, drink your calories. Liquid meal products, homemade liquid meals such as milk shakes and fruit smoothies, and even juice, can be easy ways to down additional calories.

Strategy #2. Choose carbohydrate and protein-rich foods to meet your higher calorie needs.

Special protein powders or weight-gainer supplements aren’t necessary when you’re trying to put on muscle or gain weight. Simply eating more protein, such as meat or eggs, won’t necessarily translate into more muscle either. Most athletes have trouble gaining weight because they lack calories or enough carbohydrates in their day-to-day diet, not because they lack protein. Besides, although it’s true that you need extra protein when you’re involved in a strength-training program, most athletes will consume enough extra protein from the additional food they eat to boost their calories. Carbohydrate-rich foods should still supply the majority (60 percent) of your calories. Your body relies on carbohydrates to fuel your weight-training sessions, as well as the endurance activities you participate in. Consuming adequate carbohydrate also replenishes your muscle glycogen stores so you can continue to train daily.

To meet your protein and carbohydrate needs simultaneously, follow the food pyramid’s recommendation to eat a variety of foods. Meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, and tofu all supply quality protein (as well as fat, obviously) but virtually no carbohydrates. Few foods, though, are composed of one nutrient: milk (regular and soy), yogurt, cottage cheese, dried beans, and lentils are good sources of both protein and carbohydrates. Vegetables and other carbohydrate-rich foods like pasta, rice, bread, and cereal contain relatively small amounts of protein, but it really adds up if you are having large portions.

To remind yourself of the importance of eating enough carbohydrate and protein, include a protein-rich food (from the milk group or the meat and beans group) with your carbohydrate-rich meals and snacks. For example, melt cheese on a bagel, add tuna, chicken, or a hard-boiled egg to a salad, top pasta with a meat sauce, and eat baked beans over rice or on top of a baked potato. Adding a strength-training program to an already ambitious training schedule will increase your body’s need for protein initially, so pay particular attention to your food choices when you first hit the weight room.

If you’re still concerned that you’re not eating enough protein, consider sports shakes or complete meal replacement powders. These products offer a more complete nutritional package than straight protein powders or supplements. They’re relatively expensive, so you might consider saving them for travel or for days when a busy schedule would otherwise result in missed meals. If you don’t have a milk sensitivity, you can add nonfat dried milk powder to homemade shakes or smoothies, or stir it into oatmeal, soup, cooked rice, and other dishes. It’s a high-quality, inexpensive protein supplement (a quarter cup provides about 11 grams of protein) without the unproven additives that many other supplements provide.