Are you actually eating enough? Or are you under-fuelling your training!?
Let’s talk about how under-fuelling can affect your training.
Lots of people, including people who take their training pretty seriously, struggle to negotiate fuelling for performance while keeping their body composition in check.
They want to be strong, fit & athletic, so they train hard and stay dedicated.
But they’re also afraid of gaining weight.
So they hold themselves back or become overly cautious with how much they eat.
And that can become a problem.
Because if you’re asking your body to train hard, get stronger, build fitness AND recover, while consistently not giving it enough energy to do those things…
You’re making an already difficult job even harder.
And it doesn’t help that we can convince ourselves:
“If I get leaner, I’ll have a better strength-to-weight ratio…”
Which might be true to an extent.
But if getting there compromises your training and recovery, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot anyway.
So, let’s lay it all out.
Being in a calorie deficit doesn’t mean you suddenly can’t train hard or make progress.
You absolutely can.
But generally, the bigger the deficit and the longer you maintain it, the harder it becomes to maximise training performance and recovery.
That can mean more fatigue, poorer sessions, slower recovery and potentially less progress than you might otherwise have made.
And if under-fuelling becomes significant or prolonged, it can start affecting things like mood, sleep, health and injury risk too.
Basically:
Your body has a lot of cool shit to do. It helps if you actually give it the resources to do it.
On the other hand…
If you fuel yourself well, you’re creating a much better environment to train hard, recover, adapt and do it all again.
Which is the point.
So how do we walk the line between body composition and performance?
First, let’s be clear:
You can work on both.
You can be in a modest calorie deficit while getting stronger and fitter.
But there’s a trade-off.
The more aggressively you pursue fat loss, the more you should probably adjust your expectations around performance and recovery.
If you’re eating substantially less than you need while expecting to smash PBs every week…
You might be disappointed.
(Same goes for trying to train brilliantly while sleeping 6 hours a night.)
“But what if I eat too much and get a bit fluffier!?”
Well…
Take a big-picture view for a second.
One meal, one day or even a few days where you accidentally eat more than you needed isn’t suddenly going to transform your body composition.
Noticeable body fat gain requires a sustained calorie surplus over time.
And your bodyweight can fluctuate considerably anyway because of things like food, fluid, carbohydrate intake and digestion.
So if, over time, you notice you’re gaining more body fat than you actually want?
Course correct.
Eat a little less.
That’s it.
No panic.
No guilt.
No “I’ve ruined everything so I might as well demolish a massive Dairy Milk.”
Just adjust.
Because you’re looking at the bigger picture.
And herein might lie the real issue…
If you’re consistently worried about eating too much, perhaps your nutrition isn’t quite as dialled in as you thought.
Maybe fear of weight gain or guilt around food keeps creeping in.
Or maybe you simply didn’t realise you were under-fuelling your training.
This is something we help people with at Tough Cookie.
We reverse engineer people’s eating patterns.
We don’t just look at their training.
We look at what they’re trying to achieve, how they’re training, what they’re currently eating and whether those things actually match.
We don’t automatically force people onto meal plans.
We don’t ask them to track every crumb they eat.
Instead, we help them build a way of eating that they enjoy, that supports their training and moves them towards their goals, without food becoming something they’re frightened of getting wrong.
So if you’re training hard but wondering whether you’re actually fuelling yourself properly…
Drop me a message and tell me what’s going on.
I’m more than happy to help.
Or, if you’d like some help with the bigger picture of your training and nutrition, just hit the Free Intro button below and come have a chat with us.
Comments