Every four years, the Winter Olympics remind the world that athletic excellence comes in many shapes, sizes, and stories. From curling, ice skating and short-track speed skating to cross country skiing and hockey, one truth stands out: your body is your greatest strength, not something to be minimized for someone else’s approval. At the Milano-Cortina Winter Games, athletes understand that to rise to your best, you need to keep your body fueled. Thousands of competitors are eating with purpose, not restriction. Olympic dining halls have served enormous quantities of pasta, pizza, eggs, cheese, and pastries - not as indulgence, but as high-performance fuel to meet the incredible energy demands of needing to compete at the highest level. Organizers of the games estimated athletes consumed the equivalent of 1,800 meters of pizza over the course of the Games, essential calories for rigorous competition. Olympians know something important many of us often forget: your body...
There has been substantial talk surrounding RED-S and for good reason. Adequate energy intake is essential for athletic performance, recovery, and long-term health. Yet many athletes, across all sports and competitive levels, fail to meet their daily energy needs. A chronic mismatch between energy intake and energy expenditure can lead to low energy availability, impairing performance and increasing the risk of injury, illness, and hormonal disruption. Although RED-S is often viewed as the result of intentional undereating (when athletes consciously restrict food intake due to performance beliefs, body image concerns, or external pressures) undereating can also occur unintentionally. Framing RED-S solely as a consequence of deliberate restriction or disordered eating overlooks a substantial subset of athletes who fail to meet their energy needs due to factors such as high training volume, appetite suppression following intense exercise, time constraints, l...