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Diet Culture and the effect on athletes

Yesterday was a great day. Karel, me and our friends Carley and Alvi went for a 64 mile gravel ride in Walhalla. The ride included gravel, road, single track and a lot of climbing. The route took us a little over 5 hours and we covered around 7300 feet of elevation. Carley encouraged me to go for one of the QOM climbs - a 9-ish mile gravel climb that took me 48 minutes. It was super tough to stay on Karel's wheel but I was relieved when it was complete (and I secured the queen status - at least for now). As I was riding, I couldn't help but think about how my body was able to perform. I was so tired and sore from the previous week/weekend of training yet my body was continuing to impress me. This got me thinking about how athletes view and treat their bodies, especially as it relates to food. 

One of the most common New Year resolutions is losing weight or changing body composition. This is very likely due to diet culture. If you are tempted to lose weight fast, it's easy to get sucked into one of the many endless popular diet endorsements.

Diet culture focuses on size, shape and weight. It has an obsession with thinness. Even if it comes across as a 'lifestyle' or 'health-promoting' there is an expectation that if you change the way you look, you'll be more attractive, loved, accepted, happy, valued, healthy and successful.

Diet culture does not prioritize health and well-being. It focuses on thinness, leanness and muscles. Diet culture is everywhere and it requires a daily fight to ignore the constant messages that you are not worthy unless you look a certain way.

With so much pressure to change the way that you look through restrictive eating, you must remember that diet culture is not responsible for the side effects of dieting. These include feelings of guilt and failure, lowered self-esteem, destroying your relationship with food and your body and putting you at risk for disordered eating or an eating disorder. Diet culture glorifies extreme weight loss. It also shames people in larger or non "ideal" bodies.  According to the National Eating Disorders Association, 35% of dieting becomes obsessive and 20-25% of diets turn into eating disorders. 

But this blog post isn't to talk just about diet culture. There is a subculture within diet culture. One that normalizes and even encourages disordered eating habits and body preoccupation. 

Athletic diet culture. 

The general population isn't alone when it comes to buying into diet culture. It's not uncommon for athletes - training 10+ hours a week for an athletic competition - to have an off-limit food list, restrict food groups, avoid carbohydrates, skip snacks and fast - because there's the belief that....

  • You'll be faster if you lose weight
  • You'll become a better athlete if you lose weight
  • You'll be healthier if you lose weight
  • You don't look like an athlete, you should lose weight
It's almost impossible to exist happily in your own body when dealing with sport specific pressures around body weight. Many disordered behaviors like excessive training, fasted workouts, avoiding carbohydrates, not consuming sport nutrition, skipping snacks, restricting calories and a preoccupation with food are perceived as normal or even encouraged in the athletic population. Although disordered eating behaviors are unhealthy for the general population, they can be somewhat dangerous to the athlete population. 

For athletes - no matter your current size, age or fitness ability - your ability to stay consistent with training and absorb training training depends on the fuel and nutrients that you give it. Like a car, your body will not run without fuel. However, unlike a car, your body will begin to struggle when fuel supply begins to drop below half a tank. The nutrients in the food that you eat plays a vital role in your body's ability to withstand training stress and function in daily life. Poor nutrition can lead to fatigue, hormonal issues, compromised immunity and bone health, slowed metabolism, injury, poor performance, difficulty concentrating, low motivation, burnout and restless sleep. 

While certain diets may look appealing for health, weight loss or performance, consider what may happen to your body when it doesn't receive adequate vitamins and minerals due to calorie/food restriction: 

Gluten Free - low in fiber, iron, folate, vitamin D, B12, magnesium, calcium, zinc. 
Clean eating (no processed or fortified foods) - low in calcium, iron, folate, B12, potassium, calcium, sodium. 
Keto/low carb- low in fiber, carbohydrates, vitamin D, calcium, folate, magnesium, vitamin D.
Vegan - low in protein, iron, calcium, vitamin D, B12, Omega-3.
Low calorie - everything.

Whether you choose to change your diet for medical, health, ethical or performance reasons, it's important to consider what your style of eating does or doesn't provide in order to ensure you can stay healthy and perform well as an athlete. 

Don't downgrade your training by dieting in order to attempt to achieve a specific body composition. Upgrade your diet to support your training. Performance improvements come from taking care of your body, not from simply existing in a smaller body.