GAINING & LOSING Weight

All athletes should eat as though they are trying to change body composition.  This may mean trying to increase or decrease body fat, or to increase lean body mass.


If you are currently at a perfect body composition for your athletic goals, ask yourself what would happen if you stopped training and competing.  If you’d lose weight, you must eat as though you are trying to gain weight.  If you’d gain weight, you must eat as though you are trying to shed weight.  


Obviously this exists on a continuum: making changes requires dramatic measures and discipline whereas maintenance can be achieved with limited consideration. Try to make the majority of body composition improvements during the Off-season training phase. i.e. take a more aggressive approach (multi-faceted, at the extreme ranges)


Caloric intake versus caloric expenditure is the basic formula that determines if someone is in the process of gaining or losing weight.  Any surplus calories will be stored as fat, and only fat.  To make up the caloric difference if expenditure is higher than intake, stored glycogen (CHO) is quickly depleted, which is followed by a breakdown of lean mass (PRO) and body fat.

Upon further examination however, the types of nutrients and the timing of their consumption skews the arithmetic somewhat.  Certain nutrients create a hormonal response which affect how the body treats the nutrients in that meal. Physical activity or inactivity also create different hormonal environments that change how nutrients are treated within the body.


A simplified view of how activity affects body composition:
 
    Endurance activities create a hormonal environment that promotes an efficient body.   Immediately following activity, all calories are gratefully accepted to maximize muscle and liver glycogen stockpiles.  If calories are coming in faster than they can be converted and stored as glycogen, they are quickly converted to fat and stored away in anticipation of the next endurance bout.  Protein is used to repair damaged blood cells, muscle fibers and other lean tissued that has suffered micro-trauma from the repetitive activity.  The rate of protein synthesis is stimulated only if the intensity of the activity is above a certain threshold level.  Otherwise it is suppressed, and any dietary protein is used for glycogen repletion and fat storage.

Very high intensity activity (which due to the intensity level must be intermittent) creates a hormonal environment that promotes an effective body.  Available protein is synthesized to repair any damages to muscle and other lean tissues.  All other calories are used to replenish glycogen levels.  Any surplus calories are converted to, and stored as, fat.  Chronic exposure to this type of activity can stimulate growth of muscle cells (and tendon, bone, etc.) so the body is better prepared to handle another high intensity bout.


A simplified view of how nutrients affect body composition:
 
    Carbohydrates are absorbed from the digestive system as glucose (a simple sugar) where it is transported by the blood to all tissues as an immediate energy source.  An increase in  blood glucose triggers an insulin response.  Insulin is a hormone that stimulates peripheral cells to take up glucose.  Any glucose in surplus to the immediate needs is first stored as glycogen (the amount that can be stored depends on your recent training history), and all additional as body fat.

Protein is broken down to its constituent amino acids and transported through the blood.  If  blood glucose levels are inadequate to meet the demands from peripheral cells, the amino acids will be shunted to the liver where they are converted into glucose then re-released into the bloodstream.  If blood glucose levels are sufficiently high, the amino acids can be taken up by muscle and other cels to repair structural proteins and enzymes.  This process is also facilitated by the actions of insulin.

Fats are transported from the digestive track and through the bloodstream as triglycerides.  Some will be taken up by peripheral cells to form membranes or other structures.  If blood glucose levels are low, the liver will transform the triglycerides into glucose.  Any surplus will be sent to fat cells for storage.


GAINING WEIGHT:
    Gaining weight should be a slow processes to ensure that the majority of gains are made in lean mass, not body fat. It is most productively accomplished in the off season when weight room activities dominate, and participation in endurance activities -like practicing most sport skills- can be almost entirely eliminated without adversely affecting performance.

Increasing total caloric intake is mandatory for gaining mass.  Consuming PRO at the high end of the range (see Nutrient Quantities) is necessary since its amino acids are the building blocks of human tissue.  Remember, however, that it must be ingested with at least twice as much CHO (by weight) to promote PRO uptake and synthesis by the muscle cells.

Use the following strategies for gaining weight:
‣Have frequent CHO snacks with PRO
‣Increase serving size at meals
‣Serve recipes with plenty of accompanying CHO (rice, pasta, breads, etc)
‣Eat before bed, and as soon as you wake
‣Don’t wait for hunger; eat when you can not when you need to


LOSING WEIGHT:
    Making significant changes in body composition is best done in the early stages of the offseason.  This is when training programs are most flexible, and activity levels can be modified without adversely affecting athleticism and skills, which could be a problem if this is attempted in season or during the preseason. Losing weight should also be a slow process, otherwise muscle and bone mass will be shed along with body fat.

If you are trying to decrease body fat, a reduction of total daily caloric intake is necessary.  Caution is advised to ensure adequate nutrient consumption is maintained however so that health and performance do not suffer.  Scaling back on CHO ingestion is the safest way of achieving this caloric reduction.  For reasons discussed above and on the Nutrient Timing page, CHO should not be minimized around activity times, but can safely be reduced at other meals to total as low as 2.5g/Kg/day.  With such a drastic CHO restriction, PRO intake will have to increase (and Fat as well) so that the total energy debt is kept around 500cal/day which will translate into about a pound a week.  Habitual changes, such as avoiding deep fried foods, skipping dessert, and little things like substituting mustard for mayonnaise, or snaking on fruits instead of chips will go a long way in trimming body fat.