18/09/2021 05:51
A lot of us have grown up with a fear of eating a certain amount of food - as mentioned by Liam on our Instagram recently, “the biggest mistake keeping you from gaining muscle is your fear of gaining fat!”
We tend to shape our eating habits around the fear of fat gain. We’ll eat in a deficit or under maintenance, cut certain things out, but then if one day we end up ‘going over our calories’ or eating something that we see as ‘off limits’, then we throw everything in the ‘f%&k it bucket’ and go in the complete opposite direction, eating everything in sight until midnight - then going on a fast or eating restrictive amount of food the next day to ‘make up for it’.
Often this mentality can come from overeating - remember; eating enough CONSISTENTLY is key!
How do you feel when you are eating less? Do you feel sluggish, tired, have trouble finding motivation, less enthusiastic? Are you getting any better in the gym? Are you performing at your best? Is your strength increasing?
If you have been under eating, then I can guess what you answered for most of those questions.
We’re always harping on at you to eat at maintenance and eat enough to fuel your performance. In the Female Performance Project, the aim of the game is LITERALLY to eat enough to fuel performance - and a lot of girls find they are given more calories to eat from the word go. It’s hard to convince some of you, so here are your reasons to eat more, backed up by the evidence that we use at pH Nutrition when setting up your nutrition plan ;)
(As a disclaimer, the overfeeding studies used for this blog were all focused on over eating certain macronutrient ratios - just overeating typical overprocessed western food will not quite have the same effects in terms of fat free mass gained in comparison to fat mass gained! We are also focusing on populations who take part in regular physical exercise and resistance training. Studies on sedentary individuals have shown more fat gain than studies on active individuals. Protein is also key, as there seems to be a correlation with the higher the amount of protein eaten, the higher the fat free mass gained in relation to fat mass.)
You feel happier
Going for longer without food, or not eating enough food, causes cortisol to continually elevate - higher cortisol levels turn into chronic stress. In patients with elevated cortisol, there is decreased tryptophan (an amino acid) which is responsible for creating serotonin (happy hormone!). Restrictive diets, and undereating in combination with training hard (double stress!) is therefore going to inhibit production of serotonin and cause you to feel more irritable and anxious. Tryptophan comes from protein , so combine this with a lack of enough protein in your diet and you are not going to be as happy as you could be!
Start incorporating some of these tryptophan foods into your diet in order to boost your serotonin:
You will be more productive
Your brain also requires fuel to work properly. Ever gone for a long period without food and found it hard to focus? Your brain is actually the main consumer of glucose in your body, using around 5.6mg of glucose per 100g of brain tissue per minute. Glucose metabolism in the brain is required for cell signalling, clearing out old cells, producing new ones… this means that our productivity, neurotransmitters (including things such as serotonin which we mentioned above), and work capacity, is reliant on a certain amount of glucose.
Trying to learn a new skill in the gym? Not only do you need to fuel for the activity itself, you also have to work your brain to get those mind muscle connections as you start to connect the dots on something like a handstand walk.
Your hormones will thank you
We’ve spoken about relative energy deficiency disorder (RED-S) in both men and women before. Read that blog here! Recent evidence has shown that not only a deficit across days/weeks/months can have an impact on this, but a deficit just within one day can also lead to low energy availability and symptoms of RED-S.
This means that day to day energy intake is so important especially if you are training hard, and even more so if you are doing more than one session per day. A within a day deficit could occur when your body is under fatigue and is using energy to recover and rebuild. RED-S in both women and men will lead to hormone imbalances in estradiol and testosterone, which in turn leads to an increased stress response (higher cortisol), and danger of osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and gastrointestinal issues. In order to avoid low energy availability, you need to be eating at a maintenance level in order to support your sport, and then in order for your body to recover and support muscle protein synthesis, you need to be in some kind of surplus .
You feel more energitic
Our body is actually pretty good at regulating energy balance on its own, if you can listen to it. Our hypothalamus will use long and short term controls such as regulating metabolism based on body fat stores through hunger and satiety signals (hello leptin!). If we have a surplus of energy, our body will probably try and use it in order to regulate our weight.
Being energetic is literally an abundance of energy. With a little extra in the tank, you may find you will jump out of bed with a bit more bounce in the morning, you might find yourself fidgeting, you may be more likely to want to go for a walk, or go out for social occasions. When I first started eating more a few months ago, I found that I was super bouncy and constantly dancing about whilst coaching my classes at the gym. Just living your daily life requires energy… if you want to get a lot out of it, you need to fuel for it!
You build muscle
Okay, you might have read that and then said, 'well I'm not a powerlifter, weightlifter, runner, swimmer, or a fitness model etc... so why do I need muscle?'
Having a decent amount of muscle mass is not just about performing in a sport. Lean muscle mass contributes to overall metabolic health, because it helps to decrease our body fat percentage.
In a culture where we have so much access to convenience food, and it is very easy to be lazy, the body fat percentages of the population are creeping up, correlating to much more prevalence of:
- Obesity
- Heart disease
- Strokes
- Diabetes
- Mental health problems such as depression
- Other health complications and chronic conditions which degrade the quality of life.
Higher body fat percentage correlates with:
- A LOWER BASAL METABOLIC RATE (so you are more likely to store excess calories as fat too)
- Lower energy levels
- Daily tasks become more challenging (when I was overweight, I found walking up the stairs a challenge and never had the motivation to even go for a walk!)
- More pressure on joints leading to painful ligaments, tendons, and more knee pain
- Poor posture, leading to issues doing daily tasks and more pain in places as lower back
- More susceptible to injury and a slower healing process when we do get injured.
- More susceptible to getting sick and a slower healing process when we get sick.
Whereas if we increase our lean muscle mass we have:
- A HIGHER BASAL METABOLIC RATE (we will burn more calories at rest!)
- More overall strength to complete daily tasks!
- More lasting energy throughout the day!
- More energy when we wake up!
- Much less likely to get injured and get knee or lower back pain
- Less likely to get sick and quicker to recover.
So as you can see, building muscle is not about 'being bulky' or 'being fit' or looking a certain way. Building muscle is about having a healthy body which is stronger to fight off illness and keep you on your feet.
The higher our muscle mass, the lower our body fat percentage. This means that we are going to look much healthier and leaner due to changes in our body composition - even if we do not lose weight but instead focus on gaining muscle.
There are many overfeeding studies out there, with a mix of those overfeeding different macronutrient ratios, overfeeding on different populations such as lean, overweight, active or sedentary… but I looked specifically at those who studied resistance trained, active populations.
I’ve spoken before on previous blogs about the infamous 4.4g protein per kg bodyweight studies, led by Antonio et al. These studies used overfeeding macronutrient splits which ranged from 2.3-4.4g protein per kg of bodyweight, while a lot of the studies on sedentary individuals had low protein intakes. Surplus calories were between 300-490.
Both groups (low protein 2.3g, high protein 4.4g) saw overall weight increases, but with this particular study, all the gain was in fat free mass (FFM). The higher protein group actually lost more fat mass. On follow up studies, it was found that the difference in FFM increase after 2.6g-3.3g of protein per kg of bodyweight was not substantial, so there may be an upper limit of how much protein is necessary.
Macro splits for this study were roughly 42% protein, 28% fat, and 30% carbohydrate.
As for the ‘amount’ of food that is needed as extra in order to facilitate muscle gain in terms of hypertrophy (and hypertrophy is not just important for bodybuilders - increasing the size of muscle can improve endurance which will carry over to running, lifting, gymnastics…), there is not a study that can give us any kind of ‘set amount’ in aiding muscle protein synthesis (MPS). Studies have shown however that there is an ‘anabolic response’ in overfeeding (anabolic is ‘building’ - so if we are trying to ’build’ muscle, we need to get that food in), whilst some have demonstrated that in a deficit, MPS is much more challenging except in untrained or individuals.
The moral of the story here is that if you want to perform in your sport and get stronger and fitter, if you can eat more of the right things alongside a resistance training regimen, you are going to improve your body composition! And don’t worry, you don’t need to eat 4.4g protein per kg of bodyweight a day (that would be around 334g for me…. no thanks!), but you can stick to that manageable 2.6g per kg of bodyweight and still get the same gains!
If you want to perform well and have an excellent physique, you need to look after your body by fueling it with lots of the good stuff. The better we fuel, the harder we work, the more athletic we become.
You sleep better
There does seem to be some correlation between sleep quality and the amount of food eaten. While there is a lack of studies on whether restriction causes less sleep, there are lots of studies which show that lack of sleep will hinder a fat loss or muscle gain goal, because there is a correlation between the success of both of these goals and the quantity and quality of sleep.
However I have personally experienced and worked with clients who have been on very restrictive diets who have struggled with sleep and have woken up feeling groggy, or have restless legs at night. If we have heightened cortisol due to restriction of food, especially in the evening, this is going to hinder our sleep quality, as raised cortisol levels will inhibit melatonin production in the evening (the hormone which helps us to wind down to sleep!).
As well as this, if we go to bed hungry, then this is going to disrupt our sleep! I have spoken to clients (and also been that person myself) in the past who have woken up in the middle of the night ravenous, or have not been able to go to sleep because I was hungry.
When I wrote my blog on intermittent fasting for women, one of the studies I looked at mentioned that a 16 hour fast led to a disrupted circadian rhythm-based, which in theory will probably affect sleep quality due to hormone balance, as above.
While this is a little bit of speculation on my part, this may be another area to explore!
Final thoughts
A calorie deficit is not for life. If we want to fuel our brain correctly, perform well, and build muscle, then we need to be eating at least at maintenance! With a little bit of a surplus, you can see that there will be benefits such as increased energy and mood, productivity, muscle growth… all the things you need to go and boss your life!
These are some of the improvements which we see in girls who jump on the Female Performance Project. I will give you the right amount of calories for you to be feeling all these epic feels and coach you through how to work them into your lifestyle.
Chloe Salter
I am a PN qualified nutrition and CrossFit coach who is passionate about helping you reach your goals. I have been overweight and want to use this to guide and educate you on how to eat to perform at your best. I am based online and at Shapesmiths in London.
References
The Effects of Overfeeding on Body Composition, a Review. Leaf and Antonio, 2017
Is An Energy Surplus Required to Maximise Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy Associated With Resistance Training. Slater et al, 2019.
Cortisol, Serotonin and Depression, All Stressed Out? Cowen, 2018.
Emerging Roles for Serotonin in Regulating Metabolism: New Implications for an Ancient Molecule. Yabut et al, 2019.
Sugar for the Brain, the Role of Glucose in Physiological and Pathological Brain Function. Mergenthaler et al, 2013.
2018 UPDATE: Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), British Journal of Sport Medicine, 2018.