How to really cut weight as an Endurance Athlete

Cutting weight as an athlete can be hard.

Let me make it a bit easier for you by cutting out all the bullshit that’s out there in relation to weight loss and show you how the elite do it consistently season after season. 

In this blog post today I'm going to share with you exactly how you can drop body fat and, most importantly, maintain it right across a season so you can be lighter and more powerful.

 I'm going to show you how I do it with my athletes in my private coaching program, which has been battlefield-tested season after season with hundreds of athletes.

By the end of this blog, you will;

1. You will know how to assess your body comp, from the gold standard to at-home measurements.
2. You will be able to calculate your daily energy needs taking into account all your training.
3. You’ll know which dietary strategy to use to drop weight and keep it off across the season.

Why are we fussing over our weight all the time?

 Let me put it into perspective for you. For every 1kg of excess body fat you carry, it will cost you 3 seconds per 1km on a moderately graded climb. So for example, if you are carrying 5kg in excess body fat and are on a moderate incline for a 10km climb, you will be 2.5 minutes slower that a lighter version of yourself. As you can imagine, the time differences really do add up over the course of an event.

 This is why athletes are always consistently chasing a leaner, lighter version of themselves. However, there is one major issue with this, just because you get lighter does not necessarily mean you'll improve your race times. What you actually need to improve is what's called your power-to-weight ratio; check out the link below to a previous blog I wrote that goes into more detail on how you can test your power-to-weight ratio and how you can manipulate it to get faster race times.

How to improve your power-to-weight ratio

Read more

 Anyway, let's continue with me showing you how I coach athletes to cut and drop body fat and, most importantly maintain this across a full season.

First up, test don’t guess.

The very first thing you should do before you decide whether or not you need to drop weigh is test your body composition. You need to establish a baseline of your current body fat % and muscle mass first.

There are several ways in which you can test yourself, ranging from the gold standard to tests you can do at home.

 Here’s a list of tests ranging from best to at home.

• Dexa scan
• Skinfold measurements
• Bod pod analysis
• Bioelectrical impedance
• Girth measurements

Just bear in mind that there are several factions that can influence your weight and body comp. That’s why it is essential to measure yourself the same way and time each time you test. Consistently repeat the same circumstances every time you test.

 Factors that influence your weight

• Stage of your cycle (females)
• Hydration statutes
• Salt intake
• Timing of your last meal
• Timing of when you weighed yourself.
• Muscle soreness
• Stress
• Glycogen stores
• Clearing the bowels or not.

Secondly, you need to identify your energy needs.

 Once you have identified a baseline of your body comp, the next thing on the list of dropping weight is to figure out your energy needs. Use the formula down below for a quick and easy way to identify your energy needs.

We are pretty familiar that in order to lose weight, we need to consume less energy than we burn. Therefore you need to be in a calorie deficit sustained over a period of weeks to reduce your weight and, most importantly, drop body fat.

What I found works best for the athletes I work with is going for a slow and gradual approach to dropping weight. I reduce their calorie intake by 300-500 kcal per day and get the athlete to sustain this over a 4-6 week period.

There’s a few reason why I do this;

• Slow weight loss means you don’t have to be in a large calorie deficit which allows you to still have plenty of energy for your training (very important).
• By using a slow, gradual approach, you can build and reinforce good healthy eating habits that can help you sustain your new weight after the drop, keeping it off.
• Going slow combined with adequate protein intake (1.8-2.2 grams of protein per kg) allows you to drop body fat and maintain your muscle mass )essential to keeping power output high)
• Cycling between periods of calorie deficits and back to maintenance helps prevent the body from adapting to lower energy intake, slowing your metabolism over time.

Let me run you through a quick example.

For example, if we take an 85kg endurance athlete training hard with an active job, this is how to calculate this athlete’s energy needs based of the above formula.

85 kg x 22 x 1.8 = 3366 kcal per day to maintain weight

 To drop body fat controllably, reduce calories by 500kcal per day.

 New kcal intake per day 3366 – 500 = 2866 kcal per day

Aim to maintain this for the next 4-6 weeks.

 Pro-tip.

To avoid you losing muscle mass (which you don’t want as this produces your power), you need to stay in a positive nitrogen balance.

 Aim to consume 2.2 grams of protein per kg of body mass.

 For example – 85 kg athlete needs to consume 187 grams of protein per day.

Pro-tip – aim to have 25-40 gram servings of protein spread out evenly across the day. Make sure to have protein in 3 main meals and 1 snack per day.

Also, aim to add resistance training into your schedule if you are not doing so already at least 2 times per week, no more than 4 times per week. Aim to lift heavy (i.e., low reps heavy weight = 5x5s) to build/maintain muscle mass when reducing calories to drop weight.

Thirdly you need to sort your diet out

 This I won’t lie can be the hardest bit for you to do.

 If you go online and google diets for weight loss, you will find so many options, from keto to low fat to vegan, intermittent fasting, and the rest. It's next to impossible to figure out which diet is best.

 I’m going to let you in on a little secret from the nutrition industry, all these diet for weight loss have one thing in common, they place you in a calorie deficit, and that’s why you lose weight.

It doesn’t matter which diet you choose from as long as you can sustain a period of 4-6 weeks in a deficit, you will lose weight. However, what really does matter is whether or not you can sustain a period of time in a deficit. This is where your dietary choices really do come into play.

 My approach for endurance athletes typically (can change depending on the context of the athlete) is to try and stick to their typical diet as closely as possible with some minor changes. I would typically introduce intermittent fasting and training in a fasted state while reducing calorie intake on top of carb cycling, I remove carbs, going high fat & protein (go low carb) on training days that are zone 2 low-intensity long duration and flip this to moderate to high carb on intense / race pace training sessions (zone 3+).

Going low carb & fasting has three major benefits;

1. Staying a glycogen-depleted state (carb stores are low to empty) (through low carb diet and fasting) encourages the body to break down fat to top back up carb stores in the muscle, resulting in dropping body fat.
2. Removing carbs and adding more fat & protein around training can increase your fat max (ability to use fat as a fuel when training/compositing); this can prevent you from bonking/hitting the wall when competing.
3. Going low carb and intermittent fasting can increase insulin sensitivity helping you to control blood sugar levels better, and stopping energy crash and cravings when trying to drop weight.

You can read more about fasted training 

Read more

 If you are still a little unsure about how to start dropping weight, I have summed it all up in 5 key steps down below. I promise if you implement these steps you will see progress in dropping weight.

 Take home message

We have just covered the main principals’ of diets and strategies that can be used to help your drop weight and maintain a race weight across the season.

 Down below are my five main key points that is a must to get out of all the info I went through above.

1. Don’t get stuck in one camp of thinking. Keep an open mind when choosing your approach, and always ask would you be able to sustain this for a year.
2. All diets have one thing in common they all place you in a calorie deficit, facilitating you consuming less food. This at the end of the day is the comer stone for weight loss.
3. To lose weight, you must be in a calorie deficit. Rule of thumb for sustainable weight loss is 1 lb or 500g per week. That’s a calories defect of -500kcal per day. Deficits should be maintained for 6-12 weeks at most.
4. Get control of blood sugar levels first, do this be adding complex and fibrous foods and subtracting sugary/ simple carbohydrates for your diet and maybe intruding periods of fasting.
5. Reduce hunger and cravings by adding a serving of high-quality protein foods and essential fats to every meal. This will increase your feeling of fullness and satiety, helping to prevent over eating or binge eating.

Are you looking for a way to enhance your performance and get the most out of your training?

 We can help!

Our Personalised Supplement Strategy is designed to help you get the most out of your training, while saving time and money. We'll create a supplement plan based on our years of experience working with endurance athletes like you.

Fill out our form, and we'll send you your personalised supplement strategy within 72 hours. You'll discover what supplements are right for you and why, when selecting the right supplements is so important to your success.

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Reference’s

•  Knechtle, B. et al. (2012) ‘A faster running speed is associated with a greater body weigh loss in 100-km ultra-marathoners’, Journal of Sports Sciences, 30(11), pp.1131–1140. doi:10.1080/02640414.2012.692479. 
• McSwiney, F.T. et al. (2018) ‘Keto-adaptation enhances exercise performance and body composition responses to training in endurance athletes’, Metabolism, 81, pp.25–34. doi:10.1016/j.metabol.2017.10.010. 
• McSwiney, F.T. et al. (2019) ‘impact of ketogenic diet on athletes: Current insights’, Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine, Volume 10, pp. 171–183.doi:10.2147/oajsm.s180409. 
• Murphy, C.H., Hector, A.J. and Phillips, S.M. (2014) ‘Considerations for protein intake in managing weight loss in athletes’, European Journal of Sport Science, 15(1),pp. 21–28. doi:10.1080/17461391.2014.936325. 
• Rankin, J.W. (2002) ‘Weight loss and gain in athletes’, Current Sports Medicine Reports, 1(4), pp. 208–213. doi:10.1249/00149619-200208000-00004.