Nutrition is an essential part of any athlete’s training regime. With proper nutrition, you can expect to put on muscle, burn fat and improve your performance in all areas of sports including track and field, CrossFit, powerlifting, and more. But what if you don’t have the time or resources to prepare food? Or are you unable to leave your day job to become an athlete? In these situations, nutrition suffers. Poor nutrition can be as simple as not eating enough protein or carbs during the day or not getting enough calcium during the workout. There are many other factors at play here that go beyond your control but understanding how poor nutrition impacts your progress in sports can still make you a stronger competitor.
1. Poor Performance
Poor performance can be caused by not eating enough protein or carbs, not getting enough calcium during the workout, or not eating enough calories during the day. When you don’t eat enough carbs, your body will burn fat instead of muscle to produce energy which will slow down your recovery time after a workout. When this happens, it takes longer for muscle tissue to repair itself which can lead to injury and slow recovery. Testosterone is a sex hormone that plays an essential role in the body. In men, it’s thought to regulate sex drive (libido), bone mass, fat distribution, muscle mass and strength, and red blood cells and sperm production. When you don’t eat enough calories, your body will burn fat and protein to produce energy which is not enough for your body to function properly. This means that you will have to eat more food at each meal to maintain a normal state of energy.
2. Longer Recovery Times
You might be able to recover from a workout faster if you get enough protein and carbs. But this is only true if you eat them BEFORE your workout. If you don’t eat them before your workout, then you can’t expect to recover as quickly. An exhausted body needs a lot of time to recover after a hard workout. The longer it takes, the more likely you will be to get injured or get sick. This is why athletes like weight lifters and powerlifters prepare their food the night before they compete so they can have them ready in the morning when they start their workouts. These athletes often eat something like a peanut butter sandwich with meat and veggies for breakfast, a nice bowl of oatmeal for lunch, and some pasta or rice with meat sauce for dinner. They typically pack their protein powder in their bags so they can drink it during their workouts instead of having to drink water because of dehydration.
3. Immune Suppression
HGH helps maintain, build, and repair healthy tissue in the brain and other organs. This hormone can help to speed up healing after an injury and repair muscle tissue after exercise., is released by the pituitary gland in response to PRL. It also acts as a regulator of the immune system. When you don’t eat enough protein or carbohydrates during the day, HGH levels drop and your immune system is suppressed. This can lead to several autoimmune diseases including Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Poor nutrition can lead to a state of overall exhaustion. This means that your body will have a harder time fighting off illness, infections, and other health problems. This is especially true in those who eat poorly but still exercise regularly. Go here when you are ready to start the process of changing your body composition.
4. Weight Changes
Weight is a huge factor in sports. You can never expect to see significant gains if you don’t change something about your body composition. Weight changes can be caused by poor nutrition or not eating enough during the day. When you don’t eat enough, your body has to burn more calories just to go through the same motions of eating and digesting food. This leaves your metabolism more stressed and less efficient which will result in a slower weight loss. Weight changes can also be caused by muscle loss and fat gain when you don’t eat enough of the right foods during your workout routine or on rest days. Poor nutrition can cause changes in weight by making you put on fat, lose muscle, or both.
5. Other Changes
To see any progress in your sport, you must have a solid base of muscle and fat. If you do not have enough of one or the other, your body will adjust to this imbalance by storing the excess fat. This can lead to an overall decrease in body weight and a decrease in performance. If your diet is not providing enough calories, your body will be forced to burn more stored fat. If this isn’t happening fast enough, then it may begin burning muscle tissue as well as fat. In either case, you are losing muscle mass and therefore strength which means that you will be less able to lift heavier weights or run faster. The most noticeable change that poor nutrition causes are a loss in lean body mass. This is because your body will use up what it has stored in the form of fat to make up for the lack of protein and carbohydrates. The result is a decrease in your lean muscle mass, which can lead to an increase in body fat percentage and a decrease in performance.
Poor nutrition can be a major obstacle in your weight loss journey. You will not see any significant results if you don’t change something about your body composition. The changes that poor nutrition causes are very easy to see and understand- they are the same changes that you would expect to see if you were losing weight too quickly.