Sports Nutrition -
Answer To Question #3
Question #3:
What are the biggest mistakes you see athletes make when it comes to losing body fat?
Answer by Dr. John Berardi:
I see a number of them but here at the biggies:
Not eating enough calories. Many of the athletes I see come to me after struggling to lose body fat and the biggest mistake that most of them have in common is that they are using a starvation approach to weight loss. Not only does this strategy fail to help them achieve their body composition goals, it also ends up hurting their performance in their respective sport. As far as fat loss is concerned this is a poor strategy because the athlete may end up muscle mass. This will result in a slowing of their metabolic rate which will ultimately limit how much fat they can lose. Moreover, the lack of calories limits the intensity and frequency in which the athlete can train and in the end leads to decreased performance, which was the exact opposite goal they were trying to achieve by losing body fat in the first place.
A better strategy for an athlete, is to follow my G-Flux principals (increasing both exercise volume and total food intake), make big improvements in food selection, and pay attention to nutrient timing. These lessons are taught in depth in my Precision Nutrition program.
Not using nutrient timing. As discussed above, nutrient timing is a key factor in improving body composition. In fact, it’s the one principle that makes the biggest change. And when it comes to nutrient timing, a big factor is carb timing. Specifically, the bulk of your daily carbohydrates should come during and within 3 hours of exercise. Now remember, I’m not talking about low carb diets here exclusively. I’m talking about eating more carbs when the body best uses them for recovery and fewer when the body will more likely stimulate fat storage.
So, again, for the best results, most athletes would benefit from eating their sugary and starchy carbs during and/or after training – as discussed in Precision Nutrition. There are a few exceptions to this rule (for example – in those who have excellent carbohydrate tolerance) but that’s for later discussion.
Not using outcome-based decision making. I see so many people wanting to get lean and beginning the process with 1 training program and 1 diet plan. And this plan usually works for a short period of time – whether it’s 4, 6, or 8 weeks. However, once they’ve lost fat and adapted to the program, it stops working. And when it stops working, they give up.
Well, it’s important to expect all one-off programs to stop working. And with this expectation, it’s important to use an outcome-based decision making strategy. What I mean here is that folks have to adjust their training and nutrition programs based on their results. If progress stops, something small has to be tweaked until it starts again. And if it stops again, same thing. If you use the outcome to determine the approach, you’ll always be making progress.
About Dr. John Berardi:
Dr. Berardi has a PhD in the area of Kinesiology (with a specialization in Exercise and Nutritional Biochemistry) and is a consultant to 10 Olympic Programs and numerous NCAA and professional sports teams. Dr. Berardi and his company, Science Link, Inc. have one purpose: to take the latest in advanced nutrition research and teach it to others in a way that doesn't take an advanced degree to figure out. In this Q&A column, Dr Berardi will be answering performance related questions on the topics of training, recovery, nutrition, supplementation, and more.
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