#508: Why Athletes Can Achieve High Performance During an Energy Deficit – Jose Areta, PhD

Sigma Nutrition Radio

Danny Lennon

Nutrition, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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About This Episode:

Insufficient energy availability can significantly disrupt normal hormonal, metabolic, and physiological processes, prompting the body to initiate a coordinated response aimed at conserving energy.

While commonly viewed as beneficial for weight loss and managing cardiometabolic conditions in the current obesity epidemic, chronic energy deficiency in the context of modern sports and exercise nutrition is linked to adverse health outcomes and diminished athletic performance.

Nevertheless, the evidence regarding the negative impact of energy deficit on physical capacity and sports performance is not entirely clear.

Although severe energy deficiency can impair physical capacity, it's noteworthy that humans can enhance aerobic fitness and strength even in the presence of significant energy deficits. Strikingly, many elite athletes compete at the highest levels despite displaying evident signs of energy deficiency.

This raises intriguing questions about how the human body adapts to energy deficits, challenging conventional views on the relationship between energy availability and athletic prowess.

To discuss some potential reasons for this ability to maintain peak physical performance while suppressing energetically demanding physiological traits, researcher Dr. Jose Areta of LJMU is on the podcast to discuss his work in this area.

About The Guest:

Dr. José Areta currently works as a lecturer in Sports Nutrition and Metabolism at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at LJMU.

José's primary interest is in the area of training-nutrient interactions in humans. In other words, he investigates how to manipulate ingestion of carbohydrates, fat and protein around training to optimise physical performance and health.

The outputs of his research have not only expanded the knowledge of the field but had significant impact and influence on determining current dietary recommendations and practices world-wide.

His work has provided novel insights in relation to the amount, timing, quantity and distribution of carbohydrates, fat and protein and dietary supplements around training. Over the last few years José has been developing his research in the area of the endocrinological, metabolic and physiological effects of energy restriction, in which he is currently growing his research team and capability.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 508 of the podcast. I am your host, Danny Lennon, and you are very welcome back to the podcast
0:23.2	if you are one of our regular listeners. And a welcome to the podcast if maybe this is your first
0:29.2	time tuning in. I hope you do enjoy it. Essentially on this podcast, we dive into the science
0:34.6	of nutrition and health through looking at some of the primary research in that
0:39.0	area, trying to decipher what we can take from that and what is a fair and accurate conclusion.
0:45.0	So hopefully this episode today is also another part of informing you on another interesting topic.
0:51.7	So we'll be taking a look at, particularly in the case of athletes,
0:54.6	when there's a situation of insufficient energy availability or low energy availability,
1:00.6	in cases where an athlete is essentially got a high enough output of exercise relative to their
1:07.6	energy intake that puts them in this state of low energy availability for
1:12.1	other processes within the body, how this potentially impacts physical capacity and sporting
1:18.8	performance. Because we have, as we'll probably discuss, some pretty clear data that there can be
1:25.5	a impact on various physical systems around the body
1:29.0	when there is a prolonged low energy availability state. And as we will probably come to,
1:34.9	as we've discussed on some previous episodes of this podcast as well, when there is a continued
1:40.1	period of a low energy availability state, then we can have issues around disruption of various
1:48.5	different hormonal, metabolic and physiological processes in the body. However, it's worth noting
1:56.1	that when we actually go out and look at athletes performing in the real world, despite a number
2:01.3	of situations where they have either a large energy deficit that they are purposely or
2:07.4	maybe accidentally have in place, that we can see many of these athletes not only still be
2:12.1	able to perform, but many of them are competing at the highest levels of the sport and winning.
2:17.4	We can see this ability
	...

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