Female Endurance Athletes Need to Pay Attention to Nutrition

Women have been increasingly participating in sports at every level over the past several decades. However, in some cases their zeal to maximize their performance may lead them to permanently damage their health. According to a press release by physicians at the Loyola University Health System, inexperienced female endurance athletes tend to increase their training too fast, while not eating enough to sustain themselves.

Women who become newly devoted to a sport are often anxious to make quick progress and lose weight as well. This combination can lead a woman to maintain a rigorous training schedule without consuming enough calories and nutrients to allow her body to keep up with the demand. In the process, she may even continue to believe that she's doing what's needed to become healthier, and any sign that her body is struggling can be misinterpreted as proof that she should train even harder.

Doctors sometimes refer to the result of this situation as the "female athlete triad." This is when the athlete's condition becomes so extreme that she's engaging in markedly disordered eating, her periods have become irregular, and she begins to develop osteoporosis (severely weakened bones). At this point, intervention is necessary to prevent an athlete from doing permanent damage to her health.

The particularly insidious part of this health problem is that women often create it by doing things that they believe will make them healthier. Therefore, treatment requires attention to the medical, psychological, and nutritional issues together. The goal is to reteach women how to improve their health and develop a more realistic sense of what their bodies need. This way, they can both try to repair the damage that's already been done, and prevent future problems.

The sports medicine specialists at Loyola have a number of recommendations for those women who want to train for endurance sports. Due to the risk of osteoporosis, they particularly stress the importance consuming at least 1,000 to 1,200 mg of calcium a day (up to 1,500 for post-menopausal women). This should include some magnesium and vitamin D to help the body absorb and make use of the calcium.

It's also important to eat regularly, and eat enough. A woman's actual caloric needs depend on her weight and activity level, but generally a good guideline is about 30 calories per kilogram of body weight. As a woman increases her training, she may need to eat more than this. It's also important to divide this food intake up throughout the day, and include carbohydrates in every meal (and particularly consume some immediately after a training session).

Woman can train hard and do well in endurance sports, so long as they make a point of learning to listen to their bodies and take care of them well. While it can be easy to fall into the trap of trying to progress as quickly as possible, going to extremes can result in injuries that take months to heal. In the long run, it's better to allow your body to progress at a rate that's comfortable for it, and allows adequate healing time.