I WHOOP’d my Athletes to Eat

The long awaited follow-up to my previous blog post… what happened when we returned the WHOOP (http://whoop.com) devices to the athletes for fall camp in August.  Sleep was still a priority for some, but during the first week the biggest change was how I WHOOP’d my athletes to eat.  This is not just about making healthy choices, but making choices that will provide enough calories to sustain a high level of activity for someone with a very high metabolism, low body fat and high muscle mass.  A chef will tell you that eating is an art, but for an athlete eating for performance and recovery is a matter of science and math.
 
Now those of you who exercise regularly probably have met that person (or, e-hem, are that person), who likes to eat and uses exercise for some level of calorie balance.  As we get older we may realize that we can’t eat as much as we could in our younger years, but for an athlete at any level there is a fine balance between eating enough and eating too much.  Too little fuel and our muscles cannot replace the energy that we used up in our last workout.  Too much and the excess is stored as potential energy for future works (aka adipose tissue, aka fat).  
 
As recovery starts the minute the last workout finishes, failing to consume enough to fuel to replace what was lost in the last workout, you may not be able to complete the next one. If this is compounded from day to day, the result is not just weight loss, but loss of muscle mass and performance declines.  For an athlete that has trouble keeping their weight at an optimum level for their sport, letting the number on the scale drop can lead to a downward spiral.  This is of utmost important during pre-season football camp when the athletes are practicing hard on back-to-back days in order to be ready for the season.  And this is when I was able to WHOOP my athletes to eat.
 
During summer training the sports performance dietician shared some tips to encourage calorie consumption and some anecdotes on professional athletes.  Yes, there are athletes who set an alarm to make sure that they eat every few hours, even waking up in the middle of the night, in order to consume enough calories to maintain their lifestyle.  When one of our trying to be 200-pound skill players looked at the numbers and realized he was burning 6000 calories in a day, he took his eating seriously, though probably not hitting 6000 calories.  While according to the WHOOP developers, this number may be high, for the first time in his college career he didn’t drop weight during camp, so he at least achieved energy balance.  
 
The body can store about 3600 calories worth of energy in the muscles and the liver, if they are fully charged at the end of the day.  Any fuel that we consume prior to exercise that is readily available will get used first then the body turns to the stored energy.  Once about half of the stores are used up, the body will start to slow itself down some to prevent an energy crisis and the inability to perform its daily functions.  So for an athlete burning about 3000 calories in a workout, he or she will need fuel beforehand and even during the workout even if they were fully charged at the end of the previous day.  To put that in runner terms, most people burn about 100 calories per mile, so anything over 18 miles and you will definitely need some fuel along the way.  If you are a bit larger or burn more, you will need to fuel for sure. 
 
Not all calorie counters are created equal, most are estimates based on formulas and cannot take into account the specifics of you being you, so it is important to figure out what will and won’t work for you.  It is also important to note that under-fueling can lead to weight gain as much as over-fueling.  The body is tricked into believing that it is in starvation mode and will hold onto the fuel that it does have.  Anytime that performance is suffering, it is important to try to figure out the cause. And, of course, anything of concern should be brought to a medical professional.