Energy Availability: Are You Eating Enough?

Podcast Transcript

Jerred:  Okay, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, just me today. And I'm gonna be going over a study about optimal energy availability and low energy availability. So really talking about how to fuel your performance. So how many calories you should be consuming because it's very interesting.

I know there's a massive problem in the world of overeating that is a lot of people, that's most of the population. But there is also a much smaller portion of the population. A lot of people we work with and have worked with over the years who are trying to optimize their performance and they are often undereating and it is hurting their performance, it's hurting their hormone profiles.

Um, and it's suppressing could ultimately end up suppressing their immune system depending on how long it goes on. And I'm not even talking about these levels of like. Where we're getting to disorders of, uh, anorexia or, you know, anything like that. I'm not even talking about those things. I'm just talking about in the performance world.

So those who want more ideal performance, oftentimes they're not feeding themselves correctly. So I'm gonna utilize this study to kind of illustrate a point, but then I'm gonna help you by the end of the podcast. Kind of formulate your battle plan for how you want to fuel yourself based off of whatever kind of diet you want to have, whether that's, uh, a vegan diet, whether that's carnivore, whether that's just well balanced, whether it's more performance based with a lot of carbohydrates.

It's kind of up to you. I'll think, I'll, I'll talk, talk through it all so you can kind of understand where my brain is at. But let's start with a study, 'cause this study was done on only females, but I promise you by the end of the podcast, you'll see how this applies to both men and women alike. So the name of this study, if you wanted to look it up on your own is the whole body and skeletal muscle metabolic response to 14 days of highly controlled low energy availability in endurance trained females.

And what they were doing, um, was they were looking at these endurance trained females, um, and they had low energy availability compared to optimal energy availability on metabolism and exercise performance. They wanna see what it did there. They just, for some definitions, low energy availability. Was defined as consuming approximately 22 calories per kilogram of fat-free mass per day, and optimal energy availability was 52 calories per kilogram of fat-free mass per day.

We'll get to calculating that in a second. Um, if you wanted, like some of the details that it was randomized blind crossover study with 14 day dietary interventions, meaning they did the low energy availability and optimal energy availability, and then it had a three day refueling period. I. Okay, so what were they looking at?

Their overall measurements? They assessed substrate utilization. Meaning what were they using fat carbohydrates during the exercise. They looked at insulin sensitivity, skeletal muscle, uh, mitochondrial oxidative capacity and exercise performance through time trials, time to exhaustion tests. So the, the big thing that they were looking to find out were like, they wanted to understand how short term energy deficits affect metabolic function in athletic performance, particularly in endurance trained females.

And to evaluate recovery. Now, here's the interesting thing, like just kind of average, like you're kinda like what your takeaways are for this. What they did was they found out that short term caloric restriction as defined as, as I mentioned earlier, um, it led to increased fat utilization. I've done podcasts over podcasts talking about how your body, body utilizes different substrates for fuel based on what you're giving it and how you're fueling yourself.

And they also had ultimately impaired performance. So it was an approximately 7.8% reduction in their 20 minute time trial performance. And it persisted even three days after refueling. So they did this two weeks low energy, optimum op, low energy availability, not optimal. And then they had, let's just call it nearly 10% reduction in their 20 minute time trial.

That's massive. You know, sometimes when we come across studies, um, it can erase a red flag when we're at two, three, 4% when we're at 7.8%, 8%, probably some people coming out to 10%, 12%. If you had to look at every individual athlete, that's major, that's a big, big reduction in performance, especially on something like the 20 minute time trial.

And overall, they had very little unchanged muscle glycogen. But we don't need to get into all those details. Now, let's, let's talk about this. So. A lot of times I, I've talked about my own personal journey on, you know, in, in training and just being an entrepreneur and, you know, a father of three. Sometimes my fueling can take the back burner.

It's just through the schedule. Like if, if, uh, I'm busy in the morning, I want to get a lot of work done during the day, and then I, you know, we have kids practices things at night. Sometimes I know I'm not fueling properly and. I do feel like this is easier for men to do, um, for very long periods of time than it is for women to do.

I think it's more detrimental to women and that's part of the reason I was looking into this study, just for, you know, keeping up to date on the research and how this works and me wanting to be more well-rounded in my knowledge of the difference between male and female anatomy and physiology when it comes to these things.

But I know for me personally, like I said, I, it's very easy for me to undereat and you can see some of that in performance, but what you don't know that's going on behind the scenes and as little as two weeks of doing that. We're talking about also, um, you're starting to mess with your hormones. When you undereat in the, the level of low energy availability.

They're talking about this study, and so a lot of times you need to eat more to start performing better, not only like in a workout, like a 20 minute time trial, but as a human being, you need to fuel properly to optimize, you know, your hormone levels and your performance. So I'm gonna use me as an example.

I haven't tested my fat free mass in a long time, but I'm just gonna say I'm fat. I'm, I'm 15% body fat. Let's just, just throw it out there. And I'm 185 pounds, so 185 pound male, and I am 15% body fat. Now I'm gonna kind of walk you through, um, what I'd be looking at as an, as an athlete, and then you can kind of do your own math.

So what I have to do, and the reason I have to know my body fat per, uh, body fat percentage is because I have to know. What my fat free mass is so I can do their little calculation. So if I was 185 pounds and I'm 15% body fat, I subtract the body's fat. So 185 times 0.15, and you subtract that from 185 pounds, it comes out to being my fat free mass is 157.25 pounds, or 71.3 kilograms.

Now, once you get that number, you can start to play around with the optimal energy availability and low energy availability. That was given in the study. And just so you know, again, going back to this was a female based study, the research on optimal energy availability kind of, kind of comes in at around 45, um, calories per kilogram of fat free mass per day and, and goes up to 52 being like the true optimal.

And this is across multiple different studies, not just this study. So if you're wondering, Hey, how does this apply? If you're in that 45 to 52, you're in the optimal calorie range. So that's something you can also play with. Um, so anyway, if I were to look at my optimal energy availability based off of having 71.3 kilograms of fat-free mass, I multiply 52 times 71.3, and that comes out to being 3,708.

Calories per day. That's my optimal energy availability according to this study. Me personally, I would like to go a little bit lower than that. I probably play somewhere between the 45 and 52, slightly lower than 52, just given how my training is today. Paying attention to my body weight and my performance, that's where I think I would be.

But where I would want to be is the low energy availability, which is 22 calories per kilogram of fat-free mass. So again, going back to the calculation, 22 times 71.3 for me, that'd be 1,569, let's call it 1,570 calories per day. That is very low. I probably very rarely hit that low of low energy availability, but I know I've probably been in like the 2000 calorie range per day, which is flirting with that line, and I don't want to be anywhere near it.

So when you're looking at this, you're like, okay, well what do I do? Well, one thing you need to know is if you do this for, for two weeks, you're just having a busy schedule, whatever, and you're in this lower energy availability and you're feeling off, it might not be your sleep. It's not more cups of coffee.

It can literally be your fuel, and people almost never look at what they're eating on, whether or not it's affecting their performance, whether that's mental performance, physical performance, how they're feeling, libido, all of these things. People normally never look to food, and I'm doing this entire podcast to say to you, if you are one of my high performing athletes.

You're not the athlete who's eating too much, the average American who's eating too much. If you're one of my high performing athletes and you feel like you're having some hormonal issues, anything related to that, your performance is off. Your mind is not clear. I want you to focus on optimal energy availability and try doing this for at least two weeks.

Let's not dive into the low energy availability. I don't want you to go do that and experiment with it. I ultimately want you to be optimal energy availability. So I've kind of given you like my breakdown. I need 3,700 calories in any given day, right? And it can take more than three days to recover it.

It can, some of the, some studies take, say it can take two to four weeks for the performance metrics to get back to, to baseline and one to two weeks for hormonal markers like leptin and T three to begin to normalize, but they will still lack. So when I'm going down into this, I'm like, okay, I got 3,700 calories.

How can I like further optimize this? And this is how I have athletes think about their diet because I don't care if you're vegan, I don't care if you're carnivore. I don't really care about any of those things. We just need to agree on a few things. And the first thing that we need to agree on is how many calories are we gonna consume?

And I already landed on using their calculation, I need to consume 3,700 calories a day. Like I said, I would probably go a little bit lower than that in my own official calculations, but 45 to 52 calories per kilogram of the fat-free mass per day. So let's say I wanna consume, uh, 170 grams of that being protein.

You know, uh, a lot of people were throwing around the. One gram per kilogram or one gram per pound of body weight. So I can do 185 grams of protein if I wanted to. Me personally, I realistically sit in the one 60 to one 70 grams per day. That's what I'm shooting for because when I often go for 180 5, I find it very challenging to maintain that for long periods of time without, um, you know, with having to do more supplementation than I want.

And most of the protein sources that I'm looking for, I want them to be like. Highly absorbable. So we're talking about, uh, things like eggs, where the utilization rate is really high. Whey protein's also in that category, but it's not something I personally can consume. So now we've set our calories, 3,700 calories per day, and I want to have 170 grams of that being protein.

Well, there's four grams of, uh, there's four calories per gram of protein. So right off the bat, I know 680 calories are locked into protein. Now you get to play with the fat and carbs for your own personal preferences. I have found trying higher carb diets is very, very difficult. Um, so like if I were to go to a typical performance proto profile, I'm close to one gram per pound of potty body weight.

And let's say I wanted to do fat to be 0.8 grams per pound of body weight, that would put me at 148 grams of fat, which would be 1,332 calories. And then that puts me needing, you know, not having to break down everything else, 422 grams of carbs. But that's, that's way too high for me personally. But this is where you get to play around with it.

So the first thing you need to do, set your optimal energy availability, utilizing the formula I've already gone over. After that, you lock in your protein, so lock in your protein amount somewhere close 0.8 to one. Gram per pound of body weight. So we're getting away from all the kilogram stuff, 0.8 to one gram per pound of body weight.

We can get away from fat free mass, everything else, let's be on the higher end of protein. So for me, that protein breaks down to being 170 grams, which is 680 calories. Now fat, which you need to know about fat, is it has nine grams per calor or nine calories per gram of fat. So if I want to consume around 170 grams, which is closer to that one gram per pound, um, I'm gonna be at 1,530 calories, which would put my carbohydrates, it like locks.

Now I have to have the, the rest has to be carbohydrates. It's at 370 grams because that, you know, it just for you breaking, breaking it all down. Protein is four. Uh, calories per gram fat. Nine calories per gram. Carbs, four calories per gram. And so that's how I reverse engineer my diet and how I have athletes do it all the time.

Lock in your calories, next, lock in your protein. Then you can go in and reverse engineer how many fat and carbs that you want in your diet, but still trying to hit that caloric goal. Okay? You don't have to necessarily use a macro tracker for any of this. When you do, you go in there and they're like.

They ask you what you want to do and it's, it's never optimal. You might be playing around with too many carbohydrates and, and what I've done and, and that makes me personally feel worse. You might not be in the same camp. You might be fine with the consumption of 400, 500 grams of carbohydrates. I am not, I feel like trash when I do that.

I do not feel good optimally, mentally, anything. So when you lock in the calories and you lock in the protein, now you just play with fat and carbs. And this is where I think that you should really spend some time over a 30 45 day window playing with it. Like, how much fat can I have from clean sources?

If we're getting it from like avocado, uh, you know, almond butter, those kind of things. Like yes, these have higher fat car carbohydrates. A lot of nut butters also have, um, carbohydrate and fat together. But you can start to find out where you performance marker is and start to, you can start on the higher carb side, fill the rest in with fat, and then you can slowly go down this line and find out what is optimal for you.

And it could take a year. And nobody wants to hear that, right? But this is the podcast where we tell you things that you don't want to hear. Uh, 'cause we're just trying to be real. You know? I'm trying to be real with you. It's gonna take a lot of balancing. And then what I also recommend that you do during this timeframe is get blood work done and also monitor your performance.

So we're locking in our optimal energy availability. We're paying attention to our weight on the scale. We've locked in our protein, and now we're playing with the levers that are fat and carbohydrates. Okay? If, can I have more fat? Can I have less fat? And utilize ai? This stuff is simple. Like I know what I'm saying.

Might be going over the head of some people because I've given you a lot of like, oh, fat is this many grams per carbs and car or fat is this many calories per gram, so on and so forth. So it's even like, uh, getting jumbled up in my brain. But you can go use ai, use chat GPT to be like, Hey, I want to follow the 52 uh grams or 52 calories per.

Pound of fat-free mass and kilograms. Here's how much I weigh. Here's how much protein I want to have based off of my weight. I wanna be lower carbohydrate. You can go throw all of this into ai. So this isn't hard to to track down. You don't have to like sit around with an app or anything else. You can just have AI figure out all this for you.

But I want to urge you to try it out. For 30 days, try out the optimized energy availability and see how you feel at the end of that. And if you're not feeling right, it could be 'cause of the carbohydrate fat. And so that's where you, you play around with it. But here's the deal. If you're struggling with anything you think in the hormonal profile, if you think that you're having any issues and performance, anything across your life, mental acuity, try this for 30 days.

Optimize your energy. Balance, okay? See how you're feeling. And if you start gaining weight. Or something's off you're not feeling right, you can back down and go back Closer to that 45, um, marker I was talking about, you know, 45 calories per kilogram of fat free mass as opposed to 52. But I, you can start optimally at 52 and start playing around with this.

And how I suggest anybody start any diet before you do anything is just to assess what you've had today. Okay? So go. Look at what you, or just start tomorrow and, and say, okay, here's what I ate. Here were the calories. Here's what I'm getting each and every single day, and see how far off you are from optimal 'cause right now, I've given you everything you need to calculate your optimal level performance, your optimal diet.

But I want you to go calculate how far off you are from optimal and then you can formulate the plan of what you need to eat each and every single day to become optimized. And you will be surprised, I've done this with so many athletes, male and fam, female athletes over the years, once they actually start eating what they're supposed to be eating, just these lights go off.

They, they're like, oh, wow. I had no idea. Like this was the issue. Like I'm like slugging along at work and I feel like I'm hitting this mental wall. I need that second cup of coffee at two 3:00 PM. And really you're just not eating enough or you're not eating properly. You don't have enough protein in your meals.

Uh, you're eating all, you know, high carbohydrate, low protein, low fat diets with not enough calories. That's what a lot of people are doing, I have found and discovered over the years. So once you dial this in, you'll be surprised. You might not need the TRT shots. You might not. Need all these other things that people are jumping to when reality, it's like, let's optimize our diet, get our optimized energy availability, let's dial in our sleep and hydration.

And you might just have everything fall in line, hormo, hormonally, uh, mentally, everything. So give this a shot and see how it works for you. Alright, that's it for this one. Go optimize your energy balance throughout the day. And live a better life. So for all of our athletes who are plugging away at the training, we really appreciate each and every single one of you in the app commenting, putting in the workouts, being consistent.

If you wanna be a part of the community, you can do that. Go to garage gym athlete.com, go sign up for a free trial. We would love to have you, but that's it for this one. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.