The Intuitive Athlete: Fuel, Train & Perform Your Best

Intuitive Fueling, Training and Performing

Should female athletes fast before their workout?

It depends.

Fueling, training, and performing as a low carb athlete involves many factors including how you train, and which is your main fuel tank (carbs or fat).

1. Is your workout a low heart rate morning movement exercise as walking, hiking, swimming, or easy bike?
2. What is your heart rate in your workout?
3. Are you fat adapted?

 

Women are obviously different than men.

I am discovering that SO many female athletes are doing too much of everything. 

1. Too much fasting
2. Too low of carbohydrates
3. Too much hard exercise
4. Too many stressful activities

 

All while we have too little of hormones including low thyroid, progesterone, and cortisol.

Why are we pushing past the body’s signals or red flags that are being sent to us in order to follow what ‘everyone’ else is doing?

Why do we stop listening to our own red flags sent by our own body?

Instead of adjusting our fueling, training, and performing plans… we push past the “right” dose of “stressor” for our bio-individual needs and ultimately lead us to “METABOLIC CHAOS”.

My suggestion is to start listening to our own intuitive signals and adapt to what our mind, body and spirt needs to be our optimal self.

I am proposing a “new” type of training… INTUITIVE fueling, training, and performing for the athlete – especially the FEMALE ATHLETE.

When should we eat before a workout?

When should we eat after a workout?

When should we have a higher carb meal?

When should we adjust our workout plan?

When should we fast or not fast?

What about this peptide?

“A large body of data has established the hypothalamic kisspeptin (KP) and its receptor, KISS1R, as major players in the activation of the neuroendocrine reproductive axis at the time of puberty and maintenance of reproductive capacity in the adult. Due to its strategic location, this ligand-receptor pair acts as an integrator of cues from gonadal steroids as well as of circadian and seasonal variation-related information on the reproductive axis.

“Besides these cues, the activity of the hypothalamic KP signaling is very sensitive to the current metabolic status of the body. In conditions of energy imbalance, either positive or negative, a number of alterations in the hypothalamic KP signaling pathway have been documented in different mammalian models including nonhuman primates and human. Deficiency of metabolic fuels during fasting causes a marked reduction of Kiss1 gene transcript levels in the hypothalamus and, hence, decreases the output of KP-containing neurons. Food intake or exogenous supply of metabolic cues, such as leptin, reverses metabolic insufficiency-related changes in the hypothalamic KP signaling. Likewise, alterations in Kiss1 expression have also been reported in other situations of energy imbalance like diabetes and obesity. Information related to the body’s current metabolic status reaches to KP neurons both directly as well as indirectly via a complex network of other neurons. In this review article, we have provided an updated summary of the available literature on the regulation of the hypothalamic KP-Kiss1r signaling by metabolic cues. In particular, the potential mechanisms of metabolic impact on the hypothalamic KP-Kiss1r signaling, in light of available evidence, are discussed.”

We strive to BURN FAT, optimize our health, and improve the aging process… or as I say, “Strive for THRIVE each day and live our best life our second half of our life!”

What to eat and when to eat is an N = 1 Experiment especially for the high performing individual, athlete and especially the female athlete.  There is not a one size fits all solution or specific answer!

What if you do a performance focused, higher heart rate, training in the morning before the first meal?

What are the risks of doing a fasted workout session upon waking?

1. Do we have lack of fuel on board to train in a fasted stated (12-15 hours)?
2. Do we risk losing muscle strength?
3. Do we increase the chance of creating hormone imbalance?

Hormone imbalance can have a negative effect on our body weight (weight gain), energy and vitality.

MORE IS NOT BETTER!

Instead, would exercising in mid-afternoon or early evening (before dinner) be the ideal time of day to do a more intense workout session or strength training session (HIIT)?

Ben Greenfield suggested starting your day with a morning EASY fasted movement session (move more than a hard workout) as walking, low heart rate run, easy bike, easy swim, or hike that keeps your heart rate in your fat burning range (as MAF formula).

How can you customize your nutrition and training plan?

1. Check out your DNAFit and ancestry background
2. Become fat adapted before you begin fasting and before you do fasted workouts.
3. Two meal a day may not be enough calories for you- so maybe you eat MORE in that meal or break your fast earlier with an easy to digest fuel as grass-fed bone broth (option to add sea salt and fat as MCT oil or grass-fed butter) or .
4. Women do best by adding some calories before a workout – then waiting to eat post workout.
5. Men do best with a morning fasted workout then eat afterwards- easy to digest.

How can you be an intuitive eating and fuel/train/perform as an intuitive athlete?

1. Ask yourself if skipping that meal is too much stress for your body
2. Learn if hungry or just need to hydrate.
3. Do intermittent fasting 12 plus hours – listen to your body to when to “break your fast” rather than going by time.

What time of day should you eat?

For example if you had to work out at 530 am what would you take and when is so individual but also different for men vs. women.

One of many suggestions from my mentor Ben Greenfield:

#5 Increased testosterone

• In lean active women, who require testosterone quite significantly as do men of course, the issue is that when you overdo fasted exercise or you do extremely glycogen depleting exercise sessions in a completely fasted especially an overnight state, you can tend to see a drop in hormone production.
• Basically, it’s another one of those ancestral mechanisms where nature doesn’t want starved people who are hungry and running from lions to make babies – we down-regulate a lot of these hormones responsible for fertility.
• If you’re going to do harder workout sessions and you’re going to do those in a fasted state, then ideally, you would save them for the afternoon or the early evening- If you haven’t been fasting for 8 to 12 hours.
• If you do the harder workout session in the morning – do make sure to prioritize a post-workout meal. I see over and over again in the people who will do like a hard morning workout but then not eat a drop in those hormones, or in the people who just basically are working out too much and not eating enough.
• Ultimately, the scenario here is if you get up in the morning, and this is especially important to tell your female clients, if you get up in the morning and your only time to do a hard exercise session is in the morning and you’ve been fasting for 8 to 12 hours…
  • if you are male, you would actually be able to get through that pretty well but you’d want to prioritize your post-workout nutrition.
  • If you are a female, I’ll even have them do something like a smaller workout snack after they’ve been fasting, but this would be something that’s non-insulinogenic like you take 20 grams of amino acids or you take a little bit of MCT oil or something like that.
  • ONLY IF it’s going to be a really hard workout as an hour-long strength training workout, a CrossFit WOD, something like that, not the easy morning movement that I was talking about.
  • You do see an increase in testosterone when fasted workouts are done in moderation, and it’s not like a crazy soul-crushing workout in which you’re starved before and you’re starving yourself after.

We need to learn more about KISS1 Gene and Kisspeptin proteins…

What is KISS1 gene?

“Context: Kisspeptin, encoded by the KISS1 gene, is a key stimulatory factor of GnRH secretion and puberty onset. Inactivating mutations of its receptor (KISS1R) cause isolated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH). A unique KISS1R-activating mutation was described in central precocious puberty (CPP).”

Mutations of the KISS1 gene in disorders of puberty – PubMed

Is Kisspeptin a protein?

“Kisspeptins (including kisspeptin-54 (KP-54), formerly known as metastin) are proteins encoded by the KISS1 gene in humans. Kisspeptins are ligands of the G-protein coupled receptor, GPR54. … The Kiss1 gene is located on chromosome 1. It is transcribed in the brain, adrenal gland, and pancreas.”

Kisspeptin – Wikipedia

So, how can we prevent adding adding additional sources of CHRONIC STRESS for the female athlete when it comes to fasting, keto, carbs and exercise?

Here is what Dr. Amie (The Thyroid Fixer) and I are working on…

Functional Lab Testing & LIFESTYLE Habits: when is your fasting, low carb athletic lifestyle is TOO MUCH and becoming a source of CHRONIC STRESS – leading to “METABOLIC CHAOS”?

1. High performing driven individual
2. Dutch test- add optimal ranges
   1. Cortisol low
   2. DHEA low
   3. Testosterone
   4. Estrogens
   5. Melatonin
3. Hormones – serum
   1. Progesterone
   2. Insulin
   3. HA1C
   4. Leptin
4. Full thyroid panel lab ranges vs. optimal
5. 1. Free T3
   2. Free T4
   3. Reverse T3
   4. Antibodies
6. Athletic:

1. 1. Exercise 1x day or more
   2. HIIT training at least once a week
   3. Endurance athlete
2. Hormones- cycling

1. 1. Pre menopause
   2. Irregular cycle
   3. Post menopause
2. Nutrition

1. 1. Low carb – grams per day average
   2. Carb cycling
   3. Nutritional Ketosis
   4. Fasting 20 plus hours once a week OMAD
   5. Intermittent Fasting 15-plus hours 3x or more week

 

Debbie Potts

Health & Fitness Coach, Author, & Speaker

Host of ‘The Low Carb Athlete’ Health Building Podcast

Founder of ‘The WHOLESTIC Method’ Coaching Program

FNTP, FDNP, NASM CPT, CHEK HLC, Ben Greenfield Coaching

BURN FAT. OPTIMIZE HEALTH. IMPROVE PERFORMANCE.

Learn more on https://linktr.ee/Debbiepotts