Athletes and their diets

By Gareth Zeal BSc

Introduction

A lot of athletes come to see me with typical complaints of fatigue, inability to drop
bodyweight and recurrent infections. In broad terms many over-train and under-eat. It is
typical with an endurance athlete training for marathons triathlons and extreme endurance
races; they are simply not eating enough to fuel themselves through their own events. Many
are paranoid about using supplementation of any sort for fear of failing the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) drug tests; and others somewhat naively believe that a normal
healthy diet is enough to compensate for the rigours of their sport.
For this article, I have concentrated on four athletes, ranging from an Olympic modern
pentathlete, a dancer in a West End show and two endurance athletes, one who runs
marathons and the other is an extreme endurance runner.

Case Study 1– a modern pentathlete

The subject of overtraining was dealt with eloquently in volume 8 of The Nutrition Practitioner1. I
have used this modern pentathlete as a case study that illustrates how difficult it is to combine fulltime
work and full-time training.

The pentathlete in question was working full-time in a busy environment and endeavouring to train
twice a day at the same time. She found she was getting a cold more or less every month, and a more
debilitating infection every three months; this understandably had a very negative impact on her
training. There is a general misconception amongst many athletes and most of the population that all
exercise is good. It is not generally recognised that 45 minutes of intense exercise halves the activity
of the immune system for up to four to five hours2. Soviet athletes recognised this phenomenon
decades ago and always refuse to meet members of the press straight after training in case any of them
are carrying infection3. This is one of the reasons that athletes need more antioxidants than the
general population.

The first goal was to get the pentathlete’s immune system back into shape. In order to facilitate this
process I suggested she take 5 ml of Echinacea, twice a day, Monday through Friday, resting at
weekends There is much debate about how best to use Echinacea and the science is ambivalent;
however, in my experience, while there appears to be no harm taking it every day, a better effect is
achieved by resting periodically. I would have liked her to take vitamin C to her personal bowel
tolerance, but we compromised on one gram with each meal.

The next target was for her to ingest more food. As time constraints were an issue I asked her to
prepare a protein shake to be taken after each training session in addition to the regular meals. The
only other supplementation she was prepared to take was a high-strength multivitamin, twice a day.
The next six months were a revelation to her, in that she did not get a single infection, her energy
levels in general were higher, and recovery from training was much faster. Roughly 18 months later,
she went on to win a medal in the modern pentathlon. This was not due to the miraculous effects of
supplements or herbal extracts; rather, I believe, it was a case of enabling her body to train and
recover without compromising the immune system and enabling her talent and hard training to earn
the results she deserved.