How To Lose Weight For Athletes: Lose Pounds, Not Pace!
Figuring out how to lose weight for athletes is a slightly different ball game to standard weight loss.
Your body has different needs and your motivations might not be the same as non-athletes. That’s why I thought I’d break down how to achieve healthy weight loss for athletes specifically.
Like many athletes, I recently decided I wanted to lose weight, and successfully did so. Some of this advice is from my personal experience, but the rest of it is from my experience as a registered sports nutritionist and the work I do with athletes.
I work with amateurs and professional athletes and so my advice takes into account health and performance.
First we’ll go into the nitty gritty of making a realistic weight loss plan and how to balance it with training. After this, we will take a look at setting a weight loss goal because that's an important factor.
Then I’ll cover some of the common pitfalls of weight loss for triathletes, such as losing weight but keeping muscle, managing cravings and navigating the risks associated with weight loss.
Let’s get into it!
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Why Are You Trying to Lose Weight?
It is important to examine your motivations for weight loss, especially as an athlete.
If you're losing weight because you're overweight then this is a very reasonable thing to do. You can use a simple BMI calculator to learn if you are overweight.
If you're already in a healthy weight range and you are losing weight just for performance purposes, I'd really encourage you to think twice.
I'm going to talk about this more later with my results and with the risks, but for any athlete, including triathletes and runners, weight loss doesn't necessarily mean better performance.
It’s often more effective to focus on your training and nutrition - I’ll get into this in more detail later in this article when we talk about the risks of RED-S.
What's Your Weight Loss Goal?
It is important to set a weight loss goal when losing weight for triathlon or another athletic event. That way you know what you’re aiming for and when to stop. You’re also more likely to stick to it if you have an end goal in sight!
My usual advice is to aim for between 0.5-1.0 kg of weight loss per week. I do not recommend super rapid weight loss for athletes (or anyone!). If you’re losing more than 1 kilo per week, this is a sure fire way to burn out and get demotivated. The caveat for this might be those looking to quickly drop weight for a weight category, but this article isn't appropriate if that's you!
It's also important to understand that this process won't be linear. Your weight will fluctuate over time - sometimes even over the course of the day!
This is totally normal as your weight is affected by hydration and the food you eat. So don’t worry about it!
Making a Weight Loss Plan
It's crucial to make a thorough, achievable meal plan for athletes to lose body fat. Whilst "eating by intuition" is a nice idea, this typically isn't a safe way for an athlete to lose weight.
You need to start by calculating how many calories you need to eat every day. You don’t want to just eat as little as possible; this is unhealthy and unlikely to give positive long term results.
A good starting point is to aim for a 500 calorie deficit per day. This should work out at around 0.5kg weight loss per week.
Of course, you need to know what your calorie count for weight maintenance is so that you can subtract the deficit.
There are various ways that you can do that. You can use an online calorie requirment calculator that should get you close, but just aware they won't be 100% accurate. You can also use apps like Cronometer or MyFitnessPal.
Another option is to use your smart watch. When I undertook planned weight loss, I used my garmin to do this! Not a Garmin plug, I should add, any smartwatch will do the job! But I use the Garmin Forerunner 955 and think it's brilliant.
I checked my daily suggested calories on my Garmin and subtracted the 500 calories from that to find out my daily allowance.
Now this is not an exact science; different bodies on different training schedules will lose weight faster or slower than others.
You can gauge whether or not you need to adjust your calorie intake by looking at how fast or slow you’re losing weight. If you're in that 0.5-1 kilo per week range then your estimates are correct, but if it's faster or slower than that you can adjust your calories.
What to Eat For Weight Loss as an Athlete?
In my experience, eating a repetitive but varied diet is the best way to go when trying to lose weight.
Find a few good recipes for each meal that fit within your calorie allowance and stick to those. It can be exhausting to try and plan a new meal for every single meal, so a few go-to recipes with some variation is a good place to start.
For example, if you have oatmeal for breakfast a few days a week, you can mix up the toppings. I really enjoy banana and honey, frozen berries or grated apple and cinnamon.
I do usually recommend using a calorie counting app, at least for the start of your weight loss journey so that you can get used to roughly how many calories are in the foods you are eating. It's often eye opening to see how many calories are in different foods.
I don't think calorie counting needs to be a long term thing, and it's also not right for everyone so consider whether it is appropriate for you.
I make a meal plan at the beginning of every week and do my grocery shopping using that. It really helps to have a plan and not worry about what to eat when you get home from work and are knackered!
In terms of macros, protein and fibre are both very important.
Eating enough protein will help to minimise the amount of muscle you lose. I advise between 1.6-2.2g per kilogram of body weight per day.
Try to spread your protein intake out over the day - a good amount with each main meal!
Protein is one of the most filling macros, so a protein rich meal will have you feeling full for a long time, reducing the urge to snack!
Fibre also makes us feel more full, so fibrous foods like vegetables are a fantastic way of getting that sensation that we've eaten loads without actually eating a lot of calories.
I have oatmeal most days of the week, and often swap the toppings to keep it interesting
How to Lose Weight While Training
The best weight loss for athletes is combined with a healthy and consistent training programme.
The intensity that you exercise at is really important to consider when it comes to losing weight.
A lot of people think that in order to lose weight it's best to do lots of high intensity exercise, but actually that's not the truth at all.
In my experience more often than not this leads people to burn out where athletes cannot stick to a long term plan.
Your body is also already under stress when losing weight, and high intensity just adds to that. This obviously is depending on your training schedule, but I usually suggest that the majority of your training should be easy exercise when trying to lose weight.
A regular 30-60 minutes of easy training that leaves you feeling refreshed and motivated will be far more beneficial than some sporadic high intensity training that leaves you a mess afterwards.
I know that sort of training doesn't sound like it would help, but believe me it really works. I'm a registered Sports Nutritionist, British triathlon level 2 coach and work as an Advanced Clinical Practitioner in Family Medicine - I wouldn't say this if I didn't mean it!
It doesn't mean you can't do high intensity training, just be careful about how hard you go and how frequently.
Another important focus is strength training, because this will help prevent you from losing muscle whilst you lose weight. It's normal to lose a small amount of muscle when losing weight but strength training should reduce this.
I made it a priority and did 2 solid gym sessions a week, with squats, deadlifts, pull ups and other similar exercises. 2-3 sessions per week is the ideal amount for maintaining muscle, so make sure you get it done.
A big thing to say here: do not try and lose weight while actively training for performance for an event! You will need all your body’s strength to focus on performance, so this is not the time to be shedding pounds as well!
I try to encourage the athletes that I work with to train for weight loss and not for performance. This mindset shift means they focus on the thing that is most important and reduced the risk of overdoing their training whilst in a calorie deficit.
As a minimum, I like to see athletes return to calorie maintenance about 4 weeks out from an event to make sure they're firing on all cylinders.
How to Manage Training & Keep Your Weight Loss on Track
It’s good to implement strategies to manage cravings when they hit, so that you can stick to your plan.
I personally benefit from structure; if I have a meal plan and know exactly what I’m going to be eating throughout the day, then I’m unlikely to stray from that.
Meal planning comes into its own here, especially in the evenings. If you know what you are eating, you are less likely to cave to the easy option of ordering an unhealthy takeaway.
As I have mentioned, I make meal plans a week in advance. I also often batch cook and freeze meals - this way I have no excuses not to eat well because all I need to do is whip it out and microwave it!
You might find yourself craving a sweet treat after dinner. Try having a pint of water with your meal to ensure that you're not dehydrated, and to maximise fullness. If the craving hits even then, wait 20 minutes.
If you still want dessert, aim for something healthy like low fat yoghurt or berries. This is still likely to satisfy you but shouldn't throw your calories totally out of whack and will also provide healthy nutrients!
However more often than not, the craving subsides within that 20 minutes! You can do this same trick if you are tempted to stress eat
Risks of Weight Loss
As a nutritionist and someone who works in family medicine, health is very important to me and I have to emphasise that weight loss is not always healthy!
When you're in a calorie deficit you can run into risks associated with RED-S, which means ‘relative energy deficiency in sport’. This can lead to various problems, including as decreased bone density, mood disturbances and excess fatigue.
This is why I say you need to know what your goal is and decide if weight loss is really what you want to do.
If you're overweight, then the health improvements of losing weight will likely be more beneficial than the risks of losing weight.
But even so, it should always be a slow, controlled process and you shouldn't feel awful during it. If you do, that suggests your balance of training and calories isn't right.
However if you're already a healthy weight and just trying to lose weight for performance’s sake then for most people it just isn't worth it.
I would usually advise athletes to ignore their weight and focus on training and nutrition. These are far more important for your performance than weight loss.
Furthermore, when you're already lean you're more likely to lose muscle tissue when you lose weight. You can end up losing power, which isn't helpful for performance.
It's also really tempting to keep losing weight. Your running might get a bit easier, so you’re likely to think what's a little bit more? Just another kilo.
But more weight loss doesn’t equal better performance. That correlation stops after a bit. I'd rather get back on track with properly fuelling my training again.
That’s why you set an end goal! You hit it, then go back to focusing on training!
If you want to discuss whether losing weight is right for you, or would like me to help design a weight loss plan for you then get in touch for 1:1 coaching.
Conclusion
Let’s round it up! What are the main things to consider when thinking about how to lose weight for athletes?
Have a clear reason: don’t lose weight for the sake of it!
Set goals: know how much you plan to lose and how long you will need to lose it.
Slow and steady wins the race: don’t aim for more than 1kg weight loss a week.
Eat well: fill yourself with healthy high protein high fibre foods, so you are properly fuelled and won’t be tempted to snack
Plan well: plan your meals and your training so you know that you are on the right track!
Manage your cravings: have tactics to help you manage cravings for unhealthy snacks - but also don’t beat yourself up if you cave. One slip up will not sabotage your entire weight loss plan!
And that’s it! I hope you have a better understanding of how to lose weight for athletes. Drop me a comment below if you have any more questions.
