Feeling Full & Pre-Meet Food Volume
York County Barbell athletes are on the cusp of another meet! As we move towards weigh-ins, many of our athletes are cutting down to make weight for their respective bodyweight categories. Our team is also continuing to train to perform, priming our bodies for maximal lifts on competition day. These may seem like conflicting priorities. How does an athlete cut down whilst simultaneously training to perform? As a team, we benefit from high-quality programming and coaching on the part of our Head Coach. As an athlete, I appreciate the space I am given to focus on my training intensity and my nutrition because I trust the expertise of my coach. However, this still leaves the question of how to eat to perform as well as make weight?
This is a huge area of exploration! There is quite a bit of misinformation floating around regarding leaning out, losing weight, and supporting an exercise regimen. This impacts everyone seeking to use food as fuel and to feel their best, and is particularly true for athletes who have both performance and bodyweight goals. Additionally, many athletes have lifestyle goals that they want to integrate into their performance goals. For example, cutting 10 kilos to make a lighter bodyweight category may serve weightlifting goals, but if that athlete also loves to go on long, grueling backpacking trips requiring thousands of calories to sustain, those goals may be at odds.
When seeking to make weight and perform, athletes should be acutely aware of the caloric density of their food. Put otherwise, how many kCals are present in a meal of a given weight? High-volume/low-density foods tend to be fibrous produce items, such as leafy greens, peppers, apples, berries, and so on. Medium-volume/medium-density produce includes starchy carbs such as potatoes and beans, as well as tropical fruits such as banana and pineapple. Low-volume/high-density foods include carb sources such as rice and other grains, animal protein, and fatty foods such as nuts, oils, and full-fat dairy.
High-volume foods will literally fill our bellies. A big salad makes us feel full because we are literally full. However, when we eat a small portion of nuts, we also find ourselves to be satiated. What’s the mechanism behind this seeming contradiction? There are a handful of things at play here.Foundationally, our bodies are smart machines. Our bodies want to be fueled and healthy, and they are incredibly adaptable. The human species survives across incredibly diverse biomes consuming wildly different diets. Carnivorous humans eating animal protein at the poles survive just as vegans eating produce do at the equator. In our contemporary age, elected diets such as vegetarianism or necessary diets such as grain-free to support celiac disease are all capable of sustaining the human body.
In this vein of our bodies being smart machines, recent peer-reviewed literature indicates that our appetite cues are mediated by our bodies’ perception of the energy content of meals (Flynn et al., 2022). To understand this, it is important to understand the difference between hunger and appetite. Hunger is our body’s need for fuel, while appetite is our body’s desire for food. You may have a larger appetite for a meal you enjoy, despite the number of calories you’ve consumed over the day. Understanding the difference between these two, and learning how to listen to your body’s cues regarding each, is a critical skill when seeking to improve your nutrition and is something a nutrition coach can help you to master. (But more on that later!) For the purposes of this article, “satiation” is used to refer to a feeling of satisfaction of both hunger and appetite.
Flynn et al. (2022) conducted a study that ultimately examined 33,681 meals to determine how humans moderate their caloric intake. The purposes of their study included revealing ways to mitigate overconsumption, but their findings are applicable to those seeking to refine their nutrition for performance, weight category, and general lifestyle purposes. Their analyses revealed that generally, “humans are sensitive to the energy content of meals and adjust meal size to minimize the acute aversive effects of overconsumption” (Flynn et al., 2022). This is a very general statement, but put otherwise, they found that humans are able to vary what leads to satiation based on the caloric content of meals (Flynn et al., 2022). For example, when eating an incredibly low-volume/high-density meal, such as candied nuts, humans will use caloric content (what Flynn et al. refer to as “energy content”) as a trigger for satiation. When eating an incredibly high-volume/low-density meal, humans will use food volume to trigger satiation. This is a hyper-simplification of a sophisticated study, but it does reveal avenues for meaningfully engaging with diet and nutrition for those targeting both performance and body mass goals.
Eating in a caloric deficit is the primary way to lose weight. Eat fewer calories than you burn. This is simple, though not always easy. In the initial phases of cutting weight, for both weight-classed athletes and others, I recommend eating high-volume meals to cue satiation. There are other benefits to this approach, such as the increased micro-nutrient consumption that often comes with eating more varied produce. It is also important to note that as you increase your fiber intake, you should also increase your hydration, as food volume within your gut is another critical element when making weight.
Hydrating, ideally with water, helps to push food fiber through our digestive system. Too little fiber can slow our digestion, but too much fiber (and not enough hydration) can also create digestive friction that can slow how quickly our bodies push food through our systems. For athletes seeking to perform during training, as well as to make weight, this is of critical importance. High-volume meals in advance of training sessions will likely still be in your gut when you are training. For some this may not be an issue, but for many, the experience of training with food in the gut can be very uncomfortable. I typically advise timing high-volume meals after the day’s training session. Additionally, as athletes approach weigh-ins, it is crucial to leave your body the time it needs to push food mass out of the digestive system. While eating high-volume meals can help create satiation when in a caloric deficit, in the few days immediately preceding weigh-ins, athletes should lower the volume of their meals and eat as few grams of food as possible. For example, and athlete in a weight cut seeking to consume 175g of carbs on the day before an afternoon weigh-in would be better advised to eat 234g (or approximately one dozen) medjool dates than 5334g of raw romaine lettuce. The former will increase the athlete’s bodyweight by 0.234kg, while the latter will add over 5kg of bodyweight. While this may be an extreme example, it illustrates the importance of modifying food volume to meet specifically-timed bodyweight goals.
The good news here is that your body is your ally! As you decrease your food volume, your body will adapt and will use caloric content as a metric of satiation, as revealed by Flynn et al. (2022). As previously mentioned, there are many other factors at play that can impact sense of hunger and appetite. Caloric intake, caloric expenditure, food volume, fiber content, hydration, and macronutrient balance are all factors in feeling full. The experience of eating itself also plays a role. Food is a universal part of the human experience. (Hunger is also, unfortunately, a part of the human experience. Hunger impacts billions globally, and approximately 10% of U.S. households are food insecure. For more details on hunger, food insecurity, and nutrition, please explore the AP News site linked below.) Balancing the various roles food plays in our lives, as a supply of training fuel, as a mechanism for cultural meaning-making, as a source of pleasure, etc., is not a simple task. Learning to listen to your body’s cues regarding hunger versus appetite is an important skill to build. Working with a nutrition coach can help to build this and other skills, and can empower you with information to guide your specific goals. However, even without a coach, remember that your body is a smart machine! It is your ally. While there are certainly metabolic, autoimmune, and other conditions that can make the mind-body relationship more complex, you and your body are the ultimate determinants of nutritional success, not some external factor. Socialized expectations surrounding bodies are messy and can be harmful. A good nutrition coach can help you to unpack socialized expectations of our bodies as people and as athletes. Ultimately, if you feel good, enjoy your relationship with food, and are hitting your performance goals, that is what matters.
References
Flynn A. N., Hall K. D., Courville A. B., Rogers P. J., & Brunstrom J. M. (2022). Time to revisit the passive
overconsumption hypothesis? Humans show sensitivity to calories in energy-rich meals.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 116(2), 581-588.
https://apnews.com/hub/hunger
