In my past articles on training women, I ranted a bit (maybe a lot) and took umbrage with the fitness mindset toward constant diminishment, measurements, and neglecting or trivializing strength training.
One thing that I haven’t readily examined is nutrition. I'll say outright that this isn't written as a highly “technical” article. Everything expressed here is my personal opinion based on my own education and personal experience with clients as well as from studying the research and practice of many other more qualified coaches. This isn't medical advice or prescription. I've aimed to establish some definitions of common diet mentalities and fallacies that I commonly see in female clients. As a whole, the fitness industry tends to be ineffective at helping female clients with food and diet. I've seen the general approach of calorie counting or “you have to be in a deficit to lose weight” repeatedly fail time and time again. Those things work, but nutrition for women is almost always a psychosomatic subject that involves a number of compounding factors both physical and mental. Attempting to solve that by dryly explaining the “science” of calories and thermal dynamics is shortsighted at best and damaging at worst.
Before I go any further, this is how I personally define a “healthy” diet. This definition is both subjective and objective.
Subjective: Your diet gives you continuous energy throughout the day without crashing or low points. You feel alert and clear headed, and you aren't in a mental fog or dragging at any particular time. You feel energized after eating, and you aren't sluggish from what you eat (or don't eat for that matter). You feel that you recover quickly from intense activity or exercise and you aren't lacking energy overall. A particularly long day of working doesn’t leave you overly exhausted, and any physical training doesn't leave you completely drained.
Objective: Your caloric needs are being adequately met in regards to your daily expenditure. Unless it's a depletion period before competition or someone is incredibly sedentary, I'll never readily endorse any diet of fewer than 1,400 calories as being “healthy.” Your macronutrients (and subsequent micronutrients), especially protein (which most women seemingly don't eat enough of) are in line with your daily expenditures, your level of lean mass (this is the only number I really care about with clients, male or female), and your overall subjective feeling of well-being. Hormonally, your menstrual cycle, hair and skin health, and sex drive are all normal. If these things are off in any way—as in you don’t have a period or its sporadic; your skin, hair, and nail health are suffering; and your libido is low (and they're all intertwined)—I'm not likely to consider your current diet “healthy” by any means.
Disordered mentalities
In my experience training clients, I've found that female clients typically have certain mindsets regarding nutrition. While these mindsets don't necessarily represent a truly clinical “eating disorder,” they're flawed enough that I would consider them a disordered “mentality." This categorization is for my own organization of thought and acts as a quick reference for how I can best help somebody. My goal in sharing this is that it will help coaches and trainers optimize their own training practices with their female clients. These aren't catchall solutions by any means, and this isn't intended to discount or dismiss the various physiological aspects that accompany food consumption, food manufacturing practices, and food science. I'll also add as a disclaimer that these terms and definitions aren't hard and fast psychiatric diagnoses of any kind, nor do I pretend to present them as such. They are categorizations of behavior of my own construction and you can use them as you see fit.
Nutrirexic: A nutrirexic is an individual who has developed an obsession with consuming any and every conceivable micronutrient while also chronically under eating in regards to overall caloric consumption. This isn't anorexia per se, although I would certainly consider it an eating disorder. The individual's rationale for this is often centered on the belief that “not all calories are created equal” and that “nutrient density” outweighs caloric consumption. While I definitely support the consumption of nutrient dense foods and believe that calories can be overly emphasized, this kind of disorder has exceeded that rationality. I know that there are coaches and fitness personalities who unfortunately promote these beliefs to an extreme level. This is also highly common among female fitness competitors who promote their “clean eating” foods as being nutrient filled. Hence, it is “healthy” that they only consume 1,200 calories a day.
Calorexic: This person is similar to someone who is nutrirexic, although she may or may not have the obsession with micronutrients. In this case, you have someone who believes that the less she needs to eat, the “healthier” she is, and this can readily turn into anorexia. This is under the misguided belief that her metabolism is somehow super efficient and able to survive with scant amount of foods. This can be a derivative of a fitness competitor or celebrity practices in which the girls proudly advertise how little and/or how clean they eat and that having a barely 1,000 calorie metabolism is highly desirable. This is also seen in the culture of minimalist diets promoted through various sectors of the entertainment media in which a supposedly healthy diet is comprised of a minimal number of foods. Without going off on a tangent, societal and social expectations do play a heavy role in this.
Binge eating will likely happen as well as a compulsive obsession with tracking and controlling everything food related. Longer term health problems will also begin to arise if this “diet” is followed. It is well studied that eating disorders are manifestations of a personality seeking “control” and stability. This type of dietary control of calorie counting gives a false sense of stability. Aside from the binge eating, this type of situation creates a constant atmosphere of stress surrounding food and eating. This client is likely someone who avoids social situations involving food or may say some statement along the lines of “I hate eating in front of people/I hate when people watch me eat/I hate to eat.” It is important to recognize these things and understand that helping this person as a client may fall outside your scope of practice, experience, education, or all three. I've made recommendations that people see mental health professionals.
“Super foods only”: Leading off from the calorexic and nutrirexic (and be aware that someone can be all three), "super foods only" women have decided that they will only consume “super foods.” The term “super foods” is one constructed by the media and refers to foods that are very high in particular micronutrients. Unfortunately, these foods are also described in “dietary magic” terms and are enormously hyped up to have near mystical properties in regards to what they can do for your health. I've encountered women whose diets consists almost entirely of kale salads supplemented with various “nutrient” dense vegetables, berries with maybe Greek yogurt, and green juices and smoothies. This is not a healthy diet. The irony to this is that often these women do consume an adequate number of calories, but their macronutrients are completely screwed sideways.
The backlash reaction is binge eating. They’ll get cravings for protein and fat rich and high calorie foods, as these are all lacking in their regular diets. These women simply don't consume enough of these things on a daily basis, and this ends up manifesting itself as periodic binge eating in which they’ll eat uncontrollably (in actuality, it's your metabolism attempting to balance out a continuous deficit). Then they'll go through a period of shame, guilt, and self-hate over not having self-control, which leads to more controlled and obsessive eating, which then further perpetuates the destructive cycle. Counting calories may or may not be an issue, as the issue is more based on controlling the types of food consumed.
Carboholic: This person is all carbs all the time and consumes nothing else. This is often seen in women who make a Frankenstein attempt to cut out bad carbs and bad fats. They end up with a diet that consists of nothing but carbohydrates. This isn't “bad” in the sense that their carb sources are unhealthy, but it’s very unbalanced from a macronutrient standpoint. These girls usually have diets that are very heavy on salads and fruit and legumes, but protein and fat intake are absurdly low. I’ve stopped being shocked by cases where the total protein intake for the day is two eggs in the morning and some edamame at dinner. The irony to this diet is that the constant carbs do give them energy and they may be avid exercisers, but they are also prone to constant crashes in energy and need to eat every two hours or they get infamously “hangry,” a combination of fatigue and irritability.
The one thing that is a bit unique is that this type of person will periodically get intense cravings for protein. It could be wanting fried chicken or a burger, or it could be a seemingly random craving for all you can eat Korean BBQ. Generally, I find this type of client the easiest to help, as she usually likes to eat and is open to increasing protein when she's educated as to why.
Everything intolerant/catastrophic allergen: In this case, the person has managed to convince herself that the reason for her lack of weight loss, results, poor muscle tone, and perceived health problems is entirely attributable to some type of food allergy that she must have. This may be intolerance to a variety of things or a fixation on one thing that is the cause of all of her frustrations. Gluten is obviously the most popular, but dairy, sugar, protein (yes, I know that doesn't make any sense), carbs, acidic food, nuts, non-alkaline water, and pretty much every food group imaginable are also thrown into this group. I've stopped being surprised by this, as practically every food and food group has been demonized in some fashion or another by diet gurus who are selling a black magic diet.
This can turn into any of the above disorders already listed, and it also lends itself to continuous stress over everything being consumed. This is also someone who often has trained herself to ignore her natural intuition on eating and is very reliant on some source of “right/wrong” foods. This then cascades into obsessive patterns of eating. I often think of this as a dietary version of being a hypochondriac.
Other categories
If I'm not suffering, I'm not dieting: Accompanying the larger disorders, you have a broad category of what I deem diet suffrage, a woman who believes that a diet should be as arduous and strict as possible and anything less must not work. This is the pain equals progress mindset. This kind of “super strict or fail” mentality in which she feels that her diet must be “perfect” all the time can be hellish to solve, and I'll readily say that I don't have a grand solution. It will take awhile to work through to say the least. The scary thing with this diet mentality is that when the diet isn’t her version of perfect, she'll feel like she's lost control and failed herself. She'll think that there is something wrong with her and will have extreme guilt, thinking that she can do better and doesn't deserve this. This could well be its own topic of exploration, but the degree to which I’ve seen women drive themselves into anxiety over dietary adherence is staggering and can seemingly involve every possible aspect of their personal history, self-worth, personal expectations, and anything else you want to throw in there.
The search for the “silver bullet”: There is a common logical fallacy in which there must be a silver bullet diet/detox/method that will “solve” all of a woman's frustrations with food. This doesn't exist. The process of eating for performance, competition, or general health is just that—a process. Just as training is a process of self-discovery and learning, so it is with nutrition. Learning what works and what doesn't work for you should be something that is fulfilling and allows you to develop your own personal intuition with food and eating. Becoming enslaved to the belief that there is a perfect system or perfect diet will, in the long run, simply prohibit you from learning the process that best works for you. This cognitive fallacy is something that I'll touch more on in the second installment of this series.
The solution to all this disordered thinking?
There isn't a clear cut “answer” to any of it. These types of disordered mentalities come with a hoard of complexes and accompanying behavior. My recommendation as a professional is the following.
Have a “safe” diet discussion with your female client in the very beginning of training. This discussion should be a simple line of nonjudgmental questions such as:
- What do you typically eat in a day?
- What gives you energy?
- What foods do you really love?
- Do you cook or eat out?
At no point in any of this should you ever stop the person and render some “you shouldn’t do that” statement. If I had thrown an elbow to the throat every time I heard an idiot male trainer say that to a female client in the middle of a discussion, I'd have a substantial body count.
Your goal for this discussion should be threefold. You should:
- Record objectively her typical dietary habits
- Recognize her discomfort or comfort talking about food
- Start a process of leading her toward being able to recognize the problems that may exist with her current eating habits and/or patterns of thought
Again, you ask, she talks, you listen, you listen more, you ask, and you keep listening. You don’t interrupt, and you don’t issue judgment. You don’t say that gluten is the devil and Paleo is how God would eat and recommend six small meals a day because you’re an amateur NPC bodybuilder and that’s how everyone is supposed to eat.
Your subsequent discussions on nutrition following that first conversation should have a focus on either education and/or gradually changing cognitive behaviors. I have female clients who I talk with a lot. I have ones who just need more straightforward education, and I have clients who are largely self-sufficient. Regardless, everyone can use some degree of teaching.
Lest someone throw out “trainers shouldn’t recommend diets” or “we aren't psychiatrists,” this doesn't have anything to do with recommending a diet. You're right in that we aren't psychiatrists, and if this whole process seems uncomfortable and unfeasible, don’t bother with it. However, if you are someone who knows how to build a genuine rapport with your female clients and you want to help them to the fullest, you fully know that you'll be informing the way that they think as much as the way that they exercise and train. In case this also seems overly analytical and touchy feeling, again understand that it will vary highly from person to person. I’ve had hour long discussions with female clients over their relationships with food over multiple sessions. I’ve also had ten-minute talks with clients who were completely healthy and my only recommendations were to improve the nutrition around their training and that was it.
In closing this first installment, I hope that everyone reading this has learned something useful to put into practice with his or her own training. Perhaps you recognized your own fallacies in your approach to nutrition. In part two, I'll discuss peanut butter and detoxes and focus on deconstructing some common dietary myths that contribute to disordered mentalities. Should anyone wish to contact me with any questions, criticisms, or hate mail, feel free to reach me via email or on Facebook (which is my whole name—Alexander Juan Antonio Cortes). I do hope that this series creates a constructive discussion on how the fitness industry as a whole can better serve women and that a shift can be made toward a “become more, not less” mindset.
