Around 58% of personal trainers exhibit some form of disordered eating.
A lot of PTs get into the profession at a relatively young age, sometimes as early as their 20s. At that point we as humans are not necessarily the most emotionally mature. We’re not necessarily the best at regulating ourselves. So, we might already have some baseline dysregulation and then we have this environment that has a huge focus on body and food that fuels that dysregulation further.
And so, these coaches or personal trainers, they pass these food and body (often body-dysmorphic) obsessions onto their clients by promoting diets and lifestyles that are unsustainable, to say the least, and can have dire repercussions at worst.
Those personal trainers who work with women and push the narrative of low carbohydrate diets know nothing about female physiology. And yet they target this audience the most, with fat burning workouts / calorie counting / fasting and low carbohydrate diets. All in the name of a quick buck, quick unsustainable results without any consideration of the impact it might have on these women’s mental health, eating habits and their physiology.
The boundaries between ‘losing a little bit of weight’ (although the target is usually to lose a lot and fast), and the development of eating disorders are marginal and fluid, e.g., small dietary changes that are started for weight loss can very quickly become compulsive. Is this really what your fat burning 6 weeks bootcamp is designed to do, or you simply do NOT care?
Now, let’s talk specifically how long-term low-carbohydrate diets have disastrous consequences, especially for women.
I’m sure you’ve heard of LEA (Low Energy Availability) but there’s also Low Carbohydrate Availability.
A lot of symptoms that come from low carbohydrate availability, especially in females, mimic a lot of signs and symptoms of LEA and these are decreases in endurance performance, training response, coordination, judgement, muscle strength, and increased irritability and depression.
So, to reiterate, low carbohydrate availability means not eating enough carbohydrates to match your everyday activity, including training. In simple terms you are not eating enough carbohydrates but potentially enough calories.
How does it manifest?
§ simply feeling rubbish most of the time
§ never feeling properly recovered
§ sleep is poor
§ often feeling hungry in the middle of the night
§ the regularity and heaviness of the menstrual cycle is being impacted (more on this later).
Women are far more sensitive to low carbohydrate intake. It mostly affects the production of LH (Luteinising Hormone) and without it ovulation won’t happen. The lack of ovulation means no production of progesterone. An anovulatory cycle is basically a subclinical menstrual disturbance with symptoms A LOT OF women complain about, but nobody is putting two and two together.
There could be many reasons for anovulation, but being in a chronic state of low carbohydrate availability certainly won’t encourage the body to spend the energy on the reproductive system – remember, it is not essential, but only a ‘nice-to-have’.
Let’s recap. The lack of progesterone (on the back of anovulation) leads to:
§ heavier cycles (often leading to iron deficiency – women are more prone to it, especially those with short and heavier cycles)
§ shorter and/or irregular cycles
§ more period pain (progesterone is a muscle relaxant so less of it = stronger cramps)
§ higher risk of endometrial hyperplasia and/or cancer due to unopposed estrogen (sometimes called estrogen excess relative to progesterone)
§ compromised bone architecture: we need both estrogen AND progesterone (unlike what the mainstream media is saying, glorifying estrogen)
§ new onset or intensified PMS
§ breast tenderness
§ mood swings, sudden unexplained anxiety and/or anger, irritability
§ brain fog (progesterone stimulates the production of BDNF which is an endogenous protein aka feed for the brain)
§ menstrual migraines
§ sleep disturbances
§ poor recovery time
I could go on…
The problem is that we don’t often see that as on the surface it all might look good (minus the symptoms that are scapegoated onto the ‘bad hormones’ that somehow magically go out of whack on their own… really?) especially if the woman is still menstruating. Sometimes the menstrual bleed disappears as well, to which nobody raises an alarm, especially if a woman is put on a Pill that gives her an illusion that everything is okay and since she has her cycle regulated by an external hormonal agent, she won’t see the irregularities that could have given her a clue…
Another issue is that a lot of women with subclinical menstrual disturbances are often not underweight, in fact they’re normal body weight, not exercising excessively, not having a fully blown eating disorder but perhaps just simply controlling what they eat… These women will have the same brain changes as those with the missing period. And this is the problem. We are always looking at the extreme examples. All it takes is chronic subliminal stress. First the ovulation goes, eventually the central part of the brain that controls the cycle goes: ‘ah-ah, shut it down too’.
And to give you an example, those women with anorexia nervosa, their periods often stop long before they lose a lot of weight.
So, it turns out – female hormones love (complex) carbohydrates that so many women actively avoid.
They are especially crucial for those who exercise.
Exercise is a form of ‘stress’. Training fasted or not eating enough, bookending your meals, and certainly avoiding carbohydrates multiplies that stress exponentially.
But you know, there is another way…
You can eat plenty of carbohydrates, never count calories, not need to portion control and in fact never have to think about dieting ever again.
Karolina runs 90 min workshops on just this subject specifically. Come, join us. You will not regret one minute of it!
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