Strength and Power Calorie Prescription

Blog by Karlyn Grimes, MS RD LDN CSSD
Retained Medical Adviser

The following is the first of a multi-part series on nutrition for strength and power athletes and finding the optimal recipe for peak performance.

Bio
Karlyn Grimes, MS RD LDN CSSD, is the founder of Simply Simple Health (SSH) and author of The Everything Anti-Inflammation Diet Book. SSH creates and administers nutrition, fitness and health education programs for athletes, educators, coaches and sports teams at schools and colleges throughout the Boston area. Its programming includes individual and group sports nutrition counseling, as well as sport-specific personal training. SSH also contributes to numerous academic textbooks and magazines.

Karlyn has a dual Master’s degree in nutrition and exercise physiology from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Colgate University, with a minor in economics. She is a registered dietitian (RD) with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, a certified specialist in Sports Dietetics (CSSD) and a licensed dietitian nutritionist (LDN) in the state of Massachusetts. She is currently a faculty member in the Nutrition and Biology Departments at Simmons College in Boston, where she teaches sports nutrition, medical nutrition therapy, exercise physiology, anatomy and physiology, general biology, and numerous other courses.

It All Starts Here
It’s plain and simple: Strength and power athletes need more calories than their sedentary counterparts, but those needs vary tremendously depending on age, gender, body mass and sports-specific demands.  Case in point: Maximal strength and power is a universal goal among weight lifters and gymnasts, but while weight lifters go all-out to gain body and muscle mass, gymnasts strive to limit unnecessary baggage so they can jump, flip and tumble.  Determining your calorie needs is all about experimenting with current research-based sports nutrition guidelines so you can complete your own personal performance puzzle.

Calculating Actual Energy Intake: Keep a Food Diary
For all strength and power athletes, regardless of weight goals, calculating the average daily calorie intake for three to five days can provide very valuable information.  This can easily be done by using an online dietary analysis program such as https://www.fitday.com or https://www.supertracker.usda.gov.  Start by keeping a portable mini notebook or pad of paper handy to record your food intake throughout the day.  This will prevent you from forgetting any on-the-go snack attacks.  Be sure to include as much detail as possible.  Record serving sizes in cups, teaspoons, tablespoons and ounces(when recording liquids, use liquid ounces; for solid foods, use cups or gram ounces).  After you have entered all your data, be sure to average your energy intake for the three to five days to arrive at one average energy intake value.

Calculating Science-Derived Energy Requirements: Get Out Your Calculator
Once you have determined your actual average daily calorie intake, use the appropriate Resting Energy Expenditure (REE) and Activity Factor (AF) to calculate your daily energy requirements at your current weight.

Fine-Tuning Your Energy Requirements Based on Performance Goals and Objectives
After analyzing your three- to five-day food record and calculating your daily energy requirement, ask yourself, “Do I want to maintain, lose or gain weight?”  Answering this question will enable you to focus on the appropriate weight management strategies presented below so you can personalize your daily energy requirements.  Do keep in mind that energy needs will vary as the intensity and duration of training changes from preseason to the competitive season to the off-season.  Athletes need to create an annual nutrition plan divided into distinct periods that scales energy and nutrient intake up and down to compliment alterations in training schedules.

Gaining Lean Muscle
If weight gain is your goal, your priority from a performance and health standpoint is to gain lean muscle tissue. To start your muscle gain journey, evaluate how your actual three- to five-day energy intake compares to your recommended daily calorie calculations.  Are they similar?  If not, do you consume more or less energy than is recommend?  Does this correlate with recent weight gain or loss?   For example, if your actual average daily energy intake is ~3,200 calories and you’re not gaining weight, it is obvious that you need to eat more calories to gain muscle mass — but don’t overdo it now that you have the facts.

For athletes looking to gain muscle, patience is a virtue. As miraculous as the human body is, it can only construct a finite amount of muscle tissue daily.  An increase in daily calories is required for weight gain, but it is crucial to acknowledge that only about 30-40% of weight gain is in the form of lean muscle mass when an extra 500-2000 calories are consumed daily.¹ Therefore, it can be inferred that the more dramatic the increase in calories, the more body mass gain will be in the form of adipose tissue (aka body fat), not lean muscle tissue.

In terms of long-term weight loss goals, current recommendations dictate that  that individuals lose 5-10% of their current body weight over a period of three to six months.  That translates to a 10-20 pound weight loss for an individual weighing 200 pounds. Once the weight is lost, the goal is to maintain the weight loss for three to six months before attempting additional weight loss.  To stay motivated, monitor weight weekly and measure body composition monthly.  And don’t forget to assess training and sport performance to ensure they are not negatively affected by calorie restriction and increased energy expenditure.  Additionally, take into consideration your genetic blueprint so that you can choose body composition changes that are both achievable and sustainable.

Snacks and Mini Meal Examples and Strategies to Promote Weight Gain*

• 1 scoop chocolate flavored Klean Recovery mixed with 12 ounces of 1% milk (365 calories; 24 grams protein)
• Smoothie (choose your flavor):
  • Klean Chocolate-Peanut Butter Bliss: 12 ounces of skim or 1% milk, 1 scoop Klean Isolate protein powder, 1-2 tablespoons peanut butter and 1 tablespoon unsweetened dry cocoa powder (362-462 calories; 38-42 grams protein)
  • Klean Fruit Fusion: 12 ounces of skim or 1% milk, 1 cup unsweetened frozen fruit of your choice, and 1 scoop Klean Isolate protein powder (340 calories; 34 grams protein)
• 4-6 ounces of turkey in a whole wheat pita with lettuce, tomato and mustard and 1 cup skim or 1% milk (400-448 calories; 34-44 grams protein)
• Half a peanut butter sandwich on 100% whole wheat bread (1 slice bread and 2 tablespoons peanut butter) with 1 cup skim or 1% milk (380 calories; 20 grams protein)
• Consume nutrient- and calorie-dense foods, such as oatmeal, dried fruits and 100% juices, nuts and seeds, starchy vegetables like beans and sweet potatoes, and fathappy fruits, such as avocadoes and olives.
• When making recipes such as puddings, pancake mixes, hot cocoa mixes and oatmeal, add low-fat milk instead of water.

Losing Stubborn Body Fat
Body fat has an inverse relationship with strength and power.  It takes energy and work to move a larger body mass, especially if that mass is lazy fat tissue.  Consequently, as body fat levels increase, strength and power decrease — but keep in mind that all athletes require minimum gender-specific body fat levels to support normal hormonal and bodily function.  If levels get too low, performance will decline.  Thus, it is always important to ask yourself why you want to lose weight and assess whether the weight loss will truly improve your performance.

In a nutshell, changes in body fat levels are intimately associated with calorie intake and energy output.  An inverse relationship between these factors causes body fat levels to rise and fall.  In other words, you can expect body fat gains when calorie intake exceeds energy output, and vice versa.  If calorie intake is too low, you can expect not only body fat loss, but also a decline in precious muscle proteins that are key to peak strength and power.

Logically, any weight-loss plan requires a calorie deficit or a negative energy balance, but the deficit must be reasonable so that weight loss is slow, muscle loss is minimized, fluid and electrolyte imbalances do not come into play, and illness and injury are curtailed.  Ideally, you should target weight loss during the off-season so as not to impact performance. Moreover, weight loss should not exceed 2 pounds per week; accept that the closer you are to your ideal body and fat weight, the less weight loss you should expect.

In general, a deficit of 500 calories per day will result in an approximately one-pound weight loss per week.  Regardless of sport, athletes should not restrict daily calories to less than 30 calories per kilogram of body weight, because it is difficult to consume an adequate amount of nutrients when energy intake is significantly restricted.  An energy deficit can be achieved via a combination of calorie restriction and increased energy expenditure.  When you include exercise in the deficit equation, muscle mass is better preserved.  On a final note, there is evidence that a relatively high protein intake (~30% of energy intake) will reduce the loss of lean mass relative to a lower protein intake (~15% of energy intake) and that protein has a large thermic effect that may aid in reducing body fat.²

Weight Maintenance
For weight maintenance, perform a three- to five- day dietary analysis to determine what calorie level keeps your weight steady.  While you’re at it, evaluate your average micronutrient  (vitamins and minerals) intake.  According to government statistics, up to 90% of Americans are micronutrient deficient, especially athletes that push their physical limits.³  To ensure that you satisfy all your vitamin and mineral requirements, take Klean Multivitamin daily* — not taking a daily multi is like skipping the toothbrush in the morning.  Additionally, to help manage the oxidative stress that results from participation in repeated intense training, take Klean Antioxidant every day.  Klean Antioxidant has a unique blend of ingredients that guards against cellular damage and nasty free radicals that peak when you hit the gym hard.^‡

Bio
Karlyn Grimes, MS RD LDN CSSD, is the founder of Simply Simple Health (SSH) and author of The Everything Anti-Inflammation Diet Book. SSH creates and administers nutrition, fitness and health education programs for athletes, educators, coaches and sports teams at schools and colleges throughout the Boston area. Its programming includes individual and group sports nutrition counseling, as well as sport-specific personal training. SSH also contributes to numerous academic textbooks and magazines.

Karlyn has a dual Master’s degree in nutrition and exercise physiology from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Colgate University, with a minor in economics. She is a registered dietitian (RD) with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, a certified specialist in Sports Dietetics (CSSD) and a licensed dietitian nutritionist (LDN) in the state of Massachusetts. She is currently a faculty member in the Nutrition and Biology Departments at Simmons College in Boston, where she teaches sports nutrition, medical nutrition therapy, exercise physiology, anatomy and physiology, general biology, and numerous other courses.

References

1. Kreider RB.  Dietary supplements and the promotion of muscle growth with resistance exercise.  Sports Medicine.  1999; 27: 97-110.
2. Lambert CP. Macronutrient considerations for the sport of bodybuilding. Sports Medicine.  2004; 34(5): 317-327.
3. Kreider RB, Wilborn Cd, Taylor L, et al. ISSN exercise and sport nutrition review: research and recommendations. Int J Soc Sports Nutr. 2012;7:7 [homepage on the Internet]. c2012. Available from: https://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1550-2783-7-7.pdf