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CHAPTER 29
BURNING OFF BODY FAT AND OTHER WEIGHTY ISSUES
The issue of body fat remains a sensitive one for endurance athletes.
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On one hand, many believe that with all the training they do, their body fat should melt right off. But the reality is something quite different: they don’t see that happening; in fact, higher than expected body fat is common among multisport athletes. Diet plays an important role in burning off excess body fat, but using a heart-rate monitor and finding the correct maximum aerobic heart rate will turn your body into a fat-burning machine.
The problem of excess body fat often begins when athletes are in their twenties and thirties. This period marks a change in metabolism. The body no longer tolerates certain dietary imbalances, non-optimal training, and daily stress that one’s golden youth once easily brushed aside. Once you are past the age of twenty, several physiological functions begin to diminish. These include maximum oxygen uptake, maximum heart rate, lung capacity, muscle mass, and strength. The rate of decline is dependant upon overall fitness and health, especially aerobic capacity. As these age-related changes take place, body fat content tends to rise. Studies have shown that for active endurance athletes, body weight may remain the same with age, but body fat content can rise 3 percent each decade. But for an aging athlete who is fit and healthy, these typical declines in body composition—more fat, less muscle—don’t occur.
Question: From your own experience watching, coaching, and training endurance athletes, would you say there is an optimal body size for triathletes, like there usually is for cyclists and runners?
Answer: There are many fitness and health factors you can control, from building aerobic function and avoiding injury to controlling body fat and preventing most chronic disease. So obtaining your own personal ideal body by training and eating right for your needs should be your goal. Obviously you can’t change your body type to some theoretical image for your sport. While we think about the ideal athlete for any given sport, it’s really just an academic discussion for most people. Researchers use body size (mass), total surface area of the body, and other factors to calculate and compare measurements such as maximum oxygen uptake, power output, and other variables when performing experiments with groups of athletes (although physiologists disagree on just how to do this). Your genes dictated your body type—how it functions in sports is greatly dependent upon how you program it.
Each one of us must address this issue individually, and for almost every athlete burdened with higher-than-normal levels of body fat, this chapter will answer the common question, “How do I get rid of this extra body fat?” While the short answer is that a heart-rate monitor can help burn off body fat when used to build an aerobic base, there are a number of issues to address, one of which is why, other than aesthetics, too much body fat is harmful.
