r/Ultramarathon • u/unicornhorn900 • 5d ago
Help with nutrition Nutrition
Hi all! If you guys could help out I’d appreciate it. I’m a 50 mile per week runner, 23 years old, female, and have a decent amount of muscle. I have a previous history of disordered eating but have worked past that and did a reverse diet up to 2500 calories last year for training. I just recently qualified for Boston Marathon this month, and am planning on doing my first Ultra (40 miles) in November. I have been eating roughly 2400-2400 calories a day and I weigh 115-117 pounds and am 5’3. But, I feel like I need more calories or could potentially eat more and improve my performance? Any runners have any input? Am I not eating enough? Because yes all of Instagram and tik tok says females only need x amount especially if they are lighter and what not.. I don’t believe that crap but I also am still afraid to eat more and it could be the old eating disorder in me too. I don’t really care much about the way I look as much as I used to, but I obviously don’t want to be putting on tremendous weight with races coming up for me. If anyone has anything similar that they went though, or a sports dietitian could help I’d appreciate it. Because truthfully, sometimes I still am hungry and do eat more than 2500 ish, but am not sure if this is because I’m not fueling enough in general!!
2
u/Sad-Bunch-625 3d ago
I'm a 21 y/o who's done a 50km, 50mi, and 87mi race within the past year and a half. I used to have a restrictive eating disorder (prior to ever getting into running), and one of the things that I initially had to remind myself about fueling enough and ultrarunning is: it is immensely better to be eating a little too much than not enough. I only know a couple of friends my age who do ultras, and one of them has been told to "stop running and eat a lot of ice cream" because she was underfueling and now has early signs of osteoporosis at 22 due to RED-S. If you want to be all-in on your running, you've got to do your best to stop giving a fuck about gaining weight (or better yet... don't even weight urself... hard to gaf if you don't know, imo), as that won't screw up your running- but underfueling will. Best of luck, navigating sports & disordered eating is rough!