15/06/2026
One of the trickiest conversations in youth sport is body composition.
Because there is a BIG difference between:
✔ performance-focused nutrition support
…and
❌ aggressive weight-focused behaviours in growing athletes.
The reality is that many young athletes are still:
🌱 growing
🦴 developing bone mass
🧠 developing neurologically
🏃 trying to recover from high training loads
…all while balancing school, sport and life stress.
This is why weight-focused approaches in adolescent athletes need to be handled extremely carefully.
In clinic, one of the biggest mistakes I see is athletes trying to:
❌ slash carbohydrates
❌ skip meals
❌ remove snacks
❌ “eat clean” but unintentionally under-eat
❌ aggressively chase aesthetic goals during heavy training periods
Often this creates:
📉 poorer recovery
📉 reduced performance
📉 fatigue
📉 increased injury risk
📉 menstrual dysfunction
📉 low energy availability
Ironically, many athletes perform and physically look BETTER once energy availability improves and recovery capacity returns.
When body composition goals are appropriate, the focus should remain on:
✔ supporting training quality
✔ maintaining adequate carbohydrate availability
✔ preserving lean mass
✔ structured meal timing
✔ improving food quality where needed
✔ gradual sustainable changes
✔ protecting recovery and health
Not simply “eating less.”
Because in developing athletes, under-fuelling is rarely a performance advantage long term.
