Elite high school athletes, especially girls, often eat far less than their bodies need. A female athlete burning 1,800 calories in training plus 1,200-2,200 at rest needs around 3,000 calories daily, but most fall short, tanking energy and performance.
most elite high school athletes do not understand how much their body is actually burning. So let's say that you guys are working out 2 to 3 hours a day, and those 2 to 3 hours are pretty intense. Let's say that you're burning 600 calories per hour. If you're training for 3 hours, that means that you burned 1,800 calories with the activity. But if you did nothing throughout the day and you were just sitting in a chair all day watching TV, your body would still burn between 1,200 to 2,200 calories depending on the size of your body. If you're a female athlete and you sitting in a chair all day long burn 1,200 calories, but then and you're working out 3 hours a day and you're burning an extra 1,800 calories, guess what? That means you need 3,000 calories, which I guarantee a lot of you female athletes are not getting 3,000 calories in a day. Obviously it's going to depend on your size and your body and your training and everything, so don't just say, oh yeah, I need 3,000 calories. Like, it's going to be different for everyone, but I'm trying to make the point here is most of you are undereating and you don't know it, and your energy and your performance is suffering because of that.
