160. The Fear of Overfueling + Trail Running Nutrition

In this episode of the Female Athlete Podcast, I talk with professional trail runner and exercise scientist Keely Henninger. We discuss community and competition in trail running, and Keely shares strategies for optimizing performance, as well as handling unexpected challenges like injuries and race DNFs. Keely and I explore nutrition culture in trail running, how fueling enough improves how you feel and perform, as well as debunking the fear of overfueling. Keely touches on her nutrition journey, from underfueling and injuries, to eating poptarts on the trails and winning National Championships! 

More than a runner, we talk about Keely’s career in exercise science, first researching biomechanics and female athletes for Nike, and now exploring the intersection between how athletes’ actually fuel, their performance, and exercise dependency. We highlight the performance gains to be made from proper nutrition, and how current fueling guidelines and sports nutrition companies’ recommendations may be wrong. Our advice to listeners is that unnecessary suffering can be avoided by fueling enough, and athletes’ should be more afraid of underfueling, not overfueling!

TOPIC TIMESTAMPS:

8:45 Trail running and community 

12:45 Strategies for competition: controlling the controllables and dealing with uncontrollables

16:00 Unnecessary suffering in sport and nutrition 

22:00 Keely’s nutrition journey: from underfueled and injured to winning National Championships!

25:20 The fear of overfueling

27:35 Nutrition culture in trail running

30:55 Keely’s fueling favorites (poptarts FTW!)

34:00 Researching exercise science, female athletes, and nutrition

38:40 Looking at athletes’ fueling habits, performance, and exercise dependency

41:35 Unpacking fueling guidelines and sports nutrition companies 

44:10 Improving performance through fueling 

49:50 End of the podcast questions 

Follow Keely on Instagram and Twitter @runwidkeel and me, your host Lindsey Cortes, on Instagram @female.athlete.nutrition 

Keely shares our mission of empowering female athletes through her own Trail Society podcast, worth a listen for everyone: https://open.spotify.com/show/54hL2RFrTeWKSV2VGn9DlN  

If you find value in this podcast and would like to support the show, join our patreon community! Become part of our Fiercely Fit and Fueled community today, and receive bonus episodes, merch, monthly recipes, access to an exclusive community message board, and have the chance to ask Lindsey your questions and get a podcast shoutout, and more! Head to patreon todaypatreon.com/femaleathletenutrition Your support means a lot!

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