Caught Between Two Worlds: The Challenge Facing Today's Female Athlete

Fueling the body an athlete needs to perform while feeling pressure to maintain the body she thinks she needs to show.

My job has never been just about building better athletes — it's about helping them build a high-quality life, and this is one of the areas where I try hardest to make a real impact, because I see the struggle firsthand. After decades of working with athletes, there's a challenge I see among female athletes today that I've grown increasingly concerned about.

Today's female athlete is trying to live in two worlds.

In one world, she's an athlete. Her body is being asked to train hard, get stronger, skate faster, recover between workouts, build muscle, compete, concentrate, sleep, manage school and perform at a high level. That body requires fuel.

But there's another world she's living in at the exact same time — the world of Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and an almost constant stream of pictures, videos and comparisons. She's not only thinking about how she's going to perform in tomorrow's game. She may also be thinking about how she's going to look in tomorrow's post.

And those two worlds can create an incredibly difficult conflict: I want to fuel like an elite athlete. But I'm afraid that eating more will change how my body looks.

The research backs up that this pressure is real. Social-media use, and appearance-based comparison in particular, has been linked to body-image concerns, eating-disorder symptoms and internalizing mental-health struggles among adolescents. But researchers are also careful to point out that social media doesn't affect every teenager the same way — the type of use, the individual and the context all matter.

That's an important distinction. I'm not blaming social media for every nutrition problem I see. I'm saying that the environment female athletes are growing up in has made an already difficult relationship between food, performance and appearance even more complicated.

What I See as a Coach

Very few athletes walk into my gym and tell me, "I'm restricting calories." That's generally not how this presents itself. Instead, I sit down with an athlete and look at what she's actually eating.

She might be training several days a week, practicing her sport, playing games, trying to develop into an elite athlete. Then we look at her nutrition. She didn't eat breakfast — she wasn't hungry, or eating early makes her stomach uncomfortable.Lunch was small. She grabbed something quickly between school and practice. Protein intake was nowhere near what her training demands. Carbohydrates were inconsistent. Fruits and vegetables were limited. Then she trained for another 60 to 90 minutes.

Nobody deliberately decided to starve an athlete. But when we put the entire day on paper, it becomes obvious: she's asking an elite-level output from a body that isn't receiving elite-level fuel. And that's where education becomes incredibly important.

Her Body Doesn't Know About Instagram

This is something I want every young female athlete to understand: the pressures she's experiencing are real, but her body doesn't understand them. Her physiology wasn't designed around social media — it's concerned with survival, energy availability, reproduction, movement, recovery, and maintaining the biological systems that keep her healthy.

When there isn't enough energy available to support both exercise and normal physiological function, the body has to make adjustments. Sports medicine calls this low energy availability, or LEA. When it becomes prolonged or severe enough, it can contribute to Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, or REDs. The IOC identifies potential consequences including impaired energy metabolism, reproductive function, musculoskeletal health, immunity, glycogen synthesis, cardiovascular health and psychological functioning — along with increased injury risk and decreased performance.

That's why simply eating less isn't a good long-term strategy for becoming a better athlete, or for building the healthy, strong, lean body many athletes actually want.

The Female Body Will Protect Itself

One of the most important systems involved in energy availability is the brain. The hypothalamus helps regulate appetite, reproductive hormones, body temperature and a host of other physiological processes. When energy availability stays inadequate, the body can alter endocrine signaling and reproductive function as part of its response.

For a female athlete, menstrual changes can be an important warning sign — not something to celebrate because "I'm training so hard I lost my period." Losing a cycle because of inadequate fueling isn't a badge of being fit. It's a signal worth paying attention to.

Low energy availability has also been associated with impaired bone health, which is especially concerning during adolescence and early adulthood — the years when young women are building bone mass that matters far beyond their athletic careers. I'm not just trying to build great 16-year-old athletes at Kaifas Athlete Development. I'm trying to help build healthy 30-, 40-, 50- and 60-year-old women. The behaviors athletes learn now can follow them for decades.

Eating More Doesn't Automatically Mean Gaining Fat

This is probably the biggest mental hurdle I encounter. An athlete hears, "You need to eat more." What she sometimes interprets is, "You're going to gain body fat." Those are not the same statement.

If an athlete is consistently underfueling, cutting food further isn't a sustainable body-composition strategy. Adequate nutrition lets her train harder, replenish glycogen, recover, maintain or build lean tissue, and support the physiological systems that let her adapt to training — and muscle matters enormously to the athletic appearance many girls are actually trying to achieve.

She can't ask her body to build a stronger, more powerful, more athletic version of herself while continually refusing to provide the materials and energy required to build it. The goal isn't eat everything, and it isn't eat as little as possible. It's this: eat enough of the right foods to support what her body is being asked to become.

And here's the irony in all of it: if a girl eats to properly fuel and recover, giving her body the right amount of calories to train and adapt the way it's supposed to, she'll often end up lean and strong as a byproduct — which is usually the exact look she was afraid eating more would take away from her.

Breakfast: Training the Body to Accept Fuel

Breakfast is one of the biggest struggles I see. Many female athletes genuinely tell me, "I'm just not hungry in the morning," or "If I eat that early, I feel sick." I believe them. I'm not interested in telling an athlete that what she's feeling isn't real.

But discomfort with breakfast doesn't necessarily mean permanently avoiding morning nutrition is the best solution. Eating patterns can be trained like any other habit. Start small — a smoothie may be easier than a plate of eggs and oatmeal. Greek yogurt and fruit may feel better than a large meal. A banana, toast and a protein source might be an achievable first step. Then gradually build from there.

For an athlete with persistent nausea, abdominal pain, significant bloating or other GI symptoms, though, the answer shouldn't simply be "force yourself to eat." That's something worth discussing with a parent and an appropriate healthcare professional.

The Gut and the Brain Are Connected

There's another part of this conversation female athletes need to hear: gut health isn't separate from overall health. The gastrointestinal system communicates bidirectionally with the brain through what's commonly called the gut-brain axis. Stress can affect digestion, and gastrointestinal distress can affect quality of life and psychological well-being.

Interestingly, inadequate energy availability itself can be associated with GI problems. Research in female athletes has linked low energy availability with symptoms including constipation, diarrhea and altered gastric emptying, and female athletes commonly report exercise-associated GI symptoms in general.

That can create a frustrating cycle: she doesn't eat because her stomach doesn't feel good → she continues underfueling → inadequate fueling may contribute to GI problems → eating becomes even more difficult. The solution isn't always simply "eat more." It's figuring out how to fuel better, gradually and consistently, while addressing persistent GI problems when necessary.

Nutrition Journals Should Show Her How Little She's Actually Eating

I want my athletes to use nutrition journals differently. What I typically see isn't an athlete trying to eat less on purpose — it's an athlete who looks at her day on paper and genuinely doesn't realize how little she's eaten. That's the real problem the journal can solve. Used correctly, it gives her a value system: a way to see firsthand just how little fuel she's actually taking in, where she's falling short on protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats, and where she needs to add more, not less.

The journal becomes an educational tool rather than a punishment. It's not about perfection. It's about awareness.

Protein Matters — But So Do Carbohydrates and Fat

I constantly see athletes eating far less protein than they need. But I don't want this to turn into "eat protein and everything is fixed." Female athletes need all three macronutrients. Protein supplies amino acids necessary for muscle repair and remodeling. Carbohydrates are a critical fuel for high-intensity exercise and help replenish muscle glycogen. Dietary fat supplies energy, essential fatty acids and supports numerous physiological processes. Micronutrients matter too — particularly ones female athletes often struggle to get enough of, like iron, calcium and vitamin D.

That's why I'm much more interested in an athlete learning to build balanced meals than obsessing over a single calorie number. For protein specifically, I like to see athletes targeting around 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, depending on the athlete, sport, training load and goals. For a 130-pound athlete, that's roughly 130 grams per day. Some athletes may appropriately need more or less, but nutrition should be individualized rather than turning one number into another rule girls feel obligated to chase.

Preparation Beats Willpower

Most nutrition failures I see aren't failures of discipline. They're failures of preparation. She wakes up late. She doesn't eat. She goes to school. Practice starts immediately afterward. There's nothing packed. Now it's 6:30 p.m., she's trained for two hours, and she's barely fueled herself.

That's why one of the best nutrition strategies has nothing to do with biochemistry: look at tomorrow before tomorrow gets here. Prepare breakfast. Pack lunch. Have a pre-training snack available. Know what comes after training. Keep foods on hand that the stomach tolerates. Meal prep when necessary. Build in enough time in the morning that eating isn't an emergency.

Elite nutrition isn't about creating a perfect diet. It's about creating repeatable behaviors.

Creatine and the Female Athlete

There's one supplement I think deserves special attention: creatine monohydrate. It's one of the most extensively studied sports supplements available, and there are interesting reasons it deserves particular attention in women.

A review examining creatine across the female lifespan reported sex-related differences in creatine metabolism and described lower endogenous creatine stores in females than males. Researchers have proposed that creatine supplementation may be particularly relevant to female physiology, although female-specific research still lags behind the enormous body of work done in men.

For female athletes, creatine may support strength and power development, repeated high-intensity exercise, training adaptations and lean tissue development. There's also growing interest in creatine's potential effects on brain energy metabolism, cognition and mood, particularly in women — though that research is still developing and shouldn't be presented as a treatment for mental-health conditions.

And importantly: creatine is not a steroid. It doesn't make a female athlete masculine, and it isn't a fat-gain supplement. Creatine can increase intracellular water within muscle, particularly when beginning supplementation — that's different from gaining body fat.

For adults, a simple, commonly studied approach is 3–5 grams of creatine monohydrate every day. It doesn't need to be cycled. Consistency matters more than timing. A loading phase can saturate muscle creatine more quickly, but it isn't necessary. For athletes under 18, supplementation decisions should involve the athlete's parent or guardian, and ideally a sports dietitian or healthcare professional who understands the athlete's health, diet and training.

Creatine needs to stay in its proper place: an athlete cannot supplement her way out of underfueling. Creatine is the finishing touch. Food is the foundation.

What I Want My Female Athletes to Understand

I'm not asking female athletes to stop caring about how they look. That wouldn't be realistic. I'm asking them to understand their bodies well enough that fear doesn't control how they fuel them.

I see the pressure. I understand why it's difficult. And I understand why eating more can sometimes feel like moving away from the body an athlete wants. But physiologically, chronically underfueling an athletic body can move her away from many of the things she's actually trying to accomplish: strength, muscle, energy, recovery, health, confidence, performance — and ultimately, a strong and athletic physique.

Her body isn't her enemy. It's the vehicle through which she's asking herself to accomplish some extraordinary things. Feed it accordingly.

A Different Goal

At Kaifas Athlete Development, my responsibility can't end with making athletes faster, stronger or more explosive. I need to teach athletes how to take care of the body producing that performance.

That means helping female athletes develop a healthier relationship with food. Helping them understand their physiology. Teaching them to fuel rather than fear food. Teaching them to prepare. Teaching them to listen to their bodies without letting every uncomfortable feeling dictate their behavior. And teaching them that nutrition isn't something they endure while they're athletes — it's a skill they're developing for life.

Because eventually the games end. The practices stop. The uniform gets put away. But the relationship an athlete builds with her body and with food can stay with her for the rest of her life.

So my message to every female athlete I work with is simple: I see the world she's trying to navigate. I understand the pressure. But no athlete should starve the one she's trying to become in order to satisfy the image she thinks she's supposed to be.

Fuel her. Build her. Take care of her. She has a lot more important things to accomplish.