A few weeks ago I was watching a YouTube video of a pretty established CrossFit games athlete. In it they were covering their macros and what they eat in a day.

It was almost identical to me.

I laughed at that parallel, knowing I’m way off in terms of absolute fitness. As a joke told my friend and he went “I mean you probably have a pretty similar training volume and body size so makes sense”.

Which is true! And it made me think how often I assume people who are “less fit” than the people who’s content they consume, or where they want to be, or their own hash criticism may lead them to think “well sure THEY can eat that much. But I’m not that fit … so I don’t need that.”

Your body doesn’t know how your fitness ranks next to everyone else’s. It only knows the stress you put on it. Even if you’re a back or mid of the pack or just getting started In lifting — your lack of fitness won’t dictate you needing less overall calories or food.

The amount will yes — be relative to you, your lean mass, your weight and height and age. BUT ALSO your training volume and frequency and intensity. All which don’t matter less for an intakes sake if you’re “less fit”.

Being less fit may mean less volume and less of a demand for calories/carbs. But it’s not your relative VO2 max or 1RM or Fran time that’s dictating this.

And ignores the fact — it takes calories to get fit. The people that seem to have muscle driven endurance roaring endless metabolisms fueled well + trained hard to get there.

If you’re holding back on basic things like supplementing intelligently, eating more protein, upping your carbs or consuming the calories you need for your activity till you’re “fitter” you’re holding your self back.

Your body need energy to produce energy to recover and make new tissue and keep you moving forward.

Your body only knows stress.

It doesn’t know you’re less fit than anyone else.

& your food intake is far more determined by what + how much + how hard you do it — than how well.