Whether you exercise for fun, or in competitive situations, you should understand the important role nutrition plays in fitness. This useful new text focuses on nutrition as it specifically relates to female athletes. It addresses topics of major importance to women in sports, coaches, trainers, sports nutritionists, and physicians. Each chapter is a "mini-course" on a particular aspect of nutrition. Subjects include the nutritional practices of female athletes; the requirements for carbohydrates, proteins, and fats; details on vitamins and minerals, with special emphasis on the nutrients of importance to female athletes; the role of water and electrolytes, including prevention of dehydration and guidelines for optimal fluid replacement; body weight and composition; factors affecting energy balance; how to achieve a healthy competitive weight, and an overview of eating disorders in athletes, including definitions and diagnostic criteria, prevalence, risk factors, and effects on health and performance.

Designed to address the nutritional needs of women over the age of 18 who partake in sports on a regular basis, Nutrition and the Female Athlete: From Research to Practice highlights nutritional concerns specific to active women. It discusses the link between nutrition and athletic performance and translates research into practical applications for health, fitness, and nutrition professionals. The book addresses gender differences in substrate utilization and the implications for how these differences might translate into different macronutrient requirements for female athletes. It covers vitamins and minerals that are often lacking in the diets of female athletes and presents special considerations for individuals with disordered eating, menstrual dysfunction, and low bone-mineral density.

“Dr. Sims realizes that female athletes are different than male athletes and you can’t set your race schedule around your monthly cycle. ROAR will help every athlete understand what is happening to her body and what the best nutritional strategy is to perform at her very best.”—Evie Stevens, Olympian, professional road cyclist, and current women’s UCI Hour record holder Women are not small men. Stop eating and training like one. Because most nutrition products and training plans are designed for men, it’s no wonder that so many female athletes struggle to reach their full potential. ROAR is a comprehensive, physiology-based nutrition and training guide specifically designed for active women. This book teaches you everything you need to know to adapt your nutrition, hydration, and training to your unique physiology so you can work with, rather than against, your female physiology. Exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist Stacy T. Sims, PhD, shows you how to be your own biohacker to achieve optimum athletic performance. Complete with goal-specific meal plans and nutrient-packed recipes to optimize body composition, ROAR contains personalized nutrition advice for all stages of training and recovery. Customizable meal plans and strengthening exercises come together in a comprehensive plan to build a rock-solid fitness foundation as you build lean muscle where you need it most, strengthen bone, and boost power and endurance. Because women’s physiology changes over time, entire chapters are devoted to staying strong and active through pregnancy and menopause. No matter what your sport is—running, cycling, field sports, triathlons—this book will empower you with the nutrition and fitness knowledge you need to be in the healthiest, fittest, strongest shape of your life.

Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach and drawing on the experience of experts in their respective fields, this unique book presents and discusses an array of topics relevant to the ever-growing population of pediatric, adolescent and young adult female athletes. Each topic is clearly defined and includes epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment and future directions. Opening chapters discuss growth and development, sports nutrition, resistance training, and psychological considerations for the young female athlete, with a chapter focusing on the female athlete triad. Later chapters present injuries and management strategies common to the young female athlete, such as overuse injuries, spondylolysis, hip and ACL injuries, concussion, and cardiovascular complications. The concluding chapter considers the benefits of physical activity for chronic disease prevention later in life. The Young Female Athlete provides useful, up-to-date information for any practitioner treating this active population, encouraging sports participation with fitness, injury prevention, personal growth, and long-term health.

This is the first book of its kind to focus solely on the female athlete triad - its origins, its recognition, and most importantly, its management. Since the symptoms themselves cover a range of medical specialties, chapters are written by experts in a number of relevant fields - sports medicine, orthopedics, endocrinology, and pediatrics - with an eye toward overall care of the young female athlete. Additionally, each chapter includes suggestions on how to educate and communicate with young athletes and their parents, as well as trainers and coaches, on how to manage the illness outside of the direct clinical setting. The female athlete triad is often seen in sports where low body weight is emphasized, such as gymnastics, figure skating, and running, though it can appear in any sport or activity. The interrelated symptoms - eating disorders, amenorrhea, and low bone mass - exist on a spectrum of severity and are serious and potentially life-threatening if not properly treated. Psychological problems, in addition to medical ones, are not uncommon. The Female Athlete Triad: A Clinical Guide discusses all of these areas for a well-rounded and in-depth approach to the phenomenon and will be a useful reference for any clinician working with female athletes across the lifespan.

It is well-established, through extensive peer-reviewed published research, that physical activity and exercise training can impact the reproductive endocrine system of women. This ground-breaking, comprehensive title presents a range of unique insights into the opposite question: how the reproductive endocrine system of women affects their exercise ability. More precisely, the thematic question explored in this work is: if exercise affects reproductive hormones, conversely then could the reproductive hormones have physiological effects unrelated to reproduction that influence the capacity of women to exercise? In exploring this question, the goal is to better understand the unique physiology of women and whether female sex hormones might account for some of the variance in physiological performance between amenorrheic and eumenorrheic women, and within women across the age span as they experience menarche to menopause. Sex Hormones, Exercise and Women: Scientific and Clinical Aspects synthesizes the research by exploring the physiology and psychology behind these occurrences. This novel title will not only be of interest to researchers, exercise scientists, graduate students, and clinicians; it will also serve as a source of valuable information for female athletes and their trainers in the context of preparing for competitions.