How Does Nutrition Affect Athletic/ Performance?

I was in my nutrition & performance class (I'm an exercise science major) and we came across this slide. I thought I would share a little about what my class went over on the differences about not eating enough and eating too much. ** This applies to all populations, not just athletes looking to perform **

Many of us want to live healthy and perform better on a day to day basis, whether its in a sport, the gym or just be able to do every day activities. THIS IS FOR EVERYONE, NOT JUST ATHLETES!

MALNUTRITION:
This can be either underrating or overeating! (undernutrition/over-nutrition)

Undernutrition: (not enough nutrients/calories) Lets say we are an individual looking to lose weight. AND, we are underrating, this is where things go wrong....

- Energy: If we do not eat enough and deprive our body of nutrients, we are lacking vital nutrients, minerals and nutrients that allow our body's to use towards energy and keep up feeling well and alert all day. This is not good, especially if you're an athlete (actually all of this is not good, but you get the point).

- Metabolism: Given that we aren't eating enough, our metabolism starts to freak out. We start to gain weight (metabolism slows down) as the body realizes that we aren't feeding it adequate nutrients and we go into "starvation mode", so the body holds on to whatever it already has. If this is kept up, eventually the body starts to eat away at fat and valuable muscle mass (proteins) to keep organs working. This then turns into an eating disorder and the body turns on itself, losing large amounts of weight. 

- Enzymes: These guys are responsible for helping up build up tissues (muscles, other enzymes, etc). If we under-eat, there enzymes are not being made and are starting to diminish. If we are working out on top of not eating enough calories, we are just adding to the down hill spiral...

Overeating: (way too many nutrients/calories) Lets say we are an individual who is very small/hard gainer, looking to increase size in body composition. BUT we consume way too many calories (grand majority, unhealthy calories).

- Physiology: Disruption of normal physiological processes. This is a complicated, very detailed bit. So, lets just say we are eating are amounts of unhealthy foods such as pizza, burgers, fast food in general. (very bad thing to do, to gain weight...healthy weight). This disrupts the body ability to metabolize or consume large amounts of nutrients, leading to certain complications that can turn into disease and eventually death. Ex: consuming large mounts of protein will cause your body's pH balance to change and poison itself. Or consuming large amounts of sugar, over time, diabetes can be a metabolic disease that can arise due to your body's inability to metabolize sugars property. 

- Body Composition: This is where our appearance starts to change. We gain weight but its all fat mass that we gained. We are not happy with how we look. This is due to over consumption of calories and not being active enough.
NOTE: eating large amounts of heathy foods, is STILL an over consumption of calories and WILL result is unwanted weight gained. Not beaches the food is healthy, doesn't mean you can eat and eat and eat, you will still gain weight with healthy foods. That is why gradual increases in calories is recommended and not a sudden spike in caloric intake.

I know this is a long read, but it is very useful information. At least it lets you know and you are more aware of how not to go about losing or gaining weight. I am even guilty of some of this, we aren't just born knowing all this information. Its important to know what is wrong so that we can adjust and try a healthier route.