Olympic Marathoner Shows REDs Affects Men, Too

We wanted to share this article and video recently released by Runner's World and Olympic Marathoner with On Running, Jake Riley, since it serves as such a powerful example of how easily RED-S can occur in any athlete, at any time. We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments or questions below.

Key quotes:

It took us a long time to figure it out, because I didn't change my diet that drastically. It was mostly just cutting out sodas and desserts. After talking it through with a nutritionist, it turned out that I was probably never eating enough carbohydrates to begin with. Looking back at my career, I've had dips of performance and I was probably in a similar caloric deficit then, but just didn't know it,

You kind of expect to be fatigued during marathon training, but eventually it just comes to a point where it's extreme.

I've always been a little bit heavier than most of the people I'm competing against. It's relatively common when you're talking to other runners to see that people are very particular about what they're eating. You hear the comments about having to earn dessert, or you get side-eyed when you order a big breakfast. So I had the perception that whatever I was doing was not what a typical runner would do and therefore, by not modifying. my diet, I was leaving potential on the table.

I justified it by saying "I'm not going extreme here. I'm not skipping meals. I'm not going hungry". Most of the meals I was eating looked like normal meals, it was just not as much as I was eating before.