We previously spoke with Carbs Fuel Athletes, Alex, Cécile, Mimi, and Adrian. Their insights emphasized how important it is to still fuel their workouts during the off-season, but also how their fueling methods varied during this period and how the psychological component influences their fuel choices. For part two, we chatted with Claire Shorenstein (MS, RD, CSSD) and Chris Lowe (MS, BS), both professionals in the sports nutrition space. They will provide their insights on approaching off-season fueling with considerations for fuel choice selection, carbohydrate intake, experimenting with fueling strategies, as well as weight and macronutrient management.
Are the approaches to fueling workouts different during the off-season versus the race season?
Claire: Nutrition often looks a bit different in the off-season, but it really depends on the individual athlete. Is your training volume actually lower, or have you just switched sports? While many of my clients do take some time off immediately post race, they usually resume exercise not long after. Don’t make the mistake of thinking “I’m not racing” and neglect your everyday and performance nutrition, if you’re still working hard in other athletic endeavors. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing different sports. Always fuel the work you’re doing.
Chris: Not really. An athlete’s diet must support training quality. To ensure an athlete maximizes training-quality, they must fuel the work they’re doing by meeting their energy and carbohydrate demands. This is the definition of periodized nutrition. Athletes will have training sessions of varying training modalities, durations and intensities. Therefore, it’s vital that an athlete’s nutrition and fueling strategy is aligned to the outcome of that session, regardless of the time of year.
Carbs Fuel TLDR: Regardless of the time of season, always fuel your workouts to meet your body’s energy demands and maintain training quality.
Fuel choice during the off-season: should an individual still take gels, drink mixes, or are solid foods better?
Claire: Just because it’s the off season doesn't mean you should start avoiding sports nutrition products. You may still be going hard and/or long, which calls for intra-workout fueling. You can incorporate “real” or solid food into your fueling plan if that works for you, but gels, drink mixes, and other sports nutrition products are easy, convenient, and highly effective too. That doesn’t change just because you’re not racing. What you choose to do will depend on your individual preference, tolerance, sport, and intensity. Many of my clients use a combination of products and foods year-round, especially when training for ultra-endurance events. The bottom line with all of this is that you have to figure out what works best for you, in a wide variety of scenarios. You don’t get a medal for skipping gels and eating “real” food during exercise.
Chris: Fuel choice during a session is dictated by personal preference, gut tolerability and intensity. During the race season, athletes will bias formulated products such as carb powder, gels and chews as they are typically easier to consume and tolerate when working at higher intensities. However, when the intensity is lower, and carbohydrate requirements are less, athletes often bias semi-solid and solid foods, such as energy/cereal bars, dried fruit, fruit, rice cakes or sweets (candy). Since an athletes training program will include more base miles during the off-season, they’ll by default, favor solid-based fueling products. There’s no right or wrong when choosing fueling products, let personal preference dictate what fueling products you choose.
Carbs Fuel TLDR: Fuel choice during a session should be guided by intensity, duration, and gut tolerance regardless of the time of season. However, this decision is ultimately a personal choice; choose the type of fuel that works best for you.
Should individuals consume less carbs during their off-season training?
Claire: Carb intake should always match your training volume and intensity, no matter what time of year it is, because carbs are the body’s preferred energy source for exercise. Higher training volume and exercise intensity both drive up your carb needs. Carbs are also crucial for good health. Matching your carb intake to your individual needs helps to preserve muscle mass, protect your bones, promote iron, absorption, regulate hormone function, provide a primary energy source to the brain, maintain GI function, and influence heart health, among other things. If you’re putting in fewer hours in the off-season, then yes, you may not need quite as many carbs per day as you did while in season. But if you’re training around the same amount as before, you still need a lot of carbs. For reference, endurance athletes typically need anywhere from 5-12 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight per day, depending on training, intensity, and duration. Since that is a huge range, here’s how you can break that down further:
- Low training volume/intensity (0-60min/day of easy effort): 3-4g/kg of carbs per day
- Moderate volume/intensity (~1-2 hr/day of easy effort or <60min of high intensity): 5-7g/kg carbs per day
- High volume/intensity (~2-3 hr/day of easy-effort or 1-2hr of high intensity): 6-8g/kg carbs per day
- Carb loading or very high volume/intensity: 8-12g/kg carbs per day
The main takeaway is that the more you train, the more carbs (and overall energy and other nutrients) your body needs.
Chris: Fueling during a session is largely determined by the duration and intensity of the session: the greater the intensity or duration, the greater the fueling and carbohydrate need. Therefore, if off-season training has a lower fueling demand due to doing more base miles, the carbohydrate need is less. But, of course, this is in relation to an athletes’ output, as elite cyclists, for example, can still be expend well above 800kcal per hour even when the relative intensity is low. Meaning, they’ll need more fuel compared to an amateur cyclist doing half the amount of work/output.
Athletes may also include fasted training, or training with low carbohydrate availability (train low) to amplify training adaptation during the off-season. However, training with reduced muscle glycogen levels before, during and after training is perhaps unwise and questionable for most as it could greatly impact the quality of the next training session. Resulting in less work completed over the week due to heightened fatigue levels, resulting in smaller performance gains. Additionally, if carbohydrate intake is significantly reduced during the winter months, their susceptibility to illness increases, resulting in less training time completed throughout a training block, which is ultimately the most important factor for progression.
Carbs Fuel TLDR: You should still fuel with carbohydrates during the off-season. However, match the amount of carbohydrates you consume during this time with the duration and intensity of the workout. Also, consider the negative impacts of training without carbohydrates or reduced glycogen levels, as this can impact subsequent sessions and overall health.
Is the off-season a good time to experiment with new fueling strategies?
Claire: Absolutely. The off season is a low-pressure time to play around with new products and fueling strategies, so that you can begin your next season feeling more confident and well-fueled. As a starting point, ask yourself where your baseline nutrition and hydration are at, so you can identify areas that need some improvement. For instance, are you hitting 60-90g/hr of carbs during longer training sessions? How many ounces of fluids are you consuming per hour, and how does that compare to your sweat rate? How many milligrams of sodium are you consuming per hour?
Also, consider troubleshooting problems that came up in your past season. Did you struggle with GI issues, cramping, poor recovery, or something else? Are you happy with your nutrition plan or are you looking to change things up and try some new products?If you’ve mastered the fueling basics, you can also play around with performance supplements, like caffeine or other well-researched ergogenic aids.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, take a close look at your daily nutrition and lifestyle habits. Do a self-assessment by asking yourself questions like, am I eating every 3-4 hours? How are my energy levels? Am I sleeping well? How is my recovery? How are my moods? Do I have any abnormal labs values in my recent bloodwork? How am I managing stress?
Chris: Yes. Athletes should have 100% clarity and confidence in their race day fueling strategy. Therefore, the off-season provides the perfect opportunity to build their race day fueling plan to identify what works and what doesn’t. Ultimately, athletes don’t want any nasty surprises on race day. With this in mind, athletes should trial different timings, types and amounts of carbohydrates in low-priority training sessions to start formulating their plan. Once they have a good idea of their fueling strategy, they should put this all together in a session that replicates race day demands to gain a more accurate reflection of how it works for them. This is then further refined during season openers and warm-up races to gain a true understanding how their fuelling approach works under competition settings.
Athletes place a huge amount of effort in training and life to ensure they’re in the best shape possible on race day, but often crumble due to their nutrition – use the off-season wisely to ensure this mistake isn’t repeated in 2026.
Carbs Fuel TLDR: Trying new fueling strategies during the off-season provides the time and opportunity to ensure that your race day nutrition is effective, tried, and true. It allows you to try new products and formats of fuels without negatively impacting your races.
How should someone approach fueling their workouts and weight loss during the off-season? Should my macronutrient intake change during the off-season?
Claire: If you’re aiming to lose weight or change body composition, off-season is the time to do it. For most people, it isn’t the best idea to directly work on weight loss or body composition changes during a training cycle, as this can increase your risk of low energy availability which in turn negatively impacts performance and health. You should still approach weight loss cautiously during the off-season, and consider first focusing on identifying and improving any existing nutritional gaps and also looking at diet quality to see how your body responds to these changes. This is especially true if you are still training consistently, as you don’t want to risk injury or other negative impacts by creating too much of an energy deficit.
If you are trying to lose weight, you should still be fueling your workouts adequately. Do not skimp on intra-workout fueling (i.e. before, during and after). Think of this nutrition as an investment in how that session will go, as well as how you recover for the next session and also how you will feel the rest of the day to live your life.
Where you can likely tweak things would be at other points in your eating day. Consider things like, am I getting enough fiber in my diet (at least 25g for women, and 38g for men)? Am I eating a variety of plant foods, including fruits, veggies, nuts/seeds, and beans/legumes? Am I eating consistently, so that I am not reaching any extremes in hunger or fullness? Am I including whole and minimally processed foods, and saving more processed items for when I need/want them (e.g. convenience, sports nutrition, etc)? Am I eating slowly and chewing my food, so that I can digest what I eat properly?
Additionally, make sure you’re focused on lifestyle factors, such as sleep and stress. These things affect nutrition decisions, mood, appetite, and athletic performance, among other things.
Also, if you are trying to lose weight, weight loss should be VERY slow, as that minimizes risks. Continue to support your training with adequate carbs, but also keep protein high (and perhaps go higher than you were during your training cycle, e.g. 2-2.2g protein per kg bodyweight) to help preserve lean body mass. Either way, please remember that if your goal is to improve performance, there are SO many factors that affect performance beyond just weight and body comp. You should always make sure your everyday and performance nutrition is dialed in first.
Chris: Weight loss can only occur when an individual is in a calorie deficit. The greater the calorie deficit, the greater the compromise to health, well-being and performance. Therefore, being too lean or going too aggressive with a calorie deficit is highly discouraged. So, if an athlete has identified that being leaner will benefit their performance, they must start early and do it slowly, as last minute crash dieting is the fastest way to ruin their performance and negatively impact their health and quality of life.
Athletes can generally tolerate a calorie deficit better when training intensity is lower, as the higher intensity, higher carbohydrate demanding sessions generate high levels of fatigue and makes hunger difficult to manage. Therefore, adding the stressor of a calorie deficit on top of high intensity training isn’t the best practice. Anecdotally, this makes adherence to a calorie deficit difficult (another reason not to chase weight loss closer to the season).
This places the off-season as the perfect time to pursue body composition goals, once they’ve had ample time to relax and recalibrate from the long race season, as adding a new stressor through a calorie deficit too soon following the season will not allow an athlete to fully alleviate the fatigue from racing.
For a successful weight loss phase to happen, an athlete must find the right balance between eating enough to perform yet restricting enough to drop body fat. This is determined by the size of the calorie deficit and rate of weight loss. Of which, it’s recommended that athletes aim to follow a calorie deficit that facilitates a 0.5-1% drop in body weight (via body fat) on average each week. So, an 80kg athlete would aim to lose 0.4-0.8kg per week on average, placing them in a small-moderate energy deficit. As the size of the calorie deficit isn’t overly restricting, they can keep carbohydrate intake reasonably high to drive training performances.
Generally, carbohydrates will be the only macronutrient that changes, which is relative to the fuelling demand for that day. Therefore, regardless of what phase of the year an athlete is in, carbohydrate provision is the main macronutrient that needs modifying from a performance perspective.
That being said, the off-season provides the opportunity to relax and unwind from the stressors of a hard racing season. Therefore, athletes may be more relaxed from time to time with their nutrition. In this case, I’d recommend having a more flexible carbohydrate-fat ratio as this promotes greater food variation and can reduce food focus, not only in off-season, but in lower demanding phases of the season also to keep the head happy. In return, supporting long-term consistency and building a better relationship with food.
Carbs Fuel TLDR: If weight loss is part of your personal and/or fitness goals, the off-season is the best time to do this as the associated challenges are less likely to significantly impact your performance. That said, training in a caloric deficit is going to be an added stressor on the body that can not only slow adaptation, but can increase risk of low energy availability and injury. The approach to weight loss should be done with care with careful consideration for factors such as impacts on training, protein amount intake, rate of loss, and overall health.
Summary
Chris and Claire have provided excellent insight into the approaches to fueling your off-season fueling with consideration for many factors. It is abundantly clear that the tenets of intra-workout fueling do not change because you are in another part of a training cycle. However, it is important to take the time to decompress and allow yourself space to enjoy foods and perhaps break from structured nutrition habits. This provides a psychological break and allows you to maintain a healthy relationship with food.
The information outlined in this blog is meant to be an informative starting point when considering your off-season nutrition. Each individual is unique in their needs and we recommend working with a nutritionist or registered dietitian if you are looking for personalized guidance.
Claire Shorenstein, MS, RD, CSSD: https://www.eatforendurance.com
Chris Lowe, BS, MS: https://chrislowenutrition.com
