Dr. Vonda Wright

So I'd never be a skinny little runner.

And my running economy is a little bit off because of where I build muscle versus not.

So not everyone is meant to be a long distance runner.

And there are some that are meant to be long distance runners.

So if we're talking about your friends who are like super skinny, are they economically viable for being a long distance runner?

Possibly.

But we also have to look, are they male or female?

What is their injury rate?

What is their fueling?

And then for me, I'd want to see the DEXAs of the women that are just training long distance and super skinny, because most of the time we see a higher visceral fat

in and around the organs as we're talking about, even though on the outside they look super lean, but they have a really high percentage of visceral fat because of the inflammation, the low energy intake, and most likely estradiol suppression.

If we talk about the evolutionary biological theories, and there are a lot of sociologists that will counter when I'm getting ready to say, so I'll apologize in advance.

When we look at original hunter-gatherer type communities, the male body was designed to go out to find the calories.

The woman body was designed to stay and take care of the offspring and make sure that home was set.

If it was low calorie, menstrual cycle would stop because you didn't want to reproduce in a time of low calories.

Body fat would come on because there weren't a lot of calories.

Exactly.

An energy deficit.

So with the male body, and we see this, their brain and hypothalamus is not as sensitive to those nutrient deficits as much as a woman's body because we have menstrual cycle and menstrual cycle function.

A man will lean up and get more cognitively focused in times of low calorie intake.