Dietary Intake of Endurance Athletes During 12 Weeks of Self-Selected Training: An Observational Study.

Rothschild, JA ORCID: 0000-0003-0014-5878, Morton, JP ORCID: 0000-0003-2776-2542, Stewart, T ORCID: 0000-0001-5915-3843, Kilding, AE ORCID: 0000-0002-5334-8831 and Plews, DJ ORCID: 0009-0006-1528-7907 (2026) Dietary Intake of Endurance Athletes During 12 Weeks of Self-Selected Training: An Observational Study. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. pp. 1-10. ISSN 1526-484X

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Abstract

It is recommended that endurance athletes modulate their daily carbohydrate intake according to the demands of training, but there is limited evidence of how this is currently practiced by athletes during real-world, day-to-day training. The purpose of this observational study was to report the dietary intake of endurance athletes across a 12-week period with an emphasis on the relationship between training load and carbohydrate intake. Self-selected training and dietary intake were self-reported using a smartphone app by 46 endurance athletes (61% male) daily for 12 weeks, representing a total of 3,718 days of dietary assessments and 3,160 days of training. Fasted-state training was regularly performed by 65% of athletes and was more common in men (33.6% vs. 17.2% of training days, p = .023). Average daily carbohydrate intake for each athlete ranged from 1.2 to 7.2 g/kg (M = 3.9 ± 1.5). At the group level, significant correlations were found between mean daily carbohydrate intake and both percentage of training sessions performed in the fasted state (r = -.39, p = .008) and weekly training volume (r = .42, p = .004). Participant-level correlations between daily training load and carbohydrate intake ranged from -.42 to .83. Overall, athletes adjust daily carbohydrate intake based on exercise duration, but at the individual level, many athletes do not align carbohydrate intake with training load as recommended or do so with minimal adjustment.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	athlete self-monitoring; carbohydrate periodization; dietary intake assessment; sports nutrition; 32 Biomedical and Clinical Sciences; 42 Health Sciences; 4207 Sports Science and Exercise; Clinical Research; Nutrition; 1106 Human Movement and Sports Sciences; 1116 Medical Physiology; Sport Sciences; 3210 Nutrition and dietetics; 4207 Sports science and exercise
Subjects:	T Technology > TX Home economics > TX341 Nutrition. Foods and food supply R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC1200 Sports Medicine G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure > GV561 Sports
Divisions:	Sport and Exercise Sciences
Publisher:	Human Kinetics
Date of acceptance:	30 March 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	2 June 2026
Date Deposited:	01 Jun 2026 10:30
Last Modified:	02 Jun 2026 00:50
DOI or ID number:	10.1123/ijsnem.2026-0032
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28685

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