#Nikki cross weight loss full

My thought process was that if I consistently ate less than I needed, I would be faster, leaner and stronger. I’m sure if they did, and if I was given information to help me understand my body at an earlier age, I’m sure it wouldn’t have gone as far as it did. No one ever said I shouldn’t diet, no one ever asked if I was healthy, no one asked if I had a period. I didn’t know of the health or performance consequences, I just thought I was doing my best to be the best I could be. I had no idea what I was doing, I hadn’t recognised any of the negative effects I was experiencing. More than my happiness, more than my training, and most importantly more than my health.

I thought that to be the best rider I could, power-to-weight mattered more than anything. My behaviour around food, consistent injuries, mood swings, lack of periods – pretty much every symptom there was, I had it. It wasn’t until the months after I had given birth to my little girl that I finally realised what I was experiencing during racing were symptoms related to and more than likely, RED-S.

I had a real understanding of what it took to train, fuel, and recover in order to perform. By that point, and luckily for me, I had found enough help to finish my career happy, healthy, with a regular period, and at the top of sport. Nikki Brammeier after finishing seventh at Koppenbergcross Belgium in 2018. I knew at points I had a disordered way of thinking about food, but when the majority of your peers have the same thoughts and habits it all becomes normal. Over time, my relationship with training and fuelling became unbalanced.

It was never me asking what I could eat to improve my performance it was always weight I was thinking of.

#Nikki cross weight loss full

I never had full support or enough understanding for any of it to matter. RED-S is defined by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as “impaired physiological functioning caused by relative energy deficiency and includes, but is not limited to, impairments of metabolic rate, menstrual function, bone health, immunity, protein synthesis and cardiovascular health.” The underlying factor leading to this impairment is low energy availability (LEA), where an athlete has inadequate energy available to meet basic physiological needs.ĭuring my career I only ever had snippets of information on fuelling. The warning signs were all there, and yet I still didn’t realise I had RED-S until my career was over. In all honesty, I don’t even think I knew what it was.

Below she tells the story of her career in relation to her health, and more specifically, her experience with RED-S. One of the topics Nikki has been open about is body composition and the over-hyped desire to be skinny without considering the ramifications. In the years since her retirement, she has been open about the various struggles that accompany racing at the top of the sport. She stepped away from racing in 2019 when she gave birth to her daughter. Brammeier also rode for Team GB at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games in 2016.Īfter leaving Boels-Dolmans in 2017, Brammeier started her own cyclocross project Mudiiita with the goal of encouraging the growth of cyclocross in the UK. On the road side Brammeier rode for the top team in the world, Boels-Dolmans, in 20 where she predominantly rode in support of Lizzie Deignan. Her cyclocross palmares includes four British national titles, fourth overall in the World Cup standings in 2017-2018, third overall in 2015-2016 with a win in Namur that year, and too many podium finishes to count. Nikki Brammeier raced professionally both on the road and in cyclocross.