With dreams of becoming a starter for her college basketball team, Beth trained harder than ever the summer entering her sophomore year. She hadn't played as much as she would have liked her freshmen year and her coach had mentioned that if she could become a better runner and loose some body fat, she had a chance to start the next year. She needed to be thinner and be able to run up and down the floor with the rest of the girls. .
During the summer, Beth trained twice a day. She was determined to start, to impress the coach. It was almost an obsession to her. At six in the morning Beth ran 3-4 miles, jumped rope for 20 minutes and did abdominal exercises. Keep in mind, she did all of this extraneous exercise on an empty stomach hoping to burn excess calories and body fat. She only wanted lean muscle, no flabby skin. On her way out the door to work, Beth finally grabbed a small bite to eat: yogurt (fat-free), a piece of fruit, and a bottle of water. When she got off work in the afternoons, Beth rushed to the gym to lift weights, go through agility circuits, and shoot around in the gym. She usually stayed there for 2-3 hours. By the time Beth returned home it was usually around eight in the evening, and she was exhausted. Sometimes she was so exhausted she went to bed without dinner. When she did eat, it was a baked potato and salad "no bread because it had too many carbohydrates, and no red meat because of the fat content. Beth ate two meals a day, if that is what you call them. They hardly fit her nutritional needs for the amount of exercising she did. .
As summer came to a close, Beth had developed an excruciating pain in her shins from running so much, her face was unusually puffy and dry, and she was always tired. Weird she thought, but she went along with her regular exercise routines. She knew that she was physically fit and would definitely impress the coach. At a towering 6'1, Beth went from 1701b to 1451b and lost 5% body fat (21%-16%).
