RED-S and cycling: Red flags, role models, and recovery

I’ve tried to be as open as possible about my relationship with food and cycling when the opportunity presents itself. My relationship with my own body weight has been pretty problematic in the past, exacerbated greatly by just believing I was ‘just being a cyclist’. I am happy to say that things are much improved, though I do feel it’s one of those things that is managed rather than ‘cured’. 

I no longer note the caloric expenditure of my riding, and I’m certainly making a more concerted effort to eat better before, during, and after riding. I was however, until recently, unaware of the syndrome/condition/situation knows as RED-S, or relative energy deficiency in sport. The short version is that it is an ongoing imbalance between calorific expenditure and intake; either too much of one, or too little of the other. As you can imagine in a sport like cycling, where regular high calorie output days are often the norm you can see how it might be easy to unexpectedly slip into conditions like this.