No, in my opinion and personal experience, food has very little to do with it.
What i talk about, when i say “lifting heavy” is not the actual exercise or fact of being in the gym, but the total strain on the nervous system. You see, people can be completely demolished just working in an office. But if they are easily triggered and stress a bit more than an average person, plus they have problems at home, their sleep sucks or they have sleep apnea, they can experience all the same overtraining symptoms.
Food, unless is like way too little or way too much, has nothing to do with nervous system. In fact, i believe that eating in a surplus puts a strain on a digestive system, which is very large organ system in our body, which also ads to the CNS fatigue.
Similar like when people get massive burns. If you look closely, you will understand that actual burns cant kill people. They are mostly a problem to the layers of the skin, BUT…if the burn is massive enough, people die. They dont die because their heart is burned or their organs are burned. They die, because skin is sensitive, and the CNS goes into the shock because of the large area that is now producing pain, and has to be repaired, which strains the CNS and it basically just throws an Error and shuts off.
The CNS adapts very little or not at all. That is why when people start to train they can deadlift every day, but when they get super strong, they sometimes deadlift super rare. The CNS is the same, but the person is strong enough to lift 10 times as much, so the damage to the CNS is 10 times as much.
Eating more recovers muscle, but in a way it also strains the organ system. Being heavier than you were supposed to - also does it. Every muscle that has to be moved and triggered when you lift, is controlled by nervous system.
Basically the more it has to do, the more it is fucked.
In many ancient cultures, fasting was a way to go, when you felt sick.
In fact, how do you know that an animal is feeling bad? It stops eating. When you dont eat, you preserve the energy that is wasted on digestion.
The part i said about how i felt before powerlifting, i was shredded. I was single digit bodyfat, i have tons of pics which i also have posted many times. I fasted. And most time i was in a caloric deficit.
I believe that eating less might be less stress. And i also think that cardio stuff strains us less than lifting weights, because we as a species were ment to do “cardio” in nature, but we were never ment to lift heavy.
I am not saying this is 100% true, but going by my personal experience - my levels of energy, my sleep, my libido, my agression - all went downhill the bigger and stronger i got. I ate more, i even upped the drugs, introduced growth hormone. It does very little for the “feeling good” being energic and having agressive libido.
There is also one thing to consider. Bodybuilders complain about this much more rarely than strength athletes. Which again, goes back to lifting heavy.
Idk if any of you have had this but i have - after hitting a new PR on a deadlift, i get depressed for 2-3 days, sometimes go down with flu like sypthoms. I almost never got sick when i was fighting 2-3 times a day, always banged up, etc.
