SITREP #7: Fuel the Weight

16 hours ago

11 min read

Subject: Our training nutrition guide is out, it is free, and the thing most likely to wreck your build is not the training.

Prepared: 13 October 2026

Status: Fuel the Weight, Edition 1, 2026. Seventeen pages and 100% free.

Bottom line up front

Fuel the Weight is live. It is free, it is seventeen pages, and it was written for this event rather than lifted off an American supplement blog.

Three things to take from it.

The failure mode is under-eating, not overtraining. Ramping up for the Run while eating the same as always, or less, is how people end up flat, sick, injured and going backwards. Your body weight can be perfectly stable while it is happening. The guide calls this out as the failure mode that actually hurts people, and it is the reason the whole thing was written.

Carbohydrate is a dial, not a number. Your food should rise and fall with your training. A rest day does not need what a ninety-minute vest session needs, and Run day needs more than both. Protein stays fairly steady. Fluid follows your sweat.

Nothing new on Run day. Not a new gel, not a new breakfast, not an electrolyte tab a bloke hands you at the start line. Every part of your plan gets rehearsed on a long vest session first.

Two things sit behind this that are worth stating plainly.

50 days is enough, and not a day more. Run day is Saturday 5 December. That is 50 odd days. Your gut is trainable in the same way your legs are, and that time is a comfortable window to practise a fuelling plan properly. It is not enough time to wing it and hope.

Your sweat rate is yours, and you cannot guess it. Fluid needs vary enormously between people. The guide has a one-session test that settles it. Until you do that test, every drinking plan you have is a guess, and the risk runs in both directions: too little and you cook, too much plain water and you dilute your blood sodium, which can kill you.

1. What this guide is, and what it is not

Title	Fuel the Weight, Edition 1, 2026
Length	17 pages
Price	Free
Built for	The Weight of War Run and the 21 km weighted vest programme
Evidence base	Clinical Sports Nutrition (6th ed.), the Australian Dietary Guidelines, and published position statements
Where	weightofwarrun.com/product-page/fuel-the-weight-nutrition-guide

It is general education. It is not a meal plan and it is not medical advice.

If you have a medical condition, take regular medication, have diabetes, are managing your weight under medical care, or have any history of disordered eating, the numbers in the guide are the start of a conversation, not a prescription. Take it to your GP or an Accredited Practising Dietitian and work it out with them.

Veterans: if you hold a Gold Card, or a White Card for an accepted condition where diet is part of the treatment, DVA can fund dietetic services. Start with your GP.

2. The one idea: fuel for the work required

This is the spine of the guide. Carbohydrate targets are set by training load, not by a fixed daily number.

Training load	What that looks like	Carbohydrate
Light	Low intensity or skill work, rest and recovery days	3 to 5 g/kg
Moderate	About an hour a day. Most people on the vest programme live here	5 to 7 g/kg
High	One to three hours a day of moderate to hard work	6 to 10 g/kg
Very high	Four to five hours a day or more	8 to 12 g/kg

Protein is steadier. Around 1.7 g/kg a day on strength and vest work, around 1.9 g/kg through a Run build, spread across the day rather than dumped into one meal. Above roughly 1.7 to 2.0 g/kg, extra protein is mostly burned rather than built into muscle. More is not better.

Why carbohydrate and not something else: it is the main fuel for moderate to hard work, and the tank is small. Roughly 300 to 600 g of glycogen in muscle and 90 to 110 g in the liver. A long vest session empties a serious chunk of that. Cutting carbs because a podcast told you to is a reliable way to train hard and improve slowly.

3. Find your row

The guide pre-works every target from 60 kg to 130 kg so nobody has to do arithmetic. Three rows, to show the shape of it:

Body mass	Carbs, rest or light	Carbs, ~1 h a day	Protein, strength	Protein per meal	Fluid, ~4 h before	2% loss ceiling
70 kg	210 to 350 g	350 to 490 g	~120 g	~21 g	350 to 500 mL	1.4 kg
90 kg	270 to 450 g	450 to 630 g	~155 g	~27 g	450 to 650 mL	1.8 kg
110 kg	330 to 550 g	550 to 770 g	~185 g	~33 g	550 to 750 mL	2.2 kg

Two notes the guide makes that most do not.

Over 50? Older muscle responds less to the same dose of protein. Push your per-meal dose nearer 0.4 g/kg rather than 0.3 g/kg, every three to four waking hours.

Carrying a bit extra? The g/kg ranges were built for athletes and they scale off total body weight. If a fair bit of yours is not muscle and you are not training for hours a day, the top of the carbohydrate range will hand you more energy than you burn. Start at the bottom. The guide shows the arithmetic in the 100 kg worked example.

4. The failure mode: under-eating

This is the part we care about most, so it gets its own section rather than a footnote.

Energy availability is what is left for your body to run itself once training has taken its cut. When that is chronically too low, recovery stalls, muscle protein synthesis at rest drops, hormones get suppressed, you get sick and injured more often, and bone takes a hit. Men get this too. Your weight can be stable the entire time.

Building for a 21 km vest event while eating the way you always have is exactly how people walk into it.

Stop and get it checked if you see:

Constantly flat and tired, sick or injured more often, low libido, training going backwards, losing weight you did not mean to lose
Localised bone pain in the foot, shin or hip that worsens under load and does not settle. Vest work and high mileage on too little fuel is a classic set-up. Stop loading it and see your GP or physio
Rigid food rules, guilt or anxiety around eating, skipping meals to earn food, secrecy, or training to burn off what you ate. It affects men too, and it is far more common than diagnosed eating disorders
Confusion, stumbling, vomiting or collapse during or after long hot sessions. That one is 000

That is the whole point of the vest. If the food, the weight, the drink or your head is getting heavy, put your hand up.

5. Run day, and the sixty days before it

The golden rule: nothing new on Run day. The gut is trainable, the same as your legs, and Run day is the worst possible time to discover it is not ready.

The timeline the guide sets out:

When	What
3 to 4 hours before	Carb-rich, low-fat, low-fibre breakfast you have eaten before a long session. 1 to 2 g/kg for an early start, with 5 to 7 mL/kg of fluid
Just before the start	300 to 400 mL of fluid. A sachet of Alivia Hydration mixed in means you start with sodium on board
During, under 2.5 h	30 to 60 g of carbohydrate an hour
During, 2.5 h or more	60 g/h, up to 90 g/h only if you have practised it, using mixed carb types
After	Fluid 125 to 150% of what you lost over 2 to 4 hours with sodium. Protein ~0.3 g/kg soon after. A proper carb-rich meal

One practical catch worth flagging, because it catches people out. A sugar-free electrolyte, Alivia Hydration included, carries almost no carbohydrate. It is 0.6 g a sachet. It is doing the sodium and fluid job, not the fuel job. Over an hour on your feet you need to pair it with gels, lollies or food. Plan both or you will be well hydrated and completely out of fuel at 15 km.

6. Do the sweat-rate test. It takes one session.

You cannot plan your drinking without knowing your own sweat rate, and you cannot know it without measuring it.

Go to the toilet, then weigh yourself in minimal clothing. Write it down.
Do a normal vest session of about 60 minutes, ideally in conditions like the Run.
Track exactly how much you drink.
Towel off and weigh yourself again in the same clothing, before you drink or go to the toilet.
Sweat loss per hour = weight lost in kg + fluid drunk in litres. One kilogram lost is roughly one litre of sweat.

The guide's 100 kg worked example: 100.0 kg before, 99.1 kg after, 0.6 L drunk. That is 0.9 + 0.6 = 1.5 L of sweat an hour. Over a three-hour Run, 4.5 L. To stay under a 2.0 kg loss, drink at least 2.5 L, about 830 mL an hour. To avoid gaining weight, do not drink more than about 4.5 L.

The risk runs both ways. Losing more than 2% of body mass hurts performance, and more so in the heat. But drinking far more plain water than you sweat, for hours, dilutes the sodium in your blood. Severe cases cause nausea, vomiting, collapse, and can kill. The people most at risk are not the fast ones. They are slower, recreational participants taking a drink at every stop.

Do not finish heavier than you started, and use something with sodium in it. Some medications raise the risk, including some for blood pressure, mood and seizures. If you take regular medication, talk to your GP before the Run.

7. Supplements, and where Alivia actually fits

Food first, always. Supplements are the last one per cent and the industry is poorly regulated. The guide uses the Australian Institute of Sport's framework, which sorts supplements by strength of evidence and risk.

Group	What it means	Examples
A	Strong evidence for use in specific situations	Sports drinks, gels, bars, electrolytes, protein powders. Caffeine, creatine, beta-alanine, bicarbonate, nitrate, glycerol
B	Emerging evidence, research or supervised use only	Collagen, tart cherry, fish oil
C	Little or no meaningful evidence of benefit	BCAAs, glutamine
D	Banned, or high contamination risk. Do not touch	Prohormones, SARMs, DMAA, ephedrine

Alivia Wellness are our Official National Supplement Partner for the Run, and two of their core products sit in Group A. That is not a marketing line, it is where the AIS puts them.

Product	What is in a serve	Where it fits
Creatine Monohydrate	5 g micronised creatine monohydrate per sachet, nothing else	One sachet covers the 3 to 5 g daily dose exactly. AIS Group A. Builds training quality in the gym rather than the Run itself
Hydration	251 mg sodium, plus potassium, magnesium, zinc, vitamin C, B6 and taurine. Sugar-free. Mix with 400 to 600 mL	Long vest sessions, hot days, and rehydrating after. Electrolyte supplements are AIS Group A. No carbs, so pair it with a carb source over an hour
Essential Amino Acids	5 g of all nine essential amino acids, free-form, including leucine	A top-up when a proper feed is not practical. At 5 g it is smaller than a 0.3 g/kg protein meal, so it tops protein up rather than replacing it

The part that matters most, and almost no supplement brand can say it: all four Alivia products are HASTA certified. That means batches are independently screened for substances banned under the World Anti-Doping Code. Supplements sit in a regulatory gap between food and medicine, and products have been found carrying undeclared ingredients and heavy metals. If you are ever drug tested in sport, you are responsible for whatever is in your sample whether you meant it or not. Batch testing is not a nice extra. It is the whole ball game.

Fat burners, testosterone boosters and pre-workouts with proprietary blends are not part of this plan. Get training, sleep and food consistent first. That beats anything on the shelf.

Code WEIGHTOFWAR15 gets you 15% off at Alivia, and sends 15% of the proceeds back to Weight of War. aliviawellness.com/WEIGHTOFWAR15

8. God's Nectar

Yes, there is a beer section. We are not monsters.

The national guideline for healthy adults is no more than 10 standard drinks a week and no more than 4 on any one day. Less is lower risk.

For training specifically: heavy drinking after exercise gets in the way of rehydration, refuelling, sleep and repair. In one study, about 12 standard drinks after training cut muscle protein synthesis by 24% even when protein was eaten alongside it, and by 37% without. You did the hard work. Do not drink the payoff away.

Having one after the Run? Rehydrate and eat a proper meal first, alternate with water, and count them.

Or be like me (Josh), and smash a beer or two on the finish line and don't be afraid of the hell you will go through on Sunday.

9. What Weight of War is asking for

Download the guide. It is free and it is seventeen pages. weightofwarrun.com/product-page/fuel-the-weight-nutrition-guide
Do the sweat-rate test this week. One session. It is the single highest-value hour you will spend before Run day, and it is the only item on this list you cannot buy.
Pick your Run-day breakfast and your on-course fuel now, then practise both. You have 50 days. Use thirty of them rehearsing.
Eat for the work you are doing. If your training has gone up and your food has not, that is the problem, not your legs.
Register. Saturday 5 December 2026, Brisbane, Cronulla, Karratha and Canberra. Free to enter, for everyone. weightofwarrun.com/weight-of-war
If any of section 4 sounds like you, ring someone. GP, an Accredited Practising Dietitian, Open Arms on 1800 011 046, Emergencies are 000.

10. One last thing

A guide about food is a strange thing for a veterans' mental health charity to put out, until you look at what it is actually about.

It is about blokes and women quietly running themselves into the ground, feeling worse every week, and assuming the answer is to train harder and eat less. It is about not knowing a number that takes one hour to measure. It is about the gap between how heavy something feels and how heavy anyone else thinks it is.

Nobody carries it alone. That includes this.

References

Fuel the Weight is referenced throughout and its full reference list is in the guide. The sources below are the ones behind the figures quoted in this SITREP.

Weight of War Ltd. (2026). Fuel the Weight: A training nutrition guide for the Weight of War Run and the weighted-vest programme (Edition 1). https://www.weightofwarrun.com/product-page/fuel-the-weight-nutrition-guide
Burke, L., Deakin, V., & Minehan, M. (Eds.). (2021). Clinical sports nutrition (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education (Australia).
Thomas, D. T., Erdman, K. A., & Burke, L. M. (2016). Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and athletic performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 48(3), 543-568.
Sawka, M. N., Burke, L. M., Eichner, E. R., Maughan, R. J., Montain, S. J., & Stachenfeld, N. S. (2007). American College of Sports Medicine position stand: Exercise and fluid replacement. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 39(2), 377-390.
Moore, D. R., Churchward-Venne, T. A., Witard, O., Breen, L., Burd, N. A., Tipton, K. D., & Phillips, S. M. (2015). Protein ingestion to stimulate myofibrillar protein synthesis requires greater relative protein intakes in healthy older versus younger men. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 70(1), 57-62.
Parr, E. B., Camera, D. M., Areta, J. L., Burke, L. M., Phillips, S. M., Hawley, J. A., & Coffey, V. G. (2014). Alcohol ingestion impairs maximal post-exercise rates of myofibrillar protein synthesis following a single bout of concurrent training. PLoS ONE, 9(2), Article e88384.
Kreider, R. B., et al. (2017). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: Safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14, Article 18.
Maughan, R. J., et al. (2018). IOC consensus statement: Dietary supplements and the high-performance athlete. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(7), 439-455.
Australian Institute of Sport. (n.d.). Sports supplement framework: Group A. Australian Sports Commission. https://www.ausport.gov.au/ais/nutrition/supplements/group_a
HASTA. (n.d.). Certified products. https://hasta.org.au/certified
National Health and Medical Research Council. (2013). Australian dietary guidelines. Commonwealth of Australia.
National Health and Medical Research Council. (2020). Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol. Commonwealth of Australia.
Open Arms - Veterans & Families Counselling. (n.d.). Eat well. Department of Veterans' Affairs. https://www.openarms.gov.au/living-well/eat-well
Alivia Wellness. (n.d.). Creatine monohydrate; Hydration; Essential amino acids; Hydrogen tablets [Product information]. https://aliviawellness.com/

Nothing in this SITREP is medical or dietetic advice. Alivia product descriptions are the manufacturer's. Weight of War Ltd receives a share of proceeds from purchases made with code WEIGHTOFWAR15.

Prepared by Weight of War Ltd. Weight of War Ltd is a registered Australian charity and a public company limited by guarantee (ABN 44 698 550 999, ACN 698 550 999) working in Australian veteran mental health and re-purposing. Donations are not currently tax deductible.