Not eating enough calories can make you feel like you're overtraining, but you can still overtrain even if you're eating enough food and protein.

If athletes don’t eat enough calories or carbs, especially during intense training, they might not recover well—and fixing that could stop them from feeling overly tired or burned out, which people often think is overtraining.

To diagnose overtraining in athletes, doctors need to rule out other health issues like low nutrients, infections, or energy deficiency, because those can cause similar symptoms and often happen at the same time as overtraining.

Not eating enough calories or carbs can lead to serious health and performance problems in athletes, like burnout and hormonal issues.

If athletes train too much and don’t eat enough, they might be misdiagnosed with overtraining when the real issue is low energy from not fueling properly.