Yahoo Sports 
Adam Kreek on why buff Olympic bods do not last — and the risks to athletes’ emotional well-being
Here is one fewer reason for sports fans to feel inadequate while watching Olympians whose skin seems to be have been shrink-wrapped over their frame flicker across TV, computer and smartphone screens across the next three weeks.
The world sees Olympic athletes in peak physical form, but as former gold medal-winning rower Adam Kreek detailed today, what they don't see the post-Games slide down into de-energized ennui. No doubt Kreek was going for the gallows humour with his take on watching his past "of 3.5% body fat and 208 lbs of lean muscle mass" recede, but there's probably a serious subtext. One can glean why many athletes, once the quadrennial ends and the glory becomes a memory, struggling with depression after having, to quote Clara Hughes, having driven themselves "so hard beyond any reasonable way a human being should be pushed." It is a culmination of a four-year cycle. Small wonder there is inevitably temptation to dissipate one's body after training to hit a peak.
On another level, it means people who eat healthy and exercise daily might be better off in some days. From Postmedia News:
You would think an Olympian's fitness lasts a long time. It doesn't.
After competition, many Olympic athletes stop training cold turkey. Sitting on the couch is more dangerous for the highly trained athlete. Couch loving, Olympic friends of mine would wake up two months after the Olympic Games with heart palpitations. The solution to their fluttering heart was counter-intuitive: get up and go for a long run. When you are highly trained, your body becomes reliant on high levels of activity to perform basic physiological functions.
An elite athlete needs to de-train for at least six months, if not one year, gradually reducing exercise to normal, sustainable levels.
Three weeks after the Olympic Games, an athlete's conditioning usually drops fast. Athletes can only perform at 70% of their prior selves — partially due to the self-punishment that occurs in the social scene post-competition.
Years of discipline turn into sleepless nights, unrestricted diets, alcohol over indulgence and extra-curricular *Ahem* activities. When competition ends, these people with the most amount of energy in the world have to burn off their excess energy. What a party! You have never seen a line at McDonalds, like the line in the Olympic Village after closing ceremonies. I know one lightweight rower who gained 20 pounds in one week eating Big Macs and drinking beer. (Postmedia News)
The tales of various zesty enterprises whereby Olympians burn off that excess energy are well-known. One should not go there, beyond acknowledging it, lest that prudish Britons feel insecure.
This does explain so, so much. It sounds similar to why fad diets rarely work. There is just no way to sustain that body beautiful beyond the end of the Games. On a serious level, surely sports psychologists and the like are aware of this phenomena. No one can really order someone what to do with her/his body. Someone's heart has to be in it to maintain a diet and exercise routine. The sacrifices Kreek alluded to would suggest Canada's Olympic pooh-bahs owe it to the athletes to follow up after the Games and make sure they haven't strayed too far from healthy habits, which can affect a person's mental well-being.
Meantime, people who make fitness a daily routine and abjure consuming excessive empty calories shouldn't feel so bad. There might not be any offers to pose nude for a fundraising calendar coming, but at least they're on a track which can be maintained.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
