Muscle Talk - By International Protein

Superfoods Of Bodybuilding

July 29, 2020 International Protein Season 1 Episode 11
Muscle Talk - By International Protein
Superfoods Of Bodybuilding
Show Notes Transcript

In this podcast, we dig into Christine's knowledge about superfoods, after all, she is a fully qualified food & nutrition scientist.


  • We ask what the superfoods of bodybuilding are?
  • Some of the common Superfood Myths.


Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein

If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk

If you'd like to learn more about International Protein, visit https://www.international-protein.com/

A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/

Ash Horton:


Our host, the world renowned Christine Envall, an IFBB professional, three times world champion, a mentor and icon, and of course, a founding co-owner of the best supplements money can buy, International Protein. In this episode we dig into Christine's knowledge about super foods, after all, she is a fully qualified food and nutrition scientist. We ask what the super foods of body building are and some of the common super food myths.


Ash Horton:

Christine, in this episode, I'd really like to talk about super foods, the super foods of body building, because they are different from normal super foods, right?


Christine Envall:

Yeah. Well, I mean, super foods, the definition really is just a food which is more concentrated in nutrients than what another type of food might be. So for example, we talk about blueberries being a super food because they had a really, really great, what was it, ORAC value, which is basically anti-oxidant properties. So compared to an apple, a blueberry was a super food. But it's kind of like a definition which it doesn't have a backing behind it in terms of you can say something's low fat because it has less than three grams of fat if it's a solid food, whereas, there's no like what is the definition of an actual super food. So we've just kind of collectively come up with this term for foods which are more nutrient dense than other foods.


Christine Envall:

So people would be familiar with things like the acai berry and obviously goji berries through the past, and pomegranates coming to the fore. And all of those things can be called super foods, but there're a whole bunch of other super foods which have always been part of the body building diet. So I will talk about them in detail, but I'm just talking about things like oats, good old oats, which most body builders eat.


Ash Horton:

Is that a super food?


Christine Envall:

It is a super food.


Ash Horton:

Okay.


Christine Envall:

Yeah. Well, I might as well talk about it now because I've jotted down some notes on what makes it a superfood. It's obviously got carbohydrates, that's generally why we're eating it. It has a lot of fibre and it has a particular type of fibre called beta-glucan, which has a very, very special role in basically binding with cholesterol and pulling that through the blood. So it has a lot of strong evidence around reducing cholesterol for people, so it's not just working like normal fibre, but it's like literally helping with lowering cholesterol and the bad lipoproteins. So that in itself is really, really powerful. So that's always been in oats and bodybuilders have always used oats.


Christine Envall:

It's also very high protein, so it's one of the highest protein grains. So again, not a lot of bodybuilders are eating oats for the protein, but it does happen to have a higher level of protein than what other grains do have. And also the fat type in it is also considered a healthy fat type. So it's got great fibre, a very special fibre, so it's not just like your normal fibre that you find in any old thing, it's a very specific type of fibre. It also has manganese, magnesium, copper phosphorous, B1, so there's thiamin, vitamin B1, and B5 and folate. So there's a whole bunch of vitamins sitting in there that are not found in other grains. Sometimes they might have one or other, but there's quite a range there, and it is one of the most nutrient-dense foods that you can eat.


Christine Envall:

It also has a specific polyphenol called the ... I'm not going to pronounce this properly, avenanthramides or something. I've written that really badly. But basically, the first word of that, avena, is the word for oats. So Avena sativa is what the botanical name for an oat is. So they've given it this special name which relates to oats, because it's only found in oats, it's a polyphenol. And what that does is it increases the nitric oxide production, which anyone who's an older user of any pre-workout, every pre-workout back in the early 2000s was called N.O. something, because it was a nitric oxide booster. So basically that dilates your blood vessels.


Ash Horton:

So nitrous oxide being the balloons that you huff when you're partying and you [crosstalk 00:04:25]-


Christine Envall:

But nitric.


Ash Horton:

Nitric oxide?


Christine Envall:

It's a different ... Not the nitrous oxide that you might blow your car and make your car go really quickly, but it's a little ... What it does is it basically has a lot to do with blood flow and increasing the dilation of the vessels, so you get more blood to go through your system, hence you're delivering more nutrients, more oxygen whilst you're training. But like we even had our pre-workout N.O. Ignition, because it was a pre-workout designed for increased vasodilation.


Christine Envall:

So there actually exists in oats of all things this particular one, and I have to ... Yeah, avenanthramides. I'm going to have to like I say, look up my writing there, but it's a particular polyphenol for oats. It also has an anti-inflammatory effect and that is also a little bit topical more so than ingested. This is why you see a lot of oat products in eczema products and skin products. So that's not really eating it, but it is definitely one of those properties. So it's one of the most nutrient-dense foods that you can possibly eat.

Christine Envall:

In a 78 gram serving, which is probably a little more than what most would people have of oats. Some women might have more like 45 to 60 grams, but in a 78-gram serve, they have 13 grams of protein, 8 grams of fibre, 51 grams of carbs and 5 grams of fat. So it's a really nutrient-dense food and that's why it's a superfood. And it is probably the staple of most bodybuilders when it comes to their breakfast, and a lot of people also add it to their own shakes that they might make throughout the day and they might blend that up and use oats. So as far as a carbohydrate, it's an awesome carbohydrate to eat and a really great way to start your day. So oats is a superfood and it's been like I say, a bodybuilding staple for years and years and years.


Christine Envall:

But what I wanted to go through was a list of I guess my top foods which you would probably have as a bodybuilder and why I think they are superfoods. And even if it's not really a food I'm going to start off with water because water is something which in bodybuilding, believe it or not, it's so critical and it's talked about a lot around comp time because you might be reducing your water, you might be water loading, you might be doing a lot of things manipulating your water.


Christine Envall:

During the training cycle and just during your normal course of your workouts, what I have come across is a lot of bodybuilders who are actually dehydrated, one, because they don't drink enough water, but also two, because they like the way the veins stand out more. When you're a little bit drier you think that you're leaner, but it's actually really bad to be in that condition of dehydration, just on a day to day basis.


Christine Envall:

So essentially water makes up about, what, 80% of your muscle cell, so that proper hydration of you is critical for your muscle to be properly hydrated. And if it is dehydrated for a prolonged period of time, you can actually damage the muscle cell, metabolically and also strength-wise. You're going to notice if you're dehydrated for too long, your strength will be affected and your ability to contract, your ability, and your actual out and out strength.


Christine Envall:

And then it also impacts what they call the quality of the muscle. So the hydration and basically all the processes that happen in the muscle need to be done in an aqueous environment, which basically means it needs to have water present. So continually forcing that to be lower than what it should be and drying your muscle cells out, essentially will impact the way that it signals, the way that the nerve's functioning, the way that it's telling that muscle cell to actually operate. So just keep that in mind. I've written something else down here, which I can't quite read, but it's to do with you're affecting your protein structures of your actual muscle cell by staying dehydrated too long.


Christine Envall:

So proper hydration which then also relies back to your electrolytes because it is possible to just drink too much water, not have the right amount of sodium and actually just keep that flushing through, which is kind of like a flip side problem, where it is ... The way that the muscle cell works is it likes to have more potassium inside of the muscle and then less potassium on the outside, and then more sodium on the outside and less on the inside. And it basically forces the balance of intracellular and extracellular water.

Christine Envall:

So you need to have that right balance there of your sodium and your potassium as well, which then I guess comes down to some of the side of the food and the superfoods and having foods which are high in potassium, which is where your fruits and your vegetables come in to make sure that you don't just have the water, but you have the correct amount of potassium and sodium and you're not having too much sodium and not enough potassium, because that essentially forces it the other way, and forces all the water out of the muscle cell into what they call the subcutaneous or extracellular water. Ash is looking at me blank here, but when we do the podcast on peaking and peak week, we'll go into a lot more detail on that because that all relates to how you get that dry look, but you keep all the water in your muscle because that's the goal.


Christine Envall:

Water in a nutshell to me is a superfood even though it's got absolutely ... Well, it doesn't have anything in it because if you ... We'll also do another talk on water and different PH water and what to look for in water, because it used to be the thing when you were bodybuilding that you would drink distilled water which is basically had ... or deionised water ... had everything taken out of it. But that is actually not a good thing to do when you're trying to peak because you're stripping too many of things out and you do need certain elements in there, certain minerals in there, and electrolytes in the water to actually make it stay in your body in the right way. So the old deionised water days, I definitely put them behind me after the first few years of competing because I saw that it was too extreme. But that's water, definitely essential, definitely a superfood.


Christine Envall:

Next, I put down broccoli.


Ash Horton:

So let's go back to the water just for a second.


Christine Envall:

Yeah.


Ash Horton:

How much is too much?


Christine Envall:

As in too much water? Or-


Ash Horton:

Yeah.


Christine Envall:

Well, if you were drinking, say, probably in excess of about five to six litres a day, I would consider that maybe I would need to look at were my electrolytes out of balance. So I got to a point for example where at one time before a competition I was having about 9 to 11 litres of water a day and I was so thirsty. Oh my God, I was just never not thirsty, but the water was essentially coming straight through me. And I went and saw the doctor about it and they said it's a condition called hyponatremia, which basically means that you don't have enough sodium in your system. So what happens too is the more water you drink, the more you flush the sodium out.


Christine Envall:

And then I was also ... I wasn't reducing my sodium, I just don't like sodium to start off with. I don't like salt, so I wasn't really adding it to my food and I had to actively start adding seasonings to my food to get that sodium back up again. The potassium was fine, but essentially this wasn't enough to really cause ... If you have a lot of salt in your system, a lot of sodium in your system, it creates a situation where your kidneys will retain the water back into your body to balance that out. So the salt requires a certain amount of water to balance it. So when you take all of that out, it has no reason to be there, but it does create a situation when you're thirsty because your brain's recognising it thinks your thirsty because you're actually dehydrated, because the water is flushing straight through you. So you'll just have a system where it's just going in and just coming straight back out again, and it's quite frustrating and quite awful, but it is just an electrolyte imbalance.


Christine Envall:

So people say drink your water, which you do need to do, but if you're drinking more than say five to six litres a day and you're not out sweating in the sun, working on a building site or doing something like that, you're just working a normal job and just doing a normal gym training session, then I would probably get that checked out and look at what you're actually eating, because potentially you have gone too far. And then on the flip side of that, if you are only having about a litre a day or two litres a day and you are training, sweating, doing cardio, sweating, then you're probably not drinking enough.


Ash Horton:

And it's probably more common isn't it that people aren't drinking enough?


Christine Envall:

Yes. People forget too little the pre-workouts. Whilst you might drink a pre-workout, there's a lot of caffeine in those and those type of ingredients are diuretics, which basically force the opposite thing to having the sodium and it's basically causing your body to dump water more than what you actually drink. So if you drank 200 mills of water with a coffee or a pre-workout or something, I don't know the exact number, but you definitely will release more than 200 mills. It's not an equal one for one, you'll potentially release 400 mills and go 200 mills negative.


Ash Horton:

Interesting.


Christine Envall:

Yeah. So with more and more things like pre-workouts being consumed that have that extra caffeine in, that's a real potential risk area. The other thing is when you're eating a higher protein diet, you require more water because when a carbohydrate is metabolised it releases water. When you metabolise protein, it requires water to dispose of the waste products. So-


Ash Horton:

Chris, you were talking about oats before. I noticed that when you eat oats that they just absorb that water. You get really, really thirsty after you've eaten oats, it sucks it up.


Christine Envall:

Well yeah, that's the nature of the carbohydrate in there and obviously, the fibre is trapping that water. So that's the thing about carbohydrates I guess structurally. They're designed to absorb water, same thing with rice. If you start out with 100 grams of rice and you cook it, you end up with 300 grams. Suddenly you now have 300 grams of rice that you have 100 grams of rice and 200 grams of water. So carbohydrate foods are designed to soak that up, whereas a protein, you cook it and you tend to lose about a third of the weight of the protein as the water goes out of the muscle because chicken and fish and meat is like our muscle as in what makes it up is about 70% to 80% water in that piece of meat because naturally, that's intracellular water. So then you cook it and it releases it.


Ash Horton:

Right.


Christine Envall:

Yeah, but that's a whole other topic there, Ash.


Ash Horton:

It is. It is. Let's go back to what we [crosstalk 00:14:29]-


Christine Envall:

Back to our superfoods, back to broccoli. So broccoli I know it's a great immune-boosting vegetable.


Ash Horton:

And last week you told me I need to eat more broccoli.


Christine Envall:

I did because I had to prove to you that it's actually a superfood, and it is. It is actually one of the original superfoods when people started using that terminology and what are the best vegetables to eat. And one of these with broccoli is it's immune-boosting. It has, what is the word for it? sulphur ... I can't read my own writing when I make notes and I try to be very accurate. The sulforaphane's and the indole-3-carbinol, a couple of phytonutrients that are found in broccoli and they have got anti-cancer benefits, so that's a great vegetable to eat in terms of that.


Christine Envall:

It also is really high in vitamin C, which also helps with immunity and also iron absorption. Believe it or not, broccoli is one of the highest protein vegetables, not that I would ever count the protein in broccoli as towards my protein count, but it is actually high protein, high fibre. It's higher in calcium than most vegetables. Potassium, which we talked about in terms of retaining the water in your body and in your muscle. Selenium, which is an antioxidant. Manganese, vitamin A, C, E and K, iron. It is best used gently steamed. So you don't have to eat raw broccoli, but you don't cook it until turns dark green. Don't do that either, so just lightly steamed. Apparently, it helps to release a lot of these nutrients that are in there.


Christine Envall:

It also has kaempferol, which helps with inflammation, which again muscle soreness to do with inflammation. Just any kind of I guess state where your body is ... It gets inflamed basically when it's fighting with an infection or an injury or something which is an immune type of response, you'll get that inflammation. It's also been shown to help with allergies and heart disease. So there's a lot of really powerful stuff in broccoli there. So if that hasn't convinced you to eat more broccoli, Ash, I don't what has.


Ash Horton:

Obviously, I've got this problem, when I was a kid, I remember my brother pulling out a piece of broccoli and looking through it and there was a caterpillar in it. So it sort of scared me. Look, I'll try, but-


Christine Envall:

Oh come on Ash, I come off a farm and we used to grow biodynamic vegetables and you think how many caterpillars I found in broccoli.


Ash Horton:

You probably just ate the caterpillars [crosstalk 00:16:54]-


Christine Envall:

Extra protein


Ash Horton:

Yeah.


Christine Envall:

No, I didn't eat the caterpillars, but I just put them outside humanely.


Ash Horton:

All right, I'll get broccoli.


Christine Envall:

A caterpillar never killed anyone.


Ash Horton:

What about the modified broccolis. I don't even know what they're called, is it broccolini or something?


Christine Envall:

Broccoli with a cauliflower? Now, broccoli and cauliflower, for example, fall into the same group of what they call cruciferous vegetables and that also includes kale. But I don't believe that it has the same true benefits of what broccoli does. It's still good for you, your vitamin C, but I think the ones which are anti-cancer, those particular phytonutrients are more specific to broccoli, so I would stick with the pure broccoli. I mean, the other ones are kind of fun. In terms of being more potent or being a higher-powered kind of superfood, then broccoli's the one.


Christine Envall:

But having said that it's pretty much any vegetable is going to be better than not having a vegetable, you know what I mean? I believe that nature colour coded vegetables, so that if you mix and match the colours, and obviously broccoli being green and cauliflower's white. You've got things like your pumpkin and your sweet potato which are your bright orange from your carotenoids. You've got your capsicums which are bright red, which again has got a lot of vitamin C. Then you've got your beetrooty type ones which you've got your anthocyanins. Beetroots also have some more factors or nutrients which are to do with that vasodilation and nitric oxide production.


Christine Envall:

So eat that mixture and eat that variety of vegetables. Don't just go with the good old potato and just stick with something like that because it's nice and safe. Not to say that the ... Potatoes are obviously famous for their vitamin C, when they had the potato famine in Ireland and I think everyone got sick from scurvy and not having their potatoes. So vegetables, it doesn't matter what the vegetable, they all have some benefits, they all have different benefits, but obviously, if we talk-


Ash Horton:

You've got lots of colours on your plate.


Christine Envall:

Exactly. It's with everything, whether it be fruit, whether it be vegetables, go for that variety, because as I said, it's kind of colour coded where the carotenoids, which are more your orangy type of colours and those are the ones that you're finding obviously in your sweet potatoes, your pumpkin. And then as I said, the anthocyanins, what's in your dark red coloured ones and your ... To be honest, the chlorophyll, obviously there's a lot of chlorophyll in your green ones, so your spinach's and your lakes and your broccolis and that.


Christine Envall:

So yeah, it's a beautiful thing, but each one does have its own specific kind of phytonutrients. So like we talked about the oats that have that name that I can't pronounce for that specific polyphenol that's only found in oats. Whilst it's similar to barley, whilst that's similar to other grains, it's only found in the oats. So always that variety is always I think a good thing rather than saying, "Okay, this one superfoods is going to do absolutely everything for me.”


Christine Envall:

What else did I have on my list? I had lemon. Fresh lemon, not the lemon out of the bottle that makes the lemon juice. Lemon is an amazing source of vitamin C, and whilst all citrus fruit is, it's probably the lowest sugar of all of the citrus fruits for delivering that vitamin C. So-

Ash Horton:

So you're talking about squeezing there, or you're talking about having a lemon water in the morning?


Christine Envall:

Any kind of lemon is good. Obviously with lemon and with a lot of these, well, any kind of fruit, it's the actual fibre in the fibrous structure of the lemon, which makes the anti-cancer benefits and also the ones which people attribute more to weight loss. If you're just talking about more the cleansing type of benefits the juice is okay, but I actually put the whole lemon in hot water and just slice it so it's got the pulp. There's also certain benefits that are coming out of the peel. So I believe if the hot water can kind of extract some of those ones. I haven't written the name of those, but they are more the essential oils that are existing in the peel of the lemon.


Christine Envall:

And nobody really wants to eat a lemon. I know a few people in my lifetime that have actually eaten fresh, whole lemon, but most people obviously it's too much, and the peel's just like a whole other level. So being able to extract those components out of it by putting into a hot water drink. And I'll actually put in with some ginger and cinnamon and just make a hot lemon tea.


Christine Envall:

Obviously, the benefits of lemon is also helping to decrease oxidating stress, which we put our body through on a daily basis, particularly when we're training. But one thing for bodybuilding why I think it's really good is because it has citrate in it which prevents calcium from forming. And people know calcium in terms of, what do they call them? Is it galls stones, the little ones that get stuck and don't pass through the urinary tract?


Ash Horton:

Yeah, gallstones.


Christine Envall:

Yeah, gallstones. But I think bodybuilders also get little calcium deposits under their skin and I don't know if it's specific to bodybuilding, but I just know a lot of bodybuilders who get them and they have these little ... As you diet down, it's like what's this little weird lump that's sitting there. And I've always been told that it's like a calcium deposit that is just a lot of calcium has built up and obviously you see it because it's someone so lean.


Christine Envall:

Fortunately, it's obviously not within the system and creating a gall stone, but it's still probably not good to have little deposits of calcium sitting around because it can lead to, I believe, a weakening of the tendons and things because that's where I've seen a lot of that in myself is built up around where I've had injuries and problems is some calcification on the tendons, which obviously is going to impact how you're able to train. Potentially it can cause pain. It could actually lead to some kind of tendon damage. So having that lemon with the citrate to help bind up the calcium, then it stops it from depositing in-


Ash Horton:

Yeah, that's really interesting.


Christine Envall:

And also the vitamin C from lemons helps with collagen production which helps with skin strength, smoothness. And as bodybuilders, we should be looking after our skin because when you diet down you need that ability for it to shrink down onto your body. And then when you go back into you’re off-season, it needs to be able to stretch again. And if you end up getting stretch marks or it doesn't shrink down and it leaves little wrinkles and things like that. So very, very important to bodybuilding there with the fresh lemon.


Christine Envall:

Flipping over onto my next page, Greek yogurt. So I put Greek yogurt down specifically as opposed to just regular yogurt because I decided I would take the time to just say why it's different. So basically with the process of making Greek yogurt, they make the yogurt, set it, and then they strain it again. So they force more water out of it, which also takes out extra sugars because the sugars are soluble they go out. So it concentrates the protein in the yogurt and that's why the Greek yogurts are so much higher in protein than what the regular yogurts are.


Christine Envall:

Obviously probiotics, but that can be from any type of yogurt. But essentially it just has more calcium, more protein, more B12, iodine, and it obviously has the casein protein, which is your more slowly digested protein. So I think it's a great snack, it's a great slow-release type of protein, but it has all of those other nutrients in with it. Iodine obviously is very important for correct metabolic function and it's generally very low fat. It's the only thing which is lower fat, lower sugar, but has that great protein hit. So Greek yogurt to me is a great super food.


Christine Envall:

One which I've put down here, and it's probably not that commonly eaten these days, I actually wrote down liver.


Ash Horton:

Liver?


Christine Envall:

Liver.


Ash Horton:

Wow.


Christine Envall:

Now, liver, when I first started training, my coach made me eat liver twice a week and I did, and I hated it because I had to go to the butcher and he used to say, "You're spoiling your cat," and I would just agree with him. I didn't want to tell him I was eating the beef liver. It is hard to stomach but it's a source of B vitamins, so I actually then switched over to taking those desiccated liver tablets, which again, this is one of the first supplements and when there weren't really good quality protein powders around that was one of the first really effective supplements that I ever found and I did definitely notice a difference with my strength. So even compared to red meat, it's more concentrated in liver, iron and the B vitamins, and I actually rate that as really good strength promoting the type of food.


Christine Envall:

I'm just thinking there's also a product. I don't know if it's still around but there was a company called No Days Off and they had a very concentrated form, and essentially, to come back to it, it was some type of liver. It was so strong it really worked wonders, it gave you amazing strength, however, the problem with those kind of things if you have too much of them, it can build up and create the uric acid at your joints, which basically causes gout which is very, very painful. So that's the flip side of having too much of that.


Christine Envall:

But they had created a modern-day liver tablet, so to speak, in a powdered form and it was very, very, very effective for increasing strength and endurance in the weight side of things and building muscle. So just regular liver tablets, don't know if they're still available, but definitely, I would put them in that superfood, or liver, if some people find a way of, I don't know, mincing that up and disguising that in their regular food. It's worth a try.


Christine Envall:

Again, coming back to protein, there are so many choices here, but all proteins obviously are superfoods. Every different meat-based protein has a different kind of complement of vitamins that are found in it. Red meat, for example, has five grams of creatine per kilo. So that's a lot of meat really to eat to get your five-gram creatine serve, but it is still in there, so if people aren't supplementing with creatine and that it is naturally in foods. So if you were to eat a couple of steaks... You may be getting about 2.5 grams of creatine per day coming in from the meat that you might be eating.


Christine Envall:

Again, obviously getting your B12 and your zinc and selenium and your phosphorous and your B6. So you're getting a whole bunch of nutrients that are coming through those foods when you're taking them in the lean form. Chicken has more of your B6 and phosphorous, whereas, say, your red meat has your B12 as well, which your chicken doesn't tend to have as much. Also, it doesn't tend to have as much of the creatine, but there's less fat naturally coming in with it, so it kind of depends where you're going with that.


Christine Envall:

And of course, we talked about the casein coming in from the yogurt, but obviously, then whey protein is a superfood because you want all of those amazing branched-chain amino acids and all the essential amino acids, and in a form that you get can get them straight after a workout. So whilst that again might not be recognized as a superfood for general, for a bodybuilder, to have something that gets in that quickly and delivers what you need in terms of the amino acids, then I don't think you can really go past that too far at all.


Christine Envall:

I also put down egg white protein. Again, that's another superfood and a classic because it's very low fat. It's essentially pure protein. Do keep in mind that one egg white has only about three grams of protein, so do you need to have a lot of them, unless you're going for the liquid egg whites, in which case that's equivalent to whatever you have, but it's easier than having to break all those shells and throw out all those yokes. But essentially, the thing to watch with egg white though is it's high in sodium. So it's probably higher than what you naturally would want to take in. So you want to keep that in mind and potentially balance that out with some higher potassium foods, or watch it at certain times if that sodium is an issue because it's causing you to retain water in the wrong places.


Christine Envall:

Sweet potato, this is another really good one, again because of the colour. It's really, really high in obviously your carotenoids, your vitamin A. Also has B6, potassium, antioxidants, lots of fibre, both soluble and insoluble, because obviously the soluble is the one which has to do with your blood sugar control and reducing that cholesterol, whereas the insoluble is basically the one which acts like a scour and keeps everything working properly from top to bottom.


Christine Envall:

So also with the soluble fibre, and this is again coming back to the oats and why they're so good is that they have ... The viscous fibre creates in your bowl when it's being fermented, it creates a little short-chain fatty acids and that basically keeps your intestinal cells healthy. So essentially look at it not just a way of keeping things moving through, but it is actually keeping the integrity and health of the actual system that it's moving through, which is also then to do with absorbing food and stuff. So it's very, very important to have those different types of fibres.

Christine Envall:

With sweet potatoes, they come in a multiple ranges of different colours, so you actually have your purple ones and your white ones and your orange ones. So each one of those has different benefits and I think they said the purple ones are actually really good for brain health. So again, even mix up sweet potatoes. And it's probably not as common in Australia, but I know in America they definitely have all the different colours are available quite readily.

Christine Envall:

So we've got oats for the morning, you've got your sweet potato. The thing with sweet potato is it does cause some bloating and stuff with some people because of the extra fibre. Ad then I thought when you're looking at a carb source, I definitely wouldn't recommend just taking in all your carbs from sweet potato, because it is for the amount of carbohydrate that you need there's an awfully huge amount of fibre. So you kind of need to treat it more like a vegetable than a …


Christine Envall:

I call it a starchy carb which is an old fashion term, but it's still to me very, very relevant, because it basically distinguishes a vegetable being a fibrous or a starchy kind of a carb. So a fibrous would be things like your broccoli, and your spinach, and your green beans, and all of those ones which are very low-calorie density and low carb density. So 100 grams of them maybe has like 10 to 15 grams of carbs versus a more substantial amount of carbs that you would find in a sweet potato. And I actually don't have that number to pull. Yes, I do. It was 41 grams of carbs, but I believe that that is in a 200 gram serve. So there's about 20% carb.

Christine Envall:

S compared to then rice, which is a whole other level where you're looking at, in the raw grain of rice, you're looking at about 70% carbs, so divide that by three once you add water into it. So you're bringing that down to 25 odd grams. So once you're in the form that you eat it, it's actually not terribly different, but in terms of that fibre content, the sweet potato's got about 6.6 grams of fibre in that couple of 100 grams. Bodybuilders tend to eat white rice to avoid the fibre because it can cause havoc with your training. So there's a situation where what's healthy and then what's compatible with your training can be two totally different things. So it needs to be that balance where-


Ash Horton:

You eat brown rice?


Christine Envall:

I eat brown rice now, and I definitely didn't use to eat brown rice when I was competing. I did used to try to get as much what I would call pure carbohydrate to get that energy because I didn't want to have to have that volume of food. Obviously now as I'm older and I'm not training as heavy, I don't have to eat as much food. Now I'm trying to fill myself up and slow down how long it takes things to digest so that I don't feel like I'm totally depriving myself.


Christine Envall:

And I think at different phases in our life, there are different health needs. You always do need fibre. So I was having my oats and always having a lot of vegetables, so I didn't feel I needed to have, at every single meal, did I need to have some kind of a fibre hit, because I would find that that would interrupt my training or make it uncomfortable for training. So it's not all about just hammering your body with all of this amazing stuff, because the reality is it's there, it doesn't digest and therefore that causes other problems.


Christine Envall:

And that's why I wanted to include rice and pasta as superfoods for bodybuilding, even though the reality of say white rice is it doesn't really have a lot of nutrients other than pure carbohydrate. But then I thought bodybuilding or any sport really needs carbohydrate, and you don't necessarily have to take in every food with the maximum amount of nutrients if the rest of your diet is very heavily stacked with really great vegetables and powerful foods.


Christine Envall:

Sometimes you need to have something which is specific to what you're trying to do and that's just like a really good, light, clean source of carbohydrate. It doesn't cause any other complications in your body. And obviously, the fibre is where all those vitamins and other nutrients are sitting. So, unfortunately, the fibre and that go together, so in taking out the fibre, you take out all the good stuff.


Christine Envall:

But it is something which is related to sport, because I did at one point spend some time with a dietician who specialised in sport and she said around event time that they would take the athletes off all of the high fibre foods for that very reason that coming into a boxing match or coming into gymnastics or whatever because it will ... We were specifically more talking about Olympic sports. This is what this lady had specialised in and people who were trying to make weight classes, so boxers and gymnasts, and that's what she said, "Yeah, we definitely in those last three, four days, we make sure their diet is so devoid of any kind of fibre and anything which is basically going to cause any kind of creation of gas, or anything uncomfortable for when they compete.”


Christine Envall:

So the thing with food is that there's one thing is the nutrition and there's the one thing that you do on a day to day basis, but when you do your event or your training, then everything changes, and that's the thing to remember that it's two very, very distinctive and different parts. I always looked at rice as being an absolutely amazing, pure fuel for my heavy workouts, and therefore, I didn't want to be putting something in which basically had half the nutritional value, which is being your fibre and put that in at other times.


Christine Envall:

I'll just talk a little bit quickly about the difference between say pasta and rice, where on paper they can look absolutely the same. You can have the same carbohydrate content, but because they are coming from two totally different sources, how they feel inside of the body and how they feel in your muscle when you actually metabolise that and it gets processed, I don't think I've read any research around this, but I know what I feel and I know from talking to other bodybuilders that the pasta really makes your muscle feel more pumped and makes it feel fuller and heavier than what rice does. And rice does seem to digest a little bit quicker, which brings me to quinoa which is an actual super food.


Christine Envall:

But unfortunately with quinoa, on paper it reads great and it's a lovely thing, but the reality is it seems to not actually provide enough ... It doesn't fuel the fullness and the fullness to the muscle. And even the energy that you get out of it, probably because it is quite ... It's high in protein and it's high in fibre, so the carb count is a little bit lower, but the actual what you feel after eating it compared to say brown rice which also has higher fibre, you just don't seem to get this sustained feeling of fullness and fullness in the muscle. So that's just an observation that I've made because I do eat a little bit of quinoa, but I don't feel it has the same impact as what something like rice or a pasta does.


Christine Envall:

So I guess if you're trying to diet and you're older and you're not burning as many calories it's an awesome food to have, but if you're younger and you're really trying to get your calories in and you're really trying to push your weights up and put some good size on, then I probably would stay away from the quinoa no matter what it has in it, which it incidentally does actually have some of the same components that broccoli has being that kaempferol. And we didn't talk about the quercetin which is another anti-oxidant. Some things are specific to certain foods, but other things there are found in multiple places as well, so you don't have to get everything out of one food. But I think the moral of the story there is that have as much variety as possible of your good fruits and vegetables.


Christine Envall:

We talked about this in the past too, but eat them in a form where they're not totally disintegrated, like don't put your fruit and bash it up in a [inaudible 00:37:02] smoothie blender thing. Try to eat and actually get the fibre. Your mechanical biting and chewing is nothing on mechanical blades chopping something up. The way that your body takes it and starts to break it down has to do a lot more work than when you've essentially turned it back into a very, very fine particle by blending it. You'll get a lot more benefit from the food by having it in the natural form that you would eat it using your teeth. So that's one thing that I'd say about eating fruits.


Ash Horton:

It's interesting you say that coming from a protein company. And protein's a bit different.


Christine Envall:

Yeah, it is different because there's no fibre and things like that. Milk essentially is water, the proteins, and then fats, and carbohydrates, and your vitamins and your minerals. And the process of making that is more just taking out the water, whereas, with the fruit you're changing the structure. So the only one where they've really changed the structure is calcium caseinate but it's still essentially in a folded ... It's not in the micellar form anymore, but the structure of that casein still absorbs through the body at exactly the same rate that a native casein molecule has.


Christine Envall:

So whilst it has undergone some structural unfolding and refolding through the process of isolating it, it's not behaving any differently in the body, whereas when you're physically, mechanically chopping up a fibre it is. So you essentially got the molecules in the same way and all you're doing with milk is you're taking out the extra lactose that you don't want or the extra fat that you don't want, the water which you'll add back when you put it into your protein shake.


Christine Envall:

It does to a degree with certain types of processing of the isolate to the concentrate, we talked about how it takes out some of the factors that help with immunity, and that the concentrate is actually a better product because it hasn't lost a lot of those things. But it's only when you're going up to that extreme level that you're starting to strip out some of those nutrients.


Christine Envall:

But again, you know I'm a fan of more of your concentrates and your whole ... The micellar casein is actually a whole milk protein. I shouldn't say whole milk, it's a whole protein in that it has had the fat stripped out, it's had the lactose stripped out, but the actual protein is still that blend of whey and casein. So while we talk about the casein part, it does actually have the same native form that it is found in milk.


Christine Envall:

So milk protein isolates is the name that we use for it. So it's just essentially taking the protein out. So yeah, there's a little bit of a difference between just taking out the bad stuff, leaving the good stuff, versus having the whole thing but just putting it in a format where you've taken out half of the work. So that's my top list of superfoods.


Ash Horton:

Well, that was information overload. I feel like I have to listen to this one five times just to retain 10% of it. Fascinating, and I really like the depth of detail you go into with this Christine, so I'm sure the listeners do too.

Christine Envall:

Cool. You did ask me to get detailed, so-


Ash Horton:

Yes. Yes, well, that's what we're doing. Anyway, listeners, if you want to ask some specific questions, jump in our Facebook group. Search Aussie Muscle Guru. Ask a question, get involved. We're giving away prizes for the best questions and we're going to answer them on this podcast. Thanks again, Christine.


Christine Envall:

Thanks, Ash.



Ash Horton:

Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognise that these tips, they are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that buy now button. So once again like, share and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie Muscle Guru, three times world champion, Christine Envall.