The Science of Fitness Podcast
Welcome to the Science Of Fitness podcast where we aim to inspire you to live a healthier and more fulfilling life as we share evidence and anecdotes on all things health, fitness, performance, wellness and business.
Hosted by Kieran Maguire, Co-Owner and Director of Science Of Fitness with an Undergraduate degree in Exercise Science and Masters degree in High Performance, the podcast includes guests and friends of SOF from all walks of life sharing their knowledge and stories within their field of expertise.
Join us as we provide listeners with digestible and relatable educational tools and entertaining stories to inspire a healthier and more fulfilling life.
The Science of Fitness Podcast
The Science of Sports Nutrition with Sally Anderson
Step into the world of sports nutrition with this captivating episode featuring Sally Anderson, an expert sports dietitian with extensive experience working in sports such as diving, ballet, and tennis. Specialising in optimising health and performance in adolescent and young adult athletes, Sally brings a wealth of knowledge to help athletes navigate the complexities of nutrition.
In our conversation, we peel back the layers of dietary practices that athletes often grapple with, from misconceptions about carbohydrates to the profound impact body image has on meal choices. Drawing from her background as a competitive lightweight rower and seasoned dietitian, Sally bridges personal experience with professional expertise.
Throughout the episode, we dissect the essential nutrients that enhance athletic performance, challenging the popular notion that carbohydrates should be eliminated from an athlete’s diet. Instead, Sally advocates for a balanced approach, underscoring the need to time and distribute carbs effectively throughout the day to fuel training sessions efficiently.
Listeners will appreciate the nuanced discussions regarding body image and mental wellbeing, particularly in figure-based sports, where the pressure to maintain a certain physique can overshadow performance goals. Sally provides valuable tips on how to cultivate a supportive environment that promotes healthy eating habits without succumbing to restrictive eating patterns.
By sharing practical advice for meal planning and preparation, this episode empowers listeners to make informed, nourishing choices that respect their unique needs and goals, transforming the perceived limitations of diet into a framework for enhanced performance and holistic health.
Welcome to the Science of Fitness podcast, where we aim to inspire you to live a healthier and more fulfilling life, as we share evidence and anecdotes on all things relating to health, fitness, performance, business and wellness. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Back to the Science of Fitness podcast. We have Sally Anderson on the episode today. Sally is a sports dietitian and I guess I'm in awe of her work. So, sally, welcome down to the SOF and welcome to the Science of Fitness podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:It was funny when we caught up and you sort of mentioned I floated the idea of let's have a chat, and you're like, oh, I'm not the researcher, let's get someone else on. And for me, this podcast and this whole program is about practitioners that are on the coalface, that are seeing stuff all the time in terms of their industry, their specialty and what they're doing. And then there's the other side of it where you've set up and run a business within sports, sports dietetics space. So there's so much that I want to talk about. How are we going for time today? What time do you have to be out of here?
Speaker 2:Hour Two. No, we're good of time today. What time do you have to be out of here? An hour Two.
Speaker 1:No, We'll see how we go. I tend to keep it to an hour, so we'll see how we go. We always start with a rapid fire. Let's get the juices flowing for all the listeners. Yourself myself, You're going to give me a yay, nay or gray answer for these five. I know, I know it's huge, but hey, you're not a PhD, so you can be a bit more opinionated. Maybe Carbohydrates should be drastically reduced for optimal performance. Reduced. No Good, strong no.
Speaker 2:Strong, no Hard nay.
Speaker 1:Hard nay. Fasted training is beneficial for endurance athletes.
Speaker 2:Oh, another hard no.
Speaker 1:Protein timing the consumption of protein is more important than the total daily intake.
Speaker 2:Definitely not Total daily intake more important.
Speaker 1:Supplements are necessary for all athletes.
Speaker 2:Hard no.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting one, and I think that also speaks to the recreational exercise Hydration strategies should vary depending on the sport you're playing. Oh, yes, absolutely cool demands change not a single gray.
Speaker 1:Pretty happy, I'll take that. Normally there's a few grades um, let's get into it. Uh, your specialty, I guess now um, and I'm sure it's evolved and you've touched all sorts of um, I suppose, different realms within sports, dietetics, um, but currently you're you're working with um athletes that work in sort of figure-based sports. So talk me through what kind of those sports are, who you're working with and who you have worked with previously, um, and, I guess, some of the challenges associated with those athletes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So well, look, I think it's almost helpful to do a bit of a step back. So I did sort of start a lot of my work as a sports dietitian with rowing, and so back then there were more Olympic events that had lightweight rowing and so that's a weight category sport. So someone is looking to drop weight, usually to be able to race, to be able to even compete. So I have experience in that myself. Personally, I race as a lightweight rower.
Speaker 1:What does it look like to be defined as a lightweight rower? I've worked with one lightweight rower athlete in my time and I had a rough idea, but to be honest, it was pretty great for not growing up rowing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to race. So if you're an individual athlete, then you need to make 59 kilos for a female and it's 57 as a crew average. So if you happen to be in a crew boat and you've got someone who's a little bit lighter than you, then they can take weight for you and you can sit at 59.
Speaker 2:But you know that then brings in a whole dynamic of like oh, I'm taking weight for you, and so you know it really starts to yeah when you've got a hungry, hungry athletes together and then you've got a dynamic like that, it can get a little bit tricky, but yeah, so for rowing, the weigh-in is two hours before the event, so you need to make weight two hours before. And yeah, there's various ways and means of doing that, depending on where someone is at. And yeah, I mean, my experience was I decided to do change to lightweight from being in heavyweight change and the event that I was looking to do was eight weeks away and I needed to drop 10 kilos to do that. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a bit of a deal and, look, I did see a sports dietitian at the time.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a great experience and that was sort of part of probably why I'm a sports dietitian now. They kind of gave me like a fairly filing cabinet diet is what I would call it and circled a few things and then the review process was coming back and they weighed me. They didn't ask a whole lot of questions around what I was eating, how I was feeling, and so really, my, I think a lot of my nutrition advice actually ended up coming from my coaches and my fellow rowers, and you know it's probably not the best advice. So that experience is certainly sort of what drove me more into having an interest in nutrition, because when you start sort of having to manipulate things to achieve a particular physique, then you realize, wow, there's a lot of power in food. Um, however, when that becomes the primary focus for someone's, then sort of long-term like existence, like it might feel like this is appropriate and relevant for a particular goal. But if that's an everyday, lifelong choice, that's potentially where it's going to become unhelpful.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, powerful word, unhelpful because you know what are you trying to optimise. Yeah, yeah, okay. So you had your rowing experience personally. As a rower, you went into dietetics sports dietetics. You started off your career in rowing and trying to give athletes a better experience than probably what you had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, that's it, and part of my ethos with working with athletes is that I do want to spend a good amount of time with them, and so, you know, the sessions are set up so that we have plenty of time to be able to understand what someone's trying to achieve. And you know, we would never write a meal plan within session. We'd go away and we take a couple of hours to do that before then.
Speaker 1:You know, then walking the athlete through it after that, yeah, so and that's sort of where and then you know you find yourself in the sports that you're working in now and you've kind of ebbed and flowed through your career through this sort of weight-based, figure-based type of sport.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, the I suppose a lot of my private practice was probably built on endurance sport and that was as part of again, like, often sort of your own experience does sort of dictate where you end up going. And I was doing a lot of cross-training to keep my weight where I needed it to be for rowing, and so that was a lot of running and cycling and swimming. I'm like, oh, put that together and that becomes triathlon, and so, you know, you end up training with various running groups of running and cycling and swimming. I'm like, oh, put that together and that becomes triathlon. And so, you know, you end up training with various running groups and triathlon groups. And you know, when I train, I talk.
Speaker 2:So, that's probably where you know I ended up seeing a lot of endurance athletes through that. And then, yeah, look through my various contracts that you do as a dietitian, I've probably gravitated more towards what you would sort of describe as aesthetic or physique-based sports or performers. So ballet is one, diving is one, gymnastics another, where physique is more on display for the athlete, for the athlete, and with that then comes the issues that are more risk. So you would have more body image concern, more disordered eating and eating disorders in those pursuits and certainly, when you sort of rewind it back to sort of the lightweight rowing space, a lot of the advice that I was getting absolutely was coming from people with, you know, very questionable relationships with food and ways and means of achieving a particular goal.
Speaker 1:It's something you know. I'm just come from a performance world and it's just purely been gym or conditioning-based outcomes strength or conditioning-based outcomes really and it's pretty straightforward. You know there's a weight element and I work in rugby and it's just, oh mate, he's just a bit muddy, he just needs to cut a bit of weight, he needs to get fitter, and it's just a lot less. You need to look and behave and appear, I guess, in a certain way, well, and appear.
Speaker 2:I guess in a certain way. Well, do you know what? Interestingly, on that point, the one thing that crosses all sports from a physique perspective that will improve performance is how much lean mass you have, not your body fat. So, yes, there are some sports where body fat is important and it will change performance. However, if we're kind of like speaking broadly about sports, then the amount of lean muscle that you have will dictate performance. However, if we're kind of like speaking broadly about sports, then the amount of lean muscle that you have will dictate performance.
Speaker 1:That's super interesting. That's a little flag for strength and strength and conditioning, isn't it? I love that, thank you, really, you know, it's something that mass in general, which is often, I guess, spoken about in my like in the performance end of kind of my world, and I felt it personally like I got into running a little bit more and I found, if I'm strength training quite a lot, eating a decent volume, holding a certain weight, what I felt was a weight I didn't run as efficiently. But there is, you know, that lean mass element. I never really personally, you know, went into the depths of going DEXA scans and seeing what the changes was, and did I have a lean mass change or was it just a body fat percentage or whatever? But it's certainly a factor that I think influences, I guess, how someone recreationally I consider myself a recreational, fit person trains and feels when they train, particularly when it comes to endurance-based stuff. So in your experience, endurance-wise, is that something that people are unnecessarily concerned about in terms of, oh, I'm going to get too big?
Speaker 2:I'm going to get too big, I'm going to get too muscular if I do too much strength. Yes, I mean. There's so many things that influence performance, though, and I think sometimes, like nutrition, or like just zeroing in on one aspect and being like that's the thing, that's what's going to help me be able to perform, it's like, well, there's a whole lot of things to consider here. So, yeah, look, total mass when you come to endurance events, sure, it's going to have an impact, but also to a point, you know. So if someone is thinking and often it is the athlete mentality, and this is recreational or elite, like we put everyone in that category right? Is that? Well, if lighter going to be helpful, then I've got to get even more. Like more is better, more is better, and so, no, there will be a point where, if you continue to go down that path, that's not going to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it becomes counterproductive. Yeah, so I'm a big proponent of low-hanging fruit. You know you're like, oh man, what supplement? What should I watch? And I'm like, how was your sleep last night? Did you eat decent food before you came here? Have you trained your four strength sessions that you intended on training? Do those and then worry about your pre-workout, post-workout supplement or something. So you know endurance. Let's stay with these guys for a second. You know what are the low-hanging fruits that you're like. Don't worry about the lean mass one or two kilos that you might or might not be holding. What are the low-hanging fruits?
Speaker 2:Eating before training, okay, or you know having I mean, if we kind of do a little bit reductionist nutrition for a second, it will be having some sort of carbohydrate coming in before a training session.
Speaker 1:That's swimming, running bike, any of the endurance sessions, as well as strength sessions.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. So you can just consider it pre-training nutrition, and what that is going to do is give you some fuel to actually complete the session better. Now, this is like you know, we're not cars, but you hear the car analogy all the time. So the car being like, oh, you've got to put fuel in the car for the car to go, but with humans, carbohydrates being the fuel, even if we don't put that in, we can still go. It's not as though the car won't go, like the body will go, it just won't go as well as if you'd actually put something in. So, yeah, having something before will result in you being able to do more work in the session. Therefore, you get the performance adaptations of having done more work that sort of brings me to.
Speaker 1:I guess you're studying, so you went into the exercise world as well, study-wise yeah, well, exercise. Physiology was my first degree, undergraduate, and then went to dietetics. How much of an advantage of has that given you? If anything, maybe it's not too as a competitor, but just from sympathizing with an athlete or an enthusiast uh.
Speaker 2:So look, you can become a sports dietitian without being an exercise physiologist. However, what I've learnt in those four years, I just loved it. It was exceptional and, yeah, I do think it helped, because once you then become a dietitian, then you go and do further study to become a sports dietitian and I think the exercise physiology stuff probably was able to breeze through, whereas other people would have just found it a little bit more difficult but, yeah, it's, you know, having an understanding of the demands of different sports.
Speaker 2:But that said, like if I'm going to work in a sport and I knew nothing about diving before, I went and worked in it and you know you really want to talk to the coaches, talk to the athletes, watch a training session, go and see what these guys do and pick up some of the lingo. That's going to give you some good buy-in with the athletes linking up vx fizz.
Speaker 1:It's um, it's really, you know you just you just did it before where you want to get more out of the session and being able to come from an exercise perspective like that, that for me it's like there's so much value in a productive session. Yes, and you're having that understanding exercise, physiology wise, I think quite often people go to a dietician or they speak to someone without maybe that lens of you know we were just talking about it before this started of I'm training quite a lot and there's a certain outcome I want to get out of my training. Recreational or elite athlete, um, let's not forget about that. I think the sports elite level is probably connected. The dots of a good dietitian will speak to the physiologist, the strength and conditioning, the biomechanist and the physiotherapist and it's all this sort of closed loop system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, recreation, I don't think people quite have that luxury true and so you know it's that time I that you did studying the undergrad, being passionate about the exercise side gives you that sort of linking of the dots and I think also it's recognising that training or exercise is the stimulus You've got to have that.
Speaker 1:And it's got to be hard. You've got to put in some effort. Sure, yeah, we want to generate the adaptation. We've got to be hard, uh-huh to put in some effort. Yeah, yeah, we want to generate the adaptation. We've got to put that stress on the system and if you're not well fueled, yeah you're not going to put an ideal amount of stress yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's, let's bed down the training, and then nutrition can support the outcomes that you're looking for absolutely so, you know, you talk about diving ballet, these, these sorts of, I guess, sports, for lack of a better term. They are figure-based, they need to appear a certain way. They can't really hold too much, you know, even maybe muscle mass. How do those athletes, you know, how does managing that go? Because it must become a massive psychological piece for a lot of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's tricky psychological piece for a lot of them. Yeah, it's tricky and some people are going to be more predisposed to going down a body image concern, disordered eating, eating disorder path than others.
Speaker 1:Can you define those Body image into disordered eating, into eating disorder?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a spectrum, okay, and the eating disorder is clinically diagnosed. Dietitians don't do diagnosis. That would be psychologists, medical Psychiatrists yeah. Yeah, that would diagnose that. However, and look, I don't need a diagnosis to work with someone. I'm just going to work with someone with whatever's in front of me. So it is common that you will see someone with body image concern and that body image concern doesn't actually translate into any nutrition behaviors. It might be taking up a lot of space in their thoughts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it might not result in food changes, whereas disordered eating is like it's going further along the spectrum and this is where you start to see some unusual behaviours happen with food and it's probably best to find as a change in behaviour. So if you did have someone with normalised eating before and you start to pick up on changes, then that's an early warning sign that we need to Be a little bit careful here.
Speaker 1:So you're speaking to me and I'm an individual that we've observed these behavioural changes. What can and do you do with those individuals in terms of going, hey, just have you noticed. And then how does those like? It's sort of cold-faced conversation and sometimes I assume it may not be comfortable, may not be easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How do you navigate that sort of stuff?
Speaker 2:And that's not something that you learn no, no um, but a psychologist that I um worked with closely for a number of years made the suggestion that, like, always approach with curiosity. Um, validate first and then approach with curiosity. So so it's like oh, it sounds like it's really difficult. There's your validation. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And then the conversation goes from there. Rather than making assumptions about why someone is eating the way they are yeah, there is. You know, there's a lot of change that's occurred around sort of what's appropriate when it comes to commenting on people's bodies, the way they eat. It would now be sort of pretty well accepted within sport and performance that you don't comment on someone's eating behaviors because you don't know and you're also just seeing one event in isolation. You don't know what else is going on for them in that day, or emotionally, what's going on for them.
Speaker 1:It's I mean again, I've said it come from the rugby world, particularly from a performance sense, and it is I don't want to use the word toxic, but it is confrontational, 24-7 in that sense of man. Look at him, what is he eating? He's training so much it's like. Well, he was 150 kilos and he's now down to 120. And why keep, you know, shitting on him? Because he could be 110 when he's coming, like you know, it's all that sort of stuff and I've been a subject to it as well. Like mate, you're overweight, that's why your Achilles keeps blowing up. It's like there's a functional element and then there's also that side of. Maybe we could frame it better. And coaches, particularly if you were to speak, then you obviously do often. What's kind of the big thing that you've identified over the years that coaches need to understand in terms of their language with these athletes?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you landed on it then, like, how do you frame it better? So you know, if we're just talking to metrics of body weight or skin fold, it's like, hang on, what about performance? So for that particular athlete who had, you know, improved their diet, well, what's their recovery like? What's their energy levels like, are they sleeping better? And once you can kind of change the dialogue more around being performance, outcome, that's as opposed to like you've got to meet this target. Usually you're going to find that the the lens that the athlete has on food is also going to change, and so they're going to be thinking about right, how do I feel myself? Well, how do I feel this particular session? How do I recover from that particular session? And once you do that, other things tend to fall in place yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I just like it resonates so strongly with me. I have worked in health and fitness. Gen pop love it, obsess over it, performance outcome first. And it's like, well, what does that mean? I'm not going to give you an eight-week challenge, I'm not going to. I want you to squat technically very well and then let's set a goal and a target for a weight. I want you to be able to run X. I want you to be able to row X, no pain. I want you to be able to adhere for three months to X. I want no limitations on that. Oh man, I need to lose 15 kilos. I'm like, oh, that might be a byproduct and we'll enjoy it if it is Lovely, you know, and it's just, we need to. And this is for general pop and I see it all the time.
Speaker 1:Our industry, my industry, still has this if you're not shredded, if you're not flogging yourself day in, day out doing HIIT and weights, with your HIIT, you're not going to get anywhere and you are a failure when it comes to health and fitness. Yet I think some of the most impressive recreational athletes I know may not look the certain way that you know they should, but aerobically they're incredible strength, they're really strong. Injury they're fine, they recover well, they don't have recurring injuries. They're doing Ironmans, they're lifting, you know, and they're just balanced and happy with how they're feeling and their health, which is ultimately the outcome, because one day we're suddenly 80 and we're going oh, why did I care so much? So you know, I think it sounds strong to both the athlete side. It's something that a lot of coaches probably need to hear and a lot of athletes need to hear is like worry about the performance, like the metric on your body fat percentage or your muscle mass or whatever. It doesn't really matter If you're turning up and doing or achieving what you, I guess, should achieve as the athlete. That's the main concern. These are just levers you can pull to get there Correct. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:So let's get a little bit more nuanced into some of the, you know, nutritional stuff. There's a big song and dance about protein at the moment and everyone should be eating more protein. The longevity world is big on it and it has a place. I think we've probably underdone it a little bit from a general health perspective. Let's speak to athletes and your recreational, well-trained person that's doing five to seven sessions a week. How much protein should they be eating? Protein timing is it important. Let's start there.
Speaker 2:Look, the answer to most nutrition questions is going to be well, it depends, Because it really depends how they're currently eating. So do they need more protein? Well, I don't know. Let's see what they're actually eating at the moment Protein for most of the almost, like, if we kind of go with like the worried. Well, like, I just really want to make sure I'm doing a good job of this. The worried well, the worried well.
Speaker 2:Mostly they're having enough protein in total, but perhaps it's not distributed across the day as well as it could be. So you might see that there's a good amount of steak or chicken or fish that someone will have in their evening meal, but then lunch is like a little bit of ham on the sandwich and then breakfast is like oh, it's a piece of toast. As I run out the door there's no protein happening there at all, and we know from a repair process and protein does repair. That's its main function. If we're sort of thinking like training.
Speaker 2:We want it to be drip fed over the day, so you want to have some at breakfast, and so that might mean, well, if you can have toast, we need to put some eggs with that. Um, it's not putting peanut butter with that. I mean, peanut butter is great, but it's not a source of protein.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, um and that's probably where they go wrong.
Speaker 2:You know where most you know, recreationally people do sure, and and if anyone goes and looks up nutrition tables, I'll be be like but there is protein in nuts. There is, I can see it. It's like well, there is, but it's not high biological value and to get enough protein from peanut butter you're going to have to have half the jar there's a lot of other energy sources coming with that as well.
Speaker 2:We could do this in a more productive way. So, yeah, I would say sort of protein, sure protein. Spacing over the day is probably what I would find is the thing that I would work with people the most, because for the most part, the people that I would see are typically getting enough in total so just redistributing it.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting cool.
Speaker 2:And then correcting the myths around oh, I'm having some protein balls at afternoon tea. No, no, you've had a carbohydrate or a fat ball. That's what that is. That's more going to be the nutrients that you are getting from that. It might be labeled that. Yeah. Being a protein ball, you buy it from the cafe and it's got a protein ball.
Speaker 1:But like when you actually look at Ingredients. Yeah, nutrients.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely going to be a good quality choice. If you look at the ingredients, you're like yep, yep, all of those things I can pull out of my pantry, no problems. Great, it's a nutritious food, but is that your protein dose?
Speaker 1:No, okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's such an easy thing to slip into. I'll have been pretty specific and measured and seen and, okay, a steak in the evening or a piece of fish is a like a salmon piece of salmon is a wonderful source of protein. There's, you know, good fat sources as well, but, um, yeah, the, the drip feeding element was the biggest one that I realized. Okay, you know what's your lunch decision and how can you frame that a little bit more because you can miss really quickly on just balancing it? Um, and then you have this heavy end. Can you go too much? Like you know, you hear things out there now and we've spoken about the internet, um, and all its uh greatness in terms of extremities. Uh, you know, two grams per body weight, kilo, that sort of stuff is that. Is there a line where it's like you probably just don't need that?
Speaker 2:the the downsides of having too much protein is that it it's going to make it difficult to fit in other nutrients that you also need, that are valuable, that are going to help, you know, health performance. So I guess when I see people that are having too much protein, then usually it's because there is this belief that more protein, the better it's, the you know, it's the halo child nutrient. Let's get as much of this as possible, but then they're not getting enough carbohydrate or fats, um and and so it's just a matter of winding it back. So it's not that too much protein is not bad. It's not going. It's not going to give you kidney damage Okay, definitely not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Very hard to get to a level where it might even.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and you know there will be some particular clinical conditions where people cannot have too much protein. But if we put that aside for a sec, too much protein is not going to be a health problem in itself, but what could be a health problem is that the other nutrients that you're not missing you're going to have problems because of that.
Speaker 1:It's an opportunity cost.
Speaker 2:It is and I mean maybe I'm underselling that a little bit, because I certainly do see a good number of athletes, in particular female athletes, who will not eat enough carbohydrate, and we do see that then that results in health problems, injury risk. Yeah, it's usually in the bony space, where that happens.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, that was going to be. My next question is macronutrients. What do we miss?
Speaker 1:And I think, as a professional and we've, you know, done the the learning, and at the cold faces I've said, um, understand that you know this whole carbs of the devil thing, which I don't know if I put a year on it, but a decade, maybe between 2005 and 2015. It was the thing, um, purely for fat loss and weight loss, and it kept, you know, getting um sort of bashed around. I remember doing my master's and professor, greg hafu hopefully I get him on this show one day um, uh, he just ridiculed a ketogenic, purely high protein diet from a performance perspective and he went through the entire synthesis chain of muscle recovery, repair and at that moment, as a intense 21 year old that I was, I was fully like I'm going to eat a keto diet, not drinking. I'm dialed in. I trained every day at 5am, didn't miss a session, got really lean, did not get stronger, did not put on weight, didn't feel that different. I was probably getting enough energy in, but I wasn't asking much from a performance sense of myself.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, as soon as I got my ass handed to me in that one lecture, I remember it clearly. I remember all the little graphics of the you know, pk13, alpha and the mTOR and all that sort of stuff and I'm like, okay, mom, carbs are back, we need to cut down the fat, we're changing the bread yeah, seriously, and it makes such a difference. And there's been moments in my life, training, where I've ebbed and flowed through eating more carbohydrates. And if I'm training a lot, lot, I do it. I just feel so much better and I think so many people still miss it. I still, to this day, see clients daily where I'm like don't run from carbs, they're not going to swell you up or anything negative.
Speaker 2:No, look, there's a couple of things on carbs, and I think carbs they're probably the more tricky nutrient to get right? Well, because it's not consistent. So if we think about well, carbs are your body's fuel source. Your fuel needs change every day, so you can't just be like, right, here's my amount that I need, that's set and forget and we'll just stick with that. There's no perfect day. There's no perfect amount of carbohydrate to have.
Speaker 1:Is it required that you've got to drip it, just like you said about the protein?
Speaker 2:With carbohydrates. We really want to think about sort of attaching it to the training session so you would have your carbohydrates beforehand. If you did a particularly hard session, then the recovery meal you're going to boost up the carbohydrate content in that, compared to a day where it's breakfast, and breakfast is always going to have a good amount of carbohydrate in it. But on the days where you've trained that morning and it was particularly intense or it was particularly long or a combination of both, then that's where we're going to need to refuel with more carbohydrate than what you would ordinarily have.
Speaker 1:And the young athlete that wants to put on lean mass, which, as we, as you said, is one of the most important things from a performance perspective. Where does carbohydrate sit in that context?
Speaker 2:Well, it's your growth nutrient, so it's fuel. So we've kind of been talking about like this is fuel for a training session, but it's also your growth nutrient. So protein will do repair of lean mass. It does new growth.
Speaker 1:Wow, more people need to hear that.
Speaker 2:We want to grow. We need more growth. Wow More people need to hear that we want to grow, we need more carbs. Yeah, carbs are not the enemy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love carbs and we should right, and they do have such an important place. Can people go wrong with carbs? You know, like where did this whole thing come? That oh, carbs are the devil, et cetera. You know, probably away from the athlete world and more from Gen Pop.
Speaker 2:I think, where it's come from and it's probably a multitude of things, but sugar is a type of carbohydrate, okay, right, and so I think it's just been like well, sugar is bad, therefore carbs are bad.
Speaker 1:Because it becomes glucose ultimately, and we yeah, okay. Yeah, okay. So let's then say on it carbs and sugar when is one more important than the other?
Speaker 2:That's such a great question.
Speaker 1:And this is layman terms. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, yeah. Even I've done. You know Masters in Science, and it's like I still think carbs and sugar are different things. I consider them differently, but ultimately they're the same fuel source at the end of the day of the process.
Speaker 2:It will appear in your bloodstream as the same thing.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so where do they differentiate?
Speaker 2:So for what the individual needs to care about is okay, if I've got to get some carbohydrate coming in before this particular training session, how much time have I got? So if you don't have much time to digest, then you want to go more for your simple carbohydrates. Sugars are going to be. So if we differentiate, we kind of go okay. Well, look your simple carbohydrates or your sugars, they're things that taste sweet when you first bite into them, whereas your complex carbohydrates you know big, complex molecules when you eat them they're going to taste a little bit more savoury. If you're having them by themselves and if you were to look at them under a microscope, your simple carbohydrates or your sugars are going to be sort of just like two molecules joined together. So to break that down, yoink and you're done, whereas your complex carbohydrates got some chains coming off it in all directions and so to break that down it just takes longer.
Speaker 1:So you get a slower release of those sugar molecules.
Speaker 2:So you're going to get a bit more of a slow feed of that energy coming into your body which, if you're eating, you know an hour or two out of a training session. You want that. However, if you have like 15, 30 minutes before you're about to go into a race or go into a really intense training session, you don't want your body having to deal with digestion. You want blood flow to be directed to your working muscles and to digest food. Well, we need a good amount of blood flow happening, so we kind of need to make it a little bit easier on our guts to be able to do that process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah, that's really interesting. Let's say what if an athlete does both? They have their nice bowl of oats in the morning and they're heading to their training session and then they start to freak out and they want the one it's. They're not sure if they've eaten enough. Like is there merit to having both? And I guess it depends.
Speaker 2:But you can always top up it's fine to have both yeah, absolutely, and, and you know, chances are that first meal is actually going to have both in it, because it's pretty normal to have some fruit when you have your porridge or some honey on that um.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I think you know the lovely thing about carbohydrate is you can always kind of titrate it up or down, depending on what happened earlier. So if you're like, oh I missed the mark on that, my lunch didn't have enough carbohydrate to recover me, we'll just sort it out in your afternoon snack or have a little bit more at dinner.
Speaker 1:Yeah your body's not keeping score.
Speaker 2:I'm like. You didn't give it to me at lunchtime, therefore, I'm not going to refuel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. Staying on carbs, you know, before bed, particularly from a growth perspective. Is there any merit to that? Or is it just sort of like listen regular intake in and around your training, as you're saying, and then considering it from a growth perspective? If that's sort of what you want you know lean mass particularly you've got to have it at nighttime. Is there a benefit to that?
Speaker 2:Look, the before bed opportunity to eat is a good one for someone who is wanting to increase lean mass. So if you've got some time to get some more food in and like it's like, well, here's my quota of food that I need to eat in a day to increase my body mass, increase my lean mass, then ideally you want to front load it and you want to put it in and around your training sessions for best outcomes. But if, for some reason, you've managed not to get your quota of food in, then putting it in before you go to bed Great idea, definitely do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Get into training. I want that quick glucose sugar type carb. I've got the choice of a piece of fruit, banana, apple or grabbing some snakes and that sort of instant glucose type hit. Is there a preference? Is there something better? There's a fiber element with the fruit. Talk us through that. And what should an athlete be considering, if they need to at all?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, look, I mean I don't think we're trying to get sort of health outcomes from pre-training nutrition. So you know, if that's the only place that you get your fruit in the day, then okay, maybe you would be. But if it's just like the difference between two and like I really just want to have a good training session, have whatever you're going to be able to tolerate better, and for some people that might be the snakes, because there's less, virtually no fiber content to it, right, so there's less digestion work to do. Whereas some people might feel a bit like, oh, piece of fruit, that's too much. Most people can actually tolerate a piece of fruit beforehand. So if you can, absolutely I'm going to support that. Right, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2:The thing that is almost like your emergency nutrition. If you're like, oh, I've had a massive nutrition fail here, I've got to do an afternoon training session. I've barely eaten anything all day. I'm rocking up to the gym. I've got to get something in beforehand. That's sports drink. Okay. Because it's entirely possible. If you've had a day like that, you also probably haven't hydrated particularly well. So a sports drink does fueling and hydration with the easiest possible digestion. It just slides into your system Like it's designed to do. That Underestimated.
Speaker 1:That's very interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's not and, like everyone knows, it's not the health food of the nation. It's not pretending to be, I don't think, it's just solving it's got a name that's specific, right, that's right, it's solving a problem. So if you're having sports drink because you know you've pulled into the servo and you want something sweet to have with your lunch, like well, it's appropriate. But there will be times where athletes will use these things because it's going to be really helpful to their performance to do so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's good to know actually, the amount of times I catch myself in exactly that situation. I'm going all morning. I actually forgot to eat breakfast. It's 11 am and you know I got here at 5. I'm not eating before that, so I need to eat something and I do, and then you know it's a little bit more work and suddenly I need to train and I'm like I've eaten one meal and I need to now. Do you know back squats? I'm sorry I'm making you squirm. Sometimes it happens, not all the time but being able to lean on that like just grab a sports drink, have someone's grab you know something else that satiates me because I know it works for me and it's just a handful of nuts or whatever it might be, and then off I go and then try and catch up later in the day. Don't make it a habit. I know.
Speaker 1:But you know, it's just. It's nice to know, because quite often, for a little while there, I was like, oh, I know what these sports drinks are. They're just, you know, really glucose, it's just sugar, Correct. Your system needs it if you're going to lift weights. So keep that in mind. Fueling for performance versus fueling for health. You know, I think we've touched on it there. It's quite, it's quite clear and it you know. When we say performance, I think I want to make a point. If you are 65 and you're a woman that you're suddenly worried about your bone density and your lean muscle mass, consider it performance. When we say it, it's you just as much as it might be the athletes, because these rules don't really change.
Speaker 2:Would you agree with that? So give me the question again.
Speaker 1:So a woman that wants to increase her lean muscle mass?
Speaker 2:Ah, increase, yes, and we're talking performance nutrition.
Speaker 1:These rules apply Okay to her, just as much as it might apply to your ballerina or your diver or your rugby union athlete.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's the thing is like. You don't discriminate on nutrition strategies based on the level of the athlete. So whether you're elite, whether you're active, it's like no, we are meeting the athlete where they're at. So I have worked with Olympians and world champions who we're just working on eating breakfast. We're just working on eating breakfast.
Speaker 2:We're just working on finding sources of protein that aren't chicken wings, you know like there are some real sort of fundamentals that you're working on with someone who is very skilled, very talented, but doesn't have a good you know nutrition vocabulary not you know nutrition behaviours you know nutrition vocabulary, not you know nutrition behaviours. So, and I would suggest that most you know, women of this age are probably going to have some really good bones to their diet of how they currently eat Pardon me, and so it's just yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2:It's probably just tweaking to make, to make things you know, work for them yeah if they come to this point, they're like all right, well, I need to increase my lean mass. Well, let's start with training.
Speaker 1:You've got to have the stimulus yep then once you've got the stimulus, then great, we can start to work on the nutrition strategies yeah, yeah, um and I think, if I reverse engineer that question, maybe ask it a bit better they don't need to go on a specific diet that's separate to any other diet from an athlete perspective. Hard, no, hard, no.
Speaker 2:There are considerations, right, so there are things that will occur. So you know, and I think it's probably pretty common knowledge, that you don't eat the same way or the same amount that you did when you were, say, 20. But that's going to be more obvious and that's mostly because we move less. But there is a point where metabolism will drop off and that's sort of more like around 60 or so, and so that is where someone won't need as much total energy to survive, to exist, and so you know, if someone has a body composition goal layered on top of that, then it's going to look different what they do over 60 compared to when they were 20 and is that based on volumes of macro micronutrients?
Speaker 2:That's total food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not going to be like a don't eat nuts.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, and if anything, I probably should say like it's not even. I mean, it is total food, but what we haven't spoken about from a nutrient perspective is alcohol. Yeah. So wine consumption is often it's like oh, look at that, we can just adjust this and you're done.
Speaker 1:Your total input is going to come down quite a bit generally yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a good point Because it's you know, I think again the internet being such a great place, and then also it's got its flaws. And this is probably one of the big flaws is there's so much concern that people are getting it wrong based on their age, gender, all these sorts of rules, and that might cause a defeatist type mindset, where people then actually double, double down not intentionally on bad habits because they're like oh my god, there's so much I've got wrong, I just I give up.
Speaker 2:No, and I think so, like I would think that my main talking point with someone in this situation is like we've just got to be a bit more patient. So you know, when you tried this, you know 20 years ago, and like you know, it just came off really quickly and you got the change that you wanted straight away. It's like it will still happen. It will just take a little bit longer. So you've just got to be a bit more consistent, persistent to get it and you absolutely can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the metabolism generally slows down, as you said, around these ages and you know, maybe earlier for men, maybe later, but, as you said, do you think it's mostly related to a lack of movement or just less daily movement, or is there, you know, profiles with hormones and all that sort of stuff involved?
Speaker 2:Great question, and I don't think we actually know the answer to that.
Speaker 2:There is absolutely a line of thought that you could continue to train and the small change that occurs in metabolism is meaningless yeah, you won't see it yeah so you know we absolutely move less as as we age as a general rule, and you know, with the amount of technology that we've got now, we're going going to be moving less. So, yeah, putting more moments in your day where you do move more and you know having activity is something that you do most days I think that's really important.
Speaker 1:It's the same in the exercise world. You know, I look at a lot of the women here and they might listen to a podcast or read an article and it's like bone density, bone density. I need to be stomping my feet on the ground. I'm really worried and I'm like hang on, like, hang on, just like, are you doing that once a week or can we just get you walking every single day? It's probably going to have a better effect and it's just that regular movement. And I've gotten to the point now where I'm like looking at people and going like, oh, what are your ribs and your shoulders doing and do you move regularly? You and you know older people obviously just tend to represent in a way that they don't move as much. Yet. Then we have the luxury of having a fit over 50s program and you have the one person who is still doing triathlons in her mid-60s and she just has this beautiful mobility and access to ranges of motion that theoretically and by the textbook she should have lost, but she hasn't.
Speaker 2:She hasn't stopped.
Speaker 3:Well, that's it, and she may or may not be winning her age group like who cares?
Speaker 2:and I think, like going back to something you said right at the start, was around like oh, you know you've got to work hard, and and then you sort of reference that again of like we're not talking about flogging yourself, like you're not, like you don't need to flog yourself, but probably what working hard looks like is being consistent. And so you know you've gone and done the charity ride. Well, that's great, but what did you do after the charity ride ended? Did you just stop?
Speaker 1:And you know, drink two bottles of wine every other week, sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Or if you get injured, well that doesn't mean you stop Like, you can still do like if you've injured your knee or your ankle. It's like, well, upper body. There's still so much movement that you can do. So yeah, and I know I'm kind of getting off topic of nutrition, but I really do think it's that consistency with exercise or training, however you think about it, is really important.
Speaker 1:It sort of precedes. You know, if you're moving regularly, you feel more motivated to nutritionally make a better decision, probably, and then you're more conscious of it, and so it sort of goes. So it's all in one, it's one system for me and you know, again, I'm envious that you've, you know, done the exercise, physiology and the nutrition and the dietetic side, because it is the more, like, the amount of times I'm like, stop asking me these questions. I'm like, stop asking me these questions. I'm actually not the professional in that space. I have what I know, but again, you're worrying about one, two percentage changes that are not worth worrying about because we need to go to the big rocks. Yeah, um, what are some of your pet peeves when it comes to those one percentage changes on? Like you should eat this before you train, or if you are a certain age, you need to change and start having this, or, you know, is there anything that really comes to mind?
Speaker 2:uh, the pet peeve. Look the. The current fashionable pet peeve is for females eating around your menstrual cycle. So, like changing the food that you would eat depending on where you are. We have no evidence, no evidence to suggest that that's what you need to do. It's not to say it might not come Like it absolutely might, but at this stage, like what would you know give meaningful change?
Speaker 1:Like, we just don't have any evidence to suggest that that's the case and instead of worrying about that generally, what would you suggest? Most females in this situation that do worry about that aren't worrying about it and they need to tick this box. Eat breakfast Okay.
Speaker 2:Have breakfast.
Speaker 1:With a little bit of protein in it. Yeah, yeah, good, let's talk about fibre. It's kind of popping up a little bit more, you know, in the whole gut health space and we've mentioned it and it's so much more complicated than I think. A couple of kombuchas and thinking, okay, I've got good gut health. Now you know, from a fibre perspective, sources of fibre and how regularly should they be consumed throughout the day. Where do we sit with that and how do you go working with people and where do they compromise?
Speaker 2:Look, fibre and guts is like like that. It is a really tricky space and it's not um often so where I see this pops up in the space that I work in, that where guts become cranky is because people aren't eating enough total. When you don't eat enough total, you know digestive system can slow down not always, but it can and that's total, total food intake yeah total food.
Speaker 2:So it's like, okay, well, this is how much food you need to eat in a day, but someone's not eating that much, which does shift and change because of how much activity you're doing.
Speaker 2:If someone's not eating enough, then guts can become really cranky, and so having more fiber in that situation is sometimes going to be not helpful. They could be having way too much fiber and actually we need to dial it back. So you know, the australian dietary guidelines are going to recommend like 30 grams of fiber a day, and if you were to eat your recommended between five and seven servings of vegetables, then you're going to knock that out of the park because it's not going to be a problem having, like you know, your grainy sources of carbohydrate-type foods. You will get that no problems, and a lot of people don't, and sure, it's certainly something that any you know meal plan that I'm going to write is going to get them towards that. But I think probably more often I would see that the issues with guts is going to be they're not eating enough in total or they might be having too much, and actually we need to dial it back.
Speaker 1:Total food, too much total fibre, too much total fibre, that's interesting. Having big mixing bowls of salad for dinner. Okay, oh yeah, you don't need that much.
Speaker 1:Let's put a bit of protein in there maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay interesting, um, to go a little bit more, it depends for, like this, um, your experience in terms of the genetic nuance of like, how people adapt one to training, to, to, to, to nutrition. Particularly. I think sport exaggerates it. You go work in a world like rugby union. There's certain athletes that are really whippity and fast and struggle to hold mass, and then there's other athletes that are on the other end of the spectrum. You've then gone to these physique based sports from you know, diving and ballet, I guess. What observations have you made? And you know, from a research perspective, do you think that that's somewhere where we might look at?
Speaker 2:Look, I would suggest there's definitely not enough research in the space, and not to say that it's not being done, there's plenty of amazing researchers out there who are doing stuff around here.
Speaker 2:But I think my observations would be in these sports where physique can change performance, and that might be increasingly mass or it's not necessarily. We're not talking about always going down. What you see with that is that some people, thanks to their parents, are going to be able to do these movements better than the next person, right? So you're going to have some dancers who just genetically, because of their parents, are going to have a physique that is, you know, more sort of akin to what the dancing world is looking for and look it is changing because different dance companies aren't as focused on that nowadays.
Speaker 2:Like it absolutely is changing, but that is very much more a you know, it's probably more an appearance concern, whereas when you look at something like diving or gymnastics, like, well, performance is still, you know, like it's the most important thing. These, you know, the athletes do worry because of what they're wearing. They're wearing virtually nothing and they're out, you know, in front of the world doing that.
Speaker 2:But there can be times where physique will change what they're able to do and so, you know, it's like people will self-select into that, based on what they have been given okay, I will never be a diver okay you know, um, I tried to be a rower but, you know, part of the reason why I wasn't successful is because you look at the really successful female rowers and they've got massive, long reach, really long limbs and I don't have that and I'm not going to be able to get it.
Speaker 1:There's no way I'm going to be able to that's right.
Speaker 2:So it's this really good example of like okay, so if I love this sport, love it. How am I going to stay in it? All right, well, if I change my body weight, I can go into that category over there and I'll be able to stay in it, but it's not, yeah. So I think sometimes we're almost probably trying to fit the square peg into the round hole and maybe that's only going to get so far. But from participation man, anyone can do this. So when I say I can't dive, well, absolutely, actually I can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so interesting.
Speaker 2:But just not as an Olympian ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's. I mean, I've waffled about my experience in it a number of times, but high-level summary eldest brother is physically pretty talented. He's pretty talented in a number of ways, but he was really good at swimming and even better at water polo, right, and so in we go, we're swimmers and water polo players as well. Yeah, um, and just you know, knowing a little bit from a sports perspective, anecdotally, the swimmers have these beautiful long limbs with beautiful ranges of motion like obscene ranges of motion, sometimes dangerous, but it makes them really good in the water. Try as I might, I will never have it and I tried and I tried and I tried. So many benefits of not being so talented. So I increased my work rate and you know, that's psychologically sort of put me in a better place. But I think if I just stuck to the land and relied on my stiffness, on my tendons, I might have been okay running 400s.
Speaker 1:Never got the chance to. So you know, it's just funny. I'm aware of that personally, um, and you know, I think for the parent or the athlete or the, the teenage, you know person that might be in a situation where they are trying to be sweat pig in a round hole, I guess there is sort of that consideration. It's not to say don't do it at all. And if you love the sport, like, there's going to be a place and you can do as you said, um, but you know it's, it's sometimes you might just need to lean and pivot. You know, I ended up playing more rugby and loved it. Loved it more than the swimming, even though I tried harder at the swimming, just purely because I think I liked the land. But then there's this sort of other end of the spectrum and I've learned this later on in my career.
Speaker 1:I went and dabbled with gymnastics just purely from a. Principally, the movement is so specific and it requires such high-level mechanical understanding of yourself ranges of motion, strength, joint control, so forth that there's an inevitable benefit for everyday people. To aspire towards a handstand, you don't need to have one, but if you ask the thoracic range of motion or the wrist strength. There's certain layers that are really beneficial. You know how much of it can that square peg for the round hole start to get a little bit more rounded on the edges? And then you know diet-wise, because I think a lot of people that do hold a lot of mass are trying to do an endurance-based, sport-wise struggle.
Speaker 2:How much does you know an adaptation happen, if anything that you've seen? Well, it can, and so it's going to require consistent stimulus, right? So you're going to have to do the gymnastic movements consistently to get that, and and I think it's almost like you know your body will morph and change into the stimulus that you give it. So if you do sprint training, you're probably going to look more like the quintessential sprinter. Are you going to look?
Speaker 2:exactly like them Like Usain Bolt? Probably not, because you don't have Usain Bolt's parents. However, if you start doing marathon training, your physique is going to morph and change into that of a marathon runner, but it's still like, like it's not to say that it is the quintessential marathon runner that you are then going to become like.
Speaker 1:But certainly, yeah, it's an elastic band, right, yeah, yeah it's sort of that sort of inverted you almost, and you'll land where your body can land. The longer you stick at it, it'll land in more of a place that it does land. Yes, consistency, adherence, patience, probably the factors depending on what you want and, again, who cares what you look like? Yes, just if you want to run well and you want to run at your best, consistency, adherence and patience, you know, very interesting. So let's to bring it home. Some of the big noise diets that again we're seeing all over the internet. Like man, I just wake up, I eat meat, I eat tallow, I eat raw eggs. What might the person who's really smashing a heavy carnivore diet be missing out on? Nutritionally, macro, micro as well from a nutrient perspective.
Speaker 2:Okay, look, chances are the macro, what they're going to be missing out on. I think it's probably no surprise they're going to be missing out on. It's probably no surprise they're going to be missing out on some good quality complex carbohydrates, which then you know you're going to. There's a lot of B vitamins that would come with them. If you have the whole grain versions of those, you're probably going to be pretty low on fibre, or at least fibre that's going to come more from a grain source compared to fibre that's going to come from, you know, your vegetables, salad sources.
Speaker 2:Fats-wise, usually that carnivore diet is going to push someone more towards the saturated fat intake which long-term, not so helpful for human health. And I mean, look, it's not to say that you couldn't be having things like your avocado and your olive oil and you have your fish on that particular diet and you could be punching a good amount of your unsaturated fats. But usually the execution of that is that there is a fair reliance on red meat which is going to come with your saturated fats. So that's what you might be getting perhaps too much of, not enough of, on the fats perspective If we go. So that's your macronutrients. If we then go the next rung down of being micronutrients. We've kind of mentioned bigger vitamins already. Iron is usually going to be pretty fine. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But do you know what I mean? Iron is really tricky and sometimes if someone's not eating enough total, so let's say they are doing this sort of more. You know keto type diet if, if the the protein intake is so high that it wipes out their appetite, that they actually don't eat as much as what they need, then you do see that iron levels can drop even though there's a good whack of it in your diet. So, like eating enough, and this is where I think one of your first questions is like what's more important eating enough or protein distribution? Always, eating enough is the most important thing for health and performance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, it's just funny. I mean, I deal with it all the time and you have all these other variations that come your way and it's like, oh man, like again, simple, big rocks, low hang fruit, just just eat that. Yeah, pardon the pun. So in terms of I guess you know the, the everyday people that you see, let's take aside from the athletes to sort of bring home as, I guess, a closing message, if you were to pick kind of three or four things that you just consistently see and this isn't research, this is observation, anecdotal patients that you've seen, and you've seen a number of patients- I'm sure what are just like the big rocks that, nutritionally, you just tend to find yourself saying quite often.
Speaker 2:I would say one of the first ones. So if we're talking sort of active population and particularly I would say this particularly does apply in adolescent population, young adult is that appetite is not necessarily reliable for how much you need to eat. Okay, so when your kid wakes up and they're like, oh, I'm not really hungry, well, hang on, we know what's ahead of you in the day and if you don't eat now, that is a missed opportunity and you will not catch it up again. So it comes into that whole. Like you know, total amount of food is the most important thing and if you miss that time you don't get the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Who's going to have a double lunch meal? Certainly not while they're at school. Like it's hard pressed to get enough food in, you know, for for someone in a working day or in a school day. So it really makes it difficult when um, to achieve an energy requirement if a meal is being wiped out. So I would say there are times where you just need to eat per plan or like intellectually, be like well, I know, I need this food here, as opposed to appetite, okay. So intuitive eating I feel like it's probably one of the again on trend like just eat when you're hungry and stop when you're satisfied. Well, that's a really advanced skill for someone who has had, let's say, if we have got someone who has a disrupted relationship with food and there's lots of reasons why they have come to eat the way they are. If you go well, just eat when you're hungry and stop when you're satisfied, that probably is not going to end well.
Speaker 1:May not eat at all. May eat way too much yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so then the same thing for someone who is not a food-focused individual. There's plenty of people who just don't really think about food, and so then they don't really want breakfast, and it becomes a real punish to try and get it in. But then at some point it will catch up with you, okay, you know, at some point. That then means your body's like you have caused me to do a lot of training and you haven't given me enough nutrition, and now we're broken.
Speaker 1:Yeah, broken, or you know. I guess would that bring in like binge eating type behaviours.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I mean, and it can, it can result in that it can, and so, yeah, the kind of food behaviours that it brings in is varied, and so some people yes, it can bring in that and that can be on a 24-hour whip around. It can be sort of on like more a weekly basis, whereby someone's being quite restrictive throughout the week, intentionally, or they're just taken with other things and so they're not eating enough throughout the week, and then come weekend it ends up being like that's where they end up consuming a whole lot more food, which is, if you bring it back to the performance outcome, it's like, well, all these training sessions that you did in the week, they weren't very well fuelled, so your body needed it and it got you back.
Speaker 2:It was like I'm going to get you and on the weekend is when it happened, and so you ended up eating more, and so you see someone's body weight is quite stable. But are they well fueled for the work they're doing?
Speaker 1:probably not yeah, it's such a strong point. I mean again, I see it often and people mid-session they're just kind of and I'm like what's going? On how much have you eaten? I had breakfast, what?
Speaker 2:did you have?
Speaker 1:uh, then we start unpacking. Great question yeah right, that's the theme of it. Let's go right into food. Quick answers from someone that needs to drip-free their protein more. You gave the recommendation of throwing an egg on that piece of toast before you leave the house. What else can they do? Breakfast, snacks, lunch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a big fan of making breakfast the night before because, you can just get prepared, and it's because it is a rush time, Like you know.
Speaker 1:it's where we're heading out the door. You're preaching to the choir here.
Speaker 2:So the things that are useful, ads to regular breakfast would be okay. Yes, your eggs on toast. Easy one Overnight oats.
Speaker 1:That's my go-to at the moment. I love it.
Speaker 2:Great. So you've got to make it on milk and you've got to add yogurt. Yep, because if you don't have those two things, then you're not going to get enough protein.
Speaker 1:And I throw a scoop of protein in it.
Speaker 2:Well arguable that you'd need that.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Because it's like well, if you've got enough milk and high protein yogurt, your protein needs in that meal are set. So save your protein powder for when you need like a convenience option later in the day, a little afternoon, a little treat yeah. And when you are using whole food as your protein sources, it's going to come with more nutrients attached to it. So if you look at the calcium content of the overnight oats made on dairy versus your protein powder, it's outrageous Like you get a good amount of that coming in.
Speaker 2:So, where possible, we do want to use your whole foods. Okay, overnight wheat bix for those people who find that overnight oats are not okay. Overnight wheat bix is a cracker. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then things like again, like the make-ahead version of eggs. People are like I don't have enough time to make eggs. Well, if we do eggs and kind of make them like a scramble and then you get a wrap, and you put some avocado, some spinach down, wrap it all up in the wrap, stick it back in the pan. Make it into a burrito shape. Put that in alfoil in the fridge. Done it can stay.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's cold, you're going to done. Yes, it's cold, you're gonna be idiot cold, but but sometimes you know we're not.
Speaker 1:Every meal is a taste sensation. Sometimes we're just ticking boxes, yep and, but you're feeling great. You know what's a temporary two minute. Well, you know, whiffing down one of those to actually really feeling well, energized, good through the day, um, okay, so that's breakfast. Other, you know, easy grab snack, protein, drip feeding through the day options.
Speaker 2:I would again. I'd lean on the yogurts, so your high-protein yogurts. There's a variety of brands Yo Pro is a classic one, chobani they're kind of moving more into sort of like not all of their products when they first started out were high-protein. Now, like you, get their Chobani flips and it's like oh, that's kind of just a dessert yogurt now. So you've got to be like mindful that yeah, you can't kind of just be loyal to a brand. Yeah, you've got to kind of just stay on them and just make sure, like hang on, how much protein am I actually?
Speaker 2:getting from this, what else? So tins of tuna on crackers, corn thins If you want to have even cottage cheeses I feel like that's the underutilised dairy Big time. Oh, such a good option. And you can make that sweet or savoury, like as bland as anything, so you can chop up fruit and put it in there. There's a high-protein sweet. Or you can go more the savoury option by. You know, you can put some olives through that. Or like if you have some toast and you put Vegemite and you put cottage cheese on top, there's your savoury option.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, do a cooking class, really nice. And then I mean, you've touched on a few things around the fruit and veg servings fibre but you know through the day that people could just you know you've got A and B staring at you at the servo on your way to training or your way to work from training in the morning want to get some fiber, want to get some carbohydrate. You know, do you? What do you grab?
Speaker 2:The banana.
Speaker 1:Huh, the banana.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like prepackaged Awesome. Yeah, Medjool dates another really good option. Okay, you know they're the ones from you know, in the box at the supermarket where you've got to take the lid off. Do pay an obscene amount per kilo, but they're delicious, you don't need to eat a kilo. That's right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome, I think that's sort of the big thing that you know we talk macro, micro and sometimes the layman might go well, what does it look like? What do we actually need that I put into myself like a banana, yeah, you know, as an easy example. So, yeah, really useful, sally, been a lot of fun. Jeez, I think we could keep going and going, and going, and going. Probably so.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty happy we connected and I have no doubt we're going to do a few more of these and a lot more work in the future. So thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me Cheers.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to today's episode. For more regular insights into SOF, be sure to check us out on Instagram or Facebook, or visit our website at scienceoffitnesscomau. Once again, we thank you for tuning in to the Science of Fitness podcast.