166 Do micronutrients matter?

I recently saw a well-known hybrid athlete claim that he almost never eats vegetables. This athlete claimed he ate nothing but steak, milk, honey and sugary drinks. He also claimed that he had worked with the highest level dietitians in the world, and this still seemed good to him.

Another well-known hybrid athlete has said similar things. Once I heard this athlete say that as long as he hits his protein target for the day, he doesn't really care if he has sour patch kids for dinner.

So do micronutrients matter?

The answer of course is, it depends. 

Certainly for a hard training hybrid athlete or CrossFit competitor, meeting energy needs is way more important than hitting a micronutrient target.

But once you are adequately fueled, and your macronutrients are in place, then micronutrients do matter.

Well, some of them.

Some RDAs appear to be completely meaningless; other RDAs were established on decades of data that connect deficiency to fatigue, fracture risk, or degraded performance.

In this episode, I cover both ends of that spectrum, emphasizing the most common and consequential micronutrient deficiencies in athletes, and walk through how I built a single day of eating that covers nearly all of them.

We cover:

• Why some RDAs (e.g. vitamin E) don't seem to matter at all
• The two-factor framework I use to rank nutrients: how common is deficiency, and how consequential is it?
• Iron in female athletes — ferritin targets, dosing protocols, and why standard lab "normal" isn't good enough for a training population
• Vitamin D, electrolytes, and magnesium — practical thresholds and dosing for hard-training athletes
• Choline and calcium — the two nutrients that are functionally exclusive to a single food group (eggs and dairy)
• Iodine — the rising prevalence of deficiency due to non-iodized sea and pink salts
• The importance of B12 for vegans and vegetarians
• Omega-3 — strong mechanistic evidence for inflammation resolution
• Vitamin K2 — an honest look at a nutrient where the evidence is still developing
• The dietary fiber-SCFA-sport performance relationship
• The 11 food groups I use to structure a day, ranked in order of importance
• My full daily food log, meal by meal, and the reasoning behind every choice

Enjoy!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we are going to answer the question: Do micronutrients matter? I recently saw a well-known hybrid athlete claim that he almost never eats vegetables. This athlete claimed he ate nothing but steak, milk, honey, and sugary drinks. He also claimed that he had worked with the highest level dietitians in the world, and this still seemed good to him. I saw another well-known hybrid athlete say similar things. I once heard that athlete say that as long as he hits his protein target for the day, he doesn't really care if he has sour patch kids for dinner. So do micronutrients matter? The answer, of course, is it depends. Micronutrients matter less than energy and macronutrients. Nobody who is malnourished cares how much vitamin K they're getting. And certainly for hard training hybrid athletes and CrossFit competitors, meeting energy needs is way more important than hitting a micronutrient target. But once you are adequately fueled and your macros are in place, then micronutrients do matter. Well, some of them. The thing about nutrition science is it tends to be quite messy. It takes a long time for most micronutrient deficiencies to appear as performance degradation or negative health outcomes. And then in most cases, it's very hard to assess the intake of those individuals. Questions like how often in the week do you eat leafy green vegetables? And the subjective recall required to answer that question, then get put into some sort of algorithm to determine recommended daily allowances for a nutrient or RDAs, which I'll use that term frequently in this episode. As a result of that process, some of the RDAs are completely meaningless. Take vitamin E, for example. The RDA for vitamin E is based on a single study that's over 50 years old. The vast majority of American women fall well short of the RDA, but seem fine. There don't seem to be any negative health outcomes if you don't meet the RDA for vitamin E. Now, on the other hand, there are nutrients where deficiency is both extremely common in certain populations and strongly linked to negative outcomes. Iron is a prime example. Iron deficiency affects a significant percentage of the female athletic population. The exact percentage varies widely depending on the population surveyed and the definition of deficient. Menstrual losses make this a particularly common deficiency in female athletes, leading to fatigue, degraded performance, and other symptoms. So, to answer the question, do micronutrients matter? We must first ask which ones. I attempted to rank the most important micronutrients according to two criteria. First, how common is deficiency? So how available is the nutrient? How distributed is the nutrient across the food supply? And then secondly, how consequential is deficiency? For instance, vitamin C deficiency is very consequential. It results in scurvy. But vitamin C is so abundant across the food supply that deficiency almost never happens. On the other hand, vitamin E deficiency, quote unquote, is very common, but apparently inconsequential. So, I made a list that combines the two factors. In order for a nutrient to rank high on this list, deficiency must be both common and consequential. The most common and consequential nutrient deficiency is iron in female athletes who have a high demand for it due to menstrual losses. So based on the convergence of the literature, screen female athletes routinely. Get your ferritin tested at minimum twice per year if you're a female athlete in hybrid sports or in CrossFit. Ferritin is the primary iron storage protein in the body, so it's a proxy for total body iron stores. You want to target over 50 micrograms per liter of ferritin. And that's the athlete floor. The standard lab normal is lower than that. First line is dietary iron. So this would be heme iron from red meat, oysters, and shellfish. You do want to avoid tea and coffee within an hour of iron-rich meals because the tannins inhibit absorption. And pairing with vitamin C at the same meal increases absorption. When ferritin gets below 30 to 35 micrograms per liter, at that point, dietary intervention alone is unlikely to restore stores quickly enough, especially if you're in the middle of a training block. So that's where oral iron supplementation at 100 to 200 milligrams of elemental iron every other day, away from training sessions, is ideal. Also away from calcium-rich foods, which inhibit absorption as well. And then you want to monitor the response to that. So you want to retest ferritin if you've already gotten a low result every 8 to 12 weeks after beginning supplementation. And you can expect a 10 to 15 microgram per liter increase per month with adequate supplementation and dietary support. Okay, so that is the basic rundown on iron and female athletes. Next, we have vitamin D. So deficiency is quite common for indoor athletes, for athletes who live far from the equator, and athletes in winter. So if you're an indoor athlete who lives far from the equator and it's winter, right? Or maybe any combination of those factors, consider a blood test. 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter is the target. And then if deficient, dose 1 to 5,000 IU per day. That seems to be completely safe. And uh the toxicity risk really only comes in at doses much higher than that. Next we have electrolytes, which are lost through sweat at highly individualized rates, but they are lost through sweat. The total amount of loss scales with training volume, heat, and humidity. So these are basic hydration recommendations by session type. If you're under 60 minutes in moderate conditions, then just water is sufficient. As soon as you get over 60 minutes and you add heat to the equation, then you're going to start dosing 300 to 600 milligrams of sodium per hour. And you can do that with food, you can do it with salty snacks, or it doesn't have to be an electrolyte product. Once you get over 90 minutes in the heat, or you're a heavy sweater, then you're looking at half a gram to a gram of sodium per hour. The upper end of the range is most relevant for athletes if you get visible salt residue on the skin or salt stains on your shirt, if you have a history of cramping, or if you're training in high heat and humidity. Okay, along with that, you're gonna do 400 to 1,000 milliliters of fluid per hour, depending on how much water you lose. You can do a sweat test to get an individualized assessment of exactly what your hydration needs are, that I think most people are gonna do just fine with these general general recommendations. But if you can support it, then getting some sweat testing done with there's a company called Precision Hydration is a practical step. Next we have magnesium. Magnesium is not particularly abundant in the food supply. It has been linked, not necessarily causally, but it has been linked to poor sleep quality and heightened stress reactivity. So those are functional indicators of inadequate magnesium. I personally have experienced great results since starting a magnesium glycinate. So there's a strong case for supplementation in an athletic population. You do also lose it through sweat. And there's interestingly an elevated demand for magnesium if you eat a high carbohydrate diet and if you train a lot. You also excrete more magnesium in your urine if you're stressed. So there's lots of mechanisms by which magnesium supplementation at just 200 to 400 milligrams of magnesium glycinate before bed, very low risk, very low cost, and very well mechanistically supported. Okay, now we're getting away from where supplementation kind of makes more sense and into some of the more food-first micronutrients. Choline. So choline is mostly exclusive to eggs. Liver is an alternative, but most people don't eat liver. So choline is mostly exclusive to eggs. And inadequate choline has been linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and ALT, which is a liver enzyme elevation. Beyond that, deficiency is also tied to muscle damage and muscle atrophy. It has also been linked to cognitive impairment, which is those are looser findings than the liver markers, but still worth noting. I mentioned that because choline is for almost everyone exclusive to eggs. So if you eliminate eggs from the diet and you don't eat organ meats, then you're very likely to not be getting sufficient choline. So that is one reason that eggs are their own food group in the 11 food groups that I will list later. Next we have calcium. So calcium is mostly exclusive to dairy, at least in amounts that most people need. There is this bone pathway by which, if there's inadequate calcium in the diet, that you get chronic resorption from the bone and increased fracture risk. So that is a direct mechanistic consequence of inadequate calcium. And there are other consequences that are more speculative, but that fracture risk is real and documented. So if you don't eat any dairy, then you're very likely to be getting inadequate calcium unless you, you know, drink like uh fortified plant milk. A lot of fortified plant milks have calcium added. We'll get to this when I get to the practical recommendations, but eggs and dairy are their own food groups and they rank quite high because of these nutrients that are mostly exclusive to the to those food groups, choline for eggs and calcium for dairy. Next we have iodine. So this has become increasingly common because while most table salt is iodized with synthetic iodine, the rise of non-iodized sea salt and pink salts significantly lowers dietary intake of iodine. And there are well-documented deficiency diseases, mostly related to the thyroid. And it is personally, it was an actual gap in my own diet. And I recently started using a sea salt that is fortified with kelp as a natural iodine source. You can also eat kelp snacks or seaweed snacks, but the amount of iodine in those is highly variable. And I wanted a standardized amount uh that I was getting each day to make sure I was not super overdoing it, and but getting an adequate amount each day. So uh it's called Numami Organics, is the company that I use, but it's a it's a Celtic sea salt fortified with kelp, and that gives you a really standard quarter teaspoon of that gets you your daily uh amount of iodine, and I highly recommend that if you're not using an iodized salt. Next we have zinc. So exercise increases your losses of zinc via sweat, and there are documented deficiency consequences, and they're actually related to performance. So these are not these are mechanisms that might influence performance, so reduced peak oxygen uptake, decreased muscle strength and power, and impaired immunity. Zinc is particularly abundant in seafood and red meat. So those are also categories that are separate from the rest, not not red meat, uh, but meat and poultry are a category, and seafood is a category, in part because it's particularly abundant in zinc. B12. This really is super important for vegans and vegetarians. There are severe, well-documented consequences at over deficiency of B12. So it's it's very uncommon if you eat any dairy, eggs, seafood, or meat. So very, very low commonality if you eat any of those food groups. But if you are vegan or vegetarian, then you need to seriously consider supplementing with B12. So there's a real risk in unsupplemented vegans and vegetarians. So that's worth mentioning. For omnivores, super uncommon, but for vegans and vegetarians, I have to put the B12 caveat in there. Next we have omega-3, specifically EPA and DHA. So there is another kind of omega-3 that is available in some nuts and seeds, chia seeds, especially. Uh, but it is not very well converted to EPA and DHA. EPA and DHA you can really only get from seafood. And interestingly, the kelp that seafood eat, right? So there's a high commonality of suboptimal status because a lot of people don't eat very much seafood. And this is not performance outcome evidence, but there's strong mechanistic evidence for specifically anti-inflammatory properties of omega-3 due to specialized pro-resolving mediator production and reduced inflammatory markers. So there's no direct performance outcome per se, but there is strong mechanistic evidence for including omega-3 EPA and DHA in the diet. Okay, we're getting to less consequential ones now, but folate, so there are real consequences when deficient, but folate is pretty well distributed across food groups. So my main contributors are mango, broccoli, spinach, OJ, and oats. So you can see there's, you know, if you eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, if you eat dark leafy green vegetables, especially spinach, then you're probably good to go. Honorable mention, this is the last one, is vitamin K2. So vitamin K2 is as pre-formed, is only really available meaningfully in these obscure fermented foods, like some cheeses and this fermented soybean uh food that is common in Japanese cuisine. Research is ongoing, it's funded by companies positioned to sell K2 supplements. But my approach to it is I make sure I include dark leafy greens every day because they provide K1, which the body can convert, though somewhat inefficiently, to K2. Plus, I get some incidental K2 from grass-fed butter, from eggs, and from Parmesan. So that's my approach to vitamin K2. But I will be, you know, watching the evidence if people start supplementing with K2 and all of a sudden they, you know, feel great and they get these great outcomes, then yeah, I would consider maybe some of those fermented foods or supplementing with it. I think that's pretty unlikely personally, but honorable mention for vitamin K2. Okay, so below that point, your deficiency risk drops close to zero. So I'm mentioning these for completeness, but vitamin A, vitamin C, and vitamin E. Vitamin A, there are real well-documented deficiency diseases, but almost entirely confined to the developing world, it's not a realistic risk for most people. I mentioned this before, but vitamin C, same thing, highly consequential if you don't have any in the diet. But because vitamin C is so abundant across food groups, it almost never happens. And then finally, vitamin E is the inverse case. It's technically quite common to be deficient in vitamin E, 96% of American women. But there's no demonstrated harm. So deficiency is very common, but does not appear to be consequential. Now, it is possible that if we ate more of a certain nutrient, that we could see improvement in health and performance. That's totally possible. We also observe that if certain nutrients are absent from the diet, that tends to lead to negative health outcomes. So this is where the food groups come in. So there are 10 food groups. These are used to assess dietary adequacy in low and middle-income countries. I changed it from 10 food groups to 11 to separate seafood from other meat as part of my own assessment because you really can't get the omega-3 PA and DHA from anything but seafood. So I separated that out into its own. So I've ordered each group so that you can prioritize the groups that have a nutrient where inadequacy is consequential and that nutrient is somewhat consolidated inside of one group. Okay, so there are 11 groups here. The first is meat and poultry. So iron, especially from red meat, you can get iron other ways. Uh it's not going to be heme iron, and that heme iron is really, really helpful for preventing iron deficiency. There's something called foot strike hemolysis, which is if you're running a lot or you're doing a lot of box jumps or a lot of double unders, where you lose some iron. And especially for female athletes, if you add the menstruation on top of that, then it's just you are adding complexity if you don't eat red meat. So because iron deficiency is so common and so consequential, especially in a female athletic population, that is why meat and poultry are number one. Now, there are ways to get adequate iron if you are a vegan or vegetarian. I'm not going to go into that on this episode because most people are omnivores, and most people will include these groups at the top. Next we have dairy, and that's because, like we said before, calcium is consolidated into this one group. Now, personally, I made a change recently where I added, I switched from a plant protein to a whey protein. And I'll get to that when I talk about my own dietary pattern. And I switched, I added some Parmesan to the diet because it's very dense in calcium. It's aged for a long time, so it's very low lactose. And I am doing that to increase my calcium intake, to get closer to the RTAs, because the evidence for inadequate calcium intake and chronic resorption, and then that leading to increased fracture risk. That uh mechanism is pretty compelling. And so I am doing that to make sure that I get adequate calcium. Next, we have eggs, specifically for choline. So, choline is yes, you can get it from liver, but most people don't eat organ meats. So that is why eggs rank particularly high, is because yeah, I mean, inadequate choline is linked to liver dysfunction. And so if you're never eating any eggs for 10, 20 years, that's probably not good. So have an egg every once in a while. Seafood, so we have it's a secondary source of iron, it is also a source. Of iodine, which we covered. Uh, it's if you use a fortified salt, then that's moot. But a lot of people are moving away from iodized salts. So seafood actually does have some iodine in it. I do recommend just getting a fortified salt. And then omega-3 EPA and DHA. Uh, it's it's mechanistic evidence, so there's no performance outcomes directly linked to intake of omega-3 EPA and DHA, but mechanistic evidence is pretty compelling. So I do a half to a whole salmon filet per day, and that gets me to adequacy on omega-3 EPA and DHA. And seafood is the only place you can get that, right? So uh if you're like, well, I do chia seeds or I do, you know, it's not the same, right? It's it's just not the same thing. So seafood ranks pretty high as well. Next we have dark leafy green vegetables, and this is for vitamin K, which I talked about earlier. It's K1, technically not K2, but the body can convert K1 to K2. They're also a good source of folate, and they have fiber, right? Uh, which get converted to short chain fatty acids, and those have a real performance benefit. So whenever I see an athlete like bragging that they never eat vegetables, I'm just like, I just facepalm. I just, it's just honestly, guys, it's brazen to me. It's brazen and audacious to just you know flaunt that. And you you kind of you can sense it when they say that. They're like, Sour patch kids for dinner, or I never eat vegetables, or it's like, dude, I don't know about that. You know, it's just like the way they say it, you're just like, I don't know. And so there have been studies recently coming out that link fiber intake, it gets converted to short chain fatty acids in the body, and those have a real performance benefit. So having some dark leafy green vegetables, those rank pretty high. Uh, personally, I do some spinach or some kale, and then usually have either a broccoli or asparagus with dinner. And so I'm having one to two servings a day of dark leafy green vegetables, but just make sure you rotate those in. Next, we have vitamin A rich fruits and vegetables. So these are obviously a great source of vitamin A. And they also contribute fiber and SCFAs. So now we're into the food groups seven through 11 where they're not really providing anything unique, right? So before I move on from the vitamin A rich, I do a serving of carrots every day, and that gets my vitamin A well above adequacy. Okay, so now we're in groups seven through 11 where they're not they're not really providing anything particularly unique or of consequence uh from a micronutrient perspective, but I'm gonna mention them for completeness. So next we have grains, white roots, and tubers. These you just need for energy, right? Which is a totally separate conversation. You need to have them in the diet for energy's sake, but from a micronutrient perspective, they rank pretty low. Next we have pulses, so these are beans, peas, and lentils. They are inconsequential for omnivores. So if you're eating the things up at the top, the the meat, the poultry, the dairy, the eggs, the seafood, you really don't need these. Um, I rarely have them, but they are very, very important for vegans and vegetarians as a source of protein, as a source of zinc, they are you as a source of iron, they are very important. But if you're an omnivore, you're eating the things higher in the higher order, then the pulses become basically inconsequential because you're getting those things from those other food groups. Next, we have nuts and seeds. So nuts and seeds are a big vitamin E contributor, but like we saw before, vitamin E doesn't seem to matter that much. So it may not be consequential. I make sure I have a serving a day, or not a full serving, I have 20 grams a day. And that gets me to certainly the adequacy of vitamin E, but like we talked about before, the RDA is kind of meaningless, right? But it's a food group, and so I make sure to include it. And then the last two groups are other vegetables, so that would be like zucchini and other fruits, so you know, uh peaches and things like that. Okay, so what what does all that look like in practice? Personally, I pack as much variety as I can into a single day. That way I only have to think about a handful of rotations, and I can just set it and forget it. Okay, so I'm gonna walk through my food log. I'm gonna tell you why I do everything I do that's in there, and here we go. So the first is my pre-training meal. So my pre-training meal is oats, eggs, grass-fed butter, orange juice, and honey. The oats specifically are gluten-free. I have never been tested for celiac, but I was having some symptoms of celiac. And I switched to gluten-free oats, and I I will say I feel significantly better after switching to gluten-free oats. I learned that just regular oats, people with celiac have to treat regular oats like wheat. That is how common and how significant cross-contamination is of oats. So if you have like really severe celiac, then you actually have to get like purity processed oats, but a regular gluten-free oat for most people with uh, you know, a mild intolerance to gluten is gonna be adequate. Okay, and then that's my pre-training meal. That's all semi-solid or liquid volume, so it clears the stomach pretty easily. And even if some of it is still in my stomach, it's all semi-solid. So I can still train pretty soon after eating that. Next, I have intra workout. So there's banana in there, maybe some applesauce, and then the staple is coconut water with either cyclic dextrin or carbolin mixed in it. I don't like the plain carb supplements, they just don't taste good. So I mix it with coconut water, provides a little bit of sodium, provides some fructose to you know, balance out all of the other sugars that are mixed in there. So that is what I do for intra workout. You can get super fancy with intra workout and the ratio of glucose to fructose. I just make sure I have some fructose in there, hence the banana, the banana, the applesauce, the coconut water, and then I add the carb powder with it. Next, post-training meal. So this is I do a smoothie and then I do another bowl of hot cereals. So this is strawberries and blueberries, which are uniquely high in polyphenols. And polyphenols are just great, and I'll come back to those when I get to my lunch and dinner. Uh, they're just really good for you. I put some spinach or kale in there, so dark leafy greens are present. And then uh lately I've been doing a whey protein. I do not tolerate dairy very well at all. And this is the only whey protein that I can use. Uh it's from a brand called MRM, and they add probiotics to it, so bacterial cultures, and they add enzymes to it, and I tolerate it just fine. So shout out to MRM. They obviously I'm not they don't, they have no idea who I am. So uh, but I really love their product and it has really helped me increase my calcium intake and just get a highly bioavailable source of protein in my day. I mixed that with coconut water. I have then cream of rice, and I have to include a note here on Pride Foods. They make one that is both organic and unfortified. So if you're eating, you know, two servings a day, this stuff, four servings a day, this stuff, like some people do and more, then the orange box cream of rice is it's it's fortified, right? With iron and all sorts of other stuff. And so there are bodybuilders eating six servings of that stuff a day who have actually gotten iron poisoning from fortification. So I was just like, I'm just doing unfortified. So I do Pride Foods, um, they're a great brand, at least for those of you who are stateside. And then I mix that with almond butter or peanut butter. Okay, so those are my pre-training, my intra workout, and my post-training meals. All of that is either liquid or semi-solid volume, clears the stomach quickly, allows me to train. Then I have two solid meals. Solid meal one is jasmine rice, carrot, high vitamin A. So I've already I've got dark leafy green vegetables check. I've got vitamin A rich vegetable check. And then I do a wild caught salmon fillet or half of one. I buy them frozen, I get them in bulk because it's cheaper that way, because salmon is expensive. But I want to get the EPA and DHA in the diet, so I do that. I buy it frozen and I put it in the air fryer way better than just buying fresh fish. That way you just it's not sticking up your whole fridge, and it's there's no spoilage risk. I do that with olive oil, and I do a high polyphenol olive oil. So there's if you're in the States, there's a brand called Lucini Premium Select. It's among the highest you can get in a grocery store. Highest polyphenol, that is. I have gone to a specialty store because I really like olive oil. I've gone to a specialty specialty store which is going to have higher polyphenol oils than you can get in the grocery store. I really like the the taste of it, the burn that you get from it. So I have bought those before, but I'm not going to a store like that every week. So I just get a high polyphenol oil from the store. And again, the polyphenols, which the olive oil and the the berries are particularly high in, have just been they're linked to so many good outcomes that it's something that I want in the diet in abundance. And then I'll usually have pineapple with that. So that's solid meal one. And then salad meal two, I'm having jasmine rice or sweet potato as a vitamin A rich vegetable, or yellow potato. I'm having either a ground beef or grass-fed steak with that, or I'm having shellfish, I'll have some shrimp, or I'll have chicken breast or chicken thigh. And then I'm having either broccoli or asparagus, so dark leafy green vegetable check, or zucchini, which is another. I have been doing more zucchini lately because it's lower residue. I do olive oil with that, depending on the fat content of the meat. And then I'll have either mango, kiwis, or peach with that. And then I'm had the parmesan, like I mentioned before, because that provides calcium. So I mentioned this before, but salt fortified with Nordic kelp for the natural iodine, and then I also do uh Ceylon cinnamon, which has some interesting glucose disposal properties, probably not significant, but worth mentioning. So this covers all of my micronutrients with the exception of vitamin D, which is one of the only nutrients the body can synthesize on its own. I get plenty of sun, I live in a place where there's lots of sun, so my blood levels were very high normal on my last test. So notice how much variety is inside of that day. If you point to a food group, well, what about dairy? What about eggs? What about seafood? What about meat or poultry? What about dark green leafy vegetables? What about vitamin A rich fruits and vegetables? What about grains? What about nuts and seeds? What about other fruits and vegetables? It's like 10 out of the 11 groups. It's in there. Right? And I'm not rotating foods, I'm not like doing a, you know, on Monday I eat this, on Tuesday I eat that. I've seen that recommendation, I've seen that recommended before. And it's just, I don't, I'm like, dude, just get me as much variety in the day as possible. Now, you can't really get 11 food groups in in a day.

unknown 35:18

Right?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

If you're so focused on micronutrients, then it's like that's why there are some rotations inside of that. But so you're gonna have some rotations. You just there's no way you can get perfect variety inside of one day because there's just too many different types of food. But if you point to a group, it's like it's in the week. The one I'm relatively absent in is pulses. I mentioned this before. But because I eat meat, the pulses become basically inconsequential. They are extremely important for vegetarians and vegans for the protein, iron, and zinc. But in an omnivorous diet, they they basically don't matter. So that pattern also gets me to 10 to 15 grams of fiber per thousand calories. You don't have to do it that way. That's just how I do it. I wanted to show how much variety you can build inside the day and still train, right? How much fiber you can fit in the day, especially if you're using things like oats, things like a blender to make a smoothie, then you can get a lot of fiber in without a ton of you know, whole food, high red, whole high residue food. So, in summary, include foods from most of those 11 groups and vary food items within each group, and that is going to get you most of the way covered with your micronutrients. So the groups to review are meat and poultry, dairy, eggs, seafood, dark green leafy vegetables, vitamin A rich fruits and vegetables. Those are the ones that from a micronutrient perspective, it's important to have often those six. From there down, it's grains, white roots, tubers are very important for energy. Pulses, inconsequential for omnivores, but very important for vegans and vegetarians. Nuts and seeds, and then other vegetables, and finally other fruits. Okay, guys, and we also went through cases where individual micronutrients have common and consequential deficiencies. So iron deficiency is very common and very consequential in female athletes. I just had a client go through this and start supplementation. Vitamin D, very common if it's winter, if you're an indoor athlete, if you live far from the equator, consider a blood test if any of those apply to you. Electrolytes, if it's hot and you do anything over an hour, then start considering electrolyte supplementation. Magnesium glycinate, 200 to 400 milligrams pre-bed. There's a lot of mechanisms that support the use of that. Personally, I've seen great results with that. We talked about choline and how that's exclusive to eggs. We talked about calcium, how that's exclusive to dairy. We talked about iodine and the importance of a fortified salt because it's increasingly common to have a gap with the rise of non-iodized sea salts and pink salts. B12, very important for vegans and vegetarians to consider supplementing. Those are the nutrients where deficiency is both common and consequential. Okay, guys, that's it for today. If you're on a podcast platform, please rate the podcast. Share this with a friend who needs to hear this. You can also join us for the training camp. It's in about three weeks in Dallas, Texas. I would love to see you there. Thank you guys for being here. See you in the next one.