November 15, 2016 • 44 mins
My free email series for beginner runners: www.freerunningcourse.com
30-Day None to Run Challenge (starts January 1, 2017): www.nonetorun.com/challenge
Save $$$ on running shoes and gear from Running Warehouse: www.healthynomics.com/gear
TODAY'S SHOW
Nutrition plays a vital role in helping beginner runners enhance their endurance, recovery and running performance.
I admit that I am not a nutrition expert and nor am I perfect from my own nutritional standpoint. I try!
To help you understand how nailing your nutrition can make you a better runner, I invited Jennifer Sygo onto the podcast to chat.
Jennifer is a registered dietitian and sports nutritionist with Cleveland Clinic Canada. She is the team dietitian for the Toronto Maple Leafs and also provides advice to the Toronto Raptors.
In 2014, Jennifer released her book, "Unmasking Superfoods: the Truth and Hype about Acai, Quinoa, Chia, Blueberries, and More".
Some topics we chat about include:
- Surprising nutrition habits of professional athletes.
- How a nutritionist fuels two little boys a breakfast and their morning routine.
- Time savings tips for families with busy schedules.
- Tips for new runners looking to lose weight.
- Nutritional timing – is it important?
- Hot trends in nutrition and whether there is any merit to them.
- Is it possible to run and rely only on fat for fuel?
- Simple steps you can take today to eat better and help become a better runner.
- And much more!
The notes and links from this episode can be found here: http://www.healthynomics.com/26
Enjoy.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Healthinomics
podcast. This is episode number26 with registered dietitian,
sports nutritionist,professional speaker, and author
Jennifer Saigo. Some topicswe'll chat about include
surprising nutrition habits ofprofessional athletes, how
nutritionist fuels two littleboys at breakfast time for their
(00:21):
morning routine, time savingtips for families with busy
schedules, tips for new runnerslooking to lose weight,
nutritional timing, is itimportant, hot trends in
nutrition and whether or notthere's any merit to them, is it
possible to run and rely on fatfor fuel, simple steps you can
take today to eat better andbecome a better runner, and
(00:42):
much, much more. Before we getstarted, I wanna tell you about
three other quick things.
Firstly, I have my free emailseries for beginner runners. You
can find it atwww.freerunningcourse.com.
There, we cover everything fromhow to pick the right running
shoes to running for weightloss, injury prevention, and
you'll even get a free trainingprogram and strength and warm up
(01:03):
routines. Again, the link tothat course is
www.freerunningcourse.com.Secondly, I'm currently running
a thirty day none to runchallenge, and I have about a 30
runners and walkersparticipating right now.
I'm giving away a none to run tshirt every week during the
challenge, and one lucky winnerat the end will win a free pair
of running shoes. The nextchallenge starts 01/01/2017. To
(01:29):
sign up, head over towww.nonetorun.com/challenge.
That's n0net0run.com/challenge.Lastly, if you need any running
gear, clothing, or a new pair ofrunning shoes, Running Warehouse
is offering Healthinomicslisteners 10% off your orders.
(01:50):
Go to Healthinomics.com/gear andenter the code healthy 10 at
checkout to save on your nextorder. That's it. Enjoy my chat
with Jennifer Saigo.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Welcome to the Healthenomics Podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Boosting your health and fitness IQ
Speaker 2 (02:07):
one episode at a time.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And now your host, Mark Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
All right, Jennifer. Welcome to the Healthenomics
Podcast. It's so great to haveyou on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, it's great. Looking forward to chatting
about, all things nutrition and,a little bit of performance and,
and everything in between. Justto get started, I like to get
our guests to, if you can give alittle brief bio and background
on yourself, you know, whatyou're doing with work. I know
you've got two little boys as Ido, so, you're, you're a busy,
(02:43):
mom and I also, read in your biothat you're, you do some running
yourself. I saw you ran the twothousand and four marathon in
Toronto.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Oh, you're good. Yeah. And never again after
that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You're smart.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It was my husband and I have forever dubbed three
degrees Celsius with howlingwinds and driving rain marathon
weather because it was the oneand only marathon that he and I
both ran. We ran it together andit was about as bad conditions
as you could create for aperson. Tell me a little bit of
(03:20):
myself. So I'm a registereddietitian and I practice and
live in Toronto. I've beenpracticing in sport nutrition
for over ten years right now.
And before that I did a master'sdegree in human biology and
nutritional sciences from theUniversity of Guelph. So I
always had an interest in sportnutrition, although I've
(03:42):
practiced in a wide range ofdifferent realms of nutrition.
But in the last few years, I'vereally started to narrow my
focus more into sportperformance. So now I work
Downtown Toronto at a placecalled Cleveland Clinic Canada,
where I do one on one nutritioncounseling for all sorts of
people, especially those in thedowntown area who are busy and
(04:03):
trying to, like you said, it allin into busy lives. Then they
might be a triathlete or someonewho's doing some type of
obstacle course race or theymight be a runner.
And then I also work with acouple of sports teams. I work
with Athletics Canada, which isthe Canadian track and field
(04:24):
team with the sprint and relayteams and jumpers and throwers
up at York University. So wejust came off preparing them for
the twenty sixteen Olympics,which was a lot of fun. Was an
experience, it was really fun.You get kind of burned out for a
while.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Did you actually go to Rio yourself?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, I didn't. My counterpart in the West Trent
Stellingwerf, who's aphysiologist with a nutrition
specialty went on behalf ofAthletics Canada and he's also a
coach.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Okay, know Trent well. He was actually on the
podcast about a year or so ago.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Oh, very good. Yeah. So he and I work very closely
together and he manages theathletes out in the Victoria
area including his wife who'sone of our Olympians, Hillary
Stalingworth. And then the lasthighlight where I guess would be
working for the Toronto MapleLeafs where I do their nutrition
for both them and their AHLteam, the Marley's.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And then I consult for some other sports teams and
groups as well. So lots ofsports on the brain these days.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, absolutely. Your marathon with those harsh
conditions, which marathon wasthat?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That was what was then called the Toronto
International Marathon and so itwas run-in October. It's now the
same weekend that Scotiabankruns their marathon. They've all
kind of migrated around. Ithought I lost you for a second.
Still got you Mark?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I'm still here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
They've kind of migrated them around over the
last few years. It ended up backon that same weekend and as soon
as I saw that I was like, Ohdear. It seems like the weather
has a bad habit of reallyturning right around then. I
trained in shorts and so I wasdetermined to wear shorts for
the marathon and it was threedegrees and like I think I
(06:08):
almost died.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah. It's funny October, that October, I mean,
you're you can get greatweather, like perfect running
weather, or you can get, youknow, that winter, almost winter
like harsh weather. So, you wereunlucky.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I still run, I still enjoy it, now I do it for
pleasure and to stay healthy formy kids and as you know with
kids you just try to stay activeand I'm not training to win
anything, I just want to takecare of myself.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, that's fantastic. That's sort of my
approach as well. Yeah, so well,let's just keep it going. So you
mentioned your kids, I've gottwo little boys as well. What's
your morning routine like,especially sort of from a
breakfast standpoint?
I know it's sometimes achallenge but I'd love to hear
sort of what a nutritionist doeswith their kids.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Sure. So my kids are early, get up around six. We've
really tried to somehow changethat but there's My older son is
eight and he's just dialed infrom the second he wakes up,
he's just ready to go. So myhusband actually gets up and
runs before they get up. So he'sout of the house by ten to five
in the morning and puts in aboutnine k and then comes home and
(07:23):
then the kids get up and I'mstill sleeping.
And then I get up sometime aftersix and do a workout. The kids
have a little bit of cereal withmy husband and then usually
while I'm doing a workout orrunning myself, I'll be making
oatmeal for them. So they kindof get two breakfasts but you
know, when they're up thatearly, they kind of need it.
(07:44):
There's no way they could makeit all the way to lunch.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Well, that's a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, sometimes they're complaining of being
hungry by the time I take themto school on the days that I do
walk them, you know, at 08:30 inthe morning, they're already
hungry again. We do oatmeal withblueberries. I put some seeds
and like hemp seeds and pumpkinseeds and stuff in there and a
little bit of milk and somecinnamon, a little brown sugar
and we sit down and have asecond breakfast together and
(08:08):
it's one of my favorite parts ofthe day.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah. Oh, I like that. Yeah. We we tend to do
well, yeah, sometimes sort of asecond breakfast, but they
usually, like, they'll have, youknow, whatever cereal or toast
or sometimes oatmeal. Butsmoothies, we like to do a lot
just because, get them some kindof greens in there.
Know you're not supposed to hidethe greens for their whole life,
(08:31):
but at this point, it's a goodway to get them some greens.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah. No, you're right. That's not a bad idea. My
kids do love smoothies and theyhave learned to accept the green
smoothies willingly. Oh, good.
That's a win.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (08:44):
but no, also, I mean for myself, I have a cup of tea.
People often wonder, dodietitians take caffeine? And
the only reason why I don'tdrink coffee is because it
actually is just too strong forme, it just makes me shake and I
get really, really strongreaction from it. I've actually
done a genetic test for it and Iam a slow caffeine metabolizer
(09:04):
so I can tell you I cancertainly feel that. Cup of tea,
I managed to wean myself off thesugar.
I used to take it very Britishwith milk and sugar and it took
years but I finally got thesugar out of there so tea with
milk now.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I didn't know you could do a test for caffeine
sensitivity.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You can and it's something that is of interest to
some athletes and individuals.There's this debate about
cardiovascular risk factors forpeople who consume especially
large amounts of caffeine thatif you are genetically a slow
metabolizer of caffeine likemyself, too much caffeine could
potentially increase your riskof cardiovascular disease
(09:45):
whereas for other people who arefast caffeine metabolizers, in
theory, they can consume upwardsof six cups of coffee a day and
it could be protective of theirhearts.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So it's an interesting little test. The
company that provides it isbased out of the University of
Toronto and they're calledNutrigenomics. Okay. That's with
an X at the end and you can payfor that. Anybody can get that
test done and it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I might have to look into that. Now before we dive
into some more of the runningrelated questions, I want to ask
you, you say you work with a lotof professional athletes, do you
have any interesting stories orsort of shocking nutritional
habits you've seen forprofessional athletes? And
before you answer, I grew upwith Steve Nash in Victoria, BC.
(10:35):
Grew up playing sports and stufftogether. I remember when he
started in the NBA and thengoing down to visit him, you
know, he you know, he's a youngplayer, just ate freaking
everything.
He had the biggest bowl of M andM's in his place I've ever seen
in my life, and that wasconstantly, you know, we're
going into that eating it. SoI'm sure, you know, it's more
the younger guys, but I'd loveto hear if you've had sort of
(10:56):
any stories or whatever withoutouting anyone of course.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Sure. Sure. Yeah. Well, I think you've you've hit
the nail on the head. I also dosome consulting work for the
Raptors as well.
So I've seen a little bit ofboth sides of the NHL and the
NBA. And I've worked with otherpro athletes as well on tennis
tours and other NHL players andso on. So I've seen a little bit
of of sort of the breadth of ofpro athletes. And I'd say that,
(11:21):
I mean, the main themes are theyounger athletes are often or
players are the ones that oftenhave some of the crazier
nutrition habits. But I have tosay things are changing and
they're changing fast.
Not all of our young come inwell versed in nutrition, but it
is really NHL players in generalare getting a greater sense of
(11:43):
the importance of nutrition at ayounger age than certainly a
generation ago, but even I wouldsay even five years ago. There's
much less work in convincing aplayer that nutrition matters,
and it's really I think aconsequence of all the
discussion that's out thereabout nutrition these days. And
parents are better educated andso then that feeds down into the
(12:06):
kids. So kids are still kids andI actually am not a heavy when
it comes to this. Perspective isnot, you need to come into the
league and be doing nothing butgreen smoothies all day.
You know, you have to be allowedto be 19. I know what I was
eating when I was 19 and I wasnot taking good care of my diet.
(12:27):
So I don't want nutrition toever feel like it's a chore or
that it's something that youdread going into the dietitian's
office because you're going toget in trouble. You know, a lot
of the guys are working ontaking better care of themselves
and then usually it's in theirmid twenties that they often
kind of something clicks andthey kind of go, Oh yeah. Like
you said with the Steve Nashstory that all of a sudden they
(12:49):
realize that when they're eatingtoo much of whatever, people
don't realize it is possible toput on too much weight as a pro
athlete.
Yeah. There's no guarantees thatyou're gonna be ripped and lean
all the time and always in thebest shape. You do have to
actually limit yourself at somepoint and especially if you're
not playing a lot, which doeshappen to some guys, right?
They're on the bench.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And and so there there are times where they'll
have gone up five seven poundsfrom the start of the season and
they gotta get dragged into theoffice and, you know, read the
riot acts a little bit, butRight. They're it it's it's
better than you might think.They all have their hiccups but
it's better than you think.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
That's good. I guess that makes your job a little bit
easier as time goes on and thesekids coming out are a lot more
educated from a nutritionalstandpoint.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, that's good. Let's move or segue into running
and, you know, as I mentionedearlier, I've got a lot of
people that come to my site.They're beginner runners.
They're either just gettingstarted or perhaps they're
coming back into running after alayoff due to injury or life
(13:54):
just getting busy. Many of thesepeople are looking to, to
running as a way to help them,be fitter and healthier, but,
also to help them lose weight.
So just, love to hear yourthoughts on approaches for for
people who are looking to loseweight, through running some,
you know, maybe some strategiesor or things that people, you
(14:17):
know, often get wrong whenthey're approaching, you know, a
fitness activity like runningand looking to lose weight?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Sure. Yeah, I can relate to this very much. I sort
of cut my teeth as a speaker andin sport nutrition doing a lot
of presentations at the runningroom and other running stores.
You do get those questions fromthe five ks and learn to run
groups and the 10 ks's and upand weight is one of those
things that would come up overand over and over again. And I
(14:45):
think the main thing that peoplehave to be aware of when they
start running or return torunning or really any fitness
program that's new for them isthat, I hate to say it but you
don't burn as many calories asyou might think.
There's a rough rule out thereand it does vary but that you
burn about a hundred caloriesper mile that you run and that's
(15:06):
mile not kilometres. So do yourmental math there. So if you
think of it, if an averageperson needs say 2,000 calories
a day and you're getting startedinto running and so maybe you're
doing, you know, a two mile runwhich you know, maybe a walk run
to start or maybe pushing allthe way to three mile which is
closer to the five ks mark. Youknow, you're looking at burning
(15:28):
maybe an additional two to 300calories a day. Well, that's the
basically the margin of errorfor weight loss.
Usually when we recommendsomeone lose weight, we say
whatever amount of caloriesyou're consuming now, shave that
down by two, three, four, maybe500 calories a day and that will
elicit sort of a slow and steadyweight loss. So in other words,
if you're doing a kind of atwenty to twenty five minute run
(15:51):
or walk run, really in theory,if you want to lose weight, you
wouldn't want to increase yourcalories from baseline at all.
And I think what happens though,is that for better or for worse,
activity, physical activity isvery tightly regulated and
associated with our hungermechanisms that our brain and
(16:12):
our body triggers for us. If youare increasing your activity
level, your hunger is going togo up in parallel to that. So
that's sort of the bad news ofthe story is that if you pick up
running and you pick up eatingto go along with it, you're
going to have a hard time losingany weight and if you do even
manage to get that small say twoto 300 calorie a day gap, that's
(16:34):
really only translating to abouta pound every ten or so days.
So it's really important peoplebe realistic and say, Hey, I'm
not gonna lose 20 poundsovernight here unless I change
my diet along with it. And sothat's where the real win comes
is if you say, hey, this is ajumping off point for my
lifestyle and now I'm going towork hard on both taking care of
(16:54):
my eating and I'm going to run.And if you do both and you don't
restrict yourself too much, thatcould be the real sweet spot.
One last thought on that that Ithink is is another hiccup or
mistake that people make andI've so been guilty of this, is
you go for those long runs withyour running group, know,
whatever that might be, whetherthat's seven k to start or 12 or
(17:15):
21 k and you finish it off andit's like guys, we're going for
burgers. We're here we go.
Know, like I finished that eightk run. Is the farthest I've ever
run. I am on fire here. We gottago for brunch. I'm having the
Benedict covered in a chocolatecake and I think that
unfortunately that again I knowI've done that, we reward
(17:37):
ourselves.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
So you have to be mindful of that, do go out and
have some fun but you know ifyou're eating back more calories
than you burned then you canactually see your weight go up
when you start running and Ihave seen that before.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Interesting so from a nutritional standpoint and
actually eating, what are somelike, your top tips then for
these people who are startingrunning and looking to lose
weight, like strategies to helpthem either curb that appetite,
or whether it's timing of eatingor how to some simple effective
(18:13):
ways to shave a few morecalories off.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Sure, there's lots of ways to go about this and I
think one of the things we'venow come to understand about
nutrition and weight ornutrition and health is that
there's no one system that worksfor all people and in fact the
research supports this. It's notjust I'm not just being sort of
cute. We now understand that forexample, people do very well
with low carbohydrate diets.Other people do better when they
(18:39):
have sort of a calorie countingapproach or something where
they're really monitoring howmuch they're taking in, keeping
food logs and journals andthings like that. Other people
do better, you know, simply bymaking sure that they don't eat
out as often and and you knowtrying to cook at home and
prepare their own meals.
So you have to be very honestwith yourself about what fits
(18:59):
for your life, your lifestyle,your preferences and the people
around you and start to growinto a diet pattern fits for
you. Having said that, some ofthe things that generally affect
us all, we do all get a bitthrown by portion sizes. It's
very easy and in fact, there'sreally interesting studies on
people who are nutritionalscientists who actually study
(19:22):
this for a profession, they workin the field and you can easily
throw them off with portiondistortion by taking for example
a larger plate or in studiesthat have been done out of
Cornell in The US, giving largerscoop sizes and they ask the
nutrition scientists to scoopout an equal amount of ice cream
(19:43):
to their friends using a smallscoop and a larger scoop. Sure
enough, they'll portion out alarger amount using the larger
scoop even though they work inthe field and know better. So we
all get thrown by this.
Things like bigger plates,bigger bowls, ive us into
serving ourselves more food. Sosimple act of just using a
smaller plate or smaller bowl sothat you're filling up all the
(20:06):
space but on a smaller amount ofplate, that your brain will
think of as being a positive andit'll actually trigger you to
feel more full. Those are someportion control sort of
strategies and there's lots moreof them out there. By the way,
if you are interested in thisarea, there's a great book by a
fellow named Brian Wonsink whostudies this, Slim by Design
(20:29):
that you can take a look at andhe's a terrific researcher in
the area. Other strategiesduring the day is it's really
important to snack properly, totake the time to plan balanced
meals and snacks and by balancedI mean things that contain
protein and good qualitycarbohydrates.
It doesn't need to be a bigplate of pasta. For some people,
the carbohydrates might be morelike fruits and non starchy
(20:52):
vegetables like broccoli andasparagus and green beans. But
don't feel like you can't haveany carbs either. Absolutely do
fit in a runner's diet but it'sthe key is to have it planned
ahead and plan to eat every saythree to four hours through your
workday and bring those foodswith you so that at 03:00 in the
afternoon, you know you havesome almonds or a little bit of
(21:14):
cheese or some hummus forprotein or maybe some Greek
yogurt and you have an apple ora few whole grain crackers or
some carrot sticks for a littlebit of carbohydrate. And the
protein, the crucial thing itdoes is helps us to feel full.
The carbohydrate gives us alittle bit energy. And then that
way, we eat those two foodstogether, middle of the
afternoon in particular, ormaybe on our way home, on the
(21:38):
train or wherever, you come intoyour house and you've got your
head screwed on right. And thatmeans you can have the energy to
go out for your run instead ofgoing, I can't be bothered,
know, I'm too tired, too hungry,or you gorge, and then you go,
Oh no, I can't run because Ijust ate too much. And it also
allows you to make a betterchoice when it comes to dinner
time. So instead of you knowpicking up the phone and calling
for dinner or getting Uber Eatsor whatever is in your
(22:01):
neighborhood, you'll actuallyhave sort of the sense because
you're not so starving to takethe time to cook some food.
So again, portion control Iwould say, balanced snacks,
those are just a couple of ideasbut there are many many more out
there that can help people tocontrol their weight.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, I like your idea of getting some energy
before the run. I think, youknow, I've had it before where
you you go on a run and youhaven't eaten anything in hours
and you you feel lethargic.You're just, you know, one of
those bad runs where you'relike, why am I doing this? If if
(22:38):
you're new to running, I mean,that's gonna be compounded, I
think. I mean, you're you're notreally enjoying it yet as it is
and you're, you know, youhaven't fueled yourself
properly.
So I think you might as wellstart with, you know, something
in your tank and, you know, andcut down your battles there.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Well, know, there's a term that we use called which is
breakthrough hunger. Andbasically, the idea is that if
you're experiencing hungerduring a run or any exercise,
any sport, you definitely havenot eaten enough beforehand.
Exercise is a natural appetitesuppressant while you're doing
it and shortly afterwards. Ifyour stomach is growling, then
(23:17):
yes, you definitely needed torethink your fueling beforehand.
And for the record, if you'restuck in those situations where
you're like, oh no, I think I'mkind of getting hungry and I
gotta go over my run-in fifteenminutes, that's where those
really easy to digestcarbohydrates come in.
That's the ripe banana, that'swhere you know, a few orange
slices, that's where maybe ahandful of grapes or a few
(23:41):
crackers or even a slice oftoast. They're not, you know,
they on their own, they're foodsthat won't keep you full very
long but they're really simpleto digest, they get into the
bloodstream quickly and thatwill give you some instant fuel
without leaving you feelingheavy or bogged down. Even just
a few bites of those or maybe agranola bar, that can all be
quick fuel so that you enjoy therun and I think that's the name
(24:03):
of the game is nobody wants itto feel like it's a slog or
you're gonna quit and we don'twant that.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Exactly. So what about after the run? You know,
if you're just going for a runthat say, you know, twenty five
to thirty minutes, is itimportant to get anything back
into your body either, you know,hydrating or or some food right
away or is it that not thatimportant?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Great question. And the answer is yes to hydration
and no to food. Now I'll put abit of an asterisk on the no to
food because it depends a bit onwhat else you have going on in
terms of activity in your life.Let me explain a little bit.
Unfortunately, for better or forworse, recovery is one of these
things that people like me whowork in sport nutrition, I think
(24:49):
we've created a bit of amonster.
So we've created this impressionthat recovery is this massive
issue for people you need torecover, recover, recover and
get your protein shake. And thereality is for the majority of
weekend warriors or recreationalathletes, recovery isn't really
(25:10):
necessary as long as you'reeating a regular balanced diet.
What I mean by that is that ifwe look at the two big factors
in recovery, one is muscletissue repair. So when you run
or do any type of exercise, youactually induce small amounts of
damage to the actual musclefibers, called the micro tears.
We need to repair that and makethat muscle healthier and
(25:31):
stronger for the next workout.
Then the other thing thathappens is we deplete muscle
glycogen, that's the storageform of carbohydrate in the
muscle and if we start the nextworkout with very low glycogen
and that run is long, we couldend up bonking or running out of
fuel. So those are the two bigthings we're trying to do in
recovery. But the real thingthat most runners or I said
(25:52):
casual athletes need to bear inmind is both of those
activities, repairing the muscletissue and replenishing glycogen
will happen naturally on theirown within forty eight hours,
within two days of an exercisebout. So if you're running three
times a week and you're notpushing yourself to your
absolute limit, your body willtake care of itself. Now, if
(26:13):
you're using running as a dailyactivity and it's still, let's
say, twenty five minutes a day,even then I would argue your
body is pretty much able to takecare of itself as long as you go
ahead and eat your dinner ifit's the evening or eat your
breakfast if it's the morningafter your workout.
You don't need to be consciousof recovery. Where it becomes
important to really startgetting dialed in on recovery is
(26:35):
when those workouts or thoseruns are graduating to being an
hour or more and it's becomingback to back days most days of
the week and or your crosstraining. So if you're doing
this as part of triathlontraining program and maybe
there's a swim in the morningand a run at night or you go for
a run-in the morning and thenyou play a hockey game at night,
then you want to think aboutyour recovery especially in that
(26:57):
first workout that leads intothe second one because that's
where you might only have twelvehours to recover and if that was
a hard workout, you bet you'regoing to start the next one
feeling low. In that case, thekey nutrients are protein and
carbohydrates which it keepscoming back to. Protein again to
repair the muscle andcarbohydrate to replenish the
glycogen.
People ask me a lot aboutchocolate milk and it fits the
(27:20):
bill. It's a great combinationof protein and carbohydrates and
it's tasty. Yeah, it's got quitea bit of sugar in there but if
you really have had a hard, hardworkout that's been an hour or
longer, your body can actuallyuse that sugar right away to
replenish glycogen. If chocolatemilk's not your thing, there are
many, many other options. Ioften recommend things like
Greek yogurt with some granola,but you could certainly do even
(27:43):
things like a banana with somepeanut butter.
If you're, you know, gonna eat ameal, it could be some like
chicken with rice or chicken ona wrap. All of those would work.
Cereal and milk, eggs withtoast. Again, it's some protein
and some carbohydratespreferably in about the first
half hour. After an intenseworkout, we're talking forty
(28:03):
five minutes, that's really hardor an hour longer steady state
and another workout expected thenext day.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay. That's great because, yeah, I know that the
chocolate milk thing that's beentalked about for the last few
years. So it's good to hear youradvice on that one. You
mentioned carbs, you mentionedprotein, but you haven't said
that much about fat. And I knowthere's still a lot of talk out
there about athletes burningfat, basically becoming fat
(28:33):
adapted, guess they Is there anyresearch behind that or what are
your thoughts behind that, thewhole fat adapted camp of
nutrition?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Oh, it's a great question and I've just come back
from basically a think tanksummit where this was one of the
major topics of discussion andwe're very lucky. It's a think
tank funded by a group calledB210, we're a big funding agency
for athletes leading into theVancouver Olympics and they're
now funding a group of sportdietitians in Canada to sort of
(29:07):
raise our game and allow us totap into some of the cutting
edge research. And we were veryfortunate to have Louise Burke
who's perhaps the best known andmost revered sport dietitian on
the planet come in fromAustralia and tell us about a
fat adaptation study or a lowcarb high fat study that has
been conducted on race walkerswho are endurance athletes in
(29:30):
Australia and they're working onthe results right now and
they're going to run a secondarm of the study next year. So
bottom line is that it is anarea that is of great interest
to a number of researchers rightnow. And I'll tell you what we
basically know today and bigasterisk here, we have more to
(29:50):
learn.
So this is literally as oftoday. Okay. Is that so when you
do basically, for lack of betterword, starve the muscle of
carbohydrate, you do see changesin the way that the muscle
works. And you'll see a downregulation of certain enzymes
that are related to turningcarbohydrate into energy, and
(30:12):
the body will start to shift tousing fat as a preferential
fuel. We do know that to be thecase.
Here's the caveat or theasterisk to it. When you look at
peak power outputs or peak speedoutputs, no study to date has
yet demonstrated that a fatadapted athlete, that's someone
who is chronically eating a verylow carbohydrate diet and
(30:34):
switching to eating a lot morefat in their diet. No one has
yet demonstrated through goodquality research that you can
run at top speed or generate toppower on a high fat, low
carbohydrate diet. So it's anarea that there's a lot more we
need to understand about thechronic adaptations to high fat,
(30:57):
low carb, high fat diet in termsof endurance performance. There
may be some instances where itcan be appropriate.
In my experience, myrecommendation at this point
would be it might be somethingthat an ultra endurance athlete
would look at, like maybesomebody who's looking at sort
of marathon and beyond, youknow, fifty k runners, Ironman
triathletes, if top speed is nottheir primary concern. So this
(31:21):
is somebody who just says, look,I don't want to have to deal
with all the sport foods. Youknow, maybe someone's very,
they're overweight or they'reinsulin resistant and they want
to cut the carbohydrates down intheir diet. And in all these
cases, I would approach thisvery carefully. I would work
with someone who's an expert inthe field, preferably a sport
(31:41):
dietitian who's got experiencein low carb, high fat diets.
You have to be really mindfulbecause there are side effects
to the diet that can be reallychallenging for some people. For
the rest of us, what we'relearning is that basically
there's a sweet spot forcarbohydrate intake. So just
because you're running sometimesdoesn't mean you need to eat
(32:02):
buckets of pasta. And I thinkthat's been a myth that we've
got to really break free of. Andthe word we use a lot these days
is periodization.
And what we mean by that is thatyou adjust your carbohydrate
intake according to the trainingloads or volumes that you're
doing. So if you're training alot, a lot of miles, high
mileage week, you're doing a lotof tempo runs, a lot of top
(32:24):
speed runs, that's a week whereyou're gonna wanna put a bit
more carbohydrate on your plateor maybe instead of just having
veggies as your carb for dinner,you include some starches. On
the other hand, if you got a lowweek, down week or you're
injured or you're coming off arace and you're not running
much, those are the times whereyou can bring your carbohydrate
intake down. It doesn't need tobe full on heavy duty carb
(32:47):
intake. So that's not the sameas fat adaptation, it's
periodization.
You are still consuming carbswhereas in someone who's fat
adapted, you're pretty muchexcluding them entirely.
Although even the very low carbfolks, a lot of them do still
consume some carbs so that'sanother area to discuss some
other day. But I think again,it's that idea of marrying the
(33:07):
carb intake to the amount ofeffort that you're putting out
there and not treating every dayas though it has to be exactly
the same.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Okay, that's great. That clarifies a lot of things
for me. I read about is itHailey, Jabrilassi, the Yes.
Great runner that, in one of hisworld record marathons, or one
of his top marathons, he wasconsuming something crazy. I
think it was like 90 grams ofcarbs.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
An hour.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Is that right? Or something around there?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
I think this is something that gets so lost in
the messaging out there is thatall the world records to date in
the marathon have been set bypeople consuming vast amounts of
carbohydrate during their run.Yeah. I mean sports drinks,
gels, all the stuff that's kindof getting a lot of flack these
days is exactly what has fueledpeak performance. Why? It's
(34:01):
because the speed they arerunning at is so fast, you
literally cannot burn or oxidizefat fast enough to produce a
world record in the marathon.
As of the research, as weunderstand it, and physiology as
we know it today, it isliterally not possible to
generate a world record withoutcarbohydrate. Like I said, you
(34:23):
want to go slow steady, that's adifferent animal. But if you
want to be able to go and if youlook at the speed that these
guys are running at, I mean,there are a lot of people who
cannot run even a hundred metersat the speed that a marathon
world record runner is runningtheir entire 42 kilometers at.
You need to fuel it withcarbohydrate.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, no they're flying. Yeah that could be a
whole another topic for apodcast. What other hot trends
are you seeing right now otherthan sort of the fat adapted?
You know, I don't know ifthere's still people talking
about paleo, low carb. See alittle bit about the keto,
(35:02):
ketogenesis.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
I guess that's low carb as well but what are the
sort of hot trends you're seeingout there right now and is there
any merit to them?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
So yeah, think the paleo diet, you know, it's
definitely still you know, inand out of sort of the nutrition
trends and it marries into thatlow carb realm but it's not
necessarily the same thing.Paleo is sort of short form for
the Paleolithic diet which isnot a single diet per se. And
(35:33):
again, this could be a wholeother topic but basically the
idea being that our ancestorswere not genetically adapted
enough to the foods that we'veintroduced with the advent of
agriculture in the past tenthousand years and that we need
to eat more like an ancestraldiet of meats, starchy
vegetables, vegetables, fruit,nuts, seeds, eggs, fatty fruits
(35:56):
like avocados and coconut, thatthat should be the primary food
base of our diet and that weexclude things like dairy foods,
whole grains, and legumes aswell as all processed food. And
you know, I mean, the bottomline is that the studies to date
on paleo have all demonstratedat least some element of, I
guess you could say positivityin that people tend to lose
(36:17):
weight when they go on the diet,their cardiovascular risk
factors look better. It's reallyimportant for athletes to
understand there are no studieson paleo diets for athletes to
date.
They do not exist. So foranybody, we have better research
out there on low carb high fatthan we have on Paleo. So I'm
not saying don't go Paleo but Iam saying just realize that
(36:38):
because you've read somethingthat says it might be good for X
doesn't mean it is gonna workfor you. And all of these diets
are really restrictive. Andremember what I said a few
minutes ago, it really comesdown to what is workable for
you, your lifestyle and yourfamily.
And so if you say, Yeah, that'sgreat. I'm going to go paleo.
Well, you have to understandthat means you'll never have an
(36:59):
ice cream cone with your kidsagain. So is that worth it? Is
that okay for you?
You can't have a piece of cakeon your birthday or you can but
you're breaking your paleo dietat that point. And what I do see
if you want to talk about trendsis I see unfortunately a lot
more what I would call healthanxiety, know, sort of paranoia,
(37:20):
dietary dogma out there wherepeople are feeling an extreme
pressure to adhere to a certaindiet and they're feeling a lot
of guilt and shame if they falloff that diet. Oh, I ate some
refined sugar and I feel reallybad about myself. And I think
it's so great that we're payingmore attention to nutrition and
I think the messaging isobviously getting out there but
(37:41):
I think you all have to alsotake that all with a grain of
salt and just because some isgood, more is not necessarily
better and like I said, thereare many different diets that
can fit so as soon as you kindof get this religious adherence
to one diet, be really carefulbecause we have a lot more to
learn and I'll bet you someonecould come along and twist that
(38:02):
conversation in the exactopposite way from what you
believe to be right and as aclassic case and point for that
is paleo diets versus vegandiets.
Both have great evidence forhealth and they're completely
different diets. Yeah. So youknow, think we all have to find
one that fits. The common themesI generally encourage people to
pay attention to is just try toeat more whole food, prepare
(38:24):
food at home when you can, planyour meals ahead so that you're
not eating quick foods inrestaurants, more food from the
outside of the grocery store andless stuff in boxes. And doing
that in a step wise fashion forme, you're better off than
following sort of the latest fador the latest trend.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
That's great advice. So I don't want to take too much
more of your time, but if youhad to give someone sort of one
piece of advice or one tipthat's something they can easily
implement tomorrow to help themeat better, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Well, I would say one that I thought about mentioning
off the top that I didn't, butworks so beautifully, especially
for busy people is at thebeginning of your weekend or
somewhere on your weekend, takefive minutes with your family,
your partner or yourself,whatever and write out what your
meal plan or your dinner plan isgoing to be for the week. That
(39:23):
simple act of just saying, youknow what, on Monday night,
we're gonna have the chili andon Tuesday night, I'm gonna make
the chicken stir fry. Whateverthat might be, changes
everything because it allows youfirst of all to walk in the door
and whoever comes in first knowswhat they need to make. So it
takes away that whole thing ofwalking in, opening up the
fridge or the freezer and likelooking at it, you stare at it,
(39:44):
you're like, nothing there. Youlike close it, you walk around
the kitchen three times, youopen it up again, you look at
the fridge or freezer, it looksexactly the same but you're
really hoping for a differentoutcome.
Like we've all done that likeover the third time, still the
same. So you take that out ofthe equation. You also force
yourself to plan ahead so thenwhen you go to the grocery
store, you know you need to buythat feta cheese for that
(40:06):
particular dish which youotherwise wouldn't buy. That
takes away the frantic phonecall of, Honey, you got to buy
some fudge, you got to buy someon the way home which saves a
whole lot of hassle and a lot ofstress. The other thing it does
is it reduces wastetremendously, reduces your
grocery bills and basicallyallows you to enjoy a lot more
stress free meals with yourfamily.
(40:28):
And all of those things I'vejust talked about are much
bigger keys to overall healththan again a lot of the fattish
stuff that's out there. So ifyou just took ten minutes, we
have a whiteboard in my house,my husband and I sit down on the
weekend, we map it out, we lookat the activities, who's got
hockey, who's doing this, who'sgot a meeting. And then we say,
Oh, you know what? This is acrazy week. I better make some
soup that we can just warm upevery day or No, we got a bit of
(40:50):
time that day.
I'll be home early. That will bea night that I'm gonna make the
pork tenderloin or something. Soit's a simple act but it's
incredibly powerful and if youtook five, ten minutes every
weekend, I think you'd be amazedat the difference it would make
in your life.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
That's great, thank you for that. And so before we
go, I know you've got a book,can you tell us a little bit
about your book?
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Sure, yes, so my book is called Unmasking Superfoods,
The Truth and Hype about Acai,Blueberries, Quinoa and More.
And it was published in 2014 byHarperCollins Canada. And it's a
book that was it stemmed from, Iused to write a column for the
(41:33):
National Post for about eightyears. And in that time, we
amassed a lot of differenttopics, lot of different strands
of sort of thought over various,whether it's sport nutrition or
weight loss, but superfoods aresomething people are always
asking about. So we took thosecolumns, rejigged them and I
turned it into a whole bookessentially what it is, it's a
(41:55):
chance to be sort of a criticallook at the superfoods movement.
It's not meant to be, Everybodyneeds more goji berries. It's
meant to be, Well, what do weknow about goji berries and do
you really need them and arethey that much better than say a
blueberry or strawberry that wecan get locally for less money
and supports local farmers andlocal economy.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
So it's not meant to poo poo on super foods but it's
just meant to be a critical lookat it and I also talk a little
bit about some super foods thatdon't get in my opinion enough
attention. Some of the ones someof you guys might enjoy things
like cheese. I talk about thevalue of cheese and how it's
underrated. I try and liberatethe noble potato which I think
(42:34):
is actually a nutritious food.If that's the sort of thing
you'd enjoy, it's a fun littleread, it's pretty light and I
know a lot of people use it assort of a reference for future
use that they can pull it outanytime they're having a fight
at the dinner table aboutcoconut.
Whip it out and win that Oh,
Speaker 1 (42:55):
that's great. So I'll put a link to that in the show
notes. I'll also put a link tothe other book you mentioned
Slim by Design and some of theother items we talked about. So
last thing, so where can people,if they want to follow you
online or learn more about yourwork, where can they do that?
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Sure. So, have a website which is just my name,
jennifersigo.com. Sligo is S Y GO and you can find my contact
information on there and link tome on social media. Probably the
place I'm most active is Twitterand my Twitter handle is same
thing, Jennifer Seigo. And I'dlike to tweet about, you know,
sport nutrition topics andnutrition trends and so on.
(43:39):
So you can certainly follow meon there. But again, you can
find me on Facebook and variousother LinkedIn and all of that
through my website. So pleasevisit me and I work downtown at
Cleveland Clinic Canada andpeople often ask about, you
know, do you need a referral?And the answer is no. You can
just call up the clinic and askfor an appointment and off you
go.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Awesome. So you're not snap chatting?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I literally just signed up and it was the most
embarrassing conversation. Therewere about five of us around a
table and we were like, so howdo we do this?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, I still don't know how you do that.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And all we're old, it's not good.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Well, that's great. Well, thanks very much,
Jennifer, and we look forward tohopefully talking with you again
another time.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Thanks so much, Mark. I appreciate it. Thanks for
listening to the HealthinomicsPodcast
Speaker 3 (44:26):
at www.healthinomics.com.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Healthinomics
podcast. This is episode number26 with registered dietitian,
sports nutritionist,professional speaker, and author
Jennifer Saigo. Some topicswe'll chat about include
surprising nutrition habits ofprofessional athletes, how
nutritionist fuels two littleboys at breakfast time for their
(00:21):
morning routine, time savingtips for families with busy
schedules, tips for new runnerslooking to lose weight,
nutritional timing, is itimportant, hot trends in
nutrition and whether or notthere's any merit to them, is it
possible to run and rely on fatfor fuel, simple steps you can
take today to eat better andbecome a better runner, and
(00:42):
much, much more. Before we getstarted, I wanna tell you about
three other quick things.
Firstly, I have my free emailseries for beginner runners. You
can find it atwww.freerunningcourse.com.
There, we cover everything fromhow to pick the right running
shoes to running for weightloss, injury prevention, and
you'll even get a free trainingprogram and strength and warm up
(01:03):
routines. Again, the link tothat course is
www.freerunningcourse.com.Secondly, I'm currently running
a thirty day none to runchallenge, and I have about a 30
runners and walkersparticipating right now.
I'm giving away a none to run tshirt every week during the
challenge, and one lucky winnerat the end will win a free pair
of running shoes. The nextchallenge starts 01/01/2017. To
(01:29):
sign up, head over towww.nonetorun.com/challenge.
That's n0net0run.com/challenge.Lastly, if you need any running
gear, clothing, or a new pair ofrunning shoes, Running Warehouse
is offering Healthinomicslisteners 10% off your orders.
(01:50):
Go to Healthinomics.com/gear andenter the code healthy 10 at
checkout to save on your nextorder. That's it. Enjoy my chat
with Jennifer Saigo.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Welcome to the Healthenomics Podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Boosting your health and fitness IQ
Speaker 2 (02:07):
one episode at a time.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
And now your host, Mark Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
All right, Jennifer. Welcome to the Healthenomics
Podcast. It's so great to haveyou on the show.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, it's great. Looking forward to chatting
about, all things nutrition and,a little bit of performance and,
and everything in between. Justto get started, I like to get
our guests to, if you can give alittle brief bio and background
on yourself, you know, whatyou're doing with work. I know
you've got two little boys as Ido, so, you're, you're a busy,
(02:43):
mom and I also, read in your biothat you're, you do some running
yourself. I saw you ran the twothousand and four marathon in
Toronto.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Oh, you're good. Yeah. And never again after
that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You're smart.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It was my husband and I have forever dubbed three
degrees Celsius with howlingwinds and driving rain marathon
weather because it was the oneand only marathon that he and I
both ran. We ran it together andit was about as bad conditions
as you could create for aperson. Tell me a little bit of
(03:20):
myself. So I'm a registereddietitian and I practice and
live in Toronto. I've beenpracticing in sport nutrition
for over ten years right now.
And before that I did a master'sdegree in human biology and
nutritional sciences from theUniversity of Guelph. So I
always had an interest in sportnutrition, although I've
(03:42):
practiced in a wide range ofdifferent realms of nutrition.
But in the last few years, I'vereally started to narrow my
focus more into sportperformance. So now I work
Downtown Toronto at a placecalled Cleveland Clinic Canada,
where I do one on one nutritioncounseling for all sorts of
people, especially those in thedowntown area who are busy and
(04:03):
trying to, like you said, it allin into busy lives. Then they
might be a triathlete or someonewho's doing some type of
obstacle course race or theymight be a runner.
And then I also work with acouple of sports teams. I work
with Athletics Canada, which isthe Canadian track and field
(04:24):
team with the sprint and relayteams and jumpers and throwers
up at York University. So wejust came off preparing them for
the twenty sixteen Olympics,which was a lot of fun. Was an
experience, it was really fun.You get kind of burned out for a
while.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Did you actually go to Rio yourself?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, I didn't. My counterpart in the West Trent
Stellingwerf, who's aphysiologist with a nutrition
specialty went on behalf ofAthletics Canada and he's also a
coach.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Okay, know Trent well. He was actually on the
podcast about a year or so ago.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Oh, very good. Yeah. So he and I work very closely
together and he manages theathletes out in the Victoria
area including his wife who'sone of our Olympians, Hillary
Stalingworth. And then the lasthighlight where I guess would be
working for the Toronto MapleLeafs where I do their nutrition
for both them and their AHLteam, the Marley's.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And then I consult for some other sports teams and
groups as well. So lots ofsports on the brain these days.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, absolutely. Your marathon with those harsh
conditions, which marathon wasthat?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That was what was then called the Toronto
International Marathon and so itwas run-in October. It's now the
same weekend that Scotiabankruns their marathon. They've all
kind of migrated around. Ithought I lost you for a second.
Still got you Mark?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I'm still here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
They've kind of migrated them around over the
last few years. It ended up backon that same weekend and as soon
as I saw that I was like, Ohdear. It seems like the weather
has a bad habit of reallyturning right around then. I
trained in shorts and so I wasdetermined to wear shorts for
the marathon and it was threedegrees and like I think I
(06:08):
almost died.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah. It's funny October, that October, I mean,
you're you can get greatweather, like perfect running
weather, or you can get, youknow, that winter, almost winter
like harsh weather. So, you wereunlucky.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I still run, I still enjoy it, now I do it for
pleasure and to stay healthy formy kids and as you know with
kids you just try to stay activeand I'm not training to win
anything, I just want to takecare of myself.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, that's fantastic. That's sort of my
approach as well. Yeah, so well,let's just keep it going. So you
mentioned your kids, I've gottwo little boys as well. What's
your morning routine like,especially sort of from a
breakfast standpoint?
I know it's sometimes achallenge but I'd love to hear
sort of what a nutritionist doeswith their kids.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Sure. So my kids are early, get up around six. We've
really tried to somehow changethat but there's My older son is
eight and he's just dialed infrom the second he wakes up,
he's just ready to go. So myhusband actually gets up and
runs before they get up. So he'sout of the house by ten to five
in the morning and puts in aboutnine k and then comes home and
(07:23):
then the kids get up and I'mstill sleeping.
And then I get up sometime aftersix and do a workout. The kids
have a little bit of cereal withmy husband and then usually
while I'm doing a workout orrunning myself, I'll be making
oatmeal for them. So they kindof get two breakfasts but you
know, when they're up thatearly, they kind of need it.
(07:44):
There's no way they could makeit all the way to lunch.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Well, that's a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, sometimes they're complaining of being
hungry by the time I take themto school on the days that I do
walk them, you know, at 08:30 inthe morning, they're already
hungry again. We do oatmeal withblueberries. I put some seeds
and like hemp seeds and pumpkinseeds and stuff in there and a
little bit of milk and somecinnamon, a little brown sugar
and we sit down and have asecond breakfast together and
(08:08):
it's one of my favorite parts ofthe day.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah. Oh, I like that. Yeah. We we tend to do
well, yeah, sometimes sort of asecond breakfast, but they
usually, like, they'll have, youknow, whatever cereal or toast
or sometimes oatmeal. Butsmoothies, we like to do a lot
just because, get them some kindof greens in there.
Know you're not supposed to hidethe greens for their whole life,
(08:31):
but at this point, it's a goodway to get them some greens.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah. No, you're right. That's not a bad idea. My
kids do love smoothies and theyhave learned to accept the green
smoothies willingly. Oh, good.
That's a win.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (08:44):
but no, also, I mean for myself, I have a cup of tea.
People often wonder, dodietitians take caffeine? And
the only reason why I don'tdrink coffee is because it
actually is just too strong forme, it just makes me shake and I
get really, really strongreaction from it. I've actually
done a genetic test for it and Iam a slow caffeine metabolizer
(09:04):
so I can tell you I cancertainly feel that. Cup of tea,
I managed to wean myself off thesugar.
I used to take it very Britishwith milk and sugar and it took
years but I finally got thesugar out of there so tea with
milk now.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I didn't know you could do a test for caffeine
sensitivity.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You can and it's something that is of interest to
some athletes and individuals.There's this debate about
cardiovascular risk factors forpeople who consume especially
large amounts of caffeine thatif you are genetically a slow
metabolizer of caffeine likemyself, too much caffeine could
potentially increase your riskof cardiovascular disease
(09:45):
whereas for other people who arefast caffeine metabolizers, in
theory, they can consume upwardsof six cups of coffee a day and
it could be protective of theirhearts.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So it's an interesting little test. The
company that provides it isbased out of the University of
Toronto and they're calledNutrigenomics. Okay. That's with
an X at the end and you can payfor that. Anybody can get that
test done and it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I might have to look into that. Now before we dive
into some more of the runningrelated questions, I want to ask
you, you say you work with a lotof professional athletes, do you
have any interesting stories orsort of shocking nutritional
habits you've seen forprofessional athletes? And
before you answer, I grew upwith Steve Nash in Victoria, BC.
(10:35):
Grew up playing sports and stufftogether. I remember when he
started in the NBA and thengoing down to visit him, you
know, he you know, he's a youngplayer, just ate freaking
everything.
He had the biggest bowl of M andM's in his place I've ever seen
in my life, and that wasconstantly, you know, we're
going into that eating it. SoI'm sure, you know, it's more
the younger guys, but I'd loveto hear if you've had sort of
(10:56):
any stories or whatever withoutouting anyone of course.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Sure. Sure. Yeah. Well, I think you've you've hit
the nail on the head. I also dosome consulting work for the
Raptors as well.
So I've seen a little bit ofboth sides of the NHL and the
NBA. And I've worked with otherpro athletes as well on tennis
tours and other NHL players andso on. So I've seen a little bit
of of sort of the breadth of ofpro athletes. And I'd say that,
(11:21):
I mean, the main themes are theyounger athletes are often or
players are the ones that oftenhave some of the crazier
nutrition habits. But I have tosay things are changing and
they're changing fast.
Not all of our young come inwell versed in nutrition, but it
is really NHL players in generalare getting a greater sense of
(11:43):
the importance of nutrition at ayounger age than certainly a
generation ago, but even I wouldsay even five years ago. There's
much less work in convincing aplayer that nutrition matters,
and it's really I think aconsequence of all the
discussion that's out thereabout nutrition these days. And
parents are better educated andso then that feeds down into the
(12:06):
kids. So kids are still kids andI actually am not a heavy when
it comes to this. Perspective isnot, you need to come into the
league and be doing nothing butgreen smoothies all day.
You know, you have to be allowedto be 19. I know what I was
eating when I was 19 and I wasnot taking good care of my diet.
(12:27):
So I don't want nutrition toever feel like it's a chore or
that it's something that youdread going into the dietitian's
office because you're going toget in trouble. You know, a lot
of the guys are working ontaking better care of themselves
and then usually it's in theirmid twenties that they often
kind of something clicks andthey kind of go, Oh yeah. Like
you said with the Steve Nashstory that all of a sudden they
(12:49):
realize that when they're eatingtoo much of whatever, people
don't realize it is possible toput on too much weight as a pro
athlete.
Yeah. There's no guarantees thatyou're gonna be ripped and lean
all the time and always in thebest shape. You do have to
actually limit yourself at somepoint and especially if you're
not playing a lot, which doeshappen to some guys, right?
They're on the bench.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And and so there there are times where they'll
have gone up five seven poundsfrom the start of the season and
they gotta get dragged into theoffice and, you know, read the
riot acts a little bit, butRight. They're it it's it's
better than you might think.They all have their hiccups but
it's better than you think.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
That's good. I guess that makes your job a little bit
easier as time goes on and thesekids coming out are a lot more
educated from a nutritionalstandpoint.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, that's good. Let's move or segue into running
and, you know, as I mentionedearlier, I've got a lot of
people that come to my site.They're beginner runners.
They're either just gettingstarted or perhaps they're
coming back into running after alayoff due to injury or life
(13:54):
just getting busy. Many of thesepeople are looking to, to
running as a way to help them,be fitter and healthier, but,
also to help them lose weight.
So just, love to hear yourthoughts on approaches for for
people who are looking to loseweight, through running some,
you know, maybe some strategiesor or things that people, you
(14:17):
know, often get wrong whenthey're approaching, you know, a
fitness activity like runningand looking to lose weight?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Sure. Yeah, I can relate to this very much. I sort
of cut my teeth as a speaker andin sport nutrition doing a lot
of presentations at the runningroom and other running stores.
You do get those questions fromthe five ks and learn to run
groups and the 10 ks's and upand weight is one of those
things that would come up overand over and over again. And I
(14:45):
think the main thing that peoplehave to be aware of when they
start running or return torunning or really any fitness
program that's new for them isthat, I hate to say it but you
don't burn as many calories asyou might think.
There's a rough rule out thereand it does vary but that you
burn about a hundred caloriesper mile that you run and that's
(15:06):
mile not kilometres. So do yourmental math there. So if you
think of it, if an averageperson needs say 2,000 calories
a day and you're getting startedinto running and so maybe you're
doing, you know, a two mile runwhich you know, maybe a walk run
to start or maybe pushing allthe way to three mile which is
closer to the five ks mark. Youknow, you're looking at burning
(15:28):
maybe an additional two to 300calories a day. Well, that's the
basically the margin of errorfor weight loss.
Usually when we recommendsomeone lose weight, we say
whatever amount of caloriesyou're consuming now, shave that
down by two, three, four, maybe500 calories a day and that will
elicit sort of a slow and steadyweight loss. So in other words,
if you're doing a kind of atwenty to twenty five minute run
(15:51):
or walk run, really in theory,if you want to lose weight, you
wouldn't want to increase yourcalories from baseline at all.
And I think what happens though,is that for better or for worse,
activity, physical activity isvery tightly regulated and
associated with our hungermechanisms that our brain and
(16:12):
our body triggers for us. If youare increasing your activity
level, your hunger is going togo up in parallel to that. So
that's sort of the bad news ofthe story is that if you pick up
running and you pick up eatingto go along with it, you're
going to have a hard time losingany weight and if you do even
manage to get that small say twoto 300 calorie a day gap, that's
(16:34):
really only translating to abouta pound every ten or so days.
So it's really important peoplebe realistic and say, Hey, I'm
not gonna lose 20 poundsovernight here unless I change
my diet along with it. And sothat's where the real win comes
is if you say, hey, this is ajumping off point for my
lifestyle and now I'm going towork hard on both taking care of
(16:54):
my eating and I'm going to run.And if you do both and you don't
restrict yourself too much, thatcould be the real sweet spot.
One last thought on that that Ithink is is another hiccup or
mistake that people make andI've so been guilty of this, is
you go for those long runs withyour running group, know,
whatever that might be, whetherthat's seven k to start or 12 or
(17:15):
21 k and you finish it off andit's like guys, we're going for
burgers. We're here we go.
Know, like I finished that eightk run. Is the farthest I've ever
run. I am on fire here. We gottago for brunch. I'm having the
Benedict covered in a chocolatecake and I think that
unfortunately that again I knowI've done that, we reward
(17:37):
ourselves.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
So you have to be mindful of that, do go out and
have some fun but you know ifyou're eating back more calories
than you burned then you canactually see your weight go up
when you start running and Ihave seen that before.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Interesting so from a nutritional standpoint and
actually eating, what are somelike, your top tips then for
these people who are startingrunning and looking to lose
weight, like strategies to helpthem either curb that appetite,
or whether it's timing of eatingor how to some simple effective
(18:13):
ways to shave a few morecalories off.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Sure, there's lots of ways to go about this and I
think one of the things we'venow come to understand about
nutrition and weight ornutrition and health is that
there's no one system that worksfor all people and in fact the
research supports this. It's notjust I'm not just being sort of
cute. We now understand that forexample, people do very well
with low carbohydrate diets.Other people do better when they
(18:39):
have sort of a calorie countingapproach or something where
they're really monitoring howmuch they're taking in, keeping
food logs and journals andthings like that. Other people
do better, you know, simply bymaking sure that they don't eat
out as often and and you knowtrying to cook at home and
prepare their own meals.
So you have to be very honestwith yourself about what fits
(18:59):
for your life, your lifestyle,your preferences and the people
around you and start to growinto a diet pattern fits for
you. Having said that, some ofthe things that generally affect
us all, we do all get a bitthrown by portion sizes. It's
very easy and in fact, there'sreally interesting studies on
people who are nutritionalscientists who actually study
(19:22):
this for a profession, they workin the field and you can easily
throw them off with portiondistortion by taking for example
a larger plate or in studiesthat have been done out of
Cornell in The US, giving largerscoop sizes and they ask the
nutrition scientists to scoopout an equal amount of ice cream
(19:43):
to their friends using a smallscoop and a larger scoop. Sure
enough, they'll portion out alarger amount using the larger
scoop even though they work inthe field and know better. So we
all get thrown by this.
Things like bigger plates,bigger bowls, ive us into
serving ourselves more food. Sosimple act of just using a
smaller plate or smaller bowl sothat you're filling up all the
(20:06):
space but on a smaller amount ofplate, that your brain will
think of as being a positive andit'll actually trigger you to
feel more full. Those are someportion control sort of
strategies and there's lots moreof them out there. By the way,
if you are interested in thisarea, there's a great book by a
fellow named Brian Wonsink whostudies this, Slim by Design
(20:29):
that you can take a look at andhe's a terrific researcher in
the area. Other strategiesduring the day is it's really
important to snack properly, totake the time to plan balanced
meals and snacks and by balancedI mean things that contain
protein and good qualitycarbohydrates.
It doesn't need to be a bigplate of pasta. For some people,
the carbohydrates might be morelike fruits and non starchy
(20:52):
vegetables like broccoli andasparagus and green beans. But
don't feel like you can't haveany carbs either. Absolutely do
fit in a runner's diet but it'sthe key is to have it planned
ahead and plan to eat every saythree to four hours through your
workday and bring those foodswith you so that at 03:00 in the
afternoon, you know you havesome almonds or a little bit of
(21:14):
cheese or some hummus forprotein or maybe some Greek
yogurt and you have an apple ora few whole grain crackers or
some carrot sticks for a littlebit of carbohydrate. And the
protein, the crucial thing itdoes is helps us to feel full.
The carbohydrate gives us alittle bit energy. And then that
way, we eat those two foodstogether, middle of the
afternoon in particular, ormaybe on our way home, on the
(21:38):
train or wherever, you come intoyour house and you've got your
head screwed on right. And thatmeans you can have the energy to
go out for your run instead ofgoing, I can't be bothered,
know, I'm too tired, too hungry,or you gorge, and then you go,
Oh no, I can't run because Ijust ate too much. And it also
allows you to make a betterchoice when it comes to dinner
time. So instead of you knowpicking up the phone and calling
for dinner or getting Uber Eatsor whatever is in your
(22:01):
neighborhood, you'll actuallyhave sort of the sense because
you're not so starving to takethe time to cook some food.
So again, portion control Iwould say, balanced snacks,
those are just a couple of ideasbut there are many many more out
there that can help people tocontrol their weight.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, I like your idea of getting some energy
before the run. I think, youknow, I've had it before where
you you go on a run and youhaven't eaten anything in hours
and you you feel lethargic.You're just, you know, one of
those bad runs where you'relike, why am I doing this? If if
(22:38):
you're new to running, I mean,that's gonna be compounded, I
think. I mean, you're you're notreally enjoying it yet as it is
and you're, you know, youhaven't fueled yourself
properly.
So I think you might as wellstart with, you know, something
in your tank and, you know, andcut down your battles there.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Well, know, there's a term that we use called which is
breakthrough hunger. Andbasically, the idea is that if
you're experiencing hungerduring a run or any exercise,
any sport, you definitely havenot eaten enough beforehand.
Exercise is a natural appetitesuppressant while you're doing
it and shortly afterwards. Ifyour stomach is growling, then
(23:17):
yes, you definitely needed torethink your fueling beforehand.
And for the record, if you'restuck in those situations where
you're like, oh no, I think I'mkind of getting hungry and I
gotta go over my run-in fifteenminutes, that's where those
really easy to digestcarbohydrates come in.
That's the ripe banana, that'swhere you know, a few orange
slices, that's where maybe ahandful of grapes or a few
(23:41):
crackers or even a slice oftoast. They're not, you know,
they on their own, they're foodsthat won't keep you full very
long but they're really simpleto digest, they get into the
bloodstream quickly and thatwill give you some instant fuel
without leaving you feelingheavy or bogged down. Even just
a few bites of those or maybe agranola bar, that can all be
quick fuel so that you enjoy therun and I think that's the name
(24:03):
of the game is nobody wants itto feel like it's a slog or
you're gonna quit and we don'twant that.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Exactly. So what about after the run? You know,
if you're just going for a runthat say, you know, twenty five
to thirty minutes, is itimportant to get anything back
into your body either, you know,hydrating or or some food right
away or is it that not thatimportant?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Great question. And the answer is yes to hydration
and no to food. Now I'll put abit of an asterisk on the no to
food because it depends a bit onwhat else you have going on in
terms of activity in your life.Let me explain a little bit.
Unfortunately, for better or forworse, recovery is one of these
things that people like me whowork in sport nutrition, I think
(24:49):
we've created a bit of amonster.
So we've created this impressionthat recovery is this massive
issue for people you need torecover, recover, recover and
get your protein shake. And thereality is for the majority of
weekend warriors or recreationalathletes, recovery isn't really
(25:10):
necessary as long as you'reeating a regular balanced diet.
What I mean by that is that ifwe look at the two big factors
in recovery, one is muscletissue repair. So when you run
or do any type of exercise, youactually induce small amounts of
damage to the actual musclefibers, called the micro tears.
We need to repair that and makethat muscle healthier and
(25:31):
stronger for the next workout.
Then the other thing thathappens is we deplete muscle
glycogen, that's the storageform of carbohydrate in the
muscle and if we start the nextworkout with very low glycogen
and that run is long, we couldend up bonking or running out of
fuel. So those are the two bigthings we're trying to do in
recovery. But the real thingthat most runners or I said
(25:52):
casual athletes need to bear inmind is both of those
activities, repairing the muscletissue and replenishing glycogen
will happen naturally on theirown within forty eight hours,
within two days of an exercisebout. So if you're running three
times a week and you're notpushing yourself to your
absolute limit, your body willtake care of itself. Now, if
(26:13):
you're using running as a dailyactivity and it's still, let's
say, twenty five minutes a day,even then I would argue your
body is pretty much able to takecare of itself as long as you go
ahead and eat your dinner ifit's the evening or eat your
breakfast if it's the morningafter your workout.
You don't need to be consciousof recovery. Where it becomes
important to really startgetting dialed in on recovery is
(26:35):
when those workouts or thoseruns are graduating to being an
hour or more and it's becomingback to back days most days of
the week and or your crosstraining. So if you're doing
this as part of triathlontraining program and maybe
there's a swim in the morningand a run at night or you go for
a run-in the morning and thenyou play a hockey game at night,
then you want to think aboutyour recovery especially in that
(26:57):
first workout that leads intothe second one because that's
where you might only have twelvehours to recover and if that was
a hard workout, you bet you'regoing to start the next one
feeling low. In that case, thekey nutrients are protein and
carbohydrates which it keepscoming back to. Protein again to
repair the muscle andcarbohydrate to replenish the
glycogen.
People ask me a lot aboutchocolate milk and it fits the
(27:20):
bill. It's a great combinationof protein and carbohydrates and
it's tasty. Yeah, it's got quitea bit of sugar in there but if
you really have had a hard, hardworkout that's been an hour or
longer, your body can actuallyuse that sugar right away to
replenish glycogen. If chocolatemilk's not your thing, there are
many, many other options. Ioften recommend things like
Greek yogurt with some granola,but you could certainly do even
(27:43):
things like a banana with somepeanut butter.
If you're, you know, gonna eat ameal, it could be some like
chicken with rice or chicken ona wrap. All of those would work.
Cereal and milk, eggs withtoast. Again, it's some protein
and some carbohydratespreferably in about the first
half hour. After an intenseworkout, we're talking forty
(28:03):
five minutes, that's really hardor an hour longer steady state
and another workout expected thenext day.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay. That's great because, yeah, I know that the
chocolate milk thing that's beentalked about for the last few
years. So it's good to hear youradvice on that one. You
mentioned carbs, you mentionedprotein, but you haven't said
that much about fat. And I knowthere's still a lot of talk out
there about athletes burningfat, basically becoming fat
(28:33):
adapted, guess they Is there anyresearch behind that or what are
your thoughts behind that, thewhole fat adapted camp of
nutrition?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Oh, it's a great question and I've just come back
from basically a think tanksummit where this was one of the
major topics of discussion andwe're very lucky. It's a think
tank funded by a group calledB210, we're a big funding agency
for athletes leading into theVancouver Olympics and they're
now funding a group of sportdietitians in Canada to sort of
(29:07):
raise our game and allow us totap into some of the cutting
edge research. And we were veryfortunate to have Louise Burke
who's perhaps the best known andmost revered sport dietitian on
the planet come in fromAustralia and tell us about a
fat adaptation study or a lowcarb high fat study that has
been conducted on race walkerswho are endurance athletes in
(29:30):
Australia and they're working onthe results right now and
they're going to run a secondarm of the study next year. So
bottom line is that it is anarea that is of great interest
to a number of researchers rightnow. And I'll tell you what we
basically know today and bigasterisk here, we have more to
(29:50):
learn.
So this is literally as oftoday. Okay. Is that so when you
do basically, for lack of betterword, starve the muscle of
carbohydrate, you do see changesin the way that the muscle
works. And you'll see a downregulation of certain enzymes
that are related to turningcarbohydrate into energy, and
(30:12):
the body will start to shift tousing fat as a preferential
fuel. We do know that to be thecase.
Here's the caveat or theasterisk to it. When you look at
peak power outputs or peak speedoutputs, no study to date has
yet demonstrated that a fatadapted athlete, that's someone
who is chronically eating a verylow carbohydrate diet and
(30:34):
switching to eating a lot morefat in their diet. No one has
yet demonstrated through goodquality research that you can
run at top speed or generate toppower on a high fat, low
carbohydrate diet. So it's anarea that there's a lot more we
need to understand about thechronic adaptations to high fat,
(30:57):
low carb, high fat diet in termsof endurance performance. There
may be some instances where itcan be appropriate.
In my experience, myrecommendation at this point
would be it might be somethingthat an ultra endurance athlete
would look at, like maybesomebody who's looking at sort
of marathon and beyond, youknow, fifty k runners, Ironman
triathletes, if top speed is nottheir primary concern. So this
(31:21):
is somebody who just says, look,I don't want to have to deal
with all the sport foods. Youknow, maybe someone's very,
they're overweight or they'reinsulin resistant and they want
to cut the carbohydrates down intheir diet. And in all these
cases, I would approach thisvery carefully. I would work
with someone who's an expert inthe field, preferably a sport
(31:41):
dietitian who's got experiencein low carb, high fat diets.
You have to be really mindfulbecause there are side effects
to the diet that can be reallychallenging for some people. For
the rest of us, what we'relearning is that basically
there's a sweet spot forcarbohydrate intake. So just
because you're running sometimesdoesn't mean you need to eat
(32:02):
buckets of pasta. And I thinkthat's been a myth that we've
got to really break free of. Andthe word we use a lot these days
is periodization.
And what we mean by that is thatyou adjust your carbohydrate
intake according to the trainingloads or volumes that you're
doing. So if you're training alot, a lot of miles, high
mileage week, you're doing a lotof tempo runs, a lot of top
(32:24):
speed runs, that's a week whereyou're gonna wanna put a bit
more carbohydrate on your plateor maybe instead of just having
veggies as your carb for dinner,you include some starches. On
the other hand, if you got a lowweek, down week or you're
injured or you're coming off arace and you're not running
much, those are the times whereyou can bring your carbohydrate
intake down. It doesn't need tobe full on heavy duty carb
(32:47):
intake. So that's not the sameas fat adaptation, it's
periodization.
You are still consuming carbswhereas in someone who's fat
adapted, you're pretty muchexcluding them entirely.
Although even the very low carbfolks, a lot of them do still
consume some carbs so that'sanother area to discuss some
other day. But I think again,it's that idea of marrying the
(33:07):
carb intake to the amount ofeffort that you're putting out
there and not treating every dayas though it has to be exactly
the same.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Okay, that's great. That clarifies a lot of things
for me. I read about is itHailey, Jabrilassi, the Yes.
Great runner that, in one of hisworld record marathons, or one
of his top marathons, he wasconsuming something crazy. I
think it was like 90 grams ofcarbs.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
An hour.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Is that right? Or something around there?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
I think this is something that gets so lost in
the messaging out there is thatall the world records to date in
the marathon have been set bypeople consuming vast amounts of
carbohydrate during their run.Yeah. I mean sports drinks,
gels, all the stuff that's kindof getting a lot of flack these
days is exactly what has fueledpeak performance. Why? It's
(34:01):
because the speed they arerunning at is so fast, you
literally cannot burn or oxidizefat fast enough to produce a
world record in the marathon.
As of the research, as weunderstand it, and physiology as
we know it today, it isliterally not possible to
generate a world record withoutcarbohydrate. Like I said, you
(34:23):
want to go slow steady, that's adifferent animal. But if you
want to be able to go and if youlook at the speed that these
guys are running at, I mean,there are a lot of people who
cannot run even a hundred metersat the speed that a marathon
world record runner is runningtheir entire 42 kilometers at.
You need to fuel it withcarbohydrate.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, no they're flying. Yeah that could be a
whole another topic for apodcast. What other hot trends
are you seeing right now otherthan sort of the fat adapted?
You know, I don't know ifthere's still people talking
about paleo, low carb. See alittle bit about the keto,
(35:02):
ketogenesis.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
I guess that's low carb as well but what are the
sort of hot trends you're seeingout there right now and is there
any merit to them?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
So yeah, think the paleo diet, you know, it's
definitely still you know, inand out of sort of the nutrition
trends and it marries into thatlow carb realm but it's not
necessarily the same thing.Paleo is sort of short form for
the Paleolithic diet which isnot a single diet per se. And
(35:33):
again, this could be a wholeother topic but basically the
idea being that our ancestorswere not genetically adapted
enough to the foods that we'veintroduced with the advent of
agriculture in the past tenthousand years and that we need
to eat more like an ancestraldiet of meats, starchy
vegetables, vegetables, fruit,nuts, seeds, eggs, fatty fruits
(35:56):
like avocados and coconut, thatthat should be the primary food
base of our diet and that weexclude things like dairy foods,
whole grains, and legumes aswell as all processed food. And
you know, I mean, the bottomline is that the studies to date
on paleo have all demonstratedat least some element of, I
guess you could say positivityin that people tend to lose
(36:17):
weight when they go on the diet,their cardiovascular risk
factors look better. It's reallyimportant for athletes to
understand there are no studieson paleo diets for athletes to
date.
They do not exist. So foranybody, we have better research
out there on low carb high fatthan we have on Paleo. So I'm
not saying don't go Paleo but Iam saying just realize that
(36:38):
because you've read somethingthat says it might be good for X
doesn't mean it is gonna workfor you. And all of these diets
are really restrictive. Andremember what I said a few
minutes ago, it really comesdown to what is workable for
you, your lifestyle and yourfamily.
And so if you say, Yeah, that'sgreat. I'm going to go paleo.
Well, you have to understandthat means you'll never have an
(36:59):
ice cream cone with your kidsagain. So is that worth it? Is
that okay for you?
You can't have a piece of cakeon your birthday or you can but
you're breaking your paleo dietat that point. And what I do see
if you want to talk about trendsis I see unfortunately a lot
more what I would call healthanxiety, know, sort of paranoia,
(37:20):
dietary dogma out there wherepeople are feeling an extreme
pressure to adhere to a certaindiet and they're feeling a lot
of guilt and shame if they falloff that diet. Oh, I ate some
refined sugar and I feel reallybad about myself. And I think
it's so great that we're payingmore attention to nutrition and
I think the messaging isobviously getting out there but
(37:41):
I think you all have to alsotake that all with a grain of
salt and just because some isgood, more is not necessarily
better and like I said, thereare many different diets that
can fit so as soon as you kindof get this religious adherence
to one diet, be really carefulbecause we have a lot more to
learn and I'll bet you someonecould come along and twist that
(38:02):
conversation in the exactopposite way from what you
believe to be right and as aclassic case and point for that
is paleo diets versus vegandiets.
Both have great evidence forhealth and they're completely
different diets. Yeah. So youknow, think we all have to find
one that fits. The common themesI generally encourage people to
pay attention to is just try toeat more whole food, prepare
(38:24):
food at home when you can, planyour meals ahead so that you're
not eating quick foods inrestaurants, more food from the
outside of the grocery store andless stuff in boxes. And doing
that in a step wise fashion forme, you're better off than
following sort of the latest fador the latest trend.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
That's great advice. So I don't want to take too much
more of your time, but if youhad to give someone sort of one
piece of advice or one tipthat's something they can easily
implement tomorrow to help themeat better, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Well, I would say one that I thought about mentioning
off the top that I didn't, butworks so beautifully, especially
for busy people is at thebeginning of your weekend or
somewhere on your weekend, takefive minutes with your family,
your partner or yourself,whatever and write out what your
meal plan or your dinner plan isgoing to be for the week. That
(39:23):
simple act of just saying, youknow what, on Monday night,
we're gonna have the chili andon Tuesday night, I'm gonna make
the chicken stir fry. Whateverthat might be, changes
everything because it allows youfirst of all to walk in the door
and whoever comes in first knowswhat they need to make. So it
takes away that whole thing ofwalking in, opening up the
fridge or the freezer and likelooking at it, you stare at it,
(39:44):
you're like, nothing there. Youlike close it, you walk around
the kitchen three times, youopen it up again, you look at
the fridge or freezer, it looksexactly the same but you're
really hoping for a differentoutcome.
Like we've all done that likeover the third time, still the
same. So you take that out ofthe equation. You also force
yourself to plan ahead so thenwhen you go to the grocery
store, you know you need to buythat feta cheese for that
(40:06):
particular dish which youotherwise wouldn't buy. That
takes away the frantic phonecall of, Honey, you got to buy
some fudge, you got to buy someon the way home which saves a
whole lot of hassle and a lot ofstress. The other thing it does
is it reduces wastetremendously, reduces your
grocery bills and basicallyallows you to enjoy a lot more
stress free meals with yourfamily.
(40:28):
And all of those things I'vejust talked about are much
bigger keys to overall healththan again a lot of the fattish
stuff that's out there. So ifyou just took ten minutes, we
have a whiteboard in my house,my husband and I sit down on the
weekend, we map it out, we lookat the activities, who's got
hockey, who's doing this, who'sgot a meeting. And then we say,
Oh, you know what? This is acrazy week. I better make some
soup that we can just warm upevery day or No, we got a bit of
(40:50):
time that day.
I'll be home early. That will bea night that I'm gonna make the
pork tenderloin or something. Soit's a simple act but it's
incredibly powerful and if youtook five, ten minutes every
weekend, I think you'd be amazedat the difference it would make
in your life.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
That's great, thank you for that. And so before we
go, I know you've got a book,can you tell us a little bit
about your book?
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Sure, yes, so my book is called Unmasking Superfoods,
The Truth and Hype about Acai,Blueberries, Quinoa and More.
And it was published in 2014 byHarperCollins Canada. And it's a
book that was it stemmed from, Iused to write a column for the
(41:33):
National Post for about eightyears. And in that time, we
amassed a lot of differenttopics, lot of different strands
of sort of thought over various,whether it's sport nutrition or
weight loss, but superfoods aresomething people are always
asking about. So we took thosecolumns, rejigged them and I
turned it into a whole bookessentially what it is, it's a
(41:55):
chance to be sort of a criticallook at the superfoods movement.
It's not meant to be, Everybodyneeds more goji berries. It's
meant to be, Well, what do weknow about goji berries and do
you really need them and arethey that much better than say a
blueberry or strawberry that wecan get locally for less money
and supports local farmers andlocal economy.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
So it's not meant to poo poo on super foods but it's
just meant to be a critical lookat it and I also talk a little
bit about some super foods thatdon't get in my opinion enough
attention. Some of the ones someof you guys might enjoy things
like cheese. I talk about thevalue of cheese and how it's
underrated. I try and liberatethe noble potato which I think
(42:34):
is actually a nutritious food.If that's the sort of thing
you'd enjoy, it's a fun littleread, it's pretty light and I
know a lot of people use it assort of a reference for future
use that they can pull it outanytime they're having a fight
at the dinner table aboutcoconut.
Whip it out and win that Oh,
Speaker 1 (42:55):
that's great. So I'll put a link to that in the show
notes. I'll also put a link tothe other book you mentioned
Slim by Design and some of theother items we talked about. So
last thing, so where can people,if they want to follow you
online or learn more about yourwork, where can they do that?
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Sure. So, have a website which is just my name,
jennifersigo.com. Sligo is S Y GO and you can find my contact
information on there and link tome on social media. Probably the
place I'm most active is Twitterand my Twitter handle is same
thing, Jennifer Seigo. And I'dlike to tweet about, you know,
sport nutrition topics andnutrition trends and so on.
(43:39):
So you can certainly follow meon there. But again, you can
find me on Facebook and variousother LinkedIn and all of that
through my website. So pleasevisit me and I work downtown at
Cleveland Clinic Canada andpeople often ask about, you
know, do you need a referral?And the answer is no. You can
just call up the clinic and askfor an appointment and off you
go.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Awesome. So you're not snap chatting?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I literally just signed up and it was the most
embarrassing conversation. Therewere about five of us around a
table and we were like, so howdo we do this?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, I still don't know how you do that.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And all we're old, it's not good.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Well, that's great. Well, thanks very much,
Jennifer, and we look forward tohopefully talking with you again
another time.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Thanks so much, Mark. I appreciate it. Thanks for
listening to the HealthinomicsPodcast
Speaker 3 (44:26):
at www.healthinomics.com.
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