August 21, 2021 • 42 mins
From Leanne and Susie on The Nutrition Couch this episode:
- We chat about a media article which asks: What is flexible dieting (IIFYM) and is it effective?
- Our 'Client Case Study of the Week' is about constant hunger. How do we manage it?
- Our 'Supermarket Product of the Week' is powered peanut butter; and
- Our listener question is all about probiotics, should we be taking them for general health?
So sit back, relax and enjoy this week’s episode!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi Onleanne Ward and I'm Susie Burrow and welcome to
the Nutrition Couch, a weekly podcast from two of Ustrey's
leading dieticians, bringing you everything that is new in the
world of nutrition, diets and good food from the Nutrition Couch.
Today we're chatting about the trending media topic of flexible darting,
or you may have heard it called if it fits
your macros. Our client case study of the week is
(00:22):
about being constantly hungry while trying to lose weight. And
on our most popular segment, the Soupermarket Product of the Week,
we discuss a new powdered pinut butter. And finally, one
of our listener questions has sent us in a question
about probotics. Should we be taking them for general helps.
We'll give you all of the research and science behind that,
but before we jump into today's podcast, Susie, you are
(00:43):
always cooking up a storm in the kitchen. What have
you made for the twins this week?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I do cook quite a lot. Sometimes I'm testing different recipes.
Sometimes I'm cooking to thank people for things, or of course,
to get that elusive perfect Instagram shot. The issue, of course,
is that contrary to what you see on social media,
they don't always work out, and I actually do have
(01:09):
to throw out a fair wax. So for every great photo,
there's probably two or three dodgy ones that haven't quite
made it. But I tear what I have been perfecting,
and I am pretty proud of this. I have wanted
to be able to make a muffin with a crunchy top,
like at a cafe for some time because whenever I
make muffins, and they're not my favorite go to and
not even my kids, but they do really well on
(01:30):
social media. But I thought if I could perfect a
crunchy top muffin, I would be pretty happy. And I
finally have got the right mix. And it's not complicated.
It's more like how you do a crumble. We do
a little bit of brown sugar with a little bit
of wholemeal flour and do it that way. But I'm
pretty proud of my effort. So I've been doing the
crunchy top muffins. They're coming up particularly well. This morning.
(01:51):
I did like a breakfast bircher, but I did it
as a muffin. Now I think people will love it
because it's like a creamy oats breakfast muffin that you
could have in a bowl, almost like a cake, but
it's not my flavor profile I don't eat that. So
the other thing is a lot of the stuff I
actually don't really like that much, so that helps, and
we try and give the rest to neighbors and things.
(02:12):
But as I said, I also have terrible stuff up.
So like a couple of weeks ago, I had to
get a picture of a banana bread and I took
it out too early land so it was still wet
in the middle. I knew it was, and I got
the photo. It's a great photo, but I also know
the battle wasn't completely cooked crew because it was really
dense and thick because I tend to thicken them up
with quite a lot of yogat, And I ended up
(02:33):
taking it to my mum's and it was literally we
just chucked it out. So that's the thing about Instagram,
isn't it Just because it looks perfect doesn't always mean
that it is. And for every great looking baked recipe,
there's probably a couple that are looking pretty dodgy. So
I definitely spend a lot of time in supermarkets picking
up whole your self raising flour yogurt and butter, which
are the things that I tend to run out of
(02:54):
because I will also say, I know we've got to
get started. But I always give people the option in
baking of using a sugar replace. It's not like a
monk fruit or sugar. But if I'm honest, I don't
buy monk fruits sweet now because I think it's really expensive,
like eight dollars a small bag, and I really try
and make things affordable. So I give people the option.
But I myself just cook with a little bit of
sugar because I don't want to spend eight dollars plus
(03:15):
on making a muffin or a banana bread recipe. So
I like to give people that option because otherwise it
can be really quite expensive. All of that healthy baking.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
You can absolutely yeah, And you know me, I don't
tend to bake too much, so I always love seeing
your creations on social media.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Might't be longer there. We're going to be having those
pureys coming up soon.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Get gotta get me one of those Thermo mixers or
something like that. I think I can make up some
baby food.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It makes it really easy one hundred percent and you
can just freeze it. All up and off you go,
so you never is motivated. I think when the kids
are about six months. By the time it gets to
twelve and eighteen months and you're fully back at work,
you just don't care anymore. But go with it. At
six months, I agree, invest in the thermino.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Awesome, well, Susie. This week in the media, we're chatting
about flexible darting. So it's I I f YM or
if it fits your macros? What have you heard about this?
I know it's big within sort of the bodybuilder and
fitness community. A lot of the online coaches who you
know work with clients for fat loss are talking about
flexible dieting. Essentially, it's just a way of I think
(04:13):
counting or tracking your macros and making them fit. Rather
than I guess calorie counting. It's more tracking the number
of macro nutrients you're having. And for me, you know,
I've sort of dabbled with a little bit in the past.
If I'm going through a fat loss block myself, I
will of course track, but I'll track calories and macros
because we know that if the goal is fat loss,
you absolutely have to be in a calorie deficit, and
I think macro nutrients, particularly from a body composition perspective matter.
(04:36):
You know, you don't want too many carbohydrates. You need
enough fat, particularly for things like you know, cellular health
and hairskin and nails and that sort of thing, and
even just women's reproductive organs how they work. We need
some fat in our diet at a minimum of twenty percent.
And I think protein, of course, is especially important when
we're trying to aim to you know, gain some lean
muscle mass or maintain our muscle mass. So I think
(04:56):
macro nutrients are absolutely important. But how do you feel
about just the concept of flexible dieting.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
When it comes to me, I think this is what
I would call a convenient diet theory for you. So
it's really using a proposed model of eating to suggest
that you can very easily eat high calorie or what
we'd call sugary processed foods and still achieve your dietary goals.
(05:24):
So if I'm putting it into context, and I wasn't
overly clear about it either, because I think it just
to me doesn't fit at all flexible, But then dieting,
I'm just not really quite clear. But the best way
I can think to describe it is that if you
have a goal of fat loss and you're sticking to
a certain calorie load or macronutrient loads. So say you
wanted to reduce your carbohydrate down to forty percent of intake,
(05:46):
So if you wanted to still have a chocolate bar
at lunch time, the way you would be able to
do that is if you made sure you were getting
your salad and vegetables that didn't affect your macros, and
then a piece of lean protein, and then potentially you
could get a little bit of well, I guess you
get the carbohydrate from the mars bar and a little
bit of fat from that, so you were keeping all
(06:07):
the other components of that meal low in fat and light,
so it would allow you to have a mars bar
as part of your diet. Now, I think philosophically it
sounds really nice because it means you take away from
that idea that there's good and bad foods. In that model,
it's about choosing the foods you want to eat but
still achieving your dietary goals. But I am yet to
see it really work in practice. And my understanding is
(06:30):
that where it comes up most of all these people
who are perhaps doing physique changing or specifically bodybuilding, where
they have a much wider range of calories and macros
that they can fill, and so it doesn't matter if
they eat a packet of lollies because their carbohydrate intake
or requirements are very high, Whereas I really struggle to
(06:50):
see how it could fit for my clients who are
small people who don't have a lot of calories to
play with. And I can tell you straight away that
if they would doing flexible dieting and still including a
high fat, high sugar food most days, they wouldn't achieve
their diet your goals because they just don't have that
much room to move calorie wise. So for me, it
fits to a much larger frame person who has a
(07:14):
lot more energy and calories to burn as opposed to
the clients that I work with.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And I think that's a really important point because a
lot of the bodybuilders and the finness coaches out there
who promote this, and I think the funniest thing is
that people the first thing and I googled, you know,
if it fits your macros? And the first website that
popped up was the IFYM website, and the first thing
it's said in big bold letters, was this is not
a diet. Well, if you're weighing and tracking your food
every day, that's a diet. So I think it is
(07:41):
a type of diet. But I think people get away
with it saying, you know, you can eat mar as
well as you can eat donut. You can eat whatever
you want as long as it fits into your macro nutrients.
But I think you make an important point that a
lot of the proponents of this diet, and a lot
of people who are promoting it, have super high requirements.
So if you're a bodybuilder, you're doing twenty twenty five
thousand steps a day, you're doing seven workouts a week,
you're in three thousand plus calories. Yeah, you're gonna have
(08:02):
a lot more calories to play with than the average
person who sits at a desk job might get three
or four workouts in a week, but their deficit in
terms of fat loss is more around that fifteen sixteen
hundred calorie mark. You just don't have the luxury or
flexibility of having a lot of these higher calorie processed foods.
So I do think you're right it it matches a
certain client tell more than it's something that fits everybody.
(08:25):
But also I think for a lot of people it's
it's kind of just an excuse to eat processed foods.
And as you said, you know, trying to eat three
thousand plus calories specifically focusing in whole foods is actually
really hard to do. Like there is people who you know,
they will eat a bag of lollies just to get
their carbs and their sugars in. They will just add
you know, a mass bar on top of their porridge
in the morning just to get their carbohydrates right up there.
(08:45):
After a training session, they're taking down bulk protein powders
because their protein requirements are like one hundred and eighty
grams a day, and good luck to you try to
eat that in you know, whole foods, there's a lot
of protein. So I think for a lot of people, yeah,
it is, you kind of do end up a lot
more processed foods in And then clients that I've worked
in the past who come into my coaching services, obviously
this isn't something that I recommend, but they've tried this
(09:08):
before and they say, I don't want to do it
again because I you know, the tracking and the weighing
and that sort of thing just drives me insane. And
I get to the end of the night and I've
got like, say, only two hundred calories left. I'm starving.
I've got no carbohydrates left because I ate it all lunchtime.
And what am I supposed to do with Like, you know,
I've got to eat sixty grams of protein or something,
and I've got no fat left and no carbs left.
So I think unless you're really planning out your day
(09:30):
and you kind of know what you're going to have
for dinner, you can get very stuck in terms of
using all of those you know, with the flexible dieting,
it's like I want to go have a burger in
some fries for lunch. Okay, that's cool. It might fit
your macros now, But by the time you get to dinner,
you've got no fat left, you've got barely new carbohydrates left.
You've got to eat a hell of a lot of
protein for dinner on very very low calories. So what
are you going to have a piece of steam fish
(09:50):
and two green beans. I think it's just it's not
as flexible, I think, as what people really think it is.
And The other thing is that most people don't consider
a fib or a mac nutrient targets, So I think
a lot of people aren't actually tracking their fiber intake EGY,
which we know for general health and particularly gut health
is so incredibly important. So I think that a lot
of people are going, yeah, I'll have a burger and
(10:11):
fries for lunch, and I'll just have some steamfish for
dinner and a piece of broccoli. But they're not getting
anywhere near the required amounts of fiber or that diversity
of fruits and veg every day as well. And you know,
they're eating a bag of lollies, whereas you could have
a nice fruit salad and you're gonna get a lot
more nutrients in from the fruit salad, but probably a
similar amount of carbs and sugar in there. So I
do think there are some negatives to it. It definitely
(10:32):
does fit a particular type of clientele, as you said,
larger bodied, higher requirements, super super active, and also those
online calculators and the people that tend to set your
macro nutrient targets. It's not really something that's really based
on I guess research and science, and probably should be
adjusted quite regularly as people's weight comes down or their
training sort of differs as well. But a lot of
(10:52):
people will set their macros at the beginning and say,
you know, I want to lose ten to fifteen kilos
and that never changes the entire way through. Then they
hit a plateau and they wonder why.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I really don't like my clients checking their macros.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Indeed, when I develop a meal plan, I've calculated the macros.
But what I find And I had a client just
on the weekend doing this, so she started to count herself,
so she was trying to understand what I was doing
so she could adjust based on things she wanted to eat.
And I think straight away this lends itself to psychological
management of food intake as opposed to responding to natural
hunger and fullness signals, because you're mentally calculating and eating
(11:26):
along that line, as opposed to what your body's telling you.
And the other issue I have with it is that
there's gross in accuracies in macro nutrient and calorie composition tables.
So even though it might look like it is perfect
and it's five grams of carbohydrate here, as you and
I both know there's a lot of inconsistencies in the databases.
It's not always completely accurate. So when people start to
(11:49):
count their macros to within a gram of recommendations, it's
not a healthy way of doing it. It's really in
a way promoting disordered eating because you're saying, I had
an extra gram of carbohydrate here, you know I need
to duck two from there, and then you might be
deducting it on a vegetable which probably doesn't really even
count anyway. So you're starting to isolate nutrition down into
(12:09):
individual foods and macros, when that's not really how we eat.
We eat a diet of food and the overall balance
comes from the meal patterns and the meal balance. So
I think it's trying to break down a behavioral pattern
of eating into numbers, and for me, it just doesn't work.
And I find it makes people really confuse. They don't
(12:29):
necessarily understand the science in the degree of being able
to balance well, and most importantly, they're not listening to
their bodies anymore. So I am really not a fan
of macro nutrient counting, even though I do do it
with for my clients myself, and the way I would
describe it is when you go to the accountant. I
don't want the account to tell me how to calculate
my baths. I want him to do it. So when
(12:50):
I see a dietitian, I want the dietitian to get
the balance right for me, as opposed to start to
do it yourself, because you never do it as well
as the accountant or the dietitian because you're not factoring
in all those other very so the only people and
I have seen it, I guess you're describing with bodybuilders,
they might add lollies and things. The only time I've
ever had to do that is with very young NRL
players early in their career, where they might be a
(13:11):
winger who weighs eighty kilos and they are six foot
two and they're doing two or three training sessions a day.
And those people I might send to McDonald's. You know
that you would never publicly state because that's how many
calories they're burning. But for most people, I just don't
really understand where it fits. And if anything, I think
it can do more damage because you start to, you know,
lend itself to indulging yourself on these foods that really
(13:33):
aren't healthy for us. And give yourself permission to be
eating them psychologically without even listening to your body in
terms of what it really really wants. So it's not
something I use. I think it's great to be aware
of it, but if someone was asking me about it,
I generally think it's an excuse to eat more more rubbish.
And you know, we all follow a diet lean all
of us ere a diet, whether we like to admit
(13:54):
it or not. But for me, a diet is about sustainability,
and it's about developing habits and patterns of eating that
you like, as opposed to thinking about it in your
head and thinking what you should be eating in numbers terms.
And that's where we sometimes feel wrong with principles like this,
which are asking us to calculate things. And we don't
eat according to a science. We eat according to a
(14:14):
behavioral pattern.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And I always say that, you know, we eat food,
we don't eat numbers, we don't eat macros. And I
think that that's the biggest downside of something like this
doesn't work well. If you look at you know, the
photos and that sort of thing online, you would think absolutely,
look at these people, they look fabulous, but looking lean
and fit, and strong, and that sort of thing isn't
necessarily an indicator of health. As you mentioned, a lot
of these super lean people aren't necessarily healthy, and a
(14:38):
lot of them have, you know, super low iron levels,
they've got you know, chronic and autoimmune diseases. Just because
somebody looks a certain way and follows a certain diet
pattern doesn't necessarily mean that they're healthy. And so I
think that's a really important thing to notice. Tracking your
macros is all well and good, What about your micro nutrients?
I would say that your micro nutrients matter as much,
if not more than your macro nutrients. And are you
(14:59):
tracking things like are you getting in enough selenium? Are
you getting in enough fol ate? No? Probably not, because
when you're putting everything into an app, you're just not
getting that diversity of foods. And again, people fall into
that rabbit hole where they're like and this is a
perfect example of my husband when I met him, he
ate the same thing for breakfast, lunch, He had a
second lunch and then dinner every single day because he
was doing flexible dieting. That's what he did. And it
(15:21):
was one vegetable at each meal. It was like broccoli
and then beans, We had greens twice a day. He
had chicken, he had turkey, and I think he had
either chicken or beef for dinner. And breakfast was like
this high protein nudugrain sort of cereal with milk, and
that was it, And that was his start because it perfectly.
He had perfectly calculated his macros on a daily basis
based on what a fitness coach had told him. Then
(15:42):
I came in and he started dating me. Here this
is years ago, and I just plipped on its head
because we shouldn't eat the same thing every day, and
just because it can calculated in an app doesn't necessarily
mean that that's healthy. He'll probably kill me for saying
the story on him.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Oh he knew he was alive when he met you.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, doesn't mean it's true health. You know. See that's mine,
that's my specimen.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Ever. Now you fell badly in love with someone who
gave him all the dietary information he wanted for free.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Absolutely, it works. First ways, he reads all of my
contracts and that sort of thing, because he's a good
lawyer and I do all his nutrition works well.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Shouting out to David. We love David, but.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, just because that's the bottom line I think for me,
like macro nutrients of course are important, but don't forget
about your micronutrients. They're so so important, and when you're
just tracking macros, your micronutrients go out the windows. So
you will probably end up deficient in quite a lot
of things. If you notice that your hair's falling out,
your period's becoming a lot more irregular, you're waking up
exhausted despite hitting your macros every day. Is that health
(16:42):
and are they true markets of health? Probably not. Probably
a good thing to sort of reassess what you're actually doing.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And they're very rough, those macro nutrient encounters. They're very,
very rough. They're not overly accurate. So take it with
a grain of salt and use it as a general
guide as opposed to thinking that this is an excuse
to eat a maths bar every day. It sounds too
good to be true, as we always say. All right, well,
moving on. A case study that has presented for us
recently is a little bit about hunger, but not we've
(17:09):
spoken before, Leanne about getting in touch with your hunger
to guide your food choices. That is incredibly, incredibly important,
but something that comes up a lot for some of
my clients is constant hunger, and sometimes I will start
someone on their plan and their feedback very quickly is
that they can do it, but they're feeling really hungry,
and that kind of incessant hung go where they can't
(17:30):
stop thinking about food and they're obsessed and they're eating
their dinner at four thirty. And this for me is
a big, big concern, but it's very, very common, so
we did think it was a really good opportunity to
talk it through. Now physiologically, if you're consuming a well
balanced meal that ticks the box on your macro nutrient
but is also really micro calorie load, So you know,
(17:53):
you have a lunch that's got some salad or soup,
and then a sandwich you'll rat with a decent amount
of protein, or perhaps some leftover dinner that's got again
a serve of lean meat and lots of veggies and
a little bit of good quality carbohydrates from some sweet
potato or some brown rice. That meal that might clock
in between three to five hundred calories for the average person,
should in theory keep you full for at least three
(18:15):
to four hours. So as soon as I have developed
a plan, or clients are eating reasonably well balanced meals,
if they're feeling hungry within an hour or two after
consuming that meal, I'm a bit worried because it's telling
me that something's not quite right with the way they're
processing their hunger or potentially their hormones. So Indeed, with
some hormonial conditions like insulin resistance, because insulin is not
(18:38):
metabolizing carbohydrate overly effectively, you can have quite fluctuating glucose
levels which can really drive that incessant need for sweet food. Indeed,
it can be behavioral if you have programmed to eat
every couple of hours. Indeed, the brain will seek out
that stimulation if you are consuming inadequate amounts of carbohydrates.
So if you're actively cutting your carbohydrates out, So for example,
(18:59):
you might have had an omelet for breakfast with no
other fuel, no toast, or you might have had a
chin a salad for lunch with no carbohydrate added. Indeed,
it's not uncommon to get those sugar cravings an hour
or two, So incessant hunger is a sign that you
do need to have a step back and say, why
am I not getting the satisfaction and fullness. But in
my experience, lea and the most common reason is that
(19:21):
there's hormonal issues driving it, which is an indicator to me,
I may need to get those hormones under control, or
that the meals they're making up or developing according to
what they think is balanced or healthy does not have
the right macro nutrient mix or balance of food groups
that is going to keep them full for that three
to four hours.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
And I think in my experience, I would say that
the most common things when clients say I'm hungry, I'm hungry.
I'm hungry most of the time it's in the first
one to two weeks of when I start working with
a client, because the portions and the meals that I'm
giving them they're just not used to, Like we've just
flipped things on their head, Like I've pulled the carbohydrates
to half of what they're having. I've do the amount
of sales and veggies, and they've kind of got a
(20:02):
bit lazy and they're like, Okay, I'll hit the carves,
I'll hit the you know, the fat and the fiber,
but I didn't have enough you know, salads. Old kind
of like won't bother with that. Or something like that.
So I think that hunger for most I would say
eighty to ninety percent of my clients will stabilize within
about a week of working with me. So I think
that's just that difference in you know, the body, the hormones,
even the mind as well in terms of just doing
(20:24):
something a little bit different. So I think that that
constant hunger, if it's in the first week, if you're
doing something new or working with a new program or
a dietician or something like that, give it a week,
suck it up and see how you go. And if
it's still there in the second or third week, then
it's definitely something you need to look at. When the
second most common reason, I would say then besides, it
just needs you know, your body just it doesn't like
(20:45):
change necessarily, and sometimes it doesn't do that well with change.
So just give it a good week and see what happens.
And if you're still feeling hungry all of the time
in a week two or three, that's all we need
to sort of shake things up a bit. Are you
eating enough fiber? Are you eating enough protein? Most of
Australians should be having thirty grams plus a fiber a day.
I personally think, Susie, that our fiber recommendations are too low.
(21:05):
It's twenty five grams for healthy women and thirty grams
for healthy men. I quite often will easily have my
clients on thirty thirty five forty grams of fiber a day.
I personally think that our Australian recommendations are too low.
Just my own opinion, but I will absolutely drive up
the fiber and the protein and their meal plans. And
the other thing is for a lot of is is
it true physical hunger? It's that difference between I'm just
(21:27):
craving something because I know I'm you know, following a
meal plan and trying to be quote unquote good, or
you know, it's Wednesday and I haven't had any chocolate
since Monday. Whatever it is. But it's just that emotional
drive to eat what I call head hunger, versus that
true physical hunger or that stomach hunger. So I think
that's really a big thing to ask clients. Are you
(21:47):
actually truly physically hungry? If I said to you, go
and have an extra veggie souper, go and grab three
or four carrots with some homas or salza, could you
do that and they're like, oh no, no, I really
just feel like some crackers. And it's like, if you've
got a driver need for an exact or certain type
of food, it's more probably that head hunger or that
emotional hunger versus that true physical hunger, because if you
(22:07):
were truly physically hungry, you would eat any vegetable on
the planet. I would just drink, you know, gallons of
water if I was truly physically hungry and that was
the only thing that was available. So I think it's
really important to sort of differentiate between is this true
physical hunger or stomach hunger. So I think they're probably
the two most common reasons. And I think probably the
third one is clients who are trying to do it
themselves and they just put themselves at a far too
(22:28):
big a deficit. I had a dam from a girl
just yesterday who was like, he's an online calculator. I
know you always say you need to be in a
deficit to lose weight. Well, my deficit was I think
it's just like oney, one hundred calories or something like that.
And I was like, oh, it's too big. And I
said why that deficit? And she said, oh, the blog
I read said it should be a five hundred cow deficit,
and I just think for too many of us, we're
just putting ourselves in two bigger deficits. Of course, we're
(22:51):
going to feel hungry if you're you know, she was
gaining weight beforehand. You know, she's probably on two thousand
plus calories, has now taken herself down to eleven hundred calories,
ramped up her exercise in the the process as well
because she's trying to lose weight. It's just too big.
It's too much for the body to cope with. Like
I really do think slow and steady wins the waste,
so I think not enough protein and fiber. Is this
(23:12):
actually true hunger? Or is this just more cravings and
that constant need or want to eat because we're so
used to it because it's a habit for us. And
are we in too big a deficit? They're probably the
three biggest things I think about when clients are saying
I'm hungry and hungry, I'm hungry.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And I think, leading on from that, it's time of day,
because people start out with this intention of cutting back,
so they impose the restriction earlier in the day, so
they might start with an egg or two and one
slice of toast, so they think, right, I'm going to
be good. I'm going to cut down on the carbohydrates.
Then they skip morning tea or they just have a
cup of green tea because they're trying to be good,
and then they get to lunch and they give themselves
(23:47):
a plane tuna salad. Now what happens in my experience
with that is because they have restricted at the time
of day when they're often most physically active and need
the most energy, that they get a rebound hunger all afternoon,
and that is where you have that constant need to snack,
and you know at two o'clock you're hungry again, and
then at four o'clock it's like you can't get enough
food in. So you really want to pile the day
(24:09):
with more fuel, in particular that vegetable bulk at every meal,
including breakfast and lunch, and make sure that those first
two meals are balanced, and you will notice that your
hunger is a lot more in control on those days.
Because my argument's always been your race of good nutritions
one in the morning, kind of like trathlon. The race
is one on the bike. So if you front load
and get breakfast really well balanced with some veggies as well,
(24:30):
to bulk it up. A well balanced lunch that contains
all of your nutrient groups, you will find you won't
have that constant need to snack all afternoon. But you're
right because the other thing that people do in the
afternoon is they grab the crackers or all carbohydrate without
their balance of their macros and getting some protein, getting
some veggies, and the more of that really quickly digested
carbohydrate you consume, like the rice, crackers and the hommus
(24:51):
and those ready to eat you know, snacks, it primes
the brain to look for more of those really starches,
those really processed carbohydrates, and that drives you're overeating all afternoon.
So it's about getting the balance through the day helps
to control your hunger and in the afternoon. And when
a client presents and says that they're starving at five o'clock,
I know they haven't eaten enough in the day. So
it's about what's happening earlier in those meals. And inevitably,
(25:14):
when I look at food pictures or food diaries, my
constant feedback is where are the vegetables, where's the salad,
because I might pile a whole salad with lunch or
add lots of veggies to it omelet, and my clients
will have nothing. They'll have a slice of tomato. So
it's that shift and getting that balance right through the day,
and that helps predict that hunger management in the in
the afternoon and then in the evening. A lot of it,
(25:34):
as you said's habitual. It's because we're programmed to have
a lot of sweet food. So it's working through that
and really thinking, right, the truth is, I'm not actually
probably hungry, it's just wanting something in my mouth. So
how can I have something in my mouth that's not
going to be too many calories?
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Absolutely, I think there are quite a few, I think
different concepts that we can really look for here. So
I hope that those sort of talking points have given
our listeners something to think about, because it's going to
be different for everybody. Just because you're hungry doesn't necessarily
mean you need eat more. It doesn't necessarily mean that
you haven't eaten enough. Maybe you've eaten enough, but it's
the wrong type of food, or it's the wrong mix
of foods, or you've had just a huge leg day
(26:10):
at the gym, you know, and you actually need to
eat more than other days. And again, this is why
I hate it, or not that I hate I don't
encourage clients to caloriecount and macro account because most of
the time you're trying to eat the same thing every day,
but you don't do the same thing every day. And
I know, Susie, not right now because I'm pregnant. But
when I do a big leg day in the past
at the gym, I'm hungry that day, like hungry, like
(26:30):
I'll go breakfast, snack, snack, lunch, snacksnack, dinner, Versus if
I just go out and just do, say my ten
thousand steps for the day and that's all I do.
I can normally hold off of my break ea till
you know, around ten o'clock because I'm just not genuinely hungry.
Then go to a later lunch and then maybe have
one sack in the arbor and have dinner, and I'm
done for the day. Like my calorie lodal intake for
that day is just significantly lower than if I'm doing
(26:51):
a big heavy leg day in the gym, because I'm
just not burning as much and I'm just not as hungry.
So all of these things I think come into play,
but it's really it's going to come down to an
individual basis. And again we're going to plug dietitians here,
and that's why it's so important to be working with
a qualified professional because yeah, sure you can do it yourself,
but you know, I could do my tax myself, but
I'd probably be losing out on you know, hundreds or
(27:12):
thousands of dollars, So you know, in terms of what
I could actually be claiming, I could attempt to fix
my calm myself, am I got to fix it? Probably not.
I could attempt to you know, clean my teeth myself
and not go to the dentist for years and years,
but eventually, I think my teeth are going to pull out.
So I think the need to see a professional in
what those professionals are qualified in is so so important.
In nutrition is just one of those scary areas where
(27:34):
because there's so much online or because everybody eats, everybody
thinks they're an expert in nutrition. So absolutely is a
good time for us to really rate the importance of
seeing a dietitian. If you have specific goals around your nutrition.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And a meal should keep you full three to four hours.
If you're eating every hour or two, it's way too often. Definitely,
that's a guiding light.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Absolutely. Now onto our most popular segment, our new and
exciting supermarket product. So a listener has sent us this
over our Instagram, Susie, which is at the Nutrition Couch podcast,
So give us a follow on Instagram if you don't already,
and send us your product, send us your questions in
bearing in mind that we can't give you personalized advice,
so we have had quite a lot of DMS saying
from people, Hey, Susie Leanne, this is my height, this
(28:16):
is my weight? How many calories should I be eating?
We can't give that personalized advice over Instagram, but we
are more than happy to chat about listener questions and
the different products that you send through to us as well,
so please do send them through. We've got quite a
list now, don't we, Susie. Our listeners are really enjoying
the podcast, which is amazing. But today we're chatting about
a product somebody has sent in called PEB two. So
(28:37):
it's essentially powdered peanut butter. So on the front of it,
the marketing says ninety percent less fat and six grams
of protein, So I mean it looks pretty good. I
think it is gluten free, and it's a vegan product
as well. So for two tablespoons of this powdered peanut butter,
it's sixty calories. It is one point five grams of fat,
so significantly lower fat than if you had two tablespoons
(28:57):
of actual peanut butter. It's gone ninety milligrams of sodium,
and it five grams of carbohydrates. So obviously, because peanut
butter is more of a fat, we don't expect a
huge amount of carbohydrate. A gram of fiber for the
two tablespoons a powder peanut butter and six grams of protein,
so six grams of proteins is a big whack in
two tablespoons and quite low calories as well, at just
(29:18):
sixty calories. So I've actually got some sitting in my
cupboard at the moment, SUSI, A brand I think in
the past is center to me, or I don't know,
it's ended up somehow in my cupboard. I did mention
to you because SUSI said, where do you actually buy
this from? And I said, I've seen it in my gym,
because my gym has this big fancy venue machine. They
sell you know, broccoli chips and protein cookies and all
the health kalos that we've talked about in the past.
But this is actually something that I don't consider too bad.
(29:40):
Actually a sort of a fan of it, SUSI, because
you can get the taste of the peanut butter in
it for a lot lower calorie, a lot higher protein.
So again, if you're in a deficit and you're trying
to lose body fat's a good option. It's nothing like
real peanut butter. I must admit. You kind of mix
it with water and it forms like a little bit
of a paste. So I've actually put it in porridge
in my prods in the morning. I've sort of put
(30:00):
some of this in and the taste is there, but
it's just nowhere near is concentrated in terms of the
taste as normal peanut butter would. But I guess it
is sort of what probably at least a third of
the calories that two tablespoons of normal peanut butter would be.
So I think it has a time and a place,
and it's definitely something that I'm not going to completely
discount at all, but for the right type of person,
I think it could be quite helpful. What are your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
This is one of the most interesting products I've ever seen,
and I've just had to look. Actually, it does say
it's available at will wet. It sells for ten dollars,
which is obviously significantly more than a standard peanut butter.
It's imported from the US, and I will disclose that
I do. I am an ambassador for Mavers and Astray
in peanut butter, so I'll be very careful here. I
think it's really interesting because you're right, it gives people
(30:47):
an opportunity to potentially enjoy the protein rich benefits associated
with peanut butter with a lot less fat. It does
have added sugar and salt, which a number of the
peanut butter's on the market now, including the Range, don't have,
so there's a downside to that, and I think for
people who potentially are counting their fat or really love
(31:07):
the taste of it, it's an option, but you're going
to pay for that. You know, it's ten dollars per jar,
which isn't insignificant, and I just think, wow, I guess
the other thing going through my mind, and we haven't
discussed this before, Like, do you think you'd lose some
of the sort of antioxidant potential with some of those
nuts in the way that it had been processed.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, I mean I think that the potential is definitely there,
But again, probably peanut isn't like what I would call
the healthiest type of nut or anything. Yeah, I mean
it's more about legume, isn't it than a nut? But yeah,
there are pros and cons, Like I think it sort
of falls mid range to me, Like it's not something
I highly recommend or I don't think I've ever written
it into a meal plan for a client, but I
can see that it has a place, I guess. But
you definitely do need to be using I think I
(31:48):
sort of originally added about a teaspoon to my approach
and I literally couldn't even taste it, So you do
have to be using quite a lot of it, like
sort of the one to two tablespoons that's recommended in
the serving size, which again the container is not actually
that big, and for ten bucks a pop, you know,
the price does add up quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
So just off the top of my head looking at it,
I'm wondering actually if it would be a reasonably good
ingredient for homemade bliss balls or even to bump up
the protein content of baking.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, because if you're if I cook with peanut butter,
I'm often using it as a fat almost as an
alternative to having extravagin olive oil or butter. But one
of the issues when it comes to protein balls in
particular is if people don't have or want to use
protein powder, what's an ingredient you can get in there?
And I'm thinking if you were making a bliss ball,
(32:35):
I would probably use it there. I wouldn't use it
as an alternative to peanut butter because I think that
there's better one hundred percent nuts spreads out there that
are better to spread and things. But if I had
it at home, I would actually use it as a
base to a bliss ball as a way of getting
the protein in there without using protein powder. Yeah, and
interest because only two tablespoons.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Is almost six grams of protein, So that's atra bread
idea yea, and for only sixty calories.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's how I would absolutely use that product if across
my path. And then compared to the cluster of protein
powder it's actually not too expensive because these protein powders
coming in at about twenty dollars per container. So yeah,
just off the top of my head brainstorming, that's how
I would actually use it in real life. If I
was making protein balls. Of course you can't send those
to school because then they have a nut base. But
for adults at home or why the kids are all homeschooling,
(33:22):
if you were making bliss balls, you know, you could
do peanut butter banana balls with that really easily.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
It would probably, I think work really well in products
like that. And also I think smoothies as well. A
lot of people again don't like to use protein powder,
and for whatever reason, I think that's absolutely fine. But
you know, smoothies are generally and again especially if you're
you know, following a vegan or a plant based life style,
you can't get a good whack of Greek yogurt in there.
You're actually going to be quite limited with your protein
if you're a plant based and b don't like adding
(33:47):
protein powder. So I think this is a really good
option to get a little bit more protein into something
like a smoothie as well. So I do think it
definitely you know. I think the perkose of it is
the six grams of protein for only sixty calories. I
think that's amazing, particularly for people following a plant based
lifestyle with the love of the fibers a little bit higher,
but you know, Lisa's a gram in there. But I
think overall it's it's a medium sized product that we
(34:09):
could recommend. I definitely recommend it. I wouldn't I wouldn't
shy away and say it's not recommended. But I think
it has a time and a place, and for the
right type of person, I think it could actually be
quite beneficial.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Absolutely for plant based arts. You write breakfast smoothies, great
choice and I might have a play with it and
some bliss balls actually, but that's exactly where old I
would use it. So if you've used it, we would
love to hear from you post your recipes or experience
with it. But I think we will continue to see
more and more of these food products that are almost
novel to compliment the diets that we will have. But
that's a US product. It wouldn't surprise me if we
see it astray and one.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I think there are a few Australian brands, Yeah, this
is just the one that one of the ladies sent
me over Instagram, so I screenshot of this exact brand,
But I think there are a few different brands on
the market. The one in the veting machine at my
gym is definitely a different brand. I mean, I've seen
a chocolate version of this as well, so it's powdered
pebe and chocolate together, So I think they're almost trying
to make some sort of like healthy inteller or something
like that for it. So I think again, you know,
(35:01):
there's a few different flavor combos there as well, so definitely, yeah,
a few interesting and exciting products coming to the supermarket.
But yeah, I don't mind this one overall. And I
do think, as we mentioned, from someone following a plant
based lifestyle or trying to keep their fats or their
calories overall quite low, it can definitely have a time
and a place very interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
My good find good find all Right, Well, for our
final segment of the week, we had a great listener
question come up about probiotics, and if we're honest, we
do get quite a lot of questions around gut health
and specifically around supplements you can take and probiotics and
The question was a general one about should we be
taking probiotics for general health now nutritionally, when we have
(35:40):
a look at the research, there's some specific dietary areas
that are proven to have a beneficial effect of probiotics.
And for anyone who's not familiar, probiotics are the good
bacteria that exists naturally in our gut, and we get
them in fermented foods, so you often see them as
part of yogurts or even probiotic shots like You're coolt,
and we see them in more and more of our
foods in general to support my gut help. So specifically
(36:02):
then that the areas of nutritional science I'm aware of
that have been shown to have proven effects of probiotics
being added to the diet are more for digestive health issues,
things like alternative colitis, diverticulitis. I know there's some evidence
to help reduce collig in infants and babies.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Is there any other.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Key areas that you're aware of from the research that
are proven to have benefit from using probiotics.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
The collecting the babies is a great one. The alternative
colitis is again very strong research to support that has
you know, as much chances remission as what some of
the steroids do. Traveler's diarrhea is a big one if
you're overseas and you know something like Barley Belly, the.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Spen, the Gold days.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, pretty lucky enough to travel to somewhere like
Barley these days, travelers diarrhea absolutely antibiotic associated diarrhea. So
in the hospital system there's a terrible type of antibotic
related diarrhea called SEEDEDIFF. So there's really really strong research
for some a specific strain of prodic to help with SEEDEDIFF.
And there's a little little bit of emerging evidence around
ibs and some constipation, and also a tiny bit of
(37:02):
evidence I found around mastatists. But I think you know,
by the town you got masst artists, I think you're, yeah,
you're probably not wanting to really do too much rather
than just get those antibotics and as fast as you
can to help you out. So yeah, there is definitely
some specific health conditions, but with probotics, it is absolutely
around the strain that needs to be research to support
the strain, the amount and the type as well that
(37:25):
you're having. So I think that there's a few things
to think about for probotics, but for general health. If
you wanted a black and white answer, my answer would
be no, I don't think that probotics are needed for
general health. In a capsule form, I think we can
take probotics in our foods. But what's more important, and
we have research to support this, Suzi, is that probotics
for general health matter far more than what proverdics do.
(37:45):
So our proverdex are a good bacteria. Our probotics are
the things that feed our good bacteria, so they create
fuel for our gut health, and probotics can naturally help
to strengthen our gut lining and our gut health as well.
So there's not enough research for probotics and general health.
But the way we should be putting our focus is
on naturally occurring probotics and for a lot of people
(38:06):
with gut health issues in ibs, there are a lot
of our high FORODMAPP foods, so I think just be
really careful. But we don't absolutely want to cut out
probotics in general, even though they might trigger us and
cause a few symptoms. We still want to include as
much as possible and as much diversity as possible into
small amounts, even if it's sort of every second day
as you can, because the research is really strong for
general health and probotics, not so much of probotics just
(38:29):
for those specific health conditions we mentioned.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And when it comes to probiotics, I much prefer my
clients are consuming them in whole natural foods as much
as possible anyway, So plain Greek yogat that is not
Greek style yogat, which is different, but actually good quality
Greek yogurt, which is the one that doesn't taste as
sweet or fermented vegetables you know in sour crowd and
miso and foods like that. So I think when you're
(38:52):
ticking the box on those what we call superfoods that
have pack full of nutrition in general and great daily additions,
I definitely don't retain recommend people go and pay for
extra probiotics for all of these reasons. Plus there are
another expense, and I would rather my clients are spending
on good quality fresh fruit and vegetables and increasing the load.
As we know, the wider the range of those products,
the better our range of gut microbiome is anyway, So
(39:16):
it comes down always to me to a good quality
yogur and things like that, just to be ticking the
box when you're with your daily food choices rather than
popping another pill.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Absolutely, and I just think that it's really going to
be sort of the one to five percent of your diet.
Like if you're taking a probody hoping to improve your
gut health and your diet is crap, you're not going
to get anywhere, do you know what I mean? Like,
the foundations of a good diet are going to make
up eighty five to ninety percent of what needs to
be done, and supplementation on top of that. We always
(39:45):
says dieticians may be one to five percent benefit that
you're going to get there. But the problem is we
all want the miracle and the pill. We all want
to pop something and hope that it helps, rather than
actually do the hard work and reduce our stress and
focus on sleep and focus on eating more whole foods
so much that goes into a holistic, healthy lifestyle. And
I can promise you that probotics would be maybe five
percent of benefit for the majority of people, unless, of course,
(40:08):
we're talking about those specific health conditions, and if you
did have one of those specific health conditions such as
inflammatory baladices or antibodic associated diarrhea. Absolutely crucial to touch
base with either your DP but probably more importantly your
dietician because they will know the exact strain and the
exact type of probotic. If you had, you know, a
bit of Barley Valians some travelers diarrhea. You're not just
(40:28):
going to go and grab a random probatic at the chemist.
You're going to want an exact strain and an exact
amount of that to take, and an exact time frame
as well. So again you're not wasting your money, You're
getting the true benefits which are proven in the research.
So I think that there is, you know, some really
great emerging science around probotics, but I think for general health,
majority of people probably not needed. Absolutely focus on probotics
(40:49):
from food first, and also your probotics from naturally occurring
foods as well. Alrighty, Susie, that brings us to the
end of Nutrition Couch for another week. I'm more sad
on it comes to an end, but I do think
we cover so much content. I mean it's been nearly
forty minutes, so I think we've done pretty well this week.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
We try to keep our times to thirty, but we're not.
We're failing dismally every week, so we're sorry.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Some of these things we could talk about for longer
and longer and longer, but we do try to cap
ourselves so that it is a nice short shot podcast
for you guys, and we can cover a lot of topics.
So if you haven't done so already, we appreciate it
so much. If you could go and subscribe to the
podcast and leave us a positive rating in the purple
Apple Podcast app. Now, if you don't have an Apple phone,
we would love we all know somebody that does. Let's
(41:32):
be honest, grab someone else's far and give us a
good rating in the Apple podcast app. We'd appreciate it
so much. That influences the chart ratings and the higher
we rank on the charts, and thank you for your support.
We've been at number one for pretty much since we
launched about fourteen weeks ago in terms of the nutrition
podcast charts in Australia, so we can't thank you enough
for that. But those charts are really influenced by your
(41:52):
subscriptions and your ratings, So if you haven't done so already,
please leave us a positive rating or review. Because the
more the higher up the charts we are, the more
people that we can reach and actually help and get
some great evidence based nutrition messages and science out there
to the general public versus you know, some of these
influencers who are promoting all sorts of terrible things, Susie,
So we do appreciate your feedback and me thank you
(42:13):
very much for that. Give us a follow on Instagram
at the Nutrition Catch podcast and we will catch you guys,
same time, same place, next Sunday morning.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Have a great week.
Hi Onleanne Ward and I'm Susie Burrow and welcome to
the Nutrition Couch, a weekly podcast from two of Ustrey's
leading dieticians, bringing you everything that is new in the
world of nutrition, diets and good food from the Nutrition Couch.
Today we're chatting about the trending media topic of flexible darting,
or you may have heard it called if it fits
your macros. Our client case study of the week is
(00:22):
about being constantly hungry while trying to lose weight. And
on our most popular segment, the Soupermarket Product of the Week,
we discuss a new powdered pinut butter. And finally, one
of our listener questions has sent us in a question
about probotics. Should we be taking them for general helps.
We'll give you all of the research and science behind that,
but before we jump into today's podcast, Susie, you are
(00:43):
always cooking up a storm in the kitchen. What have
you made for the twins this week?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I do cook quite a lot. Sometimes I'm testing different recipes.
Sometimes I'm cooking to thank people for things, or of course,
to get that elusive perfect Instagram shot. The issue, of course,
is that contrary to what you see on social media,
they don't always work out, and I actually do have
(01:09):
to throw out a fair wax. So for every great photo,
there's probably two or three dodgy ones that haven't quite
made it. But I tear what I have been perfecting,
and I am pretty proud of this. I have wanted
to be able to make a muffin with a crunchy top,
like at a cafe for some time because whenever I
make muffins, and they're not my favorite go to and
not even my kids, but they do really well on
(01:30):
social media. But I thought if I could perfect a
crunchy top muffin, I would be pretty happy. And I
finally have got the right mix. And it's not complicated.
It's more like how you do a crumble. We do
a little bit of brown sugar with a little bit
of wholemeal flour and do it that way. But I'm
pretty proud of my effort. So I've been doing the
crunchy top muffins. They're coming up particularly well. This morning.
(01:51):
I did like a breakfast bircher, but I did it
as a muffin. Now I think people will love it
because it's like a creamy oats breakfast muffin that you
could have in a bowl, almost like a cake, but
it's not my flavor profile I don't eat that. So
the other thing is a lot of the stuff I
actually don't really like that much, so that helps, and
we try and give the rest to neighbors and things.
(02:12):
But as I said, I also have terrible stuff up.
So like a couple of weeks ago, I had to
get a picture of a banana bread and I took
it out too early land so it was still wet
in the middle. I knew it was, and I got
the photo. It's a great photo, but I also know
the battle wasn't completely cooked crew because it was really
dense and thick because I tend to thicken them up
with quite a lot of yogat, And I ended up
(02:33):
taking it to my mum's and it was literally we
just chucked it out. So that's the thing about Instagram,
isn't it Just because it looks perfect doesn't always mean
that it is. And for every great looking baked recipe,
there's probably a couple that are looking pretty dodgy. So
I definitely spend a lot of time in supermarkets picking
up whole your self raising flour yogurt and butter, which
are the things that I tend to run out of
(02:54):
because I will also say, I know we've got to
get started. But I always give people the option in
baking of using a sugar replace. It's not like a
monk fruit or sugar. But if I'm honest, I don't
buy monk fruits sweet now because I think it's really expensive,
like eight dollars a small bag, and I really try
and make things affordable. So I give people the option.
But I myself just cook with a little bit of
sugar because I don't want to spend eight dollars plus
(03:15):
on making a muffin or a banana bread recipe. So
I like to give people that option because otherwise it
can be really quite expensive. All of that healthy baking.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
You can absolutely yeah, And you know me, I don't
tend to bake too much, so I always love seeing
your creations on social media.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Might't be longer there. We're going to be having those
pureys coming up soon.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Get gotta get me one of those Thermo mixers or
something like that. I think I can make up some
baby food.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It makes it really easy one hundred percent and you
can just freeze it. All up and off you go,
so you never is motivated. I think when the kids
are about six months. By the time it gets to
twelve and eighteen months and you're fully back at work,
you just don't care anymore. But go with it. At
six months, I agree, invest in the thermino.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Awesome, well, Susie. This week in the media, we're chatting
about flexible darting. So it's I I f YM or
if it fits your macros? What have you heard about this?
I know it's big within sort of the bodybuilder and
fitness community. A lot of the online coaches who you
know work with clients for fat loss are talking about
flexible dieting. Essentially, it's just a way of I think
(04:13):
counting or tracking your macros and making them fit. Rather
than I guess calorie counting. It's more tracking the number
of macro nutrients you're having. And for me, you know,
I've sort of dabbled with a little bit in the past.
If I'm going through a fat loss block myself, I
will of course track, but I'll track calories and macros
because we know that if the goal is fat loss,
you absolutely have to be in a calorie deficit, and
I think macro nutrients, particularly from a body composition perspective matter.
(04:36):
You know, you don't want too many carbohydrates. You need
enough fat, particularly for things like you know, cellular health
and hairskin and nails and that sort of thing, and
even just women's reproductive organs how they work. We need
some fat in our diet at a minimum of twenty percent.
And I think protein, of course, is especially important when
we're trying to aim to you know, gain some lean
muscle mass or maintain our muscle mass. So I think
(04:56):
macro nutrients are absolutely important. But how do you feel
about just the concept of flexible dieting.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
When it comes to me, I think this is what
I would call a convenient diet theory for you. So
it's really using a proposed model of eating to suggest
that you can very easily eat high calorie or what
we'd call sugary processed foods and still achieve your dietary goals.
(05:24):
So if I'm putting it into context, and I wasn't
overly clear about it either, because I think it just
to me doesn't fit at all flexible, But then dieting,
I'm just not really quite clear. But the best way
I can think to describe it is that if you
have a goal of fat loss and you're sticking to
a certain calorie load or macronutrient loads. So say you
wanted to reduce your carbohydrate down to forty percent of intake,
(05:46):
So if you wanted to still have a chocolate bar
at lunch time, the way you would be able to
do that is if you made sure you were getting
your salad and vegetables that didn't affect your macros, and
then a piece of lean protein, and then potentially you
could get a little bit of well, I guess you
get the carbohydrate from the mars bar and a little
bit of fat from that, so you were keeping all
(06:07):
the other components of that meal low in fat and light,
so it would allow you to have a mars bar
as part of your diet. Now, I think philosophically it
sounds really nice because it means you take away from
that idea that there's good and bad foods. In that model,
it's about choosing the foods you want to eat but
still achieving your dietary goals. But I am yet to
see it really work in practice. And my understanding is
(06:30):
that where it comes up most of all these people
who are perhaps doing physique changing or specifically bodybuilding, where
they have a much wider range of calories and macros
that they can fill, and so it doesn't matter if
they eat a packet of lollies because their carbohydrate intake
or requirements are very high, Whereas I really struggle to
(06:50):
see how it could fit for my clients who are
small people who don't have a lot of calories to
play with. And I can tell you straight away that
if they would doing flexible dieting and still including a
high fat, high sugar food most days, they wouldn't achieve
their diet your goals because they just don't have that
much room to move calorie wise. So for me, it
fits to a much larger frame person who has a
(07:14):
lot more energy and calories to burn as opposed to
the clients that I work with.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And I think that's a really important point because a
lot of the bodybuilders and the finness coaches out there
who promote this, and I think the funniest thing is
that people the first thing and I googled, you know,
if it fits your macros? And the first website that
popped up was the IFYM website, and the first thing
it's said in big bold letters, was this is not
a diet. Well, if you're weighing and tracking your food
every day, that's a diet. So I think it is
(07:41):
a type of diet. But I think people get away
with it saying, you know, you can eat mar as
well as you can eat donut. You can eat whatever
you want as long as it fits into your macro nutrients.
But I think you make an important point that a
lot of the proponents of this diet, and a lot
of people who are promoting it, have super high requirements.
So if you're a bodybuilder, you're doing twenty twenty five
thousand steps a day, you're doing seven workouts a week,
you're in three thousand plus calories. Yeah, you're gonna have
(08:02):
a lot more calories to play with than the average
person who sits at a desk job might get three
or four workouts in a week, but their deficit in
terms of fat loss is more around that fifteen sixteen
hundred calorie mark. You just don't have the luxury or
flexibility of having a lot of these higher calorie processed foods.
So I do think you're right it it matches a
certain client tell more than it's something that fits everybody.
(08:25):
But also I think for a lot of people it's
it's kind of just an excuse to eat processed foods.
And as you said, you know, trying to eat three
thousand plus calories specifically focusing in whole foods is actually
really hard to do. Like there is people who you know,
they will eat a bag of lollies just to get
their carbs and their sugars in. They will just add
you know, a mass bar on top of their porridge
in the morning just to get their carbohydrates right up there.
(08:45):
After a training session, they're taking down bulk protein powders
because their protein requirements are like one hundred and eighty
grams a day, and good luck to you try to
eat that in you know, whole foods, there's a lot
of protein. So I think for a lot of people, yeah,
it is, you kind of do end up a lot
more processed foods in And then clients that I've worked
in the past who come into my coaching services, obviously
this isn't something that I recommend, but they've tried this
(09:08):
before and they say, I don't want to do it
again because I you know, the tracking and the weighing
and that sort of thing just drives me insane. And
I get to the end of the night and I've
got like, say, only two hundred calories left. I'm starving.
I've got no carbohydrates left because I ate it all lunchtime.
And what am I supposed to do with Like, you know,
I've got to eat sixty grams of protein or something,
and I've got no fat left and no carbs left.
So I think unless you're really planning out your day
(09:30):
and you kind of know what you're going to have
for dinner, you can get very stuck in terms of
using all of those you know, with the flexible dieting,
it's like I want to go have a burger in
some fries for lunch. Okay, that's cool. It might fit
your macros now, But by the time you get to dinner,
you've got no fat left, you've got barely new carbohydrates left.
You've got to eat a hell of a lot of
protein for dinner on very very low calories. So what
are you going to have a piece of steam fish
(09:50):
and two green beans. I think it's just it's not
as flexible, I think, as what people really think it is.
And The other thing is that most people don't consider
a fib or a mac nutrient targets, So I think
a lot of people aren't actually tracking their fiber intake EGY,
which we know for general health and particularly gut health
is so incredibly important. So I think that a lot
of people are going, yeah, I'll have a burger and
(10:11):
fries for lunch, and I'll just have some steamfish for
dinner and a piece of broccoli. But they're not getting
anywhere near the required amounts of fiber or that diversity
of fruits and veg every day as well. And you know,
they're eating a bag of lollies, whereas you could have
a nice fruit salad and you're gonna get a lot
more nutrients in from the fruit salad, but probably a
similar amount of carbs and sugar in there. So I
do think there are some negatives to it. It definitely
(10:32):
does fit a particular type of clientele, as you said,
larger bodied, higher requirements, super super active, and also those
online calculators and the people that tend to set your
macro nutrient targets. It's not really something that's really based
on I guess research and science, and probably should be
adjusted quite regularly as people's weight comes down or their
training sort of differs as well. But a lot of
(10:52):
people will set their macros at the beginning and say,
you know, I want to lose ten to fifteen kilos
and that never changes the entire way through. Then they
hit a plateau and they wonder why.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I really don't like my clients checking their macros.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Indeed, when I develop a meal plan, I've calculated the macros.
But what I find And I had a client just
on the weekend doing this, so she started to count herself,
so she was trying to understand what I was doing
so she could adjust based on things she wanted to eat.
And I think straight away this lends itself to psychological
management of food intake as opposed to responding to natural
hunger and fullness signals, because you're mentally calculating and eating
(11:26):
along that line, as opposed to what your body's telling you.
And the other issue I have with it is that
there's gross in accuracies in macro nutrient and calorie composition tables.
So even though it might look like it is perfect
and it's five grams of carbohydrate here, as you and
I both know there's a lot of inconsistencies in the databases.
It's not always completely accurate. So when people start to
(11:49):
count their macros to within a gram of recommendations, it's
not a healthy way of doing it. It's really in
a way promoting disordered eating because you're saying, I had
an extra gram of carbohydrate here, you know I need
to duck two from there, and then you might be
deducting it on a vegetable which probably doesn't really even
count anyway. So you're starting to isolate nutrition down into
(12:09):
individual foods and macros, when that's not really how we eat.
We eat a diet of food and the overall balance
comes from the meal patterns and the meal balance. So
I think it's trying to break down a behavioral pattern
of eating into numbers, and for me, it just doesn't work.
And I find it makes people really confuse. They don't
(12:29):
necessarily understand the science in the degree of being able
to balance well, and most importantly, they're not listening to
their bodies anymore. So I am really not a fan
of macro nutrient counting, even though I do do it
with for my clients myself, and the way I would
describe it is when you go to the accountant. I
don't want the account to tell me how to calculate
my baths. I want him to do it. So when
(12:50):
I see a dietitian, I want the dietitian to get
the balance right for me, as opposed to start to
do it yourself, because you never do it as well
as the accountant or the dietitian because you're not factoring
in all those other very so the only people and
I have seen it, I guess you're describing with bodybuilders,
they might add lollies and things. The only time I've
ever had to do that is with very young NRL
players early in their career, where they might be a
(13:11):
winger who weighs eighty kilos and they are six foot
two and they're doing two or three training sessions a day.
And those people I might send to McDonald's. You know
that you would never publicly state because that's how many
calories they're burning. But for most people, I just don't
really understand where it fits. And if anything, I think
it can do more damage because you start to, you know,
lend itself to indulging yourself on these foods that really
(13:33):
aren't healthy for us. And give yourself permission to be
eating them psychologically without even listening to your body in
terms of what it really really wants. So it's not
something I use. I think it's great to be aware
of it, but if someone was asking me about it,
I generally think it's an excuse to eat more more rubbish.
And you know, we all follow a diet lean all
of us ere a diet, whether we like to admit
(13:54):
it or not. But for me, a diet is about sustainability,
and it's about developing habits and patterns of eating that
you like, as opposed to thinking about it in your
head and thinking what you should be eating in numbers terms.
And that's where we sometimes feel wrong with principles like this,
which are asking us to calculate things. And we don't
eat according to a science. We eat according to a
(14:14):
behavioral pattern.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And I always say that, you know, we eat food,
we don't eat numbers, we don't eat macros. And I
think that that's the biggest downside of something like this
doesn't work well. If you look at you know, the
photos and that sort of thing online, you would think absolutely,
look at these people, they look fabulous, but looking lean
and fit, and strong, and that sort of thing isn't
necessarily an indicator of health. As you mentioned, a lot
of these super lean people aren't necessarily healthy, and a
(14:38):
lot of them have, you know, super low iron levels,
they've got you know, chronic and autoimmune diseases. Just because
somebody looks a certain way and follows a certain diet
pattern doesn't necessarily mean that they're healthy. And so I
think that's a really important thing to notice. Tracking your
macros is all well and good, What about your micro nutrients?
I would say that your micro nutrients matter as much,
if not more than your macro nutrients. And are you
(14:59):
tracking things like are you getting in enough selenium? Are
you getting in enough fol ate? No? Probably not, because
when you're putting everything into an app, you're just not
getting that diversity of foods. And again, people fall into
that rabbit hole where they're like and this is a
perfect example of my husband when I met him, he
ate the same thing for breakfast, lunch, He had a
second lunch and then dinner every single day because he
was doing flexible dieting. That's what he did. And it
(15:21):
was one vegetable at each meal. It was like broccoli
and then beans, We had greens twice a day. He
had chicken, he had turkey, and I think he had
either chicken or beef for dinner. And breakfast was like
this high protein nudugrain sort of cereal with milk, and
that was it, And that was his start because it perfectly.
He had perfectly calculated his macros on a daily basis
based on what a fitness coach had told him. Then
(15:42):
I came in and he started dating me. Here this
is years ago, and I just plipped on its head
because we shouldn't eat the same thing every day, and
just because it can calculated in an app doesn't necessarily
mean that that's healthy. He'll probably kill me for saying
the story on him.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Oh he knew he was alive when he met you.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, doesn't mean it's true health. You know. See that's mine,
that's my specimen.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Ever. Now you fell badly in love with someone who
gave him all the dietary information he wanted for free.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Absolutely, it works. First ways, he reads all of my
contracts and that sort of thing, because he's a good
lawyer and I do all his nutrition works well.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Shouting out to David. We love David, but.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, just because that's the bottom line I think for me,
like macro nutrients of course are important, but don't forget
about your micronutrients. They're so so important, and when you're
just tracking macros, your micronutrients go out the windows. So
you will probably end up deficient in quite a lot
of things. If you notice that your hair's falling out,
your period's becoming a lot more irregular, you're waking up
exhausted despite hitting your macros every day. Is that health
(16:42):
and are they true markets of health? Probably not. Probably
a good thing to sort of reassess what you're actually doing.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And they're very rough, those macro nutrient encounters. They're very,
very rough. They're not overly accurate. So take it with
a grain of salt and use it as a general
guide as opposed to thinking that this is an excuse
to eat a maths bar every day. It sounds too
good to be true, as we always say. All right, well,
moving on. A case study that has presented for us
recently is a little bit about hunger, but not we've
(17:09):
spoken before, Leanne about getting in touch with your hunger
to guide your food choices. That is incredibly, incredibly important,
but something that comes up a lot for some of
my clients is constant hunger, and sometimes I will start
someone on their plan and their feedback very quickly is
that they can do it, but they're feeling really hungry,
and that kind of incessant hung go where they can't
(17:30):
stop thinking about food and they're obsessed and they're eating
their dinner at four thirty. And this for me is
a big, big concern, but it's very, very common, so
we did think it was a really good opportunity to
talk it through. Now physiologically, if you're consuming a well
balanced meal that ticks the box on your macro nutrient
but is also really micro calorie load, So you know,
(17:53):
you have a lunch that's got some salad or soup,
and then a sandwich you'll rat with a decent amount
of protein, or perhaps some leftover dinner that's got again
a serve of lean meat and lots of veggies and
a little bit of good quality carbohydrates from some sweet
potato or some brown rice. That meal that might clock
in between three to five hundred calories for the average person,
should in theory keep you full for at least three
(18:15):
to four hours. So as soon as I have developed
a plan, or clients are eating reasonably well balanced meals,
if they're feeling hungry within an hour or two after
consuming that meal, I'm a bit worried because it's telling
me that something's not quite right with the way they're
processing their hunger or potentially their hormones. So Indeed, with
some hormonial conditions like insulin resistance, because insulin is not
(18:38):
metabolizing carbohydrate overly effectively, you can have quite fluctuating glucose
levels which can really drive that incessant need for sweet food. Indeed,
it can be behavioral if you have programmed to eat
every couple of hours. Indeed, the brain will seek out
that stimulation if you are consuming inadequate amounts of carbohydrates.
So if you're actively cutting your carbohydrates out, So for example,
(18:59):
you might have had an omelet for breakfast with no
other fuel, no toast, or you might have had a
chin a salad for lunch with no carbohydrate added. Indeed,
it's not uncommon to get those sugar cravings an hour
or two, So incessant hunger is a sign that you
do need to have a step back and say, why
am I not getting the satisfaction and fullness. But in
my experience, lea and the most common reason is that
(19:21):
there's hormonal issues driving it, which is an indicator to me,
I may need to get those hormones under control, or
that the meals they're making up or developing according to
what they think is balanced or healthy does not have
the right macro nutrient mix or balance of food groups
that is going to keep them full for that three
to four hours.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
And I think in my experience, I would say that
the most common things when clients say I'm hungry, I'm hungry.
I'm hungry most of the time it's in the first
one to two weeks of when I start working with
a client, because the portions and the meals that I'm
giving them they're just not used to, Like we've just
flipped things on their head, Like I've pulled the carbohydrates
to half of what they're having. I've do the amount
of sales and veggies, and they've kind of got a
(20:02):
bit lazy and they're like, Okay, I'll hit the carves,
I'll hit the you know, the fat and the fiber,
but I didn't have enough you know, salads. Old kind
of like won't bother with that. Or something like that.
So I think that hunger for most I would say
eighty to ninety percent of my clients will stabilize within
about a week of working with me. So I think
that's just that difference in you know, the body, the hormones,
even the mind as well in terms of just doing
(20:24):
something a little bit different. So I think that that
constant hunger, if it's in the first week, if you're
doing something new or working with a new program or
a dietician or something like that, give it a week,
suck it up and see how you go. And if
it's still there in the second or third week, then
it's definitely something you need to look at. When the
second most common reason, I would say then besides, it
just needs you know, your body just it doesn't like
(20:45):
change necessarily, and sometimes it doesn't do that well with change.
So just give it a good week and see what happens.
And if you're still feeling hungry all of the time
in a week two or three, that's all we need
to sort of shake things up a bit. Are you
eating enough fiber? Are you eating enough protein? Most of
Australians should be having thirty grams plus a fiber a day.
I personally think, Susie, that our fiber recommendations are too low.
(21:05):
It's twenty five grams for healthy women and thirty grams
for healthy men. I quite often will easily have my
clients on thirty thirty five forty grams of fiber a day.
I personally think that our Australian recommendations are too low.
Just my own opinion, but I will absolutely drive up
the fiber and the protein and their meal plans. And
the other thing is for a lot of is is
it true physical hunger? It's that difference between I'm just
(21:27):
craving something because I know I'm you know, following a
meal plan and trying to be quote unquote good, or
you know, it's Wednesday and I haven't had any chocolate
since Monday. Whatever it is. But it's just that emotional
drive to eat what I call head hunger, versus that
true physical hunger or that stomach hunger. So I think
that's really a big thing to ask clients. Are you
(21:47):
actually truly physically hungry? If I said to you, go
and have an extra veggie souper, go and grab three
or four carrots with some homas or salza, could you
do that and they're like, oh no, no, I really
just feel like some crackers. And it's like, if you've
got a driver need for an exact or certain type
of food, it's more probably that head hunger or that
emotional hunger versus that true physical hunger, because if you
(22:07):
were truly physically hungry, you would eat any vegetable on
the planet. I would just drink, you know, gallons of
water if I was truly physically hungry and that was
the only thing that was available. So I think it's
really important to sort of differentiate between is this true
physical hunger or stomach hunger. So I think they're probably
the two most common reasons. And I think probably the
third one is clients who are trying to do it
themselves and they just put themselves at a far too
(22:28):
big a deficit. I had a dam from a girl
just yesterday who was like, he's an online calculator. I
know you always say you need to be in a
deficit to lose weight. Well, my deficit was I think
it's just like oney, one hundred calories or something like that.
And I was like, oh, it's too big. And I
said why that deficit? And she said, oh, the blog
I read said it should be a five hundred cow deficit,
and I just think for too many of us, we're
just putting ourselves in two bigger deficits. Of course, we're
(22:51):
going to feel hungry if you're you know, she was
gaining weight beforehand. You know, she's probably on two thousand
plus calories, has now taken herself down to eleven hundred calories,
ramped up her exercise in the the process as well
because she's trying to lose weight. It's just too big.
It's too much for the body to cope with. Like
I really do think slow and steady wins the waste,
so I think not enough protein and fiber. Is this
(23:12):
actually true hunger? Or is this just more cravings and
that constant need or want to eat because we're so
used to it because it's a habit for us. And
are we in too big a deficit? They're probably the
three biggest things I think about when clients are saying
I'm hungry and hungry, I'm hungry.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And I think, leading on from that, it's time of day,
because people start out with this intention of cutting back,
so they impose the restriction earlier in the day, so
they might start with an egg or two and one
slice of toast, so they think, right, I'm going to
be good. I'm going to cut down on the carbohydrates.
Then they skip morning tea or they just have a
cup of green tea because they're trying to be good,
and then they get to lunch and they give themselves
(23:47):
a plane tuna salad. Now what happens in my experience
with that is because they have restricted at the time
of day when they're often most physically active and need
the most energy, that they get a rebound hunger all afternoon,
and that is where you have that constant need to snack,
and you know at two o'clock you're hungry again, and
then at four o'clock it's like you can't get enough
food in. So you really want to pile the day
(24:09):
with more fuel, in particular that vegetable bulk at every meal,
including breakfast and lunch, and make sure that those first
two meals are balanced, and you will notice that your
hunger is a lot more in control on those days.
Because my argument's always been your race of good nutritions
one in the morning, kind of like trathlon. The race
is one on the bike. So if you front load
and get breakfast really well balanced with some veggies as well,
(24:30):
to bulk it up. A well balanced lunch that contains
all of your nutrient groups, you will find you won't
have that constant need to snack all afternoon. But you're
right because the other thing that people do in the
afternoon is they grab the crackers or all carbohydrate without
their balance of their macros and getting some protein, getting
some veggies, and the more of that really quickly digested
carbohydrate you consume, like the rice, crackers and the hommus
(24:51):
and those ready to eat you know, snacks, it primes
the brain to look for more of those really starches,
those really processed carbohydrates, and that drives you're overeating all afternoon.
So it's about getting the balance through the day helps
to control your hunger and in the afternoon. And when
a client presents and says that they're starving at five o'clock,
I know they haven't eaten enough in the day. So
it's about what's happening earlier in those meals. And inevitably,
(25:14):
when I look at food pictures or food diaries, my
constant feedback is where are the vegetables, where's the salad,
because I might pile a whole salad with lunch or
add lots of veggies to it omelet, and my clients
will have nothing. They'll have a slice of tomato. So
it's that shift and getting that balance right through the day,
and that helps predict that hunger management in the in
the afternoon and then in the evening. A lot of it,
(25:34):
as you said's habitual. It's because we're programmed to have
a lot of sweet food. So it's working through that
and really thinking, right, the truth is, I'm not actually
probably hungry, it's just wanting something in my mouth. So
how can I have something in my mouth that's not
going to be too many calories?
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Absolutely, I think there are quite a few, I think
different concepts that we can really look for here. So
I hope that those sort of talking points have given
our listeners something to think about, because it's going to
be different for everybody. Just because you're hungry doesn't necessarily
mean you need eat more. It doesn't necessarily mean that
you haven't eaten enough. Maybe you've eaten enough, but it's
the wrong type of food, or it's the wrong mix
of foods, or you've had just a huge leg day
(26:10):
at the gym, you know, and you actually need to
eat more than other days. And again, this is why
I hate it, or not that I hate I don't
encourage clients to caloriecount and macro account because most of
the time you're trying to eat the same thing every day,
but you don't do the same thing every day. And
I know, Susie, not right now because I'm pregnant. But
when I do a big leg day in the past
at the gym, I'm hungry that day, like hungry, like
(26:30):
I'll go breakfast, snack, snack, lunch, snacksnack, dinner, Versus if
I just go out and just do, say my ten
thousand steps for the day and that's all I do.
I can normally hold off of my break ea till
you know, around ten o'clock because I'm just not genuinely hungry.
Then go to a later lunch and then maybe have
one sack in the arbor and have dinner, and I'm
done for the day. Like my calorie lodal intake for
that day is just significantly lower than if I'm doing
(26:51):
a big heavy leg day in the gym, because I'm
just not burning as much and I'm just not as hungry.
So all of these things I think come into play,
but it's really it's going to come down to an
individual basis. And again we're going to plug dietitians here,
and that's why it's so important to be working with
a qualified professional because yeah, sure you can do it yourself,
but you know, I could do my tax myself, but
I'd probably be losing out on you know, hundreds or
(27:12):
thousands of dollars, So you know, in terms of what
I could actually be claiming, I could attempt to fix
my calm myself, am I got to fix it? Probably not.
I could attempt to you know, clean my teeth myself
and not go to the dentist for years and years,
but eventually, I think my teeth are going to pull out.
So I think the need to see a professional in
what those professionals are qualified in is so so important.
In nutrition is just one of those scary areas where
(27:34):
because there's so much online or because everybody eats, everybody
thinks they're an expert in nutrition. So absolutely is a
good time for us to really rate the importance of
seeing a dietitian. If you have specific goals around your nutrition.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And a meal should keep you full three to four hours.
If you're eating every hour or two, it's way too often. Definitely,
that's a guiding light.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Absolutely. Now onto our most popular segment, our new and
exciting supermarket product. So a listener has sent us this
over our Instagram, Susie, which is at the Nutrition Couch podcast,
So give us a follow on Instagram if you don't already,
and send us your product, send us your questions in
bearing in mind that we can't give you personalized advice,
so we have had quite a lot of DMS saying
from people, Hey, Susie Leanne, this is my height, this
(28:16):
is my weight? How many calories should I be eating?
We can't give that personalized advice over Instagram, but we
are more than happy to chat about listener questions and
the different products that you send through to us as well,
so please do send them through. We've got quite a
list now, don't we, Susie. Our listeners are really enjoying
the podcast, which is amazing. But today we're chatting about
a product somebody has sent in called PEB two. So
(28:37):
it's essentially powdered peanut butter. So on the front of it,
the marketing says ninety percent less fat and six grams
of protein, So I mean it looks pretty good. I
think it is gluten free, and it's a vegan product
as well. So for two tablespoons of this powdered peanut butter,
it's sixty calories. It is one point five grams of fat,
so significantly lower fat than if you had two tablespoons
(28:57):
of actual peanut butter. It's gone ninety milligrams of sodium,
and it five grams of carbohydrates. So obviously, because peanut
butter is more of a fat, we don't expect a
huge amount of carbohydrate. A gram of fiber for the
two tablespoons a powder peanut butter and six grams of protein,
so six grams of proteins is a big whack in
two tablespoons and quite low calories as well, at just
(29:18):
sixty calories. So I've actually got some sitting in my
cupboard at the moment, SUSI, A brand I think in
the past is center to me, or I don't know,
it's ended up somehow in my cupboard. I did mention
to you because SUSI said, where do you actually buy
this from? And I said, I've seen it in my gym,
because my gym has this big fancy venue machine. They
sell you know, broccoli chips and protein cookies and all
the health kalos that we've talked about in the past.
But this is actually something that I don't consider too bad.
(29:40):
Actually a sort of a fan of it, SUSI, because
you can get the taste of the peanut butter in
it for a lot lower calorie, a lot higher protein.
So again, if you're in a deficit and you're trying
to lose body fat's a good option. It's nothing like
real peanut butter. I must admit. You kind of mix
it with water and it forms like a little bit
of a paste. So I've actually put it in porridge
in my prods in the morning. I've sort of put
(30:00):
some of this in and the taste is there, but
it's just nowhere near is concentrated in terms of the
taste as normal peanut butter would. But I guess it
is sort of what probably at least a third of
the calories that two tablespoons of normal peanut butter would be.
So I think it has a time and a place,
and it's definitely something that I'm not going to completely
discount at all, but for the right type of person,
I think it could be quite helpful. What are your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
This is one of the most interesting products I've ever seen,
and I've just had to look. Actually, it does say
it's available at will wet. It sells for ten dollars,
which is obviously significantly more than a standard peanut butter.
It's imported from the US, and I will disclose that
I do. I am an ambassador for Mavers and Astray
in peanut butter, so I'll be very careful here. I
think it's really interesting because you're right, it gives people
(30:47):
an opportunity to potentially enjoy the protein rich benefits associated
with peanut butter with a lot less fat. It does
have added sugar and salt, which a number of the
peanut butter's on the market now, including the Range, don't have,
so there's a downside to that, and I think for
people who potentially are counting their fat or really love
(31:07):
the taste of it, it's an option, but you're going
to pay for that. You know, it's ten dollars per jar,
which isn't insignificant, and I just think, wow, I guess
the other thing going through my mind, and we haven't
discussed this before, Like, do you think you'd lose some
of the sort of antioxidant potential with some of those
nuts in the way that it had been processed.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, I mean I think that the potential is definitely there,
But again, probably peanut isn't like what I would call
the healthiest type of nut or anything. Yeah, I mean
it's more about legume, isn't it than a nut? But yeah,
there are pros and cons, Like I think it sort
of falls mid range to me, Like it's not something
I highly recommend or I don't think I've ever written
it into a meal plan for a client, but I
can see that it has a place, I guess. But
you definitely do need to be using I think I
(31:48):
sort of originally added about a teaspoon to my approach
and I literally couldn't even taste it, So you do
have to be using quite a lot of it, like
sort of the one to two tablespoons that's recommended in
the serving size, which again the container is not actually
that big, and for ten bucks a pop, you know,
the price does add up quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
So just off the top of my head looking at it,
I'm wondering actually if it would be a reasonably good
ingredient for homemade bliss balls or even to bump up
the protein content of baking.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, because if you're if I cook with peanut butter,
I'm often using it as a fat almost as an
alternative to having extravagin olive oil or butter. But one
of the issues when it comes to protein balls in
particular is if people don't have or want to use
protein powder, what's an ingredient you can get in there?
And I'm thinking if you were making a bliss ball,
(32:35):
I would probably use it there. I wouldn't use it
as an alternative to peanut butter because I think that
there's better one hundred percent nuts spreads out there that
are better to spread and things. But if I had
it at home, I would actually use it as a
base to a bliss ball as a way of getting
the protein in there without using protein powder. Yeah, and
interest because only two tablespoons.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Is almost six grams of protein, So that's atra bread
idea yea, and for only sixty calories.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's how I would absolutely use that product if across
my path. And then compared to the cluster of protein
powder it's actually not too expensive because these protein powders
coming in at about twenty dollars per container. So yeah,
just off the top of my head brainstorming, that's how
I would actually use it in real life. If I
was making protein balls. Of course you can't send those
to school because then they have a nut base. But
for adults at home or why the kids are all homeschooling,
(33:22):
if you were making bliss balls, you know, you could
do peanut butter banana balls with that really easily.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
It would probably, I think work really well in products
like that. And also I think smoothies as well. A
lot of people again don't like to use protein powder,
and for whatever reason, I think that's absolutely fine. But
you know, smoothies are generally and again especially if you're
you know, following a vegan or a plant based life style,
you can't get a good whack of Greek yogurt in there.
You're actually going to be quite limited with your protein
if you're a plant based and b don't like adding
(33:47):
protein powder. So I think this is a really good
option to get a little bit more protein into something
like a smoothie as well. So I do think it
definitely you know. I think the perkose of it is
the six grams of protein for only sixty calories. I
think that's amazing, particularly for people following a plant based
lifestyle with the love of the fibers a little bit higher,
but you know, Lisa's a gram in there. But I
think overall it's it's a medium sized product that we
(34:09):
could recommend. I definitely recommend it. I wouldn't I wouldn't
shy away and say it's not recommended. But I think
it has a time and a place, and for the
right type of person, I think it could actually be
quite beneficial.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Absolutely for plant based arts. You write breakfast smoothies, great
choice and I might have a play with it and
some bliss balls actually, but that's exactly where old I
would use it. So if you've used it, we would
love to hear from you post your recipes or experience
with it. But I think we will continue to see
more and more of these food products that are almost
novel to compliment the diets that we will have. But
that's a US product. It wouldn't surprise me if we
see it astray and one.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
I think there are a few Australian brands, Yeah, this
is just the one that one of the ladies sent
me over Instagram, so I screenshot of this exact brand,
But I think there are a few different brands on
the market. The one in the veting machine at my
gym is definitely a different brand. I mean, I've seen
a chocolate version of this as well, so it's powdered
pebe and chocolate together, So I think they're almost trying
to make some sort of like healthy inteller or something
like that for it. So I think again, you know,
(35:01):
there's a few different flavor combos there as well, so definitely, yeah,
a few interesting and exciting products coming to the supermarket.
But yeah, I don't mind this one overall. And I
do think, as we mentioned, from someone following a plant
based lifestyle or trying to keep their fats or their
calories overall quite low, it can definitely have a time
and a place very interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
My good find good find all Right, Well, for our
final segment of the week, we had a great listener
question come up about probiotics, and if we're honest, we
do get quite a lot of questions around gut health
and specifically around supplements you can take and probiotics and
The question was a general one about should we be
taking probiotics for general health now nutritionally, when we have
(35:40):
a look at the research, there's some specific dietary areas
that are proven to have a beneficial effect of probiotics.
And for anyone who's not familiar, probiotics are the good
bacteria that exists naturally in our gut, and we get
them in fermented foods, so you often see them as
part of yogurts or even probiotic shots like You're coolt,
and we see them in more and more of our
foods in general to support my gut help. So specifically
(36:02):
then that the areas of nutritional science I'm aware of
that have been shown to have proven effects of probiotics
being added to the diet are more for digestive health issues,
things like alternative colitis, diverticulitis. I know there's some evidence
to help reduce collig in infants and babies.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Is there any other.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Key areas that you're aware of from the research that
are proven to have benefit from using probiotics.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
The collecting the babies is a great one. The alternative
colitis is again very strong research to support that has
you know, as much chances remission as what some of
the steroids do. Traveler's diarrhea is a big one if
you're overseas and you know something like Barley Belly, the.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Spen, the Gold days.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, pretty lucky enough to travel to somewhere like
Barley these days, travelers diarrhea absolutely antibiotic associated diarrhea. So
in the hospital system there's a terrible type of antibotic
related diarrhea called SEEDEDIFF. So there's really really strong research
for some a specific strain of prodic to help with SEEDEDIFF.
And there's a little little bit of emerging evidence around
ibs and some constipation, and also a tiny bit of
(37:02):
evidence I found around mastatists. But I think you know,
by the town you got masst artists, I think you're, yeah,
you're probably not wanting to really do too much rather
than just get those antibotics and as fast as you
can to help you out. So yeah, there is definitely
some specific health conditions, but with probotics, it is absolutely
around the strain that needs to be research to support
the strain, the amount and the type as well that
(37:25):
you're having. So I think that there's a few things
to think about for probotics, but for general health. If
you wanted a black and white answer, my answer would
be no, I don't think that probotics are needed for
general health. In a capsule form, I think we can
take probotics in our foods. But what's more important, and
we have research to support this, Suzi, is that probotics
for general health matter far more than what proverdics do.
(37:45):
So our proverdex are a good bacteria. Our probotics are
the things that feed our good bacteria, so they create
fuel for our gut health, and probotics can naturally help
to strengthen our gut lining and our gut health as well.
So there's not enough research for probotics and general health.
But the way we should be putting our focus is
on naturally occurring probotics and for a lot of people
(38:06):
with gut health issues in ibs, there are a lot
of our high FORODMAPP foods, so I think just be
really careful. But we don't absolutely want to cut out
probotics in general, even though they might trigger us and
cause a few symptoms. We still want to include as
much as possible and as much diversity as possible into
small amounts, even if it's sort of every second day
as you can, because the research is really strong for
general health and probotics, not so much of probotics just
(38:29):
for those specific health conditions we mentioned.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And when it comes to probiotics, I much prefer my
clients are consuming them in whole natural foods as much
as possible anyway, So plain Greek yogat that is not
Greek style yogat, which is different, but actually good quality
Greek yogurt, which is the one that doesn't taste as
sweet or fermented vegetables you know in sour crowd and
miso and foods like that. So I think when you're
(38:52):
ticking the box on those what we call superfoods that
have pack full of nutrition in general and great daily additions,
I definitely don't retain recommend people go and pay for
extra probiotics for all of these reasons. Plus there are
another expense, and I would rather my clients are spending
on good quality fresh fruit and vegetables and increasing the load.
As we know, the wider the range of those products,
the better our range of gut microbiome is anyway, So
(39:16):
it comes down always to me to a good quality
yogur and things like that, just to be ticking the
box when you're with your daily food choices rather than
popping another pill.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Absolutely, and I just think that it's really going to
be sort of the one to five percent of your diet.
Like if you're taking a probody hoping to improve your
gut health and your diet is crap, you're not going
to get anywhere, do you know what I mean? Like,
the foundations of a good diet are going to make
up eighty five to ninety percent of what needs to
be done, and supplementation on top of that. We always
(39:45):
says dieticians may be one to five percent benefit that
you're going to get there. But the problem is we
all want the miracle and the pill. We all want
to pop something and hope that it helps, rather than
actually do the hard work and reduce our stress and
focus on sleep and focus on eating more whole foods
so much that goes into a holistic, healthy lifestyle. And
I can promise you that probotics would be maybe five
percent of benefit for the majority of people, unless, of course,
(40:08):
we're talking about those specific health conditions, and if you
did have one of those specific health conditions such as
inflammatory baladices or antibodic associated diarrhea. Absolutely crucial to touch
base with either your DP but probably more importantly your
dietician because they will know the exact strain and the
exact type of probotic. If you had, you know, a
bit of Barley Valians some travelers diarrhea. You're not just
(40:28):
going to go and grab a random probatic at the chemist.
You're going to want an exact strain and an exact
amount of that to take, and an exact time frame
as well. So again you're not wasting your money, You're
getting the true benefits which are proven in the research.
So I think that there is, you know, some really
great emerging science around probotics, but I think for general health,
majority of people probably not needed. Absolutely focus on probotics
(40:49):
from food first, and also your probotics from naturally occurring
foods as well. Alrighty, Susie, that brings us to the
end of Nutrition Couch for another week. I'm more sad
on it comes to an end, but I do think
we cover so much content. I mean it's been nearly
forty minutes, so I think we've done pretty well this week.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
We try to keep our times to thirty, but we're not.
We're failing dismally every week, so we're sorry.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Some of these things we could talk about for longer
and longer and longer, but we do try to cap
ourselves so that it is a nice short shot podcast
for you guys, and we can cover a lot of topics.
So if you haven't done so already, we appreciate it
so much. If you could go and subscribe to the
podcast and leave us a positive rating in the purple
Apple Podcast app. Now, if you don't have an Apple phone,
we would love we all know somebody that does. Let's
(41:32):
be honest, grab someone else's far and give us a
good rating in the Apple podcast app. We'd appreciate it
so much. That influences the chart ratings and the higher
we rank on the charts, and thank you for your support.
We've been at number one for pretty much since we
launched about fourteen weeks ago in terms of the nutrition
podcast charts in Australia, so we can't thank you enough
for that. But those charts are really influenced by your
(41:52):
subscriptions and your ratings, So if you haven't done so already,
please leave us a positive rating or review. Because the
more the higher up the charts we are, the more
people that we can reach and actually help and get
some great evidence based nutrition messages and science out there
to the general public versus you know, some of these
influencers who are promoting all sorts of terrible things, Susie,
So we do appreciate your feedback and me thank you
(42:13):
very much for that. Give us a follow on Instagram
at the Nutrition Catch podcast and we will catch you guys,
same time, same place, next Sunday morning.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Have a great week.
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