Sustainable Diet

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Why recreational athletes often experience leaky gut?

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Why recreational athletes often experience leaky gut?

Back in the day, when I was training and competing in marathons and triathlons, I started to experience certain food sensitivities, poor sleep, diarrhea, and nausea. I put it down to stress, high training volumes, and working long hours as a personal trainer. Although doing a food sensitivity (IgG) test helped me remove particular foods that increased the symptoms (whey, eggs, gluten, cashews, alcohol, etc.), it wasn't enough to fix the underlying cause. I later found out I had a leaky gut, and once I fixed it, all of these symptoms went away.

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Leaky guy played havoc with my sleep, my ability to recover and, therefore, my health and happiness. Today, my gut health is significantly better, and I wish I had addressed the problem sooner.

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Recreational athletes body types and energy system demands

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Recreational athletes body types and energy system demands

When working with recreational athletes, it's important to understand their body type and the energy demands of their training and competitions. In a future post, I want to write about the protein demands for different sports. Still, it's critical to understand how to exercise's frequency, volume, and intensity impact the macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate and fat) intake requirements.

No one diet is right for everyone. The right diet should be based on many individual factors. The food we eat contains information that speaks to our genes, not just calories for energy. Science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one. It's not about "eating less". It's about eating more of the right foods that nourish and fuel the body and mind. It's not about "moving more," it's about how movement supports your health and encourages positive adaptation, not fatigue.

Why should recreational athletes stop cutting calories and start building a bigger furnace?

Why should recreational athletes stop cutting calories and start building a bigger furnace?

I've recently been digging into the research on protein intake requirements for recreational athletes. I want to write a series of useful blog posts that I can share with my health coaching clients. However, I realise that only hardcore fitness geeks (like myself) want to read a blog post that dives into a plethora of scientific studies analysing protein requirements per kilogram of body weight to improve lean muscle mass and sports performance. Everyone else might find a meta-analysis of protein research a useful sleep aid. Zzzzzzzzzz.

WAKE UP, STAY WITH ME!

My goal in this blog series is to try and make protein intake a little more digestible for the non-fitness-geeks and give fitness geeks a different perspective.

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Fuelling for the demands of training

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Fuelling for the demands of training

A low dietary energy intake relative to exercise energy demands (ie low energy availability) may result in an array of medical issues. Many recreational athletes following mainstream diets are under-eating. Most are not eating enough to fuel their training, to improve their body composition (decrease body fat and maintain/increase lean muscle). 99.9% of recreational athletes are not getting enough micronutrients, like vitamins and minerals, in their diet to balance their hormones, strengthen their immune system, achieve their fitness goals, and increase their healthspan.

Up your hydration game

Up your hydration game

There seems to be little correlation between salt intake alone and high blood pressure. In some of the culture’s studied – higher salt consumption seems to suggest longer life expectancy – “…a low-salt diet may actually lead to serious health consequences and higher overall mortality, particularly in conditions like heart disease and diabetes…, a low salt intake is associated with higher mortality from cardiovascular events… the lowest risk of death for sodium excretion [is] between 4 and 5.99 grams per day…

Do you talk to clients about their iron levels?

Do you talk to clients about their iron levels?

Iron deficiency is becoming more and more common, to a point where I often ask my clients when they last had their iron levels tested. Iron deficiency is not as common in men because they don't have a menstruation cycle each month and lose valuable iron stores. 90% of the female clients I've worked with either have an iron deficiency or have had one in the past.

Iron is an important nutrient, and it's rather scary how many people, especially women, are deficient in iron. It's also worth noting that too much iron is not healthy, and it's important to have your iron levels checked regularly.

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Why should health & fitness professionals be recommending bone broth?

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Why should health & fitness professionals be recommending bone broth?

As health and fitness professionals we can sometimes be quick to recommend supplements to our clients. Supplements should be an addition to a healthy sustainable diet and only used when needed. If the nutrients we need can be obtained from food sources, we should be promoting these first. Mother Nature designed out food to contain an abundance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and co-factors that are essential to our survival. Processed foods are often void, or very low, on these nutrients and this is why so many people are deficient in key nutrients. As health and fitness professionals we should be helping our clients make smart dietary choices and adding foods such as bone broth to their diet.

Is there such a thing as an essential carbohydrate?

Is there such a thing as an essential carbohydrate?

We’ve all heard of essential fatty acids. We’ve all heard of essential amino acids. But is there such a thing as an essential carbohydrate? Essential macronutrients are required in the diet because the body can't produce them. Chemical reactions in the body can provide non-essential macronutrients.

It’s important to note that ALL carbohydrates in food are broken down and converted into pure sugar (glucose and fructose) or indigestible fibre. Although glucose, fructose, and fibre are all technically carbohydrates, they each have a different effect on the body.

Women's Health: Diet, Training and Hormones - Part 1

Women's Health: Diet, Training and Hormones - Part 1

As the saying goes “men are from Mars, and women are from Venus.” So should we eat a different diet? It’s not that simple, but there are some valid reasons why specific diets have different gender outcomes. Body image and social pressure affect both men and women in terms of health and happiness. Unfortunately, many health and fitness professionals make the problem worse by encouraging unrealistic goals that can have detrimental impacts on the wellbeing of their clients. This is especially true for female clients as their hormones can be easily disrupted by the wrong diet or training methods.

Give your clients a licence to eat carbohydrates

Give your clients a licence to eat carbohydrates

Is there a nutrition secret to going harder, faster, stronger, and longer? There is a whole mythology built up around “eating to perform": protein powders, carbohydrate back-loading, intermittent fasting, post-workout macronutrient ratios, etc. We've been told that carbohydrates are bad for us? But don’t we need carbohydrates to fuel our high-intensity training sessions? One of my teachers used to say, “most people don’t deserve carbohydrates, you can have carbohydrates in your diet, but they have to be clean carbohydrates.” The best way to determine if it’s a clean carbohydrate is to ask the questions, “did a caveman have access to it?”