Oct 23, 2023
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You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organized missions and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the MAVEN podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer. And in this fifth episode of our XO series, I am joined by our guest, Jana mason, senior performance dietitian at XOs.
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Potentially one of the most overlooked aspects of overall human performance. Nutrition is an absolute necessity in anything we do mindset, nutrition, movement and recovery needs to be an integrated part of our efforts to sustain and improve our activity levels. As we consider wanting to do more, think better and move towards very specific goals nutrition is key. Listen in as Jana breaks down foundational nutrition, meal timing and composition supplementation in the digestible easy to consume tips for us all to use and pass on to those we love from individuals, athletes to businesses or military.
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Seek to understand as we continue the mission to serve. Jan Contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. Good morning Jana. How's it going? Good morning, Chris. How are you? I'm doing great.
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Doing well, thanks. And before we got on here, you said. Yeah, it's a sunny day here in Florida and. Right. Yep. It's been. It's been very nice. It's been very hot. So I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks, we'll start the downward trend. So we have some nice cool mornings. The falls great here, but the summer is a little brutal at times.
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Oh, I bet. Yeah. The humidity probably going to dial in to how the environment or the external elements affect our nutritional focus here. Yeah, they definitely do. See what I did there? Segway chai try and nutrition to everything. All right, everyone. Today we're talking about nutrition with Jana mason from Exos and running out of Florida. So we've had previous episodes where we've had an introduction with Anthony Hobgood, who's also talked about some other topics like training and daily movement.
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And then we've had some information on the model itself, the human performance model with Stephan Underwood and we've also had an episode for this one with About Sleep with John Stemmerman. And so today we're talking about nutrition and how it ties in to the things that we've already discussed and then also introducing some things that we haven't yet probably introduced as something that we should no matter what we do.
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And who we are and in one of our jobs or interests or goals are how we need to factor in the realities of what nutrition does or doesn't do for us, depending on what we're trying to achieve. So Jan and I will kick it to you. Yeah, absolutely. I think nutrition is one of those things that when people do set a goal, especially like a weight loss goal or maybe even change in body composition, goal nutrition is kind of like one of the last things people consider, which it really should not be, because you're definitely going to get to your goal faster if you kind of hone in on your nutrition.
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And even even Anthony, I was listening to the podcast that you did with him. He talked a lot about nutrition. And when we're working with athletes, our coaches do a great job of telling them like, Hey, you're going to run a faster 40. If you dial in on your nutrition because the other guy who is just as gifted as you are, this is the thing that could put you over him.
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So yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize not only like if it's a weight goal or a body composition goal, like how nutrition can affect your, your mindset, your mood, your energy levels, like the tire, the energy you have at work. But also when you get done with work and you have, you know, a family to take care of or kids to play with nutrition and play a very vital role in changing your mindset.
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So I know Stephan, when he was he was speaking with you, he talked kind of like a high level overview of our human performance model that we have at Exos. And he did speak about how you do have to have mindset, nutrition movement, recovery seamlessly integrated so that you can meet your your goals efficiently and optimize your overall cognitive and physical performance.
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So he did a good job, I think setting the stage there for Anthony and and John. He'll speak about sleep in myself and then the others to follow after myself. So that was great. And then Anthony, he spoke a lot about sustainability and I'm definitely going to talk about that in in this segment because it is really key, he said.
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I liked when he said, do the simple things savagely well, but do them consistently because you could do the simple things savagely. Well, but if you only do them for a short period of time, then you're you're going to revert back to your old ways. And that happens all the time with nutrition. I get clients all the time here that, you know, they're like, Hey, I want to do something.
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Just fill in the blanks for a restrictive diet. I want to do a keto diet or a very low carb diet or I want to fast whatever, whatever it may be. And I'm like, okay, well, that's that's great. Well, let's talk about what you've done in the past, what your goals are. Has this worked in the past? Is there in barriers?
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So just asking a lot of questions, seeking to understand. And sometimes we come to the revelation, Oh, well, this didn't work in the past and actually it was only a short term success. And then I ended up gaining all my weight back or whatever it was that they had said as a goal. And then we come to the conclusion, okay, well, maybe we need to set a different nutrition game plan.
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Or it could be like, Oh, well, this has worked for me and it has been sustainable and successful, but now let's figure out how do we optimize it and fine tune it even more. So I'll definitely want to touch on the sustainability of nutrition and just making sure you're doing something that's going to fit your lifestyle and also help you get to whatever or that goal is that you set.
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So that being said, I want to start off with three key points. I kind of wanted to break it down, make it easy. I used to have this soccer coach growing up that always said when we try to get like fancy with our our footwork, he always used the terminology kiss, which I'm sure you've heard of. Keep it simple, stupid.
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So I always start out with my nutrition talks, keeping it as simple as possible and then we'll dive into a little bit of deeper conversations and I'm sure we'll have some side segments off of these three points. But three points for anybody that's listening, we're going to first talk about foundational nutrition. So what is foundational in nutrition? We're going to hit on sleep and hydration because these really are the things that you have to get right before we even want to consider changing what we're eating.
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They're basically the fundamental things that we need to make any type of body composition change or weight change. They affect our mood or energy. They affect everything. So we're going to start with the foundational pieces. The second thing we're going to talk a little bit about meal timing and meal composition. So like what things go in a well-balanced meal or a snack and then maybe even the cadence of the timing of how we eat those meals and snacks.
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And then the last thing, which is the most specific, is supplementation. So talking about those things that maybe we need to fill in the gaps because we just can't do it through the food that we're eating. Or maybe we even have like a medical history of a deficiency or we are a high performing athlete and it's really difficult to get all of the nutrients that we need just from the food.
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So we're going to kind of start off in that order are foundational. So are most basic fundamental things. Kind of like Anthony spoke about. You have to be able to fundamentally move without pain. That's the most basic thing. So we're going to start with basics and then we'll work our way up to a little bit more specific, if that sounds good.
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Sounds good to me. I mean, that's kind of introducing the opportunity to ask a couple of things along the way and then connect dots and things like that. So that's great. But I do like how you all have all of you have consistently used the terms in each of these conversations, which helps with the kind of the mindset of understanding the discipline that goes into the consistency.
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You know, and I'm not trying to split hairs on this or being very specific on this meaning, but the trust that's developed through the staff or through the coaches or through anybody that's helping you change how you do what you do, you look for these subtle things, subtleties. That's what I was looking for, is the subtleties. You're looking for it, and the language you're using is the consistency as far as seeking to understand, doing the things savagely.
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Well, that is funny because you can say I crushed it on my workout a month ago. I haven't worked out since. Yeah. So it's this memory of of success, right where you're like, Oh yeah. And then you don't do it again. So yeah, I'm curious and, you know, I'll do my best to try to not interject before you make your point, but let's go.
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I feel feel free to interject. I can definitely get off on some tangents so I'll try to stay on track a little bit here. So Foundation, we're going to start there. Sleep and hydration. I tell my clients, my athletes, these are the two most important things that we need to do and have right before you even come to me wanting to change you up your your meal plan or your game plan for your nutrition, people don't realize how much impact that these two things actually have on the nutrition choices we make and then also on our recovery from whatever the demands of the day are our movement and then also trying to change body composition.
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If that's one of our goals or change our weight, because there are a lot of physiological and metabolic responses that happen when we are getting enough sleep or and we are hydrating well or vice versa if we're if we're not getting enough sleep and recovering as well or drinking enough water. So I'm going to start with the sleep.
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I knew there's going to be a whole segment with someone that's a lot more intelligent than I am on sleep, so I'm going to keep it kind of a high level and trying to mostly focus on the nutrition piece of sleep. So generally speaking, recommendation for sleep all of these recommendations to that, I'm going to say during this segment are and I would say General recommendations like this is a starting point.
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So I want people to know that not everybody is going to fit within these general recommendations because everybody's different. So sleep requirements, 7 to 9 hours approximately a night. Why do we need to sleep? Obviously, this is the time that our body and our mind are going to repair and rebuild themselves. We can go out and Anthony can take somebody through an intense workout, maybe they do in two days, but if they're not getting adequate sleep, then they're not going to reap the benefits from the repair, the muscle building that Anthony just took them to go through that workout.
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From a cognitive standpoint, stresses illnesses like sleep is where we're going, going to come back. Those things. So from the nutrition standpoint, let's let's get to that. A lot of things are going on when you are getting adequate sleep. So growth hormone, this is a hormone that's going to be released when we are getting enough sleep. So this is needed for every tissue in your body.
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So if you're trying to make any type of, I guess, quote unquote gain, you want to make sure you're getting adequate sleep. So this hormone is releasing properly cortisol, which I'm sure John talks about a lot in his sleep section. This is one of our stress hormones, and it's a catabolic hormone, meaning that it's going to tear you down.
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So if this is staying chronically elevated while because we're not getting enough sleep. So it's chronically elevated mostly through the day because probably the demands of life outside of sleep are going to increase our cortisol levels as well. Then we're not going to be able to rebuild or repair as optimally as we would if we were getting that adequate sleep.
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A couple other hormones that I wanted to throw out there, which are more thyroid and hunger regulation hormones, there's two in particular ghrelin and leptin ghrelin is our hunger hormones. So basically this tells us we we need to eat, eat more. This is actually going to be increased when we're not getting adequate sleep. Leptin, which is our satiety hormone, telling us like, okay, you've had enough, let's stop eating.
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This is decreased when we're not getting adequate sleep. So if you have these two hunger regulation hormones that are kind of out of whack telling you to eat more, but not giving you the signal that you've had enough, then you are more apt to overeat and eat more calories than maybe you need for the day. So all of that is kind of something that you can't see physically but is internally happening.
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So you can see how this would lead to not making body composition changes, which by what I mean by that is losing body fat. If that's your goal and or building muscle or weight loss in general, you're just not going to get there as fast if you're not getting that adequate sleep. Got it. So real quick on that one, since we're there and think about that because I'm thinking about myself as always, a little vain.
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Just kidding. But if I'm thinking about the types of fat now when we're talking about sleep and we're talking about nutrition, the combination of those things to allow, you know, not to have as much cortisol and these other things, your body recovers and so on and so forth, the differences between fat. So when we're talking from here, I don't know if you're going to cover it or not, so we can understand the different types of fat so that you have the the rolls on the side and whatnot.
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And then you have the I think it's visceral stuff inside. I don't know how the other way to say around your organs, you run to organs, different things, different way to lose that and different way to focus on how we can manage that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And actually chronically elevated cortisol levels are associated with higher like abdominal fat.
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So that fat that for men, for example, is predominantly where your fat goes, which is more associated like cardiovascular disease and things like that. So like high blood pressure, cholesterol, all of that can be affected by the cortisol levels. So yes, losing the fat, that is not necessarily. And in indicative of a healthy, I guess, lifestyle or healthy biomarkers.
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Got it. Okay. Thanks for that. Yeah. Another thing I wanted to touch on here, a couple things actually. So what is asleep Disrupter? The biggest one, and I think pretty much everybody knows what it is. Stephan touched on it in his segment to alcohol. So if we are drinking alcohol consistently before bed, the alcohol basically it's going to wake you up when it starts metabolizing.
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So if you're you know that you have to be like game ready the next morning, whether it's maybe a sporting event or you have some type of like physical activity you have to be prepped for, or it could be more or if you need to be sharp in on your game for some type of conference that you have to speak out or whatever it may be, a meeting, the alcohol may be one of those things you just want to consider limiting that night before you have to be kind of game ready.
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That's the biggest one there. I do want to talk a little bit about what can what things because I don't want to get too far into all of the other things that you can do to to get better sleep, because I know John will talk about that. But from a nutrition standpoint, because I get asked a lot like what things can I eat or drink before I go to bed to maybe get a little bit of better sleep.
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So there is three things I'll touch on here. One is pretty, I would say pretty obvious, although I say pretty obvious in that I realize a lot of people don't know some of these things that I'm saying, but like a herbal tea. So like camomile that's relaxing. Tart, cherry juice, concentrate. So this'll help tart cherry juice in general.
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Or you can take pills. There are supplements for it, but if you want to go the cheaper route, I would recommend the tart cherry juice concentrate. This helps with recovery, but also helps with natural melatonin production so that you can get into more of a restful sleep. You only need about two ounces of the concentrate. I usually tell people to go that route if you're going to do it, because if you do just the 100% tart cherry juice, then you would have to drink about 16 ounces equivalent to the two ounce concentrate, which is a lot of juice and may not fit into your overall calorie or carbohydrate needs.
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And then the last thing is magnesium. So magnesium helps with muscle relaxation. You can get this again, you can get this from a supplement. But if you want to go the food route, which I would always recommend food first, nut seeds, legumes, dark chocolate, even, which is kind of a nice dessert. They all are good sources of magnesium.
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So you could have something in your dinner or if you're doing a nice snack, maybe that's high magnesium containing food. So those are three. There's more things that you can do. But I thought I'd point out by just a few of people want to want to try that if they're having some difficulty sleeping, maybe try that before going the route of more, I guess, extreme ways of getting to sleep, whether that's medication or whatever it may be.
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Yeah. Now that's good. And and because it's the flow of thought that I'm having, I'm like because you said concentrate. And I was like, where would I immediately and where would I get that? How much trouble is it worth? How much is that going to impact my ability to go find it and then and then be consistent And then you said versus the juice, which is 16 ounces.
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And immediately I was thinking that what you said impacting the other areas of concerns of calories and sugars and things like that. So I like where we're going, That's all. Okay, Awesome. Yeah. And and with any of these little, like tips that I'm giving out, just I would say just experiment because you never know what's going to work for you.
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Some people love taking tart cherry. Do some people just prefer taking magnesium before bed? So you kind of have to play around, see what works for you. Maybe it's nothing nutrition related. It could be something else. Like in your environment that's disturbing your sleep. So I'm trying not to get into that as well because I know there'll be a more in-depth segment on that.
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Okay, So we have sleep. That's number one, hydration. Number two, which is tied with sleep, is our foundation is the hydration piece. And so I want to touch a little bit on that before we move on to the actually talking about food. So general recommendations, again, this is a starting place. We can go above it if needed, but a half an ounce to one ounce per pound of body weight.
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So that's typical recommendation. So if you're a £200 person, you want to drink at least 100 ounces of water a day as your minimum. Now, if you are in a hot, humid environment like Florida, your needs may go a little bit higher than that. If you're training twice a day or maybe you're training for Ironman or whatever it is, you also may need a little bit more.
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Maybe you're at elevation, you're going to need a little bit more. So you do have to consider the external factors. But if you use the half an ounce to an ounce, that's a pretty good, I would say, place to start. And honestly, a lot of people struggle with this. And I think it's just because people don't think about drinking water and they get busy or they're like, Oh, it's a hassle because now I have to go pee and I have meetings all day.
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But honestly, it's one of the easiest upgrades we can make with probably the most significant health impact. I mean, you think about your body and how much of your body is water like it's a large percentage of your body like up to 70%. So it's got to be important, right? We need it for our cognitive function. So like making sure being focused, being productive, we need it for transporting oxygen and nutrients to our working muscles, our sales.
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If we have an injury, obviously we need water to get those nutrients to the injury site so that we're healing faster. So we need it for everything. We need it for absorbing our nutrients in our organs. It's so important and people just don't think about doing it. So I have to want to have to reinforce it and then to I have to come up or we have to come up with like, well, how can we increase water?
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Like what are some practical tips? So we'll kind of talk about those things. And I will say like we can also include any naturally zero calorie beverages in that in that as well. So we can include like unsweetened teas, sparkling waters, we can include some coffee. Even So if you're drinking black coffee, I tell people that's perfectly fine, you know, maybe two, 300 milligrams, which is probably 2 to 3 cups, depending on the brew.
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Like you can count that towards your overall hydration. But I would recommend like, let's try to make most of that water and then everything else is just kind of like a cherry on top. So yeah, so cognitively we're going to be better off. I always show, especially if I'm given a PowerPoint presentation to like a corporate setting, I will show these images, these MRI images of two different brains and on one side is a hydrating brain and all the other side's a dehydrated brain and there are blatantly like significantly more black divots in the dehydrated brain, which is indicative of brain activity.
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So you can see like from an actual image of a brain when you're dehydrated, how unproductive or uncreative or focused that you're you're probably going to be if you're dehydrated. I do think people get very used to being in a dehydrated state, and that's kind of like their norm. And they are like, Well, I feel fine and I'm drinking 20 ounces of water, so why should I increase my water intake?
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But I will tell you, like when I do come across clients that are very low in water intake, which is most of them, when they start slowly increasing water in their day, they will feel a difference whether that's mood energy, like mental clarity, physical performance too. So if we're talking about an athlete or even like a weekend warrior, someone just working out daily and that sweating from a physical standpoint, you are going to be faster and sharp or you're going to be less prone to injury.
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If you're well-hydrated as well. I always tell people try to keep it under that 1% loss of body weight. When you are training. So I'll actually have I'm not a huge fan of like weighing every day, but I will have athletes especially maybe the first week they're here and say it is summer because it's super hot here. I'll have them weigh in before and after a training session just to see how much water weight they're losing.
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And then we'll kind of do the calculation if they're losing too much waterway. So say again, £200. If they're losing more than £4 of of water weight, they're losing too much because they're already at that 2% dehydrated stage where they're going to start being more prone to injury and having a negative effects on their performance. So you can kind of do that yourself.
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Just weigh in before and after your activity, see if you're drinking enough. Maybe maybe it's easier because you weren't drinking any and you need to just start sipping water throughout your workout or your competition. Maybe you were sipping on water all throughout your training competition and you're like, I can't drink anymore. Then then that's when you're probably going to want to consider adding in maybe electrolytes to help retain some of that.
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The fluid that you're taking in. And there is all kinds of electrolytes ranging in sodium. So again, you have to kind of experiment nutrition, nutrition can be really frustrating because it's not always like black and white, but everybody's different. So it is a bit of an experiment at times. But yeah, water, water, drink enough water. Staying hydrated is going to be super beneficial to physical and cognitive performance.
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I know I mentioned that to be in that big marker, but even at 1% dehydrated, you're not necessarily going to have a physical performance decline, but you will have more of a cardiovascular strain. So your perceived effort seems harder. So we don't we don't want that, especially if you're an endurance athlete or a triathlon or you're running a marathon and you feel like, okay, I'm in mile ten, and now I feel like this is a lot harder than it was, I probably can slow down.
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So ultimately it is going to affect your physical performance. And I have to reinforce this with our military population all the time, like drink water because it does affect you. They have to be like mentally and physically sharp at all times. And it's really hard for them to to to stay super hydrated, even if they're trying. So get at it.
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So the summary is you don't feel like drinking. It is probably the the awareness s of you should because the minute you say I don't feel like it is probably an indicator that you should and if the environment in the elements you understand where you're going to be, if you're going to change from where you normally stay in your house, you can go somewhere else.
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Consider that movement itself with stress and other activities where your body's now responding to different places and different elevations and different atmosphere and all that stuff Drink, drink, water, fluids. Right. And and actually being inadequately hydrated can also affect your, again, cortisol level. So adding more stress is not good, right? Yeah. Got it. All right, cool. Dehydrator, quick note on this.
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Again, alcohol. I know alcohol is falling in everywhere here, but I have to talk about it. Alcohol is anti diuretic hormone. So you're going to be losing more water and then added sugar. Actually, a lot of people think it's coffee when I always quiz people, they always think it's coffee, caffeine in and of itself. If you're drinking it at a moderate amount, say 3 to 400 milligrams a day, you should not be dehydrating yourself.
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It's when people add added sugars or you're getting that like pumpkin spice latte. It's almost a fall season. So those things are going to dehydrate you because sugar is going to rob your cells of water. So just keep that in mind when you are hydrating, making sure that you're intentional about getting at least half your body weight in ounces of water.
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And then you can add in other things as well. Got it. Yeah. Didn't think about that. And I'm glad you said that because I like my coffee and yeah, I don't know people. It's okay to have it. Yeah. And put stuff in it so. Okay perfect. So alcohol, water. Well alcohol, I mean it comes back to double down on the things that disrupt your sleep and then disrupts your.
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Yeah. Okay. So it disrupts your sleep, disrupts your hydration which are your foundational things and we'll talk a second actually in the next piece about well, where does that fit in? So those are foundational sleep and hydration. And so now we're moving on to a little bit more specifics. It is probably what most people are interested in an end to talking about the mill composite in our macronutrients and micronutrients and then maybe the timing of that as well.
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So before I dive into the different macros, macros, I do want to stress the under fueling problem. I would say 80% of the clients I see the tactical athletes, I see they chronically under fuel, which is actually a big problem if you're wanting to lose weight or again, if you're wanting to make those body composition changes. So building up muscle or reducing some of that body fat.
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And I know I say that and I and I talk about the tactical population a bit because a lot of those at Oracle probably have been in the military at some point in their career. But I feel like that's something that a habit that you pick up when you're in that lifestyle, that sometimes you carry over and you continue to undo your fuel after you're out of the military, and especially because you're less active for the most part, then you feel like, Oh, I need to continue to cut calories, but that's not necessarily going to help you get to the weight goal or the body composition goal that you want to get to.
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I've seen plenty of people that there will go over, say, like a 24 hour recall. And I don't I'll notice that they're barely eating, you know, 12, 1400 calories. And I'm like, hey, this is probably not enough fuel to optimize your physical performance, your energy, your cognitive performance. So let's try to actually up your calorie. Even though I know you want to lose weight.
00;33;49;14 - 00;34;21;05
Let's just see what happens and we'll up the calories and then people start losing weight so that I just want people to be mindful of like restricting calories to a certain extent does not always equal weight loss. So it's trying to fuel your body with the things that are going to optimize your cognitive and physical performance. So we're going to we're going to kind of roll through those macronutrients and some micro nutrients.
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Whenever I'm talking about this section, I always start out with my favorite rule, which is the 8020 rule. And I think this brings us back to the sustainability that has been woven through all of these segments, because I have found that when we take an approach that, okay, 80% of the time we're going to fuel our bodies with what it needs to reach our goal, what it needs to be like, peak physically, mentally, but then we're intentionally going to allow for that 20% of time where we just have foods, say, nourish our souls and not necessarily our body.
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We just enjoy eating them or drinking them if it's alcohol. So I do find that that's a more sustainable approach when we are not so strict and we do allow ourselves some of that, some of those foods in the flexibility to intentionally put those into our diet. So kind of keep that rule in mind as I go through some of these different macronutrients.
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All right. So We're going to start with carbohydrates, everybody's favorite carbohydrates. When I speak about foods, I like to speak about them in a way that shows like how this food is going to benefit from a cognitive standpoint, a health standpoint, a physical performance standpoint. I don't like to say this food's good, this foods bad, because we know that all foods can fit into a sustainable diet.
00;35;57;16 - 00;36;23;04
You just want to be intentional about it. So carbohydrates, these are the foods that are going to be our preferred fuel source for our brain. So if we need to be cognitively sharp, incorporating carbs into our diet, it's a good thing. And then also it's our preferred fuel source for any high intensity activities or long duration activities. So from a physical performance standpoint, also carbs are our friends.
00;36;23;10 - 00;36;59;07
We want carbs in our diet. So what is a carbohydrate? It could be anything from a fruit, a grain, it could be beans, legumes. The key is to focus on unprocessed or minimally processed carbohydrates. So like our starchy veggies, the sweet potatoes, peas, corn, things like that would fall under unprocessed, more minimally processed would be more of like whole grain breads, pastas, brown rice, wild rice, black rice like that.
00;36;59;09 - 00;37;28;11
Those are going to be higher in fiber, which helps with cholesterol. It helps with satiety. So if we're trying to watch, you know, the calories that we eat, it helps us go for longer, helps with digestion. So lots of good things about fiber. And then also if you are eating minimally processed or unprocessed foods, you typically are eating things that are lower in added sugar, which the added sugar, as we know, is a dehydrator.
00;37;28;15 - 00;37;56;03
And also it's an inflammatory. So inflammation is connected to like every disease that we could have. So we want to keep that under control. And then if we have an injury, especially, we want to make sure we're just limited in those added sugars. My rule of thumb is typically let's try to keep the added sugar to under five grams per serving and the fiber let's try to shoot for at least three grams of fiber per serving.
00;37;56;03 - 00;38;29;07
So we're looking at a nutrition label. You should have fiber and added sugar under the carb section on the label. Got it. Makes sense. Perfect. Okay, so let's roll on 3 to 2 proteins. Protein is important for building muscle mass, but also it helps with the integrity of our immune system. So the key here, make sure we have a quality protein source at every meal and even our snacks if we can.
00;38;29;10 - 00;38;53;27
It seems like a simple thing to do, but honestly, it can be hard because what are the most convenient things? Like when we're in a hurry, we're probably grabbing a car or a car mixed with a fat, not necessarily a quality protein source. So sometimes this can actually be one of the biggest struggles for people to get adequate protein in at breakfast or lunch or dinner or whatever it may be.
00;38;54;00 - 00;39;20;14
You only need about 20 grams of protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So typically, I tell people, let's try to shoot depending on your whole nutrition plan, if you can shoot for at least 20 to 40 grams of protein in a meal, then that's great. You're doing pretty good there. Protein. We used to have this old tagline, the the left legs, the better a plant proteins.
00;39;20;16 - 00;39;43;22
Then we have our seafood or no leg and I guess animals. Then we have our two legged animal. So poultry, so chicken, turkey and then are four legged animals. So if we kind of try to include all of those, the four legged animals are red meats. Okay to have, but maybe we have them a little bit less than our seafood or our chicken and turkey.
00;39;43;24 - 00;40;11;02
So we can kind of look at it like that. And and the reason for that is because of what so Well, you definitely want to, I guess with the bears that can be multifaceted and you want a variety of everything the plant proteins are going to have a lot of fiber. So that's adding something different that like your chicken and your turkey and a red meats aren't going to have.
00;40;11;02 - 00;40;36;01
So that's an extra nutrient. They're also going to be filled with, you know, different vitamins, minerals, maybe more micro nutrients. And then as you kind of work your way up, we have our fish. So like if we're focusing on fatty fish, which are like salmon, tuna, herring, mackerel, these are going to provide those heart healthy omega three fat.
00;40;36;01 - 00;41;14;06
So they have a little bit more benefits, different benefits in certain ways. Again, if you just don't like plant proteins, it's okay to have chicken and turkey maybe try to get in some seafood if you can. So some salmon each week, it's okay to have that most of the days. But it's really important to with anything and any of the macronutrients to make sure that you're having variety because variety equals different nutrients that your body good giving and getting so balancing it out so everything offers something different.
00;41;14;06 - 00;41;42;24
And if you're looking at at what the other things you're eating contain, you can do your own supplementation of you or what you're doing, the activity levels and things like that. Exactly. And then like I said, right. Me there's still is still okay to have you know, as long as there's no religious or restrictions that are placed on you, maybe by a physician but that's still going to offer you something.
00;41;42;24 - 00;42;16;27
It has this great iron, so good protein source. So yeah, variety is key with the proteins as well. Got it. Okay. Moving on to fats are our last two macronutrient that I also, I guess kind of like carbs can get villainized a little bit, but fats are great for you if you're looking at the molecular level. So like if you're looking at your cell, your cell membrane has made up of fat, so you need that.
00;42;17;00 - 00;42;41;01
You need fat for every cell in your body. And certain fats I mentioned in the protein section are going to give you a little bit more than other fat. So like our omega three fats, which are anti-inflammatory fats, they're going to give us a little something extra than maybe things that are higher in, say, saturated fats, for example.
00;42;41;01 - 00;43;08;19
So those are things like they're found in nuts and seeds a lot, too, like chia seeds, flax seeds, walnuts, avocado. Again, our fatty fish that I mentioned earlier, olives, olive oil, things like that are going to have those good omega three heart healthy fats. But also a big thing about the omega threes, too, is the cognitive benefit that has as well.
00;43;08;19 - 00;43;36;07
There's lots of research on that. So it helps our brain, our heart and then our cells. So we want to make sure that we're trying to diligently incorporate some of those omega threes in there. But again, we still want a variety of fats because nuts, seeds, all the different fats are going to offer us different micronutrients and things that we need to optimize our overall health.
00;43;36;09 - 00;44;03;08
The last food group R is our color section, so I always include fruits in here too and in our carb section. But veggies and fruits are going to fall into here and these are what we need to help support our immune system. So vitamins, minerals, micro, all the micronutrients, phytonutrients, antioxidants, all of that fiber or green fiber all fall into there.
00;44;03;10 - 00;44;27;24
But we try to encourage at least three colors or more on each plate. This can be really hard to do. So I usually tell people like, okay, well, let's just take an assessment of what we're doing currently. Is there one meal in your day that you're not getting any color on? And if there if you can identify a meal, then maybe we'll just start there.
00;44;27;24 - 00;44;54;16
Maybe there's multiple meals, but we'll just pick one. We'll start with one meal and then try to add one color on there and then maybe we try to move that to two or maybe we move to another meal so that we can get a color on every plate. Sometimes I'll even tell people like, Well, let's just pick one color and we'll focus on incorporating as many veggies and fruits from that one color into our week.
00;44;54;16 - 00;45;24;27
And then we'll change colors the next week because each color is actually indicative of something that get like a vitamin or a mineral that's given your body to function optimally. So like red foods are associated with cardiovascular health and white foods with immune health. So they all are going to play a different role. And if you're missing out on color, if you're missing all variety, you're probably missing out on some nutrient that your body needs to maximize your performance.
00;45;25;00 - 00;45;48;15
So in summarizing all of this to me have it makes sense. The key word here is balance through understanding. I'm just going to throw my little phrase in there because if you're deficient in one thing and you double down on the, say, the proteins, right, the leafy proteins, then it's also in the vegetation and area. So you have to be considered what else you're getting when you combine things on your plate.
00;45;48;15 - 00;46;07;20
Is that safe to say? Yeah, it's all about variety and balance at the end of the day. Yep. Got it. Yes, because keep it varied, right. And understanding what each of these are. I would imagine just the layman, somebody like me is going in there and this is what I like. And you led with this, you know. What did you use?
00;46;07;20 - 00;46;31;22
What have you done in the past and what's worked and what hasn't? So you can identify what you want for your habits that you don't want to let go of so you can have that compromised to help with the consistency you feel like you're getting what you want while you're offering what you need. Slowly shift into a more disciplined routine where you now are acclimated to selection of what you're going to do in that balanced diet, right?
00;46;31;28 - 00;46;53;28
Yeah. And exactly. Have you I guess from your your personal experience, like, have you ever tried to do a very restrictive diet or nutrition plan and you were able to stick with it for a little bit, But at one point you just kind of like fall off the bandwagon and then you just go crazy and just binge on whatever you weren't having.
00;46;54;00 - 00;47;13;18
Yeah, I did the keto, but I was also at that stage I was doing trying to train for a long distance running. Oh, okay. Good combo. Great. Yeah, it's perfect. If you don't want to do what you want to do, let me just feed myself all the proteins, no carbs, and then go run 15 miles. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00;47;13;18 - 00;47;35;05
That sounds like pretty miserable. So, yeah, don't self-diagnose. Sometimes you're going to need to ask for help and get somebody to help you understand what it is that you're doing. First day, second day, second week might feel good. After that, something's missing and you don't realize it's. It's the things that you've chosen to do over the most recent days or weeks, right?
00;47;35;08 - 00;47;52;26
That you forget like. Mm. And then you don't want to do it because you're not thinking about the things that are affecting your, your decision. I don't want to do that. I don't feel like doing that. Well, that's because it's cyclic. You're you don't feel like you want to do it because you're not doing it. So. Yeah. Yeah.
00;47;52;28 - 00;48;16;00
Okay. And a lot of these things either. Yeah, we don't know that we should be doing it because there is a lot of conflicting information out there, especially on nutrition or we just have forgotten because we've gotten busy. We have families and kids and work and all that. So it's really it comes down to being intentional with everything.
00;48;16;00 - 00;48;38;27
And food is something that you want to be intentional about. It's not something that you want to add is another stressor on your life. But if you just kind of sit down and maybe it is seeking out a health professional, a dietitian to help you with it, but if you just do it and kind of make out a game plan, yes, you will have to go back and refined it and refine it.
00;48;38;27 - 00;49;00;09
Like Stephan mentioned, learn, design, deliver and refine. You do have to check back in and make some adjustments. But once you sit down and do that, it will take out a lot of stress moving forward because you get in the habit of doing certain things. So yeah, so we're we've got our foundation, we've got our meal timing and composition.
00;49;00;11 - 00;49;27;22
The last thing that I kind of had that I wanted to talk about was the most specific, which is a supplementation of this is the last thing that we should consider you shouldn't be thinking about adding in all these things like ashwagandha or b-complex or whatever it is, whatever the newest supplement is out there, there is always something they all get asked about something new probably every week.
00;49;27;22 - 00;49;50;21
And I'm like, Hold up. I'm like, I got to go research because I don't even know what you're talking about right now. We got to have the sleep in the hydration and then the food dialed in and then, okay, then maybe we consider like, okay, we're still missing something that how do we fill in the gaps? And that's where, like supplementation may come into play.
00;49;50;24 - 00;50;15;13
This can come into play if we do have a know like medical history of being deficient in something, or maybe we are a high performing athlete and we just have more demands than I guess the average person from. It also can come into play though, just based on our lifestyle. I would always recommend food first, but sometimes we are.
00;50;15;14 - 00;50;49;26
We are very busy and it's better to get something in than nothing. So we might have to do like a whey protein supplement in our breakfast oatmeal because we we don't have time to make prepare an actual like hot breakfast. So lifestyle can always Yeah. Also kind of like dictate if we need supplementation or not. I guess I'll start with some every day supplementation and then we'll get into kind of Perry activity.
00;50;49;26 - 00;51;25;01
What what can we maybe do if you are active around a workout every day supplementation again, I mentioned plant or whey based protein here because I think this is a great thing that you can have on hand if you are very busy or you don't have time to prepare, say, like a breakfast. I use breakfast as an example because this is where I struggle the most, because I do have a 17 month old that I am getting ready in the morning, I'm dropping off at daycare, then I'm coming to work all day and also trying to fit some type of movement or exercise.
00;51;25;01 - 00;52;02;12
And so I stay relatively busy and I'm just on the go in the morning. So fitting in a breakfast where it's fast and maybe I can take it in the car with me or maybe I can eat it right when I get to work and I'm checking my emails in the morning. I think that having like a quality protein source on hand is not a bad thing, and that can be used as a meal replacement if you are getting all the macronutrients in there and the color, or it can be used as kind of like an accompanying thing or even a snack too.
00;52;02;15 - 00;52;29;11
So that could be an everyday supplementation. For me, Vitamin D is an important one, but the fat soluble vitamins. So it is one of those that you do want to go get blood work before you just start taking a lot of vitamin D. But I will say that most of the people that I see, if you are indoors most of the day or you live maybe in the northern hemisphere, most of us are a little bit low in vitamin D.
00;52;29;13 - 00;53;07;00
Also, the darker the your skin, you actually are more prone to be lower in vitamin D as well. So there's different considerations there. So that's a bit you might want to get checked out because that's going to play a huge role in your hormones, your mood, your energy, testosterone if you're male. So the very important vitamin A quality multivitamin, this this is basically if you struggle to get color in your diet, you're like, I just know I don't a lot of diversity in my veggies and fruits.
00;53;07;02 - 00;53;45;27
Maybe we need to fill in the gaps with vitamins, minerals and a quality multivitamin helps support our immune system as well. Especially, you know, it's this thick season that is like ramping up. So omega threes or some type of quality fish oil. Again, this is probably one of my foundational ones, just because there's so much benefit from a brain and a cognitive standpoint to just the information Harthill So trying to get a quality fish oil, omega 312, three grams a day is usually good enough of omega three.
00;53;45;27 - 00;54;20;08
So I would say those are pretty foundational. Now there's a million other supplements out there and some people may require probiotics or prebiotics, but those are usually a little bit more, I would say felt fine tuned if you need that based on, you know, your medical history, your digestion and things like that. Perry Perry Activity supplementation. I'm going to talk a little bit about, I guess, what we do here, the facility in Florida.
00;54;20;10 - 00;54;48;18
But honestly, I think the average, quote unquote, average Joe could also do this and benefit from it. But each morning I will set out a nitric oxide supplementation. So like a beet juice. So you can you can juice your own beets, you can find a quality beet juice supplement. But this is a vasodilator. So it's going to help increase your blood flow to get oxygen and nutrients to your working muscles.
00;54;48;18 - 00;55;14;18
So it's a great pre-workout to have, especially if maybe you're going out for a run or you're training for some long endurance activity. This would be a great pre-workout supplement to take. We also give beta alanine. So if you've ever taken a pre-workout that makes you feel a little tingly or itchy, it's probably the beta alanine in it, but we'll just give it straight up.
00;55;14;18 - 00;55;41;28
So I'm not adding in other things to that pre-workout. And this basically this will help with buffering the acidity build up in you, so it helps delay fatigue. So essentially, you can go longer or get more reps in and then caffeine. How do you want to touch on that a little bit? I do not give a stimulant when I'm giving out pre workouts to clients or athletes here.
00;55;42;00 - 00;56;20;25
Everybody reacts different to caffeine. It can act as a ergo genic aid. It has been shown to improve cognitive function like alertness, focus, also endurance activity. So that could be a consideration to do on the I would say recommendation because people are probably like how how much caffeine should I drink? 3 to 6 milligrams per EKG. So just to put that in more, I guess terms you can wrap your head around if you're a £150 person, that's probably going to be about 200 milligrams of caffeine.
00;56;20;25 - 00;56;52;23
So about two cups of coffee. And this is if you're using it as a ergo genic aid. So something that's going to help your performance. I will say some people don't respond to caffeine at all or don't respond well. It also can affect people sleep again. So I would not recommend doing like a massive amount or 200 plus milligrams of caffeine before like at nighttime or maybe even mid-afternoon.
00;56;52;23 - 00;57;26;27
Like I have to cut my coffee off about 12. So that doesn't disrupt my sleep. So that would be the only caveat there. But if it's in the morning that you're getting your training done, that could be something you consider to add your pre-workout. Post-workout Again, you do need do you need three things for Post-workout recovery? I say you want to rebuild a protein, refuel with carbs and rehydrate with water protein specifically again at quality whey or plant based protein.
00;57;27;04 - 00;57;34;22
You only need 20 grams of protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So try to shoot for at least that.
00;57;34;25 - 00;58;01;02
There is some smaller amino acids. I'm not going to get into everything, but particularly leucine, which is in most quality whey proteins. You're going to see a leucine amount in there. And this is the this is the actual amino acid that you need to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So it goes through the entire process. So you want to make sure that's in there.
00;58;01;04 - 00;58;21;19
And then carbs again, the carbohydrates are going to be dependent on one. What was what's your goal? Do you want to lose weight, gain weight, maintain way? If you're wanting to gain weight, you're probably going to have higher carbs in somebody want to lose weight in your post-workout How does it fit into your overall nutrition plan for the day?
00;58;21;19 - 00;58;59;02
So if you ate breakfast before you worked out and it's hitting post-workout hitting about the time you'd have a snack, maybe do have a carb in there. It might just be your next scheduled snack or meal. It doesn't have to be a supplement as a post-workout recovery. But yeah, if you're doing something that's very long duration, say you're training for something over 90 minutes or a couple hours, then you probably are going to want to be intentional with refueling with carbohydrates to replace some of those glycogen stores that you kind of burn through.
00;58;59;04 - 00;59;22;29
Yeah, those those would be my top ones. There's there's definitely a couple other things that I'll add into shakes here. But those I don't want to give too many recommendations because some things could be affected by, you know, if somebody is on medication and things like that. So those have to be considered when you're looking at supplements because there are interactions with a lot of medications.
00;59;22;29 - 00;59;55;23
So. Got it. Yep. So I mean, it's a good flow and I like how you organize it all. It's basically it's understanding, you know, the plants, the plants, the food, whatever food stuffs you're going to have as long as you're again, sending it to where it needs to go through the hydration component. That last part of the supplementation, when you start to get into manufactured supplementing, there's your role in and I'm going to say this with caution, you're rolling some sort of dice because you got to know how much you're having in these other areas.
00;59;55;24 - 01;00;31;20
And you can go down that Costco aisle and see that whole row of stuff to choose from. And you're thinking, maybe I want this because I'm not feeling a certain way. And then you can double down on that and have too much of it. Safe to say. Right. And you got to know where it's coming from. Right. And yeah, I do the the supplement Haitian conversation in a in a general sense, I have to be cautious about it because you don't know what someone's medical history looks like or their current nutrition intake.