Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #48 Eat Your Way to Better Energy with James Collins

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

“Our body is our own high-performance vehicle and our engine is our metabolism turning our food into energy.” Who doesn’t want to achieve their personal best – whether it’s at work, during an exercise class or playing with their children? Yet how many of us think about how we are fuelling our bodies to cope with the demands of the day? Elite sports nutritionist, James Collins, has worked with the likes of Arsenal FC, England Football and Team GB to ensure they are on peak form when it counts. He believes that there is too much focus on aesthetics and not enough on energy and how we use food to fuel our bodies. James discusses simple food principles that we can all follow to feel at our best in our daily lives. We also discuss how sleep and caffeine can affect performance. And, how we are all more capable than we think we are at any age. I hope you enjoy this conversation! Lack of energy is a common complaint that I see in my practice – I have therefore created a FREE energy video-series. You can sign-up to watch it on my website: drchatterjee.com/subscription/ Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/jamescollins Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've got this focus on aesthetics. Yeah. Absolute aesthetics. And whether this be weight on the scales that we're obsessed in talking about, or whether it's now Instagram and everyone having this perfectly Instagrammable body, we're using nutrition in the wrong way. Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan and television presenter.

I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome to episode 48 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and

I am your host. Today's podcast is all about how we can eat our way to better energy. Now, as a practicing doctor, low energy is one of the commonest complaints that I see in my practice. And for that reason, I've created a free six-part video series to help you increase your energy so that you can get more out of life. If this sounds of interest to you and you would like to watch these free videos, you can sign up to receive them at drchatterjee.com forward slash energy. My guest today is elite sports nutritionist James Collins. James has worked with the likes of Arsenal Football Club, England Football and Team

GB to ensure that they're performing at their peak when it really counts. But for those of us who are not an elite sport, fueling our bodies in the right way is just as important to help us achieve our own personal goals, whether it's at work, during an exercise class or simply playing with our children. Yet how many of us think about how we're fueling our bodies to cope with the demands of the day? James believes that with food, there is too much focus on aesthetics and not enough on energy. James discusses simple food principles that we can all follow to feel our best in our daily lives. We also discuss how other factors such as sleep and caffeine can affect our performance. I really enjoyed this conversation

and I hope that you do too. Now before we get started I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly podcast episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their support of my podcast. Now, as you know, I prefer that people get all of their nutrition from food. But for some of us, this is not always possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and digestive enzymes. If you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs,

I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. James, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. Thanks very much, Duncan. Thanks for having me on.

Not at all. So look, you have written this fantastic new book called The Energy Plan. And you've got none other than Arsene Wenger with a beautiful quote on the front there. As someone who grew up as a football fanatic, Arsene Wenger is someone who I very much respected because he appeared to be someone for me who seemed to understand the importance of fueling our bodies in the right way to help perform um how did you become a nutritionist in the first place number one but also then how did you become a nutritionist for Arsenal Football Club the French football team the British the English football team, the British, the English football team.

I mean, how did that come about? Well, I guess we're going almost right back to the start here, Rangan. So this was my career started really back in 2006. I completed my master's at Loughborough. And we were going through this time in the UK where UK sport were investing a lot into London 2012 to develop services for the athletes to perform better at the London 2012 Olympic Games. And after I finished my studies, I was fortunate enough to be recruited to be fast-tracked to work with some of the athletes at those games.

And I really went straight into a role with track and field, first of all. So my first role was with athletics, which I remember absolutely loving because it was such a pure way and a pure sport to work with. So my job essentially was to use nutrition to get the most out of athletes' performances. That might have been the explosivity of a sprinter and the strength and power demands, or it might have been an endurance runner. So I really sort of cut my teeth in Olympic sports, moving to London 2012. And I was recruited to Barcelona in 2010.

And I spent seven seasons there as their nutritionist and worked with Arsene Wenger in the first team squad. And my role at the club was quite varied in that I'd work very closely with the players, developing their nutrition plans and monitoring them, but also put nutrition within a structure within the club. So working very closely with a team of chefs working very closely with other professionals such as physiotherapists doctors and conditioning coaches too alongside the players you know and as you mentioned you know I was very fortunate to have some great experiences in sport along the way with England in 2014 World Cup and France 2018 World Cup. Have you always worked in sports nutrition or have you ever worked with non-sportsmen as well?

Well I think that's a really important question and a really important thing to discuss today. I set up my practice in 2014 so initially I was working very much at the sharp end in performance and in 2014 I started to have more approaches from people with similar demands. So very busy, stressed business people, performing artists in the West End who are going to do a show in the evening, and having to fuel their bodies appropriately as well. And it was at that time, I became really interested in transferring the science from the elites into other areas of performance. And that was when I started seeing more and more people. And over the last four years, this practice has broadened.

And I now see people from a range of backgrounds, not just performers in a classical sense, but also people who are working in jobs in the city, for example, and people who are trying to get more from their workouts, and people who are just trying to essentially find a way to use nutrition in a sustainable way. So improving performance. And I guess for me, what similarities are there between, let's say, the French footballers preparing to perform

for 90 minutes in the World Cup final, as let's say, if I've got a big day, lots of patients, maybe I've got a speaking event in the World Cup final, as let's say, if I've got a big day, lots of patience, maybe I've got a speaking event in the evening and I want my mind and my concentration to be optimal all morning, all afternoon and all evening. Are there any similarities at all that we can learn from that? Yeah, I think there are. Absolutely. And I think firstly, it comes down to how we're fueling our body. And let's start with energy. Let's start with the name of the book, first of all. And what we eat obviously has a profound influence on our energy levels. And one of the things I've tried to do in the book, first of all, is that actually get people to understand how our body works. And the analogy I use is like, you know, our body is our own

high performance vehicle. And our engine is essentially our metabolism, turning our food into energy. And the premise for anyone I would work with is getting them to really understand how the body works and uses food as fuel. Because I don't know if you agree with this wrong. And I think at the moment in the UK, we talk very superficially about nutrition. And I think where sometimes that's where some of the confusion occurs, because until we can really grasp how our body uses nutrients and foods, we're then just dealing in opinions. So I think it's for me, it's always really important to have a good understanding of the body and the different fuels. And we can then apply it to a Champions League final. We can apply it to someone having energy to go to the gym. We can apply that to a busy family who's just had their

second child. There's application in all these things. Do you think there's been far too much focus on food in terms of weight loss? Obviously, a lot of people around the country, around the world are trying to lose weight. And therefore, food often is the first thing that people think about when they think about their weight. And I think when I was looking through your book, I think you said when you first started working in football, often players would be coming to you saying, hey, look, the boss has said I need to lose weight a bit. First of all, is that true? And has that changed now?

It's absolutely true. Going back 10 years, and this is almost going back to the days of track and field it was very much james coach says i need to see you because i need to lose weight that was the first comment it wasn't a comment about reducing body fat it was losing weight and it's definitely moved on leaps and bounds within sports and you know we're looking at nutrition and how it can affect how your muscles recover nutrition how it can affect energy levels your immune system. But I still feel there's a disconnect in how we use nutrition within the general public because we've got this focus on aesthetics.

Yeah. Absolute aesthetics. And whether this be weight on the scales that we're obsessed in talking about or whether it's now Instagram and everyone having this perfectly Instagrammable body, we're using nutrition in the wrong way. Too much of the focus is on the aesthetic and it's not about how we feel and it's not about using fuel to fuel our own performances. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so many key points there. Right at the start of that, I had a flashback to my youth and, you know,

I used to fanatically follow Liverpool Football Club and John Barnes in the 80s was my idol and I've got this memory I've not thought about this in a long time about I think I read something in the papers one day that's actually um his his manager at the time has said you know he's been eating too many big mucks over the summer and he needs to lose weight that's going to help him perform better on the pitch uh he'll get injured less so you know that was in the 80s i'm sure so what 20 well a bit more than 20 years ago now yeah right nearly 30 years ago actually wow getting old getting old exactly um so yeah i think that's really interesting for me but then i think i think the key point for me which i I absolutely agree with, is this whole idea about what is food there for.

You mentioned energy. Obviously, the name of your book is The Energy Plan. And I've got to say, as a GP, one of the commonest complaints I get and my colleagues get each day is, how can I get more energy? I feel tired. is how can I get more energy? You know, I feel tired. I don't have energy to do the things that I want to do, whether it's work, whether it's in the evening,

whether it's at the weekends. So I think low energy is absolutely something people struggle with these days. And clearly there are many factors that can play a role there. But you're very passionate, aren't you, that if you fuel your body in the right way with the right foods, that can make a big difference to energy. That's absolutely the case wrong and yeah and it all

starts from the food we're eating and obviously the output is energy and we're in january now right we're sitting here we're a couple of weeks into january and now is the prime time where we see a couple of things happening we see people embarking on new fitness pursuits so they're training a lot more than they ever have done, and normally also they're going on diets. And one of the things that we see at this time of year is we see people who are energy deficient, who are walking around. And this is a topic that's covered quite a lot in the sports medicine press

over the last few years called relative energy deficiency in sports. And it's something where you're expending huge amounts of energy but not taking in enough and eating enough and this manifests itself in lots of symptoms decreased concentration coordination irritability muscle strength and it can have more serious side effects too but i can definitely see in my practice at this time of year and all the conversations people are jumping straight into new a new approach to either lose weight or look better as opposed to setting up a sustainable approach to fuel their body to then train harder perhaps and improve their fitness it's the wrong way around yeah no i like that

do you think some of us are do you think we are training well not training too much but we we changing so suddenly that we maybe go from nothing to two or three spinning classes a week because we want to get fit and lose weight but we're not proportionately increasing the amount of food that we eat because you know we're trying to lose weight so i'm going to eat less i'm going to work out more but if that's not done right you're actually going to really suffer from low energy is this something you're seeing quite a lot absolutely yeah 100% Rangan it's it's something that I think people view the two sometimes in isolation and you know and ultimately the two go absolutely hand in hand and in synergy and it's just about

gaining an understanding of obviously training in the right amount, but fueling your body in the right way. And part of the rationale really for the book and getting the message across with energy actually came from sport a long time ago. And it came from working with combat sports athletes. And this includes people like boxers, judo players and jockeys, because they have to hit a certain weight to get on the scales. So typically what we would see is a few weeks out from competition suddenly they've really reduced their weight so they have to hit that to get on the scales to compete

the problem that we'd see is yep they can actually compete but when it would come to perform they had no energy wow so the one sort of key key aspect of this really for me is it look it's it's no good looking great if you don't have the energy to deliver a performance and i speak to people every day in and around london and around the uk that's you know say similar things that you the focus is so much on looking good it's almost seen as we have to go through this period of hurting this period of feeling hungry it's almost a rite of passage this deprivation you have to do it you shouldn't have to do it it's not a trade-off you can fuel your body in the right way with the right foods and still maintain the aesthetic you want it shouldn't be a trade-off

and we've almost been taught it is a trade-off i think for those people listening who may feel well you know what james you've worked with these high level sportsmen who are performing on the world stage, you've dealt with CEOs and top businessmen who are looking for high performance. A lot of people may be thinking, actually, that doesn't apply to me. But I guess I would really disagree with that in the sense that we are all looking for high performance in our everyday lives, whether it's to perform well on the school run, whether it's to perform well in your relationships, whether it's to perform well when your kids are back home from school and you want to play with them and you want to do homework with them and you want to actually

mentally engage with them. We all want high performance. And I think sometimes the word high performance is associated with CEOs and sportsmen. But I think we all need to be thinking about high performance. We do. It was wonderfully put. And almost performance is a bit of a hard, scary word sometimes. And that's definitely an approach I've had, I think, early on transferring to clients I would see on the street. They would say the same thing about how does this transfer? And performance can be a hard word, but ultimately, that's what we want. A lot of us, most of the listeners and most of the people we see each day in our practices, they want to perform better in their jobs.

We're now working longer hours in the UK. We have to perform better. We have to be fuelled to cope with these increased demands. And it's the same with our family life as well. And all we're trying to do really is to use nutrition to give our bodies the best opportunity to achieve what we can our own personal best so how do we do that so you know let's say someone's listening to this that they're interested in improving their nutrition but they don't know where to start and they've read um conflicting blog after conflicting blog and they've seen one person do really well on a low-fat vegan diet.

They've seen somebody else do really well on, let's say, a diet low in refined and processed carbs, and they think, well, I don't know what to do. I'm confused. Are there some basics that everybody listening to this can apply? Yeah, I think there are. I think there are definitely some rules. I think we really have to knock a few myths on the head straight away,

wronger than that. We shouldn't be following an approach that gets rid of any nutrient or food group. That isn't something that's sustainable. That isn't something we do with our elite athletes. So the highest performers on the planet don't use that approach. What we do is we use different fuels at different times and we make this approach sustainable and you know i think firstly if we're diving into the science a little bit more that you're right there's been

this almost debate in the media over the last let's say last five years it's really heated up in that what's the best fuel for the body should we be all high fat should we be high carb and we're constantly wrestling and actually our physiology hasn't changed much over the last 20 years we use both of those energy sources as a fuel yeah and actually our body at different times prefers to use different fuel sources when we're doing lower intensity work walking around our body prefers to use fat as its primary fuel as soon as we're really increasing the intensity maybe doing a hit class or doing high intensity, we tend to see more of a shift towards using carbohydrate as more of a fuel, but it uses both. And if we feed it both, that means we have a healthy metabolism. So should you feed your body certain fuel sources at different times, depending on what you're

doing? For example, if you've had a busy day at work and you're gonna go and do let's say this spinning class or a circuits class you know in the evening on your way home from work is there something that you should be doing to make sure that you can perform well in that class yeah absolutely i really like the approach with that wrong and as well because we're almost going backwards from what we're fueling for, which is absolutely the right approach. So we all need to think about when we're eating, it's not just eating, you know, in a sort of habitual way. It's thinking about, OK, what have I got going on today? What do I need to put into my mouth to ensure that I can sustain what I need to do today. And the reason I'm asking that

actually is particular because the last few months, my wife has started to work out more and she started to do strength training, which is not something she's really focused on before. And I won't say too much more. I'll get myself into trouble. But essentially, she's really getting into strength training now a couple of times a week but often she hasn't changed what her nutrition is for the rest of the day that's something she won't eat before she works out sometimes straight afterwards she won't eat and a few hours later she can really feel tired can't concentrate feel a little bit irritable and I see that in my patients as well because I guess in some way they've not thought about what do I need fuel for today. That's it's really well put and we need to

look at how we fuel our body over the 24 hours and there's a couple of really important reasons for that and just using your example with your wife and the strength training we know that if we're doing a resistance training or strength training session your muscles are still adapting over 24 hours later to what the workload that you put through them which i think is quite amazing when we talk about it is so we almost know that in the 24 hours after you've done this this training session what you eat will have an effect on how your muscles adapt wow so you know i you know, I think for me, that's really interesting. And how they recover as well? How they recover and how they grow and repair. And obviously, the key nutrient we look for for that is protein. And I've termed this in the book, the maintenance fuel. And it's something that we need to make sure we have enough of

in our diet over 24 hours. But also now, we've learned from the the science it depends on the timing that you have the protein during the day because our muscles are in a constant state of flux they're constantly taking in new proteins to grow and repair and breaking down so if we can get protein in our snacks and our meals it just means our muscles are constantly in positive equity really. Have you heard of the protein leverage hypothesis? I've been reading quite a bit about it recently, this whole idea that protein is one of the most important fuel sources and if you get your protein intake optimal then actually it doesn't maybe matter so much about fat and carbs because it's, you know, I'm not an expert in the protein leverage hypothesis,

I'm just not sure if you've come across it or not. It's not what I've come across it or not i've come across wrong and no no okay fine i'm gonna try and talk to someone in the next few weeks on the podcast about it because i find it super interesting but but i guess you're saying that protein you think is a very important nutrient would you say many of us are not eating enough protein i would say so yeah absolutely and i think sometimes the timing of our protein intake is suboptimal. And everything we talk about really within the energy plan as well, there's three factors with our nutrition. There's the type of foods that we're eating or the type of nutrients,

let's say the carbohydrates, fats or proteins. But the timing becomes really critical, whether what you're eating before training to fuel your body or after training as well or during the day and then we also have the total you know what what's the amount what's the amount of food that we're having over the course of the day but protein is one that's obviously grown in the public interest in recent years and is really important because we know we have to hit a certain level over 24 hours to maintain our muscle mass and to maintain growth and repair for our muscles.

So I guess working with elite athletes, I'm guessing that you have been quite specific with them in terms of how much protein they need. Do you think that, you know, a non-elite athlete, someone who just wants to perform well all day and be able to do a workout three or four times a week, do they also do you feel need to, I wouldn't say obsessively, but do they really need to measure and look at how much protein they're having? Or can it be a little bit more intuitive, do you think? It can be a bit more intuitive. I think with any of the things we're applying here, even eating for energy or your protein for maintenance, it doesn't have to be really rigid. We're not talking about weighing food.

No. You know, that's not the approach. Our elite athletes don't do that. Oh, really? You know, we don't weigh, you know, they don't go home and weigh their food. If there are specific examples where we need to be really prescriptive, yes, you know, we'll do that. And we're on a very, very specific plan. But in most cases, this is about getting the principles right with each meal

and then replicating these over the day. And I think often, Rangan, I know we were talking about this earlier on, I think often we try and overcomplicate the science. And sometimes there's some really cool, fun science behind what we're doing. But with the people who we work with, we want it to be dead simple. So they can go into a restaurant or go down to the breakfast table in the morning and have confidence that they'll put the plates of food together. And within the book, you know, what I've tried to do is we almost use this concept of building a plate

and how you build a plate depending on your demands. So let's sort of walk through then how one builds a plate because let's take, you know, a middle-aged man or woman who's working, let's say. Let's take, you know, someone who's got a busy home life. They've, you know, maybe they've got kids who they want to get to school, then get to work. And maybe at lunchtime, they want to go and have a little workout at the gym. So I guess how would they go about thinking about building their plates and I guess an additional question there might be they've got young children are there any of those principles that that they can also apply with

their kids yeah absolutely I think I would start from the very beginning with this wrong and I really love to lean on an example and the rationale supporting this because in every sports ground up and down the country and this was the same for us arsenal we would have your restaurant where your players would go and eat before and after training and typically what would happen is when they go into the restaurant the way that that we set the restaurant up was that we had the different food stations with the different components and we could then give some information to players on how they should build their plate now the, the first station was always protein. So the players would go in and choose

their portion of protein on their plate. Now, the second section was the fuel section, looking at the slower releasing, lower GI carbohydrates. Now, this would really depend. On some days, preparing for a big session, we'd be encouraging them to have a bigger portion of the carbohydrates. session, we'd be encouraging them to have a bigger portion of the carbohydrates. But on some days, we might be encouraging them to perhaps burn more fats or another adaptation. So we would say, actually, we want you to restrict the amount of carbohydrates and then move on to the next part of the counter, which is the protection foods, which is the vegetables, fruits and fats. So actually fill your plate with more of these vegetables to complete that component. And you call them protection foods.

Why do you call them protection foods? Protection foods to maintain tissue health, to maintain our immune system. Because what, the antioxidants or the phytonutrients that are contained within there? Yeah, absolutely so. And the vitamins and minerals too. For example, looking at things like vitamin C, like you said, the antioxidants, folates, and the different vitamins too. And we often find that the protection foods, the vegetables and fruits are often things that are overlooked on people's plates. We often focus a lot on, okay, well, I've got my protein,

I've got my carbohydrate, you know, my set. And we often restrict the variety of these protection foods that have obviously a crucial role for our immune system but also for our tissue health too yeah i really like that and it's really um it's fascinating for me to you know it's really fascinating to think about what might happen at a big football club like our so the players are you know rocking up they're going to eat before they train let's say and you know you've set it out like your protein station and then what's fascinating for me is that sometimes you'll encourage more low glycemic carbohydrate type foods yes but on other occasions you'll sort of restrict that absolutely which is really interesting because obviously about five ten minutes ago you mentioned about not restricting

foods and i know um this podcast has you know you know a very loyal listenership around the world, and there's a lot of different people who listen. Some people are advocates of a vegan lifestyle. Some are advocates of a low-carb lifestyle and have found that actually if they restrict refined and processed carbohydrates and really go quite aggressive on that, for them, they seem to find that they can thrive in their everyday lives and lose weight. Whereas some people love a vegan diet, and they find that that's changed their lives. And I think for me, the commonality tends to be when they moved away from, you know, what's called the standard Western diets to a more whole food based diet people tend to improve you know certainly initially no matter what change they make initially that's certainly what i found in my practice as well

and so what's fascinating for me is that sometimes your athletes are you working with you will you know you will change their carbohydrate intake depending on what they're doing so what can we learn from that yeah i mean you've summarized that really well, Wongan, in that, yeah, and it really depends on what you're fueling for. It's the point you made before, right? That's the key, I guess. So maybe it's the low carb approach for some people in the context of the rest of their lifestyle. And in the context of what they have previously done with their food intake, maybe it works for them and their lifestyle, whereas somebody else, for example, it may not work for them. I think I really like that.

Well, it all comes down to context, right? It all comes down to context because everyone has different demands in their day. And, you know, just like you said, there'll be some days where I'll advise clients to have a higher protein, lower carb meal? Because, for example, they don't need extra fuel. So what might be a scenario where that might be something you recommend? So quite typically then, I mean, we're in London now, let's dive into the city. Okay. And that's, you know, the typical person in the city, they might train three times a week. So on those days, we know that their body will need more fuel from lower glycemic index carbohydrates. And when you say that, just in case people who are listening

to this aren't familiar with those, what do you mean by that? Oh, so things like basmati rice, wild rice, whole wheat pasta, quinoa, buckwheat, rye bread, porridge oats. There's a huge variety of options of these foods that we can choose so quite broadly we're saying well on a more active day where you're training more you should have more fuel but what happens on the day where you're going to work and you know one of those days where your days run away from you yeah you haven't had a chance to go to the gym we all have them that's how we should be shaping our fueling accordingly and it might be we get home in the evening and say well look i actually haven't worked out today my activity levels have

been really low maybe it's time for me to have what we call in the book a maintenance meal which is bringing the carbohydrates right down having your source of protein and having your protection foods your vegetables but you don't need fuel if you're then going to be sitting around in the evening yeah that's interesting so It's a lovely way to think about things, about fueling your body for its specific demands. Exactly so. And I like that. And I guess with the book, you sort of outlined different approaches that people can take. I love that. That's a maintenance meal as opposed to what, a performance meal? Well, the terms we use, Rangana, we use the maintenance meal

and we use our fueling meal. And then for people who have extremely high energy demands, maybe you're preparing for your first London marathon or your first triathlon, we would use a competition meal. But most of the readers

who are just trying to get a bit fitter and trying to look a bit better and feel a bit better, we alternate between the fueling meal and the maintenance meal. And then you can look at the context of your day and then your week. And then you have the tools to adjust. Because I think too often we talk about nutrition, it's almost seen as you've got a blank sheet of paper, a static plan.

That's not reality. That's not the world we live in you know we have to be nimble with our approach and have this approach that things may change you know you might have to go and do a show tomorrow a show tomorrow night or work during the day so your energy levels might be up it's the same for the person who might you know put an extra training session into their week we need the tools to be able to fuel our bodies flexibly but before we can do that we need to understand and i guess what you're trying to teach people is yes give them you know an understanding of of different fuel sources and what they're going to do for the body but i guess the hope would be over time they would start to understand what they need for their own

bodies based upon the recommendations you initially make. Because ultimately, I guess we want to get to the point where we start to understand what we need for our own bodies. You know, 100%. I mean, I was always taught within sport that we worked and upskilled the athletes. Your work as a practitioner, you would work with the talent with the athletes and you would teach them about their body. Essentially, we would coach them.

It's like a coaching process. The coaches do it on the pitch. My role really was to upskill, work with the chef to teach them how to cook, get them to understand how their body's recovered, what an optimal level of body composition was maybe for them as well. And then little by little, you take a step backwards, and you're on hand for the odd question, hey, James, should I do this, or my muscle's sore andess is up? Is there anything that can help? But the autonomy is,

you know, it is passed into the athlete. And it's, it's the same process with this book. What we're trying to do is to upskill people to take the scariness out of exercise and nutrition and say, look, hey, look, here are the fuels, here are the different plates, try them out, see how you get on, monitor how you're doing, and you can refine it. Yeah you're on a journey i think on that level it's just very it's very empowering and simplistic approach in the sense that you know you've got all that experience you have worked with some of the most you know high performing athletes in the world at the highest level yet we can all learn from those principles because i guess what you're saying is actually what you're doing with them and what you would do with let's say me if i came in to see you actually is not that different

it's about figuring out what are you fueling for let me help you do that absolutely it's absolutely the same it's just often a different wrapper people have different context in their lives and we might you might face slightly different challenges but the science is still the same yeah our body still loses nutrients in the same way i'll tell you one thing you know just before we got recording say i was telling you that um i'm in london at the moment uh on a on a sort of book tour and every night this week i've got events in the evening so speaking about my book the stress solution and then i am you know doing a book signing afterwards and last year when my first book came out, I didn't have quite as many events.

And I'd be busy, I'd be quite excited about the events of the evening because I love speaking to people, love meeting people. And I found last year what I would often do is I wouldn't get time to eat before the events because I was doing too many other things, too many interviews. And I realized that actually what I would do, I'd be okay doing the events and doing the book signing, but then I'd come back to my hotel and I'd be starving. So then I would eat late and I wouldn't sleep very well. And so I'd be exhausted the next day. And just a simple thing that I've learned between the last year and this year is now I sort of blocked out in my diary before each event a 90-minute slot where I will eat before I go.

And it's a simple thing, right? It sounds like so intuitive, and I'm sort of pretty obsessed with nutrition. Yeah, right. But I didn't really think about it. And having gone through that experience now, I'm now eating before all of these events. I think I'm performing better at the events because I've got a really nice source of energy throughout the whole evening. And also I'm finding that I'm sleeping better because I'm not eating so late. So that's just one example of how I've tweaked things from last year.

And did you notice that quite quickly wrong when you made that change and you said right look i'm going to really focus on my nutrition before was the difference quite quick did you notice it was actually if i'm honest it was i've been doing that maybe i've done three events so far i've got 14 to do so i've still got a lot to do and i've been trying before each of these uh new events this year it's actually about a month ago, I sat down and I thought, actually, it's a grueling schedule in January. I'm really passionate about spreading the word about what I do and trying to get around the country and talk to lots of people.

But at the same time, if I don't look after myself, I'm going to struggle and I'm going to start burning out. And I reflected on what I did last year. I've also noticed, if i'm honest james is that i don't know if and i'd love to talk a bit about food timing yeah i know for me i know for many of my patients if we eat late it can often have a knock-on consequence in terms of our our sleep so therefore our recovery um i'm a big fan of um professor sachin panda's research from the soul institute in san diego he talks a lot about time-restricted eating and how we've got natural I'm a big fan of Professor Sachin Panda's research from the Salk Institute in San Diego.

He talks a lot about time-restricted eating and how we've got natural circadian rhythms and actually eating in harmony with those can be really beneficial. Why do you ask, did I notice the effect quite quickly? Well, because typically I'd expect you to say yes, really. And I think often there's a misconception with nutrition that you have to turn your diet upside down or your nutrition upside down to see an effect on your performance but actually just changing one meal and seeing how that's gone can have a massive massive difference we had um we had an event a few weeks ago this was over at the Barbican with a society of musicians and I think within the music industry nutrition's still in its infancy and they were saying look what's the one thing that I can change to have an impact on what we

do in the evening when we're performing all around the world and it's getting your pre-performance routine nailed and I said I said okay everyone put your hand up if you know what you eat or what you prefer to eat before you go on stage and what time it is. How many people give that some thought? 30%. Wow. You know, so just with one small intervention around what you're eating before and maybe what you're drinking if you're having caffeine, anything like that, you know, you can have a huge impact on the most important part of your week,

that performance on stage. And it's just a small tweak. that performance on stage and it's just a small tweak it was incredible is that when you put it like that it's obvious isn't it you think actually you know what i'm a musician i need to perform now for a couple of hours in the evening what do i need to do what do i need to fuel my body with to ensure that i can do that but for some reason we don't think about it like that um you know this was recently you said that was with musicians that's right yeah um one thing we spoke about before we came you know to record today is i've always felt that um you know premier league football seemed to be you know certainly

10 15 years ago seemed to be a little bit behind the curve in terms of nutrition they would seem to be focusing on a lot of other things. Certainly that was my perception. Obviously you're in it and you've been in it and probably one of the pioneers, I guess, in it in terms of working with Arsenal, because Arsenal are well-known for actually, I think Arsene Wenger is very well-known for sort of being slightly ahead of the game

in terms of trying to introduce these ideas into the club. And it really does strike me as quite bizarre how we've not really thought about food in that way have we we've just sort of we eat because we're hungry or we're not hungry it's just a thing that we do we've not thought about what we're going to put in for what we're doing afterwards it's our habits you know especially in london are based on habit you know we we tend to wake up in the morning, we'll have the same rushed breakfast perhaps, go to that same coffee shop for the same sandwich, finish work, perhaps scramble around at the local supermarket to prepare our meals.

And it is, it's based out of habit. And one of the key things we're trying to do with the book really is just to break habits and say to people look this should be conscious and we should be tailoring our nutrition it doesn't have to be obsessive it just requires a little bit of thought you know and how by making a few simple changes to our nutrition to our energy plan we can you know achieve a bit more and have more energy to do the things we love to do so weekends um a lot of us if we we have, you know, obviously working patterns are changing a lot now, but many people still have, you know, let's say a typical Monday to Friday office job, let's say, and they're not working at the weekends. So obviously they might just be completely chilling and relaxing at home on a Saturday, or let's say to another extreme,

they might go out with their family or their partner and go, hey, we're going to go for a long walk. We're going to go out in nature, go on a little bit of a hike. So I guess a lot of us will have the same breakfast on a Saturday morning without any thoughts. But I guess what you're saying is that depending on how we're going to spend that day, that will also then, it will also influence the sort of breakfast we should be having. Yeah, I think so. And again, it just comes back to the premise

of we're fueling for the demands of that day. So if you are having a quiet day at home, and you know you're not going to be particularly active, is that the sort of day where you might want to have one of these sort of um you know protein rich meals which are relatively low in carbohydrates because you're not going to be expending that energy through the day as opposed to when you're going out for a three-hour hike let's say you might go actually i'm going to have more of these hopefully whole food carbohydrates

in the morning with my breakfast is that is that the sort of thing you're getting at yeah absolutely i think if we're around the house each you know each day i think more of these maintenance meals you know the higher protein lower fuel type of meals would definitely fit and then we know that if we're going to go out for a big walk with the family or we're doing a couple of exercise classes or on the golf course we need to add more fuel so we might have a couple of fueling meals in our day to help support that as well do you talk about how our foods can impact our sleep at all in the book? Is that one of your focuses or is that something you've seen in your practice? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you see the same thing.

It's a massive question, isn't it? Huge. And I think probably in our roles, we're trying to frame the context to people because, you know, I remember going through sport for years. You would have players or athletes coming to you normally the day before a match and saying look i just can't sleep and it has a massive effect for them because obviously you don't get a good night's sleep you know your things like your your performance your physical cognitive performance goes down so you know it's a big area for people but i think linked into this i think there's principles around sleep hygiene and also getting the basics done really well around sleep.

And I think with nutrition, and that's the same with the whole book here, it's about doing the basics really well. And often sleep's one of those areas, I think, where we can reach for a new potion, a new pill, without getting the basics done, thinking it's going to overcome all of our other sleep hygiene principles and that that's really not the case i think i think we're all sort of a bit hardwired as humans to look for that quick fix we're looking for the hack right the hack what's a new thing that's going to sort my sleep out and it's incredible um i i i sort of i've written about sleep lots particularly my first book um although i cover it quite a lot in in the book on stress as well because i think a lack of sleep is one of the biggest stressors on the body in terms of you know what it does you know you your cognitive function goes down your ability to make decisions goes down

your ability to concentrate even hunger hormones and appetite hormones get flipped when you're not so you know you feel hungrier and you feel less full, which is a pretty disastrous combination if you're trying to limit what you're eating, let's say. And I find that in my practice when I talk to people, even if they've read some of my work and I'm often just going back to the basics and it works for the majority of people because I find with sleep and I be interested as to whether you found this with your athletes and with your clients um in the majority of cases they're doing something in their everyday lifestyle without realizing it that is negatively impacting their ability to sleep at night and it often takes just a few small tweaks is that something you've seen with your athletes yeah I think you're absolutely right. There's almost one outlier, isn't there?

There's one, let's say, red flag. And part of our role generally is, you know, you work with them and understand, is there anything out of the norm? I mean, how do you deal with, you know, your athletes, I guess, would travel a lot for competition. So you were with Arsenal, so they were in the Champions League for a lot of those years,

if not all of those years. And so, you know, that would be midweek games for the players in a European country if it was an away game. Sometimes with a time lag, maybe two hours, three hours, maybe sometimes even four hours, I imagine, depending on how far they're going. How, you know, how do you manage that as a nutritionist? that part of your role uh it is i mean and this would be very much you know a team approach as well so it'd be you know it'll be the doctor myself as a nutritionist and probably a conditioning coach too looking at all the different aspects around the player's performance and ultimately it comes down to being quite sensible you know because one of the things that we would find with our athletes is, let's say, a Champions League match. You might go and play away in Croatia, for example. You

might be on a flight that's over three hours and often the match might finish at, let's say, 10 o'clock. By the time you've left the ground, you've got clearance to take off, you might not be wheels up until, let's say, 12.30. Past midnight. past midnight and then you're in the air because you're flying home so you you might not get home in your bed until around 4 a.m that's quite common for for champions league footballers sometimes so like for us this is one of these like questions that we need to answer and this will be the same for business people right because a lot of the business clients i deal with as well if you've got to go halfway around the world for an important meeting you've got to go and do that meeting you know that is the most important thing but it's how

we can put things in place to help buffer that and i think one of the things we just got to be really practical in terms of the next day just using catch-up sleep yeah you know and how we're banking in time to then regain any any sleep lost before even looking at nutrition what what basics you know again we're back to the basics, you know, again, we're back to the basics, aren't we? What basics can we do really well to allow our players or our business people to recover? Yeah, it's interesting. One thing I want to move on to is jet lag, because I know you talk about that a little bit in your book. And you talk about the basics. And you've also got this list towards the start of home essentials, which I found really fascinating.

So first of all, you know, can we talk about these home essentials and why it's so important for you at the start of the book to actually make a list? Yeah, I think so. This really comes down to managing your own environment. And in the book, I've termed this your winning behaviors, because often I think we embark upon a new program or a new change and we haven't got everything that we need. So, for example, if we're going to look to exercise or, you know, or train more, even just having trainers or a running kit to go and do so is quite important. But likewise, how we're eating at home, do we have the right crockery, the right glasses, the right ways to serve food? Because, you know, one of the things that we know is that how our food is prepared and set out depends on how we will eat and how we will enjoy the experience. So one of the things that I always say to new clients is get these things set up

first of all, because once you have these in place, you're then in a position to move forward and make some wholesale changes. Well, I think there were a few surprising things on that list from Recollection. I want to see if I can find it. But in that Home Essentials list, there was something about, was it a protein shaker from Recollection? Yeah, that's right. Hold on, I've got the page now. It is a, yeah, a protein shaker.

I was right. So are you a fan of protein powders? I think they can play a role for some people. I would never advocate in an approach that everyone has to use a protein powder. But one of the things that we can see is that they can provide a convenient source of protein, maybe when you're traveling and you haven't got a source of protein to hand. So they can almost fill in these gaps. And I think that's the way we need to view these things like protein. Because we're talking about a supplement now.

Yeah. And that's exactly what it should do, supplement our food intake. Not be two shakes a day, a meal replacement. We should be always food first with our approach. Food first. So you're using that as something in case people are traveling or they're maybe on the go and they haven't got time to cook a fresh meal. Maybe something like that potentially now and again. Absolutely.

As a contingency. As a contingency. Okay. That's super useful, actually. I don't think we quite covered this before, but for people listening who are wondering what are those benefits of, you know, I was going to say increasing your protein intake, but I guess it depends what your existing protein intake is. When you've got the right, the optimal amount of protein in your diet for your lifestyle, what benefits will you get from that? Well, one of the first benefits is that you'll maintain your muscle mass. So if you're

doing some resistance exercise in in the gym and you have enough protein your muscles need that to be able to grow and repair so you're maintaining your mass but also another really important one is not getting so sore at times as well so your your muscle proteins are helping to maintain them uh maintain and repair the muscle mass and there's no other place really to look than this and other than in the final chapter the aging chapter with old age and obviously the problems we see in this country now with sarcopenia absolutely you know and the muscle loss with age and if there's one area where protein is a focus you know it's in that population but i appreciate i might have just uh you know

jumped ahead slightly no no not at all i at all. I think it's very important. I've sort of spoken about this, written about this on many occasions, that once we hit 30, once we get past the age of 30, we are, many of us, if we're sedentary, we're losing a significant amount of muscle mass each year. And muscle mass is a key predictor of our longevity and how well we're going to be as we age.

Something we see a lot as doctors is elderly populations who are not eating enough protein to maintain whatever little muscle mass they may have, they're really low on their protein intake. Is this a population you have seen much or not really in your work? Increasingly, yeah. Over the last four years with it within my private practice a lot of people generally who are 40 plus who are going into a different stage of their you know their life you know the athletes are one level but i think the people are coming to the practice have got families and they're looking to set up their health to be able to again back to this word perform perform optimally in their later years i mean just a couple of weeks ago i had a lady who came in who was brilliant she was aiming to

run her first london marathon at the age of 66 and her first question was james you know can i do this absolutely you know you you absolutely can with the right training and the right nutrition but i think most importantly with the right mindset and one of the things that i've i felt really important within the aging chapter and with these clients is the aspirational message is really important because i think if we resign ourself to well okay i'm getting older now so maybe i should sit on the sofa more you know maybe i should restrict the amount of training i'm doing you're resigning yourself to aging you're not fighting it you have to stress your body in the right way and you know we look at some restrict the amount of training I'm doing. You're resigning yourself to aging. You're not fighting it. You have to stress your body in the right way.

And, you know, we look at some of the examples of people who have excelled. There's marathon runners still running incredible times into their 60s, 70s, and even 80s. So it's entirely possible, but I think it all starts, it all starts with that aspirational message that this is for you if you're 40. This is for you if you're 50, 60, and 70. That is an aspirational message that this is for you if you're 40, this is for you if you're 50, 60 and 70. That is an aspirational message. A guest I had on the podcast maybe about 10 episodes ago or so was a chap called Rich Roll, an ultra-endurance athlete in America.

Oh, brilliant. And he started off his life as a corporate lawyer. He was a college athlete, always sort of performed pretty well, really let himself go with his lifestyle, sort of would drink a lot of alcohol, and he really turned his life around when he was 40 because he had some sort of chest pains um and he really that was that was a big wake-up call for him um you know that's a real summary of a very exciting story which i do go into in a previous episode with people who want to listen to it but what's incredible is that he posted recently on his instagram that he has um i think he's maybe sort of 53 54 now something like that rich i'm

sorry if i've got your age wrong um but but essentially saying he's never been in better physical condition as he is now and he uses that to really inspire people and go actually you know what a lot of people would have thought actually you were probably fitter as a teenager or in your 20s but he's showing by making those intentional choices with his lifestyle and for him okay for him he chose to go to a whole food vegan diet that was him and it seems to work for him and i'm i'm very i try and be as diet agnostic as possible one of the reasons is is because as a doctor i see patients who come in, who've got all kinds of different preferences, cultural preferences, ideological preferences on what they choose to do. And I don't really want to judge people. I want to help every single person

who comes in through my door to fit a lifestyle around what they want and their goals. And I get the impression with you also from what I've seen in the book is that you know your approach is just as applicable to a carnivore as it is to a vegan is that fair to say yeah absolutely and i really echo your message there rongan i think there are tons of different ways that you can use nutrition to get the results essentially my job is to provide the right principles and the right guidelines there's obviously a multitude of different foods that you can choose based on cultural preferences, based on other dietary preferences as well. You can still achieve the same result. It's just about applying these principles in the right way. So I'm exactly the same as you. I think we have to have a real respect for people's choices. And my role is

really to help them work within those to achieve their goal. I love this idea of choices. And, you know, my role was really to help them work within those to achieve their goal. I love this idea of performance. And you mentioned it now with respect to longevity. And, you know, the people who listen to this podcast, there's a whole variety of ages. I know there's some teenagers now who are listening, but I've also got people in their 60s and 70s and the whole range in between. And I guess, you know, depending on what you want out of life, we need to think about, well, if we do want to live to a ripe old age, how do we want to be performing when we're 60 or 70? What do we want to be able to do? Do we want to be able to, you know, go to the shops and buy our shopping and two big heavy bags in each arm and carry it home

or carry it up a flight of stairs? And I guess we want to do that we need to think about what sort of fuel we need we need to think about our muscle mass and how we're going to preserve it and our mobility so that actually when we get to that age we're going to be able to perform very much like this 65 year old lady who wants to run a marathon for the first time which again has she done it yet or is she she training to do that she's training to do that now but she's making wonderful progress and I've no doubt that she will. And I think every time you speak to whether it's her or a different client, they smash through these boundaries and often they say, yeah, I can definitely do this. I don't know why I was doubting it. So I guess the wider point is we're all capable of a lot more than we think we are. At any age.

At any age. And there are many components to look at. You mentioned mindset. Of course, mindset's very important. But obviously your approach as a nutritionist is let's get the food right for what you want to achieve. Yeah, I think that's incredible. I do want to talk about caffeine because there's a couple of reasons for that.

One of them is that in your home essentials, in your list of home essentials, you talk about a coffee capsule machine to understand your caffeine dose and timing and keep it consistent. I think there's a lot of themes in there that I just love to explore. Caffeine is a psychoactive drug that much of the world love. And, you know, a lot of the world are probably slightly addicted to i would say um let's talk about caffeine and how it plays a role in our performance and why you're so specific in your home essentials about knowing your dose yeah i mean we've got lots to talk about here for sure uh you know so you know as you've just said you know caffeine in terms of you know what we'd say as an ergogenic aid something something that can improve your cognitive performance, your alertness. But also we've got really good evidence that improves your physical performance by up to around 8%.

So I think sometimes I meet people for the first time and they say, they start an approach and they say, well, I'm off the caffeine, James. You know, that's good, isn't it? I said, well, no, I think that really depends. Oh, you know, I can still have caffeine. And I think the way we tend to unpack this is that it really just comes down to the principles we said before. Often the type of caffeine, the timing and your total amount in the day. And one of the things that I would say, first of all, Wongan, is if we look on the high street the actual amount of caffeine that's contained in our coffee varies wildly I mean I was amazed when I when I first

did the research around this and we you know we just saw that actually the published data shows that it can vary from anywhere between let's say 70 milligrams in a cup right through to 300 plus in a cup of coffee hold on that isn't I that's almost, well, four and a half fold almost difference. Absolutely. And so you get a coffee from one high street chain, you're getting a certain dose of stimulant, you go to another chain because you're in a different office that day or your route is slightly different,

and you could be getting three or four times that dose. Yeah, absolutely absolutely and this will obviously be dependent on the size of the coffee as well but yeah absolutely we know there's a huge variance now we never do that with let's say a medication right so if we were taking a prescribed medication we wouldn't jump around the doses three fourfold no so is there something i know my private thoughts on this i'll come to that in a second but is this sort of wildly variable dose of caffeine that many of us are consuming from day to day something that can cause us issues yeah i think so i think unknowingly especially let's let's take the work setting first of of all, where, you know, you might have your coffee after breakfast in the morning. You know, you might have another one after lunch.

Suddenly it's a busy day and you dip into one mid-afternoon. Suddenly your caffeine intake during the day, especially over periods of high stress, is creeping up and creeping up. And your caffeine intake each day is creeping up with that. But I think probably the bigger thing here is, like's just like we said with the fuels earlier on, we need to have an understanding about caffeine because its effects can be potent in a good way, but also it's a massive double-edged sword. Yeah.

You know, if we're looking at, you know, I think one of the examples we described off air before is caffeine sleep. It's something you're going through one of those periods with work where you've really ramped up your caffeine intake really sort of without knowing just to get through and you're wondering why your sleep's fallen off and while you're gradually your energy levels are dropping then there's the link it is such a huge sleep disruptor and you know if people have got away

with it for years and they don't think it's affected their sleep they're very resistant to the idea that caffeine might be responsible for it um and what's interesting for me actually is that two sort of world-class researchers who i've had on the podcast before um i mentioned professor sachin panda we talk about time-restricted eating he very much uh sort of is very careful about his caffeine intake and at least once or twice a year he goes off it to reset his sensitivity and he says when he does that he's more productive actually weirdly enough and he sleeps better i think matthew walker who wrote the book why we sleep who i did a two-parter with as well on this podcast um he doesn't drink caffeine anymore based upon his research so i guess it's

in the context of what he wants to do and what he wants to achieve what i think is really important about caffeine is that we forget what a long half-life it's got. And in my first book, I make the recommendation, enjoy your caffeine before noon. That's something I find useful for my patients. And this whole thing of dosing caffeine is something I got a little bit obsessed with last year because I started to drink quite a lot of coffee.

It was my crutch. I'd use it when the pressure was ramping up when I had a book deadline or when you know I was flagging in the afternoon I had more patients to see and I recognized I could tell that it was making me a bit anxious and less calm and level-headed and what really helped me is actually forgetting to I wouldn't buy coffee out I'd actually weigh it at home I'd actually make it in a cafeteria every morning and I would obsessively weigh. And I knew then what dose I was getting each day. And that's how I weaned down as well to a really low dose. And I knew, okay, I've got my hits today. And I noticed that I was much better and stable when I knew how much

I was having each day, as opposed to this wildly variable amount do you use caffeine to enhance performance with your athletes and how do you do that yes in answer yes but it's not a blanket approach because as we know the sensitivity to caffeine varies wildly yeah so it's something that like all of these principles needs a bit of exploring in situations that aren't high pressure not before a job interview not before a champions league final you know right situations where you're nice and relaxed and you can see and see your response and going back to your point there about understanding your dose you know that's exactly the principle we're looking at from the book and just have a bit of an understanding of

how much let's say a pod for a coffee machine if that gives you 60 milligrams okay you can start to have a constant then and how do you feel during the morning what's your energy like rather than jumping around to different high street uh high street coffee chains yeah because then that person comes in and i say how many coffees do you have a day they say oh i have two coffees two coffees doesn't really mean anything does it because it doesn't mean anything we've gotten just no idea what's in that how much caffeine is actually in that yeah yeah i i know um at various gyms i've trained up before some of the um some people who really you know into their fitness and weight lifting would actually dose

caffeine about 30 minutes or so before their workout so that they could lift heavier now there is some research on this isn't there how caffeine impacts our performance yeah there is yeah there's actually quite a lot of research i guess in terms of what we call again a supplement that would have an effect on performance the evidence behind caffeine is is very good you know typically in terms of peaking in the blood you take it anywhere between 45 minutes an hour to get that peak while you train. So, you know, going back to your question with athletes, you know, we look at the timing of when they would take it normally around the start of their warm up, you know, just to make sure that it's peaking at the right time. But that's the same for the business people, too.

You know, it's the same for, for example, if I'm having coffee before I'm coming down here to talk to you, you know, I might have an hour before. So that it's working when you need it to work. Exactly that. And I guess, you know, this is probably something that I'm interested in. I hope my list is hard as well. But let's say, for example, you've got a footballer, a Premier League footballer who is training throughout the week, training in the gym, the training, the doing the drills with the rest of the team. I guess you might use caffeine in the morning, let's say at the right time, so that they can optimize their performance and focus in their training session.

Yeah, that same person might be sensitive to caffeine. It might be a sleep disruptor if they had it in the afternoon or the evening. So I'm guessing you might be in the scenario where actually, let's say they've got a 12 o'clock kickoff game right on saturday lunchtime for the you know for the for the televised game you might be okay using caffeine let's say one hour before they perform um i'm assuming caffeine's allowed isn't it it's not that's right yeah so but it might be a different bit of advice if they're having a champions city game and they're performing at 8 p.m that evening because yes it might help them perform in their game but the double-edged sword is it might negatively impact their sleep

that night and therefore their recovery is that something you have to tweak sometimes like your footballers can have caffeine for a 12 o'clock lunchtime game but you maybe wouldn't recommend it for an evening game i think absolutely we would definitely tweak yeah we would definitely make tweaks to that because like you say again we're back to this word context aren't we yeah and you know for them if if for example a bad night's sleep if there's another game in two days you know what's the effect of this if this lack of recovery time and again this this is the same question that's being asked in the west end night after night you know for the musicians who are who are on stage or people who are working in studios it's how that you know we

can get the right balance you know with our caffeine to you know improve our cognitive function but without tipping over the edge and it it just it really takes a lot of practice and i think one of the things I would say with all of the aspects of nutrition here, whether it's we're talking about the fuels or caffeine, it's just having a time to monitor how it's affecting you so that you can then refine and change. And I think one of the things I always talk about

is just having a check-in each week, just a time where you spend 15 minutes you know maybe in a cafe or somewhere to review what's happened the week before now what you might be reviewing rongan is you might be reviewing your strategy around the caffeine you might say well i tried my caffeine at this time how did i feel i actually felt i felt reasonably good you know i might keep that in place for next week or there might be other challenges around your nutrition. So I think for me, we really need like the glue in our week to really be at one with our nutrition to refine, but then also to plan for the week ahead. So that let's say the wheels came off this week and you had a bad week.

You're very busy with work traveling up and down the country. One bad week doesn't become two yeah i think the wider point there james for me is um it's really this whole issue of time and connection between the things we do with our body and how we feel and i and i i write about this a lot in the stress solution actually about how you know the modern world for many of us has has stolen time from us and we're just reactive we we get up we're straight on our phones we're just reacting all day all day and often it doesn't finish and we're just reactive we we get up we're straight on our phones we're just reacting all day all day and often it doesn't finish till we're you know we're still lying in bed reacting to what's going on in the world and often that's seven days a week and we've we've

lost you know we need to take a bit of time to actually reflect reflect on yes our nutrition how we felt during the week what activities we did that made a difference to the way we feel, what was good, what wasn't so good, what would we like to change in the following week and go, hey, this worked well, that didn't work so well. So I really like that actually, a really important part, you know, sort of journaling your progress and actually making time to understand what's working for you. I think that's a great tip. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And, you know, the point that you mentioned there as well is it can be paper. I'm sort of sat here

looking at my paper, my paper pad, you know, it can be something that if you're on your phone a lot, I prefer just to use a paper pad. You know, it's, it's, it's a different feeling. And if it gets you off of your phone for a bit. Yeah, absolutely. Well, James, look, I've really enjoyed our conversation. Actually, there's so much more I could talk about. So maybe we'll have to save that for part two. We'll have to do another one in a few months, if that's okay, if I can get some time in your schedule. But I think the book's fantastic. I think it's a very refreshing approach. I think you've got such a high level of expertise from the people you have worked with. I think we can

all learn from your approach. I think if we go into it, certainly with an open mind and recognize that the results you've managed to achieve with some very high performing athletes, business people, clients, musicians, I think there's a lot that we can all learn in our own lives from that. So thank you for taking the time to write that book. James, this podcast is called Feel Better Live More because I believe that when we feel as good as we can feel, we get more out of our lives. Work, relationships, pleasure, all sorts of things. So I wonder if you might be able to come up with a few tips right at the end of this podcast to inspire people listening. to inspire people listening,

what sort of changes do you think they can make immediately in their lives, which is going to change the way that they feel? So I don't know if you've got three or four top tips for my listeners. Okay, yeah, so top tips to finish. Yeah, I guess it all starts with the goal, right? Everything we've said today has been goal-orientated. So I would say the first step is to, this weekend,

get your pen and your pad out and write down your goal. And I would say the first step is to this weekend, get your pen and pad out and write down your goal and really write down the motivation and the rationale behind that, you know, why it's important. And I think most importantly with that, you know, with any goal, you know, we're in the winter months now, is it going to get you out of bed? And you're like, hold February morning. Is that goal strong enough? Is that hook strong enough for you to make a change? So I think that once you have a goal and the motivation you can then start to be a bit more prescriptive with how you train your body and how you eat so it allows us to then you know goes on to the next part which for me

i'd say number two is to get your dose each day your dose of exercise for some people they might be quite specific with their training and it might be their dose of exercise. For some people, they might be quite specific with their training and it might be their dose of either strength or resistance training or their cardio. For other people, their dose might just be increasing their step count and getting out and being active. It will mean different things to different people, but it's just, I think, making time in the day.

And I think often sometimes treating this as a health appointment. Yeah. You know, actually have it, you know, our meetings will be in our diary. Can we not put our 30 minute run, you know, in the diary that's immovable? Schedule it in so it's a part of your day, a fixed part of your day. It is there. No one can touch it. Don't feel guilty about not taking calls. Don't take emails. That's your time. Because your point right at the top was investing time in you so you don't get burnt out. That is an investment for sure. Yeah, that's a great tip. Any more?

And I would say it's back to what we've discussed the whole way through, really, Rangan, and it's just looking at fueling depending on your demands. So I think one of the things that people can apply straight away is that days where they're more active, having more fuel, having more lower GI carbohydrates. But I think if you're stuck behind the desk at work and you're not training for, let's say, two or three days, which will happen, you're not exercising a lot. I think it's just being conscious and saying, look, my body doesn't need that amount of fuel. I can maybe go to more of these maintenance type meals with a bit more protein and a bit more vegetables because my fueling needs a nest and change the days.

James, I love those tips. I think those three tips are fantastic, really great take-homes for people. Appreciate your time today. Thank you. Good luck with the book and hopefully I'll get you on again soon. It'll be a pleasure and thanks again, Juan, for again, Wongun, for having me on. And congratulations for the podcast too. My pleasure. Thanks. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I hope you found the conversation interesting and that it has maybe caused you to look at food in a slightly different way.

Are you eating the right foods that are going to help you achieve your goals on any given day? I think it is a fantastic way for many of us to start examining and potentially changing our food choices. As always, do let James and I know on social media what you thought of today's episode. Please do use the hashtag feelbetterlivemore or FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. If you enjoy my weekly podcasts, one of the best ways that you can support them is by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing it with your friends and family on your social media channels. Or you can simply do it the good old-fashioned way

and tell your friends and family about the show. Your support is really, really appreciated. My new book, The Stress Solution, is available to buy now online and in all the usual bookstores. The book helps you to identify the four big stress superhighways that exist in the 21st century and gives you simple, actionable tools that will help you live a happier, calmer life.

The book has only been out for four weeks now, and feedback has been incredible, with 87 reviews on Amazon so far, all of them five-star ones. You can get your copy in either paperback, Kindle, or in the audiobook, which I am narrating. All international book links to my book are available at drchastity.com forward slash book. That's it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it, because when you feel better, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes is always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.

I'll see you next time.