Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Change Your Body Without Harming Your Health: The Diet & Exercise Advice Women Need

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

We have some news…We've been nominated for ITV Podcast Creator of the Year (!!!) 🏆If you've learnt something from the podcast this year, I'd be so grateful if you could take a minute to vote for us. It genuinely means the world: https://bit.ly/4ynqe451. Select ‘Creator Shortlist’2. Scroll down to ‘Podcast bCreator of the Year - Her Discussions with Dr Faye Bate’THANK YOU XXWhat if your habits are ACTUALLY making you more unhealthy?This week, I’m joined by leading sports dietitian Renee McGregor to unpack some of the biggest lies women have been sold about food, exercise and what a “healthy” body should look like.You’ll learn:⌚ Why 10,000 steps on your fitness tracker might be wrong🍝 The amount of carbs active women actually need✨ The 3-5g creatine rule for women🔋 The #1 overlooked reason you’re constantly tired⚖️ Why getting leaner isn’t always healthierResources & links mentioned:- Renee’s Substack: https://thefuellinereneemcgregor.substack.com/- Renee’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/r_mcgregor/?hl=enThis episode is sponsored by @larocheposay and their Cicaplast Repair Balm: an ultra-repairing, soothing cream enriched with 5% Vitamin B5 (Panthenol) to support the skin barrier and help with dry, irritated skin and scarring.🔔 Join the HERd* broadcast channel here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==📱 Find us on socials: Instagram & Tiktok - @drfayebate Podcast Instagram & Tiktok: @herdiscussionspod📩 Want to reach out? Email: [e-mail]🛑 Disclaimers:Opinions are my own. This content is for educational / entertainment purposes and not medical or financial advice.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere,

and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Before we get into the conversation, I have an extremely important request, more important than any other request I've ever made because I do not mean to alarm you.

We have been nominated for Podcasts of the Year. To win, I'm going to need every single one of your votes. This will take you one minute max. Really, really, really, really would love it if you clicked her discussions on the link in the description, as if you haven't already done enough for me by listening to these episodes, but I would just so, so, so, so appreciate

that one minute of your time to vote so that we can possibly win this award. Thank you so so much and we'll now get into the episode. We're going to come on to under fueling and what healthy really means a little bit later on. But before we come on to that, I'd love to understand how you got to where you are now because from what I've heard,

you have had an extremely interesting career. But starting at beginning, growing up, what did food and exercise mean for you? My mum and dad are Indian. and I grew up in a home environment where food was very much the, I guess, the way in which love was shown. So my mum's a feeder and she definitely fed us. There's no doubt about it. So food's always been central, I guess, but I suppose there were some kind of challenges in the sense of, obviously, I was born in this country.

I'm very much British, but obviously born to two parents that are an Indian. And so I was brought up on a very Indian-based diet. But when I went to school, things changed. And there was lots of input, also Western input. And I guess you just don't want to be the kid that doesn't belong, right? So I think it was quite challenging. Like I always felt a bit, I suppose I always felt a little bit insecure about my place, particularly in school.

I struggled to make friends. But yeah, I guess food was really important to my mum from that point of view. Exercise, I've always been active. Like, you, the very first pictures of me, I was always dancing, I did a lot of swimming. So I was one of those kids that swam from the age of six until I was 12, 13, always played hockey,

always played netball, was really, really, and I did loads of dancing. Like I've got multiple little plastic trophies somewhere hidden in someone's garage that, you know, kind of that was, so I've always been really, really active. Obviously, with all the knowledge I've got now, I think being active and particularly things like dancing was a really good way for me to connect with myself. So like if we think about sort of a somatic response, it was a really good way for me to feel calm, if I'm honest. I mean, I grew up in the 80s. So racism was a big problem. I did experience a lot of racism.

I have spoken about this before. I was also sadly a victim of sexual abuse. So there was lots of stuff going on that was difficult. And I guess that then did feed into my food story in the sense of age 13. I did develop an eating disorder. I guess in response to all of this, you know, my parents, they did their best for us, but they were also very. critical. So there was lots going on. And I guess all these things fed into behaviors that

weren't always great for my, you know, for my health at the time. I was never really interested in becoming a dietitian. I'll be honest, like that wasn't where I thought I was going. I love writing and also I have written several books now, but I always wanted to be a journalist. But again, I also wanted to make my mum and dad happy and they very much wanted me to do science. I think my parents would have loved it if I'd become a doctor, but that was definitely not what I wanted to do. I just didn't want the pressure, I don't think. And I probably was a bit rebellious.

I've always been known for being rebellious. And I think it was just because it was kind of like, that's what you'll do. That's not what I'm doing. So I did science at A level, didn't really know what I was going to do with it, but just did it because it made everybody happy. and ended up actually really enjoying biology and thinking, oh, this could be cool, this could be something I could do.

And then I had some really great teachers, I'm not going to lie, I had some really good teachers who really nurtured me, really mentored me well and helped me to appreciate who I was, what my skill sets were, told me definitely not to do maths.

I ended up doing a biochemistry degree. So that's what I ended up doing was an undergrad in biochemistry. chemistry and I loved it. I'm not going to lie. I absolutely loved it. It was definitely the right decision for me. I find actually understanding how the body works at that cellular level, really interesting. And also now subsequently, I've also gone on to understand how the body works from a psychological point of view as well, like from a human behaviour point of view. And you put those two things together and you create the perfect environment to be holistic in your

approach, which is obviously what I try and do. So I did this biochemistry degree, came out of it thinking, now what? And again, very lucky, great mentor who suggested dietetics had no idea what it was, like literally no idea. But went to like do some work experience and then was like, yeah, this is cool. This is like clinical, but it's not like, you know, too intense. So that's what I did. I became a dietician. I did a postgrad in dietetics. I got my first job at St. George's in Tooting. And dietetics is very similar to being a junior doctor. You basically rotate around, you build up your expertise and your specialisms and you kind of go through rotations every 18 months. So by the time I had been in the system, in the NHS system for like seven years, five, seven years.

I was a pediatric dietitian specialising in eating disorders, but that wasn't really ever been on the card. So having had my own experience in eating disorder, I was like I'm never working in this. But the way in which it happened was I was a general pediatric dietitian. We kept getting lots of youngsters coming on the ward and nobody could get through to them but me. And that's not an arrogance.

I think it's just when you've been through something, when you've had that personal experience, that lived experience, but you've also got the professional training, I think it does put you in a really good stead to support someone because you can make that connection. And I remember, like, some of my early clients saying to me, it's like you can read my mind. And it's like, well, yeah, because I get it.

I didn't say that to them. But I knew what they were experiencing because I'd been there. I guess that's where the journey started with kind of more complex eating issues. I ended up doing a few years of working in an adolescent eating disorder unit, which was, you know, which was, which was challenging. And I ended up leaving mainly because I had two small kids at home and I found it really hard to separate from being a mum to them and then going into this really intense environment where these individuals were so unwell. And I think I just couldn't, I just couldn't do it all.

I just couldn't. I genuinely put my hand up and say, I'm definitely not someone who can do it all. And I, and I needed to prioritise my children. So I took a step away from the NHS. And I didn't really know what I was going to do. I just knew that I needed a break. So I had a break for about a month. Because I'm also, like I, you know, I like to use my brain.

I'm quite ambitious. And like I said, I've always been sporty. And I'd always had this kind of thought. that one day it would be quite cool to be a sports dietitian. And maybe if I'm a sports dietitian, I won't have to deal with like really clinically sick people. So I did my master's in applied sports nutrition at that point. Like so during that time, yeah, again, I think just got really got fortunate in that there was a role going at the time. It was London 2012 and they needed somebody who could work with the rhythmic gymnastic team, the GB team. But they wanted someone who had a

clinical background as well. So it wasn't just a sports nutritionist they wanted. They needed someone who understood, I guess, the intricacies of disordered eating fundamentally. That's how I've ended up here because I started doing that role. There was nine of them and we got them through it. They're all safe. They're all, you know, they're all healthy. Thank goodness. It wasn't easy. And then on the back of that, you know, you get known for your work and I guess subsequently I've just been offered more and more opportunities, which I've always said yes to. And yeah, I guess it was after Rio 2016, when I just was like, this wasn't the path I thought I was going to go down, but actually I can make a difference. You know, there's a real gap between the clinical world and the

sports world and someone needs to bridge that gap. And I just felt like, okay, this is something I can do. And that's when I started up my own consultancy. And I guess the rest is history. Like this is, you know, that people know, hopefully know my story and this is where I am now working with a real mixture of people, but still professional athletes in that mix, still obviously everyday athletes as well,

but also doing a lot of consultancy for brands and, you know, even national governing bodies. So, so yeah, it's been a journey, but, you know, it's been an interesting journey. I want to pull up something that you said about working on a paedial unit because one of my most memorable experiences from medical school was on my pediatric placement and it was in about third year and I had this vision in my head of what

like a pediatric unit in a hospital would be like, you know, lots of little sick babies with coughs and colds and maybe a bit of a bad tummy. I've had my own issues with eating and body image and walking onto the ward and we do the ward round and an alarming proportion of the children on the ward were girls as young as nine, you know, up to maybe teenagers with eating disorders. And I thought this is not what I thought it was, it was really striking to me. And then you also spoke about the rhythmic gymnastics and we know sports, gymnastics, running as well. These are sports weight eating disorders are rife and there's these old, outdated beliefs that your performance is linked to being a smaller weight.

I was just wondering if you have any hypotheses, possibly, about why eating disorders in young girls we think are going up. First question. Second question is, are there any similarities that you noticed between your work that you did clinically with children with eating disorders on the ward and then the struggles you faced working with female athletes as well? Big, big, big, big questions. No.

I just need to pull up for so many different things. Why are we seeing a rise in eating disorders? I think that's a really, I mean, it's really important that we highlight that we are seeing a huge increase. And I can't remember the stats completely, but from memory, post-COVID, it was something like 226% increase in young individuals developing an eating disorder. So you kind of have to kind of have to take a step back and go, whoa, this is a societal problem, right? This is not like I think about my own experience and it was very much trauma driven. You know, it was I wanted to make my body as small and as insignificant as I had been made to feel. There was a very key pathway as such.

And while I'm not saying that doesn't exist, I think there are still many individuals that do use food and our bodies. as a way of coping, you know, when we go through something incredibly traumatic and difficult. And it doesn't have to be as traumatic as sexual abuse. It can be, you know, it's something that's like an overwhelming experience for you, whether that could be bullying, that could be loss. I mean, anything really that's overwhelming for you. It could even just be like a change in circumstance, like, you know, you get moved from a school to a different school. Like these are really, Like when you're younger, these are really, really monumental, and they often go unresolved.

And when you're young, you don't have the maturity and the toolkits. And so a lot of it does depend also on what support you have around you. And again, this is not about apportioning blame to parents or guardians. It's just about helping people to recognize that sometimes when you don't have the appropriate nurturing support around you, or even I've had situations with clients where they've had an incredibly nurturing environment, but almost they haven't been taught how to deal with failure. Because they've just been, you know, they've just been like sheltered from it.

So both can be difficult. You need that kind of, you need both sides of the parenting, I guess the parenting relationships, right? You need that not necessarily critical parent, but you need a nurturing parent and you need a parent that can help with boundaries. Yeah. or say parent, but we mean, you know, guardian. I think so obviously food and body are things that you can physically control. So when life feels messy, and I guess that's what I want to kind of highlight here is often it's emotional. These situations create emotions and we don't get taught about emotions at school.

We don't get taught that these are the physical sensations that our body feels. All we know is that we don't feel good and it's very easy when you're younger to not be able to make the link between this is an emotional response. This is like an emotion that I need to probably pinpoint and work out what it is. And instead, you're like, this feels, this doesn't feel good.

This is probably because I don't fit in or my body's not right or whatever it might be. And you can control that. And it gives you this false sense of security. Like you said, you said you've had your own experiences. Like when you restrict your intake, you are basically creating a container, right? A container for your emotions that help you to feel numb and avoid what's the real problem.

But you don't always understand that's what's going on. Similarly, if you are someone who has binge eating disorder, the whole kind of aspect of binging, it's not because you've got no control. It's often because that is something that helps to kind of push down and provide comfort at a time. you don't have, have that. You know, again, you don't have the understanding and knowledge of what you need to do. So we've got these very clinical reasons why eating disorders develop. But I think in recent years, particularly I'd say post-COVID, you know, COVID was a very

difficult time for all of us. It was a time of uncertainty. Like, none of us knew when it was going to be over. There was no real direction because it didn't feel like we had any clear understanding of the illness and what it was going to do. But it was also, there was also quite a lot of threat. Yeah. Yeah, because we didn't know how, like, I don't know about you,

but I was terrified and I'm a grown up in this. So can you imagine being 12, 13, 14 and not really understanding it? And also that loss of your peer support system because you're at home and you're kind of, you know, sort of locked in as such. And I think a lot of people spend a lot of time on social media. I say Instagram. It could be any social media. I'm not, I don't know much about TikTok because I'm definitely a very older generation that doesn't really feed into it.

But you know what I mean? Like social media had a big part to play in our social connection. But also our brains were absorbing all this information and our brains have not developed to cope with that. We cannot filter this much information. And so I think it creates this sense of unworthiness. I think we have a generation of young people who are growing up with a. sense of unworthiness because of what we see on social media. And I think that then feeds into, I'm not good enough, I need to improve myself, and I need to do something to achieve that. And again,

food, body, exercise, they all feed into that. So I think this is why we're seeing such a massive rise because there isn't a filter system and also we are cultivating this environment. And of course, there's so many experts in nutrition, there's so many experts in sport, there's so many fitness. And also, we have access to loads of people. You know, when I was growing up, we didn't have access to any real celebrities or sports people. It would be whatever you would see in a magazine or what the news gave you. But now you can follow your favourite athlete and you can see what they're doing. And although it might be a highlight reel, again, if you're 14, 15, you might not recognize.

recognise it's just a highlight real. Yeah. So I think we have a lot of work to do to support young people. But I also just want to highlight that there's actually been a massive increase also in older people developing eating disorders as well. And that, again, is a societal shift because, again, image aesthetic is becoming more and more important. But equally, I think we're learning more about the perimenopause and how hormones have such a big influence on how we think and how we feel. And the perimenopause is a really unpredictable time. Like it's a bit like going through puberty, but, you know, 40 years down the line. Yeah, exactly.

And there's no, we still don't know enough. And so all these, again, all these women are feeling a little bit out of control. And so they go in search of control and food and exercise. And our bodies are one way to say, we are still disciplined, we are still in control, we are not going to be beaten by this. But again, all these behaviours can then get out of hand and become problematic. So there's many reasons, but I'd say society has a huge part to play in why we have such a big problem in the Western world when it comes to eating disorders.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. the price is right fortune pick.

BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGEMD operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario.

Have you been following the Ariana Grande discourse by any chance? I think it's a really challenging conversation to bring up because I watched quite a nuanced conversation about it the other day talking about how there are absolutely negatives for talking about an individual's body. That's, you know, that shouldn't be something that we take lightly. But there are positives to be hard acknowledging not just what we're viewing happening to that single individual's body, but actually what we're viewing on a broader scale of. a lot of celebrities, a lot of high-profile women who seems to be shrinking in front of our eyes. There are damages to be done talking about an individual's body, but it feels neglectful to not

acknowledge that trend that we're witnessing. I'm not a professional in that, you know, that area. But what would, do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I always say this, that as soon as you have a following, you have a responsibility, right? And I struggle with it. I struggle with watching the world shrink quite literally in front of my eyes. And I also watch it filter down in my clinic, you know, and I see the direct consequence of these behaviours. And obviously, I work with people who don't always have the wraparound support that maybe some of these celebrities do have, you know,

or their lives are very, they're very different to the lives of the people I work with. So I think I absolutely agree that we should never ever comment on how someone looks. Because in my book, what you look like really is the least interesting thing about you. It really is. Like it doesn't give you any indicator of what that person's like. I always say to my clients, when you go to a party, do you go in and say, hi, my name's Rini and I weigh X amount? Of course you don't. because it's not relevant to who you are as a person.

You know, and I think, so it's difficult. I totally see, but I can also see why people are getting scared because it is a worry, particularly in the world that I work in. I am quite literally seeing it filter down. You know, I've had clients who are using GLP ones to maintain a very, very low body weight, which is not acceptable. I say acceptable, it's not appropriate for them.

And we're seeing the health consequences of that. Like we're seeing literally deranged liver function tests. We're seeing, you know, issues with gut health. We're seeing hormonal concerns because these women and men do not need to be on these products. But if you can access them, which we know, it doesn't matter what we say about prescription. and people can access them.

We know that 95% of GLP1s are bought on private prescription. 95%. 95%. Oh, my God. So it's problematic for me. There's this debate around GLP ones. Like I feel very, you can probably hear it in my voice. I get really passionate about this because I feel really strongly.

Yes, we've got this big farmer who, you know, someone has decided this is a great heroic product that is going to help obesity. Except it's doing more than that, right? It's not being used for obesity in a lot of cases. Yeah, exactly. And nobody is talking about the long-term consequences and how this is going to come back and bite us all in the bum because you're going to have these women and men who are holding these very low body fat percentages,

holding these very low body weights. And their body is quite literally going into low energy availability, which is obviously my area of expertise. and you're going to start seeing the presentations that we see in athletes, in the fact that they will have, if you want to call it reds, that's what they'll have. And that's that that is like a multi-system problem. Physiologically, it is shutting down pretty much every single biological process in the body. So these people in two years, three years, maybe five years, if we're lucky,

will be presenting in front of medics saying, I've got digestive issue problems or I've got hormonal problems I can't fall pregnant now or whatever it might be because they are quite literally doing this to themselves that's what I struggle with is like and whose responsibility is it

maybe is Big Farmers responsibility to say actually here's a warning sign you know I totally don't have a problem with GLP1 being used properly I really don't I totally I can see how they would really benefits some people who have tried everything and this is the only thing they can do that can at least help the process in that it helps on their journey. But they also still need the

wraparound. Yeah. They still need to be told, you know, they need to be encouraged to move their bodies a bit more. Not saying extreme, but a bit. They need to understand how to eat in a, in a way that is going to be more nutrient dense. They need these, they need that. And not everybody's getting that either. My biggest worry is when you're suppressing someone's appetite in that way, there needs to be that education around, okay, well, actually every single calorie that you, you really need to make those calories count now, you know, otherwise you're going to see the issues with your gut health. We don't have vast amounts of data on their use and healthy weight individuals, but that's where a lot of them are being used. Yeah. And I think that's my concern too. Like,

we don't have any data on that. Like the long-term use, even in the obese population, we don't have the long-term studies. We don't have like a 17-year study of how this affects them. So, like, yes, it's heralded as this wonder product, but actually I think it's going to cause us more problems in the long run. Yeah. And I feel really scared. You know, especially now that I'm starting to see it in my clinic,

I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. Like, quite literally, I am an, you know, and I am an experienced practitioner. and I don't know how to encourage someone to come off these GLP ones because when I would, when I suggest it, they're like, but I don't want my aesthetic to change. They can't, they literally have been put into, in some cases, medical anorexia because their cognition has been so impacted by the weight loss. They cannot see they are not healthy.

In their mind, they're healthy because they look a certain way. You know, their abs are on show, but actually they are really unwell. Gosh, that is so challenging because you can't, yeah, you can't restrict that access either. No. We're going to come on to a section called buy or bye bye. Yes. I'm going to show you something and you're going to tell me whether you would metaphorically buy or say bye bye-bye. Yeah.

As in goodbye to these things. We've started with GLP ones. Definitely bye-bye. Bye-bye. Okay. 100%. Any cases where, because the only rule of. by or bye bye is we love nuance. We love balance. We love nuance. So feel free to give your like caveats.

Definitely. I think, you know, when it's used legitimately in the right population group, it can be of benefit, but it still needs that education around it and it can't be a long, long term solution. You can't just expect someone to stay on this forever. Then, you know, that's not, that's not a solution. Okay. Fitness track is. I'm going to say, it's a difficult one, isn't it? I'm not a big fan of fitness trackers, so I'm probably going to say bye-bye. Yeah. But with the caveat that there are certain metrics that can be useful. So, for example, I think things like HRV can be really helpful in terms of helping people

stay accountable if they listen to it. You know, because HRV is a really useful tool in understanding how well your autonomic nervous system is responding to stress. So if it's very low, that's kind of telling you. that your body's not recovering and needs a bit of a break, needs a bit of rest, and probably isn't the best thing to go and do that high rock session. But it's whether people listen to that or not. But in terms of kind of all the other information that they provide you,

there is no way that a fitness tracker can tell you how many calories you've burnt and how many calories you've consumed because it's just impossible. And for those who don't know what HRV is? heart rate variability. So it's the time between heartbeats. So it's basically, like I said, measuring your autonomic nervous system, which is really important. I think it's probably the most overlooked part of the human body is our automatic nervous system. I don't think people understand it or use it to the extent that it should be used because it picks up on everything. It is quite literally our threat detector. There's a lot of content on social media that's nervous system regulation, nervous system regulation. I think, and a lot of it is, you know, rubbish. A lot of it is like cortisol phase. If you understand your autonomic nervous system, you understand nervous system regulation.

Like that's, you know, and I think you can just by learning the basics, there's a lot of knowledge to apply. 100%. And I think going just to kind of to add a little bit to that, when you're working with people who are restricting their energy intake or they're over-training and under-recovering,

this distorts our interception. which is a big part of the autonomic nervous system. So, you know, when people say to me, oh, I just never feel hungry or I don't know when I'm hungry, it's like, no, you've just distorted your interception, which means your autonomic nervous system is not regulated. I feel like we should be teaching this in schools. The classic metaphor of as much as I hate it,

if a lion was chasing after us, we would, you know, you either get killed by the lion or you run away, and then your body can relax. You have this relaxation. you know but in this world where we are constantly stimulated maybe we live in cities we are working we're doing coffee number two of the day we don't have that that fork in the road of either lion eats us or we get to rest we are go go go go go go go go we record for eight hours like in one day we never used to do a lunch break on the recording day it's just my old assistant used to book in the guests back to back but I never used to get hungry I never used to get hungry so I do podcast guest, podcast guest, podcast guest, we'd go from half 10 to 6. And I'd like, I didn't get hungry at all. Yeah, because I was in like fight or flight the entire day. Yeah. It's probably the most powerful lesson. I, even as a doctor, the most powerful lessons that I've learned as a,

about my body. Yeah. And I think social media is our modern day threat. Yeah. It's our lion. Yeah. You know, if you think about the amount of time we can spend on there and, and the activation that occurs in you, like I know, again, I know there are certain things that get me to become active in. I think, I'm not doing enough. I'm not being productive enough. I'm not achieving enough. And I have to kind of go, whoa, this is okay. We are okay. We are safe. We don't, we don't have to be doing what everybody else is doing. But I mean, again, I have that knowledge and I have that ability. But I think so many people don't. I do work with them. But I do choose to swear a week because it doesn't have a screen on it.

And I think that I actually find that beneficial. And I don't check my who very often. Maybe I'll check it a couple of times a week. So I'm not someone who, like, every single morning I check my sleep score. Because I don't think that's helpful either. But I think like every maybe a couple of times a week, I'll check in with my HRV. See how recovered, how rested I appear to be.

But one of the best things that I found is it looks at like your stress. So you can spot your. peaks in stress. So when I had my phone stolen in London, you could literally see the point where my phone got stolen because my stress just, it was probably my highest stress. But also, if I watched a horror film before bed, you could see my stress spiking. So I do think those insights I find really useful because now I know, okay, Faye, if you watch a horror film before bed, you're probably not going to sleep that well because you're spiking your stress. But also, interestingly, what you said about you go on your phone

and you see something that triggers you and sparks that fight or flight of, oh, I'm not doing enough. Someone I know put up a story of like this boy that I was seeing like six years ago who maybe wasn't the nicest to me. And I saw that and again, my stress, my stress spiked. So I think, yeah, fitness trackers,

they've got their flaws. Yeah. But you're right, noticing maybe what your triggers are. for your nervous system can be beneficial. Totally. And I think, yeah, I mean, I'm not. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Right now for a limited time, everyone's part of the

Buick team, even you. Buick's employee pricing for you event is on now. Get a purchase credit of up to $3,168 on a 2026 Buick Envision. Surround yourself with signature Buick refinement from an available massaging driver's seat to an expansive panoramic moonroof and a stunning ultra-wide 30-inch diagonal screen. Don't miss Buick. Eweek's employee pricing for you event. Visit buick.ca for more details. Here to like demonize everything at all, but I just think you have to be really careful. That the where I think it becomes problematic, like with anything, is when it starts to dictate how you live your life, right?

You know, like you said about sleep, I think ultimately if you can't wake up and go, I had a bad night's sleep and you need to look at something to tell you with you but a bad night's sleep, I think that's like we're losing. I think my worry is we're losing sight of our actual. interception, which is something that we're born with. And that means we're becoming more and more and more reliant on external validation and external cues. And for me, that is dangerous because then you lose sight of actually what is going on for you and what do you need? You know, so few people seem to actually understand what their needs are and then don't meet

their needs. And that might be that you need sleep or you need another jumper or, you know, you need to go and use a bathroom or whatever. But actually, actually, they're really important cues. And I think that's what we've got to be careful about is that nothing is ever going to be as optimal, I don't think, as a human body. The human body is so incredible. The more I have worked with humans,

the more I have understood humans, the more, like, the more I realize we are, we are so lucky that we have this incredible feat of engineering, really. and it's got everything. You know, it's got homestatic control. It's got this, you know, this threat detector. It's got everything we need. And yet we spend so much of our life trying to control it rather than listen to it.

And if you take a step back and think about, you know, humans before we had all these external features that kind of all this tech or whatever you want to call it, data even, you know, our bodies have always known how to give birth. Our bodies have always known how to have sex. Our bodies have always known, like, when it's the right time for a boy or a girl to go through puberty. So why are we controlling our bodies when actually they know what to do for us? And we just have stopped listening. Yeah. Yeah. We've kind of gone into this, you know, this kind of era of health optimization.

Well, actually, your body can probably do that for you. Yeah. You've just got to learn to listen. Electrolites. So again, and not an easy one to just say bye-bye. I think they have become very trendy. Obviously, as a sports dietitian, there are definitely scenarios and situations where electrolytes are really important.

So, you know, when I'm working with athletes, when they're doing long races or if they're kind of doing a lot of training indoors, particularly in the temperatures we've had recently, then electrolytes can be really helpful. But do you need an electrolyte every morning if you're not physically very active? Probably not. maybe last week when it was a heat wave, perhaps, maybe, but fundamentally it's not something that you need daily. Am I ashamed to admit the wedding prep has started? No, I'm not, but I do want to share one of

my favourite products I've been using to get my skin in the best condition possible. This is the La Roche Pose Sick Plast repair balm, which I'm sure you've probably seen recommended by the skincare goleys on TikTok. It's an ultra-repairing, thick, soothing cream that helps repair the skin barrier and is enriched with 5% vitamin B5, aka panthenol. It speeds up the natural recovery process of damaged skin, and I use it for two main things. One, to help with dry and irritated skin, and two, any scarring on the skin. I will pop some links in the notes so that you can try it for yourself. We've had a dietitian on previously who had quite a strong stance on electrolytes.

And I'm quite strong on my stance with electrolytes as well. I think that the marketing has just gone way too far. However, last week, I was chugging them. I was chugging them. We got so much stick on the clip of those slagging off electrolytes. When I was marathon training, loved electrolytes. Last week, loved electrolytes. But the marketing that tells you you should be having a packet of electrolytes every day.

Absolutely not. Yeah. Ridiculous. Absolutely. Unless you've got some certain conditions like parts or, you know, but the vast majority of individuals, you don't need a bag of electrolytes if you've woken up and your pee smelly. Like what, yeah.

Just drink some water. Drink some water. Drink some water. Tracking macros. For me, this is an absolute bye-bye. This is a no-no. Like, it is not necessary. It is, again, providing you with this false insecurity that you're getting it right.

And it can feed into things like orthorexia, which is, you know, that obsession with eating correctly, which can go very wrong. So for me, it's a big no-no. Like, again, I go back to listen to your body. It will tell you, you think you look at toddlers. And I mean, I've obviously had firsthand experience of being a mother and watching children grow up. But I remember my girls, like they were very, very clear on what they were going to eat and what they were not going to eat. Even though I was trying to give them a nice balanced diet, but there were definitely weeks where it's like, I am not going to eat any bread.

I'm just going to eat the cheese. And then there are weeks when it's, I'm just going to eat the bread. I don't want the cheese, right? That's their bodies telling them what they need. They need more calcium, they need more protein, and they were following that. They also know when they've had enough. Have you noticed that? With kids, they know when to turn their head.

They know when they've had enough. Again, we are all born with that ability. And I think tracking macros is, again, just another fitness trend that a lot of people who don't actually understand humans and human physiology will push to make money. And I, again, I have seen the absolute negative consequences how this, this particular act can basically put people into a massive deficit and then cause them huge problems. So for me, it's a definite bye-bye. So I've had my issues with Ian. And when I decided, right, okay, Faye, we need to get a hold of this now.

This is not like healthy. You're just constantly in binge restrict, binge restrict, binge restrict, binge restrict. So went to therapy for the binging. Part of the process of like trying to get better was removing the restriction, you know? That resulted in several months where I was just binging after binging after binging, put on fairly significant weight because I was also trying to work through these foods that I'd put as like banned foods, bad foods. Like one of the first binges I can like vividly remember was going to the Tesco Express getting

a loaf of olive bread and just literally in a whole loaf of this olive bread and butter, absolutely delicious. Although, but like I devoured the whole loaf and I wasn't full. Like, I didn't feel full and it just felt like I went months and months and months where nothing made me feel full. I felt like a bottomless pit. I just could eat and eat and eat. And at the time I was at uni and deliveries flowing, it probably wasn't the most nutritious

food. It sometimes feels in the current food climate that food is engineered to interrupt our society signals. This is a conversation that like you have to have quite delicately because I don't, I don't want to bash ultra-process foods because I think there's a lot of polarisation around ultra-processed foods. But there's an undeniable effect that, if you're eating less processed foods, you will get full quicker than if you eat processed foods. So I guess my question is, do you think it's possible to eat intuitively and maintain a healthy, nourished body in today's food climate? I do. I think it's multifactorial. So I think we've already done.

sort of touched on that binge eating disorder, there's an emotional element to that as well as a physiological element. And I think, again, when I'm working with people in this position, we have to tackle both sides. So from a physiological point of view, we have to help regulate their eating. And then emotionally, they have to start recognizing what are the feelings they're unwilling to feel that is causing the override in the physiology, I guess. So it's important to kind of explain that. And I think if you start to understand your relationship with food, and I think also when you start removing that deprivation mentality,

but also when you do stop, when you start to remove the labels, as soon as you say something's bad, you're going to want it. Yeah. Right? Whereas if you just say, okay, I can have this whenever I want. And I know it's not as simple as that. It's not as it, but you kind of have to show your body that actually I can have, I don't know, let's say dessert and nothing bad happens.

And so I think eating disorder recovery particularly is very, very complicated. It's not, it's really not an intellectual or a talking therapy only process. I think there's some benefit to that, but fundamentally it is a somatic response. Our relationship with food is usually around. protection. It's protecting us from something and you have to kind of understand, well, what is that somatic response that I am trying to protect myself from? What's that vulnerable part of me? And it's often shame, but it can also be, you know, criticism. It can be rejection. It can be abandonment. It can be so many different things. And once you've started to understand that,

I think that's a really big step in recovery. I'm not saying it's the be all and end of, but it's the big step. You're right. We have a lot of food available. And not all food is nutrient dense. And I tend to think about food in that way, like nutrient dense or non-nutrient dense. But that doesn't mean that I can never have non-nutrient dense foods, you know. I'm very happy to have an ice cream or I'm very happy to have a glass of wine or whatever it might be.

I think the whole ultra-processed foods, again, is very confusing. It's not very nuanced. The arguments and the conversations are not nuanced. So, you know, I like to describe. processed foods by using an example of crisps because ready salted crisps are not ultra-processed, whereas chili-flavored crisps are ultra-processed, right? Reason being, you can make ready-salted crisps in a domestic kitchen, whereas you can't make chili-flavored crisps in a domestic kitchen because of the additional

ingredient that creates the chili that is, it's that ingredient that's processed, as in it has to go through several types of processing to create that flavouring. So it's really important to get this across because I think people have decided that anything in a packet is ultra-processed and that is problematic and we can't eat it. But actually, there's lots of foods that would be deemed ultra-process that are really important and particularly we don't all come from middle-class backgrounds. You know, there are lots of people on the poverty line and they have to eat and they have to find ways of eating. as best they can. So actually, you know, from my point of view, sometimes like whole meal sliced supermarket bread gets such a bad press.

And yet we know there's a massive study that shows the whole grain component of that bread is actually a health benefit. But again, nobody talks about that because everybody is obsessed. And I think, again, it's hard. I mean, like I said, I'm a dietitian that has come from a very varied background. I grew up in a working-class family. It wasn't easy. But my mum did generally, you know, create food from scratch

because that was how you made curries. But I think it's really important to recognise that there are lots of people giving advice on nutrition. I tend to call these individuals lifestyle nutritionists because they all look perfect. They all live a perfect life. They have a very idealised view. of what nutrition should be.

But that's usually because they haven't had the experience. I worked at St. George's in Tooting. I then worked at Kings in Camberwell. Like really diverse population groups. You had to make nutrition practical. Accessible. And accessible for these individuals. You can't start telling them to have avocados on toast

when they don't even know what an avocado is. Like, you know, it's like it's really important that we make food simple and we make food practical. and we make it accessible to everyone. And I think sometimes this conversation about UFPs really does start to create this hierarchy that somehow, it's a bit like clean eating. Yeah.

It's almost like, yeah, totally. You can't eat this because you're no, that's not clean. And so somehow you're bad if you eat that. And that's really problematic from my point of view. So to answer your question, yes, I think absolutely we have ever. that if we can eat as wholly as possible, if we can make foods from scratch as much as possible, yes, we tend to be more satisfied

and we tend to be healthier. But actually, bake beans on toast is still a really balanced nutrient-dense meal that is cheap and accessible to lots of people and should not be demonised because it's got the pulses component there from a gut health point of view. got the whole grain, again from a gut health point of view, it's got the lycopene in the tomato

sauce, but it's not, yeah, it's not your plush kind of, you know, I'm even stuck for an example, but it's not, it's not, you know, it's not your kind of gourmet food. So I think there's a bigger conversation around that, but absolutely, if you choose to eat as nutrient dense as you can with the odd bit of non-nutrient dense food because that's really important from a novelty piece as well and we all need novelty for our well-being then yes you can eat healthily and normally one of the best things that help me on my journey with my disordered relationship with food was I always have a bar of chocolate in the house always and that was one of my like fear foods one of my bad foods.

And I remember when I first started having it in the house, I would demolish a bar. Like, I demolish it all in one go. And I couldn't be trusted if you're listening on audio. I'm doing quotation marks. Like, I couldn't be trusted. Now I have a bar of Tonys in my house at all times. Some days I'll go through the whole bar in one sitting,

and that is absolutely fine. Last night, I made my partner go to the shop and get me a bar at Tony's because there was no Tony's in the house. And I sat there and I had like three squares and I was like, okay, that's made me feel like enough and that's fine. And that is part of a broader healthy diet where I'll have, you know, hopefully three square nutritious meals in the day. That's what brings me joy. And that's and has really, really, really, really helped me with, with balancing my relationship with food. Obviously, this is a women's health podcast and we are actually going to come on to your specialty of actually, you know, talking about the girlies. But I'm interested to know how many men you work with because I think that tracking macros there's so many men that I've met who I see a lot of the same features of disorderly in that I had but the male version seems to be tracking macros so I'd love to know what if you've noticed any patterns in men definitely working with men and women is actually they're very different men are very data driven so I'm not

saying women are not, but men are very data-driven. They want a lot of certainty. So this is why I think they like the macros because in their mind, they'll be like, if you tell me how many grams of protein I need, how many grams of carbs I need, how many calories I need, then I'll just do it. And I can do, I can, you know, I can get on board with someone's very, very active, then yes, absolutely, we know that from a sports nutrition point of view, we do work in grams per kilo, particularly of things like carbohydrates and protein and family. And family. to a certain degree because it does help to ensure that we're providing the body with the nutrition that it requires to do the activity that they're going to participate in. The calorie bit's

really problematic for me because, you know, calories are not equal, but also calories are really, really inaccurate. Because if you think about, like, this science that came out way before I was a student, and let's face it, you know, I've been a dieting for a long time. And this science, that came out as never been challenged. And we think about food, the calorie value of food, the way in which it was calculated was you put 100 grams of this food into a calorometer, you burnt it, and that was the energy that was yielded from it.

That's what the calorie value is. Except humans are not calorometers, right? We are complex beings with multiple processes going on internally, and there's a lot of foods we cannot digest food. which means we do not get that full requirement. So one of the biggest mistakes I see when people are tracking, particularly they're tracking calories, is that they count every single thing,

including all the fiber that is not digestible, which is really important, but it's not digestible. So it's not delivering energy. So in the sports world and the fitness world that I work in, often people are counting like the carbohydrate from vegetables, for example, but that's not delivering the, energy to their muscles. And this is why so many people end up in low energy availability and then potentially into reds because it's just an inaccuracy. And this is why I said to you like

counting calories is is completely pointless. Why even using your fitness tracker to count calories is pointless because you just don't know. I always use this as an example. About three years ago I went to Nepal to do a trail race, like a stage race. And the final day it'd come and we had to get back to Kathmandu, but the flight we were meant to get was cancelled, which is always the way in Nepal, but that was fine. So we ended up all in jeeps. And I sat in this Jeep for six hours to get back to Kathmandu. So didn't do any movement whatsoever. Two hours into the ride, my watch told me that I'd done 10,000 steps, right? It's really important. I'm not saying don't have your watches, don't have your, but just be really mindful that these products are sold to us.

And actually, they're not always as accurate as we believe them to be. So by all means, use them as a crude value. But please don't be like wedded to them because they will potentially give you inaccuracies. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.

Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Ice baths. I don't really have an opinion on this that much. I mean, the science chops and changes. I mean, I was out in the lakes at the weekend and we did go for a nice cold dip and it was just very refreshing. I think there's a difference between like cold dips and wild swimming and an ice bath. Generally speaking from what I understanding of the latest literature is that there's not really any benefit from a post, you know, post training point of view. It's probably not going to do much for you from an inflammatory point of view.

But I think there's a lot of benefit to wild swimming, which we're seeing more. and more evidence for that. So slightly different, but so I guess it's a bye-bye. Yeah. Yeah. Creatine for women. Yeah, so this is an interesting one for me because as someone who has sort of followed the journey of creatine, and obviously it's a supplement that I have used with athletes in the past,

but generally speaking in people who do repeated sprint type activity. So I do use it like I use it with my ballet dancers. I've used it with gymnasts. I've used it with hockey players. football players, I've never used it in the endurance world because there just hasn't been enough evidence to use it. And there still really isn't enough evidence to use it from an endurance point of view.

However, most people that participate in endurance activity will probably do shorter interval type training as well for their overall endurance. So there may be some benefit from that point of view. But creating specifically for women, and I'm going to say this as a perimenopausal woman, is that actually there is some very good literature and emerging evidence that it can be very helpful. Particularly, you know, we're at the stage of life where our lean muscle mass can decrease,

especially if, you know, even if you are being active, it can still decrease. But also there's been some really good evidence around how it can help from the sort of brain fog cognitive point of view. So I'm going to say, yes, we'll buy that. I think we still need more evidence on all women. Yeah. But particularly the perimenopausal demographic, there are definitely some benefits. Have you read much on the literature about women with endometriosis? I haven't and I'm going to be honest about that, mainly because it's not something that comes into my clinic that often.

But I know that there's been a lot of research, like they're looking at it from a menstrual cycle point of view. Again, the dosing, the protocols we don't have yet. So until that is clear cut, I probably wouldn't advise it. We kind of need that before we can say, yep, absolutely. This is how I would use it. I'd also say you do need to be careful, woman or male, because I have had, and I'm going to put this out there, I have had athletes, particularly, I would say male athletes who are taking mega doses.

And actually they have ended up with real issues like blood in their urine and problems, probably because it has put quite a big load on the kidneys. I'm assuming, I mean, I don't, you know, but it could be the combination. A bit like we say with anti-inflammatories and endurance exercise that you shouldn't get them together because of the pressure on the kidneys, I wonder if there's something on that. If you've done a very high intensity training load and you've taken a mega dose of creatine, I can imagine that being potentially problematic. So I think just be careful.

And with the perimenopause, it is a low dose. It's not a big, massive dose. It's like three to five grams daily. Yeah. So it's not really an issue from that point of view. What do you think are the biggest misunderstandings women have about their eating? I think, I mean, we've talked about some of it already. I think the biggest issue is women don't understand just how much nutrition,

particularly how much energy they do need. And I think the narrative has always been move more, eat less. And I think the other thing is that a lot of women participate in sport or activity, usually for an aesthetic outcome, whereas actually when you start participating sport for performance, you really have to pay attention. And I'm not saying that you should, that I'm not agreeing with women taking up sport

from an aesthetic point of view. But I think that is the problem. And then that obviously feeds into the fear, particularly when it comes to carbohydrate. And I think there are nutrition approaches which are very focused on the fibre content of food and pushing fibre from a gut health point of view. but not recognizing that when you've got very active women,

they do need carbohydrate. And, you know, one of the things that I've really struggled with is this whole glucose monitoring sort of trend. And again, you're a doctor, so you'll have more understanding than me to a certain degree. But blood sugar is not just controlled by food. You know, blood sugar is controlled by our hormones. Blood sugar can be affected by being de facto.

hydrated, it can be affected by stress. Yeah. Right? Like when you're stressed, you get a massive peak. And even when you're exercising, it changes. So when you first start exercising, you will absolutely see a rise in your blood glucose because that is, that is what physiology does. It basically releases glucose into the bloodstream to then direct it to the muscles that need it.

Yeah. It is not problematic. Also, it's really not problematic if our blood glucose sits outside of the normal range. every now and again. Yeah. Like we know this. So from my point of view, this obsession with rigorous blood glucose control is really, really problematic and very unhealthy and has once again resparked the whole demonizing

of carbohydrate, particularly for women. Yeah. And I think, you know, women who are physically active. And I'm not talking necessarily about women and running marathons. I'm just talking about if you are somebody who participates in activity on a regular basis, you do need carbohydrate. We also know that generally speaking, our brain needs carbohydrates. So it should never really be off the table at all.

So for me, that's the biggest misconception is that women don't need carbs or women should do fasted training or all these things are just literally setting you up to fail and to cause your body way more problems in the long run. Another healing experience for my relationship with food was training for a marathon and having to eat four. white bagels before going out for my long run because you need a quick release carb you know like I love a whole grain as much as the next girl but if you're doing these long stints of

activity you want quick release carbs which is what we've been told time and time again and not good for us in certain circumstances they're not just good for us they are the best way of delivering the carbs to our bodies I want to get into the glucose monitors because I have gone back and forth a little bit on my opinion. My first opinion when they came out is I thought this is ridiculous. Your pancreas is there for a reason. Your pancreas are inbuilt glucose monitor. However, my opinion shifted slightly when I had a couple of lectures on my women's health

masters talking about insulin resistance, not just in PMOS or formerly PCOS, but actually how blood sugar issues. might be under-recognised in a lot of women as a component for mood changes. Obviously, there is PMOS where we know that there are issues with blood sugar regulation. But actually, there is a spectrum on which all of our blood sugar regulation sits. And there may be an under-recognition of women

who struggle with blood sugar regulations to some degree and that shifted my perspective slightly. I spoke to a doctor who we were talking about some of symptoms I experienced pre-menstrually and she basically said to me, try and do a blood sugar monitor just for a week. Not all, not forever, just do it for a week and just take no and see if there's any patterns you notice

with like your mood, your energy levels, you know, stress certain foods that you're eating and then take it off and never use it again. And so then that shifted my perspective slightly. I never did it. That's somewhere on my to-do list. And I think maybe it plays into my understanding that women's health concerns have been dismissed

and not fully taken seriously. And maybe that is a role for blood sugar in some of the symptoms we experience. But what I'd love to know is what's been your experience clinically. Are there downsides or abuses that happen with the continuous bloodshunds? sugar monestrone. Yeah, I think from my perspective, it's just created more anxiety, like real anxiety, because again, people start to have this kind of belief that their numbers have to be so tightly controlled. And like I said, we have got really good data, like big whole population

data that demonstrates that people who don't have diabetes can actually sit outside the kind of normal range of five to seven on several occasions, not for like hours and hours and hours, but, you know, for longer periods of time without any negative health consequences. I think the problem I have with continuously monitoring our glucose is, like I said earlier, is so many things influence it. We know our hormones influence our blood glucose. Like that's, we know that, like particularly in the luteal phase of our menstrual cycle, we know that when progesterone is dominant and particularly for some, women who will have higher releases of progesterone. So again, this is the other thing is that

we're all so different and our thresholds are different. So some women will have very high levels of progesterone that's released, you know, in their blood around, well, post ovulation in that luteal phase. So that massive spike of progesterone will cause them way more problems than another woman who doesn't have that. She has a peak, but it's just not as high and she's not as sensitive. So I think we, like, to a certain degree, it's interesting because I know there's been lots of like discussions around should we, how should we eat around our menstrual cycle. And to date, there is no clear evidence to suggest that we need to eat differently around our menstrual cycle. However, what I always say is that what we are learning more and more and

more is how our hormones, and I'm talking about all hormones, but yeah, our reproductive hormones in particular, how they have actually quite a big impact on our brain. And a lot of them are, like, estrogen is a big neurotransmitter. So we know they have a really big influence in also how we feel. And the, and like, again, going back to emotions and the physical symptoms. And, you know, estrogen has this kind of like stimulating effect whereas progesterone tends to have a little bit more of a sort of calming effect but sometimes if it's really like really high and it has to come right back down again that can again the body will pick up on that that will pick up on that kind of stress

I don't know again if you track your HRV you probably might notice that you get a real low midway through your cycle probably when you're ovulating because your body sees that as a stress. And similarly, just before you get your period, the body says that's a stress. Now, you might not recognize as a stress, but that's your body trying to communicate with you. It's picking up on the threat. So I think it's, I would never prescribe eating around the menstrual cycle, but I will always say that we need to appreciate that the body is not simple. It goes back to we cannot control it. And again, that measuring of blood glucose feeds into this, I can control every aspect.

Sometimes our blood sugars need to go up. Yeah. You know, and again, I just, I want to point out something from an endurance point of view again, again, it often gets missed, is that people who participate in endurance exercise will often run slightly higher HBA 1Cs. And that doesn't mean that they are pre-diabetic. That does not mean that they have PMOS. It is because they are exercising regularly, which means there was a slightly higher glucose in

their bloodstream anyway because the blood, you know, because glucose is being transferred to all the muscles. But also they tend to have the kind of disruption in their red blood cell removal. So you get quite a lot of like what we call dead red blood cells, but they're providing this slightly miscalculation of reading, which is why the HBA1C is useful, but it's not, it should not be the only indicator of insulin resistance because it could actually be telling you something else. And I know so many people who are runners who do endurance sport or triathletes or cyclists whose HBA 1C is slightly higher than it than they think it should be and they go into panic mode because they've been told warm it. They must be pre-diabetic. And yet you look at them,

you know, you look at their lifestyle and you're like, there is absolutely no way you are pre-diabetic. You know, I had a, I had a woman, she was a slightly older lady, but she was a really, she'd been cycling her whole life, done loads of long-distance cycling. And she was told by her GP that her HBA1C was high and that she needs to cut out all sugary products. So she did. And then she ended up basically in low energy availability with Reds, no energy to do the sport she wanted to do. So when she came to me, it was like I had to unpick all of that. Now, this is the problem in going back to kind of what we talked about way at the beginning.

There's a real, there's a real disparity between kind of clinical knowledge and sports nutrition or sports science. And bridging that gap is going to take a lot more than just me. But it's really important that we recognize that, you know, when you have active individuals, they are very different to a sedentary population group. And so the information that they're consuming, they also need. So even like, you know, people who are listening to this, they need to recognize if you are someone that fits in the active population group, the information that is being put out there from a public health perspective or from, as I call the lifestyle nutritionists that maybe like make things look pretty, but they don't deliver the nutrition you need, you have to remember that your lifestyle is maybe not relevant in these.

conversations. So I would never ever encourage anyone who's physically active to think about using a glucose monitor because it's going to be distorted because of the nature of being active and how you have to eat around that activity. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, Join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.

Visit BetMDM casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Sense remind you to play response. I'm 15 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge.

BetMGEM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I think the biggest issue that we are facing, well, we are even beyond the current food climate that we're living in, is people aren't moving their bodies, you know? Well, I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because it's, and I guess it does, again, depend on where you sit. I think we have two extremes. We have the extreme, absolutely, the sedentary population,

who also make poor lifestyle choices, totally agree. But then we have got another massive extreme of people overdoing it, training like professional athletes, not really eating appropriately, not resting enough. And that's another extreme. And we've got very few people who are in the middle. It's the same with body image, right? We have extremes. We have the obese population or the overweight population where people are like,

there's so much stigma and shame around that. And people are fearful of being there. But then you've got the other end of the spectrum where you've got people like prancing around in crop tops and tiny shorts with their abson show. suggesting that that's healthy and yet majority of these people don't have menstrual cycles. Their body fat percentage is so low that they're not healthy.

And a normal body size, you know, like a normal female body fat percentage, lies somewhere between 21 and 30% depending on your age. We know that when the women that come to my clinic who have hypothermic aminorrhea as a result of usually underfueling and overtraining and not recovering enough,

we know that the majority of them will need to be a body fat percentage, a minimum of 21%. That's not just from my work. That is in the research. You look at all the research and it says it very clearly that 21% seems to be the minimum

body fat percentage for women to be fertile. And that's still very lean. But women are, they're refusing that. They're like, they're not accepting it because it doesn't fit with the social ideals that we have around fitness. And so, you know, and I have this conversation, even in the athletic world, you know,

if you listen to some of the, the, the male athletes that have been around, like you listen to Laura Kenny, you listen to Victoria Pendleton, they were, they had really difficult experiences. They've all been very open about their experiences in, in their sports.

But I think a lot of the problem is, is it goes back to probably what you've discussed, so many times on this podcast is that women's health has been overlooked. There's not enough science in women. We're seen as like, you know, oh, well, we'll just extrapolate the data from white trained men. And so this is also what's happened in the world of sport. Women have been told they need to be these ridiculous low body fat percentages that has

caused them then to, yeah, get a couple of great performances. But then they disappear because it's not sustainable. You know, we don't have any evidence. to suggest that being a low body fat percentage actually improves performance. In fact, what we know is that having more muscle mass can create more power, can create more strength, and that seems to be the actually

that kind of identifying factor in what is going to potentially improve performance. But we just sit here, we cover it all up because nobody is willing to say, actually, we need to rethink this and we need to stop. We need to stop punishing women. When we push back against our natural genetic body type, we basically create more suffering. You know, you've been very open about your journey, but you think about that.

The more you pushed back against what was where your body naturally wanted to be, the more they probably increased your suffering. Was when you just finally went, okay, fine. This is where my body naturally wants to be. And actually, now it's probably a lot easier for you to stay here because it's where your body naturally wants. to be. Yeah, yeah. And that, like, that for me is so important that we get that message out, that everybody has a genetic place where their body naturally wants.

But yes, you can probably fine tune it a little bit. Yes, you can probably get a little bit more toned if you want to. But it's, but to be healthy, to find full fulfillment in life, to have joy, these punishing regimens are never going to be the answer. And chasing a body aesthetic, will never, ever make you happy, ever. Like, I'm for four foot 11. Like, I naturally have, like, quite, like, bigger thighs, bigger hips.

And, you know, I spent my whole teenage years, almost chasing the body of, like, a tall, slim model. I'm not going to grow. I'd lose weight, put it back on, lose weight, put it back on. But the problem is, is when you're unhappy with your body, losing the weight doesn't fix that. You lose the weight and you're chasing another goal. You're still unhappy, like, you have to,

comfortable in your own skin. But more importantly, you've mentioned three words. I really want to nail down, define. Hypoththalmic ameneria, low energy availability, and redness. Okay.

So what are they? Yeah. And what are the signs the goonies should be looking out for? Okay. We'll start with low energy availability. That is basically when there's not enough energy in the body to support both like movement

and biological function. And biological function means like hormonal health, digestive health, circulatory system. The body will always try and protect the brain and the heart. But even that can then become sort of downregulated, the longer low energy availability goes on. And the thing that's tricky with low energy availability is that the human body will always prioritize energy for movement. So you don't always recognize you're in it

because you don't always lose weight, right? So low energy availability is when we basically know there's not enough energy left over once the body has used what it needs for movement. And when there's not enough energy available, then it starts to shut down these biological processes. So how it's a bit like when your smartphone goes into kind of like power saving. Yeah. Yeah. It just kind of starts to kind of like shut things down. And the way in which it does it will be different from person to person. So some women may notice that their menstrual cycle changes. It's usually the most common sign in women

because, you know, we have been put on this earth to reproduce and it's a very sensitive system. So if it's under threat where there's not enough energy and the body is under stress, then it tends to be one of the first things that it does shut down. But it doesn't have to be the only thing. But also things like, you know, digestive system becomes very slow.

So people often have what's known as gastroporesis, but again they tend to confuse it with irritable bowel syndrome. But actually it is gastroporesis, which is that very slow movement of food through the gut because it's just not enough energy to do it. You may also find, especially if you're active, that you end up with more like poor recovery. You don't adapt to your training.

So you're doing all this work, but you're not getting, maybe you're not getting the muscle definition that you should be or you're not getting faster or you're not, you know, you're not kind of seeing progress. So these are all. kind of symptoms of low energy availability. Hypothamic aminaria is one of those symptoms. So this is when your period completely stops.

There's primary amenorrhea, which is obviously when a woman, if a young girl gets to 16 and she's never had a natural menstrual cycle, that would be primary aminorea. And that definitely needs to be investigated. And it's not okay to say, oh, it's just because you're active. That's not okay.

Like, no woman should not have a period, right? Full stop. So, and then secondary aminarea is when, so you've had a normal menstrual cycle, but for some reason it stops. And we have to look at why that can be. There can be lots of other medical causes for that, but generally speaking, low energy availability and under recovery are two things that can absolutely cause hypothermic aminorea, or being too low body fat percentage or being too low in body weight. So all of these things can contribute to hypothamic aminorea. And obviously the main concern about hypothermic aminorrhea is obviously you're not producing estrogen. And that can then start to have a negative impact on so many areas, but particularly bone health, which is then problematic.

And Reds is kind of like, it's the term we use for the presentation of the issue. So low energy availability can happen for quite a long period of time before symptoms become available. because the body's really good at being in survival mode. So it will do its best to keep you going for as long as possible. Reds tends to be this kind of collection of symptoms. So usually, yeah, menstrual cycle has stopped. Usually there's like bone stress injury. There could be more like nerve, like peripheral nerve type damage.

There could be, I mean, worst cases, it can even be like cardiac output related. Like it can affect any part of the body and also several parts at the same time. And how it presents is very different in person to person. But the biggest mistake I see is people believing that if they're in Reds, then surely they'd be like underweight. And that doesn't always happen. But what I will say is Reds is often associated with disordered eating and eating disorders. But Reds, so it's like low energy availability underpins Reds.

But one of the things we're seeing more and more, because this message is getting through and people are realising they need to eat a bit more if they're doing lots, but what they're not recognising is that you also need rest. And with so many people trying to do more, more,

not really resting enough, not regulating, all of this is then leading to reds, which takes a long time to recover from. And again, I want to make people understand it's not as simple as I can, I'll just take a few weeks off and I'll eat a bit more

and I'll turn this around. like the human body, this is where the nervous system has really done its job. It has absolutely gone. We are under threat. We are not happy. We are going to turn everything off. And it's going to need time to feel safe. And only when the body feels safe will it then start to recover.

Really, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. You're a fountain of wisdom. It's incredible. Time for the last question that we ask all our guests. And that is what do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25? I think what I hope most women will learn is that you don't need to keep chasing. You know, like I think we are in this very hyper achievement phase in that everybody feels they have to achieve to be seen as successful. And they keep moving forward and often living in the future rather than living in the future.

rather than living in the moment. And actually it's so important, like as someone who is, you know, now 50, looking back, I wish I'd known that at 25, that I'd probably end up where I wanted, where I was meant to end up without having to chase it

because that chasing has probably caused me more suffering than I realised at the time. I think that's a wonderful lesson for the listeners to take away. So thank you so, so, so, so much. Well, thank you so much for having me. really lovely. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire

and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. to chat to you