Her Discussions by Dr Faye - First Marathon? Watch This Before the Race Day (Sports Nutritionist’s Advice)

Starting point is 00:00:00 I am so against electrolytes and all the media hype, but there is only one case where I suggest use of electrolytes. Sean Sack is a leading voice in women's nutrition and an endurance runner. In this episode, we break down what on earth is going on with all these running influencer injuries, how to properly fuel yourself and why you could be harming your body without even realizing. Our hormones don't work the same as men. If you put a woman on a fasted cardio program where you're making her, intermittently fast, in three months time, I will look at her blood work and be like, oh, heck, we've got a big problem here. I'm not a fan of counting, measuring, weighing food, and I don't think

Starting point is 00:00:39 it's helpful for most people. If any of the audience can find one single person who is like a reputable scientific person who is pro-electrolites, send them my way. Anything over an hour, hour and 15, we want to be taking on a source of quick, easily digestible carbohydrates. Fasted cardio, you're not doing yourself any favours. A girl running sub four is absolutely not the same things a guy running same four. For the girlies who are scared of carbs, for the girlies who have felt the pressures of diet culture,

Starting point is 00:01:11 is there any advice that you can give them? Yeah. But first, please don't forget to subscribe or leave a five-star review. It really helps us keep bringing new guests that help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Hi, I'm Sean Sack and you're listening to her discussions podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:26 Sean, our community have sent in so many questions about running influencer injuries, energy, and how to fuel yourself properly for exercise. But first, I love starting with asking our guests what it is that brought them to this place in their career because I think there's nothing more powerful than hearing women talk about what they're passionate about. So what is your day to day and why are you so passionate about it? Honestly, any reason to talk about women fueling themselves and eating carbohydrate, I'm there for it because that's something that I'm so passionate about is actually that we have to fuel our lives for what we want out of them. And for me, that comes from a sports angle.

Starting point is 00:02:08 So I'm a sports nutritionist and I'm a Red Specialist, which is relative energy deficiency in sport. So I work with a lot of endurance athletes who are struggling to meet their energy demands, which might have ended up with them being injured or, you know, struggling just to meet what they need to go around their daily life, really, because it's not just the running. It actually impacts everything. I think that's something that people often forget when we're talking about fueling and sport is that it's not just that it is the whole life that this will affect. And I think for me, coming from a place of a background of, I was super sporty when I grew up. Like I was that kid who was on every single team just because I loved it. I loved being outside. I loved

Starting point is 00:02:48 running around. And my mum was also a dietitian. So I grew up knowing a lot about food and cooking a lot and kind of food was a big thing in our house. But then, kind of translating that and growing up, I had an athletics coach who told me if I ate a bagel every night before I went to bed, that I would be a better runner, and I just latched onto it. And honestly, if you could probably see now how much I talk about bagels, like, you know, that's where the bagel thing comes from. But yeah, it definitely kind of hooked my brain into going,

Starting point is 00:03:17 okay, there's like, there's something here. It's not just sport life. There is actually a lot more to it to get what I want out of things. I really thought that you were going to say something toxic about that coach. So when you said that he wanted you to have a bagel every night, I just, my heart, someone encouraging female athletes to eat properly, that's really lovely. And I think goes against a lot of the narratives that women are taught. Yeah, it absolutely does. And I was really lucky that I had someone being like, oh, eat more.

Starting point is 00:03:49 Because I did go on to have a pretty complicated relationship with food. And actually, my relationship with running and coming back. into it and then being able to appreciate to even more is actually something why I'm now so passionate about going and helping other people with that. Because I speak to a lot of kids and things who are going through athletics programs and actually trying to encourage them. That's such a powerful point where we can stop girls dropping out of sport. We can change the narrative of how they then go on to have a relationship with their body all through the way that we're looking at food versus fuel versus all the other layers to eating really. It's really nice

Starting point is 00:04:25 that we've got you on the podcast because as an athletic girlie who's always been athletic, because I represent the girlies who would use any excuse to get out of PE. By the time I was hitting 16, I don't think I did any of my PE lessons, you know, unless it was dodgeball, which I found quite fun. And then I got into quite like a toxic relationship with the gym. When I first started uni, I suddenly had control of what I was eating. My parents weren't feeding me food and that. I was like, oh, if I skip breakfast, suddenly I lose weight.

Starting point is 00:04:55 I'm not giving that as advice. Now I do eat breakfast every single day. And I went, oh, if I go to the gym every day, oh, I'm noticing these changes. Then what happened is I underfueled. I didn't enjoy exercise. It became really arduous for me. And I consistently, through the entirety of my life, my adult life, have gone through periods of exercising, you know, around the marathon this time last year, and then will not exercise for months. And then I will exercise consistently for a month. And then I will not exercise for months again. At this point right now, I do not think I've done any exercise for the last, other than a long walk for the last two months, which is abysmal and awful for my health and absolutely against everything I preach about on this podcast.

Starting point is 00:05:43 But where that relationship with exercise for me is complex, it's quite closely linked to my relationship with food and my body. And I do notice that when I get into a habit with my exercise and I start looking at myself in the mirror and I go, I notice these changes, I do slip back into those old habits of, you know, being more restrictive. And, you know, that's a whole other issues to impact. But the reason I brought it up in the first place was because I remember the first time that I went to the gym with my boyfriend. And my boyfriend was like, do you want a snack before the gym?

Starting point is 00:06:15 And I was like, no, I don't want a snack before the gym. And he goes, have a snack before the gym. And I was like, no, I don't want a snack before the gym. Like I had lunch. And he said, have a banana before the gym. the gym, please, Faye, have something to eat. And he just seemed a little bit, he was a bit confused and a little bit stressed. He was like, we're going to the gym in an hour or like half an hour or whatever. Have a banana. I love this from him. Yeah. And I was like, okay, Jesus, like, stop

Starting point is 00:06:41 trying to push this banana on me, Jesus. Okay, so I have this banana. And then I went to the gym, and the gym was so much more enjoyable because I had sugar in my bloodstream. I'm really excited to talk to you about techniques for the guileys who like yourself have been athletic all their lives and how they can handle handle this but also for the goolies who maybe they have this more challenging relationship with exercise and movement but before we come on to all of that wonderful stuff we have got a section called buy or bye bye now i am going to show you a product and you are going to tell me whether you would buy this product or whether you would say bye bye to it perfect so Energy gels.

Starting point is 00:07:26 Obsessed, yes, I have cupboards full. Nice. So, so important when we are doing long endurance sport. Anything over, I say, like, tend to go an hour, hour and 15. We want to be taking on a source of quick, easily digestible carbohydrates. I know energy gels get like a really bad name and sometimes people really don't like them. You can replace this with a squares bar if your cycling might be fine. Sweets, you know, drinks, lucasades.

Starting point is 00:07:54 sports drinks, but a form of carbohydrate because our bodies aren't used, well, our bodies aren't capable of keeping going and going going. So yes to energy gels. I had a funny situation with, when I was doing my London Marathon last year. And one of my consultants that I worked for, she was not ultra-gurly. She was an ultra-goorly. She was a quick runner. I say girly. She was a middle-aged woman, you know? And she said, Faye, if you don't like gels, I've got these sweets that I really like personally. So she sent me the Amazon link and I bought these gels and I went on my long run and I had like one of these sweets. So I was doing every five kilometres. Is that about every half an hour? Yeah, we're aiming to

Starting point is 00:08:33 hit at least 50 to 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour. So depending on what you're using, whether it's gels or sweets, it's actually looking at the grams of carbs and going, okay, how do I then translate this into how many do I need and how often do I need them? So that's a really important point from Sean that I could have used this time last year because I had one. I was doing it in my head. I was doing every half an hour. Yeah. So for long runs.

Starting point is 00:08:57 Yeah. So I popped a suite after half an hour, next half an hour. And it was on my 32 kilometre runs, like the longest run you do before your marathon. And I was absolutely wrecked. Oh my God. It was, I mean, your 32K run is awful anyway, but I was so wrecked. Anyway, I went into work on Monday morning and I said, those sweets, they were awful.

Starting point is 00:09:22 And then she goes, how many did you have? Yeah. And I said, I had one and she said, you meant to have eight. Yeah. Eight per half an hour. And I, I went, oh, that makes complete sense. Yeah. And that's one of the big mistakes people use when they're using sweets instead of gels.

Starting point is 00:09:37 So it's actually maybe going, maybe we combine them with the gels and do like one gel and then, you know, seven or eight sweets. It's not just like one sweet. So things like strawberry ladies. If you look on the back of the packet, to hit 50 grams of carbs with strawberry laces, it's basically the whole bag per hour. So it's going actually the translation. That's why gels are great because they're small, they're compact, they're easy to carry. Can you imagine doing a marathon with like six packets of strawberry laces?

Starting point is 00:10:05 You'd be chewing the whole way through. So yeah, it's actually going, it's more actually about the amount of carbohydrate you're getting. But we can do that in lots of different ways. And it's about what works for you as a runner. How many jelly babies? Do you know, roughly? I think it's a lot. You know, like squashums, like the two-colour suites?

Starting point is 00:10:23 Yes. That's like two-thirds of a packet an hour. Harry Bowes is about half a bag an hour. It's not small amounts. Like mini serene bars, it's three an hour. So if we're replacing, we've got to up the amount. I've got to be honest. I'm going to get your gel recommendations from you in a second.

Starting point is 00:10:39 But I really struggled with the gels. Yeah. So, but I found salt harness and I could really quickly shove them in my mouth. Yeah. The stickiness was. sub-ideal, and I love the Saltanis. We love Saltanis. Yeah, lots of people really like dates as well. Yeah. The only

Starting point is 00:10:54 thing you have to watch is the fibre. Okay. Because there's quite a lot of fibre in dried fruit. So it's going, maybe if you tried to do all five, however long marathon's going to take you, if you're going to try to do all your hours on Saltanas, you're probably going to end up in the Portaloon not having a great time. But we could, you know, alternate

Starting point is 00:11:10 that. So like, we could go Sultanas, then we could go sweets, then we could go one gel. And it's like mixing between to go, okay, we don't want to overload our system. but also just practicing in your runs and seeing actually what you enjoy eating, what you could carry, what tastes good. And also at the end of the day, having as much as you possibly can is better than having a nothing, right? I would far rather someone had something than nothing. It honestly felt like I was hallucinating for the last 10 kilometres of the marathon.

Starting point is 00:11:35 But I was telling my boyfriend basically every 10 minutes, maybe even like I was just chugging a gel because I was closing the stable door after the horses bolted. but I just thought, you just need to get through this. Is there too much? Would that have been too much? Well, so the kind of problem there is what we want to do with when we're taking on gels and things during running is remember that we're fueling forwards. Yeah. So we're not fueling to make up for what we've just done. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:03 We're fueling to put energy in our tank for what we're about to do. So it's kind of like putting petrol in a car. You put the petrol in, then you drive. Yes. Not the other way around. So in a marathon and in any kind of endurance sport, it's really important. want to start fueling early. It was also the way that the blood sugar works with our brain, our guy kitchen stores. Our body would much rather early on in the race, our brains going,

Starting point is 00:12:25 we're so fine. We've got this. It's fine. And that's actually one of the effects of the gels and the sugar, right? That it's telling our body it's safe. But in terms of like being able to overdo it. So when I'm saying like, it's great if you hit 50 to 60 grams, we know that people can hit 120 grams an hour, like elite athletes. That's how much they take on. And honestly, then you still wouldn't have been having anywhere near as much as 120 grams of carbs an hour. So like you can't really, it's very difficult to overdo it. And actually, you know, where your body responds, you wouldn't be overdoing it. So it's just, yeah, like you say, whatever is going to get you through that last 10K,

Starting point is 00:13:02 absolutely do it. Yeah. It was really fight for my life. Gels, recommendations, do you have your top favorites? So I, there's quite a few different ones I use. I actually use a mixture at the moment because a big thing. is kind of taste fatigue and texture fatigue. So during a marathon, when you're having to take seven, eight gels,

Starting point is 00:13:21 mixing between different brands can really help you get them down because you're not taking them the same one every time and the textures are weird. You also want to look at the grams of carbohydrates. So some have like 20 grams. So then you're needing to take three an hour, whereas others have like 40 grams, which is great. But you've got to practice to know that your stomach can handle taking 40 grams in one go.

Starting point is 00:13:44 Yeah. So it's actually going, right, do I like them liquid or chewy? So if you like them really liquid, high five are quite good or cis beta fuel. Whereas if you like them a bit thicker, Morton, precision fuel are good. And then that you can go, oh, well, should I switch it up with maybe I like something super sweet and really runny? So that's when the kind of like the maple syrup gels come in and things like sap and the natural ones are like hilltop honey. So it's actually just looking at all these brands available and just try them all out. And just literally go, there is no right or wrong answer.

Starting point is 00:14:14 It's what works for you as a runner and actually just go with them in that way. Nice. Yeah. Okay. Electrolites. I could get on a really high horse for electrolytes. No, do it because I have got passionate about electrolytes before.

Starting point is 00:14:28 I am so against electrolytes and all the media hype and all the brat, all of it. Like, it's the biggest scam ever. If any of the audience can find one single person who is like a reputable scientific person who is pro electrolytes, send them my way because I would love them on the podcast because I cannot find any, like, you know, I have my personal reasons. Explain your reasons for being anti-electrolites. So there is only one case where I suggest use of electrolytes, and that is if you are exercising and doing kind of ultra endurance. So when we're exercising for over 90 minutes and we're taking on water, we do need some form of sodium because of the way that our body absorbs water, there's something

Starting point is 00:15:11 called hypernutremia, which is basically where we get too diluted we want to avoid. You know, there is a case for sodium only in those cases, but if you are exercising for that long, you should also be taking on carbohydrate. And actually, most carbohydrate sources, a lot of them do have a form of sodium in them. So then actually, that's then negating the reason for like an additional electrolyte. But again, in super endurance, that's a different ballpark. We're not, that's not who all these electrolyte companies are marketing at. Those people have got it covered. They know what they're doing.

Starting point is 00:15:43 They work with sports nutritionists. Our day-to-day people who are being sold these very, very, very expensive packets of table salt, which are the cheapest thing to manufacture being sold of these things that are going to magically cure your brain foggy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this long list of things. And then people go, oh, I feel so much better for having my electrolytes in the morning.

Starting point is 00:16:02 It's like, no, you just drank a glass of water. Yeah. That's what's actually happening here. And some of these sachets have got a huge amount of sodium and salt in them. which you would never put on your food because God bless the government guidelines of we've been trying to get people to have less salt for years. And I honestly do think in five years time we will have a massive blood pressure issue in people our age group who've taken loads of electrolytes when they've done a 45-minute gym workout, stood at a desk all day, drunk two bottles because that's what they were told. And I just have so many issues with it. Some say the bubbles in an aerotruple piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.

Starting point is 00:16:41 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light. Rich, creamy, chocolatey arrow truffle. Feel the arrow bubbles melt. It's mind bubbling.

Her Discussions by Dr Faye - First Marathon? Watch This Before the Race Day (Sports Nutritionist’s Advice)

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