The Food Medic - S1 E1 - Food For Fitness

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

In this episode Hazel speaks to registered nutritionist, and specialist in sports nutrition, Anita Bean. We chat about everything from pre and post workout nutrition, to sports supplements, and fasted training. For more information on Anita you can visit www.anitabean.co.uk or find her on twitter @anitabean. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. Hello and welcome to the Food Medic podcast. I'm Dr. Hazel Wallace, founder of the Food Medic. I'm a qualified doctor, personal trainer, blogger, and bestselling author of the books of Food Medic and the Food Medic for Life. I'm passionate about maximizing our health through how we live our lives including the food that we eat physical activity and stress management we will hear from leading experts in their field who will be sharing evidence-based advice on how we can live healthier lives and we will cut through

the confusing information that we find online i like to think of myself as one of the first of a new generation of doctors. Hello and welcome to the Food Medic Podcast. I'm Dr. Hazel Wallace. Today I'm very excited to introduce my first guest, Anita Bean, who is an award-winning registered nutritionist, published author, health writer, and former British bodybuilding champion. She is accredited by the Association of Nutrition, specialises in sports and exercise nutrition, and is passionate about helping athletes improve their performance. Anita has also authored 28 books, including The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition,

The Vegetarian Athlete's Cookbook, and The Runner's Cookbook. Wow, what an impressive intro. Anita, welcome. Thank you for having me on. Oh, I'm so glad to have you here. You are my first guest, and I'm very excited about it, but I would love if we could just start off by you sharing with our listeners how you got into sports nutrition.

I first got into nutrition because that stems from my love for food. Even as a child, as I was growing up, I was always experimenting with different ways of putting food together. I was always in the kitchen and cooking and trying to create recipes. And at school, I was fascinated by science. I was pretty good at science as it happens. And so merging my passion for food and my love for science seemed to be a logical way to go but in those days and we're talking about 19 the 1970s and 80s there were not many courses around but I did a course in nutrition and food

science at the University of Surrey and at the time unusually for girls I started lifting weights I know nowadays a lot of girls are in the gym. I was actually the only girl in the gym for very many years. But that did trigger my curiosity to find out how nutrition can affect your athletic performance, how it can affect your body composition. And in those days, there was very little information around on sports nutrition, whereas nowadays, actually, there's too much. It's quite confusing. So throughout my university studies, I continued to lift weights,

and I eventually got into bodybuilding competitions, which I did over 10 years. And during that time, I was able to use my knowledge in nutrition and kind of, if you like, experiment myself. But I was a qualified nutritionist. I was also working with very many athletes in different sports. I worked for a short time in the NHS. I also worked for a short time in the food industry. And then I set up my own nutrition consultancy. So I became a nutrition practitioner sports nutritionist

and that was about 25 years ago sports wise I personally went on to win the British bodybuilding championships and I did the world championships after that wow don't worry I've since retired and um you know I've kind of gone on to have a more normal life because actually if you're a bodybuilder, it does take over your life. It's quite an unusual lifestyle. And there are ugly sides to the sport. But since then, as a practitioner, I have gone on to write quite a number of books. In fact, my first book was The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition. That came out in 1993.

That does sound like a long time ago, but I have updated it regularly since then. I have your updated version and it's great. It's really great. Thank you. Well, it's been updated eight times. It's really important to keep current. Absolutely.

I've written a number of books, but the reason I wrote the book way back then was because there was a complete lack of information certainly solid evidence-based information out there for athletes I was working with a number of very high profile track and field athletes actually as well as some bodybuilders and they didn't have a clue they were just guessing they were just sort of eating food that filled them up yeah hoping for the best but there were a lot of myths around I don't think many of those myths have changed quite honestly over time and that's something I would love to discuss with you today because I think everyday nutrition is a completely different kettle of

fish to sports nutrition and we may I mean the listeners may not be athletes themselves but most people are working out or are interested in working out and staying well and how they can fuel their training. So what I would love to ask and something that a lot of my followers have been asking is, what should I eat before and after I exercise? And should I be eating in between? And I think you're the best person to answer this question. I know that's a big question, but we could break it down. No, that's the most logical question to ask actually the ideal time to eat before exercise would be about three to four hours because you need enough time for the food to become digested absorbed into your body travel to the muscles if you eat too close to exercise you'll just feel very uncomfortable the food energy won't be used by the muscles because

it hasn't been delivered there the kind of foods that you want to be eating, though, in the pre-exercise period would be foods that are fairly high in carbohydrate, particularly if you are going to be doing high intensity exercise. But you also want to include some protein and some fat, obviously the healthy fats. The reason for that is that that will slow down the digestion, absorption and delivery of that carb to the muscles. So you don't want your blood sugar levels to be peaking too high or too soon. So you want sustained energy. So that's the objective. So let's not talk about nutrients. Let's talk about foods, the kind of foods. So if you're having a pre-exercise meal, as I said, you need to leave sufficient time for it to be mostly digested.

So something like porridge would be fine. So if you're working out in the morning, your breakfast could be porridge with fruit and nuts. If you are, on the other hand, exercising in the evening or maybe in the afternoon, your pre-exercise meal could be something like a pad thai with tofu so that could include your noodles your vegetables your tofu you've got all the right components all the right nutrients are in there that will give you lots of energy other examples i can give you would be something like a turkey spaghetti bolognese you could have a falafel wrap again you've got all the right components really just a good balanced meal.

And how about training fasted? If you're training first thing in the morning, you don't really feel like breakfast, is this going to impede your performance? Okay, so fasted training. Well, fasted training means you are training in a state of low carbohydrate availability or glycogen availability.

It sounds a bit of a mouthful. So the advantage of, or the potential advantage of doing that means that you will force your body to burn more fat and less carbohydrate because there is less carbohydrate available. And we definitely know from studies that the body will be oxidizing in other words burning more fat during the exercise so that sounds an attractive proposition for somebody who perhaps wants to control their body fat levels want to lose weight or you just want to not gain weight but and there is a big but as with most things it means that you may not be able to hit very high exercise intensities or you may fatigue sooner than you would have done so in other words your overall calorie burn might be less what you've really got

to look at at the end of the day is your calorie intake over 24 hours so it's not just what you're burning in those 20 minutes those 60 minutes of your workout you've got to look at what you're eating afterwards. So it's the calorie balance that really counts. And I know there's a real fashion for, or a real trend for fasting training that can work. But in terms of body composition, it's not the most important thing.

So do whatever feels right for you. But I think perhaps I should say that if you haven't eaten for about three or four hours prior to a workout, then having a little bit of food, a little bit of carbs. So if you like a little healthy snack, about 30 to 60 minutes. Like a banana or? Exactly. So that can raise your blood sugar level just a little bit. That will allow you to exercise at a higher intensity and for longer before you experience fatigue so a pre-exercise

snack yeah of course a banana it could be a handful of dried fruit and nuts it could be peanut butter on toast okay so all of those things will be suitable and then how about in the post workout period do we need to be downing a protein shake as soon as the last dumbbell hits the floor yes and we see that all the time in the gym don't we people even go around with a protein shake as soon as the last dumbbell hits the floor. Yes and we see that all the time in the gym don't we people even go around with a protein shake in their hand as they're training. So a few years ago most of the evidence seemed to suggest that there is this two-hour post-exercise recovery window and we know that glycogen, that's carbohydrate, is replenished faster during this immediate post-exercise period. And protein, again, if you consume protein in this period of time, you get a sharper rise in your blood levels for amino acids.

However, the latest research shows that actually, unless you are training within eight hours again so in other words if you're doing a dual workout that day which really only very serious athletes would do it's less important because this post exercise recovery goes on over very many hours it goes on over 24 hours so it's really what you consume over those 24 hours that is the most critical thing is getting your carb goals, meeting your protein goals, meeting your fat goals and the calorie goals. That's the most critical thing. So you don't need to be consuming this protein shake or this post-workout smoothie immediately after exercise. You won't do any harm whatsoever, but it's not critical unless you are training later on in the day. So for example, many of the swimmers whom I advise, they are

training early in the morning and they're also training in the evening or late afternoon. So they will need to take advantage of the post exercise two hour window. Okay. But for the most of us who are just training casually we don't need to worry about any time constraints there and in terms of post-workout meals does that differ to pre-workout meals? Do we need to be upping our protein? Okay that's a good question it isn't hugely different so a few years ago the main emphasis was on replenishing carbohydrate after endurance exercise. But we now know that actually combining carbs and protein.

So an example I can give you would be, say, a milk-based drink or a yogurt bowl. So yogurt with fruit, with nuts and seeds. We now know that combining those ingredients together will actually give your body everything it needs. It can promote glycogen refueling. It can promote muscle protein synthesis. That means the repair of muscle fibers that are broken down during exercise, as well as building new muscle. So it's a similar composition. It's the carbs, it's the protein,

and it's getting those nutrients from healthy food combinations so what people should take away from this is focusing on protein and carbs pre and post workout but not worrying too much about the timing of that so we've discussed what we should eat before and after we exercise how about in between exercise if we're not doing endurance training just working out in the gym lifting weights or maybe going for like a 5k run should we be eating or drinking anything then during the exercise so there is no value to consuming anything other than water if you're exercising for less than 60 to 90 minutes so it's really only the serious forms of exercise that you should think about

taking on board carbohydrates. So if you're in the gym for an hour, if you're out jogging for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, all you would really need would just be water. And then you'd only be drinking to thirst for those types of workouts. Yeah. So when we see people in the gym with these like colorful drinks, like BCAAs and various drinks. We don't need to worry about them. No, there is so much hype about these pre-workout and during workout drinks. Very little evidence to support branched chain amino acids unless you are in a state of calorie deficit. That means that if you are really dieting hard perhaps coming for a body building competition but i think for most people in the gym there is no value to take branched chain amino acids before or during the workout and that there was a study that was published

very recently that has shown that you will get greater gains greater muscle gains in other words by consuming a whole protein source, you know, as protein from an actual food, as opposed to an amino acid supplement. Yeah, I think that's so interesting. And I feel like that applies to most supplements, you know, the benefits we get from the whole food is just you cannot get that in a pill, which brings me on to my next point on protein supplementation because I would love to get your views on it whether you think it's necessary is it useful okay so if you are exercising regularly and by that I mean more than three times a week your protein needs will be

greater than that of couch potato and the current evidence is that we will need you know roughly double that of non-exercises. So somewhere between 1.2 and 2 grams per kilogram body weight, if you like numbers. I think they're quite scary, actually. I don't want people to get too hung up on them. But I think that if you ensure that you include some protein in each meal, ideally in each snack as well. So a snack could be something like peanut butter on toast.

It could be a handful of nuts. It could be humans with vegetables. It's quite easy to get enough protein in your diet, provided you're not following the latest trend or having a restrictive diet that excludes certain food groups. Now, do you need protein supplements, not if you are already consuming enough from your food and you're having balanced meals? Really, the only advantage of a protein supplement such as the whey supplement would be convenience. So it's a portable form of protein. So if you don't want to sit down and have, I don't know, eggs or something like a cheese sandwich or your hummus on toast after workout and you find it's more convenient to take it in liquid form, then that's fine.

Whey has got one or two advantages in that it's a fast-absorbed protein. And secondly, it is high in an amino acid called leucine, which has been shown to trigger muscle protein synthesis, as well as being an essential amino acid itself. But you can, of course, get leucine from most protein sources, so certainly dairy proteins, fish. For vegan protein supplementation, is it the same principle well vegan protein supplements will contain lower levels of the essential aminos and will contain lower levels of leucine so they're not it's not devoid in those so the way to get enough protein as a vegan and it's perfectly possible to do that is either by upping your portion sizes or by combining different types of protein. And we definitely know from studies that it is possible to do that. But as a vegan, you just need to be a lot more mindful and a lot more knowledgeable, really, about food. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a huge myth

around being vegan or having plant-based sources of protein and that it's almost impossible but it's not because we know that you know there's protein in whole grains and like beans and lentils what other protein sources can we give to our listeners that are plant-based? Okay you're quite right Hazel you can get all the protein that you need as a plant-based athlete and there are plenty of examples actually of high-profile athletes now Lewis Hamilton, Venus Williams they're all vegan actually they are also very strong very muscular so you can get all the protein that you need from pulses such as beans and lentils soya and soya products will contain all of the essential amino acids there so if you include

soya regularly in your diet, you're definitely on the right track. And actually a lot of soya products, the drinks, the yogurts and so on, they are fortified with calcium and the B vitamins to a similar level that you'd find in the dairy equivalent. You can also get your protein from nuts and seeds and hemp seeds, for example,

that is a complete source of protein, although the others less so and you can get protein from nut butters obviously very trendy but that's a very convenient way of adding a little bit of extra protein to your diet so really the key is to combine all of those foods so for example you could have a chickpea and spinach curry with rice or you could have something I like doing a lot is quinoa mixed with different types of beans you can make burgers out of beans black bean burgers chickpea burgers and then you can combine that with grains you can add in some tahini or you can add in some nut butter and then you've got a complete form of protein. Absolutely. So I guess the takeaway is to combine your proteins,

variety and up the portion size as well. So you're getting enough protein there. Perfect. But I guess protein shakes would be useful in that scenario as well. I know I personally use them, but for me, it's like convenience. You know, if I can't get home and grab lunch that soon, protein shakes ideal. And I think for a lot of people, that's the same. But like you said, you don't have to have it.

You know, you can have a perfectly healthy diet and meet all your protein needs through food. The other nutrient that's quite topical in the sports nutrition world is carbohydrates. And I know that a lot of athletes now are kind of trying out low carbohydrate diets. But in my mind, I'm thinking, does that not impede their performance? And I would love to know your take on this.

Yes, low carb diets. I do get asked a lot of questions about this. It's become such a strong trend over the last four, five, six years. Now, the reason why some athletes and gym goers are looking at low carbohydrate diets is because when you train with low carbohydrate availability, you are teaching or training the muscles to burn fat fat and less glycogen because there's less carbohydrate available and the second thing that's happening is that you are enhancing the endurance training adaptations the studies have actually measured an increase in the number of mitochondria and these are the powerhouses of the cells so these are the parts of the cells that burn body fat and really are more responsible for training adaptations. So when people follow a low-carbohydrate diet and they train as well, what happens?

We know from the studies that they do get an increase in mitochondria. There's an increase in gene expression, increase in cell signaling. However, and this is a big however, studies so far have failed to show an advantage in terms of performance with low-carb diets. And certainly when it comes to race performance, when it comes to performing high-level exercise, that means anything above about 75% of your maximal aerobic capacity. So that's quite hard exercise. What happens there is that you're actually hampering the body's breakdown of carbohydrates.

So it becomes like a double-edged sword. You're literally knocking out your top gear. It means that you are less able to produce energy fast. You see, carbohydrate is a fast fuel. You can get approximately 25 to 30 calories per minute, whereas with fat, it's only about six calories per minute. So if you are doing, say, long distance running, it's fairly slow to moderate intensity, or you're doing an ultra, then fat is absolutely fine as the fuel. you want you can follow low carb diet if that suits you it will save you carrying all those gels around with you but if you are looking for

high intensity if you're looking for performance if you're a competitive athlete you will do better by having some carbohydrate at least your high intensity sessions and in fact now what we're looking at in both the research and in practice is something i call flexible fueling and that means doing your low intensity sessions with low carbs your high intensity sessions with higher carbs it's what we call fueling for your workout and you get the dual benefits the best of both worlds you get the fat burning advantages and you get the performance advantages of the high carbohydrate we briefly touched on supplementation when we spoke about protein and bcaas are there any supplements that you feel we should be including in our repertoire when it comes to training okay very good In fact, only about a month ago, the IOC, the International

Olympic Committee, assessed all of the evidence relating to supplements and what they found, perhaps not surprisingly, that there is just a very small handful of supplements that's actually backed up by solid evidence that will actually work. So these include caffeine, include creatine, and possibly beta alanine. But the vast majority of the others out there, they're not backed up by the science. They're more sizzle rather than substance. So I'm quite happy to give you the top line on each of those supplements. Yeah, I think definitely a lot of people are super interested about creatine. I know I've been asked about it a lot.

So it would be really interesting if you could tell us what it is and what would be the benefits of including it and who may need to include it or it might be in their benefit too. Okay, so creatine is possibly the most well-researched sports supplement out there. It's a protein. It's made up of amino acids. And what it does, it raises the body's levels of phosphocreatine in the muscles. Now, this is a high-energy compound that is used to generate energy or ATP

during high-intensity exercise. So it can be helpful when you are performing high intensity bursts of exercise, sprints, lifts in the gym, particularly if you're doing repeated sets. So obviously the gym training environment is one of the most common ways that this supplement is used, but it's also used extensively by athletes who are doing repeated high intensityintensity bursts. So it's been well-researched for about 20 years and it has indeed been shown to increase strength, to help maintain high-intensity power output and also to aid recovery between sets

and ultimately lead to increases in body mass and body strength, particularly with sports where strength and muscle are critical. So the optimal dose, you can either achieve that by consuming about 20 grams per day for five days. That's what's often used in studies for quickness. However, I think a preferable method is by doing a longer period of loading. So roughly four or five grams per day over about 20 days, 28 days. So you have a more gradual loading protocol. So that has been shown to be beneficial. There are very few downs downsides there is no actual evidence to show that creatine has got any side effects in the short term you know some athletes experience water retention yeah maybe yeah maybe unwanted weight gain perhaps in people who are competing in sports

where they don't want the additional weight so for example in runners they might not want the additional weight because there is a certain amount of water drawn into the muscles and just putting this into context for people if you are not looking for um you know like you're not doing any power lifting or it's not from a performance standpoint it's not going to impede your training not having this in like taking this supplement every day it's literally just an extra if you are looking to go that, I guess, extra mile really, isn't it? It's the icing on the cake. Yeah.

Most definitely. It won't turn you from, you know, ordinary Joe Bloggs into a bodybuilder. No, no. We're talking about, you know, something like a maximum of 8-10% increase in strength

over quite a long period of time. So it's not going to make a huge difference. It's measurable in research terms. But I think for most people, and this is so important for people to understand, what you do in the gym should be supported by a good solid foundation of your diet. That is the most important thing, is getting your day-to-day nutrition right getting the timing right so it's getting the amounts the variety right and then the supplements whether it's creatine that you're using whether it's caffeine or anything else they are simply the icing on the cake yeah and you mentioned caffeine i mean i love a cup of coffee

and i will usually have one before I go to the gym but I'm not really into caffeine supplementation and my question to you is can we get the same benefits from a mug of coffee or do we need to be taking a supplement and that is a question that has actually been addressed in the research and we know that both coffee and caffeine will have the same or at least very similar effects so So caffeine has been well researched as well. It's been shown to work for both endurance as well as strength exercise. It's a stimulant, so it acts on the brain, the central nervous system. It works by blocking the action of a brain chemical called adenosine,

which would normally make you feel tired and sleepy. So if you can block that instead of feeling sleepy, you'll then feel more alert. And caffeine will reduce your perception of effort and fatigue. So that means that it's easier to keep going, you know, your exercise feels easier. And indeed, we know from the research that people will experience greater endurance effects, better performance enhancement as a result of taking caffeine. So whether you choose to take that from caffeine or pills is up to you. The advantage though of taking pills would be that you know exactly what you're taking. Whereas in coffee, it could be anything from say 50 milligrams from a cup of instant up to 200 or more from say

a double espresso that you'd buy from a coffee shop so you don't really know what you're getting no i think my concern around caffeine supplementation is also the negative effects and you know the half-life is what it's seven hours yeah um So if you're having it late in the day or even at lunchtime, that could be impeding you falling asleep later on. Definitely. Yeah, a couple of caveats actually with caffeine. Firstly, I never recommend it to under 18s because it hasn't been researched in terms of performance. But I have so many teen athletes who ask me, you know, they start taking caffeine, whether it's in pill form or drink form. But the second thing is you've got to remember that it stays in the body for a long time,

as you've rightly said, and it can increase sleeplessness and, you know, it can also increase anxiety, trembling. So there are negative side effects of caffeine. Everybody responds differently. We know that there are certain genes actually that make us more predisposed to using caffeine or breaking it down more readily so not everybody will benefit and some people it can actually have a negative effect the research indicates that the ergogenic effect that's the beneficial, is around about three milligrams per kilogram body weight. So that means an average size woman who weighs 60 kilos would need something like 180 milligrams to get a marked beneficial effect in terms of performance. So that's quite

a lot of caffeine, really, but it varies so much from person to person what I need might be different from what you need absolutely and it's try at the end of the day it's trial and error as to what will really work it's I mean we all know that person who can drink coffee I'm that person who can drink coffee and go straight to sleep and then there's some people who just need to sniff it and then they're bouncing off the walls and that again is down to that genetic predisposition whether you metabolize it fast or slow and I guess the other benefits of having a cup of coffee is because we know when it comes from like because coffee itself has so so many polyphenols as well um and antioxidants or plant chemicals that can benefit your gut bacteria and have other

properties so i guess there's pros and cons to both there and it depends on what you're looking for, what your goals are. And now I've got a couple of nutrition myths because I'm a huge fan of myth busting and I know that there's so many in the sports nutrition world and I'm only going to have time to cover a few with you but one of them that I come up quite a bit,

especially in the bodybuilding world is the more protein you eat the more muscle you will gain is this true? It's so tempting to believe that just because a little bit is good the more has got to be better so there is an optimal level and we know from studies for most people this is roughly 25 to 30 grams per meal it doesn't mean that the rest will be discarded if you consume any more than that you'll still absorb it it's just that it will be turned into an energy source so having more it doesn't mean that you'll then use it all to build more muscle it will just be used as a potential source of energy um yeah which you may or may not need. So it's just there is no advantage really of having more than you need. Okay that's really great. So we just need to get our minimum

requirements for the day. It doesn't matter if we go a little bit over but going maximum on the protein isn't going to give us big muscle gains in the morning. No you'll be better off really looking at the distribution of your protein throughout the day, ensuring that you have fairly even-sized amounts at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and including some in your snacks. So roughly 25 to 30 grams per meal would suit most people. Bigger people need more than smaller people because they've got a larger muscle mass. But if you have too much protein, you're really just having more than your body really needs yeah and another thing I hear from women in particular

is eating protein is going to make me bulky no if only it was that simple I'm talking now as a former bodybuilding athlete over consuming protein definitely won't make you bulky or give you those big muscles the only way that you can build muscle is through intense and consistent weight training or resistance training coupled with an adequate amount of protein and consuming more won't give you those big muscles but i should also say at this point, it's very difficult for women to get big bulky muscles anyway. So even if you trained every single day in the gym with heavy weights, you as a woman, we don't have enough testosterone in the male anabolic hormones naturally to allow us to do that. So we will end up obviously with more muscle mass, but

it's nothing like those big bulky muscles. And you see that in the magazines that's really due to you know some women will be taking steroids i don't think it's probably not an area that you really need to talk about on this show but if that's it there is an ugly side to sport absolutely absolutely and that's something i don't think a lot of people are aware of because you know what you see on online isn't necessarily the the truth no um and something i cover in my book is egg yolks and egg yolks are bad for you and cover that myth but going the egg yolk versus egg white kind of whole thing is very big in the body building world and i've read some you know recent evidence on this and i'd love to hear your thoughts on it and should we be cutting out our egg yolks and is egg what's going to give us you know recent evidence on this and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and should we be cutting out our egg yolks and is egg whites going to give us you know a better kind of are we going

to build more muscle through just having egg white and this is actually a very long-standing myth in my days when I was competing in bodybuilding bodybuilders flinging out those egg yolks and in fact a very good study was published less than a year ago, in fact, where they compared the muscle building effects of whole eggs versus egg whites. And they actually found there were greater gains to be had from the whole egg, the whole food source, as opposed to extracting the yolk. And as you know, Hazel, because the yolk is jam-packed with other useful nutrients. Apart from protein, it also contains healthy fats. There's vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin E, and a whole host of useful minerals. So there's no point just getting rid of a really good, nutritious food. Absolutely, absolutely.

And I know other people have been concerned about it from a cholesterol standpoint. And we now know that the dietary cholesterol in an egg yolk isn't something that we will have been concerned about it from a cholesterol standpoint and we now know that you know the dietary cholesterol in an egg yolk isn't something that we need to be concerned about it's not going to raise our blood cholesterol I think that's all that we have time to cover but something that I'd love to finish the podcast on is if you could give people three things that they can do today to improve their health and it doesn't have to be food related it can be anything that you feel can add to their life. Okay, these are the things that I do. Three things that I do. Firstly, I am very consistent about exercise. So I make activity or exercise part of my daily

routine. The important thing is that you show up, you do something, do something that you like. Don't do too much too soon if you do that I mean everybody falls down that trap particularly when you're young you've got ambitious training goals you want to get there really soon but you could end up being injured and I see that so much and also burnt out and I've seen that a lot as well so just be consistent a little bit every day the second thing that I do, well, I'm vegetarian. I don't think that, I mean, I've been vegetarian from birth, so that's just been a normal way of eating for me.

But I think that everybody would benefit by having a more plant-based diet, so switching more to plants and perhaps eating a little bit less meat. But we already know that from the surveys that actually one in three people have already been cutting down on their meat intake over the past year but i don't think you need to be fully vegetarian or vegan to benefit so having more vegetables more pulses more grains and more nuts and so on you've got more fiber you've got much greater diversity of nutrients that will benefit your gut health we know that can also benefit athletic performance actually amongst about 100 other benefits of having good you know good gut health

it really does it's like such an upcoming area it is haven't even tapped on it yeah of course but yeah i love those two first two so move every day and plant bait go in more plant focused I guess and your third one my third tip and this is something that I've recently got into over the last year is that I practice mindfulness meditation for 10 minutes every day and I have found enormous benefits from that first I used to think oh this is just something that rather alternative people do. But in fact, it trains your attention. It helps me to let go of stuff in the past, things that have already gone on that you can no longer do and think about. But importantly, it helps me to reduce anxieties. It teaches me to be present in the moment and to enjoy the present moment more. It teaches me acceptance

and it teaches me to be more kind to myself and kind to other people. And I think those are all important qualities that's so easy to forget in our busy lives. And I think 10 minutes of doing mindfulness meditation with an app, I do use the Calm app. Do you use, I like Calm as well. I tried Headspace for a while,

but Calm is my favorite. And I app I like calm as well I tried headspace for a while but calm is my favorite and I love their sleep stories as well if I'm struggling to fall asleep and the music I love the music as well so it is I love those three points and I think that's something that everyone can try today and try to kind of I guess it's a little interventions that you can do every day to improve your health and again like we said it's not all about, it's a little interventions that you can do every day to improve your health. And again, like we said, it's not all about food, it's mindfulness and movement as well. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Well, thank you for having me. And I am very honoured to be your first guest. Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell everyone where we can

find you? Okay, you can find my website, which is anitabean.co.uk. You can find me on Twitter and you can find me on Instagram. Amazing. I will link all of them in the show notes anyway. But thank you everyone for listening and make sure to medic podcast please do subscribe so that you are the first to hear about any new episodes and if you are enjoying them please leave us a five-star rating and a review so that we can reach as many people as possible check out my website thefoodmedic.co.uk where you can find tons of recipes and articles follow me on social media instagram twitter and facebook at the food medic and my new book the food medic for life is out now which is packed full of loads of recipes nutritional advice

myth busting and feature pages on topics such as sleep and mindfulness. You can grab both my books on Amazon or in any good bookstore. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Thank you.