The Food Medic - S5 E5: Sports Nutrition In Crossfit & Weightlifting

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

This week Dr Hazel is joined by Taylor Ryan - An Accredited Practising Dietitian and Nutritionist, Accredited Sports Dietitian and director of ‘The Sports Dietitian Co’. They chat all about sports nutrition, particularly in relation to crossfit and weight lifting.But if you’re not crossfitter - don’t switch this off just yet as the advice here is transferable to basically all forms of gym-based training, HIIT and weight lifting. If you’re looking for the basics of sports nutrition make sure to check out season 1 episode 1 for an overview of fuelling your fitness with Anita Bean and also season 4 episode 9 on the plant based athlete - also with Anita Bean. Topics covered:* Fuelling for a sport like crossfit vs running. * Nutrition for hard training sessions vs recovery rest days.* Tracking calories and macronutrients - is it essential?* Signs of under-fuelling* Crossfit diet trends (low carb/keto/paleo)* Immunity after intense training periods/competitions* Supplements* Fasted training/intermittent fasting* Vegan protein shakes vs animal protein. *Please note: the sound on this episode has quite a few disruptions and background noise due to connectivity issues. We decided to still share the episode as we don’t think it takes away from the great content* Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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all over your eye area including the lids. Thank you to Murad for supporting the Food Medic podcast. Today we are going to be talking about sports nutrition particularly in relation to CrossFit and weightlifting. Now I know that we've already discussed sports nutrition on this podcast so if you haven't listened to those podcasts please do go back and have a listen check out season one episode one for an overview of fueling your fitness with Anita Bean and also season four episode nine on the plant-based athlete also with Anita Bean if you follow me on social media you will already know that I'm a big CrossFit fan and have probably been doing it for two years now but I still completely feel like a beginner at times. So first of all what is CrossFit?

Well basically CrossFit is a training program that builds strength and conditioning through extremely varied and challenging workouts including weightlifting, gymnastics and cardio-based training but if you're not a CrossFitter, don't switch this off, as the advice here is transferable to basically all forms of gym-based training, HIIT, and weightlifting. So today my guest is joining from sunny Australia, Taylor Ryan, an accredited practicing dietitian and nutritionist, accredited sports dietitian, and director of the Sports Dietitian Co. Taylor is passionate about providing evidence-based and individualized nutrition

education and guidance to improve performance, body composition and health and the well-being of athletes. Her experience is within the sports performance realm where she has predominantly worked with strength and conditioning athletes from intermediate to elite standards particularly within strength and conditioning fields, CrossFit, powerlifting and weightlifting fields. I have connected with Taylor over social media a lot over the past year or so and I'm really excited to have her on the podcast today to chat all things CrossFit and nutrition. First of all, welcome to the Food Medic podcast. Thank you very much for having me on here. It's an honor, I can tell you that much.

It would be great just before we dive into the more specifics of sports nutrition and CrossFit to just get a bit more of a background as to who you are and what you do. Awesome. So I'm an accredited sports physician in Australia. So I did my degree about six years ago in Brisbane, Queensland. And I did my degree, obviously, with the intention of becoming an accredited sports physician. I specifically work with strength and conditioning athletes in Australia and internationally, particularly cross-fit, powerlifting and Olympic lifting. So I guess my background started from when I used to compete in Olympic lifting when I was doing my degree at university and I was competing in 53 kilo category for Olympic lifting. And obviously that's when my love for the strength and conditioning sport

became available. And I was also working with a sports physician then for my own making weight strategies for my sport itself. So I guess that's where my passion for sport grew. And then I was also, when I was at university, I was a CrossFit coach for the entire time, so around five to six years. So I was exposed to that environment naturally and then obviously delved my passion from there. Amazing I actually didn't know that in that you were competing in Olympic lifting but that's really interesting really impressive as well.

So on the podcast we've discussed sports nutrition kind of in general before but today I'd like to focus primarily around nutrition for weightlifting and CrossFit. So what are the fundamentals of nutrition that we need to consider when we're fueling a sport like CrossFit versus an endurance sport like running? Yeah so CrossFit itself is a strength and conditioning sport and it's a workout that is made up of functional movement performed at relatively high intensities so it's when it comes to the sessions themselves they vary each time so the majority of the workouts themselves do lack prescribed rest periods making it quite hard and then obviously making their performance dependent on the individual's ability to i guess sustain

high power outputs as they say so when it comes to you know crossfit and nutrition we see the importance of nutrition coming into play in the sport itself to support the i guess high intensity requirements and to put it simply it all comes down to fuel utilization at different exercise intensities if that makes So for example, if we take endurance running, you see with that that you're able to maintain relatively steady state most of the time. So carbs and fats become, I guess, the main energy sources utilized during that exercise, as they say, and most exercises. But depending on the type of exercise, plus the duration, as well as the intensity, we start to see a shift in substrate to utilize. So what I mean by that is your carbs, fats and proteins.

So CrossFit, you know, carbs are the main fuel source during high intensity exercise. So think of it like this. The higher the intensity of that exercise, the greater need of carb utilization. So your body relies on it more and as a result that can simply not be metabolized fast enough to be used as a fuel source at higher intensities such as what we do it's be with for example running where it's carved and fats are predominantly the main fuel source so hopefully that gives your listeners a little bit of understanding that when it comes to CrossFit because of of such high intensities, you know,

nutrition interventions and strategies need to be put in place to ensure the athlete, regardless of whether they're recreational or elite, are able to feel themselves most effectively for that session or multiple sessions for that day. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, thank you for giving that kind of brief overview as to what CrossFit is, because I think if you're in CrossFit, you just think everyone knows about CrossFit, but it can be a bit of an unusual term for other people. So when we are talking about these nutrition protocols around CrossFit, I guess it extends to any form of kind of intermittent high intensity training and weightlifting that people will be doing in the gym if they're kind of doing it in a metcon style of training yes that's correct um particularly

to you seeing similar circumstances with olympic lifting because there's explosive i guess movements and they're done within you know 10 seconds but it's very similar in terms of the fact of how your body does need certain nutrients and then specific recommendations to support that training and the competition style itself absolutely cool so one of the questions I often get asked is how might nutrition needs change for a hard training session versus a recovery rest day or kind of like an active recovery day I know that you've worked with CrossFit Games athletes and it would be great to have an insight into how you might kind of program for them across the week. Yeah for sure so when it comes to the general population so everyday you know weekend warriors I create

individual sleep relatively similar you find a lot of people trying to manipulate their food on a training day non-training day because basically their theory is on a non-training day they're moving less so therefore they think they need less food however i beg to differ with this so non-training days i would say for everyday individual to eat the same as the training day within reason because we want to support training and recovery as well as muscle up adaptation to support the performance itself so that's a really important concept because I feel like the majority of what the CrossFit culture is about is, you know, eat less and move more, which is unfortunately not what we want to promote in a sport

at such high intensities. When you look at the elite guys that I work with, some of these guys can train anywhere from three to seven hours a day and they're working off significantly increasing calorie requirements on those days, if that makes sense, particularly focusing more so on increased requirements for their carbohydrates and protein to support the training sessions themselves, but also to support their recovery in between those sessions. So you might see an athlete most of the time, they may do it on one hit or they may do it across the day in multiple sessions that's probably

more common because obviously the way that CrossFit is it tends to be a combination of strength, a gymnastics component as well as conditioning and as a result most of the time the elite guys will split that up throughout the day. But as you can see the problem becomes when they're doing multiple sessions and they need high calorie requirements to support their recovery, but they have a short period of time from when they train again. So obviously that becomes problematic because most of the time when it comes to exercising, and I don't know if you've experienced this for yourself, but many of your listeners have to us would say is their appetite is often suppressed and that's an acute response associated with exercise as a result so that

becomes problematic with trying to get their adequate nutrition in to support you know the total training that they're doing for the day but then also to support the next training session the next day from a recovery perspective so and you know a good example of this was when I took the Australian team over to the games so that was probably best example and probably my most stressful example of getting nutrition right for a five-day competition because obviously you're not just dealing with the increased calorie requirements for the competition themselves but you're also dealing with the individuals at their own requirements plus their additional stresses that they have or place on themselves within that competition environment yeah absolutely and i think

it's interesting you you saying about the kind of appetite suppression i definitely feel that especially if i do kind of a big session or if I've done a long run. And I almost find the next day, which I tend to program a recovery day if I've done a lot of activity in a day prior, I'll be hungrier on my recovery day. And I just like I'm not one to hold back. So I just kind of listen to my body and try to eat as I feel I need to. So I'm definitely with you on that um I'm not totally for the message eat less and move more especially when we're thinking about training like CrossFit which can be quite intense and obviously when we think to your athletes it's really important that their

nutrition's on point and very much matched up to their activity levels so that they're getting enough energy in versus how much they're expending but personally I don't think that tracking macronutrients and calories is for everyone especially when we're talking about kind of day-to-day gym goers like myself and probably a lot of people listening so from that point of view I wonder whether we can talk maybe in terms of portions um about and kind of ideas food ideas about how we might factor this into our pre and post workout training yep and that's a good question and i'm usually even my elite guys actually don't track um their calories either it's usually done all by us and i think that's a really important factor and getting them to understand education

perspective of fueling their bodies based on their requirements but also from an intuitive perspective as well um and that's as you said it's really important from a recreational standpoint because like you said not everyone wants to have to track and be as precise with that type of thing but when we're looking from like a pre-training perspective when it comes to our meals i'll get a little bit of science here and i'll give you some examples so pre-training nutrition we mostly want to be focusing on carbohydrates and it when i'm talking about this it means you know within 30 to 45 minutes of starting your crossfit session so the reason why is because obviously by providing our body with mostly carbohydrates it's going to be able to be broken down and utilized quickly for that session ahead. So I always try and educate, you know, everyday gym

goers to fuel yourself for the work ahead. So obviously, that's why the carbohydrates come in. And we're looking most of the time about 0.5 to 1 grams per kilogram of body weight for the carbohydrate requirements. So for people looking at that, sometimes that could be depending on that, your weight, anything from like a crumpet with honey and banana on it or, you know, two pieces of white bread with honey and jam. You can also do some fruit as a serving size there too or some cereal with some milk. So as you can see, the pre-workout nutrition is solely around that carbohydrate intake for that 30 to 45 minutes prior. And there is minimal protein. Within reason, there can be some protein there there but there's also minimal fat and fiber so for anyone listening the reason why

we want to try and reduce that is because um fat and fiber slow down digestion so if anyone has ever done a crossfit workout before and it's got different planes and movements in it so for example you might be doing deadlifts and, you know, handstand push-ups and running and all of a sudden, you know, you've got, you've had a high fat or high fibre, you know, meal prior. You can see that can become problematic and it can cause stitches and, you know, irritability with your training, which I guess distracts you from the performance aspect

of what you're trying to achieve. So I guess I try and look at it like you know you're pre-training mostly carbs and then when it comes to our post-training that's where it can get a little bit more complicated but also too we do want to make sure we're having a good amount of carbohydrates and protein particularly after a crossfit session because i don't know if anyone's really aware of this, but a single resistance training session as on an average can deplete, I guess, carbohydrate stores, which are known as glycogen within our muscle, to from 24 to 40%. Now, obviously, that's going to vary depending on the duration and the intensity of the session, but that's a pretty big chunk. So when it comes

to post-training, that's why the ingestion of both carbs and protein acutely following that session becomes more favorable for recovery purposes because obviously you're topping back up that fuel source. So think of it like an empty tank of petrol. So when you start a session, hopefully if you come in well-fueled, you start with a full tank and then it comes down to a quarter to half a tank. So basically by post-training nutrition, we're topping up those glycogen stores, but also helping with muscle protein metabolism at the same time. So you can see that can become advantageous in that situation,

opposed to just consuming either carbohydrates or protein by themselves. So when it comes to what that might look like, again, we're looking around 1.5 up to roughly two to three grams depending on how intense that session is for the individual of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight and then you want to be hitting that protein to be around that 20 to 40 grams to assist in recovery purposes so for example good easy options depending on when you train

so if you're training first thing in the morning, you know, a 5am or 6am session, I would make your breakfast your post-training. So therefore, you can be, you know, yogurt and muesli, it can be, you know, eggs on toast with a bit of vegetables as well. If it's, you know, in the afternoon, as per se, that's when it can become a little bit more advantageous of how you want that to be structured. And so as you can see it I guess it's dependent on what best suits the individual but it doesn't need to be anything fancy and you know for those individuals who are time poor this is where something like you know a protein shake on water and a honey and peanut butter sandwich could be an option based on individual circumstances so it's really important to take that into consideration as well absolutely so thinking more about nutrition and

not just athletes but all of us what are some of the impacts of under fueling our workouts and how what might we spot the signs yep so i feel like when it comes to just everyday population majority of us are actually under feeling unintentionally and that can be a lot to do with our lifestyle like if you're a busy mum for for example, dropping off the kids, picking them up after training, not getting some snacks in, to obviously an elite athlete aversion. But the most common signs is when we experience a term called low energy availability, when, like you said,

you're basically not consuming enough calories for your energy expenditure. And that can have both acute and chronic long-term, you know, health effects. So the ones that we experience most of the time from a performance perspective, so you might notice this more regularly, is things like you have an increased risk of injury. So if you're not recovering as well, you feel exhausted

and fatigued all the time, you just feel like you're constantly sore, you know, those types of things within reason. So obviously you just feel like you're constantly sore um you know those types of things within reason so obviously you do feel sore after training um but this can be something that can go on for a period of time and you're not seeing any i guess recovery aspects you also obviously have a um you know decreased muscle strength and lean muscle mass loss can also start to occur we see a reduction in you know glycogen stores, endurance performance or just performance in general. You may not be able to adapt to the training. So for example, if it's a strength phase that your prostate gym is doing, and obviously the intention at the end of that

strength phase is to retest your 1RMs to hopefully improve, whereas if you might feel like you've either gone, stayed the same or if not gone backwards so that can be problematic obviously there's lots of other factors we take into consideration that could be occurring with that but that is something there you may be fine that you constantly run down and therefore your immunity is affected so you may always be getting sick or increased risk of sickness you may also see a change in your sleeping patterns and therefore with your sleep we know reduced sleep can have significant effects on our muscle mass but also our recovery aspect too so i guess they're the in your sleeping patterns and therefore with your sleep we know reduced sleep can have significant effects on our muscle mass but also our recovery aspect too so i guess they're the more of a

performance effects and then you know which you had many phenomenal health professionals on here before anyway discussing this but particularly to you know we can see endocrine alterations hormonal consequences and particularly for females obviously that menstrual dysfunction can also occur at the same time yeah and i think yeah for a lot of women that's kind of the most obvious telltale sign when their periods disappear and take a long time to come back but looking at nutrition and also kind of your training a lot of health professionals say that you know there's no such thing as overtraining it's just under recovery so making sure that regardless of what training you're doing you are getting enough food in in and around your workouts but also across the week yes that's correct and also to like the food perspective but then you know your additional stresses in life and your

recovery and your sleep so i guess all of those kind of are finely tuned with our endocrine system and anything that kind of stresses out our endocrine system kind of think of it like endocrine system is our metabolic handbrake so your body starts to perceive stress obviously that metabolic handbrake is going to go up and that's going to vary you know what you may consider stressful Hazel compared to what I consider stressful is going to be different to every single individual because our metabolic switch is different on every single aspect if that makes sense. Yeah no absolutely it's interesting how sensitive our kind of endocrine system can be but it definitely does vary from person to person. Quickly moving back to carbohydrates which we kind

of mentioned in the beginning as one of the primary fuels or the primary fuels for this type of training I obviously am a big fan of CrossFit myself and the only thing I do would say is that CrossFit is you know they're really CrossFitters really love their trends and kind of low carb diets paleo keto that kind of thing are very trendy in that community is there a place for low carb diets and Cross keto that kind of thing are very trendy in that community is there a place for low carb diets and crossfit do you think i had a thing this was going to come up um so in regards the nature of the sport itself i would say no and i wouldn't support it based on the individuals who understand the physiology and exercise physiology if that makes sense so given the metabolically

demanding profile across the training itself a moderately low carbohydrate diet or keto diet is somewhat going to be less optimal for performance so when it comes to particularly low carb or keto because that like i said is the trend at the moment a lot of individuals get on that bandwagon in crossfit because obviously they see the aesthetic i guess occurrences that can happen based on going on a low carbohydrate diet so for those of you who are unaware if you go on a low carbohydrate diet what naturally will happen is when you take carbs out of your diet you lose roughly 2.7 grams of you know water that is attached with carbohydrates so carbs hold water if that makes sense so I find within the CrossFit community so many people do this because of their aesthetic appeal but then they don't understand the performance aspect of CrossFit itself so as a result you can see based on what i explained at the beginning that

the exercise you know substrate intensity based on crossfit itself is high demanding so as a result a high fat diet would be an inappropriate dietary regime for disciplines such as crossfit or high intensity short duration activities because the sport itself and even weightlifting you know relies mainly on the anaerobic energy system so that's why I guess it's important to understand context is key and getting people to understand the difference between performance and aesthetic goals because most of the time when you ask people you know when they do a ketogenic diet they're not going to feel the best on it if that makes any sense so training to look a certain way is not

the same as training as sports specific if that makes sense to make you a better athlete yeah I completely agree yeah I think you know sometimes these labels often come with almost like a health halo and people just kind of navigate towards them and think, oh, well, if I adopt that diet, then, you know, I will fully, you know, improve my health and improve my appearance and improve my performance. But like you said, it's really important to kind of go back to the basic scientific principles. Is this the best diet to support my training and if you're thinking about a high intensity explosive type training like crossfit probably not um so yeah i think it's unpopular

opinion but it's important for us to chat about it yeah and i think too just to state with that there's not being one study that i'm aware of that actually supports ketogenic diets for performance particularly high intensity sports too so that's also a fun fact there i don't know if any people will like that but there we go and from a supplement point of view are there any things that you personally recommend with your clients like pre-workout bcas creatine protein supplements yep so in regards to due diligence the athlete itself as dietitians we only ever recommend in sports edition sorry recommend supplements if deemed necessary so when it comes to evidence-based supplements

particularly for resistance training so the sport that we discussed the biggest one to date with the most research and is the only supplement to actually support enhancement of skeletal muscle hypertrophy and in response to resistance training would be creatine which i'm sure people have heard about before and particularly creatine monohydrate so what this guy does is he actually occurs naturally within our body and found in our skeletal muscle and in the brain so but we can obtain it through our diet as well through our meat fish as well as like i said our body producing it naturally so the factors to why creating i guess is great within you know resistance training as well as sports is that it has a role in i guess the regulation of energy production and acts indirectly to help the body supply more ATP.

So ATP, think of that as your body's fuel currency. So if we have an increase in creatine stores, it could potentially enhance fatigue resistance and therefore can lead to performance improvements during high-intensity, short-time recovery periods, if that makes sense. So sports such as CrossFit, resistance training, Olympic lifting. The dosage usually with creatine

for those who are interested is around 5 grams as a daily dose and with anything that we recommend or even if you hear people discuss that, it's always based on individual case-by-case basis. Loading isn't necessary with creatine. I don't know if people have heard

that before where they'll load you know 20 grams and vice versa but all that will achieve is the saturation of creating into the muscle quicker but it doesn't necessarily mean you know i mean you can do that if you want to but you know five grams is fine and sometimes people side effect that they may say they experience with creating which um i know i did but again the performance benefits far outweighs that is they might experience some fluid retention um and that's just because it's held intracellularly if that makes sense so you just see that slight fluid retention increase so i don't know if you use creatine monohydrate but it's something that i do recommend

for most most recreational to you know elite athletes from that standpoint absolutely it's got it's got some strong evidence behind it yeah yeah and then obviously the other two that i would then recommend is beta alanine so that's the one for anyone who knows what that is it gives you the tingles and it's also in pre-workout so it's an amino acid that's naturally made by the body and it's important production of a protein called carnosine which basically acts as a buffer so think of that as soaking up acid by products produced during high intensity exercise so it's responsible in reducing lactic acid which is a byproduct without being too complicated of hydrogen ions which is what we experience when we exercise so for any of those

people who've done airdyne sprints you'll understand that because the pain that is associated with doing airdyne sprints in terms of lactic acid is phenomenal but what beta alanine does is it basically converts carnosine to reduce those hydrogen ions that produce the lactic acid and therefore altering the ph of the muscle to stabilize and as a, you can go a little bit harder each time because obviously the reduction of those hydrogen ions. Now the dosage will be based on the individual and how much you can handle in terms of those itchy skin type of feelings that you can get. But currently the evidence does support around three to six grams. There is no evidence yet on the

timing associated with it. But just just to note if you do experience those itchy skin to reduce that would be to split those dosages up throughout the day to minimize a big effect if that makes sense and then lastly the one which um i think i'm most people will be familiar with would be caffeine and that's one that is most heavily studied supplement so as we know with caffeine you know it reduces our perceived rate of exertion and increases our alertness and all those types of things and this can be advantageous particularly when it comes to crossfit or if you're doing any competition to give you that little bit of extra oomph that you feel like you might need caffeine

itself is dependent on what i guess way you choose to utilize it. So, for example, you know, if you're using just regular coffee, as per say, the variance of how much caffeine in that is going to be significantly different compared to supplementing caffeine. So just to give you an idea, an espresso can have around 100 milligrams. So usually when it comes to the recommendations for dosing, it's anywhere between 3 to 6 milligrams per kilogram. So if we're looking back at that espresso, which is 100, if you're doing that based on, you know, the math of someone who's like, let's just say 60 kilos, they would need roughly 180.

So an espresso just wouldn't quite fit it, if that makes sense. So in that instance, if you're a person who likes caffeine, it might be good to look at supplementing caffeine, which may be more beneficial if that's something that makes sense so in that instance if you're a person who likes caffeine it might be good to look at supplementing caffeine which may be more beneficial if that's something that you're interested in yeah i agree um i think caffeine's definitely my pre-work out of choice but bcaa is something that comes up quite a bit amongst this community in particular but also kind of the bodybuilding community and I guess it's also super trendy because you know it comes in these like amazing flavors and colors and things like

that but from a kind of ascent what what is essential point of view do we have any evidence to say that it's kind of something that we should be including into our nutrition protocol so I always say to people bcas are just really expensive yummy colored water um this is the first way of saying it but in saying that yeah it was utilized a lot for anecdotal perspective and particularly in the bodybuilding scene but when it comes to sports nutrition if you're meeting your requirements through um your protein through your food then supplementing bcas top of that is not necessary because you're already meeting your protein requirements, if that makes sense. So I always say to people,

look, spend money elsewhere because there's better ways that we can improve your nutrition quality using actual foods that your body's going to get better usage of opposed to using BCAAs, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does does so basically take home messages once you're kind of meeting your protein needs adding in BCAAs isn't going to do a huge amount apart from you know perhaps tasting good and they do taste really nice yeah one of the things that I'm sure you've come up against especially when you've been like traveling with athletes and things or when people have a big competition is there can be a dip in immunity for a short period after how do or how can we factor this into our diet is there anything that

you recommend upping or reducing around this time so I think it's really important that food in itself plays a really important role in immunity because you think the harder you train, the more you need to fuel yourself from a recovery perspective. And, you know, nutrient availability influences immunity because basically our macronutrients and our micronutrients are involved in a lot of those immune processes and responses. So from a science perspective, you know, macros are involved in, you know, immune cell metabolism and protein synthesis. And our micronutrients are basically involved in those antioxidant defenses so when it comes to training with athletes particularly you know the elite guys it's really really important that we match our energy intake to their expenditure because the risk of being in

low energy availability will most likely increase your likelihood of lowering your immunity overall anyway. And therefore, too, obviously increasing and making sure you have adequate amounts of protein based on the fact that we spoke about it before in terms of its new cell metabolism synthesis, as we say. And also increase immune supporting nutrients. So, you know, like our antioxidants, vitamin C, A and E, and zinc and iron. But I just want to stress that if you're eating a diet as well-balanced and you're not cutting out any foods, groups by any means, you have an abundant amount of grains and whole grains, you know, your fruits and your vegetables as well as seafood,

you've got to be hitting those requirements, those micronutrients as well as those antioxidants and everything anyway because you have them in abundant amounts because they're obviously with the antioxidant perspective being micro we only need them in small amounts so the problem is when people think they're getting sick or they eat a really good diet is they're already supplementing vitamins on top of their diet and you know that's going to be problematic and not necessary in terms of the fact that you don't want to overdose on anything like that either. Yeah, I agree.

And I think food first. So kind of what I do see as well is like people adding in greens powders and they're kind of concentrated forms of greens. But if you're adding colorful fruits and vegetables to your diet in most meals, you're going to be hitting that spectrum of nutrients that you need yeah yeah and also too those fruits and vegetables will help with you know oxidative stress too so antioxidants come in and assist with that too which is really important um i find most of the time athletes are really shocking at eating their five you know fruits anyway but we always promote food first like you said over any supplementation yeah absolutely okay so there's some questions were sent in from social media and the first was the importance of

dietary fats for sports nutrition yeah so i think in regards to just nutrition itself that's really important regardless of the individual status whether an athlete or not so fat does provide an energy source you know lowering exercise intensities to aiding the absorption of certain vitamins specifically obviously our vitamins a d e and k you know it's really important protecting vital organs and aiding hormone production but the ones that we specifically want to focus on when it comes to sports nutrition is obviously the ones that have reduced the effects of inflammation so they tend to be ones that are you know are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats so

things like our nuts seeds avocados you know extra virgin olive oils as well as seafood because we know that omega-3 that being a specific type of polyunsaturated fat has its potential ability to reduce inflammation anyway so that's important in that aspect and also to a low-fat diet isn't going to be good for our sex hormones either because they're required in the production and I guess the makeup of those cells anyway so I find that's really important and two even when it comes to female hormones naturally we do see a decrease quite significantly in our fat we see alterations in our hormones themselves yeah absolutely and then the next question is around fasting which

actually you'd be like so many people ask this question in various forms but the the questions were kind of along the lines of is it okay to do crossfit workout fasted and do you rate intermittent fasting so basically in response to that i would say it's not recommended to do fasting or intermittent fasting for crossfit and that's just based on the nature of crossfit itself being you know sheer volume and the intensity of the sport and particular performance is your goal with it so as a result you know if you come into a training session fasted you obviously increase your risk of losing muscle mass based on the fact that you're not feeding your body effectively but

also to if you're not providing those carbohydrates your body will look for alternative ways of fueling itself and this can be utilized with protein so then your body will start to break down protein and use that as an energy source and that's kind of counterproductive to your goals particularly muscle mass or retention of lean mass or you know gaining muscle mass as part of those goals but so that's the performance perspective but even when it comes to understanding you know intermittent fasting itself it's not something that I would ever recommend because I find that most people anecdotally end up creating really unhealthy eating habits with it. So they start to create binging habits, you know, to have an increased risk of disordered eating patterns associated

with intermittent fasting if it's done incorrectly or if it's not done supported with health professionals. And obviously that can be problematic because then you start to develop you know like I said an unhealthy relationship with food yeah absolutely and I think speaking kind of from a female perspective our menstrual cycles can be really sensitive to fasting and so what I've seen is a lot of women who've tried this have have their periods because of it. And it might be because they're not giving themselves enough time in the day to get in enough nutrients to meet how much exercise they're doing. But also, I think biologically, we're quite sensitive to those type of regimes. So it's something to bear in mind if there's anyone listening who has possibly dabbled

in that, whereas I feel like men can get away with it a bit more easier. Yes. And that's correct. And I do feel like, and it's additional stress intimate fasting to the body too. So it's not just like, I feel it's definitely not to do with the under feeling, but it's adding additional stress to that endocrine handbrake. If that makes sense, like we discussed at the start. Yeah. I like that analogy, the handbrake.

It's always easy to remember yeah and so the next question is how soon after I work out do I need to eat is the 30 minute rule true so I guess they're referring to the anabolic window that we used to refer to yeah so when it comes to eating itself I always say to individuals just to create good eating regime. So it's good to try and aim to eat within one hour for refueling and recovery purposes, particularly if you're training in multiple sessions a day. If you're an individual who trains once, say for example in the morning, and then you don't train for another 24 hours, when people get so hung up on post-training nutrition but the rest of their day is horrible, I think we just need to sit down and reflect on that because, you know, everyone looks at post-training nutrition as the bee's knees but they kind of, you know, don't pay attention

to the rest of the day. So think of it like an ice, like a cake batter and the icing. So everyone's focusing on the icing but the main thing they should be worrying about is their cake batter and that's what happens when you don't eat effectively because all you're worrying about is that 30-minute rule or that one hour of getting your food intake in if that makes sense so I would be more I guess inclined to encourage individuals to have adequate eating bolus of food throughout the day opposed to focusing on that 30-minute rule because nine times out of 10 with training it falls either side of a main meal or some sort of snack so if they're you know implementing it in a way that's going to be sustainable for their lifestyle they should be able to I guess easily get those foods

in and still be able to recover but to maintain normal eating regimes if that makes sense. Yeah absolutely so I guess the only exception to the rule is if you are training, you know, two sessions within a day, you might want to think about getting in a bit closer in between your sessions. But for the vast majority of us who are training maximum once a day, really just focus on your eating patterns throughout the day. You know, assuming that you're kind of taking into consideration getting protein fats and carbs in there you're going to be meeting your requirements you don't need to stress about that 30 to 60 minute window yes that's correct yeah uh so the next question is are vegan protein shakes as good as animal protein and so i guess just to kind of bulk that one out when we talk about vegan there's kind of various forms of vegan blends and then animal protein we'll just kind of bulk that one out, when we talk about vegan, there's kind of various forms of

vegan blends and then animal protein, we'll just kind of look at whey protein. Yeah. So I think when it comes down to these types of proteins, it's important to assess the effectiveness of a protein source is partly dependent on, I guess, the amino acid profile of the protein itself, if that makes sense. So when we're looking at plant-based protein sources such as whey, these are more digestible than plant-based proteins. So that basically means we get a greater percentage of amino acids derived from animal sources successfully into the small intestine. They reach circulation and they're uptaken by liver, for example. So as you can see, the absorption rate of it is increased and as a result it's more

available to the muscle and it's more available for making new muscle protein so that's where most of the evidence is with that so when it comes to reason why is because there's a particular amino acid that is more abundant in animal-based sources than plant-based sources, and that's leucine. So think of leucine as the king of all amino acids in regards to putting on lean muscle mass, because he is basically responsible for stimulating muscle protein synthesis, so big fancy words for your ability to put on muscle. And that appears to always be higher in animal-based than plant-based. So if we're looking at the leucine content from an animal protein, it's around 8% to 13% and it exceeds plant proteins, which is around that 6% to 8%.

So, you know, it's not saying that vegan proteins are a bad source by any means because it's not. It's just saying that they're probably naturally going to be lower in that leucine amino acid, is responsible for that you know muscle protein synthesis so for anyone who's listening when you purchase your vegan protein just flip it over and on the back it should tell you how much leucine is in the protein itself and it should naturally sit around two to three grams if you have a protein that doesn't tell you any of those sources and it should naturally sit around two to three grams. If you have a protein that doesn't tell you any of those sources and it's proprietary blended, you need to get a new protein

because it's not going to tell you, and obviously that's not ideal. But if you do have one that it's slightly under, it's not the end of the world by any means, but there are ones on the market that do hit that threshold. But you can also just get pure leucine in the supplement form in which you can add that to fortify your protein powders itself yeah and i think i have vegan proteins and typically pea-based protein supplements and also soy protein are quite high in in leucine but definitely do have a read of the back of the supplements because sometimes as well i find this

especially with the vegan ones they can add in so many different things in there and you know they sometimes come as a blend with greens powder and things like that so yeah just going to make sure you're getting the protein supplement and not like a full-on meal supplement yeah yeah and then finally the last question's not crossfit related but a few people have asked good snacks for long runs and i guess this is for people who are training for marathons over the winter so obviously it's gonna i guess vary in terms of you know your current pre-training nutrition but you always want to go for things that have a good combination of different types of carbs so your body can digest it easily but also so it is easily digestible so my suggestions is always things like english muffins with honey or jelly or you could do i

don't know if that's a bit weird for you guys over there um but you could do honey and banana white wraps i always do mine toasted and i put a bit of peanut butter on it as well that version also in a muffin is brilliant you can do crumpets with jam and all those kind of combinations can also be made to take on the run as well because obviously the longer you run at a steady state pace you're going to you know you want to top up your fuel sources as you go kind of like that engine tank that we spoke about at the start when you're running obviously you're going to that's going to start to go down to the empty we don't want that to happen because then you're going to start

to see performance problems so if you can take it you know whilst you're running putting little pockets or anything like that it's also going to be advantageous too yeah and I guess when we talk about snacks for running we're talking about runs that are over 90 minutes and roughly you should be having about 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrates an hour um yeah so you know if you're doing anything less than an hour you don't need to worry about that because I think some people kind of are never really sure what's long and what's short yeah cool well that's everything today and for me it's been super interesting speaking to you I know that we've covered sports nutrition before but it's really nice to look at it through a crossfit lens and like we said at the start like the advice

given here also extends to just general strength and conditioning training weightlifting in the gym and that kind of thing yes thank you it's been a pleasure thank you so much okay guys that was Taylor answering all of our questions regarding crossfit and nutrition hopefully it answered some of your questions i know it answered a lot of mine and it was just nice to kind of round it up and compare it to previous episodes where we discussed just sports nutrition in general that's all for me see you again next week