The Food Medic - S7 E7: Eating to thrive not survive in training with Liam Holmes

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

This episode is all about nutrition and training and some common mistakes that people often make. Dr Hazel is joined by Liam Holmes who has worked in elite sport for over 12 years and now blends working with competitive athletes alongside the general public. His previous experience includes working at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the Republic of Ireland national team, FC Copenhagen and at Fulham Football Club - but he also works with everyone from first time gym goers, those training for a specific event, new mums, CrossFit members, endurance athletes and anyone looking to improve their body composition and be healthier.Regardless of your goals, this episode covers the key nutritional considerations you need to make when it comes to supporting your health and fitness. This episode covers:- Common mistakes people make when it comes to their diet- “Abs are made in the kitchen” - true or false?- Macros AND micros- Risks of very low kcal diets- Supplements for gym-goers- Fasted training - do or don’t?- Can your diet help with DOMS?- Healthy eating advice for shift workers. If you loved this episode make sure to give it a review, rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with your friends and family. @thefoodmedic/www.thefoodmedic.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees,

exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over deliver. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Food Mail podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Hazel. Hope you're doing really well and thank you for coming back to join us for another episode. If you're new to the podcast, please make sure to follow our platform, The Food Medic, on social media, where we share educational posts on nutrition, health and fitness. You can also drop me a message if you have any topics you would love for us to cover on here. And if you have any questions you want to submit, you can send a voice note to ellie at thefoodmedic.co.uk for a chance to feature on the podcast too.

Okay, so getting into today's episode, which is all about nutrition and training and some of the common mistakes that people often make. So I've called in Liam Holmes, performance nutritionist and owner of PH Nutrition, to help us simplify it. Liam has worked in elite sports for over 12 years and now blends working with competitive athletes alongside the general public. His previous experience includes working at Tottenham Hotspur, the Republic of Ireland national team, FC Copenhagen and at the Fulham Football Club. But he also works with everyone from first time gym goers, new mums, CrossFit members, endurance athletes and anyone looking to improve their body composition and just be healthier. Regardless of your goals, this episode covers the key nutritional considerations

you need to make when it comes to supporting your health and fitness. So make sure to grab a notepad. There's lots to take away from this. I would just love to start by asking you to tell us more about who you are, what you do and what you're passionate about. So my name is Liam, I'm the owner of PX Nutrition, I'm a nutritionist. My background is actually from like a therapy point of view. I did sports therapy at university as my undergrad. It wasn't really anything to do with nutrition. We touched on it, but I was very lucky then to, in my third year of uni, go into professional sport

and got a placement at Fulham Football Club. So kind of dove straight into the deep end. And it was at that time when I was still studying in my last year, I just kind of went down there one to two days a week, but it snowballed relatively quickly. So I was kind of involved in there one to two days a week but it snowballed relatively quickly so I was kind of you know involved in a very elite level from quite a young age in terms of my academic career so it was really amazing to be around that I kind of just uh as soon as I qualified they kind of offered me a role so I was there full-time and it was at that time i was exposed

to some incredible people amazing experts you know people that are really kind of progressive in their fields and uh it was then i did my master's in exercise and nutrition science and back then like uh professional football clubs there was only i think only one other full-time nutritionist in a in a football club and uh i did i did my master's and then again timing whatever was really uh great i i kind of uh was allowed to take over the nutrition role at fulham i ran the nutrition program and then moved on to tottenham hotspur worked for republic of ireland national team and then started doing crossfit rode the crossfit wave a little bit and that's where i kind of started to set up ph nutrition i diverted away from football and now kind of work in this space here um because i

you know i think my passion is just basically helping people to perform better now like yes the elite sport thing was was a huge part of my career but now that performance side of things is just what i really want i want people to be able to perform whatever that is that could be they wanted to perform better if they're doing three sessions a week, or if they're doing 11 sessions a week, you know, whatever. And I think we invest so much time and money these days into, you know, doing exercise and trying to progress that nutrition plays a huge role in that. So hopefully, I can just help point you in the right direction and make things a little bit more enjoyable. Yeah, absolutely. and I love kind of your approach to nutrition it's very straightforward and matter of fact and you're not trying to reinvent the wheel or make things super sexy

not saying that your account isn't super sexy but we spoke about this last night and and you and you very much owned up like you're not you know you're not trying to do that with ph nutrition yeah we're not trying to pull the wool over people's eyes when you know it's not all about sales um and you know we don't have like you say some sexy name to what we do it's you know it kind of does what it says on the tin um but that's my philosophy that's that's what my approach is is is trying to simplify things trying to make nutrition accessible and practical you know there's a lot of information out there i think social media can get a bit of a battering i think there's some incredible you know resources out there but what we want to try and do is is just to try make it simple

and achievable and sustainable for people so like yeah that's my philosophy because there's a lot of noise and it's really overwhelming even for us that have a kind of a little bit more of an idea so when people are trying to follow something or want to achieve a goal I think it can be extremely overwhelming so hopefully we can you know provide that little bit of a voice to be able to kind of make things a tiny bit easier. 100% and so And so now you don't just work with elite athletes or CrossFitters. You still do a lot of that, but you're also working with first-time gym goers, mums, CrossFit members that are maybe not competing. And so what are some of the common trends you see in terms of what people are getting wrong

or some of the misconceptions when it comes to nutrition around training i think sports nutrition unlike the nutrition around training i think there's people that have this perception that it's pills and powders and nutrient timing and you know all these weird and wonderful things whereas actually human nutrition you know is sports nutrition is performance nutrition if we can focus on health and well-being and eating nutrient-dense foods in the right amounts for what we're doing that that's going to help your performance it doesn't need to have a shiny label and be called some random name make your face tingle i think people can be going into that area when they think about

workout nutritional training nutrition that that's what they need to prioritize i think people overcomplicate it i know this may be a theme of what we're going to talk about today but actually people can train relatively consistently at the same times they do the same things so what we find is that people don't have a structure all my clients will get a little bit bored of me talking about meal structure meal timings and this isn't about like you know taking your post-workout shake it's about what are you eating leading into your session what are you eating away from your sessions to help you get the most out of your training so it's something that for example we use evening training like all too often people would eat lunch and then they don't think about it it's not it's not a priority for them and the only time they will think about it 20 minutes's not a priority for them. And the only time they will think about it is 20 minutes before the session

when they're rushing from the tube or whatever and they're shoving a bar or a banana or whatever into them before they work out. And then they don't get the most out of that session. And if you can just focus on that structure over the day, so you have a little bit more in the tank going to that hour or session that you're going to be doing in that evening,

you're just going to enjoy it more. You're going to that hour or session that you're going to be doing in that evening you're just going to enjoy it more you're going to get better progress and I think that's what people miss I think they miss that kind of like it's just about that workout window you know and I think that's where there's massive potential for people to make a small change and see a big effect yeah absolutely and I think bringing it back to kind of the fact that it can enhance your performance and make make sure that you have like get the most out of your session is really important and you know there's that really cringy phrase which is abs are made in the kitchen and I guess my question to you is do you think you can be stronger fitter or leaner without worrying about your diet using that kind of phrase as an example as cringy as it is

yeah it is absolutely in the kitchen or whatever it is cringy but like you know people say how can you out train about diet or can you train yourself without worrying about it I think what I would I like to have people to focus on is at times nutrition should be a real priority um at certain times of the year or even certain times of the month or whatever you should prioritize nutrition but having an all-or-nothing approach or constantly thinking about it i think is detrimental i think that this might be a bit controversial i think depending on the amount that you do in your age i think you can out train a bad diet i think that when you're younger or if you have a really high output then maybe the quality of your diet doesn't necessarily matter

because your output's so high um and sometimes when we work with elite athletes like it's not quote unquote the healthiest approach because sometimes it's a numbers game and trying to get calories in and timings and whatever it's quite hard but for the general public you know food quality matters massively so you know you you can't just disregard you know your food choices and just either eat just numbers and this is a big thing like yeah with calories and macros but we eat food not numbers and for me it's huge in terms of food quality i think amps are made in the kitchen is the wrong thing but it's the wrong message it's the wrong message definitely yeah but I agree with you and I think like

thinking about like you know people who are going to the gym and just want to stay fit and healthy like we need to look beyond aesthetics and appearance because ultimately you want to be healthy and live a long life and that's that's the end goal really so diet quality really matters there yeah maybe you can get away with it for a couple of years and you won't gain weight in your 20s and your 30s but if you want to be healthy and fit and strong and have a good heart and a good brain then you need to worry about quality well that's it like it's longevity and sustainability like you can do it for you know very short periods of time but it always comes back to like i said that human nutrition is performance nutrition and you've got

to be focusing on the quality of your food because like you say we don't necessarily know what happens if we chronically eat a poor diet or if we chronically under eat certain micronutrients yeah so you know that's that's a thing they said we can get away with it but it's going to catch up with us yeah and i think it's really easy as well um not just in the fitness space but when it comes to nutrition in general to get you know really focused in on the main kind of the macronutrients so carbs fats protein and also looking at energy or calorie intake but we often forget about micronutrients or vitamins and our minerals what are some of the kind of key micronutrients that you think people should be more aware of or what kind of key micronutrients are you seeing people less uh sufficient in in your kind of group of clients yeah this is a really key thing um

i'm going to start with some that we find that's really hard to derive from foods so in vitamin d and uh omega-3s be sure so these two i think are two that i would put at the top of my list because it's quite challenging to get them from food and obviously if you live in a country where sunlight is uh is sparse it's uh challenging to get in natural forms of vitamin d as well but i spoke about this before as well actually if people even live in hot countries very hot countries that they actually might be vitamin d deficient as well because they don't actually go outside because it's so hot they just stay in air-conditioned rooms and do whatever so just because you live in the sun doesn't mean that you're automatically you know sufficient in vitamin d so i would get people to focus on vitamin d and fish oil as well like yes you can

derive it from oily fish but it's quite hard to eat enough across the week but also it's that balance between omega-3 and omega-6 and unfortunately our western diet and the foods that we are exposed to have quite high levels of omega-6 so i think supplementing with these or focusing on getting these key micronutrients is essential but from food i think zinc magnesium and iron are ones that you want to kind of have a bit of a checklist across the week in terms of your foods that you want to make sure that the food that you're eating have these kind of in i think when we're talking about training and performance these are depleted during training we have a slightly higher requirement of these and these are relatively simple to get from foods so that food first approach has got to be there for those um and

the last one for me is b vitamins i don't necessarily think people talk about b vitamins as much as maybe they should be. They're such an important thing. It cofactors for so many processes in the body. It's quite hard to, you know, we don't really store them. So it's really important that we have a consistent supply of them. And for those that, like I say, have a higher output and training regularly, I think looking at B vitamins, like I like i say again from foods first and then potentially a supplementation at certain times maybe when you're training hard or you're going

through a period where you're feeling like you hit a bit of a plateau then that might be something that you kind of dive into yeah absolutely and i think also for especially for like females thinking about getting enough calcium as well especially female athletes for bone health and I'd love to kind of circle actually into that a little bit um when it comes to female nutrition and like obviously you know we're only starting now to understand sex differences when it comes to nutritional considerations in nutrition in general and also sports nutrition and the impact of the menstrual cycle and you know different physiological variables but women are typically put on very low calorie diets when it comes to you know losing weight or leaning up and sometimes these can be you know 1200 calorie

diets for a long period of time and sometimes they might just stay on that with no guidance and you know no one's going to help them out there what are some of the risks of a diet that low in calories yeah i mean where's 1200 calories come from i don't know who's made this up like someone's just said because it is everywhere like it is like you know 1200 calories like that's just like say what women should eat to lose weight like it's it's pretty crazy so yeah there's huge risks obviously with that lower amount of calories for your daily intake then you're going to struggle to get enough protein in potentially enough micronutrients because you simply have a lack of opportunities to nourish your body again with that it's going to be really challenging to get

adequate fat levels in now for females for females, we need fat. We need fat to produce hormones, to help with so many kind of processes in the body for cellular health. So with really small, low-calorie diets, it's quite hard to get those in. Now, it also places huge stress on the body. You know, your body has to find energy from somewhere. So, you know, your metabolism is going to be affected. So your output is going to be affected so your output's going to be affected so you'll probably move less your train is going to be you know you're going to suffer from it and that just compounds stress on the body like it will have to find energy from somewhere potentially using protein as an energy source which is very inefficient

you know it's not ideal so these types of things could be a real issue if you do it for an extended period of time or even if you keep repeatedly doing it you're just constantly taking that stress on the body and I think you know it affects your mood I don't know if you've you know gone down and dieted yourself Hazel like it's it's hard it's really hard and it's a really challenging thing to do for any period of time yeah and i think one thing that's really important to mention there is you know we talk about energy availability and having enough energy to fuel the things that we do every day and that could just be everyday processes but also training on top of that is another energy demand and so if we've got people who are under fueling for what the work that they're doing we call that like low energy availability and it runs into the

risk of reds or red s which is like relative energy deficiency in sport and i don't i think this is like a lot more prevalent in the kind of general active community and not just athletes um because i i don't know about you but like i get a lot of women coming to me who are quite active triathletes or just you know big into big into CrossFit and they're like, I've lost my period. And I'm like, you know, first of all, like you need to go speak to your doctor, but always kind of bring it back to its energy intake, energy output, like stress, body composition, have you lost weight? Like all of these things. And I think for women, the first sign is always or most often is always menstrual cycle disturbances but we don't see that in men I think men can hold on longer

at like these low calorie diets not saying they should but I feel like they've kind of got this they're a bit more resilient whereas like women we see like impact to their bone health their mood yeah definitely performance recovery blah blah blah and it's not really talked about no it's not and um we actually held an event uh so we have female only events but we have an event for males called the bro sesh um and it's basically getting men together to talk about this exact topic um to be talking about identifying signs like like you say it isn't as prevalent and and also men we don't talk you know we don't you know we don't say i'm struggling in here or i'm feeling

this or actually yeah i have been you know just getting through and maybe over caffeinating and doing whatever just to get through my sessions and and you know man up so you've got to be looking at signs and symptoms and all these types of things in terms of like you know if you so you've got to be looking at signs and symptoms and of these types of things in terms of like you know if you hit a plateau if you haven't you know if you find it really really hard to warm up into training sessions if you find your recovery is you know longer than it used to be sleep disturbances you know libido is really really low these types of things in men are the signs and symptoms that we need to look out for but as you say it's just trying to raise awareness because in the female community the signs are like you say a tiny little bit more prevalent and people might be a bit more maybe females are a little bit more

aware of their bodies so you know maybe kind of raise this with people earlier than men would yeah yeah the symptoms can be you know they're very you know generic and you can attribute them to loads of things like sleep disturbance and mood disturbance things like that and no one wants to admit that like they need to pull back on their training and often you know like often i find when someone hits a plateau uh in their performance then they're like i need to go harder and i'm like actually you probably need to dial it back a little bit then they do that for a while reluctantly and then they find they're getting back to their usual selves yeah you're absolutely right like it's ingrained in us especially if people that

train regularly to break through that plateau and that means well I've got to do more and it is about what you can remove but also what you can add in so can you add in you know a little bit more food maybe even just slowly starting we don't want this all or nothing or we don't want this end of the spectrum kind of approach we want to be thinking about okay can i just make a 10 increase can i just make sure that i'm going into my sessions feeling good maybe fueled and doing this while also looking at across the week right have I got an extra rest day or my bugbear hazel is active recovery days yeah they don't exist they don't exist I'm like I'm not I'm not telling you to stay in bed all day and hammer Netflix but when people

start to go to the gym on active rest days and end up doing a 40 minute emom or end up going on like a 10k run oh it's just a light 10k run i'm like yeah but that's your rest day like it's still compounding the stress that you created throughout the week you're not allowing your muscles tendons ligaments you know substrate levels like carbohydrate glycogen levels to replenish you're still depleting these so again we get that chronic kind of like well we just don't allow our body to come back into a state of kind of optimal performance and and then you know over time this is really really hard to kind of change so for anyone that is feeling this it's hard to aware because like i said we don't want

to change that we pay our monthly membership we want to turn up and get our money out of you know out of our sessions but it's maybe starting with nutrition first in terms of just increasing slightly or maybe like say just taking away the intensity that you do or the volume that you do you're still going to be turning up to the gym but you might not just trying to be going absolutely all out in that session yeah I'd agree the other thing that you're going to mention there is like feeling going into your sessions field and I think fasted training is another uh it's one of the things that I really kind of don't recommend for women specifically because oftentimes that can be one of the things that really sets off menstrual disturbances I don't know whether

you feel strongly or for or against faster training or where you sit on that kind of fence I sit on the same fence as you on this one uh Hazel so I I'm not a fan of it if I'm honest because I think people get it wrong I think especially with functional fitness or high intensity training or even doing kind of circuits classes this type of things that the energy systems that are used where it's quite high intensity so you know you're burning more kind of glycogen carbohydrates and training fasted with this like it's stressful it's stressful on the body um and what i think people get wrong is that they think that they need to potentially eat breakfast before this so it's like oh it oh, it's morning. I can't eat before training.

I'm sure you've heard this. I feel bloated. I feel heavy. I feel like it doesn't work for me. And I'm like, okay, what are you having? And they're like, oh, bagel and eggs. I'm like, oh, you can't. You maybe start with like a couple of pieces of dried fruit or, you know,

something liquid-based such as fruit juice or coconut water or protein and something else. Like don't need to be this massive meal just because it's the morning yeah so if you yeah 100 and you can play around with this then you could have something that is 45 minutes before your session now most people we get up 45 or minutes before that they're going to do a class so you could have something there you could have something liquid based you could actually if it's liquid based you could sip it through the first half of your session like this type of thing i think where people get it wrong is that they think that they need to eat a meal and often when people have um trialed it and had something and they found like what works for them whether that's like i said something small something liquid-based that the the benefits that they find in their training is huge they feel better they're

like oh my god i just i just accepted being tired and surviving through my session whereas actually you want you to be thriving through it yeah absolutely agree i think also you know these things become trendy as well and people start talking about it um but another kind of thing that is really popular is like supplementation you mentioned at the start like oftentimes we miss the low hanging fruit when it comes to nutrition and instead of focusing on big picture we're like what supplement is going to make me the best athlete or stronger or fitter or leaner and um you know i'm not completely bashing supplements they have their place there

are certain supplements that have a really good evidence base behind them like i use protein supplementation creatine but then there's some others that you know don't and you know there's a huge industry behind them what kind of supplements do you think from the top of your head have value or that you use in your own training or with your clients yeah i think you touched on two there um creatine and protein for sure i speak about this a lot with protein i think it's just to let the listeners understand that protein doesn't always have to be around your workout like you can you can supplement with protein elsewhere you can supplement it at your breakfast if you're maybe struggling to get protein there in a snack you

know in between meals you know and whatever to help that protein distribution across the day and just to bump up your overall levels i often get people to tell me what they eat post-workout and i'm like you eat relatively soon afterwards and that normally contains protein correct and they're like yeah so then you're taking a shake on top of that i'm like that could be 50 60 70 grams of protein in like a 20 minute period so identifying and looking at like say supplementation doesn't mean just a roundout workout but creatine for sure beta alanine um for people that are doing slightly more high intensity exercise again huge research behind it and uh just jumping in for people who aren't familiar with beta alanine what is it and

what kind of what are the benefits so beta alanine is a as a compound um it helps to increase the body's levels of carnosine and this is basically in simple terms to help prevent or buffer a build-up of lactic acid what it helps with is that kind of workout intensity when you're working from around 60 minutes to maybe kind of two and a half three minutes you know that repeated bout of exercise so it helps to prevent that burn that acid build-up that stops you being able to kind of you know recruit muscle fibers and you know and keep going and i'm sure anyone that's done workouts with that will be like i just can't do another rep um it's it's working on on uh helping to buffer that kind of build-up of acidity in the body yeah absolutely and it's something that

people often put in pre-workouts um because one of the harmless side effects is that it's a little bit of parathesia so it can make your face tingle or your ears tingle your hands tingle and often people put it in pre-workouts because it's an acute thing so it makes you think oh there's something something working in this whereas actually the timing of it is irrelevant you just need to make sure that you saturate your muscles with it so taking it over a four to six week period is advocated and it doesn't really matter when you take it so just for someone there like to be like oh i have to take these down and in my pre-workout you don't yeah the other the other couple i touched on earlier fit him in the official they're the kind of big four really in terms of supplementation that we would consistently

use with our clients with our athletes just again with the amount of blood work without testing without kind of feedback anecdotally and from the research that we get the most benefits from yeah one of the kind of biggest issues that people come to me with, especially when they're new to the gym or they've just started CrossFit, is muscle soreness or DOMS. And, you know, first of all, I think there's a big misconception that that's like if you're sore after a workout, that is a good indicator that you worked hard or like you've built muscle, which is not true. But the second kind of question to that is tips on reducing them yeah i think you made a really good point like it's it isn't a good indicator and sometimes we can be thinking you know it's a badge of honor like how sore you are and you come in and you're like oh i'm so sore from this and it's almost like if you aren't that then you haven't worked hard enough whereas

you know DOMS occurs because of unaccustomed exercise and or a new stimulus and it you know there's a thing called the repeated bout effect so if you're training regularly your body gets accustomed to it so you actually the level of soreness that you would experience will go down it doesn't mean that you're not making progress or whatever so definitely a good thing to highlight to people that it isn't a good indicator of a good workout um but if you do feel it like you say if there's a new stimulus or higher change in intensity of volume or whatever the number one tip i give to people a lot is to eat a little bit more around your workouts now the reason for this is that we talked about fasted training. So if you're training fasted and then potentially delaying your post-workout window, you're missing this opportunity where the body is in a slightly higher sensitized state to building blocks in simple terms to repair and regenerate that muscle soreness is a little bit higher you know we can talk about nutrient timing and again that comes back to people maybe focusing on this first but

it matters if you if you're feeling sore regularly or if you're training you know consistently like maybe kind of two three days in a row and you're feeling like you're a little bit beat up and sore and stiff just try to look at your workout nutrition and look at that pre and post workout and what can you do maybe you can focus on increasing it maybe you're kind of making sure that the timing to there within that kind of the rush as soon as you drop the barbell but within that hour post workout making sure that you're consuming some some good quality nutrition this is my number one tip before everybody starts covering things in turmeric um so uh that's what i would that's what i would uh

focus on um but then like i say there are there are other things that you can start to do in and i think we touched on it earlier about the quality of your food so if you're feeling sore and stiff look at the quality and the nutrient density of your diet you know if we're eating a varied colorful plate and a colorful diet with adequate protein and carbohydrates and veggies and providing our body with antioxidants and polyphenols and all of these things that are going to help to lower the oxidative stress that occurs with training providing the body like you say with all of the things it needs to lower this muscle soreness this systemic inflammation that we create by training so quality nutrients of your diet making sure that you're kind of focused in around that workout yeah absolutely and staying hydrated

as well as important yeah you work with older adults and athletes as well and obviously as we get older nutritional kind of requirements change a little bit what are some of the kind of key considerations that people say over the age of 50 need to start thinking about yeah this is we have we do like to say we work in crossfit gyms and functional fitness and facilities and there's a massive range. We have a lot of kind of masters athletes or older athletes or just general people that kind of need to dial their nutrition and as they age. And unfortunately, it's not a pretty picture.

Sometimes when we look at age-related changes, such as decreased muscle mass and all these different things and bone density and whatever. But one of the key things is to focus on protein intake over the day. So like the total protein that you're taking and also the distribution as we age. You know, there's something called anabolic resistance where we actually need a little bit more protein to do the same job as it would have done when we're younger.

So the easy thing is to just slightly increase the serving size at main meals and maybe potentially look at you know where you're getting protein in across the day from snacks and this is a this is a really really key thing really kind of for me the number one thing that people kind of need to focus on kind of as we age just to offset that kind of like you know dropping muscle mass and then there's key nutrients i think that's the kind of the two big pillars that I want people to focus on is that protein and key nutrients and such as calcium, vitamin D for kind of increased bone density, but also for as we get older, we get a slightly decreasing immune function. So focusing on on those two things are really crucial, as our body age well in terms of helping with the physiological functions in our body that naturally kind of go down as we start to kind of age. And we touched on it a couple of times. You mentioned hydration a few times there. This is something I find a lot of older people don't do.

Either their hydration comes from one glass of water and then just tea over the rest of the day or coffees or whatever. And they don't consistently hydrate enough across the day. Some research has shown there's a bit of a decrease in thirst perception. So we actually don't feel as thirsty. So people don't drink as much. But these types of things, those three things key nutrients vitamin d calcium b vitamins incomanisium and protein intake across the day slightly increasing that are definitely a good good kind of place to start yeah i agree so make sure to check your

we and if it's clear straw color you're on to a winner very simple lots of the kind of information that you guys put out on the ph nutrition page is like you know very practical and for people who are like busy and things like that and i know a huge portion of the audience who are listening work long shifts or work in offices or hospitals what tips can you offer them for just kind of simplifying eating well yeah it's a really good question it's it's so hard isn't it and i'm sure you've you know struggled at times through through long shifts one of the things we work with with people in this scenario is to try and the number one thing is to try and prep your own food

as much as possible you know and this means doesn't mean like spending like say four hours on whenever you're going to eat your day off cooking up a load of meals it's maybe prepping snacks or taking something that is portable such as you know what we would call like a super shake so like a smoothie kind of based thing where you know you can put it in a non-clear kind of shaker so people just think it's water or whatever they don't see it's maybe a green or bright you know red kind of berry smoothie or anything like that but what this allows you to do is take control of the nutrient density of your diet now often the case is like you're not going to make good choices at 2 a.m in the morning or coming off of a night shift so if you have the food already there you're naturally going to make

better choices and you're in control and you do it at a time when you're not tired and hungry so that's a number one thing that we get people to do is to try and take control of that the next thing is removing food labels or meal labels so when we work with a client that we don't call it breakfast lunch and dinner no we call it meal one meal two meal three now what that allows you to do is just kind of fit that around your work schedule so meal one would always be happening when you wake up meal two would always be kind of just before your shift meal three would be in you know in the middle of the shift or snack you know whatever and what that allows you to do is just be consistent rather than

being like oh I wake up at 4 30 in the afternoon I don't really fancy dinner here is it lunch is it dinner I don't really know what I want so I'll just snack and then all of a sudden you just don't have this structure and I suppose it kind of loops back to what I said before like that just allows that consistency then and then they can make small tweaks and changes depending on the shifts or their personal preference or you know if they found that that kind of works for them or it doesn't so yeah they're the kind of two main things that we get people to do yeah I think they're they're good tips because also when you're working night shifts, it can be really confusing like in terms of meal timing, but also what kind of meals to have.

And I've like, you know, dabbled with them, whether I've had like breakfast at like 7pm before going to work or then instead try having dinner. But if you're just waking up, you're like, why am I having a full meal? So I think it also depends on you. But for healthcare workers, especially if you're working, if you know it's going to be a busy shift, which it typically is, really prioritizing your pre-shift and post-shift meal.

Because if they're as nutrient dense as possible, then it doesn't really matter what you get in the the in the middle bit especially if it's a night shift like you don't want to be having big meals on board it's just going to you know make you feel less alert and things like that and also not from a kind of metabolic point of view not ideal to be having too many kind of calories in the middle of the biological night yeah you're absolutely right and that's why we use that more kind of calories in the middle of their biological night yeah you're absolutely right and that's why we use that more kind of liquid based throughout that night shift so people can sip on it so then like say you're not having this massive but you're not having to sit down with tupperware or wraps or whatever sandwiches and you can kind of sip on it depending on the shift or depending

on how you feel how hungry you feel and it just gives you that tiny little bit of flexibility but we also know that it's going to be providing you with good nutrition throughout that yeah absolutely and like I mean I always get really hungry in the night so I know they say you know there's some advice which is like just don't eat from you know at all on your night shift just kind of fast and I'm like it's easier said than done because when you're like it's 3am I'm super stressed I've got like x amount of patients to see I'm really cold because I'm in the hospital and I'm looking for comfort food you know you do need something so I absolutely empathize with people who are like yeah that's all well and good but I'm hungry yeah you do I think I think you know you're almost

fighting against physiology as well I think you know you're almost fighting against physiology as well I think you know ghrelin rises in the evening as well the hunger hormone so you know like you say it's all well and good saying oh well use willpower and just get through it well I'm using a lot of willpower to kind of get through my shift I don't want to be thinking about using it for nutrition as well so it's super challenging yeah it is I think they're really helpful tips though so to wrap up podcast, I always finish with three questions. The first one is pretty straightforward. What is can simplify it, if you can just take that kind of slightly bird's eye view and just look at your general day, not just like your workout, you know, look at what you do across the day. I think you're saying, OK, actually, my breakfast is pretty good. My lunch is pretty good.

You know, maybe I'm just missing a snack here before I work out. I think if you can just try to prioritize one or two things, I think you're going to be making sustained progress rather than thinking that you have to go all in on a nutrition plan or have to constantly think about calories and macros. You don't always have to do that. And I think you just need to give yourselves a little bit more credit. Yeah. And the second question is, if you could go back and give your 18 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Everyone finds this on the internet. I did find, you know what, I'm just going to say the same thing. I was like, apart from coming in and saying like, right, best in Google and Apple, I kind of struggled a little bit.

I guess the kind of thing was, it's like, look, nothing substitutes hard work like you know no matter how many you know I would say like if you can just consistently make sure that you're working hard then you know things happen um I know you're 18 and you want to slack off but um yeah if you can start to kind of you know get that kind of work ethic in you then yeah you're gonna be all right yeah I love that quote which is like luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity and I'm like yeah you know you have to be prepared when an opportunity comes along the only way to be prepared is to put the work in um so it's not just you know sitting back and manifesting you know your dream house yeah yeah exactly yeah could not agree more mate and finally what is one book you recommend

everyone reads and why i've got two for you hazel i'm afraid i'm gonna be that person i uh for coaches so anyone that's listening to this that is maybe a coach or a trainer or nutritionist or whatever one book that i find to be really really uh interesting was a key person of influence i just think it's just so well written and just really laid out you know kind One book that I find to be really, really interesting was Key Person of Influence. I just think it's just so well written and just really lays out, you know, kind of if you're building a brand or business or whatever. I think it's a really essential book to dive into. But my other one is Walter Isaacson's Biography of Steve Jobs. So I read this when I was a bit younger and I think Apple is so ingrained in our lives now.

You know, everyone, if you don't have an iPhone or you know of it, but this book does more than just talk about Apple. It talks about management and product development and marketing and personal growth. And for me, it's just such an amazing insight into someone that was, was such a visionary. And, you know, I think if you look at what he actually did you know he made launching a phone a massive event like the Apple event like I'm like this is crazy like how did he make it that it's this huge thing now it's just amazing for me it's just it's just it hits so many areas so no matter what area that you are in business whatever it doesn't matter I think it's just such an amazing insight so that would be my number one. Yeah, love that.

I'm actually, I've put those two books on my reading list. So I will come back to you once I've read them. Amazing. So good to chat to you again for context. Myself and Liam were on a panel last night together. So we had a little preamble yeah it was good yeah really good to catch up um so thanks for having me on it's been amazing of course and if people want to kind of find out more from you or maybe sign into one of your programs where can

they find you the main source uh that we use for kind of education is is instagram we're not on all of the apps like that's the kind of main thing if you go through our profile scroll back down like like hazel kind of touched on there we've got lots of advice on shift work lots of different practical things um and then just a website just ph nutrition dot co.uk we have different programs different variations and then like one-to-one coaching so yeah amazing well thank you so much for joining us thanks hazel okay team that was liam you can find more from him over on phnutrition.co.uk again a big thank you for tuning into the food matter podcast and as always i would love if you could take a moment of your time to just leave us a five-star rating a review and share this podcast

with someone you think might enjoy it. That's all from me. I'll see you again next time.