Dietitian and nutrition consultant Sara Widdowson discusses the role of nutrition in exercise and fitness performance, how to best manage food around your training and the different nutritional needs of a women’s menstrual cycle.
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Oh hey there, thanks for joining us on Extra Healthy Ish. Yes, this is a big sister podcast too Healthy Ish from Body and Soul, and this podcast in particular is designed to give you that little bit extra in your day for your mind, body and soul. I am your host, Felicity Harley. Now, if you're a regular listener, you will know that recently I completed my first half marathon as part of the Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival. And helping me fuel my training sessions and of course the big race was Sarah Widowser. Now, she was fabulous. She knows her stuff and I thought we have to get her on the podcast to share all her wisdom with you when it comes to well the role of nutrition in exercise and fitness performance. She is a senior dietitian and nutrition consultant specializing in women's health and fueling all types of athletes. She's also femi's resident dietitian. And yes, she's going to talk all about how to best manage your food, nutrition you're eating, around your training, and most importantly, the different nutritional needs of a women's menstrual cycle. I hope you find her wisdom as useful as I did. Sarah, how are you? Thank you for joining us on extra Healthish.
I'm good, thank you for having me.
Now, before we talk all things well, performing what to eat to perform at your peak, I need to ask you a big question we ask everyone who comes on the podcast. How do you stay extra healthish in your life?
Oh? My goodness, how do I extra stay extra healthy ish? You know what? At the moment, I'm thinking about so my mum has with three young kids, I don't sleep a lot. So I think about how I can prioritize rest outside of sleep, so making sure that they give like my brain windows of time without doing anything at all. So an example is like I love not listen to the radio when I'm driving in the car, and just like having.
Some start listening to podcasts. You can say it's okay.
I'm sorry, I get it, I get it. Moments of silence. Yeah, what else do you do?
I mean, that's a really common well need desire. However you want to describe it of many many mums, no matter what age your kids. How else do you fit it in rest?
Just little moments of like I'm trying really hard to not be like connected to devices and things right before bed, So much of that is just like a Njirik reaction, right. Something else I try and do is make like phones not the first thing I do, and it's I'm working on it. I'm not perfect by any means, but like when I get up in the morning, trying really hard to say how to my husband before I look at my phone, expose myself to sunlight, so like really simple stuff like getting out and like looking at the sun or you know, noticing outside before you jump into your day. I think rest doesn't have to look like sleep. It's just kind of little check in moments where you just kind of calm your nervous system down and then go back to your visy world.
I feel like I asked this question of everyone who comes in podcast, as I just said, but there is so many people are just striving for more rest, whether it's this phone disconnection, getting more sunlight, and like, I think this is telling us something about this state of the world. We just all want to switch off and shut down. Anyway, let's talk about what to eat to perform at your fitness peak. Talk to us about fueling our body for workouts. How does nutrition affect performance, because it's often the last thing, and you know, we caught up before I ran my we'll finish my half marathon, and I perhaps didn't appreciate until I spoke to you how important it actually was.
That's so funny, isn't it. And I think once you learn it and make so much sense and it's so obvious, but until you understand the information and how it can make an impact on your own potential with training, it's like a whole foreign concept. So I think about the question around like how can furred make a difference to my performance or in my workout? It really simply is like fuel for your muscles and for your body working right, And so I always think about with clients. You've got your baseline nutrition, so what you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and that kind of nutrition is really important for your general state of health and wellbeing for your recovery outside of your training, and then during your workout, literally what you take on board and understanding how are we to do that depending on how you're training and what you're training for, makes all the difference to your body's ability to do things that create and endurance, to be adaptable to build muscle. As an example, it does make all the difference. And I see lots with clients who don't nail fueling. You know, that they find training more tiresome or fatiguing than they should. It kind of overfills and pores into consequences outside of their training, like low immunities a common sign of underfueling, and women who aren't naming the nutrition for their training deficiencies like iron deficiency and increased risk of injury, Lots of different things.
I mean often we just think, oh, I need to fuel myself if I'm doing, you know, a half marathon. But is are there any particular I mean, should everyone who try or done some sort of you know, strength based training or running or whatever it is. Should we all fuel our workouts?
It really does depend, which is an annoying long answer to what should be a simple question, But it really does depend on your training goals, what type of movement you're doing. So if I use the example of someone doing a twenty minute walk at talking kind of pace with their dog and by no means saying you should be you know, interesting gurism ananas while you're out walking the family dog. Likewise, if you're doing like a I don't know, like a fifteen to twenty minute like quite relaxing restorative yoga. You don't need to stop halfway through to take on electroldes. But if you're doing anything beyond forty five minutes to an hour at a reasonable intensity, I don't think it's really important to consider how nutrition could be playing into things for you. And that time frame comes from we have something called glycogen, which is a store of glucose and our muscles and our liver, and we hold enough glycogen to maintain about forty five minutes of exerted effort during exercise. So after and you probably notice this in your running felicity, at that forty five to sixty minute time point, you can literally fail yourself, falling off a little bit of a nutrition cliff. And when you get used to ingesting fuel at that mark, you get this lovely people runners high, so this lovely black peak and nutrition and that gluca is coming back into your system and it really does make a difference to your ability to go for another forty five minutes and I'll feel back at for the entire day.
I mean, you really were like a madician to me, because I totally live that, Like I was doing those one hour training runs and not fueling. I was just I mean, I wasn't carrying anything with me. I wasn't even having any water. And then as soon as you said no, you should be every forty five minutes and then half an hour after, I felt amazing and it just was quite phenomenal. How it just pushed me through.
Yeah, and I talk about this concept of like fueling your own potential, Like I think a lot of the time we think about, well, I'm not a professional athlete, I don't need to have a nutrition plan. But you were just such the perfect example of you know, getting more out of your training, pushing your own limits because you have the nutrition behind you.
We're back after this shot break with more from Sarah. So with the let's use a forty five minute example. What should how should we be working our nutrition if we're doing I mean, I see most classes in the gym are an hour as well, so really, how should we structure our nutrition around that training session?
So if I use the example of like you say, like a not running, so like a weight based session as an example, and you know, carrying a bottle that has a vetro lights in it is such like a socially acceptable easy way to get in some glucose to feel those training sessions and just sipping away. So as a baseline with a client, I would talk about needing about thirty grams of carbohydrate per hour of exercise, and that maths does come from more endurance type sports like swimming, cycling, and running. But if you're noticing you're a weight trainer and you're at the gym for an hour plus and you're noticing you're feeling pretty flat towards the end of your exercise, trialing, you know, having two hundred and fifty mils of an electrolyte drink and the way of your session and seeing how it changes that outcome for you the second half could be really interesting.
See that's such an easy thing to do. You don't have to have like a banana mid class going oh sorry, guys, I need to just say my before I start the next you push up or whatever? Yeah, what about before we spoke a bit about this in Healthy Each But for those who didn't listen, what about before the workout and after the workout? What are some good foods that can aid and also perhaps improve our workouts?
So I think about this approach. I call it the Buddy system. I love coming up with terms to make things really easy for people to remember. So the Buddy system is including a carbohydrate and a protein source at that pre workout nutrition point and at post workout nutrition point. The carbohydrate is the glucose ingestion that's actually going to power your workout, and then the protein is really important for prolonging how long it's going to take for your body to access that carbohydrate. But also there's some cool evidence that protein and take pre white based training sessions can actually help muscle adaption and recovery from that time point. So rather than just focusing on protein post meal, which I think lots of people you know, proteins the trendy like cro nutrients at the moment, everyone loves protein shakes, protein bars, et cetera. But not just focusing on after training, but before as well. So some easy examples like big fan of things like protein. Oh, it's like good, easy to reduce carbs, and you can mix protein powder, throw it and get a really good protein hat. A couple of eggs on toast is another really good one. Toast with bananas and honey and peanut butter is Another really good one is like a pre training edition and then post workout. If it's a natural next meal for you, then it can just be whatever that is making sure you've got protein there, So things like pasta salad with tuna, maybe a sandwich with a good protein source like check in, maybe the family evening meal, or even a smoothie if you kind of don't have anything planned and organized, but you're wanted to get something in than that's sixteen to ninety minutes I have to finish in your workout.
What about during the workout other than your electrolytes, what are some you know, if you are going for an hour run or you're doing, you know, an intensive session for more than forty five minutes, what are some go to things that we can munch on during this and talk to us about how that helps the body.
So electrolytes was an example of quack, meaning like you induce the nutrition and it's going to enter your bloodstreamers glocos, you know, relatively quickly, so within twenty minutes of you're taking it on board. That's one example of a fuel source that you could use. Like sports styles are a really common one that people will use. People either love or hate the flavor or that kind of like intense mouthfeeling of them. But they're a lovely kind of compact pack that you can easily run with it. As an example in New Zealand, jet planes we talk about in Australia, Oh what a red frog? Yeah, I just send you jet planes one day, like your red I love.
I was a red frogs in my shorts when I was running in a plastic bag. So they don't get you know, sweaty and get gross.
Yeah. Yeah, running is not a glamorous for but yeah, so jetplanes or red frogs if you're in Australia, particularly with running, some clients get hungry, so particular if you're out there for two, three, four hours, for like those longer marathon distances, that quick carbo hydrate won't be enough and so we start to talk about things like musually bars, bananas, little sandwiches with things like honey or even a teller so like lovely and sweet and full of carbohydrate. But usually if we're talking about two hours all this, I'd be talking about electrolytesjows, things like candy. Some people love baby food pouches.
Very random again, oh my goodness, no thanks.
Baby feeding trauma, but yeah, babyfood pouches are another really common one, particularly around among again like marathon and ultra athletes. Those are some favorites.
What's your take on nutritional supplements.
It depends on what's for and what it's for. When I was a new grad dietician, I definitely used to say, you think everything you need through food, but I don't know that I believe that anymore. And in like the world of sports, like I think protein powders are such a great tool and like insurance policy for people trying to nail their protein head. So like a scoop of protein powder would have about thirty grams of protein and an egg only has six grams as comparison. But obviously there's other nutrients and eggs like you know, irons and et cetera. So I think those can be really useful for people. There's good evidence ever run things like caffeine amongst a game things like runners. So everyone has a different caffeine sensitivity, but I've got lots of clients who find the use of caffeine. There's a prayer workout really useful.
It's interesting. I've I've do a heart monitor based training. Sometimes it's called orange theory. You run for I don't know if you've got a new field. Yeah, you run for like twenty or thirty minutes, and then you do strength based training. It's quite interesting if I have a coffee right before I run, to watch my heart rate so much higher. It's just, yeah, I find it fascinating. I'm like, oh, that's right, I had a coffee. That's why it's going growing up so much faster and higher, quicker. But yeah, I think a caffeine for me is almost like my post run or post workout reward treat.
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that wasn't it, Like noticing that heart rate rise and fall, like people having lots of caffee and they're not exercising, like appreciating what it actually does to your body.
Yeah, And I suppose from all that you said, you know, one common thread is that just really listen to your body. Ma's such a cliche, but it's so true, and really get to know how your body responds to different things. You know, different foods before, during, and after you work out.
One hundred percent, be curious and play with different combinations of things.
Can I Paul die increase your chances of injury.
One hundred percent, Yeah, one hundred percent. But to clear make I work a lot with clients with something called relative energy deficiency in sport, which this would like forty other podcasts to kind of explain that and do that kind of syndrome justice. But really it's a problem where you've got an energy imbalance, so the amount of energy someone's consuming is not meeting their requirements requirements beaning like for their sport, but also growth and adolescents in any exercise that's not formal, so walking the dog, going for a walk, whole your kids are bike riding next to you, all those things, and the energy depletion causes the body to start to prioritize what's important for survival. Heart beating, blood going around my system right, And so in females in particular, you start to see issues with sex womanes like estrogen, and estrogen is so important for the health and the integrity of our ligaments, our tendons, our muscles, and our bones. So physiotherapist colleagues of mine are usually the first people to pack up this energy deficiency because they're saying, like, hey, Felicity, interesting, I've seen you six times this year for different injuries. What's happening from a nutritional point of view for you? So absolutely it increases your risk of injury on that.
You know, when we're if we exercise when we're menstruating, having our periods, should we tweak our diet at all or is there anything we should be mindful of.
During that phase of your cycle. So your period phase, you're actually kind of more I don't know if I loves this term, but kind of more male length from a hormonal point of view, So we don't have a huge rizin full of estrogen and progesterone, which happens across the other parts of our cycle. Most of the evidence around tweaking your nutrition is actually looking at the other two phases. So after your minstrual phase, you've got your follicular phase, and that part of our cycle, our body is really receptive to glucose, and so that's the part if you've heard about women talking about having pbs at certain hormonal phases, like whether it's running related or strength related, we've got more access to glucose as a fuel source, So it makes way more sense that we're more powerful. There's an athlete that's part of our cycle, but our appetite is usually suppressed at that part, so woman can be at risk of not feeling enough because they don't actually feel as hungry as they should be. And so really knowing needs in understanding how to make that from a nutrition and point of view of despite of hunger or no hunger is really important. And then in your lutel phase, your advertite is so much higher, and so is your metabolic rate. So as you kind of finish ovulation head up to your period to your nutritional needs are actually higher. And I think a lot of women are quite robotic, and we prescribe like this is what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. These are abortions and we don't lean into the fact that actually, this part of my cycle, I need to be eating a bit more. I am hungrier and that's okay.
You work with a lot of women, What are some of the most common questions or concerns you get around nutrition and training?
Oh? My gosh, so many things. I think some of the big questions I get asked is that do I need supplements, which we kind of discussed before. People not being aware of their requirement or wanting to know more about am I eating enough? Is a really big question women navigating specific nutritional needs and their training, So like maybe they're vegan eating in deficiency, or they don't like bananas though, well you just.
Had two out of three then, so I think we also spoke about my iron deficiency issues.
What I think is really difficult is that you can have an awareness of nutrition might kind of unlock some really good things for me in my exercising, but I've got all these other things that make me me and make it difficult for me to understand how to apply this information. So I'm cooking for a family, I've got deficiencies, I don't like these foods.
Whatever it might be, trial and error, isn't it just seeing what works for you around it all and your family? Except Yeah, I hear you, Sarah. It was lovely having you on Extra Healthy You. Thank you for joining us.
Today, Thank you for having me, Thanks.
For tuning into this chat with Sarah. I really love that little electrolyte tip. I'm going to do that next time I work out. Anyway, I hope you did get some really good helpful info from Sara that you can take into your next training session. If you did enjoy it, tell us you can rate and review this episode. Of course, subscribe to Extra Healthy Ish dm me at Felicity Harley if you've got any feedback, follow us on socials at Body and Soul or head online bodyansoul dot com dot you. Our pren edition is in your local Sunday paper. Thanks again for listening, Happy training, and stay extra healthy