Latest / Zone2Speak Podcast / Fueling Success: Nutrition and Performance with Elite Cyclist Kate McLeod

Transcript

Fueling Success: Nutrition and Performance with Elite Cyclist Kate McLeod · Zone2Speak Podcast

0:00
Big shout out to our sponsors. Listeners, don't miss out on these amazing deals.
0:05
Get 10% off Psych Plus, the best e-pump on the market and their other cycling products.
0:11
35% off Frey Skincare for skin that sweats.
0:16
And 25% off Genki Wellness Nutrition Packages, all using the coupon code ZONED2SPEAK at checkout.
0:24
Head to the podcast description for all the links and grab your exclusive discounts today.
0:29
And now for the episode she's just
0:32
saying it like it is and i love this she's talking about burnout she's talking
0:35
about everything and i sent the post immediately to juliana and she's like i
0:39
know her and i'm like really oh my god i want to talk to her hi everyone welcome
0:45
to the zone to podcast we're your host debbie and juliana.
0:51
Music.
0:58
Today, we're excited to have Kate McLeod on the show.
1:03
Kate is an elite cyclist, Kenyan
1:05
ambassador, as well as a highly respected nutrition and strength coach.
1:10
With her wealth of experience on the bike and in the gym, Kate has helped countless
1:15
athletes optimize their training, nutrition, and overall performance.
1:19
We will dive into her approach to nutrition, how to create good habits,
1:24
how to feel, what are the common mistakes, and how she balances it all while
1:28
continuing to compete at an elite level.
1:31
Kate, welcome to Zone to Speak. Thank you for that lovely introduction.
1:35
Thanks for having me. We are so excited to have you.
1:37
So tell us, how does someone know they are doing it right or what they are doing wrong?
1:42
So I think it's a very broad spectrum of answers there. And as I always say
1:47
with nutrition, it's completely different for everyone.
1:50
So what everyone eats on a day-to-day basis looks very, very different because
1:55
your activity is different. The type of training you're doing is different.
1:59
Your life stresses are different. Your daily routine is different on timings and stuff.
2:03
So because of that, to know what you're doing right, you have to trial and test
2:08
things and you go based on how you kind of feel.
2:11
So I think when you're doing things right, I think food shouldn't be the main
2:16
thing that's going through your head on a day to day basis. I think that's one thing.
2:20
I think you should be feeling genuinely well in yourself in your training.
2:25
You should be able to hit the numbers your coach is asking you to hit and you
2:30
should genuinely be able to.
2:32
Actively participate in all the different areas of
2:35
your life and do so without having to think things
2:38
like i can't go and do that social event because it means
2:41
food you want to be making food
2:44
decisions but not changing your
2:47
whole day or your whole schedule based on
2:50
your food decision so i think if you're doing it
2:53
well food just seems to fit effortlessly
2:56
into your life and it can be a
2:59
part of socialness it can be an enjoyment and
3:02
it's also fueling what you're doing
3:05
training wise and I think that's really important because a lot
3:08
of people tend to get one thing right but it's about getting
3:11
all of it right so you can continuously just have
3:14
a positive relationship with food but I
3:17
think if you're looking at if it's going wrong it's a
3:20
lot easier to figure out if it's going wrong than if it's
3:23
going right and I think the big factors are food consumes
3:27
your thoughts all the time you're constantly binge
3:31
eating in the evenings or after three o'clock
3:34
you can't stop eating and these are normally signs that you're
3:36
not fueling your day properly and you're not getting the right
3:39
nutrition because if you are your body doesn't crave
3:43
all the sugary foods contrary to what a lot of people on instagram promote but
3:48
if you feel properly you shouldn't need to eat a bar of chocolate in the evening
3:52
like you'll be able to have some and then put it away So I think it's easier
3:57
to see if it's going wrong than it is to if it's going right.
4:01
Yeah, I believe that too. You touched on social media and the impact that you
4:06
see on there is there's so many different kind of nutrition and fitness hacks
4:13
out there that are talking about, I did this, why don't we do this?
4:16
Now, if you add this, I wouldn't call them shortcuts.
4:19
There's just so many different techniques and methods.
4:22
It really comes down to like you were saying it's
4:25
basic needs for yourself and what you
4:28
need to do what's going to work for you if you're
4:31
planning your weekend like i can't be around that there's
4:34
already something wrong there and then holidays right now and that's
4:37
a big deal for some people someone's going to expect me to cook
4:40
what do you suggest in those kind of situations yeah
4:44
there's a few things to unpick that i think the first thing
4:46
is like one day of eating whatever you like
4:49
is not going to change and ruin
4:52
all of the work and the progress you've made so if
4:56
you just got one day just chill out eat
4:59
what you want yes your weight might go up the next couple of days because you've
5:03
had more volume of food so there's more volume of food in your gut you're heavier
5:07
you might have more salt in the food so you hold more water you've had more
5:11
carbohydrates so when you store glycogen you store water with it so your weight can go up.
5:17
From that one day by three kilos but it's not
5:20
actually that you put fat on it's just as
5:23
extra weight in your body because of what you consume so
5:26
i think that's the first thing that people really need to understand and
5:30
then they also need to be like right the number of the
5:33
scales is not going to change how i feel and
5:37
this is a big big thing for lots of people like
5:39
the number they see in the morning dictates their mood for the rest of the day
5:42
and that's not a good place to be so that's like
5:45
the first thing and then the second thing is
5:48
like okay you're going to cook for
5:51
other people that's fine everyone wants to have different
5:54
things but at the same time your health
5:57
if you've made a change in a decision to look
6:00
after yourself in a certain way the people around you should support
6:03
you with that to an extent so it shouldn't be
6:06
i'm only going to cook this everyone else.
6:09
Kind of follow suit let's make compromises let's
6:12
instead of having kind of a load of deep fried food let's
6:15
do a grilled meat or something so it's about
6:18
having those conversations with the other people around you and seeing
6:22
how you can make that work there's loads
6:25
of different food cults going on at the moment and people
6:27
want to push their cults onto everyone else and that's not
6:30
the case like not everyone wants to eat
6:33
vegetables every meal i'd prefer people to because it's
6:36
better a few but at the same time everyone has
6:39
personal preferences and it's a holiday treat yourself but
6:42
if you want to keep with your lifestyle and even during the holidays then you
6:47
need to take ownership of that and you just need to do the things you need to
6:50
do to make sure you can facilitate that but I think so many people just go they
6:55
use it as an excuse that oh I've got to cook for my family and I've got to cook for everyone else.
6:59
They should also care about you. And if you've made a decision to look after
7:03
yourself better, they're not accepting of that, then are they really supporting
7:08
you and being good family members?
7:10
So it's a really tricky one. And this is why nutrition's not so simple.
7:16
And it's not just about the food, it's about the people around you and everything.
7:20
How many dynamics that are mixed in there, personality-wise,
7:25
physical, mental, so much there to unpack.
7:29
Thank you for making that more simple. I love that you said,
7:32
go ahead and do that. Just be aware.
7:35
So you're aware that it's not going to deter you and that's not going to start a snowball effect.
7:41
I want to know with clients that once something like that happens, how does that work?
7:46
How do you kind of get them back on track if they can't physically turn
7:50
themselves around yeah and i think what happens there
7:53
is we label things good and bad so you
7:56
label foods good and foods bad and then
7:59
once you've had going back to the holiday example say you've properly picked
8:03
out you label that as a bad day so then people go oh i've been bad for this
8:07
day i may as well do it again i may as well do it again and then it just continues
8:11
to snowball so what as a coach i can't do anything specific that makes that person stop.
8:18
I have to guide them through the processes and the thinking of how they can make them stop.
8:24
So for me, it's all most about me asking them the right questions to get them
8:28
to come to that realisation of what's the trigger for that.
8:32
And we then talk about, right, what are the actions we can do to make sure that doesn't continue?
8:37
And again, everyone is completely different.
8:40
So for some clients, they're like, right, let's track my food for a week. And that works for them.
8:45
Other clients are like, right, I'm going to have no processed food this week.
8:48
And then other ones are like, okay, when I want to go and have all the sugary
8:52
stuff, first I'll see, have I fueled my day properly?
8:55
And then I'll go, right, I'll go for a walk instead to distract myself.
8:59
And then it's just about understanding what those triggers are and what you can do to get around it.
9:05
And sometimes you're going to just want to eat rubbish.
9:08
And especially for women, we have menstrual cycle.
9:11
For me, three days before, I just want carbs. I just want all the carbs.
9:17
And I know for those three days, I just have the carbs.
9:21
And you're better off in the long run because your body is craving them.
9:26
So it needs them. but then if you just allow
9:29
yourself to have it then you're not restricting yourself and
9:33
i think when people restrict them they're more likely to
9:36
binge eat because they're like oh this is a bad food i
9:39
can't do it like if you're allowed to do
9:41
something you're less likely to go and do it all
9:44
the time whereas if you're telling yourself you're not allowed to do that
9:47
there's something in your brain that's like oh you're
9:50
not allowed to do that let's let's go and do it can we touch on that a little
9:54
bit more as far as restriction because we hear that a lot or some of these diets
10:00
can just initially trigger something in the brain of I can't do that that's
10:05
too restrictive or there's just.
10:08
We're regimented in being restrictive sometimes and more so as women thinking
10:14
we need to fit into this. We have to look a certain way to feel good.
10:18
What are your techniques with restriction and how do you deal with that topic?
10:25
First, we look at what the person's restricting and then we have conversations
10:30
around why they might be doing it.
10:32
Then we just really understand what's the kind of trigger
10:35
for it and then we have to get them into a point where they're
10:39
not labeling the foods like most commonly
10:42
it comes down to people have read stuff
10:45
and they've labeled it as bad like sugar is labeled bad bread
10:49
is everyone still is hung up on bread
10:51
i'm pretty sure bread was from the 90s and
10:54
like the atkins diet like i remember my mom being like we're
10:58
not eating bread and it's like this stuff is so ingrained in our brains from
11:03
when we were like kids and young adults no there's some grains that are actually
11:08
really good for the body too and we need to have a balance of some of this stuff
11:13
because really what we're trying to.
11:16
Get at here is really fueling to feel good
11:19
so that you're not feeling deprived so you're not feeling
11:22
like you want to restrict so that you can fuel the body so
11:25
tell us in your opinion why is it so hard for
11:28
everybody i think it's just social media is
11:31
a big thing and i think as well like especially
11:34
for me like my personal experience when i was at uni
11:37
it was when all the size zero and the double
11:40
zero was in so the whole thing for women
11:43
was like be as skinny as possible and if
11:46
you're not skinny you're not attractive and it starts
11:49
when you're like super young and i think it just gets
11:52
ingrained in you that you need to be skinny and then it was
11:55
like the crossfit movement and the strong as
11:58
a new skinny so then it was like okay you need to
12:00
get ripped as a woman it's hard
12:03
to build a lot of muscle quickly so you
12:06
just got skinny and like i remember when i was at uni i dropped down to like
12:10
58 kilos and i'm like total i'm like 173 and i thought that was what i needed
12:17
to be and it took me a very long time to get out of that mindset and get to
12:21
the point where I could eat food to fuel my sport.
12:25
And it wasn't until I was doing rowing, Thames Rowing Club, that I really learned
12:29
how to train and how to eat for the training.
12:32
For me, the switch was understanding when I ate properly, how much it impacted
12:38
and improved my training.
12:40
The power that you had. Yeah. And then feeling good after training and not wanting
12:45
to go lie on the sofa all day.
12:48
That's a huge one. Oh my God. I'm so glad you mentioned that because it's true.
12:52
We can feel like we do all this stuff, but how do you know you're doing well?
12:55
That you actually don't feel awful afterwards, that you recover faster.
13:00
What are the most common mistakes that lead you to that, that people do a hard
13:06
session or even just a light session and come home and it's just like, I just want to lie down?
13:10
I think people just don't know what's in their food.
13:13
So you're bombarded with so much information and only the key points stick out.
13:19
So I think the key points lately or over the last like kind of 10 years have been sugar's bad.
13:24
You can eat some carbs eat protein all the time but
13:28
then no one digs any deeper
13:31
to that so like for example a lot
13:34
of my clients i'll ask them to like tell me
13:37
your main protein sources and all the time peanut butter
13:39
comes up and i'm like peanut butter is not a protein source like
13:42
it has protein in it but it's mainly fat but
13:46
if you look at the marketing previously peanut
13:50
butter was a protein source based on like marketing so people hear all these
13:57
sound bites without the context and then they just apply that so you get people
14:02
that will go and do a hard session off an omelette because they heard team sky
14:06
omelettes for breakfast so we think we know.
14:11
We don't or we know something but
14:14
you've missed the context to it so i think a lot
14:16
of it is just people generally just don't know what they're eating
14:19
like unless you've tracked your food and looked on the back
14:22
of food packets i think you genuinely probably have
14:26
no idea how you're fueling what i
14:29
do with my clients is the first week we track everything just so
14:33
we get a baseline for where they're at and they're normally really
14:36
shocked what normally happens is they're eating way too
14:38
much fat not enough protein and not enough carbs and then
14:42
i'm like there's your answer why you feel rubbish because you
14:45
train 10 hours a week and you eat 100 grams of
14:48
carbs a day and then you're eating 150 grams of
14:51
fat and it's like are you surprised but people just don't realize that and like
14:56
they'll say oh i don't eat so much and then we'll look at their food and they're
15:01
just eating snacks they're not eating full meals so they get a lot of calories
15:06
You get a lot of calories throughout the day,
15:09
but it's not in line with when your activity is.
15:13
And so you're just constantly hungry.
15:15
So I'd say the main things are people don't know what's in the food and people
15:19
snack rather than eating proper meals.
15:22
And you touched on it's not just what, but also when.
15:26
You need to know when to eat your calories makes a huge difference.
15:29
So which is obviously pre-training during
15:33
the training and also the recovery not physical
15:36
but nutrition wise there's also what you
15:39
need to eat for your body to recover from that session or
15:42
to feel the body or what you lost or what
15:46
you're building yeah exactly and i think what a lot of
15:48
people do is they'll eat the same thing every day even though they
15:51
don't do the same thing every day so you'll have people that work in an office
15:56
all week and they have their breakfast lunch at a set time and then they'll
16:00
go training after work and um my first question is like what did you before
16:05
training they'll be like oh i had lunch at 12 yeah but you're training at like six seven o'clock.
16:10
So they just don't know how to feel that and then on the weekend they'll stick
16:13
to the same routine that they have during the week but then their training
16:15
is in the morning so it's like you need to change on a day-to-day basis and
16:21
i think it's so ingrained in society that you have breakfast lunch and dinner
16:24
when you're training as much as a lot of people that I coach do and have an
16:29
office job and have family commitments you really have to adapt it,
16:35
all of the time and people just don't do that and
16:38
it's also difficult like if you have a family and if you have kids trying
16:41
to coordinate that and still keep
16:44
up with your commitments and your training is also really challenging
16:47
so it's something that you constantly need.
16:50
To work on it's not like we fix someone's nutrition
16:53
in a month it's we give
16:56
them the habits or i give them the habits that will help them
16:59
continuously adapt their nutrition to.
17:03
Their constantly changing life and what are some of
17:06
your tips on how to start building those
17:09
good habits i think the first one is understand what's
17:12
in the food that you're eating understand what carbs
17:15
are why your body needs them and how your body uses
17:18
it and the same with proteins and fats and
17:21
understand how much you actually need because
17:24
the other thing is like in the uk when i was growing
17:27
up it was like women eat 2 000 calories a
17:30
day men eat 2 500 no further information
17:33
then you've got the internet saying oh have
17:36
1200 calories if you want to lose weight 1800 calories
17:39
if you're on a reverse diet and maintenance and stuff
17:42
and that's too general like i
17:45
have some athletes or even if i look at my own data some
17:48
days i'll burn 2000 calories other days it'll be
17:51
fine so you really have to understand what
17:54
that looks like and i think tracking is
17:57
the main thing that helps people like you don't have to do it a lot but
18:00
do it at least for three days just to
18:03
get an understanding and then once you've done
18:05
it once then you can maybe just track your protein sources
18:08
every now and again and just every couple of weeks
18:11
kind of do a check on what you're actually eating because also what happens
18:17
is over time maybe you start with 60 grams of oats then you start weighing and
18:22
then before you know it you're at 100 and you've got no idea that you've just
18:25
added an extra 200 calories to your day so it's always good to kind of.
18:30
Re-baseline yourself so i think that's the main thing and then the second thing is really.
18:37
Understanding where you're spending most of your energy and
18:41
then how to kind of structure your food around it
18:44
so if you're training in the evening and you're working all day
18:47
at a desk there's no point having half of
18:49
your carbohydrates at breakfast one thing i used to do when
18:52
i was working in a bank is i'd shuffle all
18:55
my carbs to like from lunchtime onwards so
18:59
i'd have something my eggs for breakfast and then i'd have
19:02
my porridge that i would normally have for breakfast at like three four
19:05
o'clock because then that fueled my session at six or
19:08
seven so it's just understanding how
19:11
that should change and then on the weekends i'd have my porridge in
19:14
the morning because i'm training earlier so it's just understanding those
19:17
small things that you need to change to make your
19:20
training better and just to make sure that you're consuming
19:24
the energy when you actually need it
19:27
in the mornings for me so much easier with nutrition
19:30
because obviously i wake up empty so i
19:34
will have my breakfast with depending on the
19:37
type of training i have and i have my training and then everything's fine
19:40
but if i don't have time for example
19:44
which i know a lot of people don't and then you i have to change
19:46
and train in the afternoon or evening or some people that
19:49
do training the evening I find it so much harder the
19:53
nutrition there because I'm already maybe
19:56
full from lunch or I'm starving
20:00
and I cannot have a big meal
20:03
or I think I cannot have a big meal because then I.
20:06
Won't be able to do my training what's the solution
20:09
yeah it's just so I.
20:12
Have a rule like if you're gonna train within two
20:15
hours or less of eating then you go for like
20:18
really fast absorbing carbs so it's something like a bowl of
20:21
cereal if it's really close to when you start training
20:24
i sometimes tell people eat your training food like
20:27
start eating it before you get on the bike like a
20:29
ball or a gel or something yeah carb drink sugary cereal like sugary cereal
20:35
is my favorite thing because it's like like take two minutes and throw it down
20:41
i had a rice crispy treat the other day that i made and that picks you up it's
20:45
like fast absorbing yeah that's perfect And I made it so you can actually,
20:50
you know what you're putting in your body.
20:53
Yeah, so that's an even bigger challenge in the US because of God knows what extra stuff.
20:58
You're always looking to put something extra in it rather than just make it pretty simple. Yeah.
21:04
So like things like Rice Krispie bars, they're really good. And just like fast
21:07
absorbing stuff if you're going to train within two hours.
21:10
And then if you've got longer, then you can have more slower absorbing carbs
21:14
like porridge and things like that.
21:16
But general rule of thumb, less than two hours, you want something that's really
21:20
quick and easy to digest. That's a very good tip.
21:24
I didn't know what I was doing at first. My mind was playing tricks on me like,
21:28
I can't eat that. I probably was the worst thing I could put in my body.
21:32
So I'm pleasantly surprised there too.
21:35
I mean, from my aspect of it, it's hard for me personally with some of this
21:40
because it can play tricks on me.
21:42
I mean, anybody in my circle knows about my past with food.
21:48
And I suffered from bulimia when I was younger. when you grow up kind of a dancer
21:53
and everybody's always competing and looking at each other and your bodies,
21:56
it's tough not to like judge yourself, especially when you go through phases
22:01
like menstruation and just hormones in general when you're growing up and your
22:06
body changes completely.
22:08
Now, like even with recovery for years and years and years and eating well,
22:12
all those habits changed when I had my kids because when I got pregnant,
22:18
I couldn't eat the normal diet that I usually ate that was a lot more balanced
22:22
and I cooked everything,
22:24
my body just said, F you. I don't like any of this shit.
22:28
I just couldn't. I had massive migraines. I had to eat a lot more pasta,
22:33
a lot more bread, eggs. I wasn't eating junk or anything.
22:36
And I've never felt better in a long time.
22:39
And it was also just taking that mindset that I've had in the past of it's restrictive.
22:45
I know with certain clients, I'm just asking from this standpoint of somebody
22:48
that has had issues with eating.
22:51
And it could be on my spectrum or it could be on a different spectrum of they
22:55
overeat or they undereat.
22:57
How do you tackle that? It's like really tough. And I think it's not something
23:01
that you ever like, I don't think you ever fully, I don't want to say recover.
23:05
But it's never completely out of your mind.
23:08
Like I had a experience of like I
23:11
would say I had disordered eating I wouldn't say it was a
23:14
full blown eating disorder but it's
23:16
something that you just have to work on and you
23:19
have to constantly be almost monitoring
23:23
your own internal self-talk and that's
23:26
really hard to do and to do it all the
23:29
time is tough but you just you have
23:33
to do it and I think it kind of
23:36
ebbs and flows like there'll be times when external factors
23:39
make it harder but I think you just ultimately
23:43
have to know that right how do I look after
23:45
my body I've only got one and that's.
23:48
The thing that doesn't change like you really know how
23:51
to look after your body and you know that when you're doing those like
23:55
negative things towards it that it's not good so you
23:58
just have to really focus on am I treating myself
24:01
well would i treat my friend or
24:04
a loved one like this and then that's your
24:07
kind of self-regulation to your internal talk
24:10
to be like right no this is wrong task ask
24:13
again and then you just have to constantly be checking
24:17
in on yourself basically and it's tough you're so right there you're so right
24:22
but so many people have issues like so many athletes i talk to are concerned
24:28
like especially cyclist because I think especially with women you can be a cyclist
24:33
and not look like an athlete.
24:36
It's just people have different genetics people
24:39
have different body fat types body
24:43
fat percentages like everyone is very different and i think when you're doing
24:47
elite level sport part of it is you want to look like an athlete and so many
24:51
people just don't because their genetics aren't like that and with a lot of
24:57
them it's very much they're focused on the weight rather than their performance,
25:02
so what we really focus on with them is fueling
25:05
their performance and i always bring it back to okay
25:08
what were last race results were they better than last year okay
25:12
why were they better than last year it's like oh because i'm eating
25:14
carbs and it's like okay so let's focus
25:18
on that and when you're constantly reframing it
25:21
to that that makes it not about weight loss
25:24
and about the food and the training
25:27
and i think it's really important to have people around you that
25:30
are giving you that reinforcement because you
25:33
could still say in your head like oh i didn't win that race because
25:36
i'm fat or the other girl that one is skinnier
25:39
and it's like no that shouldn't even be a discussion point but
25:43
it is and this is just humans unfortunately i know you get that from people
25:48
even if they're not telling you oh you look a certain way they ask you in an
25:53
inadvertent way like oh have you been riding lately so it's like you know you
25:58
kind of understand like oh they're trying to say something.
26:01
Yeah. People do point out, and I think it's happening more than often.
26:04
Donna was our first guest in the podcast.
26:06
She's a trainer. She's very lean
26:08
and people come up to how come you're a trainer? You have skinny legs.
26:12
I have friends who are actually strong cyclists and don't look like athletes,
26:16
but people are like, you don't have a body of a cyclist.
26:19
I think people are more inclined to point that out because it's so quote unquote, it's okay to be skinny.
26:24
So people are like, oh, you're so skinny or something like that.
26:27
And it's just like, if I were fat, you wouldn't be like, you're so fat.
26:30
But you get it either way. Oh, you're working out a lot or like you're too,
26:34
you're looking a little too lean or it's never good enough.
26:37
So we have to have our own self-esteem and check.
26:41
And what you said makes a big difference. I've been using that one a lot for
26:46
just mental things of how I want to treat myself.
26:50
You have to also make it into something that you
26:53
can resonate with because would you talk to
26:55
a friend that way it's not just the food it
26:59
starts with the person's willingness obviously and they
27:03
have to be willing to look within there have to be willing to
27:06
have some change and everything has to be tailored to that one person and we
27:10
have to understand how that person works we have to make these mistakes or we're
27:14
not going to know what's going to work it's the only way you learn a lot of
27:17
people they're very self-critical so they'll be like oh I did this bad did this
27:21
bad it's like okay yes maybe this was bad but.
27:25
In this situation two months ago or before we
27:28
met how would you behave and I had one client last
27:31
week she'd gone to a family event at the weekend and it
27:34
was classic it was a terrible day I ate everything
27:37
and it was awful complete write-off and I was like
27:40
okay tell me a bit more like okay what
27:43
did you have what could you have had what would
27:46
you have done prior and we went through her
27:49
day and we were like we found three different things that she'd
27:52
done differently that was way better than what she
27:55
was doing two months ago and it was like
27:58
no like look take a step back
28:00
and look at these things and you managed the
28:04
main thing for her was not drinking alcohol and not being
28:07
hung over the next day and it's like that's a
28:09
big deal like you went to an occasion where you were
28:12
sociable you enjoyed yourself you still danced you still
28:15
did everything you would have done and you felt good the next
28:18
day like that's a massive win and the
28:21
more things you get like this the easier it is
28:24
to then associate the food with the feelings and
28:28
then when you come to a hard decision point you then think back to a time where
28:33
you behave differently and you're like okay i didn't have alcohol that day for
28:37
example and i was good the next day okay i won't drink at this occasion if that's
28:43
what you want to do kind of thing so.
28:45
It's all about trial and error. And then when the things go right,
28:50
remembering those things that you did to get those good feelings and just trying
28:54
not to be so self-critical.
28:56
You can't change all your habits at once. I guess that's what you're saying.
28:59
Yeah, you can't. And if you try, you're just going to fail because you'll get
29:04
to one day where it's just too much.
29:06
And then you'll be like, oh, I can't do this. So you stop doing it.
29:10
And that's why I don't give meal plans. and
29:13
I don't tell people right this is what you should do we
29:16
look at what their baseline is and then we change things
29:19
on a gradual approach like I always
29:23
work in like two week blocks so we'll do something for
29:25
two weeks because everyone's week
29:28
is never everyone I speak
29:31
to at the moment it's like oh life's so hectic I'm waiting
29:34
to get into the routine and it's like no this is life like
29:37
stop saying it's hectic stop saying it
29:40
never goes to plan like this is just life so
29:43
it's going to be that it's going to be like that
29:46
all the time and if you're constantly chasing or waiting for
29:49
that perfect week to sort things out it's never
29:52
going to happen so you just have to constantly change
29:55
those habits and then build them so no matter what happens in your week you
29:59
still eat well and you can still fully function like I think for me what I've
30:05
experienced is because I've traveled so much this year for racing people quite
30:09
often ask me how do you stick to your nutrition when you're.
30:12
Traveling so much I'm like what do you mean?
30:15
Like I just eat what I eat when I'm at home I just buy it from a different supermarket
30:20
I flew home the other day and I took leftovers from dinner that I made the night before and it's like.
30:27
For me, that's just a habit. I'd rather save money from airport food.
30:32
I also can't eat gluten for medical reasons, so eating out is more of a fast
30:36
for me. So I just make it work.
30:40
And I think people presume they're going to have to meal prep for the whole
30:44
of Sunday, and then they don't want to meal prep because they don't want to
30:48
eat the same thing every day.
30:49
And it's like, no, you just need to find out what you need to do to get that consistency.
30:54
So I think for a lot of people, what I do with them is we get a
30:57
an emergency meal that's like
31:00
if you've got nothing in and you have no time you know that
31:03
this is something you can have no matter what i love
31:06
that and when we change their like default baseline
31:10
everything else gets better so for me my emergency meal i always have tinned
31:15
fish in the house i always have like rice cakes or corn cakes and then my fridge
31:20
is always full of vegetables or salad so my worst case scenario is i have a
31:25
tin of mackerel with tomato sauce in already so I don't have to do anything.
31:28
Some salad and a load of corn cakes.
31:31
And it's when your no excuse meal is giving you all the things you need,
31:36
protein, fat, and carbs, you've got no excuses.
31:39
And so once you get that sorted, other things then become a lot easier.
31:44
I really like that. That's a good hack right there. Obviously,
31:48
when I work out, that was one of the things I was like, can I eat whatever I need to eat on the bike?
31:54
I'm not going to stop at some pizza place and grab that or go to the drive-thru.
31:59
It's picking responsible stuff that's going to fuel our body.
32:02
The way you're breaking it down makes it a lot more realistic for people, doable.
32:09
I want to bring it back to sports because there's a lot of talk on carbs.
32:16
How many carbs you need an hour? and yeah
32:23
just talk us through it like how because also there's a limit of
32:26
how much carbs your body can actually digest and especially
32:30
if you're moving your digestion is also not at full
32:33
speed or at full capacity can you
32:36
tell us a little bit about this yeah so there's a limit to
32:39
how much carbs you can absorb per hour like you
32:41
have a limited number of transporters but like the
32:44
thing is unless you're in a lab testing everything all
32:47
the time like you're never gonna know exactly what your body needs and it's
32:52
the same with macros like we can do all the calculations to work out your base
32:57
calories but unless you go and do lab testing we'll never know the exact amount
33:03
so everything's kind of a guessing game.
33:07
In that respect and like nutrition science is so new
33:09
and it's constantly developing that all the protocols
33:13
are changing all the time so if i
33:15
have someone that is like what i'd call what
33:18
we call in estonia a hobby cyclist so someone that's probably training
33:21
like eight hours a week maybe more maybe they do some
33:24
events for them i always start with
33:28
we go with between 60 and 80 grams per hour
33:31
depending on the training or even starting 40
33:34
to 80 so what we'll do for the
33:36
first couple of weeks we'll look at their training for easy
33:40
rides we might say right fuel 40 grams
33:43
an hour for all of your rides that are just zone two
33:46
and below then for any rides that you're doing intervals let's
33:49
start with 60 and it's just a case of trial
33:52
and error so what we'll do is we'll write in training peaks
33:55
kind of what amount of carbs they'll be having for the
33:58
session and then we write how they feel afterwards so were
34:01
they super hungry afterwards were they able to carry
34:04
on with their day afterwards where they starving hungry
34:08
and couldn't stop eating and couldn't stop snacking
34:11
for the rest of the day and based on their feedback we
34:14
then adjust it till we get them to a point where they can do their training
34:18
and fully function afterwards and by fully function i mean concentrate at work
34:23
participate in family activities remember stuff on their to-do list not fall
34:28
asleep for an hour on the afternoon so it's kind of trial and error to get there.
34:34
Then with my kind of high performance athletes, again, it's a massive variety.
34:40
Like I've got athletes that will race on 80 grams.
34:43
I've had one that's raced on 150 grams and like you can't even absorb that.
34:48
But they were, I felt good.
34:50
So it's really, really depends on the person.
34:55
And then also what they feel with also depends on the person,
34:58
like the different products that they use.
35:00
And with people that are using like kind of upwards of
35:03
80 grams an hour you also need to train your
35:06
gut to do that so you need to be doing it
35:09
build it up slowly and then fuel your interval
35:13
sessions like you'd fuel the race and train
35:16
your body to do that and also test different nutrition
35:19
products like i've tested so many and then
35:23
some of the side effects you get like
35:26
i did i had a gel when i was in france
35:29
not long ago and i'd run out of my normal race nutrition
35:32
like i normally use never seconds and to
35:34
race on and bello forte for training and i'd
35:37
run out of all my gels so i had to go buy some random
35:40
new gels and literally i tasted it didn't
35:43
like the taste but i was like i have no choice i literally
35:47
worst session of my entire life i
35:49
had the most salt i've ever had on
35:53
my kit ever and i just died and it was
35:56
awful but then some gels
35:59
you get loads of stomach pains so sometimes if you mix different types of stuff
36:04
so maybe you have a carb drink from one brand and gels from the other if they
36:08
have different phs that can upset your stomach so it's really kind of trial
36:12
and error for everyone but try things for two weeks or more a lot of people
36:16
will try things once and i'd be like nah.
36:19
Not for me it's like no we need data we need evidence like
36:22
two weeks then why is it bad when it shows
36:25
all the salt on your kit it's not necessarily bad
36:28
it just means you're sweating out salts so you
36:31
just need to replace them so it's just something
36:33
to be aware of that if you can see salt visibly on your clothes then you need
36:37
to replenish it it could also be that you had too much salt to begin with in
36:43
your body so it's getting some out but it depends so it's also So something
36:48
just to be mindful of, like if you're sweating a lot,
36:51
as long as you haven't taken stuff like bicarb in the days preceding it and
36:56
you haven't had loads of electrolytes,
36:58
then it's like, OK, maybe take some electrolytes.
37:01
But if you have, then it should be a question of what have I had beforehand?
37:07
And is this getting rid of excess or is this I need to replenish it?
37:12
So it's also there's no straight answer for anything, unfortunately.
37:17
It's all about the situation. Yeah, and some people just excessively sweat.
37:22
So they're going to need to have a little bit different nutrition during those kind of efforts.
37:27
You touched on your own career as an athlete, and I wanted to talk a little
37:32
bit about that so also the listeners get to know a little more about you.
37:36
I know you just went to the Gravel Worlds.
37:39
Tell us a little bit how you got to be an elite cyclist and what you have been up to.
37:45
It's been a long process so I've
37:48
always been super sporty like I played every single sport
37:51
as a kid and then I went to like this sports academy
37:54
for like sixth form college so before you go to university
37:57
so I've always been super sporty and
38:00
then when I went to uni I started rowing and that's
38:03
when I kind of learned how to be an athlete like before
38:07
then I'd just done a lot of team sports but with rowing it
38:09
was like so physical as well
38:12
as the technical side that it completely changed
38:16
my kind of perception and I started I just loved sport
38:19
even more and I was living in London
38:22
at the time so I was riding my bike to the boathouse because
38:25
it was like the easiest way to get around and I'd
38:28
always loved cycling but we'd do it as like recovery for
38:31
rowing and then I'd basically me and my friends
38:34
we'd go to like Richmond Park after training sessions and
38:37
do recovery laps with like 160 average heart rate and then go have cake and
38:42
coffee and then take photos and when I quit rowing I was like oh I'm just gonna
38:48
ride my bike for fun like it'll be nice and then one of my friends was like
38:52
oh you're quite strong like why don't you go do a race.
38:55
And like, I knew I was fast on the bike because I'd ride to work.
38:59
So I'd ride from Putney to Canary Wharf and to the city and I could overtake people.
39:04
And there was always like competitiveness from all the traffic lights.
39:07
So like going along, like the embankment, like every traffic light was like a sprint start.
39:13
So like, I still had my competitiveness and like, I basically was like,
39:19
I can't just ride for fun.
39:20
Like I went to the gym and went cycling and did some sculling for like two months.
39:24
And I was like no and one of my friends said why don't you do a race and I was
39:28
like okay and I won my second ever race and it was just like I want to do this this is fun yeah good.
39:37
And like I think I always wanted
39:40
to be I wanted to be like a professional road cyclist but
39:43
because I got into cycling a bit later my technical
39:46
abilities were just not that like they're way
39:49
better now but when I started I'd get
39:52
dropped in races like I was fine in crit races but
39:56
road races I just didn't understand the race my
39:59
bike handling was way worse than everyone else's so I
40:02
just get binned on every corner and then to start
40:05
with I'd be able to chase back on but I just got like really annoyed but
40:08
then I moved to Estonia in 2018 and I
40:12
raced for a UK team for a year and was traveling quite a
40:14
lot but then covid happened and basically in
40:18
january must have been 2020 i was
40:20
sat in calpe i'd written my resignation to
40:23
my job and i was planning to take a six-month career
40:26
break to try to train full-time and see if i could get on the team the following
40:30
year and i literally got home and there's all this stuff talk about covid tour
40:35
down under got cancelled and i was like there's no bike races it's probably
40:40
not a good idea to quit my job to do bike racing i'm So I ended up staying in that job for five years.
40:46
So only actually quit in March this year.
40:50
And basically over that time, over that time, I did a lot of road racing time trials.
40:56
And then last year I did gravel Finland because the road team that I'm on got
41:00
free entries. And I was like, oh, that sounds fun.
41:03
And Candid has given me a gravel bike. So I was like, cool, why not? Let's go.
41:08
And like, I just absolutely loved it. I love the atmosphere.
41:12
The racing was completely different because it was like a three day event.
41:15
So you had like shakeout rides beforehand. you had all the different cycling
41:20
brands there talking to you and it was just so much fun and the people were
41:25
like super friendly and when i was there i was just like i'm gonna do this this is,
41:29
this is my thing so then i decided that for this year i'd like commit to gravel more than the road.
41:36
And basically i just trained as
41:39
much as i could so from november last year me and
41:42
my coach increased my training and we were like right we're going all
41:46
in all in this year and then I was luckily enough
41:49
to have the opportunity to be made redundant at work
41:52
and I was just like if this is not the universe giving me a sign then I know
41:57
I don't know what is so yeah and then this season it's been the first season
42:02
where I haven't had a really bad crash or been really sick so I've raced the
42:06
most I've ever raced this year I've just learned so much and I think I've been to
42:10
Girona quite a lot and going there and training with the people that are there
42:13
it's just like improved my skills massively and so yeah this year has been the
42:19
most fun year so far but hopefully not the last.
42:23
How did it feel to be in the worlds with the,
42:28
you know great britain uniform i mean i feel i would
42:31
feel emotional if i have like the brazilian flag and represent
42:34
my country like it was so
42:37
cool i was really gutted because i got really really sick beforehand
42:40
so i had flu beforehand and even on
42:43
like the day before the race like i was chatting with
42:46
my boyfriend i was like should i be racing and it's
42:49
like it's like you sound really sick you've
42:53
been really sick like i literally hadn't done
42:55
any efforts for 14 days before the
42:58
world i just i'd had like five days completely
43:01
off and had been doing zone one just to
43:04
stop my legs from seizing up and even
43:07
like the day before i didn't do any pre-race activations because
43:10
i was like so dead and i just went in
43:13
with a plan of just riding within myself and
43:16
not pushing it too hard but then of course you get
43:19
on the start line with like mariana voss and lotta kopecky you're
43:22
in your gb kit you're like i've got to give it
43:25
a bit of gas yeah i gotta do something yeah i
43:28
was like okay let's not be last so it was really really
43:30
cool like favorite day on the bike i think
43:33
race wise like it was just so cool because like the whole course was literally
43:38
lined with people and then it was like really cool because like my auntie and
43:41
uncle and my cousin came they had signs and like it was just such a cool experience
43:47
so special congratulations How did you feel after that?
43:52
I was genuinely I was filled with like
43:55
happiness afterwards because it was like going to gravel
43:59
worlds for me was like you made the
44:01
right decision like you wouldn't have
44:04
done this if you hadn't left working in a bank and
44:07
it just reaffirmed my love for racing
44:11
like I was a bit heartbroken before
44:14
the race because I was sick and I knew I wouldn't get a result but
44:17
at the same time it's like I couldn't do anything about it
44:20
so like one of my friends had messaged me before and was like look you
44:23
can't do anything about it just go enjoy it soak up the atmosphere and so i
44:27
just i did that and it was very very nice sometimes we all forget we get so
44:32
distracted by the competitive side of things and all the training we forget
44:36
to have fun it's something that we just purely love.
44:41
This is what i realized this year so like when i was working
44:44
on racing you didn't have time to be fully present in the races and it was just
44:50
like right it was like going through a checklist and you're on autopilot and
44:54
then when i got rid of the work i then realized i'm not enjoying racing like
44:58
why like what the hell i'm just i've been in this mode where i've just ticked off everything
45:04
and you're just like right going to this race right done what's the next race
45:07
was in i think it was like in in june i went to a race in latvia with a friend
45:12
and i didn't even want to go and he was like oh can you come and like help me
45:16
and i was like okay fine and we had a really great weekend And because I went
45:20
there with the intention of not racing,
45:22
it made me remember like why I love riding my bike.
45:26
And then since then, it's made me realize like, I do love racing,
45:29
but you have to make sure you're not in that mindset of just going through the
45:34
process and actually being present in there and remember why you're doing it. And I think.
45:39
Worlds definitely really reaffirmed that
45:42
like i was fully present the entire time yeah
45:46
a hundred percent there wow yeah it
45:48
was crazy like if someone had said that to me like a year ago
45:51
you're gonna race with lotto kopecki and mariana voss i'd have
45:55
been like nah like no way and how
45:57
strong are they really when you're side by side like
46:00
next level like i raced i did a race with
46:03
mariana boss last year in sweden it was
46:07
a gravel race and basically i think she'd
46:09
been injured or it was it was either she just had
46:12
surgery or was going to have surgery so she wasn't even at
46:15
her like peak fitness and i remember
46:18
like the first 10k was like pretty much a road race so
46:21
it was fine everyone's in the bunch but we went up the
46:23
first time and it was probably like a four minute effort and i'm
46:28
in like the middle of the bunch doing like 450 watts
46:31
and i'm like this isn't sustainable yeah i
46:35
was just thinking that in my head i've probably got like 90
46:38
seconds at this and then i'm done yeah yeah
46:41
compared to last year they're at another level but i think now with how much
46:48
training i've done i've gone i'm a level closer i'm nowhere near where they
46:52
are yet but i can see that it's actually achievable or not like winning as many
46:58
races but getting to that fitness at least.
47:02
Yeah. I think that's a good perspective too, is not just about winning is getting
47:06
to a different performance level and seeing what your body can do.
47:11
And really that's a healthy way of looking at it is what can my body do?
47:16
So that way we can shift with that mindset, having a good trainer like yourself
47:21
and a coach that can just help in that way.
47:25
And I think it helps so much too that you've
47:28
gone through this personally in so
47:31
many different ways as an athlete as just a
47:34
person in general having a different style job because
47:37
it is very different if you're just an athlete non-stop this
47:40
is what you do this is what you train but most of us have some
47:43
sort of a job where we sit at a desk yeah i think a good
47:46
point there is like having people that have done the
47:49
thing that you're wanting to do give you the
47:51
advice because like i found it
47:54
really challenging like when I was deciding whether to leave the bank
47:57
or not I was getting all my cycling friends
48:00
and like athlete friends like do it it's
48:04
really fun and then all bank friends were like why are
48:07
you wasting a really good career why are you wasting a really good salary like
48:11
you're doing really well at your job like what are you doing with your life
48:14
like I even had someone come up to me and say like you need to choose between
48:19
cycling or this job because like we need to see that either you're committed
48:23
to this job and you can't do both. And I was like.
48:27
Why can't I do both? And yes, I got to the point where I couldn't progress the cycling anymore.
48:34
Like I managed to do both for five years, but I got to that point where it was
48:39
like, this is the ceiling to get to the next level.
48:42
You need to train more, you need to recover more, and you need to be less stressed.
48:45
And the only way to do that was to leave the place I was at.
48:49
Yeah. You had to make those hard decisions. When we come to Girona,
48:52
we have to have a chat because I've been going through similar,
48:56
very similar, also made redundant. And now I'm really trying to transition full
49:01
on into new phase of life.
49:03
How are they going to know if that's going to fulfill you or if that's going to bring you joy?
49:08
And you need to go through these stages.
49:11
Yeah, I think there is a fit for everyone. And I think Kate,
49:15
for me, I identify with her style because it's more humanized and it's not just a prescription, right?
49:24
She doesn't give you your macros and your calories and go do your work.
49:28
It's like a set plan. You can say it's very psychological as well to get to
49:32
the root of the thoughts and your internal talk.
49:35
I am starting to work with Kate. I'm so excited. And even though I study nutrition,
49:39
I think everyone should have a coach, even if it's just for a short period of time,
49:45
make an investment because like Kate said, it's so important to have the guidance
49:49
on learning what is in what you eat and how to eat.
49:55
And it really sets you off for a great start because being an athlete or not,
49:59
80%, 70% is nutrition. You can train all you want. If the race day comes and
50:05
you don't get your nutrition right, you're going to be out.
50:08
So I think getting a coach is super important. We'll share in the description
50:13
of the podcast how you can get in touch with Kate.
50:15
Yeah, and you need that awareness and support. So you were doing banking.
50:20
Did you always do nutrition? Did you study nutrition at all?
50:23
I was actually, I used to be a personal trainer. So when I was at uni,
50:27
I wanted a free gym membership.
50:28
So I got a job at the university gym. And while they got me qualified as a PT.
50:34
So I did PT for two years whilst I was at uni.
50:38
And then I actually had my own business doing it for two years in London when
50:41
I finished uni, because trying to get a graduate job in London was just ridiculous.
50:46
It literally took me two years to get a job with my degree.
50:49
So I'd done it previously, and I'd always said to myself, right,
50:52
five years to give banking a go, because I wasn't really a banker in the traditional sense.
50:58
I worked in risk management and financial crimes threat intelligence.
51:01
So i did like investigations and stuff which was related to my criminology degree
51:06
so i found it really interesting and stimulating like mentally but i just can't sit at a desk like.
51:15
After we've finished chatting here, this is like the longest I've sat down today.
51:20
Like, but yeah, so I did that. And so I was always going to go back to sports and nutrition.
51:26
And it was actually, I got COVID in 2021 and like was super sick.
51:31
Like I ended up having to get my tonsils removed.
51:34
And like, I was just basically that whole season was a write-off. It was ridiculous.
51:39
Anytime I did anything more than endurance training, I got tonsillitis the next day.
51:42
I had it like five times between the january and
51:46
the may and it was just a nightmare so because
51:49
i had loads of free time i was like right what am
51:52
i gonna do with my free time and i found the precision nutrition
51:55
qualification and i was like let's do this this
51:58
will be interesting and while i was doing it i started like
52:01
a six-week program a group of triathletes and we
52:04
basically just did this like kickstart your nutrition and it
52:07
was basically six weeks to get them developing better
52:10
a habit to fuel their training and i was like this
52:13
is really fun i like doing this way more than my
52:16
bank job of making sure we're compliant with
52:19
eu regulation and like i was like
52:22
i'm going to go back to this at some point i don't
52:24
know when but it will happen and then i kind
52:28
of coached a few people in estonia like it helped some
52:31
of under 23 cyclists and then
52:33
when i was like right i need to leave the job
52:36
in the bank I was like okay this is the time to start this is
52:39
the time to do my nutrition coaching business so yeah that's how
52:43
it started now I'm way happier and I actually enjoy doing it and it doesn't
52:47
feel like work that's oh my god we've just talked about that several times that
52:51
once you do something that you love it doesn't feel like work yeah it's it's
52:56
amazing and you get so much back
52:58
like getting to talk to you get these conversations you get so much from.
53:02
It gives you a lot of knowledge just to take with you and awareness.
53:06
I think you're doing exactly what you're meant to do. Thanks.
53:10
I can feel that. And I really, I love that you're doing Graveling now.
53:13
I don't even know you, but I mean, I can see there's such a brightness in you
53:17
from talking about it. It's like you just light up.
53:21
So yeah, you're on the right track. Just need to figure out how to fund it financially
53:26
next year because it's not financially sustainable.
53:29
Yeah i i know about that stuff you got
53:32
to figure out how to financially float all this stuff i've really
53:35
really loved talking to you and getting to know you more and
53:38
i'm going to be consistently learning more through juliana sharing with me because
53:44
i i learned so much from you i'm so happy you found the time to fit us in and
53:49
i'll see you in gerona very soon yeah perfect thank you so much for having me
53:53
i really enjoyed that chat wonderful thanks no take care all right,
53:59
That's all for today's episode.
54:01
We want to thank you, our listeners, for tuning in.
54:05
Your support means everything to us. If you enjoyed this episode,
54:08
please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and subscribing.
54:11
Music.