Episode 293: Performance Base Layer Series - Part 3: Pillars of Performance Applied (Nutrition)
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Welcome back to the 5-part Performance Base Layer Series on the Purple Patch Podcast. This series aims to emphasize the importance of the foundational aspect of high performance, which is the performance base layer. It's built on the foundation of positive habits that foster a strong physiological readiness for good physical and mental health year-round and for years to come.
The Purple Patch pillars of performance, which include endurance, strength, nutrition, and recovery, make up the core elements of the performance base layer.
Each week of the series, we have focused on a different pillar of performance. We started with endurance and movement, followed by strength and resistance training. Now, we move on to the third pillar: nutrition. Similar to the previous episodes, we will discuss this pillar from two perspectives. The first perspective is called "life performance," which focuses on anyone who seeks to improve their longevity, workplace performance, parenting skills, or anything related to their daily lives. The second perspective focuses on endurance athletes and highlights the specific needs and demands of seeking a podium finish.
In this episode, Matt shares insights on developing a well-rounded approach to nutrition to help maintain health, get battle-ready, improve resilience and adaptability, and ultimately leave you poised for long-term success in any arena.
Throughout this episode, we will use case studies and examples to highlight the importance of adopting healthy nutrition habits. We will also provide resources to assist you in your journey to better nutrition and developing your performance base layer.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 06:29 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
06:36 - 9:16 - Matt's News-ings
9:23 - 49:20 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 293: Performance Base Layer Series - Part 3: Pillars of Performance Applied (Nutrition)
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:24
What nutrients are you low on? You know your vitamins and minerals, or I should say, your vitamins and your minerals. Those things can impact your energy, your ability to focus, your performance in training, and your cardiovascular health. What about the imbalances of your hormones that can also impact fatigue, body composition, mood, and even itchy skin? What is your hormonal profile? Do you know? Guess what? You can find out. You could go to your doctor and get a blood draw. The problem there is most doctors reference their results against an incredibly low bar just the absence of disease. There's less of a real focus on how you are showing up to perform during sport of course across life and work. Often their recommendations are broad-reaching and honestly quite tough to implement. But if you're listening to this show, you're likely interested or performing at your best bringing your best self across life and sport. And that is why it is helpful to leverage InsideTracker. They assess your biometrics, they then review the results through a performance lens across key areas of performance and longevity. And it's from then that you can start to build an action plan for you to implement. Now with their dashboard, you also get it very easy to track your results. And of course, the impact of their recommendations. I love it Purple Patch athletes leverage it and you can too, all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch and use this sneaky code Purple Patch Pro 20. That's going to give you 20% off everything in the store. It's a great time right now as we lead into the holidays so that you can plot your path to be your very best across 2024. All right, folks, on with the show, and today we're going to talk about nutrition. It is number three in our series on you developing your performance base layer. I hope you enjoy.
Matt Dixon 02:21
Hey guys. And just one more thing before we get going with the show. Actually, I just wanted to sneak in just a little bit of information because today you're going to hear me talk about joining Purple Patch for a journey of transformation. But I realized that I have the opportunity to tell you about our Black Friday sale that absolutely closes on November the 30th. Although if you're a listener, because I'm really late to the market, we're going to extend this offer. If you do decide to join Purple Patch over the course of the coming year, you can buy a whole block of a year upfront, and we're gonna give you both a month free. So that's pretty darn good. And we're also going to kick you off on your journey with a free individual coaching consultation with one of the Purple Patch coaches to help you plan and help you set up your season. And so it closes on November 30. But we're only releasing the show on the 29th. And so if you email us and ping us, of course, we'll extend it out for the next week or show. It's all in for the month and an all-in for the year. So it's going to be tremendous. The second thing I want to point out is well a whole bunch of you guys asked us about apparel. We have a lot of really cool apparel at Purple Patch but we are releasing a brand new 2024 set of gear cycling gear and tri kit and this year, the theme is blue. We have three main brand colors Gold, of course, black, and the accent of blue, and what we thought we'd go with this year is the same Purple Patch stamp that I'm wearing today proudly, but all bedded on a background of that lovely blue of color. Very vibrant. You can get yours, you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete. It's tremendous stuff and it's brought to you by WYN, the highest level of quality cycling gear is available. bib shorts, jerseys, tri kit, everything you want. I'll leave a link in the show notes if you're interested. Alright, that's enough of me rabbiting on about the news. Let's get on with the show. Cheers.
Matt Dixon 04:25
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And yes, we're going to talk about your performance base layer. The very foundation of high performance for every human being. The path to develop this performance base layer is our very own the Purple Patch, pillars of performance, a holistic approach to building positive habits in movement, resistance, training, eating habits, and recuperation, namely endurance, strength, nutrition, and recovery. All of these are fueled and amplified with a high-performance mindset that makes you battle-ready gives you greater resilience and adaptability and ultimately leads you to be successful and effective over the long term. Today, we hit number three in our five-part series on you developing your performance base layer. We kicked off focusing on endurance and movement. Last week, we dove into strength and resistance training. Today we transition to pillar number three nutrition. Now maintaining our pattern, we are going to discuss this pillar through two lenses. The first is what we label life performance. And that is anyone, all of us ladies and gentlemen who are seeking to improve longevity, how we show up in the workplace better, how to be a better parent or friend, and everything around your life performance. And then we build on top of that narrow our focus a little bit and drive into the nutrition pillar through the lens of an endurance athlete. Now once again, we're going to return to a little bit of case study action. Some examples that highlight the importance of impacting, or in fact, not focusing on simple habits around nutrition. I'm even going to go mad today. And I'm going to create a couple of one-liner case studies as I'm calling them short vignettes that punch to the point and act as catalysts for action. I think you're going to enjoy them. Now, before we get going today, we do need to do one thing though. Let's do Matt's News-ings.
Matt Dixon 06:36
Yes, Barry, thank you. It is Matt's News-ings. And the word around this week's news is transformation. Because transformation in anything, any arena is a process. And it's a process that takes a lot of work and it also takes quite a bit of time typically. If you see an athlete who has a huge breakthrough in personal performance, you can expect to learn that there has been a process and journey that has been a labor of love that has ultimately delivered that magical result. And if you're equally if you hear about a huge breakthrough organization that suddenly burst into our consciousness, behind the scene, there has typically been months and months if not years of hard graft. Even a single joke by a popular comic can often be ready for primetime for our ears only after a year or more of edits, revisions, and tests. But ultimately, transformation is a powerful word. It is powerful to us because it has permanence from one state to another, hopefully elevated. And our transformation is the guiding word for next year at Purple Patch. Now this process in my mind has already begun. Offseason, you will know all about that, because we've been talking about it so much over the last few weeks of the show. And it's not too late for you to get involved. But our mission is to help you over the next year, Yes you, to transform. I want you to reflect a year from now, in awe of what you have become, and what you've accomplished. I don't want you to just train for a race with Purple Patch, I want you to transform from the ground up. What it means to be a Purple Patch athlete, I believe goes well beyond race results and ultimately achieving sporting goals. These are important. But what we care about just as much is how you show up across life, what you learn along the way, and who you become. So I encourage you to allow the sporting journey to amplify your life and have fun doing it along the way. 2024 is about transformation. And I want to know, are you in? If you want to get in, well, you're welcome. Reach out and understand how. Hop onto a free call with us. Just ping us at the email address info@purplepatchfitness.com and let the team know that you want to transfer. I promise you we will help. All right, Barry, with that little piece of inspiration. Why don't we do this? I'm gonna do it quietly. Let's do the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 09:23
Yes, folks, it's the meat and potatoes we are seeking staying power. You being your best consistently and predictably. Great energy, focus, and resilience. The route to get there? A robust physical ready state and a toolkit of performance effectiveness. The method? Well, at the base layer are the habits and practices that emerge from four distinct pillars endurance, strength, nutrition, and recovery, all working together to build that performance base layer. It is the first step for you to find your greatness. And today what we're going to do is shine a light on just one of those pillars, nutrition. What do they say you are what you eat, no? Well, it's kind of true. Let's dig in. Now to get this kick-started, why don't we first break down what we mean by nutrition, it's a big pillar, but it's an umbrella term, what falls under that pillar? Well, there is kind of your nutrition, your daily eating habits, that could be breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. I also would include slightly different to your fueling, that occurs before during, and following exercise. Your daily hydration from when you first wake up in the morning till right before you go to sleep, your hydration in your training and racing particularly relevant for endurance athletes, and then finally, potentially some supplements that you might consume beyond your normal meals and eating habits. Those are your vitamins and minerals and micronutrients to say in a very americano style. For most of today, we're not going to dive into fueling and hydration relative to racing particularly. Instead, we're going to focus because is our theme on your base layer, your platform of readiness. And we're gonna go through this in a logical step. We're gonna first talk about life performance as we established, then we're going to narrow our focus and just talk about some elements and some perspectives that are important for endurance athletes.
Matt Dixon 11:37
So let's kick it off with life performance okay? And that means that I get to first say to the whole of the audience, this is about you because we are all human beings and we all care about life performance. Now, I begin to think about this group all of us in two main terms are two main ways of thinking. The first is investing in your future self. Think about it like your performance 401k, setting yourself up for an optimal quality of life in the years ahead. And then secondly, performance now. So the readiness in your day-to-day life, for you to optimize in whatever endeavor is valuable and important to you, whether it's parenting, operating a business, fulfilling your role at work, being a great athlete, or anything. Okay, so we've got a long-term lens, and then an immediacy when we're thinking about performance. Now, the role of nutrition in life and health span is well documented, we all know it. Adults who eat healthy diets tend to live longer and have a lower risk of things like obesity, diabetes, cognitive illnesses, heart disease, and even some cancers. Now, the optimal diet can vary between individuals, and it's based on a few factors. But we do know globally that a reduction in sugar and processed foods is universally beneficial. We also know that wholesome unprocessed foods, and a consistent bounty of various fruits and vegetables daily and the best investments for our future selves. If I was going to highlight one key aspect of long-term health and quality of living, and then I would probably shine a light on your metabolic health. Now, we discussed this a little bit in last week's episode when we talked about strength, and the role of strength training when it came to improving your insulin sensitivity, hence the regulation of your blood glucose. Now, while this is important, strength training is the role of that, by far the most essential tool that you have in your arsenal to improve your metabolic health is today's focus, nutrition. Now, why do we focus on that here? Why do I care so much about metabolic health? Well, the truth is that only one in eight Americans are achieving optimal metabolic health. That is staggeringly low. Now you folks, the audience listening today, you probably skew at much better than that depressing number. But still, we should all care. Because of those daunting numbers one in eight sweep up people who are actually at a very normal weight, not with poor body composition, but are still metabolically unhealthy. We won't spend too much time talking about the longevity side of nutrition, as it's such a deep subject, and it would dominate much more than a single episode of this show to even begin to give it justice. With this said, we should recognize it is a critical consideration. And we know that your eating choices have a material impact on your quality of life moving forward.
Matt Dixon 14:54
We should also appreciate when we discussed this pillar, that every recommendation in our daily performance section seamlessly integrates into a positive outlook for your health span. And so today, I'm going to focus more on you showing up in daily life, it is those very habits that feed into your health span. And ultimately, look, I never do things with a short-term lens, I'm always looking to develop long-term sustainable performance. So that concept and that point, obviously make sense. So what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to focus mostly today, when we think about life performance, on day-to-day performance. Let me first give you some perspective. Did you know that Lucy Charles, who is the recent winner of the Hawaii Ironman World Championship, won that race in a record-breaking time? Do you know that she follows an awful diet? Her morning routine is a venti caramel-laced coffee with a croissant and maybe a muffin. Lunch tends to be fast food or something that's grabbed on the run between training sessions. She doesn't focus on maintaining her daily hydration status. In the afternoon because of fatigue, she often resorts to a huge cup of coffee or maybe even a Red Bull, she is sponsored by Red Bull, just to get through the afternoon training. And dinner, well, she does love her wine, she's from Essex after all, and so she has a couple of glasses of wine just to unwind and take the edge off. She always enjoys dessert and a big meal based on basically whatever she feels like pretty close to then for the night chasing exhaustion, ready to go to bed. Okay. That's a lie.
Matt Dixon 16:40
That's not Lucy. She doesn't have a poor diet. And I imagine that you would be pretty shocked if that was the truth. None of us would believe that a world-class athlete would aim to show up at their best but pay no attention whatsoever to the elements that can help facilitate it, eating, sleeping, recovery, et cetera. But what about a high-level business executive who is seeking elite performance in their very demanding role? Is their challenge that much different from Lucy's? Let's take Rich, for example. You see that in Lucy's diet, I outlined the little fib that I told you, was Rich's approach. Rich is a CFO, he is highly committed, he's ambitious, and he's challenged with the massive demands of his role, which includes lots of travel, and plenty of responsibility, even outside of the workplace, with family and other social obligations. And if I asked Rich if his work performance was important, he would say it's critical, and yet every single day, Rich's leaving performance on the table. He's simply unable, physiologically, to show up at his best to develop stable energy and readiness to thrive every single day. Knowingly, that he has unstable energy, and compromised cognitive function. Things like his ability to process information, focus for extended periods, and make clear decisions. Underpinning all of this is probably an erosion of the likelihood of a high quality of life in the years ahead. He's not investing in his future self. You see what and when we eat and drink daily has a huge impact on your daily energy, the quality of your sleep, and therefore the state of your recovery. Your cognitive function, including the ability to focus process information, retain clear thinking your memory, both short and long term, and much more. Simply put, no matter what arena you care about, and where you need to show up, you cannot perform your best consistently ready to perform without a baseline of successful and smart pragmatic habits under that big pillar of nutrition. This does not mean you need to count calories or weigh your food. You don't need to mimic the eating habits of a rabbit. And you don't need to go on a diet. You don't need to fall out of love with food. This is not about some nutritional revolution. It's not shackling your enjoyment and your love of eating, I'm not even going to tell you that you have to quit alcohol. This is about setting up positive habits that promote your health, your energy, and your ability to perform. Habits. Now knowing with habits that occasionally, and even appropriately, you will stray off course, you might dive into some seriously good performance-enhancing joyous, naughty choices. And for me, that's fine. But this is about what you do day to day on a habitual basis. No matter who you are, an athlete, a parent, an executive, or a busy professional, no matter, because all of us need a baseline of positive eating habits. Okay, now, what I'm going to do is not describe to you the magical diet. Instead, I will outline a few key central habits that will help.
Matt Dixon 20:35
Under the banner of daily eating, here are some things that you could do tomorrow, kicking it off, that would help promote stable energy and the ability to show up with better cognitive function. Now just doing these things alone is not going to be the answer. Remember that. I already referenced recovery. We've already gone through the importance of strength training, the importance of daily movement. All of these things work together. But these are some of the most basic elements when we just shine the light on nutrition. Number one, we should all be consuming wholesome, unprocessed foods as much as possible. Under that banner, we should aim to limit or eliminate processed foods that are packed with sodium, hidden sugars, and other chemicals. Number two, we should all commit to nine servings a day of various vegetables and fruits that is every single day. All colors of the rainbow, packing them in. We should all be getting plenty of protein. That should be at least half a gram for every pound that you weigh, if not a whole gram for every pound of body weight across a whole day of eating. We should aim to reduce sugar and relegate the big white starchy carbohydrates across most of our meals to the smallest piece of the composition of each meal plate. And we should aim number five to finish our last meals, two to three hours, before we turn into the night and go to bed. Number six, we should introduce a fast. Did I just say that, that we should all fast? Yes, from the last meal of the day to breakfast, that's often somewhere around 12 to 13 hours of each day. There's no magical restriction needed. It's not hard to implement if you're successful at number five, finishing your last meal two to three hours before you go to bed, and prioritizing sleep that's coming next week, then you get up in the morning, you have your water that I'm going to talk about in a few moments, and then you wait and have your breakfast, you can establish a healthy fast without impacting life, without it being restrictive. Number seven is consuming protein following every time that you exercise, so that you stabilize your cortisol and stress hormones, and you can facilitate muscle repair. So very quickly there I went through seven key habits, very simple things that all of us should integrate. And it's not much more complicated in there. And under that, there's all sorts of room for different diets that you feel fit your lifestyle and your preferences. But we do have one more, number eight. And this deserves just a little bit more explanation because number eight is to stabilize and manage your insulin. Now there are times over the day that it is very, very normal to experience elevated glucose in the blood, during exercise is one great example. But generally, the key hormone that we have to help you manage your daily blood glucose is insulin, and insulin is secreted from the pancreas. Now, it's secreted from the pancreas whenever we need to manage elevated blood glucose levels. And the more insulin is released, the less sensitive we become to it. Or said another way, the more times that we keep having high blood glucose levels. And the more and more insulin needed, the less effective we become at managing that blood glucose. Now outside of exercise, this means that we need to try and keep our blood glucose levels as stable as possible. So trying to prevent too many huge spikes of blood glucose, which is going to inevitably lead to huge releases of insulin. And these spikes, if they're chronic, can be one of the catalysts that lead to diabetes and massive risks of various other illnesses, including some cancers. In addition, these spikes of insulin can disrupt your body composition, management, cognitive function, recovery, quality of sleep, and much, much more. So in essence, if we can become effective at managing our blood glucose, and therefore associated insulin levels, we aren't going to be on a pathway to more sustained high performance. So we want to manage it.
Matt Dixon 25:30
So what are the things that you can do? There's no point in me saying, hey, go out and manage your insulin. Well, I can't even tell whether it's high or whether it's low. Here are a few things that we know have a positive impact on your insulin levels. Number one, after you eat a big meal, go for a walk immediately following, particularly in the evening time. Once you've had dinner, it's a nice habit, It's good for the soul as well as well, by the way, but it's a really good habit to go for a walk 10, 15, 20 minutes. The second thing that you can do is limit the high-sugar foods and snacks that you consume in the first place, particularly outside of the exercise window. When you consume high-sugar foods, or high glycemic foods, as we call them, it's going to create a glucose response and therefore an insulin response in association. A third thing that you can do is to consume plenty of leafy greens or salads before you have your main meal. And finally, a nice little trick that certainly is becoming more and more popular and understood is the positive role of apple cider vinegar. If you add some apple cider vinegar to that salad that has a stabilizing impact on your insulin. Now when you integrate these along with consistent exercise, focusing on sleep, and more, it's going to have a positive impact. And so those are your eight habits. And those are things that you can go and implement tomorrow. Remember, we want to make these things actionable and understandable. The world of nutrition is complex, it's deep. It demands real expertise, which I highly value, some experts and nutritionists can help you meet all of us and create a strategic plan. But at the surface level, these are some things some recommendations from a coach that you can go and implement tomorrow.
Matt Dixon 27:29
But that's not the whole of the puzzle. Let's talk about hydration. Because there are also some things simple habits that I would encourage you to adopt. Number one, when you first wake up in the morning, hopefully, get outside, go for a walk some exercise in some bright sunlight, I would also have you drink a liter of water to kick off the day. Now, when you go to sleep at night, hopefully, you're getting a good quality night's sleep over enough hours, 7, 8, 9 hours, you are going to wake up dehydrated, you've lost about a liter of fluid in dehydration over the night. So we want to make that up. Because that's going to impact your hunger, your energy, your cellular function, your immune system. And so wake up and the first action you take is consuming a liter of water, I would add to that it's beneficial if you get across the day before exercise, so just in day-to-day life, you consume somewhere between two and three liters across the day. That's number one. Number two, you might consider some of the two or three liters that you're consuming every day, maybe you add a little bit of electrolytes to the water. I like to use the precision hydration, 250 milligrams sodium tablet. Good, it's going to help draw your hydration into the cells. But it's also going to give you just that little bit of personality without having a high sugar content in your drink. And so if you prefer a little bit of personality before, beyond pure water, it's going to help with the adoption of that habit.
Matt Dixon 29:07
Tip number three under the consumption of fluids or hydration, enjoy your cup of coffee, or your cups of tea. But eliminate caffeine, all caffeinated beverages, afternoon. Good to ensure that it doesn't impact the quality of your sleep at night. The half-life of caffeine is about eight hours, and so after about noon, nix it, it’s a good value. Number four, if you can reduce your alcohol consumption, ultimately, and I say this as a man who does love my beer, but ultimately, alcohol is a poison, and it has a huge disruption on your performance, particularly in the days following. And so during the work week, at least, I recommend that you aim to eliminate or highly restrict alcohol. Coupled with that, I would add more sugary beverages because we should remember that alcohol is a sugary beverage. But I would eliminate all high-sugar drinks and sodas from your daily routine, period. Get rid of them. Once you break the back of that habit, you don't need them anymore. And if you need a little bit of a pickup in the afternoon, if I've eliminated sugary beverages, and I've eliminated caffeine, suddenly you don't have coffee, you don't have caffeinated tea, you don't have Coca-Cola, you don't have Red Bull. Instead, embrace a non-caffeinated hot drink. That's going to raise your core temperature, it's going to activate your alertness and your productivity in the afternoon. Now, of course, just like the nutrition habits, there's more to it than this. But these tips are highly accessible, simple habits that you can kick-start your journey with it. Okay, it's going to help you stabilize energy and foster better cognitive function. And that is going to help you improve showing up in life. Now for athletes, this, is what I just talked about, this is your base layer. And for folks that are purely interested in life performance, this is your base layer, for all of us. It is a way of eating, a foundation, and it's going to promote good health and optimal daily performance.
Matt Dixon 31:28
Now I hear athletes saying now, you might be listening and thinking Hang on, I'm training. I've got to eat more. I need more carbohydrates. And guess what? You're dead right. You do. But you will be building your sports-specific fueling eating demands on top of this performance base layer. If you are a time-starved amateur then the tips and the general approach and approaches that I outlined here, at the very first things that you should establish as habits. And at this time of the year, it is particularly beneficial to take on that journey, to establish your base layer of healthy eating. And the particularly beneficial reason is you don't have race demands, you're not chasing, you're not training at the highest level, at least I hope you're not. Now, I will say that these are pretty simple recommendations. And if you need some professional guidance and support around this, particularly if you're focused on life performance and athletic performance, this is the time to do it. I would not wait until you have deadlines for races looming. The team at fuelin, our partners, have the highest expertise that I know in this spectrum. That's why we've partnered with them. And so if you want to reach out to the team at fuelin, do so. Go directly, to fuelin.com/purplepatch, that's the page to get you there, that's going to ensure that they understand that you're listening to this show, or that you're a Purple Patch athlete, and they can give you the additional love, they'd love to do for Purple Patch athletes. These folks are professional, they are world experts. And that's why we partner with them. Because I have a very strong filter I feel like a responsibility to ensure that I put in front of you the resources that are going to help you be successful. And as I said, if you are an athlete, now is the time to dial this in, I encourage you not to wait till race season because what we want to do is get the base layer right, and then, as you're gonna find out in the second part of the show, we're gonna build on top of that, your more performance related aspects related directly to sport. I promise you if you do it now, you won't regret it. It is a personal promise. This is the time.
Matt Dixon 34:06
All right, so, life performance, endurance sports performance, what we've got here is your performance base layer with nutrition. Now what you want to do is add your training, and ultimately, your racing. As an athlete, I don't need to be spending time selling you the role of proper nutrition for an endurance athletic performance. It is, of course, your source of fuel, it delivers your hydration and your nutrients so that you can perform at an optimal level. It is the catalyst for your tissue to repair for you to gain the adaptations that you're seeking through the hard work that you do. And yes, as you'll find out, the majority of endurance athletes tend to consume calories relative to their training demands. Now, I should be clear here, I believe that everyone is an athlete. And if you aren't consistently moving about 60 minutes a day, and perhaps you do a little bit more on the weekend, it's not quite as challenging for you to meet your caloric demands. But when I talk about endurance athletes not meeting their demands, it's you folks who are hitting 10, 12,16, or 20 hours of training every single week. If that's you, you've got some real focus requirements. Because as supporting that many hours of training with the right amount, type, and timing of calories, there's a truth, a dirty truth. It's logistically challenging, and it's even physically quite stressful. And so today as I talk about athletes, I can't get into detailed meal planning, and high specifics of this. But I am going to provide some baseline expectations and habits that will help you. And these are things that are layered on top of our performance baseline nutrition that we just talked about. So what I want to think about is the foundation is what we talked about in life performance. And then as an athlete, you layer on top of this. Now, I should also add here that nutrition is incredibly complex, and it's always emerging. It's always evolving. And there's evidence that not all of us respond in the same way to different aspects of nutrition. And so you do have a journey to find the specifics that work for you. But some fundamental truths are universal. So let's go through just a few of them.
Matt Dixon 36:42
Number one, we're going to start with a mindset. A few phrases and words that will be helpful when you tackle supporting your train demands with proper eating habits. Number One, what you should remove, I'd like you to remove these words: diet, race weight. As a training athlete, you should not be on a diet, and you don't want to chase race weight. These are two phrases that tend to cause a lot of challenges for people and typically lead to some form of caloric restriction in the pursuit of a leaner body. The result of this? Well, it's a cascade of negative consequences around your energy, your tissue health, your injury and incidence, and more. You are not on a diet. And it's almost impossible to chase a specific race weight through some form of caloric restriction, while also concurrently training for the demands of your sport and life. And so remove those words from your vernacular. Secondly, don't confuse healthy eating, with fueling for training. Just venture onto any social media platform and you're going to see this live in action. Endurance athletes that just love to showcase, both their bodies unfortunately, but also the bounty of vegetable salads and lean proteins, and they're colorful and nutritious. And this is super because it's a great platform for eating for us. But it's often typically not fueling the body with enough calories. Healthy eating, as we've already discussed, you should have that as your base layer. And that supports a high-functioning life, we all need that as a human beings. But as an endurance athlete, no matter how time-starved you are, you're going to need to add to that, real fuel, additional calories across to the meal plate.
Matt Dixon 38:56
So those are a couple of important things when we think about mindset. Now let's get a little bit more specific, fueling. In general terms, as an endurance athlete, if you're training in sessions, of less than 60 minutes, and quite a few sessions, of even less than 90 minutes, you don't require much, if any, additional fueling to get through those sessions successfully. But every single session that you do, no matter how short, no matter how easy, is going to benefit from the consumption of calories after completion. It's going to help with your future eating choices across the day. The protein that you are going to include, remember, we talked about earlier, is going to lower your cortisol levels, but also begin adaptations and repair. And the carbs that you're going to consume as an athlete are going to feed the brain for energy across the day, but also restore your energy levels. And finally, for endurance athletes that are doing heavy training loads, it's a really important habit to do, so that you're providing the body with enough calories to support the training is logistically challenging. So don't under-consume immediately following. Take the opportunity when the body is like a sponge absorbing those calories. And so post-workout fueling, I think is a universal habit for athletes. Number three, feed the engine. I talked about what not to put in your mind, diet, race weight, well, here's something I do want you to put in, feed the engine. That's the phrase that you live by. Okay, it's a good, positive, strong, robust mindset. Feed the engine. Yes, you build healthy eating habits across life. But then, as an endurance athlete, you dial up the fuel, and you feed the engine. If you get this dialed in, then you support your training efforts. You provide your body with energy, you limit unneeded additional stressors, and the body is already dealing with enough through training and the rest of the stressors in life, and you set the path to a platform of health, better performance, stabilized energy, and ultimately, better results.
Matt Dixon 41:31
Now I want to revisit the underconsumption of calories that many endurance athletes have. Unfortunately, it's way too high of a percentage, and quite often this is an accidental effect. The most common culprit here is endurance athletes under-consuming carbohydrates, and also often in parallel protein. There, athletes focus on health, body composition, and eating clean ultimately fails to support their training needs. So I want to revisit this and I want to provide a rough guide to this. Remember that we've talked about throughout the show, baseline eating habits, are positive, but this is kind of your ever-eating. It's what you do before you even consider exercise, we layer on top of this, the calories that go up and up and up mostly in the form of carbohydrates, and some additional proteins, as you exercise more and more and more. Okay, so heavier training days, demand more carbohydrates. Heavier training sessions require additional carbohydrates both before and following. And this isn't going to happen by accident. It can't be left to random. Establishing a system for yourself of habit creation, and self-management is critical for athletes. Now, to be honest, as an athlete, I never truly got this right. I didn't engage with experts who truly understood the whole principle here. Someone who could support me, guide me, and coach me, through better fueling for my training demands. Instead, I had coaches who drove me on to diets and tried to encourage me to get down to race weight all the while I was trying to train overtraining for an Ironman. And what it led to was catastrophe, for my health, for my performance. Nutritionists were telling me to restrict and follow eating plans that were impossible for me to follow in life. So I'll say it again, right now, no matter who you are, you have an opportunity, that team at fuelin, this is what they do. And so this is a time that you want to establish your performance base layer, get the life stuff in right, but also start to understand, and learn, via real experts on how to fuel for your training.
Matt Dixon 44:10
Now, you might wonder why I make such a big deal of this. It's a personal observation. I say most endurance athletes don't consume enough calories to support their training. Well, this is after more than 15 years of working with professional endurance athletes. Some of the most successful Ironman athletes in the history of the sport, I've been very lucky to work with them. And over all of them, maybe 40 or 50 pros that I got to work with, I met one, maybe two athletes, that had their caloric support dialed in when I first met them, just one or two of them. The vast majority had growth opportunities and room to improve. Most of them do not get it right. And for amateur athletes, to be honest, the ratio is similar. Beyond my observation, what does the research say? The National Institute of Health proclaimed that almost 70% of athletes are at medium to high risk of RED-S. That is relative energy deficit syndrome. In other words, more than 70%, don't consume enough calories. And think about the impacts of that. You're just adding stress to your life and body, you've got an absolute loss of tissue integrity and health, hence an amplified risk of injury, you've got energy imbalances across the day, reduced adaptations from the hard work that you're putting in, you're walking around with a compromised immune system, you're going to get compromised race performance. Boys and girls, this is big. If you're going to train a lot as an endurance athlete, you need to fuel your body, by eating healthy. That's just the life performance base layer. If you're an athlete, you need to fuel the body on top of it, or ultimately it stark, you face the consequences. I know I did. Now I realize that there's plenty of emotion around eating. I also acknowledged the pressure out there and the confusion with the blizzard of conflicting information and advice. And finally, I get the draw the appeal, chasing that race weight, that Instagram-worthy tan lines on my body, and all of those poses, but I encourage you to resist. Fuel the body, chase health, and training readiness. That's gonna get you stable, and consistent. And that is the way that your body composition naturally starts to improve.
Matt Dixon 46:50
And so that is folks my general advice and perspective for athletes. If you have any individual questions at all. If you want to hear further perspective, just reach out to us. You know where to find us info@PurplePatchFitness.com. And once again, a good time to lock into the fuelin team. Fuelin.com/purple patch. That's the best way to get a hold of them. Let them know that I sent you. They'll take good care of you. All right, team next week, we march on number four, the one that I'm known for, yes. recovery. Yes, it's all about ice baths, Normatec, and that Goop-endorsed magic healing egg...maybe not. But we do peel back and have a no-holds-barred perspective on the role of recovery and sleep for both life and sports performance. I would say that's unmissable, it's going to help you. Until then, have a super week, fuel up, eat well, and we'll see you next time. Take care.
Matt Dixon 47:49
Guys, thanks so much for joining, and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing, head to the Purple Patch channel on YouTube and you will find it there and you can subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe also share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now any questions you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. As we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve, simply email us at info at Purple Patch fitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're trying hard to make it a special experience and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, and do whatever you do. Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
performance, habits, life, number, eating, athlete, day, consume, endurance athletes, nutrition, training, energy, health, calories, patch, love, fueling, diet, eating habits, ultimately