From Medal to Diet with Charlie Spedding

Foreignathlon podcast, finding out how ordinary people do extraordinary things.

It made a small difference that from where I was. I needed that little bit more. I was a good runner and I needed a little bit more to become a very good runner. So I feel very strongly that that change of mindset was, I think the cyclists call it marginal gains.

That was Charlie Spedding and this episode is from medal to. Hi, Claire, how is the training going for the Arc50?

I feel absolutely shattered, but other than that, no, it's been, it's been really good and had a bit of a recce of the course. So I know what's going to be. Be facing us, which is good. I'm not sure about the dark, but, you know, who knows what it will be like.

You've done a complete rec. Well, you've done a complete recce of the course, haven't you? I'm really impressed with the dedication of doing whole course prior to. It's not all in one go obviously.

But I mean I've done the whole course and also some of the not course as well. That was a particularly good learning point and day, I can tell you. I think I had a big sense of humor failure. But other than that it was absolutely. It's an amazing course and plenty to keep our minds busy, which is actually really nice. And I think compared to triathlon, that is really different because it's just so varied, isn't it?

So, yeah, it is. Part of the reason why I was so keen to do it is it's such a great way of seeing like I've seen most of that stretch of the Cornish coastline, but over the course of a number of years. So to see all of that in one go, which will be just absolutely brilliant. And the weather is looking pretty okay. It's looking dry, it's actually almost looking too warm. It's going to be about 10 degrees, which I was kind of hoping for a nice clear sky, crisp day, but. But no, it's. It's going to be good. It's going to be good. So one of the things I was keen to pick your brains on is given all of your expertise in the world of nutrition and given the fact that I'm desperately trying to avoid catching COVID off my. Of my wife Carol, who's got Covid in the house in the lead up to event, you're quite often sort of thinking about your immune system and how you can boost your immune system prior to an event or prior to a holiday. So how from a nutritional point of view can we Boost our immune system.

I think first of all people think that they can boost it. And actually one of the things is we can support it, but we certainly we can make it more robust, so to speak. We can't actually boost it. There's no such thing as really boosting it. And actually, you know, thinking in advance enough so actually probably you with your wife having Covid in the house has actually made you think about it maybe a bit more than possibly you would have. But certainly, you know, there's some real, real basics. There isn't anything in particular that you need to be taking in terms of like loading with those multivitamin and minerals or anything like that. So but the real basics are that actually when we train a lot, so I know we're probably both about to enter some sort of taper of some sort, but actually endurance training in itself opens us up to this window of opportunity after training to actually catch more viruses and bacteria and infections and things. So one of the things that we can do is make sure that we're not under fueling, so making sure that we actually do have some carbohydrates to actually support us in terms of supporting our immune system. The real basics. So if you, if you, I mean there's lots of kind of detail behind this, but if you think about the amount of fruit and vegetables that you have in your diet and the color, there's all these things called polyphenols. So polyphenols can, you might have heard of things like flavonoids, for example. So there's lots of different kind of chemicals, so to speak, that can really help support our immune system in lots of different ways. So actually if we're getting really good, you know, not, not missing out on meals, making sure that we're actually doing a bit of repair and recovery after training, making sure we're getting plenty of color in our diet means we get all of these different polyphenols, these different vitamins and minerals in. And that's a really good starting point. There is some evidence around certain things. So actually if you felt like a cold coming on, there is actually some evidence for taking some zinc supplementation, as is there is for higher dose vitamin C. But really a lot of the research has been done around sort of cold environments and very intensive training, but with all of these things and actually vitamin D supplementation as well.

But I was going to ask you about vitamin D because that's that I didn't get a chance to ask Charlie about that, but obviously come on to his interview In a minute.

But.

But yeah, vitamin D is talked about quite a lot with regards to. Well, I'm using the wrong term, boost our immune system, but kind of supporting it, support it.

Yeah.

And particularly with COVID there was a lot of talk around the importance of vitamin D, wasn't there?

And I think, you know, there's still. Obviously we don't know everything about COVID And you know, some of the research with that certainly was. Well, actually, do people happen to have low vitamin D levels in those population groups that were getting Covid? Because we know that in some of those ethnic groups actually they do tend to have lower vitamin D levels. So there was a kind of, a little bit of, kind of. Is it just kind of cause and effect, so to speak. But with vitamin D actually this time of year anyway, whether you're an athlete or not, we should all be in the Northern hemisphere. We should all be supplementing vitamin D because we can't get enough from the UV sunlight. So usually we say from October to April to supplement. And that can be kind of up to a thousand international units a vitamin D3. And the D3 is a really important part because that's the active vitamin D.

And the best way to get that is through one of those little sprays that mix with. Is it K2 or so you can.

Just take it on its own. So the important thing about taking vitamin D. So you can take it in a tablet form or a spray form, but the important thing is make sure. So I would always suggest to my athletes that you take it when you've got a meal that's got like more fat in it. So if you take it with your main meal, so that could be either lunchtime or evening meal. You need fat for absorption because fat is one of vitamin D is one of the fat soluble vitamins. So A, D, E and K, all fat soluble, which means they need fat to be able to be absorbed and utilized. So obviously if you're an athlete and you're competing, you do need to make sure that any supplements you take are tested. So making sure for batch testing before taking supplements. But certainly vitamin D, you know, if you haven't had it tested, most people have insufficient levels. And we know for athletes that we'd like to keep them slightly higher as well. So we do have guidelines for kind of vitamin D, but you know, really it's the real basics. The other thing that's really important is keeping your mouth moist as well. And people forget about that. So from a hydration perspective, it's really important that we keep our mouth really moist, all our mucous membranes really moist. Because actually saliva itself is antimicrobial, microbial, so it can help to fight infection. And I think a lot of people when they're at work and certainly now, you know, more and more people are back in the office and things just forget to drink. So really keeping your mouth moist. It's actually really, really simple things that we kind of forget to do. That's the other important thing. I know that's what it is. It's all one the pieces of the jigsaw. But you know, what can you do coming up to a race actually if you can get some extra little kicks in, that's really, you know, really, really important as well. So all of these things help to support our immune system. So hydration, lots of color in your diet to get all these different vitamins and minerals and polyphenols. If you feel like you might be getting cold coming on. Taking some zinc or some vitamin C may help for a short period of time. Vitamin D, but probably going to go a few days to go isn't going to make much difference in terms of really, really increasing those levels. Not under fueling and making sure we do have a little bit of carbohydrate after high intensity or endurance training sessions to help dampen the response to the kind of viruses or the open window and opportunity of infection.

Really brilliant.

Well, I think there's loads of good advice in there in terms of kind of supporting your immune system and putting yourself in the best position for race day. Now this could be a long conversation but I'm not, I want it to be a really short conversation but just I know we've been having to, to do our shop prior to race day and we've been talking a lot about different ingredients, things like that. So what the virtual Waitrose shop. Exactly. It's turning into a mammoth task. What is your describe your pre race meal of choice the night before a race, what would you consume to put you in the best position possible?

I'm going to start this like in a slightly different place and I'm not going to go off piece too much. But actually the last meal, the evening before isn't the most important meal at all. Like actually 48 hours before and even like prior to that as well. So I don't panic too much actually about the evening meal the night before because a lot of the prep will have already been done in terms of trying to increase glycogen stores. But really it's really individual. So for me, I tend to really kind of follow the principles of lower fiber, lower fat, slightly lower in terms of some of the more fermentable carbohydrates that are in the diet. So all these great things for your guts that are really good usually. So it's a little bit white and a little bit boring. But rice is usually my go to something kind of lean like chicken or turkey, tofu, that kind of thing and you know, a few vegetables, but kind of not, not too many and probably some, something nice in terms of sweet for pudding as well. So.

And I saw, I saw meringues and ice cream and yogurt on there.

Is that, that's a few little berries. If I, if I've got a little bit of space for a bit more fiber, then I'll yeah, chuck someone. What about you? What's your, what's your. Obviously we're going to be having the same thing, but what, what's your kind of go to in terms of things really usually?

Well, normally it actually be pasta. So I know we're, we're completely going against what Charlie says in an interview shortly, but anyway that's fine. I would normally go, so mine is normally a tuna pasta bake. So tomato, tomato sauce, a little bit of cheese, but definitely I have plenty of vegetables. I want plenty of vegetables but pasta. But actually I think it was when I was interviewing Phoebe Liebling, she was talking about, I think it was in that interview she was talking about actually that rice is better for athletes prior to the race than pasta. So my intention was to start switching to a rice based meal anyway. So as soon as you said a rice based stir fry, I was like, yep, I'm all over that. That's absolutely fine. And I'm not sure who's got the responsibility of cooking this thing yet, but one way or the other, I'm sure it'll work brilliantly.

I think there's plenty of us that could be interesting.

Well, particularly as we got, we've got Warren and Erica who run a nutrition company, so. So there's going to be lots of cooks spoiling the. Right, let's dive into what is a brilliant interview with Charlie Sped. After success on the track, Charlie Spedding switched to running the Marathon in 1984, winning both the London Marathon and a bronze medal at the LA Olympics in that same year. That was the first British Olympic marathon medal for 20 years and also the last one by Team G. So the performance certainly didn't get the recognition it deserved. He tells the story of his running success in his brilliant book From Last to First which was recommended on this podcast by Ali Dixon. So I went on to read it. Absolutely loved it. So I wanted to really explore his approach to sports psychology around particularly around drinking beer and also how he avoided injuries later on in his career. But I also wanted to chat to him about his new book which is Stop Feeding Us Lives and the Myths Around a Healthy Diet, which he dispels and looks into a lot of the research around it within what is another brilliant book. So loads of fantastic insights both on running and on the keys to a healthy diet and a healthy life in this interview with Charlie Spedding. Today's show is brought to you by Precision Hydration who help athletes personalise their hydration and fueling strategies so they can perform at their best. They work with a long list of elite athletes like three time Olympian and former guest of the podcast Eilish McColgan as well as many other athletes. PH tested my sweat and it turns out I'm a much saltier sweater than average and I would benefit from drinking a much stronger, stronger electrolyte drink than you'd normally get off the shelf. They also tested Sid, who actually loses about half as much sodium as I do when I sweat, which just goes to show how much you can personalize your approach to hydration. Check out their free online sweat test@precisionhydration.com to get some personalized advice. Or like Sid and I, book yourself in for one of their advanced sweat tests. As a listener of the show, if you use the discount code TRIBATHLON15 you can get 15% off your first order at the checkout. So Charlie, welcome to the Tribeathlon podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really looking forward to chatting to you. I really enjoyed reading both of your books. So I know we're gonna have loads to talk about, but I like to kick these things off by asking you to tell us your story and I think your story is really about that kind of the message within from last to first that you winning the bronze medal in the marathon at the LA Olympics. So tell us your story. How did you get into running and how did you end up with that amazing success in la?

Well, I got into running the way most people do through school, through compulsory cross country races and sports days. And when I was very young I was pretty close. I was pretty close to the bottom of the class. I wasn't very good at sport, I wasn't very good at anything actually. And we had a school sports day and the only event was 100 yards and it was handicapped on size, and I was the shortest one there. So I actually had a start on the other people in the race and I thought, I've only got to run from here to there. And I set off and I ran as fast as I could and everybody overtook me. So, having had a start, I finished last. And I still remember how horrified I was that I couldn't beat people over such a short distance, even with a start. And. But a few years later, at the next school I went to, we had cross country race. They call them cross country. It was about a mile and a half around some footpaths, but I was determined not to have that experience again, so I just tried very hard. And most of my schoolmates would run until they were out of sight of the teacher and then walk, so I only had a couple of other kids who were trying hard to compete with, and I finished second in that race. And that was the first time I really felt like I had any success. And I didn't know at the time the difference between not being able to sprint but being able to run longer distances. But obviously I learned that that was true, and I've never been able to sprint very fast, but I did have stamina, and so that was my first experience running a longer distance. And that was my first success, really, in anything I'd done. And so I liked it and I tried harder. And in that school, in every cross country race we had, I either finished second to the boy who beat me or I won them when he couldn't be bothered because he clearly had more talent than me, but sometimes he didn't bother. And then I would win a race, and winning was fabulous. So it grew from there and I got more keen and I'd go for runs occasionally to improve my fitness. And then I joined a running club when I was 16 and got into local club athletics, where there were a lot of good runners, but I was doing all right. I was doing well enough to be very encouraged and I started to really love the sport. And over years of training and competing in club athletics, I slowly got better and better and I started to run a longer distance. My first track races were at the mile and I did quite well, but didn't have the speed for it. And I eventually ran longer and longer distance, and the further I went, the better I did. By the time I was in my early 30s, having joined a running club at 16, I thought I was reaching the point where, having won a national championship of 10,000 meters on the track I thought it's time to try the marathon. I thought the marathon would suit me and, and it absolutely did. Obviously I ran it to see if it would suit me. I traveled out to Houston in America in January in 1984. And I won that race actually in a sprint finish because I needed my competitors to have 26 miles of tiredness in their legs before I could out sprint them. Because we were sprinting flat out, but probably not going very fast. But I won it by an inshore team. And I thought this is the event for me. Then I ran the London Marathon, which was the trial for the Olympic team. And I won that and got into the Olympics and then went to Los Angeles to run in by far the biggest race of my career. And, and that went absolutely brilliantly. And I. And I won the bronze medal. I did continue running after that and made it to the next Olympics four years later and finished sixth, which was a performance I was just as proud of because of problems I'd had before that. But I've been a good runner for a long time and then became a very good runner very late on in my career. And there are reasons for that, a lot of reasons which we can go into if you'd like to hear them.

Yeah, well, I've got some questions specific, but let's hear what you think the reasons are. Because I think it would be. I think that'd be fascinating to hear.

When I joined the running club, there was. Most people had an idea of the correct way to train for distance running or middle and longer distance running. And it was devised by a New Zealand coach called Arthur Lydiard. And he'd had huge success at the Olympics with people like Peter Snell, who won the 800 meters and then four years later won the 800 meters and 50 meters double. And other New Zealand athletes were winning Olympic titles at the same time. And everyone thought this is the way to train. And he had a very specific way of training which consisted of a. Of a long period of building stamina through running long distances and then a transition phase of doing about six weeks of lots of hill repetitions and then speed work to make it ready to race. That worked brilliantly for people like Peter Snell who had fantastic basic speed to start with, needed to add stamina and strength so that he could maintain his speed to win 1500 meter races. I had no speed to start with and I spent years doing lots of fairly slow marine in the winter, which made me strong. But it took me the whole summer to develop any Speed and the track season was over by the time I was starting to get an effect from the speed work I was doing. But it took me a long time to realize this because the consensus was that this is the way you did it, this is the right thing to do. And the years went by also because I got lots of injuries training like that. And anyway, by the time I was sort of in my late 20s, I'd had a few successes and a few minor international races. So I was a good runner. But I felt inside that there was more to come and it just wasn't happening. And I felt like I needed to do something quite drastic. So I quit my job, I sold my car, I rented out my house and I went to America for a.

Year.

Which I'm not suggesting that everybody has to do that if they want to improve their performances. But I felt like I needed something drastic and I went to live in Boston, which was the home at the time of some of the best distance runners in America. I also happened to know a woman there at the time as well, which was one of the reasons I went. But that didn't work out. But the running did, luckily. And I changed some of my training. One of the reasons was because the winters were so harsh in Boston that you couldn't really run the roads. And I did. I did a lot more running on indoor tracks during the winter. Not flat out stuff, but much quicker than I was doing. So I actually was able to maintain and build on a bit of pace that I did have. And so when I came to really try and speed up for the summer track season, I was already 3/4 of the way there. So the training changed. I just said, well, this consensus that everyone believes in, this Lydiard train isn't working for me and I'm going to try something else. And I tried something else and it did work for me. So you've got. One of the important things about training is to find what works for you. And I should have experimented earlier, but I was surrounded by people who were all doing the same thing. And it's difficult to think, well, they're all wrong, I'm going to be right. But the other thing that really was the big difference was I kind of changed my mindset. This was before I went out there. And that change of mindset was also one of the reasons I did what I did in basically changing my life completely, going to live on a different continent. I went through a process of realizing that I, I didn't have, I had a diligent attitude to My training I was doing, I wasn't shirking it. I ran hard in races, I was doing a lot. But I didn't have a mindset of sufficient confidence, I think because as I said when I was young, I was bottom of the class. I was struggled with lots of things. I never had great levels of self confidence that I was going to be great at anything. I was, I think subconsciously quite pleased that I was doing as well as I was. But there was something inside me felt that I can be better. I have to find a way to be better. And I, and I, I gave it a lot of thought and I realized that some of my vocabulary was wrong. I realized I had to change my vocabulary. You know, an example is yasten. What? What, how are you doing? And they typically say not bad. And so out of all the words in the English language to describe the thing we love doing, we choose the word bad and qualify it with not in front of it. But it's not really a word we should be using for something we're trying to be excellent at. And there are lots of other things we do like that. And there is. If I change my vocabulary, I would change the thoughts I had in my head and if I change the thoughts in my head, I'd have different actions and if I did different actions, I'd get different results. And so I, and I just condensed that down to change my vocabulary and I run faster. And it, and it worked for me. It was a process that took some work, but it absolutely did work and I developed that.

What you're referring to at the moment, I think in your first book, From Last to First. I think this is mostly talked about in my favorite chapter which is A Beer Drinker's Guide to Sports Psychology. It combines two of my favorite subjects.

Oh, good.

But I love that chapter. I just love the way it starts at talking about the. You know, there's something beautiful about drinking a proper pint of real ale in a nice British pub. And I love the way it starts off and then your, your sort of approach to sports psychology whilst drinking a pint of real ale in the pub, which I think was when if I remember correctly was based you having to hang around in a station, a train station for quite a while, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Talk us through a little bit about what you. How that sports psychology or how beer Drinkers guide to sports psychology works.

Well, first of all, I will come clean and say there's a little bit of poetic license in that, that all the processes I go through in that chapter didn't all happen in one hour in a pub. But it is absolutely true that I've had an hour to kill. I've gone to a pub, bought a pint of Relay, which I love, sat in a corner with a notepad, very slowly drinking this kind of beer, writing thoughts down about how can be a better run. That's absolutely true. And. But I didn't have all the thoughts in that chapter during that one hour, but I couldn't have written it as. And then. And then a month later I thought this. And then a month later I thought this. You know, that wouldn't have worked as an interesting chapter, but basically it's true. And all the things I go through were all things that I realized over a period of time, but a relatively short period of time. And we're talking about the vocabulary. Not saying, not bad. I came up with the idea of not talking about training hard. Everyone, everyone I knew said, I'm going to train hard. So you train harder and harder and harder and you come to a point where you're training too hard and you're doing more harm than good. But also, if you always think you have to train hard, you're never going to be satisfied with what you're doing. You could train, do you know. And I did some very hard training sessions, absolutely. But I didn't think of them as. I thought, this is what I need to do. But the people who always thought in terms of training harder would train incredibly hard and then not quite be satisfied because they're always thinking, I could have done more. Whereas I thought, if you do a training session of repetitions on a track, and the example I used in the chapters, 10 repetitions of 400 meters in 55 seconds, which is something I used to do, and then I'd do those sort of things with other people. They'd run the last two in 63 to prove that they could. They could do better. And I. And I thought, well, that's. That's not what you set out to do. And I convinced myself, well, if I do all of them in 65 seconds, I've done exactly what I set out to do. And instead of calling it hard training 10 out of 10 correctly is perfect. So I started to call it perfect training. And that's a very positive thing to say about training. I mean, it's very. Your training is actually very rarely perfect. But in a session like that, where you set out to do a number of repetitions in the same time you do it, I always thought well, that's perfect. And I would do that sometimes and I'd have people going away from me on the last couple instead of reacting to it. I would think, ha, you're doing hard training, I'm doing perfect training. I wouldn't say it, but I would think it inside my head that I'm doing it correctly and you're not. And then when it comes to a really big race, really, really important race, and you're thinking, this is, I'm up against it here, I'm going to have to run brilliantly, it's going to, this race is going to be really hard. And if you're, if you've been continually telling yourself, I train really hard and you never quite satisfied with it, there's a danger that your subconscious thinks this hard, this race is going to be really, really hard. And you have this built in thing that was never quite good enough. So you run a race that isn't quite good enough because you've convinced itself yourself that it's hard. And you associate hard with not being quite good enough. And I felt that, well, if I tell myself this is, I'm really up against it here, I'm going to have to run a perfect race, my mind thinks perfect. Well, we do that all the time in training. I can do that. And it's just, it's a psych, the psychological tricks, but in a really intense competition, I'm absolutely. How much talent you've got, how physically fit you are really important. But really it comes down to what's going on in your mind and not just consciously, but subconsciously as to whether you actually believe you can produce this performance or beat that person. And I just found all those, all those thoughts and changes of vocabulary and changes of ways of thinking about what I was doing really made a huge difference. Well, when I say a huge difference, it made a small difference that from where I was, I needed that a little bit more. I was a good runner and I needed a little bit more to become a very good runner. So I feel very strongly that that change of mindset was, I think the cyclists call it marginal gains.

That's the words I was just thinking of as you.

It was the marginal gain for me that made all the difference, coupled with going to America, having a new start that I'm sure. I mean, I did change my training to an extent which was, which was very important. But the actually going to America to become a better runner, I think in my subconscious mind it went, whoa, he really means it.

Is it like total immersion? You Are this is it?

Yes, this is it. And I think that that commitment took me over a barrier of that lack of confidence I talked about earlier that I'd always had. I thought subconsciously, I really feel like I changed my thoughts. I tweaked my training to make it better. I committed myself. And that took me out of that habitual just, well, are you really good enough? Sort of thought that I've had for decades because of my early experiences. So, I mean, they do. Your early experiences are. Do form you. But I do believe they're not a prison.

One of the things I loved about the book was how, and particularly around the sports psychology within it was how you were, you know, you needed to set very clear goals. Like you're talking about using the right vocabulary. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think you could have set even better goals because you talk about in the book maybe settling for bronze medal because your, Your goal was to get a medal, wasn't it? Do you think with the benefit of hindsight, you could have done them even better?

Well, with hindsight, knowing that I was good enough to get a medal, yes. But actually, I don't actually say I settled for a bronze medal.

You question whether you might have done.

Well, no, I. The thing I. I described the race and then much later on, I talk about what was going on in my mind and I didn't settle at all for a bronze medal. Consciously. I. I came into the stadium just a yard behind John Tracy, who did end up getting the silver mount, and I tried as hard as I could because we had to run down the home straight, then do a lap of the track down that last 400 meters of that race round the track in the Olympic Coliseum. I tried as hard as I could to stay with him and beat him afterwards, I thought, because I very, very much believe that how hard you can try in any situation is dependent upon context, what it means to you. Leading up to the Olympic Games, I ran some races where I ran quite a bit below what I and other people would have expected, but it was because I just wasn't committed to them. And in my mind, I was saving it all for the big race that was coming. And context is everything. People will say things like, well, I tried as hard as I could. It's something that, you know, but they weren't really bothered about. If you're not really bothered about, you think you've tried as far as hard as you could about something you don't really care about. But if you really care about something you can find from within you a great deal more than you can if you don't care about it. And what I proposed later in wasn't that I had settled for Paul's medal, but subconsciously, when I was consciously telling myself to run harder, stay with Tracy, don't let him get away. Subconsciously, my mind was doing cartwheels of joy because I was fulfilling my lifetime's ambition. Now, earlier in the race, where there was a group of about 10 of us, I committed myself to really going for it. And I really went for it and broke that group right down. And that was. That move I made four or five miles away from the finish was what really won me the medal. But when it came to running around the track, consciously, I was not settling for the bronze medal. Afterwards, I thought to myself, winning a medal in the Olympic Games was always an absolutely wild dream that I never really thought would happen. So I wondered if subconsciously my mind's going, well, you've done it, you know, as if there are. As if there are little men inside your head who are going, what do you mean? He wants more effort. He's won in a medal in the Olympics for 20 years and he's getting one. And now he's changed his mind. He wants something else, you know, so I didn't settle for it. But. And what I. What I think the question I posed was if Tracy and I had been so close together, battling for first or second, I. I'm trying to suggest I would have found more. I'm not suggesting I would have beaten him, but I would have found more because winning the Olympics is quite different from Dana Silver. If we'd been running for bronze and fourth, I think I would have found more. Again, I'm not saying I would have beaten him, but I would have found more because a medal or no medal is a huge difference. But if you've always dreamed of a medal, the difference between silver and bronze, yes, it's important, but it's nowhere near as big as the difference between winning in silver or bronze and forth. Yeah. So I was simply trying to explain the importance of context, what matters to you and what a difference it makes in what you can dredge up from inside you when it really matters.

It's really interesting and it's something. I don't know if you've read Alan Alex Hutchinson's book Endure, but he talks about countless, Gives countless examples where, you know, particularly in people situations where it's life threatening to either somebody else or the person in question, they suddenly find a level of endurance beyond which they've ever. Or a level of strength beyond which they've ever got anywhere close to anywhere else in their life. And I think you're right. It's, it's, it's that sort of subconscious having been programmed, you know, you know that you're giving everything that you possibly can in that moment from a conscious point of view. But in certain situations, yourself, you know, if you've been running from a lion or running for a medal, you'd have probably found that little bit of extra, wouldn't you?

Yes, yeah, yeah. I didn't, I didn't want to use the analogy of running for your life, but, but, but you're right. It's a, it's a context in which you would find more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Throughout your career, you also had a lot of injuries, a lot of time where you couldn't run or you were not doing as many miles as you wanted to. Did you find, as you, you know, as you went through your career, did you find anything that allowed you to minimize that time off through injury and any strategies to kind of keep you running more and injury free?

Yes, very late on in my career, I did. I had a lot of Achilles tendon injuries. It was always the Achilles tendon that would cause me problems. And they can quite easily get so sore you just, you can't run. And I have loads of treatment on them. I ended up having operations on them, which obviously took a long time to come back from. And later on in my career, when sports massage developed, I found that, and I advise this to people who ever talk to me about it, I found that a lot of all the treatment I was getting for my Achilles tendon injuries was on the Achilles tendon. But in fact, the problem was coming from my calf muscle above it, which was too tight, or I'd have a little injury in my calf that was a bit of scar tissue in it and that wasn't allowing my calf muscle to stretch far enough, which was therefore pulling on my tendon and overstretching the tendon. And I found late on in my career that some very deep, which is very painful massage to break down star tissue in my calf muscle, fix my Achilles tendon problems. So all that treatment I got on the Achilles tendons was just in the wrong place because that was where the problem was being manifested, but it actually existed further up my leg. Right. And. And I went for several, several years, the best years of my running career, without clee tendon injuries, when I had that sort of sports massage. Treatment on my calves and typically how.

Often would you be getting that sort of treatment?

When I was, when I was in America, I went to America for six weeks of acclimatization before the Los Angeles Olympics. I went back to Boston where I'd been previously and I saw a guy every week, every Wednesday he actually did a whole body massage and it was extraordinary. Wednesdays was one of my easier days and I would do a seven or eight mile run in the morning, go and see him at lunchtime and I would do a five mile run in the afternoon. That five mile run in the afternoon felt like I was flowing along the road as if I was water or something or I had wheels under my hips. I was just so loose and relaxed. And then when I went back to Boston at the time, I continued to do that. When I was back in the uk, it was harder to find somebody who would do that, but I did get it maybe once a month and that continued to help.

So I think having spoken to athletes like. Well, as an ironman professional female athlete, Kat Matthews, you may or may not know, but she, she's a physio herself and having spoken to her quite a lot about it, in the US they're much better at using physios for preventative as opposed to in the UK where it's much more kind of treating the problem after it's happened, isn't it?

Absolutely right, yes. Yeah. And that's. That's exactly what it should be. Yeah, it's exactly what it should be.

So I want to come on to your new book now because I know we're going to have loads to talk about that again. Brilliant book. So this is Stop Feeding Us Lies and is really almost nothing to do with running at all, is it? There's a tiny bit about it, about exercise in there, but tell us a little bit about your pharmaceutical background and what led you to write Stop Feeding Us Lies.

Well, I went from school doing A levels to do a degree in pharmacy because I'd always been interested in, I was interested, I've always been interested in how the human body works both at its most athletic best, how you became the best runner, but also in terms of general health and how you avoided ill health. So I worked as a pharmacist for considerably longer than I was ever a runner. I did have a spell when I left pharmacy during my running career so that I could concentrate on my running, but I went back to it afterwards and I just late on in my pharmacy again. Perhaps I should have realized this earlier. I Just found that I realized there were so many people regularly coming to the pharmacy, diligently taking their medication, but never getting better because the medicine they were taking were treating the symptoms of their problems, but not the root cause. And so I started to get very frustrated and disillusioned about this and I left. I had my own business, but I managed to sell it and leave pharmacy earlier than I had intended to. And I spent quite a lot of time researching this. I wanted to understand why, when we spent so much money on healthcare, the nhs, why people were taking medicine, not getting better. And again, everyone has a certain amount of bias in the way they think. And I had a bias. I thought originally that, well, probably they're not doing enough exercise. Obviously, that would be the first thought I had. But the more research I did, the more I realized that that just wasn't true, that it was. All these people had metabolic diseases, and the metabolic diseases were being caused by the wrong diet and lifestyle. There are other factors in lifestyle, among which is a lack of activity. But I came across research which showed that of a global disease, bad diet is responsible for more than alcohol, smoking and lack of exercise combined. So it's considerably larger problem. So I started looking at diet and I'm looking at work done by a lot of other people who. I discovered other people who were saying, you know, the diet we're recommended to eat isn't working. And I. And I fairly quickly accepted that idea because, you know, we live in a country where 64, 65% of adults are overweight, 27% of them are obese, we have rising rates of type 2 diabetes and cancer, and the NHS budget goes up every year, and we're now spending something like £150 million a year on the NHS. And I thought to myself, well, if the NHS was actually working in making people more healthy, the NHS budget will be going down because there will be fewer ill people. But it goes up every year and that everyone loves the NHS and there are some wonderful people working in the nhs. I'm not knocking anybody in the nhs, but there's a fundamental problem there that we've constantly spent more and more money because more and more people are ill. And it basically comes down to the diet we are recommended, which was introduced in America in 1977 and we copied it in 1983, and most of the world copied it around the same time. It was originally portrayed as a food pyramid. They now do it as a plate. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because the cartoons came out but if you eat according to the food pyramid, you start looking like a pyramid in your bodily shape. But basically the, the idea was to base all your meals on carbohydrates, like bread and pasta and rice and potatoes. And then further up the pyramid was vegetables and fruit, and further up the pyramid it was meat and dairy. And then right at the top, you're allowed a little bit of fat and oil and, and sweet things. And the research I did, and all the people were saying that it's all this excessive carbohydrates that are causing the problem and it's the reason people are overweight. And it all comes down to hormones. You always hear people talking about how many calories you're eating and cutting back on calories if you want to lose weight. There's no calorie counting device or organ in our bodies. We respond to different types of food with hormonal response, and insulin is the big problem. And insulin controls a lot of things, but mainly it controls our levels of blood sugar, which are normally quite low. An adult has eight pints of blood, about eight pints of blood circulating in the body. If you imagine the gallon, imagine a bucket with a gallon of water in it. Blood sugar is 1 teaspoon of glucose dissolved in a bucket, a gallon, bucket of water. So it's quite, quite dilute. And if it goes above that, insulin immediately appears to take that excess blood out of the bloodstream and either put it into cells where it can be used for energy, put it into glycogen store where it can be stored for energy in the future, or convert it into fat and it's stored in fat cells. Carbohydrates are basically, basically sugars, sugar molecules attached together, and the digestive system just decouples. All those and eating a couple slices of bread is equivalent. Once you've digested it and it's been absorbed, it's equivalent to having about nine teaspoons of sugar. And your blood sugar level shoots up. Insulin appears to drag that back down again because in high blood glucose level is very dangerous, as any type 2 diabetic will tell you. And so insulin appears and takes it back down by taking it out the bloodstream, and it quite often overshoots, so your sugar level goes below normal. And then you feel hungry, so you eat more of what you've been recommended. So typically you'll have a high carbohydrate breakfast. Your blood sugar goes up, insulin drags it back down. By 11 o', clock, you feel hungry, so you'll have some Chocolate biscuits. Blood sugar shoots up, insulin takes it down. You feel hungry at lunchtime, you have a sandwich. Same thing in the afternoon, same thing in the evening. And you're on this constant roller coaster of insulin, of blood sugar going up, insulin coming and taking it back down, making you feel hungry. And if you're doing that all the time, your cells have got all the glucose they need, your glycogen store is full. The only thing insulin can do is convert all that glucose into fat and store it in your fat cells. And so eating carbohydrate over and over again causes this roller coaster of storing fat. And this is how people put on weight. Eating the recommended diet.

Are there essential carbs? You know, is carbs an essential part of the diet?

No, there's no such thing. There are, there are three main groups. The proteins, fats and carbohydrates. There are certain. All proteins are made up of amino acids. There are certain amino acids. We have to eat some of them. Our liver can make some. We have to eat. So they're called essential, not that they're essential for health. In that context, the word essential means it's essential that we eat them. The ones we make are also essential for health, but we don't have to eat them because we can make them. There are essential fats that we have to eat. There are no essential carbohydrates because the only carbohydrate we need in our bodies is glucose. And our liver can make glucose from either protein or fat. And there are also no structures in our body made out of carbohydrates. Our muscles and our skin and our hair and our organs are made mainly of protein.

Our.

The cell membranes of every cell in our body, the structure is mainly fat molecules. It's quite interesting to ask people what they think their brain is made of, because most people don't know what to say. But 65% to 70% of our brain is made of fat molecules. Now, there are lots of different fat molecules. They're not the same ones that you store in your skin, but they are fat molecules, and there are essential fat molecules. But no structure in the body is made of carbohydrate. There is absolutely no reason for a human being to ever eat carbohydrates. Now, I'm not saying that you can't eat carbohydrate, but there is no reason for you to ever do so. As long as the rest of your diet is correct, you don't need it at all. So to base dietary guidelines on you should base your food on a food type that you don't actually need and causes you to gain weight. It is dreadful. It's absolutely dreadful.

Are there good carbs and bad carbs within that?

There are bad carbs and worse carbs. There are worse carbs. Probably the worst thing you can do is to drink sugar. Things like ordinary Coca Cola. Just a can has nine teaspoons of sugar in it. I mean, can you imagine anybody ever putting nine teaspoons of sugar into a cup of tea? They would think that's crazy. But they drink a can of Coca Cola which is the same. So there's no nutritional value in a can of Coca Cola or other soft drinks. The soft drinks are available, but it's just full of sugar which will absolutely rock up your blood sugar there. Obviously it's fine. And I eat loads of vegetables and there are carbohydrates and vegetables and if they're naturally occurring, most people have no problem with them. But there are lots of very processed, ultra processed, refined carbohydrates that aren't really occurring, whether natural molecules, but the structure of the food isn't, isn't natural normal and they cause lots of problems. So yes, you can eat carbohydrates, but I would really recommend everyone to avoid drinking sugar and eating ultra processed food.

So would there be. Is there a preference between, for example, brown rice and white rice or brown pasta and white pasta? Or is it all as bad as each other?

Well, I think I would say you're splitting hairs. There's not a big difference. Most people can tolerate a reasonable amount of carbohydrate without any problem. But some people have great difficulty with it. And some people will because of genetic differences. Some people will be develop type 2 diabetes, but genetics decides who develops that. Out of, out of 100 people, if you fed them a very, very high carbohydrate diet over a period of time, some of them would become diabetic and others wouldn't. They'd probably all put on weight. But the ones who are genetically disposed would develop type 2 diabetes. Those people would not develop type 2 diabetes if they ate a very low carbohydrate diet all the time. So it's the diet that gives them diabetes, but their genetic disposition decides who gets it.

And there'll be athletes out there that are sitting here going, well, hang on, we need to carb load or at least we need sugars during the race. I know there is kind of talk around fueling purely on fat, but of course it takes longer for for you to turn fat into glucose. So is it, is this more of a conversation around the general population and an athlete might use sugars or carbs specifically during, you know, longer races? Or is, does this apply to everybody and you and you think that carbs should really be kind of cut down to a minimum even if you're an endurance athlete?

I think that I certainly wrote stop feeding the slides with the general public in mind. I wasn't specifically talking about runners at all. I was talking about the people who came into my pharmacy and had metabolic problems and the vast numbers of people in the country who do have metabolic problems for endurance running. You can adapt to fat and you, you don't need to convert the fat into glucose. The mitochondria in your cells, the energy producing bits, your cells are perfectly happy using fat molecules called ketones to provide energy. They put you, you have. If you, if you've been eating a fairly carbohydrate rich diet in the past, you, takes you quite a few weeks to adapt to a very low carbohydrate diet. But there are endurance athletes who have been very successful never taking any extra carbohydrates at all because they've trained their bodies to burn fat molecules. We store most of our energy as fat, so obviously the body's perfectly happy with fat and. If we're adapted to, we can just burn fat. Now I think a lot of highly trained athletes can quite comfortably get away with eating a high carbohydrate diet because they use so much energy. I did I again following the consensus for my marathons, I used to, I used to carb load and I think if you, a highly trained athlete can uses so much energy, they get away with it. I would stress that if they then stop training, they should not carry on eating such high levels of carbohydrate as they have done.

This subject fascinates me and I've spoken to so many different people about it in the podcast and read books that have included the topic and it seems to really divide people. I think what I've concluded is that for some athletes the fat adaption works really well and, and they can, you know, you're absolutely right. There's certain athletes out there that are famous for, for running on a, on a zero carb pretty much diet. But then there's others that have tried, you know, long term to, to, to make it work for them and it just hasn't worked as well as carbs. So I think, I think it's, I think it's a really interesting subject, but I think it probably comes back to what you were saying around. You know, it might. One what works for one person doesn't necessarily apply to the next.

Absolutely right. Yes, yes, I agree, I agree. And you need to experiment to see which you are.

Yeah, but I think if you can be, if you're as effective running on a no carb diet, then actually you're far better off. It's just that for many people, they won't be. One of the things that we were always taught as we were growing up was that fat is bad. You know, we should have low fat yogurts and low fat this, that and the other. Your book tells us that that is all wrong. Please explain.

Well, the, the idea that fat is bad for us came from a basically one man and his quest to do this. It started in America during the last century. Beginning of the last century, there was a big increase in people having heart attacks. And they wondered why. And when the President eisenhower in the 1950s had a heart attack, there was real plan, we've got to sort this out. Our president's had a heart attack. And there was a researcher called Ansel Keys who just decided it was, it was, it was a theory of his, it was a hypothesis that it was fat in the diet that was causing this. One of the reasons they thought that was that when people had heart attacks and died, they would dissect them open and they'd find these lumps in coronary arteries and there was a lot of fat and cholesterol in those bits of plaque in the arteries and nests. And so they decided, well, there you are, it's, it's eating too much fat that's causing it. But that's, but having fat in those plaques doesn't prove that eating it was causing it. And it's a, the reason. Heart attacks is a long complicated process, but it isn't caused by eating fat. And I explained in the book, but I don't think I can go into it now because it's long complicated. But what happened was this guy, Ansel Keys produced a study of six countries and he became famous. He was on the front of Time magazine because of it. And he showed this clear graph that the two axes of the grass were. One was number of people per hundred thousand dying of heart disease. And across the bottom was percentage of fat in the diet. And he had figures for various countries. And he came out with this perfect up sloping graph that showed the more fat in the diet, the more people were dying of heart disease. The trouble was that he had or was generally available was the same information for 22 countries. And he just cherry picked the six, which perfectly fitted his hypothesis. And when I do a slideshow on this topic, I put that up and I put the 22 countries up and it's just a dot for each country. And I draw a line going through six countries which goes in the opposite direction proves the opposite because I cherry pick a different six countries. And it was just. He. This happens so much in what we call science nowadays that someone has a hypothesis and they find the results to support the hypothesis. And he did another, bigger study called the seven Country Study. And recent researchers have. Have shown there are so many holes in it that it just doesn't make sense. But they were. The Americans were desperate for an answer to heart disease. He was saying, this is what it is. At the same time, in Britain, there was a guy called Professor John Yudkin who was showing that it was actually sugar. Too much sugar and carbohydrate in the diet was causing heart disease by the long, complicated process. And he produced a book called Pure White and Deadly, still available. But Keyes in America was not only determined, he was quite ruthless. And he ridiculed Joachim at every opportunity. And he got a sugar corporation in America and General Foods, which was a big processed food company, to say, no, it's fat, it's not sugar. He's completely wrong. And poor John Yudkin ended up not being able to get any research grants because he was going against the consensus. And if you read the latest research, Yurkin was right all the way all those decades ago. But Ancel Keys won the day by persuading other people. And in the Senate committee, it was known as the McGovern Senate Committee. McGovern was the senator who was in charge of it. Eventually, when they were going to decide what the dietary guidelines should be, they got in a guy called Dr. Frederick Stair, who was the head of nutritional research at Harvard University, regarded as one of the top people in the country. And he said, no, it's fat that causes heart disease. And sugars, sugar's absolutely fine. Years later it came out that he. General Foods, one of the biggest users of sugar in their processed food in America, had paid him a very, very large amount of money to say that. So he'd basically been bribed. And we ended up. So fat was vilified. So we were told, eating fat is going to cause heart disease. So you can't eat fat. Obviously, you can eat protein, but you can't. Or for most people, it was just too expensive. You couldn't just eat protein, so the only alternative was to eat carbohydrates. So they recommended a carbohydrate, carbohydrate rich diet along with some protein and minimal amounts of fat. They didn't do any experiments or any research on what would happen to people if they had a very high carbohydrate diet. We basically did an experiment on the whole planet when everyone adopted these guidelines, and we now have worldwide obesity. But there's so much money and vested interest tied up in it, even though there's a huge amount of evidence out there, which I quote in the book People, that the people at the top won't change the guidelines because they'd have to admit we've been wrong all this time.

It is frightening, isn't it? I think, you know, it's frightening in the sense that the people that are running countries are not changing these guidelines, but it's also frightening about how little you can trust the sources of information. And one of the things that came out of reading your book and also listening to other podcast interviews you've done was, you know, the. The how. How to identify whether you can trust some research or not. And a couple of examples that I heard you talk about were Game Changes, the Netflix documentary that promotes a vegan diet. And also a piece of research that came out saying that eating pasta three times a week was a good way to lose weight. Talk to me a little bit about how you can try and cut through the noise and work out whether you can trust a piece of research or not.

Well, one of the things you have to do is a little bit of work, which most people will just read those sort of stories or watch that type of documentary and take it at face value. I saw the story in the paper about eating pasta three times a week will help you to lose weight. And I thought, that can't be right. Eating carbohydrates frequently cannot help you to lose weight. So I found the paper in one of the journals that had been printed in, and you scroll down right to the bottom of the paper and it'll tell you who funded it. And the funds for that paper were provided by Bertoli. And Bertolli is the world's biggest manufacturer of pasta. So that doesn't prove that the study is wrong, but it is a huge conflict of interest. And then if you know how carbohydrates affect insulin, you know what insulin does. You know, well, this has just been paid for. Game Changers. There were a lot of claims in there about veganism, which I found very difficult to believe. And so I, I looked up who had, who had produced the film. I've forgotten his name.

James Cameron.

That's it. James Cameron. So I did a bit of research into James Cameron and he is heavily invested in a pea protein company or in fact I think he owns a pea protein company. And pea protein is one of the main ingredients of all these plant free meat substitutes like Impossible Verdum, Beyond Meat and all those things. So by persuading people to give up real meat and develop a vegan diet, a lot of people are going to use meat substitutes. And so lots of people use meat substitutes. He's got to make more money out of his pea protein company. So when you find these sort of things, you realize that there are huge conflicts of interest in them. And to be confident about someone's research, you can have much more confidence in it. If you just cannot find any conflict of interest. They're not going to make anything out of it. It. So. But it requires a bit of research. But actually I like doing that. I spent years, literally years researching and writing that book because there was so much to look up and it was like a rabbit hole. The more I went into it, the more I found. I had originally intended to call the book Something about Health and Happiness, but I couldn't come up. It was going to have Health and Happiness in the time, but I hadn't decided on the words. But by the time I finished, I called it Stop Feeding the Slides because there's just so much myth and misinformation and propaganda and downright corruption.

And it's a great title. I think you definitely went with a good title. And one other one. I was chatting to my eldest daughter last night and I said to her about, I was talking to her about the book because she is a pastor lover. She, she absolutely. And she was really not happy when I was telling her that this book was, was, was saying that her pasta was not good for her, which I've said many, many times before. But she is a slightly fussy eater so we have to kind of go with it a little bit. But the one thing that made me laugh the most was when I mentioned salt. She was like, no, I'm, you know, we all know, everyone knows salt is bad for us. How can this book, how can this one man be saying that salt is good for us and yet everyone knows that salt is bad for us now? And actually this podcast is sponsored by Precision Hydration who make salt tablets predominantly and electrolytes. So talk to us a little bit about why we all believe that salt is bad for us and whether that's really true.

Well, it comes back to the fear of heart disease thing, because there's a little bit of evidence that a very high salt diet increases your blood pressure slightly. There's not a lot in it, but it does slightly increase the blood pressure. And blood pressure is one of the factors. It increases your risk of heart disease. So people thought, well, we need to reduce salt to reduce the risk of heart disease. So we now have this constant that they combine three things we've got to eat less. Sugar, salt, and fat. They talk about sugar, salt and fat, or sugar, fat and salt as if it's one word. These three demons, Sugar, I agree with. We all need to eat less sugar, but salt is essential for life. Our blood is a solution of salt, 0.9%, pretty much the same as seawater, and it's essential. Sodium and chloride are essential for a variety of functions in the body. If. If somebody was. If you were severely dehydrated and taken to hospital, they put a drip in your arm of saline solution. It is 0.9% sodium chloride in water, and they'd drip it into your arm. If you were very, very dehydrated, they probably put 2 liters directly into your arm. So they would drip 18 grams of salt into your arm along with 2 liters of water to save your life. But you're not supposed to sprinkle any on your food. Back to the heart disease thing and insulin. One of the many things that insulin does is prevent the kidneys from releasing salt in your urine. So because normally if you have. If you eat more salt than you need, you store some of it in your skin. But if you've got too much salt, you'll just flush it out your kidneys. But if you've got high insulin levels, insulin will prevent that and maintain. So again, eating too many carbohydrates can raise your blood pressure by not letting your kidneys get rid of the salt in your diet. But salt by itself is essential. And people in Roman times were paid partly in salt, and their word for it was sal. And the word salary actually comes from the root sal, which was salt, because it was part of your pet. Roman soldiers were. Were given a certain amount of salt so that they could eat.

And there comes this. There's this saying that you're worth your weight in salt, isn't there?

Yeah, same thing. Yeah. It's an essential part of our bodies. We Must have some. If you completely eliminate all salt in your body, you'll die if you. So another, well, another problem that comes back to something I've already mentioned is there's often lots of it in refined food. It's added to refined food to improve its taste. But I think one of the things that I read about salt, I read an entire book called the Salt Fix. A guy wrote an entire book on the benefits of salt and that was where I got some of the information from. And he was saying that because salt's essential and our bodies are so brilliant, he said if, if food tastes too salty, you've probably got plenty of salt in your body. If salt tastes really good and not too salty, you need salt.

Well, that's interesting actually, because I've observed that after, like if I've been on the Turbo Trainer and then have dinner afterwards, I, I've, you know, you will. I've had my wife saying, oh, this, you know, risotto, sorry, bad carbs. I know this risotto is, is too salty and yet I'm like, no, no, this is absolutely fine. But I've just been sweating buckets on the Turbo Trainer. So that does make sense actually. Now.

All right, good.

So what makes up a good diet? What should we all be trying to do to make up a good diet?

First of all, eat real food that comes from a farmer or a fisherman and not a factory is the starting point. Home cooked food is invariably the best, but we need so no ultra processed food. Cook your own food. I certainly believe, and there's plenty of evidence for it, that we need plenty of animal sourced foods for the variety of nutrients they contain that can't be found in plant food. I eat lots of vegetables with my meat or fish or eggs, lots of them. But I think that those natural sources of animal source foods with the fat that comes with them, I never ever cook the fat off a piece of meat I'm eating. I eat it with the meat and home cooked real food. So I don't believe in being too specific about you've got to eat this food and that food and that food. But I think that if you eat home cooked real food with plenty of animal sourced foods along with your vegetables, you're probably going to be absolutely fine. Food. Well cooked food is one of life's great pleasures. I find eating a meal with my wife or family or friends is one of life's really great pleasures and it should be pleasurable and we shouldn't.

Be.

Counting the calories on a plate or thinking oh no, I can't have this and I can't have that. We should be enjoying food. But from the basic starting point of home cooked real food, I think I've had it.

I've had a couple of, well, several nutritionists on the podcast. One thing that's come out is if you're eating the right foods, you don't need to calorie count. You can basically as much as you like if you're eating the right quality of foods and the right type of foods.

Yeah.

And you know, certainly I eat lots. I mean, I exercise quite a lot as well, but I eat lots. But if, yeah, if you're putting the right things in, it shouldn't be a problem.

That's right, that's right, absolutely. And protein and fat tends to be satiating you. You will feel full after having a meal with plenty of protein and fat in. Whereas as I described earlier, if you're eating lots of carbohydrates, you hungry again shortly afterwards. Yeah.

And that's when I remember when I first switched to a low lower carb diet, realizing that, you know, I'd always said a salad can't fill me up, I need. No, I need a sandwich for lunch. But yeah, you have a sandwich for lunch now. You know, if you're a conference and you have no choice.

Yeah, yeah.

By four o' clock you're really hungry. Whereas if you've had a salad at lunchtime, then by 7 o' clock you're thinking, well, I might get round to eating. You know, it is totally different, isn't it?

Yeah.

So you mentioned that your book originally was going to, going to have the word happiness in it. Now I have a. One of my books has, is called Entrepreneurial Happiness. So I couldn't move away, I couldn't let you go without asking what about happiness? And in your book you have specific steps to happiness which I really thought were brilliant. So I don't know whether you can remember them all, but what are your steps to happiness?

I should have reread that chapter, shouldn't I, before I spoke yet. Why don't you tell me about it here? Actually, if you need a prompt. I haven't reread it and it's so long since I wrote it I can't remember the steps in order. But I, I think one of the, one of the most important things is what? Well, exercise. Exercise outside in, in green spaces. Well, exercise in general has been shown to be very beneficial. Exercise outside in green spaces particularly so. But obviously in the middle of winter that's very difficult. But I think one of the most important things towards happiness is social connections. Absolutely. Social connections. And the more social connections you have, the better. Your relationship with your spouse is obviously enormous. If that's going badly, it's very difficult to be happy. If it's going well, it's much easier to be happy. But there's also your family, your extended family, colleagues at work, people you deal with through hobbies or whatever else you're interested in, people you, your neighbours. Whether you're on speaking terms or not with your neighbours, whether you spend a few minutes or. Or the more social interactions you have with more people that have some meaning to them I think is enormously important in your general happiness. We're not talking about being ecstatically happy about something. We're talking about a baseline of am I happy or am I less than happy? And all those social connections are really important.

I think that I thought this was the bit that I was going to come on, to particularly pull out is the fact that it's the sense of community, it's about those other people, it's about giving rather than necessarily receiving. It's that interaction with your community. And it reminded me of the opening chapter of one of my favorite books by Malcolm Gladwell which is Outliers where he talks about the. Think the people, the rosician people and how they have much lower heart disease than kind of in this was in the US but in a. In a town that. And he kind of put it initially put it down to diet and then he. And then they really. They work out actually that the resistant people have dropped all of their Italian habits and they're now eating really badly the same diet that all the other American towns nearby are. But it's their community that. That really had such a impact on their health and happiness. So I thought it was really interesting. The other one that you talked about which actually I think comes back to A Beer Drinkers Guide to Sports Psychology is Life Purpose and Meaning. So I thought it was really good. I thought it was a lovely way to finish off the book and I genuinely think it is a really good book. I think there is a really good amount of detail in there so that the scientists like me can, can get your teeth into it and go yeah, I understand this and there's research here and if I wanted to follow it up I could do. But equally I could have handed. I actually tried to hand this to. To my 15 year old daughter and say here, read the chapter on salt and you'll understand as much as. As I understand this, I genuinely think it's a really good book and I'm going to be recommending it and passing on to other people as I, you know, because it's a subject I'm very passionate about. So other than Stop Feeding Us Lies and From Last to First, which are both excellent books, are there any other. Any books that you would recommend? Any books? I mean, you've mentioned a few already, but any books you. You sort of find yourself recommending to other people that you found really powerful?

That's a good question. And the problem is I spend far too much time reading research to read many books. But in terms of books about health, there is one that has just come out by a guy called Dr. Malcolm Kendrick who I quote a few times in my book and it's about heart disease and it's called the Clot Thickens, which also thought was a. Was a very good title. Yeah, he's very good at. Explaining science in an easy to understand way.

And are there. That's brilliant. And I haven't heard of that book, so I'll be adding that to my reading list. That sounds really interesting. Are there any running books that you found that you really enjoyed or you found really helpful?

I found the Ghost Runner by John Tarrant, a great book because he's a guy who had terrible obstacles to overcome because of his slight involvement in a professional sport early on. And sport used to be seen as so amateur that you could, you could be banned from sport if you'd received a fiver as a prize in a boxing competition or something like that. Another one that I found really interesting was by Rob Hadgraft. I hope I've got his name right. Called Beer and Brine. And it's about. My mind's going blank today. It's about Walter George who was world record holder for the mile in the 1890s. And it's all about the sport in those days. And it's a fascinating read. Brilliant.

So was that called. Was that called Beer and Brine?

Yes, brilliant.

Oh, I've not heard of that. I'll definitely look that up. And the Ghost Runner sounds really good. It sounds, it's. It's a subject that they talk a bit about in Feet in the Clouds in the Fell Running world. Yeah.

And that's another good book. I've read that often. That is.

That is a brilliant book. But it's. You're here because Ali Dixon recommended your book from Last to First. So those are three.

Thank you, Ali.

Well, I was saying thanks Ali, actually, I sent her an email after I'd read it saying I was very grateful. So, yeah, no, they said they sound fantastic. So just one final question then, Charlie. What are you looking forward, what are you most excited about?

I'm most excited about the end of COVID restrictions so we can live a normal life longer term. Longer term. I'm hoping that I can somehow have more influence on the things we've been talking about. I have a presentation which I give about, about stop feeding the slides and I had several of those talks lined up just when all the lockdowns came. So they've all stopped and I haven't been able to get them going again. So that was quite frustrating. So that's something I hope to be able to do more of. You know, I'm talking to groups of staff at a company, that type of thing. So not runners at all, but the people who probably try to lose weight by eat less and move more advice, which doesn't work at all in the long run. So I hope to be able to do more of that and have more influence on people. I'm motivated to do that very much because just before Christmas I got a message randomly from someone online who said that they'd read my book in January last year and they sent me this in December. So 11 months later, and they were. She was a. A nurse and she'd been morbidly obese for quite a long time and had been a yo, yo, Dieter. She read my book and is now worth six stone.

Wow.

And has improved several health problems. And she said, I. I'm not just a nurse, I'm a health visitor as well, and I'm required to. To give dietary advice, which I no longer believe in. So I was really encouraged to keep going with what I'm trying to do. But as I said right at the beginning, the mainstream media don't want to hear anything that's against the consensus.

Yeah, it is. And. But I think what you're talking about makes absolute sense. I think it's a really brilliant message that you're getting out there and I'm, you know, I'm very grateful that you've written that book and I wish you every success with it because I think it's got a really powerful message but a really accessible message for people as well. So, Charlie, it's been absolutely brilliant chatting to you. I knew it would be and I was really looking forward to it. Where's the best place. So, other than reading your. The two books, where's the best place to Track you down.

I'm on Twitter spedinCharlie. Someone had taken Charlie Spedding.

That's most rude, isn't it?

And I'm on Facebook and I also write on Substack, Charlie Spedding at Substack. And I also have website called Stop Feeding the Slides dot com, which actually I did.

I haven't read much of, but I did start to dive into that. And there's some really interesting blog articles there, aren't there?

Yeah.

So, Charlie, it's been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much. And yeah, I look forward to recommending Stop Feeding Us Lives some more. And hopefully I'll get to see you soon, speak in person at one of those events at some point.

Well, thank you very much, Charlie. I've enjoyed talking to you too. And thank you very much for promoting my book.

You're welcome. Well, when it's. I'm hoping that they'll see your book and they'll get confused between Charlie Spedding and Charlie reading and buy some more of my books as well. So we'll see.

We'll both win.

Exactly. So what did you make of the interview with Charlie Spedding?

I loved it, actually. I really like the. Kind of like the. The first part and some of the things I picked out actually, in terms of the really kind of sat true with me. So he talked about the whole psychology of training hard. And actually when you're training like you're trying to kind of do this perfect interval or whatever. And actually when we race, we kind of turn our mindset into something different and we don't want to fail. And it's like totally the opposite. And I thought actually it's a really lovely way to think about it. And, you know, I'm. I'm really a firm believer in that positive mindset going into a race. And it's very difficult to sometimes draw yourself back from thinking what could go wrong rather than all the things that actually could go right because you've done all the preparation, you know. So I really. I particularly kind of love that about his. His racing and his background in kind of running and racing.

And I think that's something I heard Dave Brailsford speak once and he was talking about specific goals in terms of what you measure it by, because ultimately, whether you win a race or not is out of your control, isn't it? But if you do a PB or whatever it is, you set yourself as the time, you can control that. And I think that's what. What was brilliant about what Charlie was saying is that you Set that goal. You hit that goal and, and actually really, you know, then you've executed perfectly on what your plan and then what happens from that is kind of always out of your control anyway.

Yep, no, absolutely. So I, I, I, I kind of, that is something that I, I'm definitely going to take into the race for, for myself. So that was a really good, like, it's really stuck in my head.

And I would say even if you read no other chapters or you can read the first chapter about his book, of his book, because his first chapter is all about him winning the bronze medal. And then the Beer Drinker's Guide to Sports Psychology is just one, I loved it. Such a brilliant chapter.

So when he was mentioning that, I thought, actually that is something that I'd really love to kind of read because it sounds like very, you know, the whole way through the interview, he had, you know, a lot of facts, a lot of his own thoughts, but also there was this kind of real athlete behind it as well in terms of how he was kind of talking.

I'll bring the book down to Cornwall and you can read those two chapters even if you read nothing else.

Yeah, that sounds great.

And obviously we spent quite a lot of time talking about his latest book, Stop Feeding Us Lies. What did you make about the conversation around the nutrition elements that we talked about?

I think, you know, some of the things that he brought up particularly for me, I think, you know, with how evidence moves the whole time, we're in a constant state of flux with evidence. So what was the evidence years ago and how people interpreted that? And he kind of touched on, you know, people just taking bits of data and who, you know, trusted sources. So, you know, a lot of, not a lot, but some studies and studies today are still sponsored by companies. So we do have to be really careful when we interpret things. And I really love that he brought that actually towards the end of the interview, you know, he was saying about a couple of the studies and kind of where they came from. And I think more and more, you know, well, certainly in sports nutrition, you know, part of our role actually is to educate people and help them to be able to pull fact from fiction. And it's really difficult. You know, I think he said he saw a headline in a newspaper on the Metro, what he said about, I.

Can'T remember what the it was that.

Eating pasta three times a week would lose help you lose weight. And it was funded by Bertoli, the largest maker of pasta.

The classic thing of, they say, like, we don't know where it came from. But don't they say they're eating pasta three times a day and it suddenly becomes fact? And it's, and it's. I love the way he picked up on actually, you know, read it. Where does it come from? And you know, we don't have that scientific background in terms of how to read a paper, but certainly helping people to understand, like what you're looking for, I think is really useful. And, you know, I think that there are many, you know, he pulled out about sort of carbohydrates and fats and proteins and he knows everyone. And, you know, he gave a really level argument about kind of both sides really. And I think, you know, you were talking about, you know, everyone as an individual and I think bringing the athlete side in, you know, we are on individuals and research is ongoing. And that's the fascinating thing about research. And I think he really did, you know, he's done a lot of research himself and I think that was one of the great things that came across as he was open to reading and interpretation of that as well.

But I think, I think what's really good about Stop Feeding as Lies is it's very easily digestible, for want of a better phrase. You know, he's taken lots and lots of papers and books and things that he's been able to study and put it into one very, you know, accessible. That's the better word, accessible book that really I just thought, you know, I thought it was really well structured. And whether you completely agree with his, I, I actually think for the majority of people, a low carb diet makes a huge amount of sense from. I think, I think what he talks about does make a lot of sense. I think for an athlete it might be slightly different when they're, you know, particularly for, you know, some of the endurance athletes that you'll be coaching that are doing 30 plus hours a week of training. Maybe that's where carbs are, you know, more important.

Again, there's been some really good, like there's been some really good recent research into, without going to too much detail today, but using when you train on low carb, higher fat. So it's been some really interesting research on race walkers and they've just done another study more recently, you know, and actually when you then kind of give them carbohydrates, does it help them super compensate and then they become, you know, fantastic in the race and. No, it doesn't. Um, so there's some really, there's some really, really interesting research that's Coming through in terms of actually carbohydrate for competition is, is the research at the moment still suggests that that is we should be having carbohydrates. Um, but you're absolutely right, you know, and I help athletes that if they want to try and use fat as a fuel, you know, you've got to train for that. But the important thing is as an athlete, you've got to be able to train all your systems. So if you train in a carbohydrate defeated state and start using fats of fuel and increasing the mitochondrial response to that, then if you want to then use carbohydrates in a race, you've got to train to use the metabolic pathway for carbohydrates as well. So, you know, and it takes over 12 weeks to train your gut. So you've really got to think about what, what you're doing. And I think it is a really individual approach. And I think athletes from the general population, I think we should talk about it almost in a sense, although they both come together in kind of two separate pots, really.

Yeah. I remember when I interviewed Damien Hall, I asked him what's the worst advice he hears and he said it's that fueling from fat is the way forward. He said, you know, the research continues to come out that actually for the vast majority of people, fueling from fat is not the right way. For some people it really is. And I remember interview, Sorry, hearing an interview. It's actually on the 33 fuel podcast, but I can't remember the athlete's name. But he's an ultra runner that very famously lives off pretty much no carbs and it works fantastically for him. You know, since he switched to a, a fat based or low carb diet, he, he's just got better and better and better, but I think for probably every one of him, there's probably nine people that fuel long endurance stuff better with carbs.

And actually, I guess, you know, there's, there's a much deeper conversation here as well, you know, and actually it's certainly working with athletes and working with people with diabetes, because clinically that's what I do as well. It's more about how you periodize that carbohydrate. Like it's about how much you need when. And it's not about low or no carbohydrate or all carbohydrate or high fat or high protein. It's about moving that around the whole time. And that's where kind of the knowledge and kind of skills come in and working with an individual and, you know, as athletes, working out ourselves, actually how, you know, how that all works. So I find it really fascinating because actually moving things around does work. And it's not that you can't. That you have to cut things out. And actually just finding what works for you and what kind of ratios is really important.

Yeah, I thought. I thought it was a really, really good intro. I was a really lovely guy. I was really looking forward to interviewing him and yeah, he lived up to the expectations.

Yeah.

So, yeah, great to chat to you, Claire, as always, thank you for your insights and wisdom, particularly with regards to the nutrition stuff. And for everybody else, keep on tr. If you've enjoyed this triathlon podcast, please do go to Apple Podcasts and rate it and review it. It massively helps us to deliver a better podcast. It helps people find it as well. So, yeah, go to Apple Podcasts, give us some feedback, give us a rating and a review, and please share it with your friends because ultimately, that's what allows us to keep delivering more and more of these podcasts. And don't forget to download the tribathlon app for more amazing podcasts, but also to help you train, compete, and to build your tribe.