PART 2: Q and A - How To Eat For Weight Loss and Nutrition with Dr Harry Weisinger

Welcome to another Trivelo coaching podcast. Today we are here again with the very popular Dr. Harry Weisinger.

So is it Weisser or Weisinger respond to either? Either.

Either.

Either way, been called worse.

He's the popular Doctor who. We did a brilliant episode and we are following up with part two today because last episode we covered how to eat for weight loss and performance, pretty much. And we had a lot of good feedback from it and we had a lot of listeners with questions of exactly how to follow through on the advice you gave. So if you haven't listened to that part one yet, go back and listen to it because today we are doing a special Q and A with the doc himself to get into the nuances of actually how to do it, because a lot of people have tried to do it themselves and have given us some feedback onto how it works. So welcome back, Doc.

Great to be back.

You've been doing this and experimenting this in yourself since then. That was about six weeks ago. So why don't you start with a couple of results that you found yourself in your own experimentation?

Yeah, well, I mean, I would start by saying my whole adult life has been an experiment. But yes, more recently I have been, as I described in the last podcast, I've been basically consuming a ketogenic diet with the exceptions, with a couple of exceptions where I'm intermittent fasting and supplementing with carbohydrate before big rides or races. Yep, happy to report that. All going well. I've lost about 6% of my body weight since I was last here, which is fantastic. A month and a bit ago had a race win, which was pleasing solo. And yeah, like feeling better generally. And yeah, just, you know, my performance, I think is coming up it. I'm still adapting, I can tell, but I definitely feel better, particularly in the hills. That's probably a combination of. Of working out the nutrition process prior to a session like that and during. And I guess there are questions on what to eat prior to and during. And if there aren't questions on that, I'm going to answer it anyway because it's important to know.

I just wanted to pick on the thing you said initially was the exceptions, which is great. And that's been a lot of the questions, Jord, as people have asked us to ask you how important and how detrimental to your plan are the exceptions. Are they. Are they going to take you longer to achieve your state of what we're.

Trying to aspire to, or is it going to be insignificant in the journey?

Great question. Both so we're talking to athletes here, right? Nobody has three years to fully adapt. Okay. There are, there are those listening that have already got 90% of the way there. That'd be you. And probably you are 85% of the way there already anyway, just from a lifetime of endurance performance and training.

So.

From my point of view, we're not even going to consider the possibility of putting yourself through poor performance for three years to adapt as best you could. Yep. I'm, I'm far more interested in the middle ground, which is the minimum amount of disruption to the overall adaptation that allows top performance.

Great.

The last thing you want as a coach, and my coach, is for athletes to perform hours for years because they're trying to adapt so that they can perform better. It just seems, it's counterintuitive. So we're not, we're not interested in that. But I think I've got a pretty good framework for, and it fits obviously hand in glove with your training program because it's so structured that you can predict what you're going to do from an exercise point of view and from a dietary point of view. A week, two weeks, three weeks out, which is really important for athletes.

So that kind of leads us to probably the first question, and this was a common one, was the length of time that you want to be in keto for and do intermittent fasting. A couple, couple of people asked a variation of the same question. Can you do intermittent fasting too long? Can you do intermittent fasting forever? And the same with being in ketosis. Can you do that for too long?

Sure.

Okay. Well, from an evolutionary point of view, our ancestors fasted intermittently. So our whole genetic machinery is geared around coping with intermittent fasting. It is actually our natural state. And in comparison, the standard western diet is the overfed state. And it leads to all the complications that we deal with as a society, including overweight and obesity, the metabolic syndrome, not to mention inflammation, systemic inflammation, local inflammation. These all occur as a consequence of eating the way that we were taught to eat as kids, which is three meals a day, plus snacks and snacks on snacks. So can we intermittent fast too much? I don't think so. I can't imagine that's the case. Anecdotally, there are people who have done it for decades. I'm not fully up to date with the literature in terms of the longitudinal effects of intermittent fasting, but it makes complete sense to align with what we're genetically programmed to deal with, which is basically eating in a four to eight hour window. And then fasting the rest.

So part two of that is the ketosis part. So if you are intermittent fasting, but then your diet is made up of higher fat, moderate protein, low carb, how long do you want to be doing that for? That is considered safe, if there is a safe period.

Good question. I. I don't believe you can do it too much, provided that you're not missing particular nutrients, vitamins and minerals. But if you think about a good ketogenic diet, it's got fruit, vegetables, meat, chicken, fish, dairy. It's what you're taking out is essentially devoid of nutrient other than calories. That's starchy carbohydrate. And that, I mean, you're listening, so I can't gesticulate necessarily. But I'm telling you, the enormity of the problem that we face is difficult to overstate. Go into a milk bar or a cafe or a supermarket and walk up and down the aisles, and it's all starchy carbohydrate. It's poison. There's a lot of junk on the shelves, and there's nothing really in that stuff that we need apart from energy. And as athletes, we have the luxury of being able to eat that stuff when we train and race and ride. Sorry, do I overdo that?

No, no, definitely not.

I think it's spot on. Yeah.

And there was a lot of questions that would come from that. And I know I personally, after the last podcast, thought about the same thing. I guess it's just because we're so. It's so uncomfortable and it. We've been in such a state of what you said of over eating and overeating. A lot of calories are there.

Yeah. I mean, helpful. Now, having said that, do I continue on a ketogenic diet all the time, even though I believe in its benefit? No, I don't. As I said in the last podcast, and I've been true to this, I have a base of ketogenic diet. I eat carbohydrate that probably knocks me out of ketosis a couple of times a week, and then once every six weeks, I take a week off where I eat ad libitum, whatever I please. It's curiously, I don't end up eating chocolate bars, which I fantasize about while I'm. While I'm maintaining the diet. But I am inclined to have a hot cross bun or something like that because I miss it, not because I need it. So there's a difference between the danger or the potential danger of not eating a standard diet. And missing it, the psychological addiction that all of us have. But as I said, we cyclists, triathletes, we're in a luxurious position. We can virtually eat anything we like before and during a hard ride. So, you know, before on a hilly ride, I got a piece of my mum's fruitcake. That stuff is gram for gram the most caloric food you could ever find. And it tastes great. And yeah, just before going up a hill, no problem.

That's a good point. And one of the things that you've mentioned is the extreme version of that. And we know as humans, anything that is going to be unsustainable for a long period of time is going to create failure. So that's a really good point for everybody who's listening. If you do it to the extreme level, you will really struggle not only in your performance, because we're talking about that as well, but sustaining the red regime that you've given yourself.

Absolutely.

And setting yourself up for failure is kind of what we do a lot, unfortunately.

Whether we're training too hard, whether we're expecting to do. Some people miss a session, so they'll do back to back hard sessions and then wonder why two days later they're flat. And this is the same anybody who does things to the extreme, you're going to set yourself up for failure.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. And so I'm an advocate of sticking to the plan with a tolerance level. So not it's better to stray off the tracks than to be so strict and then completely fall off. So I think, you know, I have days. Here's a classic example. So say I've got a hard ride coming up the night before. I say, all right, I can have a little bit of carbohydrate now. And in the morning before the ride, I might have a little bit of carbohydrate. And then for whatever reason, I can't complete that session. You know, it's pissing with rain or whatever. Now I'm carb loaded, okay? And I'm not going to be able to do what I plan to do. And so I've kind of kicked myself out of ketosis for no good reason and so forth. It's better just to get back on, get back on the program than to say, oh, you know, I've wrecked the whole thing. I'm out of here. So psychologically, I think we've got to. One of the points is we've got to give ourselves a bit of leeway. And over the whole journey and Jordan made the point in terms of the long term goals that we're trying to make. This is a journey I've learned as part of Trivelo. It's a journey because I'm 40, late 40s, but I'm going to do this into my 70s, 80s. This is forever.

Big picture.

Big picture. So, yeah, so I'll take some short term steps back to get a, to be on the journey lifelong.

Yeah.

One of the good points you made is whilst you've been in this state since the 23rd of January, you've actually raced, you've ridden some really hard bunch rides. And I'm talking from a coaching point of view, observing your improvement.

What your diet has done has not hindered in any way.

In fact, you've won a race and.

You broke away and rode solo. You've, you've ridden some of the hardest bunch rides and kept up with us, whereas the previous month you were dropping off.

So it's almost like it's made you.

Concentrate on, on everything. So I'm gonna sacrifice all of the things I love in eating.

Yep.

If I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna train better as well. And that's the thing I've noticed is.

Your.

Zoning in on your sessions and.

The communication I've got from you now has been so much different.

Hey, I can't do that session. Is this an option? And before, when you were not concentrating on your food and your training was going along okay, now I can see it real intent in everything you're doing and it's paying dividends. The food is definitely now making you able to ride with less junk in you. You've lost weight, so you're lighter.

Yes.

You're riding better in the hills, etc. Etc.

And I'm needing, and I'm needing less food than I did.

Yeah.

So I'm reaching, you know, into my back pocket far less than I was at the start. So I'm. So that's the other advantage is you get to, you get to really finely tune and understand your own requirements as you pay attention to this. It's, it's so much better and more satisfying, at least for those of us that are inclined this way to know precisely what you need as opposed to just reaching into your back pocket for a bar of gel every hour or so.

Yep.

So the words metabolism and thyroid were asked a couple of times in questions. In terms of will my thyroid be affected and therefore maybe potentially my metabolism drop because I'm eating less and calorie restricting. Is that a Possibility.

Yeah, it's a really, really good question. Really good question. Of course, at the extreme, you know, in general practice, we see people with anorexia, which is a, which is a psychological disorder, mental health issue. And the consequences of not eating are on full display in people that have anorexia. One of the organs that's affected is the thyroid. And I mean, I mean, virtually every organ is affected, but certainly that, that is the case at the extreme, again, for intermittent fasting and caloric restriction. Not really. I mean, the, Again, we've evolved to deal with this and it's a pretty clever system. The, the hypothalamus and the pituitary and the thyroid, they've, they've got it worked out. So the level of thyroid hormone is carefully titrated by the body, provided certain conditions are met in terms of nutrition and other things.

What kind of conditions? Well, anything we need to worry about?

No, not particularly. I mean, there's not really iodine deficiency in this country anyway. I don't think we have that problem. And even on a, even on a ketogenic diet or a caloric restriction, it's not going to be a factor. That's the main, that's the main one for the thyroid. But as I said, a gross deficiency in calories and nutrition will lead to problems. But, but the thyroid's not the only one that gets hit. And again, I, I don't think it's in the scope of our discussion to be considering that extreme.

We wouldn't want people to be doing that.

Certainly. It's, I mean, because the other thing, anyone that listened to our first podcast and then has gone away and tried pulling on a few of the levers, you'll know straight away that if you restrict yourself too much, you will not perform it just it. Everything will be so much harder. So, yeah, if you're, if you're trying to perform better, you can't just cut off the supply of energy. It doesn't make sense.

That's a really great point. And I have had questions on the bunch ride, and you've been in that bunch ride, and I've almost said, he's right behind me. Why don't you ask?

And it's probably too far off the back. They don't want to go back.

It's been that question of how much carbs are okay to have whilst I'm in the middle of trying to get my body to adapt.

And yeah, that's a, that's a question that.

Yeah, sure. So again, I think it comes down to the specific session. You're very specific about what you tell athletes to do. And I think you have to apply equal specificity in terms of what they eat during those sessions or before those sessions. So as we discussed last time, an easy session, you don't need anything before it, you don't need anything during it. That is the best opportunity to continue adaptation. Yep. You can experiment and I have done this in not eating before and during a hard ride. And what I found is that an hour in the tank's empty and, and everything, it creeps up on you. You don't realize what's happening. But then 220 watts becomes virtually impossible where before you were pushing much more. In terms of tempo. Intermediate type sessions. Again, I don't think we need anything before or during, but that's an individual thing. Hard sessions. I would say, unless you're a masochist, you should, you should eat at least slightly beforehand. And, and you know, I put my hand up and I say, before our Saturday bunch ride, I have two bits of toast with Nutella and I've got sugar in my bottle.

Yep.

And I've got fruit in my back pocket. So that's. But again, there are others that won't need that if they're, if they're not in the red as much as I'm in the red, because I'm in the red a lot on our bunch. Right. So I need glycogen, I need sugar, whereas others are probably more comfortable.

Yes, that's a good point. The intensity dictates the necessity to consume.

Your dad would probably be a perfect example of that, who's very well trained physically in terms of fitness and metabolically where you probably don't need to have that much anymore, even on 140k ride.

Like Dr. Harry said, I've had years of my body adapting so I don't eat from the previous night on our Saturday and it's generally a four to six hour ride and all I've got is the drinks that I've used no food in that whole entire time and I'm not hungry when I get home.

So the advantage of that, if it's not obvious to everyone listening, is that you have developed the ability to spare glycogen and what that means in the context of racing is everything. So you can save your glycogen for when you need it. So you've demonstrated that, that you can ride six hours virtually without eating. That can only happen. That can only happen if you're metabolizing the fatty acids in Your body and to some extent ketones that are being produced by your liver. That's the only way you could even dream of doing that. So then race day, you'll go even harder and, and know that you've got glycogen there when you need it because there's, there's no way around that. The top end, you need carbohydrate.

Yep. So just going back to what you were saying before. Easy session, tempo session, sub threshold maybe. But the hard session.

Is time a factor in any of that discussion?

So if the hard session is only 30 minutes of real intensity with a warm up and a warm down and it ends up being a 55 minute ride an hour.

What'S your, what's your opinion on.

Yeah, I think you can do it, but it depends on the, again, depends on how much glycogen you've got in the tank to begin with. Because if it's a hard session you're going to be in, you're going to be using carbohydrate. So I think we've got something on the order of 40 minutes to an hour worth.

Yep.

So in theory, absolutely, you should be able to do it.

So time is a factor.

Time is definitely a factor.

So that's intensity and time.

Yeah. So I would think a criterium race, you could, you could go without food. You could.

Yep.

So.

That, that was one of the questions that actually came up was depending on the session, length of the session, what would you need?

Try it. I'd say try it.

That's my next question is really the goal of the session from a coaching point of view is to nail the numbers and we give you a range in that high intensity session and you've got the bottom, middle and top. My advice, and I'm asking this question as a coach, is it okay to say to the guy as well, don't eat.

Practice this in the intensity session where you know that it may impact and impair your ability to ride basically anywhere but the bottom of the range, definitely.

I would, I would think this would be revolutionary in coaching. I don't think many coaches consider this, but as we discussed last time, you're trying to improve their performance. In the context of competition generally that has, that requires physical attributes and metabolic attributes and they are combined, intertwined, inseparable. So you may find that the athlete can only hit the bottom end of the range to begin, but I would expect quite quickly they get up to the middle and top. And personally this is what I've found already, I can now get towards the middle and top of the ranges, whereas before, nothing above the bottom end was even imaginable.

Yep.

So to be clear, in long endurance events, how does someone know how much fuel they need? And is the source of that fuel as pure carbohydrate as possible? You don't want to be consuming fats and proteins on endurance rides, even though you can metabolize if you've trained that way.

So there are so many factors at play that I would say the answer to that is it depends. And the best way to know, because I can't predict it, the best way to know is to see how you go on a four hour, five hour training ride. Because what's the worst that can happen? You, you bonk and you, and you tap your own way home. Right. You slam two gels, try and hang on with the next bunch. We've all done it. That's, that's how you do it. You find out. I, I'm not advocating anyone tries anything new for the first time in an event that matters.

Yep.

In a club race, you know, criterium, something like that. Go for it, try it there. Bunch ride, try it there. Session on the Ergo, perfect. I mean, you're at home. I've actually had sessions where I felt myself bonk, stopped, went and had a gel, waited 15 minutes and got back and completed the session.

And so on. That if someone's testing, do you have a specific. One of the questions was what fuel is best on these longer rides, do you have a specific fuel source like a gel or a drink or something high sugar product that you would.

Yeah, great question. Everyone thinks about it. Generally speaking, the preference of athletes, cyclists in particular, is to start with food and end with liquid. Okay. So I know that's my experience at the start of a ride, I feel like I can eat a banana, no problem, stuff the whole thing in my mouth in one go, chew it done. At the end of a ride, I'm far less likely to prefer a banana over a gel. Just I don't know what it is, but I know I'm not alone. So that's kind of the framework that we have to deal with because it doesn't matter what we say. From a technical point of view, the preference ultimately determines what people will put in their mouths. I would say from a technical point of view, what you're trying to do is spare glycogen. Okay. So you're trying to, you're trying to use probably slower fuel at the start and faster fuel at the end. So you don't need slow fuel at the end because you're only on the bike for another 45 minutes. Yeah. So I would say real food at the start. So that's. Whatever that is. That's your Nutella or peanut butter jam sandwich, banana, you know, fruit, rice ball, banana bread, etc.

They cannot slow foods.

Yeah, that. Well, you've got to digest it. Right. So it's in your stomach. Stomach takes six hours to empty completely. Right. So yes, that's slow in the context of what we're talking about. It's not the slowest food, but it's slow from a athletic point of view. Then you, then you. Most people move to a bar, some sort of bar. They could tolerate a bar, maybe two bars a ride max. Again there are starchy bars that I find are better than others but it's personal preference largely you can use, you can use bars that have fat in them. So I like a local brand, Keto Nutrition and I don't have shares in them but I like a local brand. Yeah, they have fat in them so they've got that as well. Or you can use. The other one I like is you can sports. They're quite good. Slow burn doesn't spike, doesn't spike your glucose. More of a, a longer profile and then at the end you know it's, it's liquid because you want it into your bloodstream rapidly. Yeah. So it's in your bottle or a gel. Because a gel is effectively a liquid in a, in a container. Yeah. So that's, that's what I would suggest. Now how much. Again, experiment is the best way to know. But, but generally speaking, everything up to a two hour ride doesn't need anything, I wouldn't think even, even a hard one, I wouldn't think needs anything. If you did need to put something in your body, probably in your bottle. A longer ride. So three hours. I think you probably want to unless you're fully adapted like Jerry, you want to start eating at the 45 minute to an hour mark and have a solid piece of something and then probably every 45 minutes to an hour a piece of something or a bar or a gel or whatever. Whatever it happens to be. Yep.

Towards the end, is there is kind of anything fast, high sugar. Okay. Or is anything off limits because the people range from powerades to cokes to Red Bull. Are they just all under the same banner?

Yeah, pretty much. Yep. Fast fuel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean again experiment. But yeah, that's. I think it's fine. Your sort of detrimental effects of of a high glycemic food like Coke or a gel are completely offset by the fact that insulin is suppressed during exercise. So you're not going to store it. You're going. It's going to stay in your circulation until it's burnt and it's going to be burnt very quickly. I do want to make the point, in case you didn't know, a gel will meet glycemic demands for about six minutes. That's it. Okay. So if you've bonked, and so I've tried this personally, I've done this experiment, deliberately bonked myself, had a gel, measured how long it took to feel human again, and measured how long it felt to feel not so human again. And it's. And it takes about eight to 10 minutes to kick in. So. So note to the listeners in a crit. If you've waited longer than 10 minutes to the finish, you've waited too long.

You'll feel great in the car going down.

Yeah, you'll feel fantastic in the cool down. But 15 minutes to go slam the gel and it will. It'll take about 8, 10 minutes to kick in and then it'll give you 6 minutes of full gas and that's it, that's over.

So there's no point then taking a gel early.

Well, unless you repeat it every 15 minutes as you're. I mean, I've seen the triathletes with the gels taped to the like one gel after the other. I think again, to me that looks a bit silly, but there's probably good reason for it in that maybe they can't tolerate anything else or they can't carry anything else or whatever it is, but it's just not the best choice because you've got glycogen already that you're going to liberate as part of the exercise process. You're better off having a slower absorption, bit easier on the gut, bit less spiky in your blood sugar.

So I've seen and read athletes, especially at. We're talking a little bit about triathlon there. At Kona, one particular athlete had Coke in the marathon from start to finish and performed.

Fantastically.

I don't know whether he would have.

Performed better had he had another source of energy.

But it's really odd. It's really odd because to get to Kona, he's fat, adapted. So I don't.

Yep.

I don't fully understand why the athlete would need Coke, but don't know.

So the question is, is it detrimental to. To just have three hours where all you're consuming is Coke. It's a it. How is it going to affect your spiking of your glycogen?

As you said before, it dissipates very quickly. It's come in, it's going out. You're not relying on any other source.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I don't. I don't think it would have a detrimental effect. I mean, it's going to be used, it's fluid, it's sugar, caffeine. Tolerate it. Yeah, if you can tolerate it. But yeah.

The second question would be if.

The.

Food you're consuming sits in your intestine and digests and takes too long, wouldn't you be better to train your body to bypass that and just have your carbs purely from the liquid right from the get go and eliminate. You know, it's like when you're hot and sweaty trying to chew any food, that mastication action is really difficult when you're dry. And yes, I'm thinking some extreme endurance.

Races, Kona being one, the actual act of eating and then it's in your gut and you're waiting for it to digest and you've got blood flowing to the intestine to do that with a.

Compromise where you want the blood in your legs. Would you be advocating to people, look, try to get rid of the food chewing and relied solely on the liquid.

Are you asking for the entire event?

Well, generally, yes. Generally, yes. I mean, I've. So I've known pro cyclists that can eat a banana skin and eat a banana in about four seconds. So the chewing, not really a factor there. And that's what you notice in the pro cyclists. They get really good at eating really fast. It's definitely true what you say about blood being diverted to the stomach. And that's part of the adaptation of being a cyclist, actually is a new cyclist can't do both. They can't eat, digest food and pedal well. And over time, this adaptation occurs. So most cyclists I know can eat no problem. I have one exception in mind who we both know, but most cyclists can eat, tolerate food way more than a novice can do. But you're right. If certainly for a race, 100k race, let's say that's gonna be over in three hours or less. It'll be over. You'd have energy in the bottle. Well, you've got energy in your body, energy in the bottle, and you're not going to get time to eat a bar properly. I mean, unless It's a real lull in the race and you could sense that. And otherwise it's all short acting gels, something you can actually get into your body fast.

There's a good example which I just experienced myself in one of the iconic races in Australia, in fact in the world. The Melbourne to Warrnambool and the intensity. And I knew that this was going to happen, but there was very little I could do about it. The intensity for the first hundred K was something that had me at my limit because we're riding with an NRS.

National Road Series riders who are just below the pro level. And I never want to talk about age, but here I am in a bunch with these guys. So the intensity was always going to be very difficult. My issue was always going to be how much fuel do I need at this intensity to sustain that first 100k, by the way, went was under two hours. Yeah, so. So we're kind of riding at 45ks an hour over undulating roads with a head crosswind. Mind you, I didn't see any of that. I was in the middle of the.

Pack.

But I definitely had limited opportunity with mainly trying to hang on to my handlebars at that speed and not.

Being able to consume as I wanted to because it was too difficult to grab the bottle. Yes, there's a guy bumping me to the left, someone's crashing to the right. Now we're on a hill, just can't get the fuel in. And I knew this was happening, but all of a sudden I'm starting to feel twinges of crap. I'm very well trained, I'm very fit at the moment, but the intensity and the lack of getting the fuel in, that combination basically ruined my race. Yep, I still got to the finish. I was extremely happy with the result, but cramping caused me issues where I lost contact with the bunch earlier than I wanted to. Was there anything I could have done differently knowing that this was going to happen? And I knew that I was having trouble getting the drinks in and the gels and the intensity obviously from a few pure fuel source. And I was disappointed that the cramp came on. And it's nothing I'd had in two years. But obviously that intensity is not what I've experienced since I was a younger rider.

I think the only way you could have extended. I'm not even sure about this, but had you. Had you attempted some extreme form of. Of carb loading, which is to say complete deprivation and emptying the tank on a. Well, you've heard You've, you've heard me say this before, that a few days out you have a hard, glycogen depleting ride and then the next day you go until the tank's empty, say motor pace or, or whatever, and then you start refilling and then you don't touch your, your stores and you top up in the morning.

Yep.

So from that, that's. There's nothing I can think of. I mean, if you can't get something into your body like sodium, magnesium, pickle juice.

Yep.

Then. And again, you're riding at a higher percentage of your FTP than they are. Most likely.

I'm writing above my level.

Okay. So you're, you're riding, you're riding at a high number and that's why, that's why you cramped like again, this is, this is the extreme of the extreme, isn't it?

Yeah.

Second. Yeah, it is second longest race. Yeah.

And that's why it's a great experiment. And I, you know, Jordan and I definitely talked about it before the event and that was one of my concerns is. And it was really good. Actually. It's a really bit off the topic, but what training should you do for an event like that? And look, you're only going to do that once a year, so it is a really big a race. Almost like triathlon is Iron Man.

Yeah.

So there's lots of other things that have to be sacrificed for this one event and clearly consuming the right fuel, like you've just said, doing that over compensation and training many, many times on a weekend where you're riding beyond a motorbike at that intensity and then keep going for another five hours afterwards. So do that for two hours and then continue for five more because that's exactly what the race was.

Yes. And, and of course you've effectively. The Melbourne to Warrnambool has effectively been a training ride for what comes now. So having done that, you have, you will have adapted, which is, which is why, you see, I mean that I don't know about the timing, but of course the warning. Grafton were always closely and, and it's the same guys because they've, they're, they're the ones that have adapted. If you, it's almost like if you didn't do that one, you won't. Don't even rock up to this one.

Yes.

Yep. And it's so true because my form from the warnie has really stepped up and almost two weeks later you're in the form of your career.

Almost.

Yep. And that's always Been the case. And I've seen that many times with guys I've trained for the Tour of Bright.

Yep.

And then two weeks later, they are setting PBS all over the shop. Yep. It's almost like two weeks too late. They needed to do that, which is why I give guys such hard sessions. Two weeks before the Tour of Pride.

Yes.

So that by the time the Tour of Bright comes.

Yeah.

And I'm just using that, that race as an example, but a little bit off the topic.

That's fine. I am just bringing it back to the topic of nutrition. You mentioned pickle juice there. Why does pickle juice work to stop cramping?

I don't know. I'm drawing a blank.

Yeah.

Here's what I do know it. So it exerts its effect in mysterious ways. And the curious thing about pickle juice is it works the second it touches your mouth. It doesn't need to go through the gut and be absorbed. It works instantly. So there's something sublingual.

Can you choose not to swallow it?

Possibly, yeah. I don't know. Possibly. I mean, I've. I've used it myself a couple of times and it is, it's from. I don't know if it's placebo or, or something magical, but I, you know, once I was riding Hotham or something, was cramping terribly on my way down and stopped. I had a little like a beat. It shot 70 mils of filled up with pickle juice and I took it and immediately my adductors stopped cramping. It's bizarre. So, having said that, I don't carry pickle juice, but if I did the warning, I reckon I might. I reckon I might carry it.

Yep. So post sessions, fuel for recovery. What should you be taking in the first one to two hours after a training session? If you're training, whether you're doing it in that metabolic state and not eating or whether you are consuming carbs, what should you be taking after?

Yeah, so. So the answer to that depends on what you're trying to do. If you're. If the goal is to improve your glycogen stores, then immediately after a hard ride, and I mean within 30 minutes, you need to have some carbohydrate and you could have. The other thing that is beneficial is protein, because if you don't take protein in the immediate post ride period, then you will cannibalize your own muscle to.

Provide.

The basis for glycogen synthesis to replenish the glycogen stores because the body prioritizes that over the muscle. So it's a good idea either way to have a protein shake. Even if, even if you're trying to lose weight or stainless in ketosis, I would say a small amount of protein is a good idea. Yeah.

Okay, so if you are trying to replenish carbohydrate, have that within the first 30 minutes and if not proteins sufficient. Correct. Yep.

Um, so if you just had the glycogen carbohydrate replacement and you didn't have the protein, is that okay?

I think so. I think so.

But vice versa.

Yeah, I would think so. But this is post hard ride.

Yes.

Because post easy ride, again, you don't necessarily need anything. There is some evidence that having protein will spare muscle. And part of the adaptation of training is development of muscle. So it makes sense to have a little bit. I'm guilty of not doing that myself.

But I am too, especially on a Saturday, if I've got other things to do and I'm not quite organized enough. I haven't had that window opportunity. And then three hours later I suddenly realize, yeah, is it too late?

No. Well, it won't go in at the same rate into your muscles, but it's probably not too late. There's probably adaptations that are advantageous in not eating. Okay.

Yep.

But for most people, a, in theory, a protein shake before the shower.

Yep. So the adaptation I have tried to do by not doing that and sometimes I've forgotten. So is there a danger in doing that too much by really making your body adapt, by giving it two or three hours before you allow it to recover? Because we talked about the muscle, you know, really not being able to repair.

Well, the study, to answer your question has not been done. But look at your own performance and answer the question that way. So you don't achieve what you have without things going well metabolically.

Yep.

So I don't, I don't believe that it's of great detriment to basically fast after a hard ride, correct? I don't think so.

So I just want to do a little summary here because I think the listener and the athlete, the cyclist, there is no rule, is there? Everybody will adapt differently and it's. It's okay to experiment. I'm trying to summarize here. You learn more from finding out how you react to it, to whatever method you're trying. There are no hard and fast rules saying, this is a five hour ride. You should eat this X amount of fuel. You should recover with this X amount of recovery. You need to experiment a Little bit.

I agree entirely. So attention to detail, again, you've developed that in me from a athletic training performance point of view, but you apply the same attention to detail with what's going in your mouth and you learn. So you, so you know your. The listener, certainly that's coached with you knows their FTP. Do they know what they need specifically for a hard ride, a race, etc. I do.

Yep.

And I've got countless examples of people who've just started and I'll look at their bike bottles and I'll see one puncture kit full on one and then one bottle and we're doing four and a half hours. And I'll shake my head just like you just did then, and I'll go to myself, we'll have trouble today. And they actually don't and didn't understand the requirements and they're not on their own. And I'm not isolating one person. This has happened numerous times. It happened again on Sunday with another.

Group that I rode with where we did 180k and I asked the person I was helping, what did you drink?

And we were at 140k and it was a northerly heading home and they.

Had basically bonked and I just had.

Water and I was just in shock.

If I had done that, I wouldn't.

Have got to where she got to.

No, I would have been back at Sorrento.

Still be good adapting, right? But probably not worth the suffering. 40K's home into a northerly.

So there are people who really.

Are not understanding exactly the requirements.

And this is why this, this whole podcast is really important. I think that the things you've been telling us, people don't know and we think it is just a normal thought process. But unless you've experienced the bonk, then you are not going to find out what we're talking about.

Yep. No, but. So my general take on this is that nobody knows any of this stuff except if they've experimented. I mean, the, the average person out in the wild doesn't know this. They still think that the standard western diet is a good diet. You know, a breakfast of yogurt and muesli. So this is very specialized information and I used to think that it's common knowledge, but the further I've gone on as a doctor and as an athlete, I've come to learn this is quite privileged information.

You're in the minority.

That's right.

Well, I thought I knew a lot about nutrition, but I've learned a lot. The last two podcasts so that shows. And I've had a lot of people comment to me and say hadn't heard of that perspective before.

The fact that that many people I've spoken to straight away work hooked and started experimenting themselves, to me is fantastic. I'm just so pleased that people are willing to, to listen and then implement, oh, I'm going to try that. But then coming back with questions like, am I doing this right? Am I doing that right?

And it's great that you've come back and, and tried to answer some of those questions.

So the last couple of questions someone asked about the heart and artery health at a high level of fat consumption. So if you're consuming more fat, does this long term lead to buildup of cholesterol potentially in the veins or arteries? And how about the healthy fats like oils and avocado versus dairy and other animal fats? Are there any difference to heart and artery health?

Great question, great question. Where to begin? So here's what we do know. Saturated fat, and I'm not going to give the biochemical definition, but saturated fat is associated with an increase in the level of low density lipoprotein cholesterol in the blood. That in turn is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. So independent of other factors, the studies suggest saturated fat is something we should eat in moderation.

What foods come under saturated fat?

So saturated fat, we get exposed to in the most part through junk food, artificial food that you doesn't. Yeah. Process, doesn't grow, doesn't grow in the ground is our biggest exposure to it. So it's not that hard to avoid saturated fat. But there are, I mean, there's some saturated fat obviously in. Well, in most things, including healthy fat, have saturated fat. So I'm 99% sure even avocado oil has saturated fat, peanut oil, etc. Things that I would eat day to day. Now, having said that, the, the trigger to develop things like heart disease or the risk of stroke is probably fructose. It's probably sugar that is the strongest driver. And the literature is on this is maybe 10 to 15 years old and gaining momentum, that sugar, it's actually sugar that drives the metabolic process that leads to high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. And that is the food that is most dangerous when consumed in concert with a high fat diet. So to be clear, high fat, high sugar, bad.

Okay.

Low sugar, high fat, probably almost certainly not bad, provided it's not laden with saturated fat. So if you can eat things like medium chain triglycerides again, I'm not going to give a biochemistry lesson here, but things like coconut oil or purified MCT oil have unsaturated. And then foods like omega 3 fatty acids, which is found naturally in fish and some plants, hemp, canola oil, etcetera, they are. They're actually considered to be quite healthy fat. They're either burnt as fuel directly, certainly in the case of MCT, or they're incorporated into our cell membranes. So Omega 6 and Omega 3 fatty acids. Avocado oil has a lot of what we call omega 9 fatty acids, as does olive oil. And these are oils that we know as associated with the Mediterranean diet, which is a healthy diet. So does that answer the question?

Yeah. So to clarify, foods like dairy and animal fats, what do they come under? Cheese.

So dairy. Dairy's okay. It's got. It's got some saturated fat and it's got some unsaturated fat, but it doesn't have sugar, so it's okay. And I personally eat a lot of cheese. My. I don't need a lot of sugar. My cholesterol level and my LDL cholesterol level are low. My HDL level is high. And I certainly would advocate for a modest amount of dairy in the diet. So excluding yogurt, which has sugar, but certainly cream, I consume a lot of cream, I consume a lot of butter, I consume a lot of cheese. So I get the good part of dairy. And I don't drink milk except in a strong, flat white occasionally. And I don't have yogurt and animal fats. Animal fat, hard to avoid if you're eating animals. There's some. There's some contention around a high consumption of meat, but I'm not prepared to scare anyone off this. We've evolved eating meat, and I would encourage my patients to certainly that are not vegan to eat meat. I'm not concerned with animal fat. It's possibly a case of everything in moderation, but I don't see any particular issue from a cardio metabolic point of view.

Perfect. And on the coffee front, there's a bit of confusion from people with their kind of thinking. Is coffee okay? Are you saying put the butter in it to make it okay, but you shouldn't be having it, or no.

Good. Okay. So if you're a coffee drinker and you want to get more calories into your. So I guess just taking a step back, this was in the context of a diet that can be ketogenic or a diet that will allow you to avoid the desperate feeling of hunger. So how do you avoid hunger? Well, fat is satiating. So if you eat a fair amount of fat, 50, 60, 70% of your calories come from fat, you actually feel quite full and satiated. Most of the time you don't have that hunger, you can concentrate. So then the question is, well, how do I get, how do I get fat in my diet? One option is instead of milk in your coffee, put cream in your coffee or put butter in your coffee and blend it because it won't just, it won't go through the coffee without blending. You could put MCT oil in your coffee. MCT is a really good one because it's used directly as energy by working muscle and can be used by the liver and convert into ketones, which. So MCT is a good one, Butter is a good one. Now coffee is an interesting one that there's a lot of research in coffee from a performance point of view. It's not all, it's not all rosy. Some of it is inconclusive. Coffee makes no difference. One thing that seems to be agreed upon is that coffee makes you feel better, so it rises endorphin levels and fantastic book. What's called Endure. I think the author's name's Hutchinson. We should look this up. Fantastic book. And the author writes about the role of perceived effort in performance and it, it's massive. So I don't think I've admitted this to Jerry, but in a hard effort on the. Ergo, I smile. I don't feel like smiling. But the, the research shows that when you smile, you set off certain neurochemical pathways that make you feel better. And when you feel better, you're perceived exertion drops by a point or two and that enables you to complete the interval.

Is that where the smiling assassin comes from?

Yeah, so. So coffee is neutral or beneficial?

Yeah.

And it depends on whether you like coffee or not.

Is it a dehydrator?

It's a diuretic. Absolutely. And it, and it certainly can stir up the gut as well. So if you're sensitive and people have different genetic, different phenotypical sensitivity to caffeine, there are tests for this actually, but certainly it's a diuretic so you will pee more and potentially dehydrate you.

Great. So to finish off, just some rapid fire specific things that people have asked about. Nut mixes, so nuts, cashews, that kind of thing. Almonds.

Yep.

They're a big mix of protein, carb and fat. So what do they come under in terms of inside your diet?

In terms Of. Yeah, again, that's a bit of a. Neither here nor there for me. It doesn't. It's a bit like a tempo session.

Not easy, not hard.

Not easy, not hard. You're not. The problem is those, those fruit and nut mixes, hat or trail mixes, have too much carbohydrate to be keto, not enough carbohydrate to load you.

Yeah, cool.

So I, yeah, I'd just eat the nuts, really, if you're trying to do that.

Yeah.

The other thing I, and I, I think I mentioned, mentioned this last time, but measurement, really important. So if you're interested in, if you're interested in seeing what diet does to your body, you've got to measure, you've got to get on the scales. You potentially get scales that measure your body composition. If you're extreme like me, every six months or so go and have a DEXA body morphology scan to see what your, what your internal fat stores are doing. And you, you know, as cyclists we should know our bone density and so forth. But other things that you can do at home don't need a doctor for. You can test your blood ketone levels, you can test blood sugar levels. So if you're, again, if you're, if you're an interested student of what your body does under certain conditions and I would be really interested to see what Jerry's ketone levels are after a six hour ride, they'll be, they'll be high.

How do you do that? How do you measure it?

Finger prick or a breath test. So I've got both. I've got a little breath testing device which I bought online a couple hundred bucks, feeds into an app. The other thing that I'm going to start doing is measuring lactate levels because I'm learning more about the role of lactate as an energy source, but also as an indicator of threshold performance and so forth. So again, just, I'm an interested student of this stuff.

And you're happy with the accuracy of these things.

Again, it's all. So it's like a power meter, right? So you've got your power meter, you keep riding on your power meter, then doesn't matter if it's 10% different to the guy next to you. You know your number, that's all that matters.

Yep, great. Someone asked about maltodextrin. Is that any good?

Yeah, it's good. Depending on what you want. So. So maltodextrin is a. Well, I was gonna say synthetic. It's not synthetic. It's, it's a modified Cornstarch product and it, and it's a polysaccharide, so it's effectively a. It's a kind of sugar. And the thing about, the reason it's in sports drinks, Gatorade and well, everything frankly, is that it's got a really high glycemic index. So when it's in a drink, it spikes your blood sugar very quickly. So it's pretty much, as far as I know, it's pretty much as effective as glucose in terms of getting into your blood. And I guess if that's the goal to get sugar into your blood, then maltodextrose is as good as any. However, certainly in my experience as a doctor advising athletes, I would say 50% of people can't tolerate the stuff. I'm in that category. I can have a little bit, but if I have too much, my guts are cooked. And I think that's. So again, that's about experimenting with what works. Tell you what, I put in my bottle for a long or hard ride, I'll put again, I'm not trying to plug this brand, but I use keto nutrition because it's for athletes that are trying to experiment or whatever, perform on a ketogenic diet. So they have a product that's got maltodextrin in it, but it's also got a little bit of fatty acids in it. It's got a little bit of. They've got exogenous ketones. So I'll put. It's not unheard of for me. Say Tour of the Southwest stage racing, you've got to back it up, back it up, back it up in quick succession. In the bottle I've got hydrolyzed amino acids. I've got MCT oil, I've got some, either some of the keto nutrition or generation. You can starchy carbohydrate, So a bit of everything. And that, that gives, tends to give me enough sustained energy over. It's not necessarily that the race is long, but it's the, it's, it's the fact you're backing it up.

Yeah.

And that's possibly, that's possibly. I mean, if you can't get your hand to the bottle in the warning right. You're in trouble regardless because you're going to dehydrate for a start. That's, that's a way bigger impact because if you dehydrate 5%, race is over. So it's a, it's a race against dehydration mostly. Assuming you can get your hand on the Bottle if you can. Some of these sports drinks. The thing is, you can't put four hour rides, you can't put four scoops of maltodextrose in because you will dehydrate, okay? It'll suck all the blood out of your tissues. But there are some starchy drinks that have a lower osmotic pressure, so they don't dehydrate you as much. And some of these, like Hammer nutrition, for instance, you can put four hour eyes, put four scoops in, so that sort of thing. So that's possibly one thing you could look at for that type of fueling. But again, experimentation is the key. If there's anything I guess we've agreed upon, it's that I don't really know the answer. I know there are general principles that you've got to figure out what you're like as an athlete. It depends so much on you genetically and your history and how much training you're doing at the moment and what your program looks like. All those factors make it actually impossible for any of us to give the answer. I don't want to give the view to anyone that I could wave a wand and go, I know the answer for you. I don't. The reality is just like this, why Jerry tests your FTP every month, because he doesn't know where you are until he tests you. And that's. I think that's the same from a nutritional experimentation point of view.

Yeah, that's a great way to wrap up. Do you have anything else you want to.

No, that's perfect because that helps everybody understand that there is not one size fits all. And I think that's probably the key thing out of the two podcasts we've done is that you definitely need to experiment on yourself, and not in a dangerous way, but so that you can understand what works for you. And that's a hard thing to do.

Because the intensities and the duration change all the time.

And if you don't take detailed notes of what's happened to you, just like you do when you finish a long ride, you might write a note in trainingpeak saying, struggled today, felt fantastic today. They're really helpful, not only for you and your mind to summarize how you went, but for future when you think, what did I do in those weeks that was making me the same with fuel today? I struggled energy wise. Well, what did I eat that week? You know? So taking detailed notes, like you mentioned, I think is really key. If you want to. If you want to learn more about how your body functions with the fueling, then you need to be a little.

Bit more.

Professional in the way you go about it. Yep.

Well, that's a great way to finish off. Thank you very much for coming on again. Anything you wanted to add?

No, just. Look, I accept that listeners will have even more questions and I would just say feel free to contact me through you. And, you know, this is a. We're on a journey and we're all learning and I'm happy to answer questions as they. As they come to hand.

That's fantastic. Dr. Harry. We really appreciate that and is really going beyond what we. What we wanted and I'm sure people are going to take that offer up, so.

Absolutely, yeah.

So we appreciate that. Thank you.

It's been a great two podcasts of wealth of Knowledge and everyone's learning a lot. So if you do have questions, messages on Instagram, just you can search us at trivelocoaching or on Facebook. Trivelocoaching. Well, we also have a Facebook group, Travel life coaching Facebook group. You can search for that and ask to be accepted. We can accept you in there and you can potentially ask Harry yourself in there. But that's a wrap for this podcast and we'll see you next time.

Great.