We Expose Dangerous Triathlon Nutrition Myths with Taryn Richardson

On today's podcast episode, we have a returning guest on some of our most listened to episodes ever because everyone wants a bit of a slice of nutrition advice, and no pun intended there. But today we've got Taren Richardson from Triathlon Nutrition Academy back on the podcast, and we're talking about creatine. There's a huge buzz around creatine at the moment. Is it worth it or not? Common fueling race day mistakes, what to avoid on race day so you don't muck up your day from the nutrition side of things, how to actually lean up properly, and what is the goal with calorie deficit, and is that worth it, as well as which supplements are worth it and which are a waste of money. So Taryn, a very big welcome back for a 4th or 5th time, I think, on the podcast.

Ah, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to talk about all those topics. It's gonna be an awesome episode.

Let's get straight into it. Creatine, this has been a huge buzz. It's got a— and this is how it happens with a lot of trends where they just get up a big amount of speed, and there's been a lot of controversy around creatine the last 6 months. So yeah, let's dive into it.

Creatine is going gangbusters at the moment, isn't it? And it's in part because it's one of the most researched supplements out there, but because of that, it's becoming more of a household name and it's being marketed to everyone from like full gym bro bodybuilders all the way to, you know, busy moms and menopausal women. And because of that, there's lots more products on the market and we've seen the new creatine gummies come on the scene. I'm not sure if you've been following along that story, but that's, uh, It's certainly been interesting.

Yeah, just give us a quick summary of that because it is, it is a really big wake-up call, I think, for the whole industry and for anyone just deciding to take things without research. So give us a bit of a summary of that.

Yeah, it's crazy. I actually did— I've done 2 podcast episodes on my podcast around creatine gummies in this last 12 months because it's just going gangbusters. One explaining what the difference is between powders and gummies, and then the second one is like the new independent testing that people are doing with creatine gummies to see that a lot of the products out there don't actually contain creatine, which probably surprises you. It honestly doesn't surprise me, but James Smith, one of the big personal trainer celebrity type dudes, paid his own money, like paid out of his own pocket to test a lot of common creatine gummy brands, sent them off for testing, and a lot of them came back containing absolutely no creatine. Some of the brands did have creatine, which is great. Still not exactly what's on the label though, and I think that's really interesting is that we just don't have, I guess, confidence that when we're taking something, what is written on the label is what's actually in the product. So both those episodes are probably good to go back and listen to if you do want a deeper dive into creatine gummies. And if you are taking creatine gummies, please go and have a look at some of that independent testing to see if the brands that you're taking. Push is a big one here in Australia. Those guys are just expensive lollies. They don't contain any creatine whatsoever. And when you search for creatine gummies on Google, they are the first thing that comes up as the sponsored post. And then you keep getting like fed and shoved ads down your throat across all platforms that you go to once you've had a look at those ones. So that's a very quick summary of the gummies and what's going on.

What should our athletes, our listeners, our podcast listeners look for in the ingredients when they're— when they look? it's a whole wide world of ingredients, isn't it? What are the key things you want to see in the creatine supplement that you're gonna buy? What are you looking for, Taryn?

Creatine monohydrate, but the problem is with the gummies, it has that on the label, but when they test them, there's still no creatine monohydrate in the actual product. So if you are taking creatine and it is something that you wanna do, just stick with the powder. It's the cheapest way of doing it, and you can be confident that It says creatine monohydrate on the label, that's what's actually in the product.

So what's actually the benefit and purpose of creatine? Why has it got so much buzz around at the moment?

Creatine is something that is naturally found in our muscles, and if you are a consumer of animal products, then you'll be getting some creatine from your diet that way. But what it does is it helps to regenerate fast-acting energy in those short bursts of things like high-intensity sprints, lifting weights and, you know, um, team sports where you've got to do a really quick, like, run down the wing to score a try. Those sorts of types of exercise modalities are where it's best suited. It is one of the most researched and effective sports nutrition supplements, although I did not just say everyone should take creatine because that's what a lot of people hear when I say that. But it's important for improving strength, muscle mass, and that high-intensity performance, which isn't really what we do as a triathlete. We do a lot of zone 2 aerobic type exercise. But it— there are— but there are a few groups of people that are triathletes that could benefit. So I think masters athletes where we're fighting that age-related muscle decline as we get older, sarcopenia where we're just, like, pushing shit uphill really to try and maintain our lean tissue. And then we're doing all that endurance training as well and probably not strength training, which, you know, you should be doing. So it's good for masters athletes to help with that as they get older. If you are doing some strength stuff too, it can be beneficial to help with muscle stress— muscle strength and muscle mass. But you're not gonna get swole and bulk by taking creatine. And the other really interesting group where we're seeing some benefit is females, particularly across the lifespan through perimenopause and menopause. And there's some good research in the menopause brain fog space. Now again, I didn't say everyone in those groups should take it. You really do need to see someone like a sports physician or a sports dietitian before taking creatine because the dosing that you Google is not actually specific to you and you need to actually dial it in for you 'cause it's based on your muscle mass. You know, we store creatine in our muscles and so we need to actually build our creatine dosage to your physical body, not just randomly take amounts. And then the research in the brain stuff, in the cognition space, is really, really high doses as well. So it's not something that you would play with without medical or sports dietitian supervision.

What is the issue with over-consuming in, in your dosages?

Well, it's going to saturate your creatine stores. So naturally, if you're consuming animal products, you will have a certain amount of creatine in your body. We can supercompensate or kind of saturate our muscle creatine stores by supplementing with creatine, and then there is no benefit in, in taking more. But depends on the type of reason that we're taking it. So the large doses for cognition are slightly different to if you were taking it from an athlete perspective. You will run into gut issues if you take too much. That's probably the biggest one. And even really small doses, some people struggle with. So it's not something that I would play with. And it's also like, it's— I don't know, I think of my body as a bit of a temple, right? It's my high performance engine. I'm really cognit— cognizant of the things that I put into it and like, you know, low tox, low chemicals, like anything that is a supplement has a level of risk.

Yeah.

And you need to be comfortable with that risk.

I wanted to ask, you know, in terms of the risk, you did mention it's one of the most well-researched and I wanna say this really loosely, quote unquote safest supplement. From what I've read, the risk of overdosing is just a waste of time and just putting pressure on your body, but you know, obviously anything too extreme is going to be very bad for you, but if you're just over-consuming, I wanted to ask, is it just being wasted out and that's kind of the problem, or is it actually putting extra pressure on those organs that need to— it needs to go through?

Yeah, both. So it's gonna be sorted out through the body. You'll take what you need, and then the kidneys are probably going to be the main organ that will get rid of any waste. So again, you wouldn't take it if you have kidney issues, or you know, you're worried about those sorts of things. Things, you can increase your body's creatinine stores too, and we don't want to be doing that. So getting a blood test regularly to monitor for those sorts of things to make sure you aren't overdoing it could be a good strategy.

I love that you've said that because I just— a lot of the advice I see is it's super safe, you know, take, take 5 grams a day, you know, and, and there's, there's no long-term health risks. Or, you know, people have even experimented up to 20 grams, and I just read that, I go, oh, that just sounds like a red flag.

Yeah, it depends, right? Typical sports dietitian, it depends. And I think it's not a magic pill, which is what it's been marketed to at the moment. Everyone should take it in, you know, 3 to 5 gram dosage. And I think we just need to be smarter than that. Is it actually going to be safe for you? Is it going to be effective? And how do you then align that with your training and your goals so that you are moving forwards rather than throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that this thing sticks without really having any idea about if it's working, what it's doing to your body, and if it's having any negative impact on it as well.

I suppose it also links into the topic we want to talk about later, which is, you know, all supplements. And yeah, maybe we'll wait till we get to that. But yeah, I think the summary is really good, and more is not necessarily better. And in this case, it's so true, isn't it? More is actually worse.

That's right, and most things are like that.

Yes.

I would think.

Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait to kind of go through some supplements to— what you said about the gummies is just, they become really expensive lollies, you know, if you're just overdoing creatine and you just, you know, the kidneys just getting rid of all the excess waste, just becomes a really expensive supplement for you.

So, um, yeah, the cost difference is huge. So gummies, a dose is around $8, whereas a powder it's about 20 cents. So you've got to really decide what your values are and whether you'd prefer to have some, you know, candy or some lollies that may or may not have the right dose of creatine, or just, you know, put your finger on your nose and take the powder and save yourself a heap of cash to buy something else to do with triathlon.

It's always interesting to me, uh, when athletes say, yeah, but I really— it makes— it settles me, it makes me feel good, I feel like I'm in control. That placebo— it's obviously placebo effect because there's actually— there's no— there's no information telling us there's any value in it. So sometimes I'm saying to athletes, "Well, as long as it's not upsetting you, then, you know, if you feel like you're able to concentrate better or you perform better," even though there's no proof to tell us that gummies are gonna make you perform better, "if it makes you feel better, then that's actually a valid point." Yeah.

Depends if we're talking about lollies again though, right?

Yeah, but placebo is that. That is what placebo is. And, you know, we've got so many other topics where I say to people, "Look, if it makes you feel good," I'm explaining to you there's no value in it from a performance level, but if it makes you feel good, go right ahead. If it doesn't have any negative impact on you, then go for it.

Waste your money.

Go for it.

Do it.

Yeah, I think the gummies costing $60 a bag or whatever, and as you said, $8 per serving is just— I wouldn't be doing that for a potential placebo.

Unless you knew for sure that it had the right dose of creatine in it and you made that choice with that education and that knowledge, I think that you could do that. I'd be okay with that. But we're taking something that we can't confirm, or we don't know that it has actually creatine in it, I think is just silly.

So the big thing that confuses me about creatine is, you know, the, the, um, potential benefits are that strength and recovery you spoke about. But are they, uh, then because it's, you know, daily dosage, is it then tied to that daily dosage, and if you stop taking it, you're losing that strength. How does that to and fro happen?

No, so it's going to help with the energy pathways for, you know, short sharp bursts of exercise, and you already have creatine in your muscles. The only group of people that may not have very high saturation of creatine is people that don't have any animal-based proteins in their diet. So think vegans.

Yes.

Yep.

The creatine supplement really just increases that muscle saturation. It doesn't go away altogether, and so you stop taking this supplementation and you go back to zero. It's just that little bit in the top, that is going to help with the full saturation.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. And what's the— I'm just trying to get that last bit of understanding, you know, what's the, what's the benefit of saturation? You know, how is that helping you from a strength point of view? Um, the, the swole comment you made is, is what a lot of bodybuilders go for, but you know, they do take it because it, it's that water retention, right, where they— you look bigger. Um, but that's no benefit to a, a performing athlete, just, just looking more quote unquote swole.

No, but having some extra hydration in your muscles can be beneficial for some triathletes, but that's another topic of conversation for another day. Mm-hmm. I, I think it just depends on what type of training you're doing and whether you fit into a category that it would be beneficial or not. So the, the masters athletes, I think it's something to consider, but again, you need the training stimulus and you need to be doing some strength training to help with that muscle strength. There's not a lot of point in taking creatine if you're just doing zone 2 training and you're not actually doing that strength.

I think a lot of athletes actually don't understand that concept. That is a really key concept in creatine. If you aren't actually doing any strength work, then you're not probably getting the benefit out of taking the supplement. So you need to be doing it in conjunction with some sort of strength work with, you know, lifting weights or some plyometrics or something that's actually going to be contributing to the muscle stimulus.

Yeah. I think you'll do strength in, in your swim, bike, run. You know, think about, like, hill climbing on the bike. You can do hill repeats running. You can do paddle work and things like that in the pool. So we, we are getting an innate strength in the training, but if we're getting older and we are trying to maintain the muscle mass that we have, if we can build it, then yes, you definitely need to be doing the actually throwing heavy things around in the gym. That's where you guys fit in. I just support that with the nutrition.

Yes, yeah. So the summary is creatine, very worthwhile looking into, a very well-documented supplement. Don't just take a generic dosage, and be careful of the gummies.

Yeah, actually get some advice, I think. And don't take it blindly. It's not one of those things that I would take without actually getting blood tests, getting some advice.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. The next topic we want to move into is going from training into race day and common race day mistakes. And we have been speaking a lot on the podcast lately about the last-minute panic that happens with triathlon where, yeah, athletes haven't tested nutrition enough times in training, and then in the last few weeks or last couple of days or last 48 hours, suddenly everyone's giving advice on nutrition and what you should do, and you start trialing a whole bunch of random new things on race day that you haven't tried before. And it can lead to absolute disaster. And it's so unfortunate that a lot of people don't realize that you can train the house down, swim, bike, and running, but if you muck up nutrition, it just undoes all that hard work you did training. And so it's something you have to get right. So I'd love to know from you, what are the most common fueling mistakes that you think are costing athletes on race day?

You've already mentioned a couple of really good ones, and I think not actually testing your plan fully and really well and consistently over time is probably the biggest. It— you don't You need to respect how long it takes to actually get your body used to having that amount of carbohydrate before exercise for carb loading, during exercise while you're actually out there in a stressed state. When we are racing, our sympathetic nervous system is elevated. It's the stress response, the fight or flight, you know, run away from the lion, you're scared. That turns off all of our rest and digest pathways, our parasympathetic nervous system. And so consuming the amount of food and carbohydrate that you might have planned for your race is counterintuitive to what the body is physiologically doing at that time. You can overcome that though by doing a lot of practice in the lead-up, and depending on how long you're racing for, that could take months. It could take— for some people, it could take years. We don't actually know how long it takes to gut train, but we're seeing— I don't know, I see this huge trend of athletes just having more and more carbohydrate when they're racing, right? They don't do anything in training and then they're like, yeah, I'm gonna hit 300 grams of carbs, let's do it. As well as I've seen athletes train on a product or a particular gel and then race on something completely different, and I'm like, why on earth would you do that? Like, that makes zero sense to me. So definitely practicing and— or not practicing is one of the biggest mistakes, and not practicing enough We're at sort of preseason here in Australia now, and now is the perfect time to start thinking about your A race. What is your race nutrition plan for that race? And you need to start looking at practicing all of those little elements of that now.

Can we go one step further, Karen? And I know that you're passionate about this. The intensity that you train at has to mimic the race intensity, and you've just talked about we have different physiological things happen to us on race day with the stress levels. So you can't actually really mimic exactly a race unless you do a mock race amongst a small group of people, or you set it up as a coach where, you know, I want you to do this session today, race-ready session like that. So can you tell the listeners how important it is to practice nutrition, but practice nutrition with the right intensity of what you're going to experience on race day.

Yeah, because you can never really replicate the stress of race day in training. As much as you might think you can or you have done, your body is still in a much more stressed state, particularly for, you know, the nerves pre-race. So you might have this perfectly dialed in pre-race breakfast that you've practiced in training loads and it's no issues whatsoever, and then you wake up on race morning and you are like sweating bullets. You are so nervous that you can barely eat. And it's really hard to replicate that stress. So thinking ahead about what, what, what are you as a type of racer, and can you emulate any of that in your training or work backwards from that now? And yeah, you're right, like, the intensity needs to be at race pace or even sometimes above because you don't have that same level of stress and nerves that you do in training that you will in a race day. So anything that you can do to go above and beyond to set up race day knowing that you've practiced it, you know, really, really hard training or extra hours or more fuel or whatever it is to try and replicate that in a more stressed way.

So the second point would be the conditions that you're training in could be so different to what the race day conditions are gonna be like. Yeah. And even in your own— say you've got a 5-week block of Saturdays where you're gonna try and replicate the intensity we just spoke about, you got your nutrition nutrition that you think you need for that intensity. Now we've got a day that's 14°C, and now next week we've got a 28°C, and then the next week we've got a 40°C. Tell, tell the listeners how that will influence your intake of your nutrition.

Yeah, well, you should move to Queensland where our weather is much more stable for your training blocks, tip one. But yeah, you're right, your gut shuts down and the blood flow directs more to your skin to help you evaporatively cool yourself in hotter conditions. So the blood is not in your gut helping to So whatever you can tolerate in cool conditions at 14°C, you won't be able to tolerate in 30+° heat. And then, you know, throw humidity into that too and you're in a bit more world of pain. So again, you need to think ahead. What is your race? What are the conditions likely to be? And do whatever you can to train in race conditions. That might mean, you know, going out for a run at 3 o'clock in the afternoon in the heat. Replicate your nutrition as if it was race day in a session like that as well. If you can, give it a nudge, you know, push the needle a bit in your training sessions, have more fuel, have more liquids, whatever it is you can, and then you can be a bit more confident on race day if you pull it back a little bit that you've been able to tolerate even more so in training.

So a bit of experimenting, isn't it, really, with, with trying it a little bit more? Did it affect my gut a little bit less? Did I feel like I was running low on fuel? Uh, was I starting to bonk? So it's, it's, there's no exact science, is it? You trying to experiment with conditions and intensity. Is that a good summary?

Yeah, and it'll change all the time. You might have it perfectly dialed for one year and for whatever your race is, and then you go back and you build up for that same race again next year, and you almost have to start all over again. It's not something that you keep. It's definitely a use it or lose it, and I think you can get better at listening to your body and better at understanding your race nutrition over time. But it's not something that you can just stick to one level and be like, okay, this is, this is my race plan forevermore. When I help athletes with their race nutrition in the Triathlon Nutrition Academy, I teach them all of the elements so that we can build it for that race. And then we need to understand how to tweak it and evolve it for the next race because you're right, the conditions might be different, both temperature and humidity. The course might be different. You might have a really hilly bike versus a flatter, fast flat bike. You might be fitter or you might be unfitter depending on what's going on in life. So not having a set-and-forget race plan is, is one of probably a really big mistake that people make is that they maybe have been given a race plan from somebody and then they just use that for every 70.3 from here on in without having any understanding about the workings that go in behind it and how to tweak it and evolve it and finesse it for future races.

And you mentioned with the, the difference in temperature intensity, you know, the heat and humidity, and how the blood flow will be redirected to the skin to help cool down. How does the fluid intake change in conjunction with the food intake? Because there's two things that is going on in the triathlete's race. You're trying to monitor what you eat as well as your water and electrolyte intake. And so how does that change as well?

Yeah, as it's hotter and it's more humid, you're going to sweat more. So you're going to need to keep pace with that better as the temperature heats up even during that event too. A lot of people don't think about that. Like on the bike, you might start and it'll be quite cool in the morning. And as you're getting off the bike, it's getting hot. And then by the time you're running, it's really hot. So your sweat rate is not stable. It's not this one number that is just stable for the whole race too. It, it will increase on the bike as it gets hotter. And then it's even higher generally for people when they run. So understanding firstly what your individual individual sweat rate is really important because everyone is different and it changes every day. It's not something that again is a set and forget number. As well as your sweat sodium concentration will change on a daily basis too depending on lots of factors, but how much sodium you have in your diet is a big one. If you have a really heavy, I don't know, Vegemite meal and have heaps of sodium, or you know, you go out for Asian or something that's super salty, your sweat sodium excretion the next day or two is going to be higher to get rid of that extra salt. The body's super clever at regulating that. It'll increase the salt coming out of your sweat glands, as well as your kidneys will push out some extra salt too. So practicing your hydration in training for preseason definitely starts now so that you can understand what your sweat rate is. Like, that's the first step. And then keep checking and keep testing to see what it is for you as the season evolves and the temperature evolves. The hardest thing is for people that are going to Kona and they're training across, you know, Australian winter, and then they've gotta go and race in 40-degree heat. So you really need to figure out some other strategies to get your sweat rate and your fueling right in a— in a training condition that is so different to a race condition.

That's a tough one, isn't it? If you don't have the resources to— to do that, and I've experienced it myself coming from the middle of winter to go to Kona. It was— it was just like going from a cooler to a frying pan. It was just ridiculous. You just had no concept of how extreme you were from training in really cold, freezing, wet, rainy conditions. And if you don't have the, the facilities to, to do something about that, you just really have to deal with it on the day, which, which is tough. But you need to allow— this is a point we're trying to make— you need to allow for that on race day because your requirements that you've been training in nutrition-wise will change when you hit different temperatures, which is what you're trying to say.

Just got to go to Hawaii about a month early if you can. Quit your job, get a villa, do some training in race conditions.

Lionel Sanders style. And it doesn't help in 1989 when you don't have any carbs or electrolytes either, so add that to the mix as well. You mentioned before, um, the, the key mistake of, of trying a new product on race day. You know, you train with one product and then go to the other. This might be— I don't know if this question is even answerable, but why are— what's happening with different products and why they respond differently to people? And on race day, you know, some people can grab a Coke and that just hits the spot of exactly what they need, but someone else might do it, it makes them vomit. You know, is that—

yeah, yeah, sort of. I guess every product is different, right? There's no two gels that are the same. Like, every gel has got different types of carbohydrates in there. Whether they're multiple transportables or not. There's different electrolytes. There's other ingredients that are in there as well. And so you can't just grab any old gel and it's going to equal the same thing. And some people have iron stomachs and can do that, can just completely wing it on race day and they're okay. Or it's not really that they're nailing it, it's just that they're in like full-blown damage control by that point and anything's gonna be better than nothing.

Yep.

Same as Sportsdrinks. They're the same, like different carbohydrates are in there, they've got disper— different osmolarity, so how many particles are in the solution, different electrolyte loads, different types of electrolytes. And so it's really difficult to grab one sports drink in training and then just flip to whatever's on course on race day. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of Mortal on course in North American Ironman races, and that's not even a sports drink. It's just, you know, an electrolyte solution with fluid. And so you can't train on Gatorade with carbohydrate in it and then just use Mortal on course on race day, you will completely undo all of your fueling that you've done in training. So yeah, I— hopefully that answers that question.

A lot of the time, if someone's actually lost their nutrition through no fault of their own and they are just down to the course nutrition, you know, what's your advice to them around that? If there's nothing left, what are you saying?

If you've dropped all your stuff and you're just rolling with whatever's on course? Okay, my athletes know that they have to test whatever's on course in training regardless of whether they want to use it because it's always Plan B or Plan C. There's horror stories, right? I once had an Ironman guy in New Zealand have this perfectly formulated race nutrition plan, and then he got his teeth kicked out in the swim, so his whole plan went out the window because he couldn't chew any of it. So he knew what was on course, he knew how much carbohydrate he needed, he knew what all of the elements he had in his plan that he needed to kind of replicate. He also had practice with what was on course in New Zealand and knew how much was in stuff to replace it, so that by the time he got to the bike and the aid station, he could quickly kind of make it up as he went on. And, and that's my biggest advice, is that you always need a Plan B and a Plan C just in case something happens. You've got special needs if you need backup, backup, but I prefer my athletes to be relatively self-sufficient without having to stop for that. Particularly the fast ones that don't want to muck around, because I've heard horror stories there too where people can't find your special needs bag at all, or you waste 20 minutes trying to find it. So always practice with On Course as Plan B or Plan C.

Last one on race day mistakes, we were speaking off air just a little bit about the running boom over the last few years has introduced this whole wave of new runners, and, and what we're seeing is a lot of old almost wives' tales coming back where, um, it's this whole, you know, I think decades ago, you know, the, the ultra carb loading kind of was coming in and saying you just eat as much as you possibly can. Um, and then we got smarter with that. It's like, well, no, no, don't be silly with it. And now with this new wave, we're kind of seeing that same myth research. So talking about carb loading and the night before, what are your protocols and principles around how to not overdo it but still get enough in?

Yeah, I love carb loading, but we need to use a science-backed strategic approach to carb load effectively. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet, and I honestly haven't met one triathlete that knows how to carbohydrate load properly until they've had some education. And most people think that they're carb loading. It is not just going hang for leather at the carb pasta party the night before your Ironman. That's not carb loading. That comes actually nowhere close to the amount of carbohydrate you need to effectively carb load. But what we're trying to do with carbohydrate loading is a bit like creatine. We want to fill up our glycogen fuel tank. Glycogen is the carbohydrate we store for energy in our muscles. We want to fill that up by normal daily eating, and then with carbohydrate loading, we're going to supercompensate it. So we're going to shove extra in, in the top, in the end. It's kind of like putting petrol in your car. You know, when you put the bowser in your car— although people aren't going to put petrol in their cars for much longer, give it 10 years and they'll all be electric— but you press it on and it goes, "Okay, yep, we're full," and it clicks off. Then you go, "No, I can fit more in," and you press it again and shove extra in. That's kind of like the premise of carbohydrate loading. We wanna make sure that our fuel tank is as full as possible so that we can go as long as we can without running out of energy. To do that, we need a strategic evidence-based approach to carbohydrate intake that is based on you specifically. It's not just a random number that you pull off the internet. Because again, our muscle masses are all different. So we wanna fill our fuel tank up by eating carbohydrate that's not too high in fat, not too high in fiber, not too much protein. And to do that, it doesn't mean just eating the house down either. Most people struggle for the first time they've ever done it because it is actually quite difficult, particularly if you're like, "Cool, the dietitian said I can eat lollies and I can eat whatever I like." And then you're faced with the challenge of having to fit a certain amount of carbohydrate into your day and you're like, "I actually can't do this." It's too hard.

Yeah, yeah. Is there, um, is there a case where, you know, with that trial and error, you know, people are feeling, you know, sick in the lead-up, in that week leading up to the race? Is that, is that pushing it too far? They've got it wrong, or that's just the uncomfortable nature of, of going for that little bit extra?

It's something you want to practice. We talk about mistakes, like carb loading is something you want to practice at least a few times. It's not something you want to try for the first time the day before your race, 'cause it is uncomfortable. And to deal with that amount of carbohydrate, your body needs the ability to do that. So you need to increase your enzymes to digest it. You need to increase the channels and pumps that we have in our gut to absorb it into the bloodstream. All of that stuff, our carbohydrate oxidation pathways need to like ramp up. It's kinda like stoking a fire. And practicing your carbohydrate loading can help to do that as long as you put that stimulus in. And you want to line it with your bigger training weekends, right? Practice your carb loading before you do your race sims, before you do all of that big training. And then hopefully you have better energy availability to get through those big sessions as well.

A lot of the historical type of nutrition advice— and remember the days where the glycogen supercompensation method, where we, we tried to limit the carbohydrate and kept training.

Yeah.

And, and then the idea was that we were depleting our glycogen stores so much by continuing to train with very limited fuel, and then 3 or 4 days out, we would just bulk up. And we were— you know, there was evidence in those days to say that it would double.

We don't do that anymore.

That's right.

And so tell us why the problem— what was the problem with this? Why does that— why have we changed our mind on that concept?

'Cause science evolves. We probably did the study in the first instance and we're like, "Okay, let's strip everything out and then load it back up." and then they're like, "Alright, what if we don't strip it out? Does that still have the same impact? Does it still double it or not?" And so they would have done future research to really finesse the protocols and they've come a long way from probably the '80s when that was the norm where you used to strip it out. It was a 5-day protocol I think. You'd used to strip it out for 2 or 3 and then bulk it up for 2 or 3. But over time we do more and more research and we understand how to do things better and we— how to do things differently. And how to do things in the easiest possible way, I think. And yeah, we don't need to strip it out because you're going to train like crap on those days where you have no carbohydrate availability. Also, I can tell you really what we want pre-race.

I can tell you it was a shocking experience having, having done it over 10 times myself. And, and that was, that was the protocol from the experts in the '80s and '90s. And yeah, and we were being guided by by that protocol. And you couldn't train, you could hardly train because you had no fuel and you felt terrible. You, you actually lost confidence in— I don't think I can do this race. And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, you are filling your, your body up with so much nutrition that you felt heavy and tired and slow and lethargic. And by the time you got to race day, most people had done their race the 7 days previous. You know, it was such a disaster for the majority of people. I'm so glad that doesn't happen anymore.

Thank goodness. But athletes were still absolute weapons back then, I think. You know, you just knew how to put yourself into a hurt hole and keep going.

Yeah, you can attest to that looking at the times, you know. The opposite of a, um, calorie surplus and carb loading is calorie deficit. And there is this notion of, you know, I need to lean up to perform better, and I want to go into a calorie deficit to lean up. And there's been a good pushback on that recently, um, with some athletes being really outspoken about how that's not universally true. And Emma Jeffcoat is a great one, um, from Australia, has really pushed back on the fact that when I eat more and fuel my body properly, I'm stronger and I'm faster. Christian Blumenfeldt, another one, they tried leaning him up, he couldn't push the same power. And yeah, one of the heavier male athletes, and, and they just said, we'll keep you the same weight because you perform so well there. So tell us your thoughts on the calorie deficit and, and the goal of leaning up, because you can see why it makes sense to the the common eye, you know, this— I should be— my power-to-weight ratio improves, I should be able to perform better.

Yeah, it's really hard, particularly when we do do 3 sports. It's very different to applying that to just cycling or just running, but we do take a lot of our, I guess, information or insights from just cycling and just running. Particularly age group athletes look to Tour de France riders and like, yeah, I can do that. It is— we could talk for an entire podcast episode about this topic. I'm really passionate about trying to make sure triathletes fuel themselves properly instead of constantly striving to be lighter and leaner. Because that doesn't equal faster, which is what most athletes think, is that is, is as long as I, like, lose 10 kilos for this race, I will do better. But I've— we've proved time and time again that it doesn't actually mean you will be faster. You are better off actually understanding how to fuel yourself properly so that your energy availability is good and you are strong and powerful, just like Emma Jeffcoat and just like Blumenfeld. Like he's a weapon. And a lot of people, I remember in the early days, were talking about how big he is. I'm like, shut up, like leave the poor guy alone. He's the best athlete out there and you are toiling, like telling people that he's fat. There is no way that that guy is fat. Leave him alone. And we look at that as age groupers and think, alright, if I just lose 10 kilos, I'll be faster up this hill in this hilly bike course. But we run the risk more so of negative things happening if we are constantly chasing that elusive race weight. You will do long-term damage to your bone health and your hormones if you are constantly putting yourself into a deficit. So I love to teach my athletes how to fuel properly for triathlon as the primary goal. And then the body composition stuff when you do that, honestly, will sort itself out if you can be patient. One of my athletes just ripped up the course at Sunny Coast, Kelly. He's 65. He is the fastest and the leanest and lightest he's ever been in his life at 65. He's eating 4,000 calories a day. Mm-hmm. He has not put himself in a deficit to get that way. He has naturally driven body fat loss and increased muscle mass by eating, by fueling for performance and stoking the fire and improving his carbohydrate oxidation and making sure he gets enough protein and all those big rocks that will lead to body composition actually sorting itself out when you do that. 'Cause when you don't, when you put yourself into a calorie deficit all the time and you're trying to constantly lose weight, you won't perform well in training.

Yes.

You're not going to perform well on race day and you do run that risk of long-term damage so that by the time you do eat again, the body's like, "Hang on a minute. I don't know what to do with these calories." So you need to kind of flip the script and think about your body composition completely differently. And the way I love to do it is actually— is actually to concentrate on fueling properly first. Feel the energy that you can get when you are doing that right. Because when you've got energy for training, you will train harder and you will get fitter and you will burn more calories if you do that.

It's so great that you've mentioned that because a lot of athletes still to this day, when I interview them to join our program, they are saying— I say to them, what are your goals? What, what are you trying to achieve? All of them, every single one of them says, I need to be 10 kilos lighter than I am. And I would say I say, "Why?" And, "Oh, 'cause it makes me feel good. I look good. I look better. I look a better athlete. I will go faster." And I say to them, "What if I tell you that that's probably not the case?" And I love it that athletes now are getting to understand that you can't actually do the program, the actual training program, without the right fuel. And this is the message that everybody needs to hear from this podcast is you need to fuel adequately so you can actually do the hard training and get a— become a better athlete.

And you—

if you continually starve yourself for these training sessions, you will just go down a downward spiral into a big hole, not improve, probably lose weight, but it's counterproductive because you're actually not— you're gonna be asleep most of the time because you're so fatigued. And it is a hard thing to convince people of that, and it's so good that you've summarized that. It has such a negative impact on everything. And the biggest thing they should be listening to is it has a negative impact on your performance, and that's the key thing. And look, I'm astounded at the trend. Most people would follow the trends of what the pros do, but when it comes to body image, Christian looks on telly like he's— he looks like he's really heavy compared to the rest. So people aren't following that trend because they don't like the way he looks, yet he's the best athlete probably be one of the best athletes in the world. And I'm— the irony of that gets me, where most, most age groupers will follow whatever pros do, except in this particular case it's because of body image. And, and I want everybody to stop thinking about what they look like. It's how you perform is, is the most important thing. Um, yeah, I'd like, love you to comment on that.

I think if we're talking about, you know, athletes following the pros, why aren't all triathletes doing strength training? Side note, the pros are in the gym at least 3 times a week and lifting heavy, and that is why they're strong and they're robust and they don't have that fatigue in, in the, you know, back of the run. They can push through a negative split and things like that. What was your question?

Yeah, just, just, just really confirming that, um, that it needs to be a combination of training with intensity, fueling for that for that training load, not worrying about—

I—

my number one goal is not the training session or the fueling, it's losing weight. You know, they're aiming at the wrong goals. They need to be concentrating on other things, and the weight will, as you said, take care of itself. It will be what it is on race day.

Yeah, I think we need to throw away the lighter equals faster. I think that is the key to this, is the messaging that if you improve your power weight, you will be faster. If we're talking about elite cyclists that do things like the Tour de France, they have a lot of money, they have a lot of revenue, they have a lot of science backing behind that. That is a completely different person and physiology to an age group triathlete. But a lot of age group triathletes just think like that. If you can— I know it's really difficult, but if you can put the body composition weight loss— and when I say weight loss, I mean fat loss. We don't want to try and lose muscle tissue in the majority of cases. Some people do need to lose a bit of muscle tissue, but, you know, one in a thousand maybe. If you can quieten down that messaging of 'I need to be lighter and I need to be leaner, that'll make me a better athlete,' I think we'd all be in a better position.

I really love two phrases you used. And Dad, you repeated it as well, which was, um, it'll sort itself out. You know, when you train and fuel well, the process just naturally sorts itself out. And stoking the fire— and I, I see that kind of metaphor as like, you know, stoking your own body's performance levels rather than trying to be— it's just this, this, this nature of trying to be in a calorie deficit is just such a negative cycle to get into because you're just trying to like give yourself less and so you've got less energy. And it's also playing on your mind all week and you're constantly stressed at every meal about, oh, am I eating too much here? Like, everything about it is kind of a negative experience. We're really trying to— this whole thing we always talk about, we're trying to have a positive experience here. We're trying to enjoy our training, feel good, and have fun and perform well. Um, we want to be kind of— look at ourselves as more of like a bit of an enjoyable performance machine that we fill it up with good fuel, and therefore training feels good, therefore our energy feels good, and it's more of a positive cycle to get in.

Yeah, I agree. Well said. If you eat what you need or even, you know, fuel for the work required, then you will make better food choices as well. Often when people are constantly in a calorie deficit and constantly holding back, they make terrible choices in the day and then their body's in such a hole that by the time 3:30 hours comes around, that, you know, after lunch window where the floodgates open, it's really hard to close them and that's where a lot of poor food choices happen. The other key window is if you're constantly striving deficit is after dinner. You know, you're sitting down, you finally relax for the day, and the pantry's there and lots of snackcidents happen. But that doesn't happen if you've eaten properly right throughout the day. You just don't feel like as much. So it is— it is almost like a big vicious circle if we're constantly striving fat loss, deficits, training hard, then you will fall into a heap at some point whether that's on a Friday or the weekend or, you know, right before your event when the body's just had enough.

How much does habit take a role in this? Like, you might have fueled yourself beautifully all day, but for decades you've just relaxed after dinner and then looked at the pantry, and then you just naturally go there and start looking.

And is this an asking for a friend question, Jerry?

I am absolutely saying I do this. And, and yeah, it's a, it's a real habit that you form. From decades of eating like that. And look, I, I would tell everybody that I used to have a bowl of cereal at 9:30 at night every night. I was that hungry because I didn't, I didn't feel like going to bed on an empty— felt like I had an empty stomach even though I ate as much as I could all day. And it was just a bad habit to be in. And so that is part of it, isn't it? Just changing your habit.

Yeah, you have to first want to change it. But I think if you— if you want to change it, you'll do it, but you need a good reason to do it. Otherwise, it'll just become habit again. And maybe part of that is eating better through the day so you don't feel like you need it. Like, we don't want you going to bed feeling starving. So what has led to that at that time of night? Is it because you have done a terrible job of your recovery, right, in that morning session? Or did you miss lunch? Is it something that you can change in the day to turn up to that time of day and not be starving. That's the first step, because if you, if you're already— or what, if you're already feeling starving, then you know something's not working through that day.

And look, I, I have to say that we all resonate with this because we've all had these thought processes. And I'll just speak for myself and say that, you know, I've been in that, in the thought headspace myself. And I can't tell you the amount of times where I haven't felt motivated and then I've just eaten well and that was the problem, you know. And like, you haven't felt like training and then you just got some proper food into you and and that was the only thing missing, you know, and such an important thing to remember. So I'm glad we've gotten through that messaging. I really want to finish off this episode with some rapid-fire little bonus tips for everyone about supplements, and if you could just— I'm just going to throw some at you firstly, and if you could tell me if you think that they're worth it or a waste of money, and then we'll get you to finish off with any other ones that come to mind. But first one, protein powder.

Is this a yay or a nay?

Give us an answer first and then a quick explanation.

Okay, protein powder, yes, it can be beneficial, but it's not a magic bullet. You need to be meeting your protein needs from real food first. Protein powder is still a supplement, right? And a supplement is a supplement to the diet. So it can be convenient form of protein for people that are maybe following a vegan or plant-based diet where there's not a lot of protein there to help you top up your protein needs, but I prefer people not rely on it heavily.

So the follow-up questions to that are any other type of protein supplement, whether it be a bar, whether it be, you know, protein milk that is becoming really popular right now, any other one of those kind of products where it's promising high protein?

Yeah, I think the real food-based stuff I'd lean towards more. So things like the Rockabye Farms Whole Protein Smoothies, they are just a high protein milk. Those have got 30 grams of protein in a nice little convenient bottle. Protein bars are protein powder in a bar form. Um, personally, they taste pretty gross to me. I haven't really found a nice one. They taste like just chemical and artificial sweeteners. But yeah, it is a protein supplement. Then you've got things like Up Go's, um, or any of those other convenient type drinks. So I guess there's a place and a time, but if you're having multiple protein sources in a day from those sources, then I'd be looking at other sources in your diet first because it's really easy to meet your protein needs from food.

Perfect.

We just get lazy.

Last protein question then. What about the, uh, ready-made protein meals that you see, you know, the, the Muscle Chef kind of thing where they're promising 40 grams of protein in this, in this tiny pre-made thing?

Yeah, they're expensive, and you can easily get 40 grams of protein from eating like actual food. Like, any form of animal meat is really high in protein per gram, so I would go that option. But as a convenience option— this isn't asking for a friend too, isn't it, Jody?

I know, but I actually did a video, um, a couple years ago on this because I was at the supermarket and I, I have a gripe against My Muscle Chef because I picked up the meal. You're right, it was expensive. It said 50 grams of protein and that there was literally tiny, tiny strips of chicken. I just said, what world is there 50 grams of chicken? You know, chicken breast is itself is like a nice large chicken breast. I think it's about 40 grams of protein, right?

And it's a bit more than that, but yeah, it's really easy to get it from animal sources. Those, yeah, convenient options are convenient. That's That's all they are, really.

Yeah, but I felt like they were lying. I just said, this— they have to be lying here. Like, I just could not—

they probably were.

Yeah, send this off to a lab and see, because I don't— didn't rate that.

Spend $300 and get it independently tested.

Yes, exactly. Yep, James Smith style. Um, pickle juice for potentially for cramping.

Yay or nay? Yeah, look, it's not going to save you if you're cramping. You need to actually understand why you're cramping first. If it's a last ditch and it's on course and you're like, let's just see, I don't think I've really heard of anybody that it helps, to be honest. But the premise is that it is so gross that it just kind of triggers the central nervous system into a shock, and so it helps to stop a cramp if it's occurring. But for me, like, I'm a, like, primary prevention type person. Like, what is causing the cramping here? Is it because you are fatigued and you need to do some strength training? Is it because you're severely dehydrated? Are you underfueled? Like, what is going on that's causing that cramping? And fix that rather than trying to rely on something like a pickle juice at the end of your race. But by all means, if you're cramping and it's right there, take it, see what happens.

I can tell you from personal experience that, you know, your approach of everyone is different is so true, because I had a friend swear that they, they took the pickle juice and it saved them from cramping. And I was in disastrous cramp mode, took it, and did not make a single difference. It's too far gone. And it was so gross. It was—

it's gross.

Yeah. Uh, beetroot juice.

Yeah. So beetroot juice is really high in nitrate, which can be beneficial. It's a vasodilator, among other things, which can be helpful for endurance performance, but it is a sprinkle on the icing on the cake. I've seen a lot of triathletes have no idea how to eat for our sport but are still relying heavily on something like that. So there are protocols around how much and when you use it, but you need to get the foundations of all of your fueling and all of your other pieces of your puzzle right first before you would dabble in that.

And a major one, which most people might either use or not even be aware of the potential benefits, caffeine.

Oh, caffeine. I love caffeine. Just from a daily coffee perspective. No, caffeine is probably up there with creatine in that it's one of the most researched supplements out there. It is in the realm in terms of we— like Gerry said before about carb loading, we used to think lots was better, and over time they've done a lot of research in creatine supplementation to really fine-tune the dosing protocol for how much you have and when you have it and all those sorts of things. So it is one of the things that more is definitely not better. The negative impact of too much caffeine, if you've ever over-caffeinated it, are not good. You know, shakes, nausea, full-blown anxiety attacks, all those sorts of things. It is a bit of a prokinetic, so it stimulates peristalsis in the gut, and a lot of people use it to go to the bathroom pre-race. But having that happen in the middle of the race is, is not ideal and, and not pretty because it's a, like, you know, code brown, gotta go now, find a portaloo or a bush. So yes, definitely beneficial. I would dial it into a race nutrition plan in particular key moments depending on the distance that you're doing and what type of caffeine user you are. The— oh, we could talk about caffeine for an entire another episode as well. So yes, but make sure you have the right dose for you at the right time.

Brilliant. Any other top supplements come to mind when you think of well-researched or waste of money?

There's so many that are a waste of money. Please don't take a multivitamin or any of those those vegetable juice powdery thingies, please. Uh, they are just expensive nothings, particularly the vegetable powders. So this is another topic of conversation for another day. We don't actually know— nobody's done the lab testing to see if that micronutrient load is still in the product after manufacturing. So all of this beautiful stuff will go in, and that's how they make the label but nobody's actually done the testing to say, is there still this amount of vitamin C in it at the end, or is there still this amount of iron in it at the end? So don't take those things. Actually eat some fruits and vegetables, and you'll get so much more benefit from those, as well as all the beautiful phytochemicals that we get from eating fresh fruits and veggies as well.

Dad, any supplements you wanted to ask to finish off?

Yeah, look, I, I do remember there was a big push for glucosamine a long time ago, and I just haven't heard it used again since that time. Is, is there something, uh, not useful about it? That's why it's disappeared?

Um, yeah, I think it's a Group C supplement, so there's not a lot of evidence that it does anything, but it's one of those things that people just swear by. So I don't think there's anything too negative that will happen if you take it, but I don't think there's anything particularly great that's going happen either. So it's a, you know, you do it if it makes you feel good, if you get that placebo effect, but we don't think it's actually doing anything in particular.

The one we talked about earlier was to do with sodium, and so I want to— I want you to give your opinion on when you see a lot of cyclists who have got salt stains all over their, uh, their black, uh, racing suit, is that their body getting rid of the excess sodium, or is that a a sign that they're dehydrated. A lot of people have asked me that question. I'd love to hear your response.

Ah, so the salty marks on your clothing is your body getting rid of salt. You have to be careful though, because if you do an ocean swim in a triathlon and then dry off on the bike, you will look like you're a really salty sweater. So you need to either just be riding or be in a lake freshwater swim. But yeah, that's your salt gland— your sweat glands getting rid of salt. So you're— if you have those like crusty white patches, you're more likely to be quite a salty sweater.

Brilliant answers, Taryn. And on that, a lot of your answers in this supplement one was just go eat real foods, you know, get enough protein from meat, always, and get enough, get enough, you know, vitamins from your fruit and veg. And on one of our previous episodes, you just spoke about how the fact that the minimum standard for eating was 2 servings of fruit and 5 servings servings of vegetables. And that was such a sticking point to me because I thought I eat pretty healthy. Do I, do I get that in every day? And I started tracking it and I could not believe how frequently I was not hitting that. And I was like, that's so easy. And now I ask everyone, how many, how many servings of fruit do you think you eat a day? How many servings of vegetables? And most people don't get it. So that is a great starting point to just clean up. And I've always stuck with that since that last episode.

I'm so glad I helped you change something. Only 6% of Australians get enough fruits and vegetables. So it's not just you. Don't feel too bad. But we definitely need to do better. We— like particularly as triathletes, we wanna do all the things, right? We are high-performing people. We wanna do well. We're highly competitive. And I say that 'cause I am like that also. But we need more like 7 to 10 serves of fruits and veggies a day. But, you know, we are so far off that that the current recommendations are 2 and 5. And if you can do that, like you are less likely to get sick and injured because you've actually got all of your nutrients from from food and not to mention all the powerful antioxidant effects that we need when we are exercising every day. Like exercise is a stress and we forget that and we do a lot of that, so we need to mop up all of that stress with the— the free radicals and make sure our body is dampened down from that stress, prevent cancer, heart disease, bowel disease, like all those sorts of things. If you wanna live a long and healthy life and have good longevity, then go and eat Eat a bloody piece of apple or something. Fruits and veggies, get amongst it.

Brilliant. Thank you as always for joining us, Taren. It's an episode absolutely packed with gems, and so many of our athletes will be leaning on every word. If you want to find Taren, you can find her own podcast, Triathlon Nutrition Academy, where she speaks about all this in detail on her own podcast, and Triathlon Nutrition Academy everywhere on social media. You can get in touch with her there. So Taren, thank you again for joining us on a great episode.

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

That's it for this one. Thank you everyone for listening as always. We'll see you on the next one.