Sleep, Nutrition & Injury in Youth Athletes Ep 45

Every endurance athlete remembers the moment when things finally click. Your swim feels smoother, your pacing makes sense, your fueling works, and suddenly the sport feels not only easier, but more fun. And for many athletes, that moment happens at training camp. That's exactly why we created the Endurance Edge Triathlon Training Camp happening April 22nd through 26th at Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. For 4 incredible days, you'll train in a small group with expert coaches, sports nutrition support, and sports psychology guidance, all designed to help you train smarter, race stronger, and finally connect the dots in your performance. We swim in crystal clear mountain water, ride beautiful and challenging roads, run scenic trails, and spend the rest of the time recovering, learning, laughing, and eating some seriously amazing chef-prepared food.

Mm-hmm.

Camp is intentionally small, just 20 athletes, so you get real coaching, true connection, and amazing breakthroughs. So if you want an experience that can transform your entire season, we invite you to join us. Head to theenduranceedge.com and click training camp and reserve your spot with just a $100 deposit. Come train hard, learn a ton, and leave stronger than you ever imagined.

I'll see you there. All right, welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am your host, Christina Fiumara Newport, and today I have one of my trusted dietitians on. Marissa, welcome to the show.

Hello, welcome back, actually.

Yes, that's right. Yeah, if you guys haven't heard her podcast, on youth fueling nutrition. Highly recommend it. But today we are doing our little research roundup and today we're talking all about sleep, in particular sleep as it relates to youth athletes. So introduce us to the study and let's dive in.

Yeah, so this study was really awesome and it just had all these areas to go over, but one in particular was sleep for sure. And just to preface the main point of this study that I was trying to get was like, how can we help youth athletes recover better? Obviously sometimes we're picky eaters or we have crazy schedules of practices, but what are the main things that our youth athletes need in order to progress in their sport, progress in school, progress in life, right? I thought this was a, a really interesting study cuz it really helped me pinpoint very specific things that I can use in my practice and Endurance Edge practice and, and with all of my clients of just being able to really focus on a couple of areas so they can improve drastically. So this article was called Too Little Sleep and an Unhealthy Diet Could Increase the Risk of Sustaining a New Injury in Adolescent Elite Athletes. I'm sure everyone listening here has either pulled a hamstring or sprained an ankle or broke a finger, jammed a finger in basketball, whatever it may be. So we've all been there where we've been injured. Unfortunately, I know when I played soccer when I was a kid, I broke my nose. I don't think I could have stopped that with sleep, But it wasn't fun. So it definitely could have helped the recovery process if I was sleeping better. But the study was really interesting. It was basically a self-tested study. So the bunch of athletes that were in Sweden actually, which I thought was fun, that go to national sport high school. So these high schools are specifically for adolescent athletes that are at high national level, like elite athletes at their age, which I thought was really, really interesting because not only are they just Youth athletes, but they're at the top tier ones. So they really are diving really hard into their sports. So we know that it's super important for them. So they essentially sent out a survey to all these athletes at these schools, and it was a vast different amount of sports from skiing to basketball to volleyball to long distance skiing. And there was about, I wanna say, that actually participated in, I don't know if we need to have specific numbers for us, but I'm gonna try and guesstimate and remember them. About 340 total athletes that enrolled, 178 were men and 162 were women. So yes, I have, I have the numbers right here. So they were able to essentially get half and half women and men. So it was a pretty good study group of, so we can see both sides. So I really liked that about it. But basically every single thing that they studied, they studied, all of these were different quizzes, right? Self, self-exam. So these, these athletes had to basically. Take an exam and say on a scale of 1 to 5 or whatever it may be, strongly agree, strongly disagree. And they were all standardized different types of tests on the following areas. So they really wanted to look into stress, nutrition, self-esteem, sleep, and injury. All giant areas in which can impact athletes obviously, or just honestly people in general. But really just focusing on those areas because stress can lead to, you know, unhealthy mental habits or even can lead into perfectionism. As we know, as athletes, they definitely are very big in perfectionism, as well as, you know, disordered eating or eating disorder type of mental health as well. And then they looked into nutrition. So they looked in the different areas of like, how much fish are we eating? How many fruits and vegetables are we eating? Do we eat a lot of fried foods? So it kind of went into depth of kind of like a food frequency questionnaire of what they're eating, their daily intake. So we can kind of see on an index level what that's at. And then they also did a self-esteem test. So it contained 12 items, each ranked on a Likert-type scale from 1, like I said, strongly disagree, to 5, completely disagree. So they were able to look and kind of see self-esteem. And this was one area that I thought was really interesting because they based self-esteem on either contingent self-esteem, so performance-based, like did I win? Okay, I have higher self-esteem, to non-contingent self-esteem of just basically inward internal self-esteem that's more long-term that you can actually last that doesn't focus on performance-based stuff. So I thought that was really interesting. They also basically just asked sleep, how many hours a night do you sleep during the week? And then how many hours a night do you sleep on the weekend? So there's a big difference between both of those, especially if you're having to get up at 6:00 AM for school versus can sleep in until 10:00 AM on the weekends depending on your schedule. I know when I was in high school, I definitely slept in on the weekends. And then last but not least was just injury. And they defined injury as physical complaint resulting in reduced training volume, experience of pain, difficulties participating. Participating in normal training or competition, or reduced performance in sport. That was also self-reported by the athletes. So if they felt any type of way, again, very objective, you know, if they felt like their hamstring was hurting, they may have said that they were injured. So that's just something to consider there. So those were the, all the areas in which they tested all of these elite adolescent athletes. So if you want me to just dive right into the results, or if you have any Anything to comment on those areas, Chris?

So self-esteem, nutrition, sleep, stress, and injury. And they had a good amount of kids involved. I think the average age was like 17, something like that.

It was the lowest age was 16 and the highest age was like 18 and 19. So it was a really good, like basically gonna be your high school 9th grade to senior year kind of thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. All right. And I mean, obviously the research study is titled as such for a reason. 'Cause sleep and injury are heavily associated. So yeah, tell us what some of the main results were.

So I'll go into the two top most statistically significant ones. Obvious, all of them had significant differences, but the biggest two that they kind of correlated with injury, 'cause they, oh, to mention, they gave them this test in fall and then they also gave it to them again in the spring so they can see the difference if there was an injury or anything like that and they can kind of correlate that out with some backwards regression, crazy statistical stuff that I don't know about. So the two biggest areas, Chris, do you, can you take a wild guess of what the two biggest areas that were correlated the most with injury?

Well, seeing that we're dietitians, possibly it could be related to nutrition.

Good guess. That's one of them. So I will read you guys a little bit about the nutrition. Like I said, they kind of looked into national guidelines regarding different areas of foods. So right Here you can see here they said there was no significant gender or age differences observed, but the recommended national guidelines regarding intake of fruits, vegetables, and fish were not met for 20, 39, and 43% of the athletes respectively. So almost half of them didn't eat fish, almost more than a fourth, if not more, didn't eat fruits, and then even more didn't eat vegetables. So you can see here that's a pretty big proportion of athletes that weren't getting in really proper protein, really great micronutrients. Nutrients, like anything that we need, vitamins and minerals. A lot of that's going to be found in our fruits and our veggies. And especially when it comes to fish, we look into omega-3 fatty acids, inflammation, heart health, brain health, all those things that these athletes are lacking, which is crazy because they are elite athletes. One thing I thought that was great, but not really great, was that the male athletes actually ate way worse than women. So something to think about if we are dealing with youth male athletes. I have noticed in all of my clients that I have worked with the youth male athletes are definitely the pickiest eaters that I have dealt with versus women. So that's just funny anecdotal data from my end that kind of went pretty close with what I do. But yeah, that's a big thing right there. As we all know, like I said, those areas of intake when it comes to nutrition are huge when it comes to the recovery process from the rebuilding and repairing of muscles, from immune system and, and health aspect. You know, if we're feeling sick and we go and work out, we're probably more likely to do something not in the best form, which can lead to an injury. Right. So just those things are huge when it comes to our elite athletes, especially when we're looking at athletes who are legitimately going to school for their sport and they still are not eating the correct amount of food and the correct types of food. So imagine our youth athletes that aren't really at the elite level but are probably doing a little bit worse. If I had to guess, that's just kind of my take on that one.

And side note, because This is one of my favorite topics, but we need some happy poopers.

Oh, God. They definitely are.

You're not getting your fruits and vegetables. This is a good detoxifying thing that we all need to do at least daily. So sometimes I have to make sure to point that out because I've had some clients who come to me and they're like, let's say they recently have been diagnosed with celiac or some sort of issue, and they're like, oh, I thought it was normal to not poop for every 3 or 4 days. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. Let's just clarify, 1 to 3 poops a day, generally speaking, is ideal. So anyway, just, you know, had to—

I mean, yeah, like you say, our fruits and veggies have a lot of fiber in them, and fiber is extremely important for our gut health and extremely important for a nice and healthy poop. Yes.

And brain health. So it all ties in. Yeah. Okay. So yes, that was my PSA. You're welcome.

Yes. Poop is good. Anyways, keep going. Okay. So the next area. So the top 2 I was talking about, Chris, do you have a guess on out the other one was.

I'm going to curl up with my pillow right now because I feel like sleep is coming on. Yes.

So sleep was the other area that they correlated with that fun, smart statistical analysis that they did that I'm not going to butcher the name, so I'm not going to say it. But the other one was sleep. So 20% of these athletes did not get the recommended allowance of sleep of 8 hours at least on the weekdays. And I know 20% doesn't sound like a crazy amount, but that right get there and they took that 20% and also the athletes that weren't eating correctly. And those were the athletes that were more likely to get injured, if not got injured. So what does sleep do for us? Let's talk about that real quick. Sleep is one area, right? We get energy from two sources in our life and it's not energy drinks and it's not motivational YouTube videos. It is our food and it is our sleep. If we are lacking in one, the other one's gonna have to compensate. If we're lacking in the other, that one's gonna have to compensate. They are constantly needing equilibrium together. If we don't eat a lot, we're sleepy. If we don't sleep a lot, we're hungry. They kind of— you'll start noticing that, especially like if kids are doing all-nighters studying, like they're going to be munching, right? Because they're just mindlessly eating because they have to stay awake. That's their body saying, hey, I need energy, I don't know where to get it from, you're not sleeping, so give me some food. But sleep is huge. That's where we get a lot of our short-term and long-term memories solidified. So all those plays that you're learning for your specific sport or a different form for your sport whether it be, you know, throwing, javelin, football plays, whatever it may be. If we're not getting proper sleep, you're not going to be able to remember the play. And then come that weekend on game day, you may forget it and that may cost you the game. So I know that sounds crazy, but that's kind of how that works. So sleep is huge when it comes to our memories. It's also huge when it comes to recovery of our muscles and repairing and reconditioning our muscles. So every athlete wants to get stronger, faster, and more powerful. I mean, if you don't, then I don't, I don't get it. But most athletes, I would say, want to get stronger, faster, and more powerful. In order to do that, they need to gain muscle. So in order to gain muscle, we need to take in proper nutrition, which we already talked about. They're not getting enough protein, vitamins, minerals, and they need to sleep because they need to give their body that rest and recovery to repair their muscles.

Yeah, that human growth hormone, it's some magical stuff and it happens at night.

Right. And if we aren't getting that proper sleep, not getting that proper nutrition, our stress hormones are going to be up way higher than we want them to be. It's okay to have high cortisol acutely. That's totally fine. That's normal. But if we start having it constant and it becomes a long-term or chronic thing, that will decrease our anabolic hormones, which is just a fancy word of saying our building hormones, stuff that makes you stronger, right? Like testosterone. So if we're not sleeping, our testosterone is going to be low, our stress hormones are going to be high. And then again, that's another red flag of not being able to gain muscle, but also a red flag to get injured. As little as 3 nights of less than 5 hours of sleep has been shown to decrease testosterone almost in half, if not more. Wow. That was a study done in the military. Now, is that with athletes, youth athletes? No, but I'm sure that can be correlated with some youth athletes as well.

Yeah, for sure.

So it's huge. Sleep is huge. And this study definitely found that sleep and nutrition were the biggest areas that kind of correlated with the, the injury rate within these athletes. And injury in a youth athlete in high school can make or break whether they're recruited in college and have a career, right? So these are two areas that we stress as dietitians, but it sounds like other areas, other professionals are also seeing that as an important thing. And one thing I do wanna note is in these high school they did not have access to a dietitian at all. So that's one thing that I think can be greatly beneficial to youth athletes is having the ability and accessibility to a professional like a registered dietitian to help them in these areas. Because if they were to have had a dietitian that did proper education, maybe they would've ate better, maybe they would've slept better, you know? So that's something to think about as far as like moving forward of some tangible advice for you guys is if you have a youth athlete who you're just struggling to get them to eat the right stuff or go to bed or they're just too busy playing Fortnite until 3 in the morning and you just cannot do it, you got us. You got some dietitians that are more than happy to help you.

Yeah, for sure. So we'll circle back to our youth nutrition program that we're launching. But in the meantime, what are some of the strategies that you had tied into this research that you were starting to think about?

Some healthy habits that I think could be really, really good for youth athletes, and this goes to parents too because they kind of have to be all on the same page here, is to get better sleep hygiene. I mean, that's just, that's, that's it. In order to get better sleep hygiene, there's a couple of areas.

And this doesn't just mean like brushing your teeth beforehand.

No, it does not. I know it's a funny way of saying have a better sleep health.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah, basically. So these are some areas of sleep hygiene, I like to call it, that we should focus on either including or avoiding. So the last thing you wanna do is have a giant spicy meal right before bed, right? That's gonna wake you up in the middle of the night. It's gonna upset your stomach. You're not gonna be able to have good quality sleep. So try to avoid very large meals before bed. It's totally fine to have, you know, maybe a protein shake or some Greek yogurt and stuff with berries an hour or so before bed. But if you're about to have some Indian food food right before bed. I mean, you know how that goes, so don't do that. I don't need to say this too much to our youth athletes, but avoiding alcohol and cigarette intake also before bed can definitely affect our sleep. I know sometimes if we had a little too much to drink, we hit that pillow real fast and fall asleep immediately and be like, oh my God, I passed out immediately. I had such great sleep. Our body's not able to actually go through the full cycles of sleep with alcohol in our body. So you were not getting quality sleep, you were just passed out.

Yep. And that was in the research that was in that study. It was more prevalent in the 18+ year olds.

Yep.

So have a conversation with your athlete.

Absolutely.

And I know this is like a time when people are sort of exploring, but yeah, like you had mentioned, sleep is trash with alcohol. I mean, it's just— and I will admit to enjoying my glass of wine, but like, yeah, it affects HRV, it affects core body temperature, and the list goes on and on. Anyway, doesn't mean you have to be perfect, but just saying.

We're not your moms. We can't tell you to stop drinking, but just to think about it. Another area is, I know this sounds kind of funny, but check the temperature in your house. Make sure it's comfortable. Make sure you're wearing comfortable clothing to bed. Make sure you have a good pillow. My God, have you ever fallen asleep with a crappy pillow? You did not get a good night's rest. Those are all really huge.

They are. Yeah.

For real. Uh, another thing is to create a sleep routine. I know that you're like, what the heck is that? So a sleep routine is basically allowing your body to know when it's time to start slowing down. And if you create a consistent routine where let's just say 5:00 PM dinner, 6:00 PM finish that last bit of homework. 7:00 PM, watch a 30-minute show, 8:00 PM, have a glass of hot tea to kind of help you relax, 8:30, stretch a little bit, get your body just a little more comfortable, and then brush your teeth, do your nighttime skin routine, and then go to sleep, right? So if you do that every single night and, you know, not to the T of like this exact second, it's okay. But if you're trying to do, you know, roughly that, that exact routine every single night, your body is going to start being like, oh, okay, we're winding down. Okay, I'm going to start kind of taking a couple levels down, start relaxing. The last thing you need to do is be on your phone scrolling in bed. That stimulation, that blue light, is— that's another thing to avoid. So don't put that in your sleep routine. But if you want to maybe put in, like, write in your journal, or I've had a lot of athletes who like to write poetry before bed. A lot of them like to rap, so they're like, well, let me just write some, some poetry and go to bed. A lot of people like to stretch, meditate, deep breathing, Sleepy time tea is amazing. If you ever tried some herbal tea, that'll knock you right out. But I definitely think that's one area besides all those things to avoid and incorporate. I think a sleep routine is the biggest thing to start before adding in or attempting to try supplements. You definitely want to get into your routine and do all those other areas that I talked about first before just jumping into melatonin or something like that. Yeah. Yep. So don't go straight into, like, let me take 5 different supplements and then scroll on my phone the whole night. Yeah. If you take melatonin, you need your lights out. Yes. That's how it works. It needs to be.

That is how it works. Completely.

Like, you need to be going right to bed.

And it's a hormone, right? So I feel like this is something where we help people be very strategic and, like, well, I get what you're saying, but I have practice at 8:00 at night, or I finish at 8:00 like, that's okay. Then we work through the details.

We work through it. Yep.

We're in the weeds with people for sure.

That goes back to having a professional help you. Now, is sleep completely all about nutrition? No. But do we deal with that with athletes in our area every day? Every single day.

I mean, even aside from youth athletes, even for adults who want to lose weight or just want to generally perform better or not be falling asleep at their desks.

Everyone needs this.

Everyone. There is no better recovery tool than sleep. I don't care how many different bells, whistles, massage therapists, altitude chambers.

I'm sorry, there's no better immersion water, cold water therapy, whatever everyone's doing now.

And sleep.

Yeah, no, you couldn't have hit that better. I mean, sleep is the hugest thing. It has such a really close correlation to mortality rate too. You don't get enough sleep and Alzheimer's and dementia. I mean, it plays such a huge role in our health, let alone injury prevention and athletic performance. So I definitely think a sleep routine is super highly important. And like I said, all those other things, prioritizing, right?

Does it really matter? Is this something that's important to you? Like, do you really wanna do well on your test? Do you really want to become like the star goalie or whatever? Yeah. Right. Like, it doesn't matter to you, then make it happen.

Yeah. Do you leave a lot on your table? You leave a lot on the table when you leave nutrition and sleep outta the equation. Mm-hmm. When it comes to your athletic performance, if that could make or break an extra tackle or an extra second off your swim time. That could literally be 1st and 2nd place or a win or a lose.

Yeah.

So if it matters that much to you and you feel as though you have— you or your parent feel as though you are gifted enough to, you know, go to the next level, then why not try and do everything you possibly can to put yourself in the best position for success? Yeah.

Which to me makes me think of the self-esteem stuff. And we had before we started, you had some notes on that.

Yeah. Yeah. So most athletes in this study reported having decent self-esteem, but it was more based off of performance. So a lot of them had higher self-esteem because of their performance-based. So it was contingent on performance, contingent on win or lose. Now, short-term, that's great, right? If we win a game, that's—

So in other words, like, you're awesome because we won.

Yeah.

Right.

Versus you are awesome because you're an amazing person. Right. So they did see that females of the study had reported reported less self-esteem, which, shocker, we always deal with the worst stuff, right? But one thing they did note is that they wanted the athletes to focus on, like, as future stuff, future studies on non-contingent, non-performance-based self-esteem. So looking more inward and not being a perfectionist, but gaining self-esteem that doesn't have to depend on that win or lose or on that, that good player or not, because that leads into unhealthy mental mental health could lead into eating disorders, disordered eating, depression, anxiety, all of that stuff. I mean, it's so huge. So that's one area, as this is me speaking to the parents, that don't give your kids a high five for every win and don't be so hard on them for every lose. I mean, it's okay to wallow a little bit, but also give them high fives on other things in their life. Like, hey, that was really nice of you to play with your sister that day when she really asked and really wanted to play with you. Like just different things that don't have to be performance-based that make you a good person. Because at the end of the day, when they start getting older and they live on their own, do you want them to only focus on whether or not they win or they lose, or whether or not they're striving and becoming a good person in society? That's how I see it. I love that.

Yeah. This, so I have a handout that I got from, this is from elementary school and I, as I like literally just reached for it because I have it like hanging in my office here is A Parent's Guide to a Growth Mindset. And it's based on Carol Dweck's book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. I don't know if you've heard about this, but like things that you can say, like a fixed mindset being you can't improve natural abilities you were born with versus a growth mindset being you can grow your intelligence. So the same kind of thing is like you can learn from your mistakes. Mistakes help you improve. Let's see what other strategies we can try rather than like you lost, therefore you suck.

Yeah, like you're grounded.

Or you won, you won, therefore you're amazing. Like your self-worth is not tied.

Mm-hmm. A mistake is only a mistake if you don't learn and grow from it. So use every opportunity you can to constantly be growing and learning and becoming a better person. Don't put yourself in a hole, in a box that's only based off of if you win or lose or an A or a B in a, on a test. Give yourself some grace and, and, and learn learn from everything that you do because that just makes you a better person as well as a, a better mental health. I mean, I, you know, I've known a lot of youth athletes or even athletes that I worked with at the collegiate level that if they lost, I mean, they were— academics went down, everything went down. They're honestly more likely to get injured because they were so down on themselves. So it just plays a huge role in your mental health and overall health for sure. Sure.

Yeah.

No doubt. Wow.

Okay, cool. We touched on a lot of things. Look at us.

I know.

So let's tie back into the nutrition programs. Fuel Like a Winner.

Woo!

Yes. Sports Nutrition Immersion Program. Yeah. Starting up in April, launching in April. This is a great opportunity for parents and athletes to meet and grow with other parents and athletes under the wonderful supervision of Marissa here.

That's me.

So yeah, you have put together some really stellar consumable videos, handouts, like very action-oriented things that parents and athletes can execute. And shocker, sleep is in there too.

Oh, it's in there. Yep. There's a bunch of different areas, different modules, and it's ever-changing and ever-growing. So if we receive feedback, yep. If we receive feedback from someone, they really want to learn about supplements or they really want to learn about nutrient timing, that's probably in there already.

Yeah.

But you know what I'm getting at?

Should I be going into my workout fasted or typically diets.

Yeah, we could talk about different fat diets. So anything, any feedback that you guys give us, we will make a whole module on it so that you guys can constantly be ever-changing and ever-growing yourselves.

Yeah. And then as part of that, there are calls with you. Yeah. People can submit their Q&A, having various topics so that we can all dive into those things together.

Yeah.

Doesn't matter what sport you're in. From badminton to swimming to soccer.

Yeah, I tried to make it as relatable as well as taking this information, actually applying it to your life. You know, you could say all this crazy education on nutrition and then I know someone can give you no tangible things to do moving forward. I made sure to always relate it back to a specific example of a sport and how you can actually apply it to your sport so that way okay, yeah, you told me that I can eat these snacks, but like what about my crazy schedule? I go into a bunch of different scenarios of different schedules as well, so you can kind of see where to fit things and apply it to your life. So I think that is the, the best, one of the best parts of it is that it's actually applicable to life. Yeah.

Yes. Which is why we decided to call it an immersion because you're, you're getting all in. So you can find that on our website, theenduranceedge.com under services, you'll find the Sports Youth Sports Youth, Youth, the Youths. I always write, what is that movie? The Youth, My Cousin Vinny or something. Anyway, the Youths. Anyway, I know that's when I'm showing my age. Dagnabbit. Anyhow, yes. So under theenduranceedge.com under services and youth sports nutrition, you'll learn all about it. Like what are the modules on there? What are some of the things you'll learn? The community, we've got like a group chat, so you'll be learning from each other. Tons of handouts, recipes galore, and then of course group calls with Marissa. It's gonna be awesome.

And like I said, if, if it's not there, if there's something that you need, let us know. It'll be there. It'll be ever growing and ever changing. So, yep, the faster you get on it, the more information there'll be.

Yes. And it's not a fixed date program. In other words, it's not like going from April to June. You can join anytime time and have access to all that information immediately. And then we have those regular group calls. So, yep. Cool. Yay. Okay, so give us like maybe 2 or 3 reminders or takeaways before we— Yeah.

Um, sleep, nutrition, biggest areas that are correlated with injury. Drops mic. I'm just kidding.

Yes. All right. Do the thing.

So please try your best to try and focus on a sleep routine. Get your body used to falling asleep at the time. Have a good amount of sleep. Get that 8 hours in to help your body actually recover. Get those long-term and short-term memories solidified. When it comes to diet and nutrition, I think the biggest thing you can do is try your best to create as much variety in your diet as you can. Getting enough protein, getting enough of those micronutrients again, are only gonna help you with your immune system, your overall health, injury, as well as recovery. Grief and rebuilding of muscles. So if you're someone who hates vegetables but you love smoothies, throw some spinach in your smoothie. It may look gross, but you will not taste the spinach in there.

Cauliflower is one of my favorite. Riced cauliflower. Oh yeah, it's like, just disappears.

Yep. For me, it makes me bloated, but that's just how my body responds to it.

Well, hey, yep. So you gotta find what works for you.

Yeah. So I think variety is super important. Like I said, if you're someone who hates vegetables, throw some cheese on your veggies, it's okay. Throw some ranch on your broccoli, it's okay. As long as you're getting in your vegetables, get used to eating it. It's totally fine. And the last thing I'll, I'll take away is if you have the accessibility to receive help from a registered dietitian and you're an athlete who is needing help in all these different areas, please don't hesitate to either reach out to us or find someone in your area. If you are an athlete, look for someone with the CSSD certification behind their name. So they're RD and then also a CSSD. Those are dietitians physicians that have a little bit more specialized qualifications for performance nutrition. If you can't find that, doesn't hurt to still speak to an RD, but those are gonna be ones that are a little more specialized for you.

Perfect. Great recommendations. Awesome. All right, Marissa.

Okay.

Thanks for coming on and we will chat with everybody soon.

All right guys, see ya.

Thanks for listening to the Find Your Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And if you're interested in learning more about our endurance coaching, sports and wellness nutrition, metabolic and sweat testing, triathlon training team, or our triathlon training library, be sure to check us out at theenduranceedge.com. And don't forget to follow us on social media at The Endurance Edge. Thanks again. And we'll catch you next time.