Lose Fat, Keep Healthy, Run Faster w/ Jordan Sullivan

Excited to have Jordan Sullivan, the fight dietician on the podcast today. Jordan, the first question that I have for you or the first topic I want to talk about with you is in the distance, long distance running world, specifically road running 5k through the marathon, there's a bit of a pushback against people losing weight during their hard training blocks. Let's start with that topic. I want to hear what you have to say about that given that you've helped thousands, I believe, people from UFC, different fighting combat sports and the ultra endurance runners lose weight to perform at their best. Thanks for having me on that big fan and it's a good question, it's an interesting question. I think a lot of the confusion comes because it is a confusing topic. I think we simplify so many things in physiology and science right and I think if you have a quick scroll on social media it just comes up and like how many people would you say, it's just calories in, calories out and then I guess if like fundamentally you boil it down, absolutely, that's what it is but it just doesn't take into account the nuances of that. I think that's a perfect model to run if say you're an everyday person going to the gym and doing a 30 minute weight session, maybe a Pilates or a hit session, not that there's anything wrong with that but if you've got systems on either side that are very easily controllable, I suppose, very easy to control, you've just got a 30 minute session, you're going to in, lift some weights, you're going to eat this much food, you say work a very rudimentary job, you sit at a desk, everything's very controllable and yeah, for sure, let's run that system for someone like yourself, Matt and the athletes you work in, it's very different right, there's so many different components that go in that make that so much more of a problem to solve and you think if like the calories out, okay, we've got all these different sessions throughout a week, we've got different sessions throughout the day, we've got different intakes that we're trying to target to optimize sessions but then overall we're trying to create the system where okay, we need to be in that calorie deficit but how do we manage that with all of these different things and then we've got different metabolism is coming through, different body compositions coming through so you go okay, well it's not as straightforward as just going okay Matt, eat this many calories and then get the calorie deficit and you'll go out like fundamentally, absolutely that's right but there's a bit more to it and I think that's why it's so difficult and why people get their backs up I suppose when they say hey, Matt, if you're going through a hard training block, don't eat in a calorie deficit because you're going to put yourself at risk of red, you're going to put yourself in LA, you're going to get bone stress fractures, all these injuries and everything, you go, yeah, there's always a risk of that but once you understand the complexity of the situation and the nuance and your comfortable in that environment, it's a lot easier to manage like there's always going to be risk when you're doing anything like it's not always your diet as well Matt, you can go out and you know be eating the perfect diet but you can still get injured, that's absolutely still a real thing that happens which I think we forget a lot in this conversation but overall can you do it, yeah, you absolutely can do it, it's just needs to be very tailored to the individual and it probably needs to be a lot more thought put into it than what we traditionally would put in for any other weight loss client. Yeah, perfect way to start the conversation really because a lot of the time when I see people pushing back against the idea of losing weight while you're training, when I take a closer look at their profiles or I try and understand where they're coming from, they're often not necessarily trying to work with people or themselves to get to the very, you know, the very best in which they can possibly be so they're not working with elite runners, they're not working with people that literally are trying to make it their career or to get to the fastest possible time in any given distance. You and I join, you know, have a conversation where you work with people that are the best in the world in multiple sports and trying to get people to win competitions where they could be the world champion, right? I'm coaching people that are literally trying to run their fastest possible marathon. I'm personally trying to run my fastest possible marathon and I share with you before recording that my whole curiosity around losing weight, particularly to try and improve the marathon came because I noticed that I was much heavier than most runners at my level and then when I lost weight, I got faster, very simple. So yeah, lots of different topics I'd like to talk to you about here because you're an expert in the field and have been an expert for a very long time with so much experience. I really love the conversations that you've had with Dr. Andy Galpin. I love listening to him in general. He's very good at breaking down quite complicated topics and making them more understandable to people. But yeah, I guess you touched on a little bit there about the whole red-ess eating disorder thing because that's really probably the first thing I want to talk about because that seems to be the biggest pushback whenever I post anything about losing weight while you're training for a running event. People are always saying that's a huge risk. It's a huge potential issue. And you said something that I often say it's like, "Yeah, but there's lots of different risks we're already taking when we're trying to train very hard." But when someone approaches you to work with you and they ask about red-ess eating disorders, what do you reply to that and what do you say to reduce the risks of any of those things occurring in the future? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of things you can do to reduce the risk. I think the first thing you need to establish is probably two things. I think match straight away is like, first, you need to understand who you're talking to. Like you said, it's a big difference when you're talking to say more amateur athlete versus a more elite athlete. And for the very reasons that you said is that the goals are very different. And I think the first conversation I always have with them is this concept of degrees of difference and say, Matt, what you have to do with one of your elite athletes to get really good results with an amenable change, you have to put a lot more effort in to get much less of a result, if that makes sense. So you moving from 220 to 221 is one minute different. It might only be a 1% change, but the accumulative effort you have to put in to get that is probably a lot greater than, say, someone who is trying to go from four hours 30 and they could probably get to sub four hour right, they're the overall amount of effort that needs to be taken. So the degrees of difference is a big separation. And then when it comes to the reds question, you're going, okay, well, we need to understand first what is reds and how we diagnosing it. I think that's a topic that makes a lot of people uncomfortable and the best way I've had it described to me is saying, hey, Matt, well, how did you get the common cold? And you guys are very similar to the common cold. We know what it is. We know when you have it, what it looks like. We know that you're going to be sneezing, we know you're not going to be feeling too good. But say, Matt, how did you get the common cold? You go, well, maybe it's because I was out with a bunch of people on the subway and I wasn't very clean. You know, didn't sanitize my hands when I was doing this. You know, it's winter. It's quite cold. I wasn't eating too many carbs. Like, I'll have been under eating a little bit. My sleep's not been good. You go, okay, but which one is it? Or which one of those things make it and that's where we're at with reds. And I think this is where it gets quite confusing because we don't have a really good diagnostic tool to say, yes, Matt, you have reds. We know what happens and we have good ideas of how you got a bone stress fracture. You've got these blood markers, you know, you've got these symptoms, but we don't know collectively how we go in and diagnose it. So I think that's first and foremost is important to understand. And I think what is also really important to understand is the two things that really influence the degree to which you will experience those symptoms, which is the intensity and the duration. So and what I mean by that is, Matt, I could put you, let's just say I go into your house, take all the food out of your cupboards and go, okay, you're not going to eat for two days. That's a really intense deficit, but two days isn't that long of a duration. But then again, I could just say, hey, Matt, why don't you, I'll write you up a diet plan and you take some calories out, but we're going to do it over, let's say a six month period. So those two things are really, really interesting and really important when we're talking about reds because when you look at the research that we do have, which is very, very limited, and one of my, one of my big mentors, Dr. Carling and Evan, has one of the only research papers that has looked at this over a longer period of time and attempted to track this is he did this with a type one dough athlete, a European type one dough champion athlete and what he did is tracked everything over an eight week period. They estimated what his daily output was, they controlled what his intake was, they measured when he went to the toilet. So they had a really good grip of what was going in and what was going out. And what he wanted to see is go, okay, well, what is actually happening, not only physiologically, but psychologically, what's going on with this athlete. And so what he did was measured this, so he called phase one was what we call in my sport in combat sports, the fight camp phase, where they're obviously very similar to an endurance athlete, where you go to training camp, where you're going to be training for our fighters, we're dropping weight strategically to do that, we need to be in that deficit. So he can measure that, he can measure what's called the state of energy of our ability, which will touch on why that's quite important to understand. And then what he measured was what we call our fight week, which would be race week for our endurance athletes, for fighters, what they're doing is they're making dietary changes, they're changing their intake so they can drop an additional five to ten percent of their body weight in the days leading up to that weigh-in, whereas if we're getting ready for a race, as you know that, we're doing the opposite, we're carb loading, we're putting calories in, we're resting, we're doing all the right things, we don't get that luxury in combat sports. What Carl found, which was the most interesting thing I think, is that through that eight-week fight camp or training camp period, despite being in a deficit, he didn't see any physiological disturbances, he didn't see any of these disturbances that we would typically say, hey, that's Red's symptomology. Until we got to this fight week period where his intake went down, he started using other dietary strategies to get more weight off, that's when we started seeing, metabolically, these changes. come about. And so what that really says if we come back to those two factors and we go okay it's really about the intensity and duration is that he went a seven week period which is a decent amount of time right in that deficit but because the intensity of that deficit wasn't so for long his body was okay with handling that. But when we had even just these short few days a couple of days where the intensity is back to our example if I ripped all the food out of your house he basically went through a really intense period for just a couple days we started seeing those metabolic disturbances and the really interesting thing that I think which came from that study is that Carl and his team were not only just looking at when he went and competed he said okay let's look at the week afterwards and what they found in the week afterwards is that every day for the seven days afterwards he had a average calorie intake for about 7,700 calories which is a lot which is a lot that's a lot and they estimated that by the time he got to that weigh in his body had accumulated so much debt and if we think accumulation is that every day if your body needs 3000 calories but you only ate 1,500 you've accumulated 1,500 calories of debt if they work that out every day up until that point his body was in a debt of about 110,000 calories. So despite being in that still if we go back to those two points intensity duration the first seven weeks his body was fine performing well and then we go okay the short period we've really cranked up the intensity for a short duration that's when everything started don't really bad but even after the fact his body went hey man I'm in this huge debt I need to get that back and that's where they saw this rebounding what we call rebound hyperphasia or in simple terms binging to make back that 110,000 calories and I think what's most interesting about that is that you can look through all that data and you can go okay yeah that's not great and we saw in that weak period where his body composition came back up where he put on more body fat than he did muscle mass and we can say okay that's probably not great he became somewhat insulin resistant in that period as well he's testosterone in the previous period dropped quarters are really rocketed really unfavorable metabolic conditions but despite all of that this guy went out and won the European champions so he was the best athlete in Europe for that sport despite going through that so it's like even though we can sit back and physiologically say how you know what that's not ideal it's pretty difficult to then argue with the results of that and it's a good study map because it really demonstrates the complexities when we talk about reds and when people go hey don't go into a diet when you're in a training phase because you're going to get injured and get reds you go yeah absolutely there's that risk but we need to assess what that risk is because as I'm sure we'll talk about that there is also a lot of benefit to optimizing your power to weight ratio there's a lot of benefit for eating a particular way to get a particular performance outcome and that's essentially what our job is right is that we're trying to take all this information and go okay what is the number one priority which is also an important question is it performance or is it health and you and I both know elite level sports and not always the healthiest environment and it's the how do we manage and mitigate those risks yeah very well said once again because I have often wondered why no one questions or criticizes people doing 250k a week which a lot of runners do maybe not a lot but definitely some I know I can I can name at least 10 very quickly that I watch on on the socials and a lot and very few people will question the risks of that yet no question the risks of being in a slight calorie deficit and losing three or four kilos and I've never really understood that and and even I'm a big fan of sprints as well even for a marathoner and working on that sort of speed gap via hill sprints and very few people question the risks involved in in hamstring issues with speed but it's definitely a very common way of improving you know your performance in any running distance but yeah really appreciate you sharing that and I guess that sort of leads me to a question that you sort of touched on a bit there it's you know you said a lot of that calorie deficit that the athlete mentioned was in early on in that block wasn't too intense I I love I personally really enjoy tracking calories and thinking about calories and the window of the deficits and so forth so I'd love to just talk about that for a little while so you know let's say that you have me right now I'm 74 kilos as of today 73 high I want to get down to 69 kilos in two and a half months I'm six foot 183 centimeters now I've talked quite a bit on on the podcast about how I approach it but how would you approach Mike and feel free to shoot questions at me as well of course how would you approach that goal of losing about four and a half kilos to lead into a marathon and do it relatively safely and we can dive into any any aspect of that yeah I could shoot a few questions at you Matt just but I'll I'll go through I guess what my initial thought process was is and I'm going to shoot him and correct me if I'm wrong you're trying to get a 74 to 69 not because you feel like you're overweight but you're going hey I've got some marathon times that I really want to improve so this is a performance-based weight loss correct yeah it's a hundred percent performance based in fact if I wasn't running a marathon I'd probably rather go the other way I'd probably rather go up to 80 kilos so yeah definitely performance based yes yeah yeah so I guess like the logical way to then start thinking about is going okay well what is your perceived benefit if you're getting down this weight what is the perceived benefit of getting you know that four or five kilos off well I've noticed absolutely in my own weight and performance that I am just significantly faster I feel better and I just perform better when I get down to lighter weights I have never found that line that some people do find where that performance ends up sort of going the other way but yes that's that's really my best answer there I just feel better and run faster when I'm lighter yeah yeah yeah and again it's like if we just logically break it down you go I want to run faster right and you go okay well how do we run fast and just go like break it down basic you know basic physics equation four equals mass times acceleration right so if we go okay if we're trying to create more force makes it run faster if that mass if we can maintain that acceleration and we can get that mass flow and increase it we can get more force right so it's like we can improve what's called like a power to weight ratio which is essentially what we're saying is that if you can you know decrease that mass but then you can still produce the same amount of force you're going to improve your power to weight ratio an important consideration is when we're going down here is going okay we still need to be able to perform is what I'm essentially saying is that where this gets messy and where this get this crossover gets really tough is if we're going home out if we're going 74 to 69 but you're already completely optimized for your body for your body composition for your height for the amount of muscle mass that you have for your training history and we start going down if we're not optimizing we're probably going to see a decrease in performance and again this is where this whole conversation gets quite tricky because a lot of people go I don't want to be in a deficit because I find it very difficult to train I find it very difficult to recover and you go okay that's absolutely fair maybe that is more of a timing of your diet and the quality that you're getting in but hey Matt if we're aiming to get from 74 to 69 the ultimate goal then is we need to improve your power to weight ratio so that you can move your frame much faster over a set period of time so then we go okay how long do we have and let's think about those two things we've got intensity and duration so you've told me that we've got 10 weeks 10 weeks so we've got a time so we've got our duration and then we need to figure out what's the intensity that we need to put in here which is the million dollar question right and we go okay well then I'd have to say hey Matt what are you currently eating what are you currently getting in I'm sure you could probably spit it out do you know what you're eating each day yeah well I've actually come from 86 kilos four months ago so I'm on that trend already and I've been using a very basic idea which I talk about a bit we're basically looking for about a 600 to 800 calorie deficit per day except that rule gets wiped out when I'm within 12 hours of a very hard workout which tends to be twice a week and then when I'm I just made up 12 hours I just seemed seemed like a good idea and I've used them it's worked and so in that 12 hours I actually forget about the calorie deficit all together and just hit the carbs pretty hard usually with rice pasta and bread and then do the workout and then the meal after the workout are usually two hours I sort of refuel 10 days for at least 100 grams of carbs and 30 grams of protein and then I go back to that deficit window then really answer your question I mean outside of those fueling periods I tend to just stick to foods that are relatively satiating and like low in calories for how heavy they are so a lot of chicken a lot of vegetables a lot of strawberries blueberries and trying to avoid things that are going to be high in calories but just not very filling so that's what I'm currently doing I'm happy to dive into that more if you if you like but no and there's a big point that you bought up which is I guess the point that I'm going to come around and make so again we come back got duration intensities so you're telling me let's just say 10 weeks and let's just say throughout that you're obviously cycling high days low days which is important let's just say on an average you get it on a let's say 3000 calories and that's what you're you're then losing right and then from that point we need to then say okay if we want to lose weight we need to be accumulatively in the deficit by the end of the week we need to be x percentage under what your maintenance is for your body to become giving up that body fat to make up the energy difference. And we can all agree on that. The problem, like we said earlier, is that this gets a lot more nuanced and difficult, like you alluded to them, Mount where you've got high days, you've got low days, you've got rest days. So obviously we need to then put different amounts of intake to then better suit the needs and requirements of those days. And so that is a concept where this the first really layer of this white, the whole reds conversation, the whole calorie deficit conversation gets a bit more interesting is this concept of what we call within daily energy availability. Which is how much energy do you have at this particular point of a day? And a good way to think about this is, really, is there a difference, say, Matt, if you woke up and then you had a big bowl of oats and you had banana and whatever, and then you went and did two hour long runs, that means that you've taken on energy, you've taken on carbs in that morning period and then say you fuel up afterwards. Now let's say that you don't do that, you go, you do that two hour run fasted, but let's say in both scenario A and B, you end up eating the same amount of calories. So overall by the calories in calories out logic, it shouldn't make a difference. What if your body is going to give up that fat or not? But then what we're going to discuss and look into with this within daily energy availability. Okay, is there a difference and metabolically from how Matt's body is responding based on whether he had that feed in the morning before that training session compared to doing it fasted? And where that get becomes important is because you told me at the very start of this is that 74 to 69 is a performance base metric. So what you want to do, Matt, is you want to get fit a faster stronger so that you can run a better marathon time. Because I could just say to you, hey, Matt, I don't really care about your training sessions, who cares, dude, like just eat, you'll have in 3000 every day, I'm going to put you in a 20% deficit, have 2400, I don't care how you feel. But really what my job is as a performance nutritionist, performance dietitian coming in is going, no, what I want to do to get you fit a faster stronger is to get the performance adaptations that you get from training. So I can put you in this 20% deficit overall across the week. But then what I need to do is go, okay, Matt's got a two-hour long run coming up in the morning here. What is the adaptation that we're trying to get? How do I fuel that adaptation? And then what's Matt got on for the rest of the day? Does he have a strength conditioning session coming up after that? Does he have a rest day? Does he have a day off? So how do we then take that into account? And you go, oh, actually, you know what, I'm trying to optimally fuel. I really want to get the highest quality out of that. Okay, let's put a feeding in here and let's make sure that we're not doing that fasted and let's make sure that overall, that day, like you said, you're just getting in much more high quality foods. It's a really high day. We're not going to put yourself in a deficit for there. But then overall, we need to look at your diet across the week so that we do end up in that deficit. And that's this whole concept of periodizing your intake, which ultimately when it comes down to the calories in calories out, you don't necessarily need to do it. You can have a consistent intake across it. But what you'll leaving on the table, potentially, which we know from this concept of within daily energy balance is that, okay, Matt, maybe there are some adaptations that we can get around this session, that we can influence and we can gain by eating a certain way. So if you fuel up optimally for that two hour session, maybe the goal of the session is to push a certain amount or to run at threshold for two hours. And if you do not have the fuel that is in that session, maybe that becomes mentally very hard. Or physically, you just don't have the fuel in there to be able to do that. Did you optimally get the adaptations that you wanted? Conversely, you might come back to me, Matt, and go, you know what? Like, I don't really want to do that. That's not what we're training for. I really want to up my fat adaptation. So why not let's just go in there and do it faster. And I go, okay, that's fine. Overall, we still need to hit that deficit by the end of the week. But you've told me there's a different adaptation that we're going for. So we can change our strategy for that. If that makes sense. And that's how you plan it out across the entire week. And then once it comes in, you've got, you've now got your intensity. You can put your intensity across the week. So you're in the deficit, but you're also fueling for the adaptation that you want. And then the question is, okay, we do it across this duration. And there's a few numbers. If you want, Matt, I'm sure if you want to ask another question off the back of that, that you can use to guide, or what is a safe intensity, what's like a moderately risky, and what's a really risky in terms of intensity. Please, yeah, let's go dive into that. The only main question that I had there is there's a few, but one of the main ones, I get a lot actually myself, is how do you know your calorie burn through the day? Is it only really a way to, I mean, the garment has it. People tell me that's not very accurate. Then there's a group, you know, there's different devices. But how do you advise people that you work with? Because, you know, if you want to go for a pretty aggressive cut, which I'd like you to talk about as much as you like, and how sort of safe that is, and how to do it specifically, it probably is pretty useful to have pretty clear numbers, right, in terms of how much, how many calories you're actually burning in any given period of time, or any given workout. And how do you work that out yourself? Me and Andy spoke about this, right, and it was funny because it's like, we're going to sat back from each other and say, "It's funny, we work with so many elite level athletes and have so much access to cool information." And the best answer we can give for that is that one, you don't know, like, your garment doesn't know, you don't know. And unless you're in a lab and it's in a control closed lab, you're not going to get a number that's very accurate. And the best way to do it is to work all of this out, go through this process, and then at the end of two weeks we say, "Hey, Matt, what was the weight schedule that we went we were trying to achieve here?" When we're going from 74 to 69, did we reach that each week? Okay, no, I'm behind the target, I haven't lost enough. Okay, we're obviously either consuming too much or we're not burning as much as what we think, and we have to recalibrate that. And people can tell you that, you know, these boobs or whatever, and garments are super-act, they're not, like, they're, it's very, very difficult. And I think that there's a misconception that we burn so much more in different sessions, we don't particularly. That's the thing is that the human body, and we can, we can kind of get into that if you like, the human body isn't going to burn a huge degree difference from intensity once it comes across to calorie output. You're going to have a certain calorie output that is for your body, for your metabolism. Absolutely, that's going to be pretty consistent. But the difference between you doing, say, an hour-long hit session, Matt, compared to, say, an hour-long slow run is not as much as what you would think. It's really the differences come when you're doing, say, a six-hour run compared to, say, a one or two-hour, because you've just got so much more time burning those. But I think what, before we get to sidetracked, I think, just to answer your question and come back and bring it back to this, coming back to working out what's the safe intensity which ties into this, what you would need to do is figure out, okay, how much weekly weight loss do I need to lose? And we have some guiding numbers that we use in our practice, say, Matt, if you're losing what we say is very safe, which would technically avoid reds or LEA is if you lose half a percent of your body weight each week. We know if you're hitting those numbers in terms of your diet or your training, that's pretty safe. If you're getting up to one, like we're going, that's still safe, but we're kind of getting on the aggressive side. It's really once you start going above two percent of your body weight per week that we go, yeah, this is really going to be too aggressive and you're very likely going to increase the risk of developing these reds-like symptoms. So going over that again, very safe half a percent of your body weight, so if you go zero-- So just quickly, that would be zero points, that would be almost zero point four kilos for someone at 74 kilos. I just put that into the Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, and then one, once you're getting close to that one percent per week, you're probably in a pretty safe zone, but this is where the question of, okay, the duration and how long can we stay losing that? Can you keep doing that? You could probably do it. We know for at least eight weeks from what we know and the research, you're probably going to be pretty safe, but if you start going up to that closer to two, we're probably going to start seeing these reds-like symptoms coming out. So, okay, so you're saying one percent is relatively safe in your mind. I mean, that's pretty much exactly a lot. It's with how I've been losing weight in the past four months, because that's three quarters of a kilogram per week, which is three kilograms per month, essentially. Yeah, best practice in our world in combat sports when we do this across our quote-unquote fight camp is 0.75% of your body weight per week. Gotcha. Yep, that would be pretty close to half a kilo. Yeah, that's, that's, when people ask me the question in which I'm not an expert, that's why I wanted to have you on. They often ask me what's the safe amount to lose and I sort of say, well, I don't know, I'm not an expert here, but from what I've read and understood, it depends a bit on your body weight and how much fat you're carrying, but around half a kilo a week is seems pretty safe to me. And it's funny when I tell some physiotherapist or some nutritionists that do not have a performance weight goal, they think that's crazy. Some of them do. They think that's extreme weight loss. I'm like, not really, in my opinion. That's the part of the reason I wanted to get you on is because I know that you've had a lot of success with helping people lose weight at much more rapid time constraints than that. So, yeah, it's very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I think one point on that too, Matt, which I think I think this is going into the minutiae of it, but I think if you've got an elite audience, I think. it's worth bringing up. There's another measure that we do a lot in our practice is called fat free mass index where you're essentially looking at the how much muscle mass an individual has and like say in combat sports it's really favorable because you can you making a weight class and if you can hold more muscle mass for that weight class you can obviously improve your power to weight ratio and there's a lot of specifics with that but it's a really cool index because you can still apply it for endurance sports and running right like we know that you know the fastest marathon runners in the world are generally five foot seven and around 57 kilos and they would all have a very similar fat free mass index but what we know is that you having more of that muscle mass a more favorable body composition gears this system more favorably because we know that that muscle mass is more metabolically active and if you've got a better body composition you're going to be able to one have a higher metabolism so you're not going to have to go into as great of a deficit and this whole system that we're talking about about power to weight improving how fast your body can move for a given weight is probably going to be more favorable because you've got more of that muscle machinery to help you work and so what a lot of that conversation when you get people resisting this you also have to think okay well I'm trying to say this is the most political way possible but there's an athlete build right where we're trying to optimize an athlete build but then say we get someone who comes in with say more of a high body fat composition maybe a less trained athlete maybe they don't have the training history that that you have met they're going to be at higher risk when you're trying to manipulate this weight because they don't have that protective effect of the muscle and they don't have the protective effect of being able to do a good amount of exercise as well and there's a really cool in an interesting conversation you can have when it comes to reds is when you go into this deficit is it more consequential to do it by going into the deficit by going in more of aggressive diet or by training more and if you think about that you're going to eat the same diet but if you train a lot more is that different then just going into a pretty aggressive deficit where you're not doing as much training but you're just dieting and what we know with these less trained and more untrained athletes is that they're not going to be doing the level of training that you're doing that so they're not getting the protective effects of that training they're not going to have the increase muscle mass so their metabolism isn't going to be as high and so what usually results from that is that they have to in order to get that weight loss going to more of an aggressive diet based deficit which we right now it seems to be that if you're going to do that you're more than likely to run into these problems of reds interesting yeah that's something that a lot of people think too is they often think just do more training do more movement that'll increase the calorie burn a lot more whereas it's actually a little bit harder to do that in my opinion because like you've sort of sort of already alluded to adding on an extra you know 30 to 60 minute walk for example it really doesn't burn that that many calories it's only about 250 to 300 maybe over an hour at most and it's quite easy to consume that via a snack with you sort of can eat mindlessly yeah that's just so many ways we can take this conversation I've got to be mindful of your time because you're a busy guy helping a lot of a lot of professionals at this point there's a few different things that I wanted to ask you about I think you sort of touched on it here and it's muscle I've had this conversation with a lot of people and haven't had a clear answer is losing when you're losing weight you're in a deficit you're losing fat for the most part what happens with muscle there and do you do you see yourself as being a risky endeavor to actually be losing a little bit of muscle and how does it actually work like at some point when your fat stores become or your fat percentage becomes very low does does your body then naturally start to to eat into muscle more anything around that I know I probably asked about three questions at once there but anything around the idea of losing muscle for performance I've always found interesting and never had a very clear picture of so let's let's chat about that if possible no that's really good question I know there's about three in there but that's the concept is really good and something that we don't talk about you see this a lot in practice and again I've done this for over a decade right where my whole job is to let's get as much body fat off and maintain as much muscle as possible and the thing what you see is that there is a ratio of fat mass loss to muscle mass loss so when we're losing weight we're in this deficit we've done everything right we've worked all this got all the numbers right done all the periodization your body mat is still going to say I need this much calories to perform you've only put in this much we need to make up that gap from somewhere and that's where it's going to say I need to pull it from our energy bank our energy reserves so if I've got reserves all around my body I've got glycogen that I can break down and turn that into energy to make it up I've got body fat that I can turn it into as well but I've also got muscle tissue and so what the game is for us as performance practitioners is to go okay I want to preserve that as much as possible because if we go back to your original goal you're telling me that we've got a performance based weight loss goal we know that that muscle is going to be important for that performance so let's maintain it what you will generally find is the more aggressive you go in a deficit so the more let's just use a percentage base so let's say if we're going to say 10% 20% 30% just as arbitrary numbers if you can sit closer to that 10% you're very likely going to see a loss of about 90% fat 10% muscle so all of the weight loss that you actually see it's very likely going to be in that ratio as you go up to the 20% deficit that'll generally increase to about an 80-20 if you go up to 30% 70-30 and so on and so forth what we can then do is look in that and go okay well what can we be doing to make sure that we're maintaining that muscle mass as much as possible and optimizing the physiological conditions in the body to allow it to give up preferentially the fat and the two biggest things that you can be doing is a higher protein intake and you can be resistance training so you can be giving your body the stimulus to anabolically build muscle despite being in the deficit you can still give your body those physiological stimulants so you can get those pathways going and then you go okay do we have the building blocks for them to take in not to build because we're not going to be able to build in a deficit but to prevent the losses if that makes sense so can you give your body the stimulus so that your body goes okay we just did a workout and muscles have worked they want to now regrow they want to repair now even though our body is collectively in this deficit have you put in enough protein broken down protein amino acids that's going to take them up and go yes I know we've got to come around that's coming around with the collection bucket we've got a whole chip in to make up for this deficit does muscle only then put in a little bit and it's comfortable doing that it's going to give in a lot less if you've given it a lot of those amino acids if you've given it the resistance and then the collection bucket's going to go well we still got this deficit to make up let's just go to fat they're easy to get so that's a real thing and we do that a lot with our fighters and I know that works absolutely because sometimes with the fighters other athletes as well where we have weight category athletes where they're quite lean and I assess them and you go well you don't have a lot of body fat to lose we use a strategy which is called protein sparing where we do the opposite of that where we strategically reduce their protein we change their training for a set period of time with the goal of reducing their body weight by bringing down their muscle mass so it absolutely does work and those numbers aren't completely fixed but the overall concept does run true so I'm about to say something that my trigger is something although I doubt there's that many people that will be triggered by this listening to to this point but um so 69 kilos this is almost same topic as muscle loss when I I've been to 69 kilos before and that's when I ran my fastest marathons and at the time I was very very long body fat I did not get a dexter scan so I don't have clear numbers but in images I'm very lean but I'm still carrying a lot more muscle than people running faster than me and I can tell that very clearly I you know when I was in high school I was focusing on trying to play AFL so I was doing a lot of weights and what assuming as well so I've sort of have a bit of a bigger upper body build and also on the legs as well in the next 12 months I would love to try and experiment getting down to close to 65 kilos to see how fast I can run and to also maybe discover where that line is if there is one there where it actually the performance potentially might stop you know heading in the direction of getting faster as I get lighter so the question I'm coming to here is when I get to 69 kilos I'm going to be very very long body fat seeking to the question of all the topic of muscle loss do you think at that point my best strategy would be to try and maybe think about having quite a low protein intake for that next phase where I try and get down to 65 kilos or how do you think about that next phase 69 to 65 which will probably be in the first three or four months of next year when I train for an April marathon where I'm very clearly going to have to lose some muscle and you would probably agree with that if you saw photos of me at 69 you'd be like yeah he's already like extremely lean so I'm curious to know how you would approach that because I'm going to try and do that next in the first half of next year Yeah, I think the two rules still apply intensity and duration. So So you could probably do it and you could probably do it, what we would say metabolically safely, if you give yourself the right amount of duration to do so. What we also need to appreciate is body fat is important, right? Like it serves a very, very important role in our body. It stores vitamin, minerals, it provides a backbone for a lot of hormones, in a particularly cholesterol-based hormones like steroids like testosterone. So that's important, right? And you think as that body fat is coming down, there is going to be a metabolic consequence for being too low. And just as I explained before, if we're losing body fat with the goal, we can manipulate our diet and we can manipulate the intensity of that calorie deficit so we can draw more body fat to get muscle mass. At some point, if we only have a small amount of body fat, that collection bucket comes around, your body is going to go, no, I don't want to give up that body fat, we don't have a lot. Where's it going to go? It's going to go, do we have glycogen around, okay? We can rip that, but there's not that many calories sitting around in that. Where's the next place? We're going to look. It's going to be your muscle. So at some point, if you're getting really lean, even if you're in a deficit, you're not going to have much of a choice because your body is going to start taking it from that muscle as well. So I think that's important to realize, and where I think this gets quite complicated, I suppose, is that you really need a dialy, and I guess it comes back to that point of difference, Matt, where we're talking about the first point, the degrees of difference. So the things that you would have to do in order to get from 69 to 65, which is really in an attempt to shave a minute or two off of your time, for you to be able to do that and be metabolically healthy because you're already very low body fat. You've probably got quite a high training load, so there's a lot of external stress that your body is dealing with. If we think about that intensity and duration, you would very likely have to dial down the intensity of that deficit, but then give yourself a higher duration. Whereas, if say, again, the untrained person came to you, Matt, let's say we've got, I don't know, Matt, just who just left school, loved eating burgers and party, and you're doing whatever, and you come, and you're quite heavy, and you're 35%, 40% body fat, and you come to me, and you go, hey, Jordy, I want to lose, what are we going, five kilos here? We could do that very quickly. The intensity could be quite high, and the duration could be quite short, and you wouldn't see much metabolic consequence, but because you're sitting so far down there where your natural state already, Matt, is very low body fat, you've already got a lot of muscle mass, you've got a high training load, you're going to have to vary that. So I would expect that that period getting down there would take a lot longer than what it would take you going from 74 to 69, if that makes sense. Makes complete sense, and I really appreciate your expertise there, because it's something that gets bought up in conversation around my friends quite a lot, and no one really knows what they're talking about, so yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, I'm keen to stay in touch about that, because you said one to two minutes, improvement from 69 to 65, if the math checks out the same way as 74 to 69, it'll probably be close in five minutes, I think, for me, it's quite significant, yeah, the 1kg loss for me tends to be quite a significant jump. Another question that, or a topic that comes up a lot in this space is people often think it's probably safer to lose these chunks of weight, which we're talking about, not in the period, the specific training period, which for a marathon, as you know, tends to be in sort of that last eights, ten weeks, so a lot of people sort of say, "Oh, you should probably lose it before you start the marathon block," and then sort of maintain. I argue against that, I've often just lost the weight all the way through until pretty much the week before the marathon, but let's talk more about timing in terms of periodization when it comes relating to the actual marathon block itself, and another part of that would be when do you stop focusing on that weight loss? Is that just before the car blow two, three days out, but how do you view that? Because you've worked with a lot of endurance athletes yourself and helped them lose weight to perform with their best, so let's talk more about the timing of that loss when it comes to the actual, how far are you from the race? I'll talk about this from one perspective, which I think is the most relevant to be honest, Matt. And again, a lot of people will say you shouldn't do it, you can't do it, you're going to get increased risk of injury, blah, blah, blah, all of those extra things, but I've done that professionally for 10 years with my fighters, and the only time we will lose weight is going through that period right before they compete, that sort of fight camp is. And we saw, like I mentioned in that study, we've got studies showing that you can do that and you can do it safely without the metabolic disturbances and still get a really good performance if done correctly. And that's again, comes back to the intensity and the duration of that deficit. Are you able to appreciate the within daily energy availability and do as you said, can you periodize this so you're maintaining the quality of those sessions? And when we talk about maintaining the quality of the sessions, I think what other two things need to think about, can you do the session for the intensity that your coach requires? And then the duration, do you have enough fuel on board to be able to achieve those two things? Because that's what's going to give you the adaptation. They're all very important. But what I think is the most important thing, Matt, that we do not talk about enough, especially in endurance sports, is training status. Because a lot of people will come and they'll say, oh no, don't go in and don't do that weight loss block while you're getting ready for this. But they would maybe ran a 5K, a 10K, getting ready for their first marathon. And durability as an athlete, you would know, you develop that over time. You absolutely develop that. And if I were to say to you, Matt, if I said, okay, Matt, what is the most important thing about running a sub three hour marathon, what would you tell me? The most important thing in the training. What is the most important thing? If I say, Matt, I want to run a sub three hour marathon and I've got to really focus on one thing. What would you tell me to do? Oh, there's a lot of questions that fire at you. But I think the first thing, in my opinion, would be, can you run a 5K at 345 per kilometer because you're going to need to be able to do that in order to hold a 415 pace for a full marathon. That's one answer. But another one would be general training volume is going to be key, right? So one of those two would be my best answer. Yeah. And let's break that down again, unless you just use the same topic and the same principle we've run through this whole podcast. If I have to run and maintain a 345, that's a certain intensity that I have to be able to maintain. And then you're saying you also have to have to be able to run a certain volume. So if you break that down and you just go, OK, physiologically, what does that mean? Metabolically, what does that mean? And we don't need to go into all the exercise science and break down, you know, mitochondrial biogenesis. All these things and oxidative processes. But for me to be able to run a 345 for that time period, there's a lot of training in cardiovascular adaptations, training adaptations that has to occur for my body to be able to do that. There is also a lot of adaptations, say within my muscles, within my joints. To be able to allow me to just do the amount of steps required to be out there and run for 3 hours. Yes. So then the question goes, where does nutrition fit with that? And nutrition comes in and it fits. It's, OK, if my goal is that, then Matt, you're going to say, OK, Jordy, that's probably a 2-year goal that you need to be able to do that. And I go, OK, that means I need to train for 2 years. That means that I need to eat in a way that every time I turn up to a session and coach Matt has programmed this session, I can do what I said earlier, I can do the intensity of the session and the duration of the session as he's programmed. And then I can do that week to week over a set period of time so my body can then adapt, which will give me the adaptations required to run 345. And it will also allow my body to develop the durability and the resistance to be able to be out on my feet, my joints, to be able to handle that. Yeah. So that is really what the key role of what our nutrition is playing here. And I'll come back to this same point that I spoke about earlier and it comes back to this training status. If you're coming to me, Matt, and saying, hey, I want to go down from 74 to 69. I go, OK, Matt, what's your training history? That's the first thing I think. And you go, I'm very well trained, I'm running, you know, 220, I think I go, wow, like subalit, you're good, like you're there, you've probably got a decade, probably two decades of training with you. But then say, someone comes to you, Matt, and goes, this is my first time running a marathon. I've done one or two half marathons I've been running for a year, 18 months. That is then we go, do we have enough time to develop that intensity and the volume for that body to be able to handle that? It's the exact same when it comes to, OK, Matt, can you handle a weight loss period? During that intense training block, versus the untrained person? And what it comes down to is that that untrained person doesn't have the durability or the adaptations one, to keep up with that level of training. And we often will say, oh, no, it's because they were dieting, that's why they got injured. Where I sit back and go, a lot of the time, I don't think it is. I think that a lot of the time, less trained athletes usually think they're a lot better than what they are. And that's no disrespect. Like that to me, I try all different new sports, but it's very, very important you understand where you actually are. Did you really get injured because you were. In a deficit that made you lose half a percent of your body weight, or was it that you've only been running for a year, two years, and you've tried to do the same workout at the same intensity as Matt who's been training for 20 years where you don't have the adaptations, you don't have the durability within your body, so what really caused the injury? Can you give me wrong, nutrition can absolutely set you up and go, okay, you're not recovering properly? More often than not though, when you see this, a lot of this conversation of, I can't, don't lose weight during this training block getting ready for your amount, is not really a question of, was the diet wrong, because we know that you can set your diet up to do that properly. I've done it professionally for 10 years, Matt, you've done it, I've bet you've seen many of your elite athletes, I've done it with athletes in the Tour de France, I've done it with F1 athletes, I've done it with MotoGP athletes, we can do it and not have any problems, we don't get injured, we don't get sick, we don't have to pull out, but that's because they're very well trained athletes, they're training status is very high. So more often than not, I don't necessarily think it's the diet per se, that's the problem, it's usually biting off a bit more than what we can chew, when it comes to training status, and I think endurance sports more than anything, and you could probably attest to this more than me, I'm probably more respected than you. It's probably because there's so many coaches, maybe writing plans and promising people, and on social media they see someone say, "Oh, I saw this guy run 100k's, I did a 10k park run or whatever, I'm going to jump in and do 100k's." So it's like, that's kind of where I sit with it Matt, it's like, "Yeah, it's easy to blame the diet and say that it was reds and do that, but really if you dive into it, were you training appropriately for your training status?" And more often than not, that comes out, no, you weren't. Good point, yeah, I think it's something that a lot of people don't fully step back and think about that much. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic, it's something that I'll never, I wish I wanted to learn much more about, because when I started to put out a little bit of content a couple of months ago, actually maybe you really even in the last month, it was by far the most popular podcasts I've put out. And I even had quite a few very elite runners out of 2009, going from the States, I had one of Australia's fastest marathoners on the female side, reached out, and asked more about the strategy that I'm using. And yeah, it's just something that, I feel like you've really put a lot of content relating to UFC and fighting, and I'm really trying to maybe be a bit of a point of reference in the endurance space, because I've very clearly seen it in myself and many athletes that I've coached, where they'll just focus on losing that five to seven percent of their body weight, which in most cases that's only really three to four kilos. And they'll see a pretty big bump in performance, and yeah, I've not really seen anyone get injured either. And these are mostly people that are, like you just pointed out, people that have been training for quite a while and have a pretty good training status. So, I've yet to really see anyone go run with it. And I think the main reason why that is is because I'm very adamant about making sure that you are consuming plenty of carbs, carbohydrates just before the workouts, and especially during. So if you could talk a little bit more about that specifically about how, you know, really took thinking about, you've got a long run coming up on Sunday morning, it's 35k, it's something very specific to the marathon. How do you coach people through making sure that they are properly fueled for that, because you spoke a bit about this on the podcast with Andy Galpin. And you sort of mentioned that there was a, I'll let you take over in a second, but there's sort of like the hours where you're, I think it's like three to 12 hours out, it's sort of a little bit higher carbs, and then it sort of shortens. But it'd be good to hear more about that specific window of time when it comes to making sure you're fueled for the actual workouts, and then also during the workout as well. Yeah, I'm going to break this into two parts, and nutritionists are not going to like it, because they never like it when I say what I'm about to say, but that's a run. And I know I'm sounding very anti-nutrition, but I'm not like I obviously make around multiple businesses all based around nutrition, and I think nutrition is very powerful, but I think you need to, to be able to utilize nutrition to make it powerful, you need to truly understand what it actually does and what it does not do. So I'll put this theoretical situation for you, Matt, and you give me an answer, and hopefully we can make this point, and then I'll answer the question on what should you eat before and then during. So let's say we're doing your 35k run on a Sunday Sunday, whatever it is. Let's say, Matt, let's say that you and I are going out, so Matt, you're a very well trained athlete, very, very well trained runner as well. So I'm a very mid-level ultra runner, much better combat sport athlete, been training to NAT for 2025 years. Let's say we rock up, and we say, let's meet, I don't know where you live, Matt, let's just say you're in Sydney, we're going to meet near the bridge somewhere, and we're going to run for 35k. And I say, okay, Matt, I'll do that with you, but we're going to race, and whoever wins gets bragging rights, here's the conditions of the race. And we go, Matt, because you're so much better of a runner than me, is you're not allowed to eat. You have to go into that faster, and you can't do it. You're going to have water, but you can't have any fuel. Me, I get to carb load the day before, I then get to eat during it, and I get to wake up and have a pre-run breakfast. It's winter, it's cool, it's about 11 to 12 degrees, humidity's very low, we rock up there at 6am, you and I set off, Matt, and we go on our 35k run, who's winning? I think it's going to be, you know, it depends on the difference in the actual difference in the performance to begin with, that I'd say that you have a better chance, especially 35k. Well, let's say, let's say, Matt, that I'm not a runner, I want to do two guys that just rocked up, and I've never done it. Well, it's almost certainly going to be me then, because I'll be able to operate at a much lower intensity utilizing sort of probably fat stores from just historically, and I would say I'd be winning. Okay, let's say now that I am the ultra-runner, but I'm a very mid-level ultra-runner, like I'm not running faster than 7-8 minute-case, who's winning? I probably say it's still me. Exactly, and that's the right answer, you're going to win every day of the week, and it's not because you don't have the fuel on you, it's because, metabolically, you were just so much more developed to do that activity. And this becomes even more pronounced if you bring it down to a 20k, half marathon, or a 10k, or a 5k, even at the marathon. And you see this all the time, and I say this because a lot of the ultra-indurance athletes I work with, we're doing 100 miles, 200 miles, 250 miles. Like, very, very long duration events, and we've got UTMB coming up, and it's a whole different conversation running 100 miles in 14 to 16 hours is absolutely crazy. But like you think about that through a terrain, like chamomile, where you're going up and down, it's an insane workload on the body. So not only do they have to be physically adapted and so fit to that, they then have to be able to fuel that because their engine can quite literally crank up to fourth and fifth gear for 14 to 15 hours, and they can do that. So when we break it down and we go, okay, a 35k run, like if we're doing that, say, Matt, at your pace, like, say even if you're not fueled, would you be confident you could get that in sub four hours? But yeah, yeah, big time, because you're well trained, and it doesn't really matter that you're fueled or not. Will it matter for your recovery afterwards? Could you have gone faster? Yes, of course. But for your actual performance, and you being able to do that activity, it's much more reliant on the training that you're doing, and that's where nutrition becomes really important. And we come back to the point of me going, okay, if I want to run a sub three hour marathon, you're saying you need to do 345, you need to be able to do 120k a week. So, okay, the role of nutrition in this particular situation is not necessarily to make sure that I have all the fuel to be able to do these sessions. It's to make sure that I can turn up to the session, I can do the intensity coach map once, I can do the duration, and I can recover from it, and I can get back and do the session and repeat that, but then do it over this set duration of time. Over time, I can develop and adapt as an athlete to be someone who can run a sub three hour marathon. So, then when it comes back to this question, and I like to preference it with that when it comes to, well, what are we having on our 35k run? We go, okay, well, what's the goal? Because Matt, if we're just doing it, and we're just doing, I don't know, shits and gigs, and it doesn't mean anything, like it's fine. You can kind of have whatever you want. You could have a beer at 10k, you could go have a pizza, a burger. If you're not training with a specific goal in mind to hit a specific intensity or duration, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. It's just when we have this specific performance-based goal, where it starts to matter, and we've got to rock up to training every single day. Which then goes, okay, then you go say, okay, Jordy, let's say you're trying to run this three hour marathon, you're trying to adapt and perform. I go, okay, that's where it gets more interesting, because I know, and we know from studies, say this 35k, you're going, hey, this is a, you want to simulate racepaces as close as you can. We know to do that, that we're going to be operating in a point where our body metabolically is going to be burning more carbohydrates. if we're going be burning more carbohydrates it makes sense then that our muscle glycogen is topped up so that we can start using that fuel reserves. We're going to rip through our liver glycogen that's going to keep our blood sugars up and we know that during that session we need to keep fueling not only just our muscles but we need to top up that blood sugar because more and more we're seeing in the research that this real crash is hitting the wall isn't necessarily a drop in this muscle glycogen. It's very likely to drop in blood sugar hence why if we can keep exogenous carbs coming in from gels we can mentally feel a lot better. That is what is going to allow me then if you say hey Jordy I need you to do 10k's at 4 minute pace and then the next 10k's you're going to do 420 and then you're going to do 5k's at 340 and then you're going to do the last 2 at 6 minute as a recovery. That's where I can say okay for me to do that and be able to hit those splits and do those numbers it makes sense that I come in fueled up. Will me being fueled up and just having that fuel on mean that I can hit those paces not necessarily I have to be able to be fit enough to be able to hit them but what having that fuel in my tank will do is give me the best chance where I'm at now metabolically from a physical adaptation standpoint to be able to hit them and so then we finish the session and you say hey great work Jordy that was Sunday I need you back in the gym on Monday I go okay I need to optimize my recovery because that wants me back in the gym he wants me back in so then what do I need to do I know that protein is important I've got to get protein in I need know the first four hours when I'm eating we know there's very cool glycogen studies there's even studies very few studies in fighting when we look at reloading fighters after a weigh-in that first zero to four hours particularly hours zero one and two are so important and you get a much more faster uptake of that muscle glycogen we see it rapidly go up and then it slides down so if you're saying Jordy I need you back in the gym on Monday dude I'm going well soon as I finish that I'm my legs are staffed I'm poop but he wants me back in that first two hours I need to make sure I'm getting a good amount of carbohydrates and I'm going to add some protein to upregulate in that four hours I'm really being mindful and then I'm making sure okay well what does Matt want me doing in on Monday do I then need to then consider do I need really high glycogen levels do they just need to be here what am I doing overall am I meant to be in a deficit so what is my overall calorie intake look like for that day so it's a bit more nuance than just going okay go take this gel go around the 35k's if you have a really solid performance base girl but like I said earlier if you don't if she's going out and running really doesn't matter go have a pizza go have whatever don't have anything it doesn't really matter yeah the other thing I've I've really understood too and this is probably very simple do you probably one of the first things you learned is if you get around 35k you're going to jog or just run very easy that's quite different obviously but specifically when it comes to nutrition to doing it at like close to your LT1 or especially LT2 threshold are doing a 35k run even faster if you do it quite slow it's probably going to be fine if you take in almost no fuel and even I'm not saying that's a good idea I'm just saying that you'll be able to complete it you know in probably without a problem especially if you're well trained but it's quite a different ballgame if you're if you're coming close to that marathon effort or you know threshold it's you're drawing on the body's trying to draw on carbohydrates a lot more for energy at that sort of intensity and I think that's something that a lot of people learn the hard way but still don't fully fully understand yeah is it really cool thing meant that I do just as a practice point where we say like usually if I'll give a talk about this and I'll say okay how many of you guys if you're going out for a 20k run or whatever don't eat any carbohydrates and most people don't put out the hand you go okay and you go why and you go it's mostly fat burning you go okay fine okay I can somewhat see this logic and then you go but let's break it down and let's figure out where is this fat burning zone and you can do it and you can work this out and if you go okay well if we appreciate that there's this curve that we know that you know we start burning fat a lot when we're at rest you and I are just sitting here having a yarn we're going to be burning mostly fat but as our intensity of exercise increases we're going to be relying more on that glycolidic that carbohydrate pathway we're going to be using that more and more purely because it's just more efficient it just gets us oxygen gets us ATP from oxygen so our energy molecules just gets us that just a bit faster than what fat does so as we increase that that that intensity we're going to be relying on that pathway more and more to keep up with our energy demands where we think that crossover point is is roughly you know roughly about like we can work this out where it's say you're resting what you're resting by the way resting yeah resting all right yeah it's in the mid mid-dive 40s yeah 47 usually yeah okay let's let's use a round number let's say 50 where this crossover point is we know at about 60% of that 60 to 65% of that intensity is when we're going to move in where we're predominantly using carbohydrates we're still going to be using that fat but after about 60 to 65% your body makes the decision to go okay this other pathway gets us the energy faster so it just makes more sense it's more efficient to use that pathway doesn't mean this is gone just means this is more efficient and so that's after 60 65% so you can do the mass unless let's just use it because I know the numbers off my head so if you're someone who has a heart rate of 60 beats per minute that's your resting heart rate your top is about 180 that's your top end red zone if you took 60 to 65% of that you're going to land around 141 45 beats per minute and if you get a lot of people just to pull out their straver and go well check your zone too round like what was your heart rate usually most of them are going to be sitting around there so you go okay for you guys you're actually at the point where your body is wanting to predominantly use carbohydrate so you go okay for those sessions even though that that was a relatively like your your pace might have been six minutes seven minute per K your heart rate and what we're saying by that intensity is that your body wants to be using carbide it's going to be more efficient so that's where we can go back and go okay for you guys you need to still be getting in carbohydrate but what this gets a bit more nuanced when we talk about like your same now when we get up to that LT one LT2 the way that that carbohydrate curve works is that as you go up closer you're rapidly burning more and more carbohydrates so for you Matt once you get up there you might be burning a lot more carbohydrates than that person for that same run so they go out there doing six minute pace or whatever you go out and you're doing you know three minute three minute pace you're going out but your system is so efficient and so much more developed you're just rinsing through carbohydrates because your intensity relatively again and that comes back to your ability in your training status to be able to push your body up there which comes back to this point of tady already you want me Matt coach Matt wants me doing three forty five minute being able to hold that pace over this duration that training effect the training that you've done that has allowed you to be able to do that which means you're fueling needs to represent that as well you're fueling needs to be tailored for that so you're going you're fueling needs like you said running at AT1 like is going to be very very different to someone just going out and doing you know a slow and low run that doesn't diminish that they need to fuel like they don't have to they probably don't have to they can get through it but they still need to fuel and you still need to put in the right amount it's just very individualized I think this is an important point I bring up with a lot of runners because we're seeing this in the research a lot more now Matt where you know how we give out these blanket recommendations for fueling where we go 60 to 90 and then you have the higher like 120 like it kind of doesn't really apply to much anywhere else in physiology and I get it with like the pathways and how it absorbs these carbohydrates but we're seeing now like there's a lot of good research coming out you know Jamie Pugh and his lab from Liverpool John Mors I think Jamie's moved on to precision now but they've done some really cool research where they can track and they see no you know what Matt you have an individual carbohydrate oxidation rate I have an individual carbohydrate oxidation rate and there's a number of steps that actually influence how our body can use those carbohydrates so even though we all appreciate this nice little theory of this crossover where after 60 65% we're going to use predominantly carbohydrates the question then goes okay well what about Matt he's really well trained how much does he use compared to me I'm not as well trained and there's tests that you can go out now and they're seeing that there's a huge variance and we see this in practice like some of our ultra endurance athletes are winning some of the biggest races in the world doing 50 grams of carbs per hour and the way that that works is two components of can that carbohydrate can you put it in your mouth can you go down can you get it into your gut get it into your gut get it across that wall get it to your muscles that's one component of it but then can you actually oxidize it can you actually use it you know 100% oxidation rate that means that you're using most of it and if your number Matt say you your body is optimal for 50 grams but then you're all putting in 100 that means that you're only oxidizing 50% of it And then you're gonna have 50 grams left over in your Graster on Testinor tract and what's gonna happen then in another spoof or you're gonna crap your pants. And this is something you see all the time, you see it in practice where people try to ramp their carbs up and then they get all these issues and go, it's only 60 grams or it's only 75 grams it's not that much. And this probably explains why we all kind of have our own individual oxidation rates and then our optimal like absolute use of the amount that we can actually absorb and use. So all of that to say Matt, I guess a very safe way to start is one, appreciate okay. Training is the most important thing. You training is the most important thing. You don't have to hyper fixate on so much on pre, durian after until you get to a point where you're going to be training consecutively across the week in a block. And when I say that, it's like, okay, if you're training Monday, Wednesday, Friday and you're just doing like a casual run, don't hyper obsess on it, like think about your diet outside. You're gonna spend a lot of money on jails that you probably don't need, like don't do it. But once you do and you sign up with you and you start doing this right, you need to think about it a bit more. What's the intensity of this session, what's the duration and what do I have coming up? So where am I starting with my muscle glycogen? Do I have enough to get through this session, did I get through this session? Once I'm finished, how am I topping that back up and then during, okay, you need to play around what works, some guys, and you'd see it, Matt, like with your elite sub elite marathon guys, they're not having a crazy amount of jails, like some guys can have a very small amount and still be very good where other guys need to get that in because the way that they're thornous burns is they need to get those carbohydrates in. They need to get 120 grams per hour. But maybe for another sub elite guy, that's not their number. It's actually 60, even though they can both do a very, very competitive pace. But it's a lot more individualized than what a lot of people give it credit for is what that rant is ultimately coming down to say. And do you think there's a strong correlation between the person's body weight or BMI even and how much carbohydrates they might need or not really? It's funny, the research that has come out says no because there's interesting research saying that one of the examples that they use at this conference, at least was there was a 100 kilo athlete that you would think, oh, they'd need so much carbohydrates, but they only needed say 50. And then another, this is a more of a back of the pack runner that was about 50. They were efficiently oxidizing upwards of 100 grams. And again, this does come into gut training, you know, training status, like even when we're talking about muscles coming in, how developed your muscles are at being able to use that fuel. That's all going to play into it. And it just kind of makes us rethink this really blanket term that we've used for years or it's like, hey, you have 60 to 90 grams and you'll be good. You probably will. It's like a big blanket now for extending that from 60 to 120. That's an even broader range. Probably right. You will fit somewhere in there. But if you're someone who performs best and your body is going to work on 60 grams, if you try to push that to 120, you're going to have a really bad time. And it's not going to make a lot of sense because everyone's telling you 120 is best. So that's the gut's not trained, you've got to stick at it, you've got to keep your eye on it. It's like, no, you're just going to spend a very long time pooping and spewing up when really you should dial it back. Yeah. How should people understand what that rate is? It sounds like it can be trained and you can potentially push that limit up. But is that just a trial and error process that you have to sort of keep working on? Or is there a more efficient way of learning that? It is a commercial test that I'm not sure if it's coming out, it's coming out of the UK that you can come and they'll send you a pack and you can exercise. You have a glucose drink and then you can breathe into this pack, send it back to lap and they'll tell you. But obviously that's not accessible to everyone. And really, this is the same as the calories conversation, right? It's trial and error. If you're one of those people that you're constantly seeing problems after 90 grams, despite training your gut, quote unquote, doing all the right things, maybe that's because your body is better suited to say 75 or 70. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the bits of information there. It's these conversations come of all the time. So it's great to have someone with so much experience, be able to give them answers. And the next one good one that I hear from time to time, it's someone worried about losing weight and getting injured, how do you recommend supporting bone health if at all? Is it something that you think about? Is there a certain amount of calcium people should consume? I've never thought about that personally when I've been doing lots of weight loss, which I've done quite a few times, but do you consider calcium or anything specific when it comes to reducing the risk of a bone stress injury while losing weight pretty quickly? Yeah. I think that, like with most micronutrients, if you're eating a fairly sensible diet with, which if you're signing up to get a coach and you're paying a coach and you're willing to train, you're probably eating a fairly sensible diet. You're going to be covering most of your micronutrients. I can't say that I've ever programmed someone and gone, hey, you're at high risk of this. We need to up your calcium scores. We do decks at all of our athletes and we get them to get that bone mineral density test. The most protective thing and the thing that's going to develop your bones is weight bearing exercise. Like diet absolutely plays a role for sure, but weight bearing exercise is going to do the most good, but it can also do the most harm, right? As you know, increasing that mileage too fast and just putting too much pressure and stress through those bones. I mean, how healthy they are, like we spoke about. If you increase that intensity over a very short duration of time, you're going to have problems. It's the same. It's not just for your bones, it's for your joints, it's for your muscles, it's for anything. So that's absolutely a case. I wouldn't say that I've personally gone out and prescribed calcium with any of our athletes because I've noticed it, but they're all coming in again. We're working with pretty high-level guys who have that good level of training history. It may be very different as to say, maybe you've got a history of a disorder eating, eating disorder, you're a chronic dieter, you're under weight. You maybe don't have a very good diet and you're not getting that micronutrient intake through a good variety of foods, yeah, maybe potentially if that's been a chronic problem and you go get a dexer and your bone, when your density is down, then yeah, you need to be doing everything. You can. You need to be doing weight bearing exercise. You need to be eating not in the deficit and you probably need to be looking. How can you get your calcium, you know, you vitamin D, you know, like vitamin K, how can you get all of those things up to help optimize that problem? Yeah. Cool. Well, the last five minutes or so of your time, I'd like to talk specifically about, we haven't really talked about foods specifically. So I'd love for you to share, and this is very hard as a high-level question. I know that's probably a whole other podcast in itself, but what are some of the main sources of carbohydrates that you find most efficient and beneficial for people when it comes to fuelings specifically for an event? I personally think white rice is a standout for me. I know this is going to be a bit individual and some people will prefer this and some will prefer that, but I'd love to, you to speak to that. And then also the, when you're trying to cut pretty aggressively and maybe you have two or three easy days, what are the sorts of foods that you would be mostly recommending for people to have when they're aiming to keep a relatively decent amount of energy, sort of like a level, but very clearly trying to lose weight. So that'll be probably I assume foods that are pretty low in calories are pretty heavy. Like, what are some of the favourites that stand out to you in the 10 plus years you've been working with athletes? Yeah. In the running world, you really tear people in half with this conveyor right, because I guess there's whole like whole foods and the process foods conversation, which I think I could probably add a different perspective on that. But just to answer this question first, you're like, you're bang on right, like around those training, you really want that simple carbohydrate, what I really, what I really think and we use a lot with our athletes is simple carbohydrates, like your white rice, but you really need to be mindful of that fibre content because that will slow down your gut. We know that from cutting weight with our athletes, like that will really give you some gut issues if you're having too much fibre around those sessions and making sure that you're getting enough of it in as well. So if you're training like I spoke about before, if you've got that big session and you know you're doing another session afterwards, what you do beforehand is going to be a lot more important than what you're doing during, so making sure that instead of just having half a bowl of white rice, making sure you're getting a big bowl or a bowl and a half in. So, I mean white rice, white bread, sweet potato, all good things. Most natural fruit, I really like honey, is a really good one. The other component of that is the volume size of it, so like obviously you can, like everyone can imagine, like if you've got a bowl of potatoes, it's great if you're on a weight loss because you get a good amount of carbohydrates, not that many calories and it's good volume right? If you feel quite full, but right before a workout it may not be ideal and that's where you can get, you know, you can get things like honey and syrups and you can, you know, make really, really dense calorie foods for lower gram weight, so that's obviously less physical weight that's, you're going through your body, that your body has to prosper, you're getting the maximal amount of energy coming out for that. So if we're looking, you know, and that's going to be simple thing, you know, if you're making, like homemade pancakes for example, you make homemade pancakes, you can put banana in there, mash it up, you can put some chopped chips in there and then you can get some, you know, maple syrup and you can put that on top and you're probably getting upwards of 120 grams of carbs or a very small meal, like another one that we've used, we say our fighters that are going to fight and a lot of the time they'll have to weigh in and then compete 30 minutes after but they'll have to cut weight, we use a, what's called like a low volume low residue diet in the 24 hours prior, but say simple things like getting three full macarons, which probably have negative gravity of they're that light, they're so small, but you have them and it's you know 200 grams of carbohydrates just there for what maybe 100 grams of weight. So those type of things around a workout can be very, very useful, rice cakes, you know adding a little bit of fruit. I guess where the combo gets really interesting I find and I'm sure maybe Matt you could throw in your thoughts too is you know the process food versus the whole foods and you know I can have like nerd candies and jelly beans and all these around my workouts because I'm going to burn them and you absolutely will like you absolutely will burn that energy and I think that's like I'm disputed you can do that. I think where I sit with that is a little different because I've had the luxury of being able to watch elite level athletes from a very high part of their career and then see what happens once they come to the back end of their career and retire and I was in a position a few years ago Matt where I was looking after out of the top five say UFC fighters on planet earth pound for pound I was looking after three of them and it was very interesting watching how their careers kind of unfolded and years later what happened I guess injury rates you know illness just overall health once they retired because we've got to the back end of their career because the thing we don't appreciate is that those eating habits that you develop when you're an athlete you're stuck with when you're retiring and we know that exercise has a real protective effect and it's fine when we can train 15 20 hours a week because you have a real protective effect of exercise but once we get a bit older which will happen I know that none of us want to think about that it will but it will happen you will get to a point where you can't do that much exercise and if you don't have eating habits that align with a lower energy output it's really problematic and we see that a lot with retired athletes where they put on a lot of weight chronic disease really goes up because they spent 10 15 20 years developing these eating habits choosing certain foods that were okay when you were training 15 20 hours because you just it was a furnace it was burning you needed a chuck fuel in there so you could get away with it when that furnace and that fire comes down probably can't get away with that as much so as much as I do appreciate hey Matt you can go have jelly beans and nerd clusters and they're great sources of energy I do like to put it in perspective and go hey let's maybe think about this on a really whole foods base approach can you use whole foods in order to fuel these sessions where possible if not if we need to go grab some you know packet snakes and you know some sour colors or whatever like it's it's very economic for sure but we need to make sure as nutrition professional we're treating we're teaching our client how to eat not just for performance but for longevity and that's something that I've been pretty pretty passionate about the last couple years maybe it's just me getting older and Sora but mostly seeing like my clients when okay this guy did that really well and he's he's absolutely flying in retirement he's crushing it whereas another guy that didn't do that as well and well that's that's problematic and so there's that my fault because I didn't teach him this and I just told him yeah you can just eat that whenever you want so that's the only caveat I'll put you can put all sorts of foods I would say try to do whole foods as much as you can like you said Matt but you can absolutely use the more processed foods at great load five or high sugar they're very low volume you get a good amount of carbohydrates I just think think about the eating habits that you're developing now and what that's going to do in years down the track when you peel back the protective curtain of exercise yeah it's a great way to finish off Jordi I really appreciate your time I feel like I could make this a few hours but I'm not going to do that what the links to your Instagram and your website will be in the description but I know many people are running listening to this so be good to hear more about where you share your updates and where you're available to contact my people are interested in learning more yeah Instagram is probably where we're most active so that's the underscore fight dietician you can do the website the fight dietician dot com or you can just shoot us an email at info at the fight dietician dot com perfect once again yeah I really appreciate your time Jordi always learning and yeah thanks a lot for your content as well I've learned a lot through listening to your podcast with Andy Galpin and a couple more online as well yeah appreciate thanks for having me Matt it's great chat