Peores Dietas en Deportistas, Proteína, Ayuno y Más, con Francis Holway

¿Cuáles son las peores dietas para deportistas? ¿Cuánta proteína y carbohidrato necesitas? ¿Es bueno entrenar en ayunas? ¿Qué suplementos son más útiles? ¿Qué cambios debemos hacer después de los 40 o los 50 años? De esto, y mucho más, hablo con el invitado de hoy, Francis Hallway, un pionero en el campo de la nutrición deportiva, referente mundial en antropometría, ex nutricionista de River y de diferentes equipos de la NFL, asesor del Comité Olímpico Internacional y del Comité Olímpico de Estados Unidos. Francis es una de las personas que más tiempo lleva trabajando la nutrición deportiva al más alto nivel, pero la mayoría de lo que comentaremos hoy es aplicable a cualquier deportista, tanto si es amateur o simplemente recreativo. Pero antes de pasar a la entrevista, déjame hacer un recordatorio rápido de los patucinadores de este podcast, que son Weebotanics y Coffee Cafe. Weebotanics empezó fabricando aceite de CBD de calidad, pero actualmente ofrece muchos productos adicionales para salud femenina, para longevidad, como nag y precursores de nag de los que he hablado en episodios anteriores, o tienen también un triple magnesio que parece que es el suplemento de moda y está bastante justificado. Más allá de los beneficios conocidos, un estudio reciente en más de 6.000 adultos concluyó que una mayor ingesta de magnesio se asocia con mayor volumen cerebral y menor daño en la materia blanca, dos marcadores clave del envejecimiento cerebral. Las personas que consumían unos 550 miligramos diarios respecto a 350 tenían un cerebro que parecía un año más joven. En estudios animales el magnesio reduce la pérdida sináptica, la inflamación y la acumulación de placas amyloides. Lo importante, por supuesto, es priorizar el magnesio en los alimentos y lo encontramos en verduras de hoja verde, frutos secos, semillas, legumbres, chocolate muy negro, etc. Pero la realidad es que la mayoría de personas no llegan a ese nivel de 500 miligramos al día y un suplemento como el de Weebotanics podría ayudar. Y Coffee Cafe, por su parte, ofrece cafés de especialidad de distintas partes del mundo y desde hace poco también ofrece una selección de infusiones de calidad. Y hablando de estudios, en los últimos meses se han publicado dos interesantes, uno en 46 mil adultos que siguió a los participantes durante más de 9 años y encontró lo que la mayoría de estudios anteriores, que el consumo de 2 o 3 tazas al día de café se asocia con menos mortalidad, pero en las personas que añadían azúcar este beneficio se reducía. Como siempre digo, el café es saludable siempre que no lo convirtamos en un postre. Y el otro estudio, también de este año, es en realidad un metaanálisis de 14 estudios en 25 mil personas y concluye que el consumo de café se asocia con riesgos un 30% menores de cánceres de cabeza y de cuello, y también se observó beneficio en el caso de café descafeinado. Podéis echar un vistazo a los productos en sus webs Weebotanics.com y PaleoBull.com del etreo. Weebotanics es W-E-B-O-T-A-N-I-X y Coffee Cafe es KOF-I-C-A-F-E. En ambos casos tendréis un 10% de descuento en todas las compras con el código FR10. Y ahora sí, damos la bienvenida a Francis Hallway. Bienvenido al podcast Francis, ¿cómo estás? Bien, muy bien, muchas gracias Marcos por esta invitación. Al revés, gracias por el tiempo, es un placer charrar contigo, como te decía antes de empezar a grabar, pocas personas tienen una trayectoria como una tuya en general y sobre todo en nutrición deportiva, es algo que lleva 10-15 años de moda, pero cuando tú empezaste a hacer algo muy poco común, eres un pionero y por eso mi primera pregunta va por ahí, ¿no? Por saber cómo fue tu camino hasta convertirte en nutricionista deportivo y si hubo un momento decisivo en tu vida que te hizo elegir este camino. Uff, yo creo que es algo innato que tuve desde chico, yo recuerdo aprender a leer y escribir y leer el rótulo de todos los alimentos, preguntarle a mi mamá sobre los alimentos, mi ídolo, mi ídolo era Tarzan, yo quería ser como Tarzan y como ya los 7 años me acuerdo preguntarle a mi madre y a mi padre qué podía hacer para subir de músculo, ella no sabía que contestarme, me dijo comer avena, entonces yo ponía avena en un plato, comía, flexionaba para ver si había crecido, ese fue el primer estudio científico y sí, ya estaba fascinado con ese tema, pero cuando llegó el momento de los estudios, los estudios universitarios no existía la carrera de nutrición, era Home Economics en Estados Unidos que era economía hogareña, la nutrición deportiva no existía más allá de lo que sabía algún físico culturista con sus desinformaciones de la época, entonces bueno hice un año de ingeniería que me sirvió después leyes de termoenámica toda la parte de biomecánica que apliquea biomecánica nutricional y composición corporal y después hice una licenciatura en economía, empecé a trabajar como economista, al tercer día renuncié y fui a trabajar de monitor en un gimnasio de un amigo y era feliz, no tenía dinero pero era feliz y ahí empecé a tomar cursos de entrenamiento, quería ser personal trainer, hice un poco de eso y finalmente dije bueno voy a estudiar nutrición y empecé, empecé en nutrición y después de un año me decepcioné porque mis maestras me decían si no te gusta el hospital y la clínica y los enfermos están en el lugar equivocado, abandoné la carrera en parte por ello, en parte por falta de fondos y me dediqué a hacer cursos de entrenamiento que me sirvieron después para aplicar el deporte hasta que realmente empecé a trabajar de entregador hacia cursos de entregador y la mayoría de los otros colegas me derivaban gente para nutrición y llegó un punto que había un volumen de gente que necesitaba nutrición deportiva pero que entienda de la planificación de las cargas de trabajo que lo vi como algo posible y ese fue el factor que me decidió regresar y terminar la carrera de nutrición y empezar a trabajar en nutrición deportiva y ver que se podía y se podía vivir del tema. Claro, es algo que hoy resulta evidente que puedes vivir muy bien de esta bonita disciplina pero hace unos décadas no era nada evidente, era una profesión nueva, esta nutrición deportiva y tú has vivido todo su desarrollo y me encanta además que tengas ese vagaje amplio, has estudiado desde economía, ingeniería, entrenamiento personal y creo que esa base amplia te permite aprender más, conectar ideas de distintos campos y es algo muy enriquecedor. Hablas mucho también de antropometría que también cruza distintas disciplinas, cuéntanos que es esto porque es relevante y sobre todo aplicado a deportistas. Bueno, yo recurría a la antropometría porque estando en Sudamérica, en Argentina no tenía acceso a diagnóstico por imágenes, tecnologías como DEXA, resonancias, vivenpedancias, multifrecuencias entonces tenía que recurrir a herramientas más económicas, más accesibles y mi desarrollo fue en eso y el conocimiento en base a la acumulación de datos. Hice unas especializaciones tanto en Cuba como en Australia sobre esto y detección de talento y vi que los dos hacían lo mismo independientemente del sistema político que era medir una gran cantidad de personas y hacer puntos de corte estadísticos y en base a eso, traté de replicar ese modelo a modo privado con mis amigos y colegas y ex alumnos aquí en Argentina y descubrimos también unas ecuaciones, unos algoritmos de composición corporal anatómicos en vez de químicos de una tesis de la universidad de Simon Fraser en Vancouver, Canadá, que no fue muy útil porque discriminaban dentro de lo que es más amagra el músculo por sí solo y el peso del esqueleto por sí solo, lo que nos llevó a desarrollar y ampliar el concepto del índice musculo ocio que tanto hemos aplicado en búsqueda de peso ideal o composición corporal ideal en deportistas y personas normales, ahora también aplicado a salud. I want to talk more about this but before I wanted to ask you how do you see the importance of the muscle in health or how would you summarize the role it plays in the quality of life? Yes, well, the muscle in health, I think you have described it so many times too, it has more biochemical aspects like the one of the myosin that generates to help with all these processes and it also has metabolic advantages, as in terms of reducing the chronic diseases, how to absorb glucose, diabetes, cardiopathy, but also bio-mechanical advantages such as not only the quality of life to carry a bag of the market, to climb some stairs, that kind of quality of life, but also to strengthen the bones, prevent falls, which is one of the and improve the balance, apart from the cognitive benefits of self-esteem improvement and what is now being studied as a decrease in depression with strength training, the fundamental tissue and quantifying it seemed very important to me. We are talking about quantifying these variables, we are talking about the ideal weight, we surely will have to talk about the fat muscle ratio, we see in sports like football, that now the footballers have much more muscle than before, do you think this is due to the pressure of social networks or is there a justification for the performance behind it? Both things, in sports we see that there is an ideal weight or a range of ideal weight, for example, there are countries such as Australia and Cuba that have very well cataloged the weight for each sport, for each activity, for launchers, skaters, funders, speeders, for example, for each era of the year, for the macro cycle of general physical preparation and special and competitive and the competitive can be four or five kilos below the general, as well as the modification of body combustion, so there are sports where yes it is fundamental, where for example in high jump, this great fight against gravity, each extra kilo of weight means three centimeters less than jump, so there we are sailing fine, then there are other sports such as rugby, where it is not so important to have a minimum percentage or there may be a variation of one of two kilos that is not serious, but it depends a lot on the context and on the biomechanical demand of that sport. Of course, there are some approximate ranges and for example there are football clubs that penalize players if they are above 12% fat or what defines them, which in part makes sense, as you say, but that it is not so clear to what extent it is good to apply general statistics to all individuals. From working 20 years with elite footballers, how many times I heard, if I raise one or two kilos, I really notice those fractions from second to a divided ball and we have also measured with gps the routes and routes to high speeds above 15 kilometers per hour and it is noteworthy when there are differences of two kilos of weight, for example, now your question and your observation about the musculature of football players, that is a very interesting topic. We have reached the conclusion by crossing data of performance and physical aptitude that there is an ideal range of musculature related to each skeleton, that is, a motor size for each chassis in football in different sports and in football we see that that goes between 4.0 and 4.5 kilos of muscle per kilo of skeleton and we see there is a maximum muscle hypertrophy level, which is 5.2, for example, in caucasian europeans, 5.5 in afro-american, afro-europeans, but that when the football player surpasses that 4.5, it gets very heavy, it has more incidence of injuries and it does not yield so much. So those are often the players that the technique puts in the last 20 minutes of the second time for explosiveness and we have also seen that in the time of the pandemic, many football players used their time to musculate, I can think of the case of Bayer Munich, who had very musculated football players and it was a very impressive change, but almost all injured at the end of the year. So if there is more muscle than in the 90s, in the 2000s, but some have passed away and that has been counterproductive for performance. So it is not a matter of maximizing or minimizing, it is a matter of optimizing the amount of muscle, the body composition according to the sport, to the game position and to the individual skeleton of each sportsman. Of course, it will also improve not only the total gain of muscle, but also where that new muscle is and also how it has been achieved, that is, with what movements, because depending on that, it will be able to have greater or less transfer to the game and the prevention of injuries. Yes, in team sports and sportsmen, we are always talking about muscle generated with training, with dynamic exercises, we have also seen an increase of more mitochondrial mass or a little bit of maximum view, with some than another kilo of muscle increase, unlike a physical and cultural type hypertrophy, right? That is, you are very right in that. You said before that you were even in the anthropometry, because you did not count with more sophisticated means, but if money was not a problem, what methods would you use? Tell us better what methods exist and which are more precise. Well, all of these are tools, the tools all have limits and limitations, specificity of application, the four methodological rules of all the tools, so I think that the most useful and the most used currently, apart from folds, for example, it can be bio-impedance, electric, especially the multi-frequency devices, those that cost more than a thousand euros, not the monofrequency of 50 euros, right? That is basically a software inside that estimates the percentage that is most likely according to weight, height, sex and age, but the multi-frequencies are quite easy to use, useful, although a little expensive. I really like DEXA, the Densitometry Osea, with the Hologic or Lunar machines, but we have had problems, for example, I work a lot, six years ago with American football and half of the team does not enter the machine, so you have to cut your feet, cut your head or left arm, the same with Baloncesto, but it is a protocol that takes about 20 minutes with the machine and the machine is not transportable to places, but if it has that, it is very nice. Then in clinical research there is also magnetic resonance, which is another method. We can live all the anatomical and chemical methods. I like the anatomical method because I see the performance and also the health as a muscle that moves bones, a motor that moves a chassis, it is not more lean than it moves mineral-ocean content. So that's why I like to quantify the muscle and what is it that has to move. DEXA, for example, only measures mineral-ocean content, which is a third of the weight of the skeleton, but what it has to do and the lean mass involves organs and other tissues, then they all have their reach, their limitation, their percentage of error, if I have to do research on nutrition or supplements, I would love to access DEXA to see an before and after and in a practical way to go to a dressing room or evaluate juveniles in a specific place. Well, the anthropometry could be more useful, always and when we minimize the technical error of measurement and complicated measures, calculate the trust bands to know where we are. All methods have their margin of error and can have variations and not have to be obsessed with my exact percentage, I think. But if we talk about the typical swimming weights of bioimpedance, maybe not of 50 euros, but of 100 or 120, what precision do they have or how much can we trust what they tell us? Well, I answer you very simply as an example, I have a Paraguayan physical and physical friend, 1.75 meters, 100 kilos, with all the scores marked, all below 10 and with those machines he gives him 20% body fat, when in fact we will have between 5 and 10. In other words, what is inside these economic devices is a software with an algorithm and what it does, we have to load verbal data. That's where the weight takes you, but you have to load the height, your sex, if you are a woman, your age and if you do physical activity or not. There is a sixth variable that is the current that passes through the body, which is supposedly the measurement method. We have analyzed that the fat percentage of the variable that is really measuring is less than 5% of the final result. In other words, I call it estimators because they are estimators, you can also estimate the basal metabolism without measuring the oxygen consumption. In other words, it is an algorithm with a multiple regression equation that estimates the most probable fat percentage if you have a normal physical condition. So in a bodybuilder it gives you 20% when it has an 8%, you understand? And the problem is not when the first measurement is done, the problem is when a follow-up is made. If someone increases muscle and maintains their body fat, suppose someone who increases 2-3 kilos of muscle and maintains their body fat, this device will indicate that because the weight has increased and the weight/stature relationship in the algorithm is going to document it as an increase in fat when it was not an increase in fat. And the same thing happens to me when there is a injury and the athlete stops training and loses some muscle, suppose they maintain their body fat, but these devices tell me that the body fat has increased due to the proportion of weight/stature relationship. So I can give incorrect information to make the incorrect nutritional decision and then with the multi-frequency devices of 3,000-5,000 euros such as the imbody or the seca, those are much better, much more reliable, but I notice that a person of every 10 we evaluate for some reason of what they call artifacts or parts of their internal body composition gives anything. But in the other 9, 90% of cases are very reliable. In summary, the imbodies are quite reliable and the cheap bathroom vases are not. You also have to understand that the calculations, those regressions, are made from a general population and the more you distance yourself from that average population, as in the case of your friend, the less precise or less applicable the results will be for you, that is, you will be like an outlier, so to speak, and therefore less represented you will be. On the one hand, and on the other, that electrical signal, which is, as you say, a factor of many or of several that are considered, can also vary from one day to another without your fat being modified, simply based on your level of hydration, you would be more or less lucrative, etc. Exactly. Well, for example, we have two things about this. First of all, all the regression equations, including the one with anthropometry, always reflect, they are a reflection of the sample used to develop it. That is why I like the five anatomic components that do not have regression equations, but mathematical algorithms, and it is great to measure outliers. That is why I liked so much American football. In American football, in the combine, where the 320 best that are going to go to the draft of the NFL are measured, we evaluated with anthropometry for four years, and they also do a DEXA. And many of them I have seen in the row to do the DEXA, with a gallon, four liters of water, bringing all that water, because they know that in the analysis it comes in as a leaner. So what you say, they know. A little hack. Well, let's talk about sports nutrition, and after having worked with so many elite athletes, football teams, American football, what would you say are the most frequent mistakes you see in terms of nutrition that affect the performance? What I have seen the most in the world, and I have confirmed it now in the United States, because every time I go, I work with a team, I have worked with about 20 sports teams from there, I ask the group of nutrition and nutrition, what are the diets that the most problems give you to your athletes? And I have also seen it in South America, it is when there is emotional belonging to a tribe or a nutritional religion. So the lenses of that tribe are placed, and they all interpret it through that, it is like a carpenter who fell in love with the hammer, and he has to cut a board and instead of using a serrucho, he tries to do it with the hammer. And for example, the two diets that have given me the most problems, and I have seen in others that have given, in sports are the ketogenic and the vegan, the extreme vegan and the two extremes, one for the lack of protein, another for the lack of carbohydrates in these sports. I do not say that they cannot be useful in other contexts, simply that in the context of sports, especially sports that require muscle, power, glucose and fast, well, they have generated many problems. So as I said, it is a common mistake to anchor yourself to a nutritional dogma, because you go through any advice, any evidence study through this dogma, and therefore you cannot use the best tool for each case, but you have a single tool, a hammer, as you said, and for example, a ketogenic diet, because it will surely not offer enough carbohydrates, which is key to perform well, especially in certain sports. And in the case of the vegan diet, let's see, I would say that a well-planned vegan diet does not have to submerge the performance, but it is more difficult to plan, that is, it requires more knowledge, for example, to meet the necessary level of protein. And in this sense, how much protein does a sportsman need or what range is ideal and also that it depends on what you need more or less. Well, I base a lot on my protein recommendation, I base a lot on Stuart Phillips, my ex-friend who unfortunately died, Kevin Tipton who was in Sterling, Luke Van Lund from Maastricht, and they all coincide that between 1.2 and 1.6 grams per kilo would be the right amount. Then, well, there are studies of how it is, of Peter Lemon from Canada, where I liked it. This was a protein analysis in natural, recreational cultures, and I liked it because he talked about a average of 1.7 grams per kilo and a standard deviation of 0.5 grams per kilo. That is, the biological variability of the response to the strength training, which in English is "resistance" from 1.2 to 2.2 grams per kilo. Although I have many physical and cultural colleagues who use 3 grams per kilo because they like, at the stage of marking, they like the acidity that it gives them, and it helps them to lower that amount of weight. And that was also something when they wanted to increase muscle and weight, power lifters, and that is precisely to lower from 3 to 2.5 grams per kilo, helped to eat more calories, more iron, and to increase strength and muscle, paradoxically. And then there are so many exceptions to the rule that I try personally to eat 1.5, 1.6 grams per kilo and with that I am fine, right? But it is very difficult to study proteins because you combine or accumulate nitrogen, so you have to, in a group of 20, 30 subjects, you have to combine urine and fecal matter for a month, because there is something that you also talk about, Stuphilips, and that Gonsea of Romania showed in 1975, that there is an adaptation to protein, that when one starts, the first two weeks have a protein requirement that is very superior to the later adaptation, which later needs less. So, as it is something dynamic and it is something difficult to study more than a month, and then the other studies with isotopos marked with phenylalanine are studies in 5 subjects because it costs 5,000 euros each study, and phenylalanine in a person who made an extension in camilla in a leg, during a period of 4 hours, so it is difficult, it is difficult to know what the amount is, so with a bit of trial and error and seeing what the people are doing in the field are doing, and I would say that between 1.2 and 2.5 we are, we are, which is a fairly wide margin, right? And would you say, Francis, that a sportsman of endurance, of resistance in Spanish, will surely have enough protein being in the lower part of the range, right? In 1.2, 1.5, and that one of the forces will benefit from being in the upper part, knowing that there are many nuances, right? For example, as I said, if you are in heat deficit, increase the protein, not only raise the satiety, but it can reduce the risk of muscle loss, right? And if you are in supravit, well, there is no reality, the risk of muscle loss, you don't want satiety either, and you can consume less protein, no problem. Correct. And there are other issues too. With age, I have to increase the requirement of protein. I notice that I need more protein now, than before, and then there is a very close relationship between the consumption of carbon hydrate and the consumption of protein. The less carbon hydrate, the better the protein works, and there is also an increase, according to the studies of gluconeogenesis, the less carbon hydrate is consumed. So there are several factors that affect this requirement, no? And if we talk about the type of protein, distinguishing, for example, between animal and vegetable protein, do you think it influences or is it indifferent? Look, I have studied nutrition to experiment with vegan diets, with ayunos, with ketogenic diets. I read the book of Atkins in 1976, when my parents did it, it fascinated me, and I tried a plant-based diet for several years, and I lost muscle, I lost strength, and it cost me a lot with food only reaching 1.1, 1.2 grams per kilo, and it was insufficient. Only when I supplemented with vegetable protein, from soy to soy, to 1.5, 1.6, I was able to recover previous levels. So, if you use vegetable proteins, it seems to me that in the field of strength and power, and this is a personal opinion, it is necessary to reach 1.5, 1.6 with supplements, even if they are from vegetable origin protein. What you are studying, Philips, is that there is no difference. The most important, according to him, is the total amount of protein and not so much the type of protein. But if we only refer to vegetable origin foods without reaching ultra-processed, such as a soy protein or a supplement of soy protein, or a texturized soy protein to make this vegetable meat that they call it, it is very difficult to reach. My opinion, as I said before, is that you can achieve the necessary protein with a vegan diet, but it requires more planning than with an omnivorous diet. It is also true that with these products of texturized soy, vegetable isolated proteins, it is much easier, but if you consume enough protein, you have not seen a difference in the studies in terms of performance, muscle gain. I always repeat that it is enough, but in low amounts of 0.8, 1 gram per kilo, it is likely that you will notice a worse result with excessively vegetable protein, but that worse quality is compensated simply by raising the amount a little or that seems to indicate the studies. Today I have been 100%. I did a day of insomnia, a few days of insomnia, I did an Excel with the essential amino acids and all of them, and of vegetable food, banana, bananas, potato chips, nuts and spinach, and I saw that they all have the eight essential amino acids in sufficient quantities and with a diet of 1600 calories, only based on those four foods, one can cover the requirement of the OMS of essential amino acids, and there are still 1000 calories left. So I think it can be done, but yes, there is another problem that I see with plant-based diet or vegan is when someone wants, for aesthetics, to do a diet of, for example, marking for fitness culture, where they want high-quality protein, carbohydrates, calories and fats, because all the large sources of protein, vegans or plant-based, have carbohydrates or fats and carbohydrates or fats, so there is no real equivalent of egg whites, chicken breast, white fish, that kind of thing. In that very particular context it becomes difficult. Of course, let's go back to the same thing, you need to pull out isolated proteins, other textured proteins that are more processed, which I don't say they are bad, I consume them sometimes, but they are not technically natural foods. You mentioned now calories, do you think it is important for a sportsman to count the calories to ensure that he eats what is necessary, how do you plan it? I use two approaches, one qualitative and another quantitative in general, then it depends on the context. If, for example, I have a office owner who needs to lower 12 kilos and he eats, makes his food out of the house, I'm not going to ask him to weigh his food with a scale, but at that level when the change is great, it can be worked very qualitatively and say, stop eating the hamburger with fried potatoes and replace it with a salad with chicken breast, for example, and fruit, but the closer you are to the ground of body fat, especially with athletes of weight category, there you have to isolate fine and many times you have to resort to counting calories and weighing the foods and using applications such as chronometer or my fitness pal for the counting, if you can avoid it, great, but there are contexts for both types of cases. I have seen people who are fanatized with a system or another and discard the other, my vision is quite broad and I use the two tools, but I think the laws of thermodynamics and the balance of calories are important. And both systems can coexist, right? I think it doesn't make sense for almost no one to count calories every day, but to make a sample of the time that can help you understand first, what is your daily diet approximate? And second, to develop a certain caloric intuition, to know how much is 150 grams of chicken and how much protein it has or how many are 200 grams of rice and how much carbohydrates it has. And once you know the foods better, you will be able to adjust better and make better decisions without having to weigh and record everything. Exactly, I asked them, when I attended, I asked them for the first three days to use the scale because I had a very particular case, which ended up being 200 grams of meat and it didn't have results and when we weighed, what he perceived as 200 grams were 400 grams. There is a very important world between the perception of what people eat and what they are really eating. So it is very good your strategy initially and both to make an adjustment, right? You know that according to several studies, people underestimate more than 40% of the calories consumed, even dietitians and nutritionists do it more than 10%. And that is why it is advisable to do sometimes that registration, that monitoring. Let's talk before the protein and I ask you now about the carbohydrate, how much is it advisable for a sportsman or if it also depends on the type of sport. Well, there we have athletes that I call phosphagenics, for example, a powerlifter or alterophilist that has to make an effort of fractions of seconds. So it is not so important that they have a load of glucose, enough carbon hydrate and per weight category. So in those athletes to make a short descent of carbon hydrate or even enter in a cetogen to lose water and glucose and give the weight and that it does not affect the strength, we have come to use that or 0.5 grams per kilo and then in a mountain stage of the return of Spain on Tour de France I have seen data from Frum of 16, 17, 18 grams per kilo, but in general, in general we drive between 3 and 10 grams per kilo. Now there is something interesting that I have also noticed when making exponential curves of consumption of other bodies with body weight, the terrestrial athletes, not that they are in an annular gravity, such as in the water, swimming, boats, rowing, but terrestrial athletes of more than 85 to 90 kilos, especially rugby, some American football goalkeeper, that people in general need less gram per kilo than the lightest ones that many of the recommendations of carbon hydrate were made against 70 kilos cyclist athletes, that range of 5 to 10, 4 to 10, I notice that women work better with 1 gram per kilo less than men's recommendations, but the athletes of more than 85 kilos, if we use the algorithm of gram per kilo per day, it decreases as they are above 85 kilos because they simply cannot be eating 700 grams of carbon hydrate when not when they are only doing 4 kilometers of travel in the field of play. Interesting that point, so that it would not be a linear curve, but that curve reduces the inclination as the weight increases. Exponential decrease. That is, and in the case of women, they would need less carbon hydrate, perhaps because it is more efficient by oxidizing fat. Women, yes, there is a lot to study about women, it is very interesting and the capacity they have to survive with low calories, train with low calories, low carbon hydrate has surprised me. And well, it is all the subject that Ann Lokes developed with how it is energy deficiency. Yes, relative energy deficiency. Of course, the relative energy deficiency and all that, right? That, well, as you have said, it brings problems in the long term. If they come in the middle of the term, they can subsist. And related to this, how do you see the issue of intermittent fasting in general and also the fasting training? I do not see it as within the three strategies of the typical diets, one is to eliminate food groups, such as vegan or paleolithic, for example, or eliminate macronutrients, as can be the ketogenic. The third approach is to restrict food times. It seems to me that one of the three strategies that can be effective to lower weight and with that weight reduction, the benefits of metabolic improvements, such as insulin resistance, hypertension, cholesterol. And it seems to me that there are many people who generate a greater adherence, it is easier for them to do that than to eat less in each meal. And in those cases I see it positive. Then I see it in sports, I see it useful in athletes of more than 40 years who tend to overweight and who compete and train at night. And it seemed to me very harmful for, for example, an adolescent, a basketball player, 1.96 meters, 67 kilos, who is training double turns, who trains with the minors of 16 and with the team Major and the miércones with the team. And he is trying to increase muscle and has a double turn in the morning or a triathlete with a double turn in the morning and those people destroy them. So, for whom, when, how and where. But I don't see anything magical, I don't see that there are people who attribute magical properties to the breakfast or to train in the mornings and I don't see it. And of course, the muscle, I love to use a simple molecule like glucose, preferably if we eat carbs, it is going to use that because it is the ideal, the fastest. Yes, in breakfast, of course, in a state of breakfast we can use more fats, for example, in a cardio, zone 2, zone 3, we use more fats if we haven't had breakfast. We use more fats there, but how much more fat are we using? We are talking about 15 to 20 grams, total, that is, in terms of defects, yes, the real effect, in terms of magnitude, it makes no sense and then I can increase the appetite more. And then it also depends on what you are training, at what time you are born. I know in Argentina people who at 11 in the night they eat 1500 calories and at 7 in the morning they can train perfectly. Of course, I always say that you have to distinguish between training in meals and training in glucose, which is not the same. Well, it can also serve as a strategy to adapt the muscle, to use more fats, measure 2 or 3 weeks of training in glucose to try to have it better in both worlds, like the studies of Luis Bark and John Hall. I don't know what your position is about it. Very similar, yes, I see it as a tool and according to short training studies of 45-60 minutes, that it is not very intense, it has not been seen as a performance loss for training in meals and many people feel lighter, more comfortable, maybe they train for the first time and they do not want to understand anything in the stomach. But of course, if you are going to train, do a two-hour stretch or you are going to compete, well, training in meals or a little glucose will not help you at all, then I do not see a problem for most people who do not train so hard. In advanced sportsmen, you can use, as you said, a punctual strategy to favor certain adaptations, but understanding how to use it and especially without dogmatism, as you said, to avoid thinking that there is something magical here and when almost those dogmatisms come the problems. And following the concept of tools, I wanted to ask you about the supplements that I left for the end because you agree with me that they are much less important than everything we have commented so far, but if you had to prioritize five, I am going to ask you, what would they be and why? And if you would not go to five, then it would also be useful, what do you think? Well, you also have to segment for sports. For example, to a founder I would give Malto de Xtrina, I think it is great for the low osmolarity of the price that it does not have a flavor, it has a neutral flavor, it can be mixed with salad, with sweet, it is economical, it mixes well, the gels, but I would not give Malto de Xtrina a strong sportsman, I would give him creatine and I would not give him creatine because as much weight as possible to a founder, but they are two of the supplements that I see that have the most effect and work the most. Then caffeine, but well, in those who have the enzima CYP1A2 that does not inhibit its functioning, right? Then, well, beta lanina, in which the said protocol of four ingestors per day, for so long, from 1.6 or whatever, but the evidence is there and then we have creatine, caffeine, maybe beta lanina in sports is lactic, from 1 to 10 minutes, that is, there are people who like to apply it to football and I do not think it is for football, it could come to that, but when you are above 10,000 limes of lactate, like in a crossfit bowl, or REMO 2,000 meters or 800,000, 100 meters and yes, or natation 200, 400, but for other contexts, I do not know if it is so useful unless you try it and you like it and then, well, it could put the proteins in fifth place, not as something that improves my performance, but something that helps me in logistics. If I train and I am in public transport, two hours to get to my house, it is easier for me to eat one or two bars of protein, that is, take out the tapper with chicken, as in sports. Of course, it is always an easy way to ingest that protein, that is, if you get to the nibbles that we said before with food, because it will not bring you anything, it is an easy topic. And in your case, specifically, what supplements do you take? I use caffeine that comes in mate or coffee and sometimes I like to drink an energy drink without sugar for training and that has a little caffeine. As a pre-training, right? Yes, as a pre-training and during training and not always, but the truth is that I like it sometimes and creatine, creatine I like it a lot, I see that there are responders and non-responders, of course, in my case I like it and I like what is being studied now of the best cognitives or compensation of the lack of sleep. So, creatine, I take it, then what else do I take? Then I do tests, I do tests with magnesium, which is so fashionable, with omega-3, with omega-3 as it is, or melatonin at night to see if it sleeps better. And the truth is that I have not noticed much, honestly, to be honest, but I am N1 and I can be subject to my own placebo. So, but I like to try. Yes, I say that it is strange to notice something clear with these supplements, right? Even if you improve your strength, I know that it is 3-4% with creatine, which is a very good supplement, you are going to notice that, surely not. It is subtle, right? To see the house, perhaps it is the one that is noticed more, with more clarity, some people respond very well and quickly to their agenda, right? Not that they lower the stress, anxiety for a short time, of course, placebo effect or placebo that we cannot control and that is why we also need those studies, right? Changing the subject, something that interests me in your case, is what changes you have made in your nutrition and your training in the last years, right? If you have done them, right? But a lot comes from the 40s, the 50s, the 60s. You have to adjust certain variables of nutrition, of training. Have there been changes in your case by surpassing these results or are you still doing the same thing that 20 years ago? Well, my goal now, with 61 years, is to maintain my strength and muscle, my priority, strength and muscle of the last 30 years. That is my priority. And I have stopped, in exchange for training, I have noticed that I need one more day of rest, then a strength training with weights, I need more rest. I have stopped testing as much as possible. You don't care anymore to know what is your maximum of dead weight, right? Of course, dead weight, especially in squats and in bench strength. I will do like many, like many, five repetitions. I have to take care of the volume. I also prioritize a lot that my joints don't hurt. It is important to maintain the levels of strength and muscle mass and the biochemical variables of the analytics, also cholesterol, triglycerides, glucemia. Then, with diet, I have noticed that I need, despite what Herman Ponser says, that up to 60 years does not change metabolism, but I now have a lot less calories than when I was 20, 30 years old to maintain my body composition, right? But perhaps you have also lowered the total volume of physical activity. It can be, it can be. Unfortunately, in May I broke a meniscus, so running, stepping badly in a well, then now I have stopped running and I am walking. And basically with diet, I eat more protein and less carbon dioxide than before. If I continue using healthy fats, I would say that I make a Mediterranean diet with a little more protein and the type of carbon diet that is complex. Pandecine, as it is, integral things, I try to include 5 to 10 grams of fiber per meal. I try to do that and I try to distribute it equitably in 4 meals a day. The amount of protein, the amount of carbon dioxide and the amount of fiber and fat, I try to be equal. I do not do something like, I do not say that it is good, it is what I have done that works for me. You give me satiety, that it works well, that it helps me recover, it is what works for me, I do not say that it is for everyone. As I said before, if you have an intermittent diet or not, if you do 3 or 5 meals a day, it is secondary. The important thing is that throughout the day you release the body, the calories, the protein, the carbon dioxide that you need and it is not relevant to the timing, do what works for you. Obviously, if you are an elite athlete, you have to optimize a little more this, especially the food around the training, but for the rest of the dead, it does not matter. And I also agree with that, to take care of the joints. They say that you are as old as your joints sit and with the passing of the years, because limitations are many limitations that usually come here. It is also true that this does not imply that there is a need to avoid the impact, that there are people who, when they are 50, they only do cycling or swimming in fear of the impact and we need something of impact. It is important to keep the mass as it is with time. That I need to add, I need to add something of impact since I stopped running, the truth is that it should be a bit of saltability and exercises that also involve something of power. We lose with age. In fact, we lose power faster than we lose strength. Those types of 2x fibers are degraded and you also have to include that job of geometry, of velocity. But hey, you are not doing it wrong. A few days ago you published a photo without a shirt on Instagram and many would sign up for having your corporate composition, no longer with 60, but with 30. In fact, the last question would go around here. After so many decades training, maintaining a good lifestyle in general, how do you maintain motivation? I always liked it. I enjoy eating well, feeling healthy, but a great motivator is fear. I accompanied my grandparents, my uncles and my father in the hospital and I saw them die and I saw them suffer the last years of their lives and I said, "I don't want to end up like this. I don't want to end up like this." So I really care about what is called health plan, which is the quality of life of your last 10 years of life. And don't worry about how long I'm going to die, but be well, cognitively, physically, myself, these last 10 years that I have to live. And that, for me, is a very strong threat or prevention of fear. I would say that in part it is fear, but it is actually having a clear reason, which is what is often missing. People do not have a strong purpose or do these, they just take care to see a little better in the bathroom. I do not think it is wrong, that is, anything that motivates you, use it. But I think having a clear vision, as you think, works better. Yes, and then, well, I work on selling information, nutrition and artificial intelligence, so I want to be coherent between what I do and what I say. So what I say is why I do it, in its majority. And if I had that diabetes or overweight, it would not be a good candidate to transmit that information. And I see that today in networks the image is very important, then that is why, despite my shame, I started posting photos without clothes, because I see that it attracts a lot more, and people believe me for that, more than if I show a paper. It is the reality of social networks. And by saying this there will be people who are offended and will say that the important thing is what you know, but if you have a good physique, that in great measure it is true, but it is no less true that if you are an example of what you preach and you do what you say, you have more credibility. And I, as a client, I know that it would be worth it. Not only that, of course, also your knowledge and your ability to transmit and guide, but also that ability to apply what you teach and be an example, without a doubt. General Francis, we leave it here. Thank you very much for your time, for sharing your knowledge and for being an inspiration for those of us who go behind. Take good care of yourself. No, thank you and keep doing what you are doing, learning every day and I love it. Thank you very much, gentlemen.