¶ Exploring Nutrition and Its Impact
So you're thinking about running , but not sure how to take the first step . My name is Brian Patterson and I'm here to help . Welcome to Brian's Rompod . Welcome back to Brian's Rompod , and today we have a very special guest joining us , and I couldn't be more thrilled .
And it's not every day that we get to dive into the fascinating world of nutrition , and our guest is Joanne Hart , and she's going to be the perfect guide to this journey . Joanne has a brilliant mind behind the health and heart , a service dedicated to bridging the gap between nutritional science and practical food choices for her clients .
Her expertise has been sought after by full-time athletes seeking peak performance , as well as those of us who act , have an active lifestyle , and he yearn for guidance on how to nourish our bodies optimally . In this episode , joanne will shed some light on the vital role of nutrition plays in the overall well-being .
So please join me in extending a very warm welcome to Joanne as we explore how and what we put into our bodies , as just as crucial as how we challenge them . How are you , joanne , today ?
I'm good , just a couple of days , as I was saying , so always a bit of getting back started , but yeah , really good , nice holiday and fresh air .
I just wanted to start off , as usually with my guests is basically were you quite active at school and did that kind of dictate on what kind of career you're going to go into ?
No , I was active at school . I used to do like the athletics and the running as my thing . I used to more individual sports and then just whatever it was you had to do at school . Other than that , really , I was in a member of a running club when I was about 11 or 12 and my mum took me to keep me busy in the evening .
So that's where it came from in the first point . But then I went to university to do engineering and then worked in engineering for quite a few years and then I moved into IT . So those are kind of jobs , yeah . And then when I was doing that , I've always been running just as my hobby , and then I started looking to yoga first .
I did some yoga training and then I went to America for a couple of years as my husband . So then when I came back I had a spatical from that job and I came back and I went and did nutrition training . It had always been an interest , it didn't just come out of the blue . It just developed over time .
What were you doing in IT , by the way ?
I worked at Mars , the chocolate company . Yes , as infrastructure role . So I started off supporting people there , then line manager after about eight years .
So there is a bit of a tenuous link with food and Well , engineering , the engineering I did was that was obviously science based .
That was like car industry . I went to Land Rover , BMW and before that I did a lot of tyres and nutrition is using a lot of those skills in a different manner , because you're looking at test results and you're piecing bits together for people . That kind of thing .
So , people .
Engineering perhaps is another way of calling it .
I suppose there's quite a lot of science in it . So what kind of draw you into nutrition ? Is it just always been a subject that you've always been interested in ?
I think I always recognise the link between food and my health early on , like my digestive system and I think , like a lot of runners , even in the early days I would notice my tummy was a bit sore sometimes , that kind of thing . And then , yeah , when I was at Mars , it was just a really full on job . I enjoyed it , but it's stressful .
Whether stress is good or bad , it's losing a lot of your energy , isn't it that ?
kind of role .
I went to see the doctor and they said I had IBS , which lots of people get diagnosed with and there's not a lot they can offer for that . And then I went and looked for a nutritionist myself .
I started looking for alternatives it's not alternative health , but for alternative options and I went to see a nutritionist myself , a nutritional therapist , and that , once you do something like that and you start learning all these other possibilities , it stokes your interest in things . And yeah , and then I yeah .
Over time I had a coach at work to help with my development things . I guess I started thinking about my longer term . What interested me ? as opposed to just being directed in a corporate environment as well .
Okay , how does the sort of you your education , starting doing nutrition ? So you've set yourself this path that I will do nutrition . What do you ? What is the path in terms of getting yourself educated ?
Yeah , so , I went and did a nutritional therapy degree , so it's a science degree . So I've got a bachelor's science degree in nutritional therapy .
So that was a three year course and you can do it over four , five , six years , because they allowed people to do part time as well , and I did it over four just because I didn't want to be home studying all the time and I spent the spare time gain to some truck with the training and things and living life in a different manner .
And you can call people , call themselves nutritionist without qualifications . It's a really it's a quite a political environment , the whole nutrition world . You have dietitians working predominantly in NHS but somewhere privately , so they've got a certain type of qualification .
Then you have nutritional therapist and I'm part of one , a group called Bant , which is a British Association for Nutritional Therapy and Lifestyle Medicine , and within that group you have to have a degree . You didn't always used to have one but I've always had one .
So you have to have a degree to get into that group and be registered with a professional body and then you have . You'll have another group of nutritionists that work a bit more , perhaps in food science , that kind of thing , maybe more factories . Yeah , there's always different groups . We've all got our own bodies doing different things .
But my organization , without training , was specifically monitored on our like clinical training , so we get supervised when we're doing one to one consultations with people and we're using evidence based slightly look at research around what to do , but we can .
What I can do is I can help an individual so I don't have to follow a protocol for a specific thing that somebody's got a illness or whatever . I think I can talk to that person , ask all the questions , understand their history , their life and help them more on a specific basis .
But is it because you're able to do that ? Does that mean you're able to break off into ? Okay , I was interested in sports and improving performance through nutrition sort of thing , as well as those who people who are like myself , you know , being able to improve their nutrition through their regular lifestyle , sort of thing .
Yeah , so I suppose I don't say , I don't specifically say and maybe I need to for marketing I don't say I'm a sports nutritionist . I haven't done that Because to me , that perception is more something to do this I don't know more specifically , helping somebody with how many energy gels to have for a race .
Yeah that kind of thing , whereas I'm more thinking about is this person fit and healthy ? How is their digestive system ? Because if you've got digestive issues , you won't be running as well . You might not be training . Are they sleeping well ? Because if they're not sleeping well , they're not going to have the motivation to train .
How's their life flow , their stress ? Because if they've got a lot going on there again , they're not going to be building muscle , they're going to be potentially breaking down muscle because of the hormones and things .
So I'm looking at that bigger picture and we have a triangle shape and like on the bottom triangle , the triangle bottom layer , it's your daily life and your nutrition there and that might include supplements . And the next level is like when would you eat food and feel all in recovery ?
Right .
And then the next level might be those like ergogenic aids , like caffeine or something , but you're clipping in and out of those .
But the realities of people that I see are more people that have got a full-time job , that really love doing their sport at the weekends and maybe have an event coming up , or they just want to do some sport to get fit , or it's keeping their mood in a good place that kind of person but it's still very serious for them , or they know they need to do a
bit more , and so he's getting in the way to make sense .
Yeah , yeah , that's right . Do you think ? Oh no , I don't know . It's becoming more and more . People are finding out more and more about it . Even my daughter is into plant-based foods . Whenever she comes home from uni , we have to get by the plant-based milk or whatever .
Do you think over the last maybe five to ten years , or maybe shorter five years , that people have come a lot more aware of kind of their new nutritional needs ?
I saw when COVID came along . I reckon a lot of people then realised that they could do things to look after themselves more . I think there was a whole realisation there , with a group of people around that , so I think that was interesting .
Yeah , there's still a lot of people that don't know it , though , and I think also there's so many things in the media now aren't there . There's TV programmes . There's celebrities releasing a cookbook or a TV show or a blog .
If this is how I did it , this is how you should do it .
There's doctors that are now becoming nutritionists as well . They say I'm a doctor , so I'm a nutritionist . All these other health professionals tag on nutrition , or they might get into the course as well , so there's loads of people offering it , and then everybody eats food , so everybody has an opinion on what we should eat . It's really fascinating , isn't ?
it .
Is there anything else where somebody else is going to have an opinion on what we should put in our own bodies ?
That's what I always think yeah , can we go back to basics ? So let's say I come to you , or what advice would you give in terms of I lead a relatively I do running three times a week . What sort of basic advice would you give someone about their kind of nutritional ?
needs Nutrition . I would want to know if there's anything getting in the way of them progressing in those activities or anything they feel they might want to learn more about . That would probably be a starting point , and that's when somebody will then say I want to lose a bit of weight . That might be one topic . Yeah , that comes up a lot .
Yeah , not always at the beginning , though often at the end . Somebody might say I'm not sleeping well , so I'm not managing to get off my morning gym session . And I know , if I did that I'd run better because I'd have less injuries .
Yeah , okay .
So I'd be looking for those things and then I'd be making nutritional suggestions around those , so like with the weights ,
¶ Coaching and Habit Formation in Nutrition
what on ? If I had somebody I don't know , it's in there for 40s , 50s , he's got a sedentary job I might say to them have you done any basic blood tests ? First ? We might do those where you look at cholesterol and some vitamins at that kind of level that you might get done the doctors .
But often you don't get those things done unless you've got an illness . So I can help people with those and I'd interpret them and help them do that . And then I'd be looking at their food diary and I don't need them to write a really detailed one for me , it's more just to general what do you eat over a few days ?
And we'll have a conversation like we are now about is this the right breakfast for you , for the fuel , that kind of conversation . And then normally challenges come up in every's life as a reason why we're doing it . A lot of people might say I eat like this because the wife or the kid likes this food .
So a bit of it might be me coaching my person about well , you need to eat more oily fish for you for your reason . So when can you get this into your diet , that kind of thing ? And then less so now .
In the past , a lot of people would have traveled quite a lot abroad , and so they have got another challenge that they've got all these different scenarios . They've got their . What they eat at the weekends . They've got what they eat in the week when they're commuting into London .
They've got what they eat when they are abroad for a week with work , all these different things . And it's what do I do when I'm training , recovery nights , all those different things . Yeah , there's so many different things . I've trained in the . It's called the functional medicine model , so you can spider's web and it's a little intersection .
You've got different health aspects , so you've got all systems like your digestive system , your immune system , your hormones , which is big one , it's your male , female , but also your thyroid and your stress hormones . You've got your structure , which is like your bones and your skin .
You've got your energy it's about eight or nine of them and if you ping the spiders web you know on the digestion , the other areas are going to shake a bit . So everything , all these little sections , interact with each other . And that's the difference with this kind of approach . Whereas traditional medicine , you're going to see the physio for your shoulder .
They might not look at your toe . Yeah , that kind of thing some might .
Or you'll go down the pathway of a cardiovascular consultant Right In a medical environment , Whereas with this nutrition approach I'm asking all different questions about different areas to look at what I might do , and it might be they've got , I don't know , maybe they wait some issue for them . Yeah and then .
But it might turn out that they're eating certain kind of food because their digestive system isn't great for them and they're avoiding lots of other foods because they're having reactions and things .
Yeah .
So , like some people might be cutting out the fibre because when they run it sends them to the lube , but if they're cutting out the fibre all the time , that may have a long-term impacts on them in other ways . So you step back and see what we can do to work with that .
So they're cutting out the fibre and it's sending them to the lube all the time . Is that what you're saying ? Is that yeah , or it would do the other way around , because they ?
might maybe that , yeah , they're having too much fibre and then when they run , maybe that sends them to the toilet when they're doing their long run , or something .
So they might decide .
I need to eat my bagels because they're white , white bland food . But some runners get into that pattern and they have to do that all the time , and then often those ones might be slim .
There's a lot of slim people because they're running so much so they might think I don't need to worry about the kind of food quality that I'm having , but actually maybe it's catching up with them somewhere else in their system .
Yeah , Do you ? Because I know sometimes I don't know if you get this problem when you're talking to some of the clients . Is that because you're talking to a particular individual and they're having to change their particular nutritional habits or whatever , that it's going to affect the rest of the household , because it's only then ?
I'm only saying that because a family member is going through the same thing and they've been advised not to have carbs after breakfast and then , and so , although they've had , they're benefiting because of losing weight and that kind of thing .
But I'm just saying if I did the same thing in my household , it would be like my life would be eyes to the ceiling , sort of thing . Oh no , we have to accommodate food for you . Do you ever get that scenario ?
Yeah , yeah , but some people will just make it happen and they're able to get what they want , yeah , and do it ?
Depends on the committee , doesn't it ? Where do all the people will ?
Yeah all . Just they're able to , whereas other people it's less easy . So it's like a white elephant in the room . I'm talking to someone and I'm thinking , yeah , they're listening , but it's not going in that kind of thing . And so then it's what I just say , what might get in the way of this happening .
Yeah , and then it'll be like Therapist consultation type of thing . Yeah , yeah , it's very much coaching and things as well .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , coaching people , yeah , that's it , yeah , and then you'll find out , and a lot of it is helping people then to Adjust or to accommodate other people or to guess what the other person might say and have an answer .
I'm just talking to somebody who works in a restaurant and then get given food there that obviously isn't suiting them , but they don't want to say no to the people that are giving them the food . But they know I know that food is bothering them .
Yes .
So there's a bit of coaching then . Isn't there About ? Do you want to carry on like that ? How ill are you ? How is this affecting your sport ? How , whatever , or what might you do differently ? And also do you think it's also Sometimes , yeah , yeah , do you think also ?
I'm only going from my experience , but that you're in this cycle . You've always ate this way and it's trying to break out . Trying to break it out of it sort of thing to . And if you do break out of it , it's only a very short period of time , and then suddenly you get wrapped up in the cycle again .
So what's yeah ? I think for some people yeah .
What would you advise on how to continue ?
on to the new regime when you say how to keep going about habit-forming .
Yeah .
So , again , when I talk to people , some people want loads of information from me , but they can't possibly do all of those things between the two consultations and then they might cancel their next consultation because they feel like they haven't achieved . But the reality is I'm not expecting them to have done everything , because life gets in the way , doesn't it ?
Then things happen and then there's other people where we might save all this list . What are your top couple of things that you want to do ? Let's create a habit of those , and just drinking enough water might be a basic one . For some people it might be the first thing to do . They go I know I should drink enough water by day and that's affecting me .
It's a basic , isn't it ? But that comes up a lot . Or getting enough protein in each meal , that kind of one . So then we just choose a couple of them and then the next session , we see how they've got on with that .
Right , so you just choose two , very a couple of , maybe pieces of information , not major changes , just two , maybe a couple , one or two things that they can take away with them and to change that .
Try to . It's very hard , though , when I've got all this knowledge I want to impart on them and they want to get all this knowledge from me , and they're at about the time they're seeing me , so I have to just see how it goes .
But realistically , if you're coaching and you're wanting to make effective change , that's going to happen again and again and get to your results . All the recommendations aren't they that you create new habits , so that thing that you're doing becomes like driving a car you just know how to do it . And also , is it that book like Atomic Habits ?
It says that you should tag on a habit to something else that you do . You clean your teeth every day without thinking . I might say , put your vitamin pot next to that so that every day when you clean your teeth you have your vitamin yeah , there's a lot of people by them and don't tag them .
Or , as another one I think you said , like when you have a shower , if you want to do meditation , do it after that . I think I heard some people on those car maps or something talking about that so that you always try and do these things when you've got something else on the go .
Yeah , is this if I say to people , not that I'm , I used to be a fitness instructor , but the thing is that if you're going to do if you are going to do a particular form of exercise , think about , let's say , you , you go to work . So either you might not walk to work or run to work because it's for your link yeah , you're doing it already .
So yeah .
Yeah , yeah , yeah . Exactly the thing the challenge I have is that if I only give that kind of information to people , they will be like . Some people will be like , oh , I could have worked that out for myself , and they may be not getting the knowledge that I have . Right , so how do I do that ?
And you must have had that as a fitness trainer as well , and sometimes you always think I need people to do a pre-test before they come and see me , that I know they're doing some of the basics , yeah , but I wouldn't do that .
But there is something about that about knowing your audience isn't there and where they're at , so I have to work it out when I talk to them .
Yeah . I'll just raise the question that basically do you think because you are , they're not only are they coming to you as a specialist in nutrition , but you end up being a psychologist to some extent in terms of your yeah .
¶ Nutritional Advice for Athletes and Non-Athletes
You're helping with the mind , aren't ?
you yeah .
Because anybody that's helping somebody change something . Yeah , exactly . Yeah , because you're asking questions that help people to decide , and I just say things like on a scale of one to 10 , how determined are you to make this change ? That'd be one question I'd say to somebody , and then they'd go , oh , I'm a five .
And then you go what do you need to do to get it to an eight ? And then they'll go , oh , I can't do that because this is happening , yeah , so , and so is doing this , or whatever . Then we'll talk through it and then maybe you readjust the goal or something and can make it a bit more simple or change it .
Yeah , that's all we used to do as fitness instructors in that was like 20 years ago on the coaching things .
Yeah , exactly , that will get in the way , yeah .
Yeah , but so you don't think there's no one size fits all in terms of the advice that you give to people ?
because obviously , at the end of the day , they yeah .
So what would the basics be ?
Yeah , it's things like enough liquid , getting your sleep in , eating enough protein , oily fish oils , maybe vitamin D for many people , maybe a few other basic vitamins . Those are probably ones on top of my head . And then I've got access to a lot of what are called functional tests , so scientific tests that people can do .
So with those ones you can go into more detail with different vitamins and minerals so they give you more a snapshot of where you are on that day , obviously . But that can then help you to tailor the plan a bit more , and people quite like that kind of information . So I use that with some people that want to invest the time .
And also you can do things called a nutrigenomics , which is like nutrition genetics . So you do a blood sample you just be saliva , and it looks at certain SNPs , which are your variations in your DNA that might be associated with certain vitamins and minerals .
So , for example , like there's one with vitamin D and if you have that variation , it means that you might have more of a predisposition to needing more vitamin D than another person . So if that came upon a test , I might say to that person let's do you a vitamin D blood test to make sure we know where you're at .
But there's lots of different ones around that that I use with people . So just predisposition , but they do help the conversation when people are going into it . And the sports ones that you can do as well . But I've used with a few athletes that people that are more curious that just want to get information .
But they also understand that it's just , it's a snapshot but it will guide them around the vitamins and different things and there's a whole package you can do around that with different topics .
So on that . So , once you've got these results , do you do like a balance between okay , you take these supplements , but as well you change the food you're eating to give you the vitamins and protein or carbohydrates ?
Yeah , I think the real you know the real , I suppose the reality is that with the men's supplements you've got ones that are maybe like an insurance policy , so someone who might take a multivitamin yeah , just a cover of everything .
Then you might have ones that are a bit more tailored , so , like , some women might need to take iron tablets even though they might be seeing enough meat for them . It might just be important they need to do that .
And then some other people might take probiotics for a few weeks after a holiday when they got a bit of a dodgy tummy , a bit of food poisoning or something that kind of approach . So I hope my mind is three different types and those are the ones that most people know of .
They've heard of probiotics , they've heard of iron , they've heard of multivitamins , and so now , just wider in your thought process , that there's a whole load of others out there . Some are more tailored to individuals , some might be insurance policies and some might be more . You take it for a few weeks , months , to get you back to balance .
But the ones that what I'm saying with the food part is that the food for some people might not be sufficient for what they need . They might , especially if you're doing a lot of sport and exercise , there might be certain things .
I can't think on my top of my head , but there might be certain things that you just might benefit from taking a supplement for a period of time as opposed to trying to eat loads of that food .
Do you find just changing the pace of it a bit ? Do you find that working with athletes compared to , let's say , commonwealth Garden ? Joe , whatever do you find ?
is very .
How different is that ? Because obviously I know you're talking about talking to someone whose job it is to perform at a particular high level , but do you say you have ? To adopt your approach a little bit differently .
I think the reality is , my people are more people that have got jobs as well , so they're not just doing this , yeah , as they're not just doing their sport as their main thing . They're working as well . I see them a lot of people .
So that's why I like working with sporty people because they've got a goal or a reason why they're doing it , and for whatever reason , it might be that they've got a goal to win , but it could just also be that they've got a goal that they want to keep running because they know that running offers them other things in their life , like maintaining their mood or
their weight or something else , or their social group , that kind of thing . And I've forgotten the question . Now , what's the question ?
I was just saying because , if you're talking to , let's say , someone who is an athlete , do you find that your approach to talking to them or giving them nutritional advice is very different to , let's say , someone like myself ?
There's a lot more scenarios . That's the thing , because if you've got days across the week where you're training , then you'll be thinking about what you're eating like before , maybe during , after that , and the after could be immediately , couldn't it ? Or day after for recovery . And then you might have people that are training every day of the week .
They should have restation , but some people are , so their whole life is around when they eat for their sport . And then if you've got people that are not doing exercise , I'm probably encouraging them to do exercise . That's the reality , isn't it ? Because we shouldn't be sedentary . So these days we should be active , all of us .
So we should all really have a bit of a basic knowledge of fueling our sport . And I suppose one of the biggest , one of the common topics I have with people is if you're sitting on a testicle day and you want to lose some weight , then eating a banana for your breakfast or snack isn't probably the best thing , because you're not going to burn it off .
You eat a banana , it's fast sugar in your system , so your glucose levels will rise , but you're not going anywhere because you're sitting at your desk , so that glucose has to be stored as fat in the body , whereas if you're about to do some exercise or you're going to the gym or running or whatever , then some fuel before that makes sense , doesn't it ?
We can get to the nitty-gritty of whether you should have a banana before or what time you should have it , but that's the comparison . So I have a lot of that discussion and the athletes have probably got more flexibility with what they can eat , haven't they really ? Because they're exercising more , and I think that's one of the other messages .
If you want to eat more food , exercise more , it kind of just fits a lot of people , doesn't it ? If you enjoy your food , then just make sure that you're an active person , that you are walking rather than driving everywhere , and keep moving and things , and you'll probably help yourself out , yeah yeah , that's just the basic balance of life , sort of thing .
Yeah , exactly , you do get the sporty people that are probably doing too much exercise . The other extreme , don't you ? You've got the sedentary people that aren't doing any , but the ones in the middle , and then you've got the ones that are doing so much exercise .
They're probably in that category of over-training and when they're there they may be getting more colds and things because they're not recovering properly . Their mood isn't as good . They might not realise they maybe got other health issues , maybe more inflammatory things going on . They're called the ituses , I don't know , sinusitis , those kind of things .
You've got more inflammation in the body as well , because perhaps your body just can't keep up with the amount you're doing . That's the good category of people for me to work with as well , people that have got those things going on .
That can help with fueling and also athletes are going . They're working at such an optimum level that they could either go , because obviously they're training , either training for a particular event . Be it , I don't know if it was a runner . Olympic athlete . They're going , they're set , periodising their training to go up to an event , sort of thing .
I think a lot of people doing that , are they ? A lot of people that are recreational athletes . They are running , they're entering a marathon . They might just be the one , but then they're probably entering another one , another one . They're not really periodising their training .
If they did , it might be easy to help some people because , again , like the weight loss one , a lot of people do a marathon hoping to lose some weight , but the outcome is that they don't always lose weight . Some of them seem to put weight on for whatever reason .
Maybe they're eating more stress , might be different reasons for it , Whereas if they could give themselves a few months of just doing a bit more relaxed running , and activity focusing on their food . They could probably get to a better place before the next marathon and probably achieve more .
I would hope They've got to do that and I understand that because I aren't running but I do it as a social activity as well and I know I could be fitter if I did some different things or changed some of my training or whatever .
But the reality of it is , I think , do I want to do that and train on my own , because my job involves me being on my own quite a lot with my work and I don't want to go work in the gym three nights on my own when .
I could go out for a rummage some friends and have the social mental aspect of it , yeah , so you got to balance it haven't you With what you want .
You said you did some coaching in America . Is that right ?
Yeah .
I was called Coach .
Joe , yeah , we went there for a husband's job for a couple of years in California . It was really nice .
Very nice , so you're meant to make friends in Orange County .
So that's Huntington Beach area and you know the area and you put beaches . It was lovely and we lived right by the beaches and the weather's lovely all the time to get outside
¶ Involvement in Running Clubs and Coaching
and things . We active life and I joined a running club to have social life and make friends and things . And , yeah , over time they just asked me if I wanted to help with coaching and it was really that kind of coaching . I didn't have a qualification .
That was the kind of coaching where I would be given an instruction to run with a group and , look , make sure they're OK for a certain distance .
Yeah .
Or we did activities where we they would be gone all their perhaps in the fueling before half marathons and things , and so we'd have a stand on part of the run where people could try all these different things out and just see how they got on with them . The organization that did it was actually a running club , so this running club is called a snails pace .
It's great name is a snails pace . You could buy your trainers and things there and then they would . You could sign up for it . It probably won't be like a three month program to do a half marathon , the Disney half marathon , for example . OK , and then you'd have people to go out and train with each Sunday , so really nice social activity as well .
So that was what I did there . And then in the UK I did when I came back I did that the UK run leader , athletic run leader oh yeah , did that training ? Yes , I did that , but I didn't ever make use of it , other than I worked for somebody else and did it for a little bit .
I didn't actually settle my own group , because it's just the effort of doing that with all the other things I've got going on , but I did it , I was interested in that , and then I taught yoga when I was in America as well . So that's part of where some of this came from as well . Oh that's just some runners , yeah .