Welcome to Healthy Ish. Thanks for joining us on the Body and Soul podcast. I hope you are feeling healthy ish. I am Felicity Harley. Now, if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you will know that a couple of months ago I run a half marathon as part of the Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival. And helping me fuel my training and of course my race was Sarah Whierson. Now she's a senior dietitian and nutrition consultant specializing in women's
health and fueling all types of athletes. She's also femi's resident dietitian. She was so good so I wanted to get her on the podcast to share all that she knows about eating before versus after your training. Which one should you do or should you do both? Well, she's going to help us out here and also recommend the
best foods to eat. Hey, as you know, we keep our healthiest episodes short, so listening to extra Healthy Ish where Sarah talks about how to fuel your body to hit your fitness peak, you can grab that episode where we get your podcasts. Sarah, thank you for joining us on Healthy Today.
How are you?
I'm good for Elasabe It's really nice to see you again.
Yeah, nice to see you again. And I have to say a big thank you. You helped get me over the line of the NAKE Melbourne Well half marathon. I didn't do the marathon, but you guided my nutrition and eating, so thank you.
Oh you were so welcome. It takes like a good client. I feel like you were really receptive to information.
So thank you. Yeah. Tell what do you do? What's your role with Narki and Fermi.
So I'm a dietician and my special areas of interest in woman's house and then alsop and exercise nutrition. I kind of blend the two together to support female athletes. And when I say athlete, it can be like myself hobbyist just moves for joy, or it might be someone is a little bit more athletically gifted than me, and my role was for me. So we have like a team of health experts and I kind of sit as
the dietitian and nutrition expert. And then obviously for me and Nik have an amazing working relationship and so I've got the joy of supporting and meeting you and that lead up to the Nike now the marathon festival and supporting your half marathon.
Effit.
Yeah, Look, I found it personally really valuable because often we don't even think about nutrition when it comes to training. I mean I've never really considered it before. I mean, I kind of know what to eat before and after, but when I chatted to you, it made me realize but actually I probably don't know as much as I thought I knew. So when it comes to eating before and after a training session, is there any preferable before or after?
What's what's best?
The answer is kind of boss, yeah, And I think what you speak to is like nutrition is often the forgotten part of the training puzzle. You know, we're so good at thinking about our running shoes as an example, or your favorite sports bar or whatever it might be, but we don't think about the impact nutrition can have.
And I always think, particularly with that pre workout, like literally imagining you're putting fuel in the tank, Like, it makes so much sense to me to be able to top up those nutrition stores so you can feel your potential during an exercise session and then after what we're trying to focus on is recovery, and lots of people will do those two time points with nutrition around their training without even thinking about it. But it's a nice kind of reminder to come back and think about what
you're actually doing and could you be tweaking anything. So as an example, like if someone was training at four o'clock in the afternoon, they were going out for a training run, then their lunchtime meal would serve as their pre workout meal, so it's a natural meal that would fall in the day. But if someone was waking up at six o'clock in the morning to go out for a bit of a jog, then if they're not including that pre workout nutrition, and I think training your body
to do that is a really important thing to do. Likewise, with recovery nutrition, most people might naturally come back from a training session and have their next natural meal. So that four o'clock example I gave you, you might come back and maybe Hoby's booked your dinner.
That would be a recovery meal.
It would be nice right in the Spanish ev end, but that would be your recovery meal. So it doesn't necessarily need to be additional food in your diet, but thinking about the timing of your training and including that pre and pops to work out nutrition is really important.
Let's pick up on that six am one, because that's a really interesting one.
If you are an early morning a runner.
Or exerciser, how do you how should you fit in your pre training snack or meal.
I mean, if I think about most runners, and I'm sure you would have seen this in your training plan for your half marathon if it's there, would have been like a different load across your week and would normally see like a long run. Usually a trainer would put that on a weekend or a day that's not at works to allow you time to actually do the training,
but also to have those nutrition targets as well. So if I think about and we talked about this in New Console Felicity, but that long run nutrition, like timing that pre workout meal two to three hours before that long run is really important. So if you were getting up at eight o'clock on the weekend to go for your long run, then what I'm saying is at five am, which I know sounds really early and evil on a Saturday, but you should be getting up and having your pre
workout meal or your breakfast at that time point. And the three hour spacing is to reduce your risk of what we call runners gut, which many runners will know that like yucky digestion tuning and need for a public toilet pretty frantically while you're out there training during the week, if you're kind of getting up at six o'clock in the morning, it would be uncommon to see big training efforts before a workday, and so you can get away with eating closer to the beginning of that training session
and smaller portions. And an example are often of clients is if you're not eating before exercise at the moment during the week, then just start really small, so like a banana as an example of a really easy to digest carbohydrate, carbohydrates powering your muscles for your exercise effort.
Most people can train their mind in their gut to tolerate just a banana before they heat out the door, and then you might start to play with increasing that if you notice, actually, hey, I really liked how I felt on that training session from having something to eat, you can start to play with increasing their food volume.
What are some other go to pre snacks? I mean for those who don't like bananas, which is actually me unfortunately.
I think I would remember that, but no, no, no, I.
Don't even think I told you in that concept because I'm almost embarrassed so that I don't like them.
Because the runners go to snacks.
We are, we are, I'll be screened. So banana is just an example of like a quick and to eat, easy to deduce carbohydrates, or it's low and ruffage fiber. So other options that people love is like a piece of toast with like peanut butter or honey if you want some additional carbo hydrate. Some people love things like yogat or smoothies. I personally don't love the liquid slashing around my tummy while I'm training, but other people they
can tolerate that just fine. A proting bar would be another kind of common option, particularly one that contains carbohydrate, or like a musli bar or some bliss balls or is another common one that people will turn to.
It's just a bit of trial and error, isn't it. Really?
They are great examples and just okay, maybe I'll try this. Oh no, I don't feel so good after having that. Yeah, And is there any time frame before, like you know, you were saying the three hours, is there you know, anything an hour or half an hour? I mean, is there any kind of how close can you.
Eat to a run, you can train yourself to tolerate it much earlier. So for like a big running effort. As an example I was giving before, that two to three hour time space is to avoid that runners gat. As I mentioned before, when you eat food, it takes about twenty minutes from the carbohydrate that you've had in your meal to turn into glucose in your small intestine and then into your blogstring. So and kind of allowing
time to kick in is also really important. And when you include protein with a meal, it kind of juice is how quickly that car becomes glucose. So what I'm saying is you don't need to eat your banana and then you've got twenty minutes before it's in your bond stream and you got to head out the door. But if you do something make the banana and the peanut butter, you're slowing down how quickly that banana will become carver hydrate or glucose, if that makes sense, and can slow
it down. And people have been running or exercising for a long time usually able to tolerate eating quite quickly or close in comparison to their training, but it takes time. To work up to that. So I would start with that morning example of six am, And I think what's practical for people is like five am, if you can get up and have something to eat and drink, is.
It really damaging or how damaging is it on the body if you just go out for a run, you know, like to say do a six or seven kg trade yeah, like and not eat.
For woman in particular, there's evidence that our cortisol, so that's a hormone that we make. Lots of people will be familiar with that hormone in the context of stress, but there's evidence that we make a bigger cortisole response
when we train faster compared to men. And like in my work either with a lot with women who have problems with a regular ovulation or loss of period, and some of the things that I talk about is kind of understanding that cortisol impact on your brain and your brain controls ovulation, and ovulation is the event in your body that predates the period. The consequence would be potentially
like risk of underfueling. You don't get the most out of your training when you're not fueling as well properly, and that can lead to maybe not necessarily a consequence in that six k run, But if you think about you've still got the entire work day or parenting day or study day to get to like through I'll often see clients talking about being really low in energy or really hungry craving sugar at like three o'clock, and I
don't focus on that point in time with them. I zoom out and go all the way back to before that run. What did you do? And can we start there to make some changes?
Yeah, good advice, And just quickly before we go, let's just touch on after training. What's perhaps you know, your go two meal or something that we sh would be eating it at what time frame should we be taking it in?
Really good question. So I try and focus on what I call the three hours, which is you want to rehydrate, so obviously replace fluids that you've lost through sweat. You want to promote repair of your muscles by including a protein source. And you want to replenish your carbohydrate stores that you've used while you've been exercising, so including a carb And I think a really easy way to think about this is trying to include like a glass of fluid and a protein and a carb on your plate.
It can be your natural next meal or snack, and we want you to be replenishing those stores between like sixty to ninety minutes after a training session finishing. So for U six am example, you head your banana, you went through your six k run, you come back. Breakfast is your recovery meal, and most people would naturally include a protein and a carb at those meal times if that recovery nutrition is falling outside of a natural meal.
I think smoothies are a really great example of being able to hit like hydration, protein and carb really easily thinking about what you're when we've got in this movie, Sarah.
Thank you for coming on healthy Ish. Thank you.
I like that. The three hours of recovery. That's a little easy thing to remember next time you finish your workout. And I'm just hanging on to the rest. We all want rest right now, don't we? More than ever? Anyway, I hope you did enjoy this chat. If you did, tell us rate and review this episode. You can subscribe to Healthy Ish anything else head to body and sooul dot com dot you followus on socials. You can grab
me at Felicity Harley Well dm me. You can't grab our print edition, which is out in your local Sunday paper. Thanks again for listening, and stay healthy ish