Well hello, they're healthy Ish listeners. Thank you for joining us today and welcome if this is your first time tuning in. This, of course, is the daily podcast from Body and Soul with me Felicity Harley. Today we are talking about common nutritional deficiencies and how they can affect well, not just your fitness performance, but your whole life. Joining me is advanced sports dietitian and athena sports nutrition consultant,
Sally Walker. She has had over sixteen years experience in high performance sport, including going to Tokyo the Games in twenty twenty with the Australian team. If you do like what you hear today from Sally, make sure you're listening to extra Healthish, where we focus on one common nutrient that many many women and some men lack, and it is iron. If you want to hear more about iron and what to eat to boost your iron stores just listening to extra health Ish you can grab that wherever
you get your podcasts. Sally, nice to have you Unhealthy today. Thank you for joining us.
No problem now, I'm actually.
Personally interested in this topic as well as I'm sure many of our listeners are nutrition and performance. How does poor nutrition affect our performance. Now you've worked with a lot of elite athletes, let's talk about the everyday athlete.
Well, I think elite athletes and everyday athletes are still humans. They're still people. So there is a common connection between between everyone to be able to learn what the elite athletes are doing and to just sort of be inspired but also learn from that in if the body is healthy and if it's functioning well, then you can push it further. And if you're in a position where you can train well, then you can do more in training and create more adaptation and then get better results as
a result of that. So laying your foundations right and getting things right, and for people to you know, treat themselves like a athletes and know what they want to get out of training rather than just having two things coexisting if I eat and I train, to actually use the two together to get more out of it. But not just for performance at the gym, it's performance in you know, the boardroom and just life and how they're showing up to actually have energy to burn rather than skimping, scramping.
Sort of this reactionary response to performance and eating. So I think that's sort of the biggest shift in mindset is how do I get my body ready to perform? Rather than what have I just done? How do I fix that?
Yeah, that's what an interesting point because it has been for so many years. Oh I've just worked out, and now I need to eat banana or I need to do in a chocolate shake. But I think your point, like getting ourselves ready to perform in life, whether we're in motherhood or in the boardroom or like, it's just nutrition is such an important part and.
A lot of people are sort of leading with the diet and trying to jam that into their life rather than go what am I trying to get out of this? And what are my barriers and challenges? And how can I construct a way of eating that will support that
and get me to reach my outcomes? And you know, again, that's what we can learn from elite athletes is they have a clear focus and they construct their lives to be able to achieve that the difference between everyday athletes and elite athletes is that their focus might be a little bit different, but the framework that they use can still be replicated in any sort of situation.
Yeah, good point. What are some common nutrients that you see that women are deficient in that might affect well, not just their fitness performance, but their whole life performance.
Yeah. I mean sometimes it's just energy in general too, and having the right nutrients. But I think something that's overlooked when we only look at what's on the plate and the nutrients and food that's there is the availability of the nutrients eating and the availability of energy from
your food as the body needs it. And sometimes if they're if people and females are eating at the wrong times to not match their energy demands, that's when it can have the impact of sort of not enough nutrients or malnutrition or feeling the effects of poor diet habits, being tied and fatigued and sluggish, that sort of thing.
So I think in the first instance, yes, looking at what's on the plate, but then also when am I eating, how am I eating to match my activity, because it generally will be low carbohydrate availability, low protein intake to support activity, low iron even sort of smaller nutrients, and magnesium and calcium, those sorts of things just to make they're not going to be the only thing that's giving
the body energy. But if everything's present at the right times, they can all work together to give you a good outcome. So if it is a bit haphazard on the intake and when you're actually receiving those nutrients, that's when it can result in poor dietary symptoms.
Because it does get very haphazard. I mean, you know, so many of us are so time poor, and you're often you're eating on the run or you're trying to hustle children out the door and you're like, oh my gosh, I've need a breakfast yet, and I'll just grab this and that. It's but flipping your mindset, going okay, what nutrients do I need to fuel what I'm doing today is perhaps a better way look at it.
And it's realistic. How do I make this work for my life? So being realistic and going, you know what, I don't have time in the morning. I'm just on
the run. So I'm going to make it smoothie up the night before so in the morning when I don't have time, I can grab it and I know I've put in sort of some protein powder so I've got enough protein, some oats so I've got a fiber, some fruit, I've got some nutrients and antioxidants there, and you sort of how do I make it work within my boundaries rather than go, oh god, I should be having this amazing breakfast takes me thirty min and then just making
yourself feel bad and like if everyone's already time putt built on top of all the things that you need to think about with diet, just bring it to life and say, well, how can from what I know that I do need energy like carbohydrate, protein, some fibers, some calciums of mine, what ingredients will provide them for me?
I actually just slot them into my day at different times, which we seem simple just to rattle off like that, but that's when sort of an accredited sports diet tishan can help piece together what those barriers might look like and had to problem solve that and the practical side, people think it's just nutrients, but really it's the application to life to bring it to life, to actually get those nutrients in more so than oh God, I've got to get my twenty grams this or thirty five milligrams
of something else, of not how people eat. You don't eat numbers, you eat food. So to focus on what you can see, to have a variety of color and new textures, and types of foods. That way is also sort of maybe an easier way to think about the types of things that we need to eat.
How do you approach a day of eating, like what's your I mean, you've probably got a downpat now, But.
Well, that's why I'm not sort of antidetian sometimes. But the thing that makes me reflect on it and that I connect with it to share with my clients is that problem solving mindset. What's coming up for me today? How do I make it work. I've got, you know, a full day of meetings or a full day of clients that I'm seeing our so I might have to have a day of sort of smaller snacks so that
my energy is consistent through my day. So again it's putting me first in my demand, putting food over the top of that, rather than go, oh god, I've got to have this balance meal at twelve o'clock and that's when I get my nutrients in. It's really sort of laying it out and gosh, I don't have any time to get any lunch today, So I'll pick up a yogurt and a piece of fruit, and now I've got some snacks on my way to work. Like it's constantly problem solving how to make it work with what's presented
and what the environment is in front of me. So that's sort of the concept I try to teach with people, rather than well I eat this, so you should eat this, because no one should be doing that. Ultimately, everyone's different in what they want to eat, but to sort of consider frameworks that can be applied to be able to bring it to life. Because healthy foods are black people know they to eat vegetables and fruit, and I'm pretty sure most people would know sort of what it should be,
but should is the key word there. So making it a choice to say well, this is what I can be doing rather than what I'm should doing, and having ways to be able to say well, this is what it is and feeling comfortable with that rather than just a day of constant comparison to what others are doing, what should be doing, and just slip over your diet to say, well, this is what my day is presenting to me today. It's not great, it's not ideal, but this is the best I can do in this situation,
and life will move on from that. The healthy stuff the same. The thing that changes the most isn't the diets out there, it's lifestyle, routine, habits, everything around people's life which is changing more. And it's the reapplication, which is when diets fall down.
Yeah, Sally, great advice. Thank you for coming on healthy Ish. Some great advice from Sally. I hope you enjoyed this chat. If you did, jump on rate and review, or of course you can subscribe to this podcast, share it with a friend. Anything else, head to body insoul dot com. Do you follows on socials? Grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow still healthy Ish