Flexible Dieting (IIFYM), Constant Hunger, Powered PB & Probiotics for General Health

about being constantly hungry while trying to lose weight. And on our most popular segment, the Soupermarket Product of the Week, we discuss a new powdered pinut butter. And finally, one of our listener questions has sent us in a question about probotics. Should we be taking them for general helps. We'll give you all of the research and science behind that, but before we jump into today's podcast, Susie, you are

always cooking up a storm in the kitchen. What have you made for the twins this week?

and I am pretty proud of this. I have wanted to be able to make a muffin with a crunchy top, like at a cafe for some time because whenever I make muffins, and they're not my favorite go to and not even my kids, but they do really well on social media. But I thought if I could perfect a crunchy top muffin, I would be pretty happy. And I finally have got the right mix. And it's not complicated. It's more like how you do a crumble. We do a little bit of brown sugar with a little bit

of wholemeal flour and do it that way. But I'm pretty proud of my effort. So I've been doing the crunchy top muffins. They're coming up particularly well. This morning. I did like a breakfast bircher, but I did it as a muffin. Now I think people will love it because it's like a creamy oats breakfast muffin that you could have in a bowl, almost like a cake, but

it's not my flavor profile I don't eat that. So the other thing is a lot of the stuff I actually don't really like that much, so that helps, and we try and give the rest to neighbors and things. But as I said, I also have terrible stuff up. So like a couple of weeks ago, I had to get a picture of a banana bread and I took it out too early land so it was still wet in the middle. I knew it was, and I got

the photo. It's a great photo, but I also know the battle wasn't completely cooked crew because it was really dense and thick because I tend to thicken them up with quite a lot of yogat, And I ended up taking it to my mum's and it was literally we just chucked it out. So that's the thing about Instagram, isn't it Just because it looks perfect doesn't always mean that it is. And for every great looking baked recipe,

there's probably a couple that are looking pretty dodgy. So I definitely spend a lot of time in supermarkets picking up whole your self raising flour yogurt and butter, which are the things that I tend to run out of because I will also say, I know we've got to get started. But I always give people the option in baking of using a sugar replace. It's not like a

monk fruit or sugar. But if I'm honest, I don't buy monk fruits sweet now because I think it's really expensive, like eight dollars a small bag, and I really try and make things affordable. So I give people the option. But I myself just cook with a little bit of sugar because I don't want to spend eight dollars plus on making a muffin or a banana bread recipe. So I like to give people that option because otherwise it can be really quite expensive. All of that healthy baking.

of macro nutrients you're having. And for me, you know, I've sort of dabbled with a little bit in the past. If I'm going through a fat loss block myself, I will of course track, but I'll track calories and macros because we know that if the goal is fat loss, you absolutely have to be in a calorie deficit, and I think macro nutrients, particularly from a body composition perspective matter.

You know, you don't want too many carbohydrates. You need enough fat, particularly for things like you know, cellular health and hairskin and nails and that sort of thing, and even just women's reproductive organs how they work. We need some fat in our diet at a minimum of twenty percent. And I think protein, of course, is especially important when we're trying to aim to you know, gain some lean muscle mass or maintain our muscle mass. So I think

macro nutrients are absolutely important. But how do you feel about just the concept of flexible dieting.

I'm just not really quite clear. But the best way I can think to describe it is that if you have a goal of fat loss and you're sticking to

a certain calorie load or macronutrient loads. So say you wanted to reduce your carbohydrate down to forty percent of intake, So if you wanted to still have a chocolate bar at lunch time, the way you would be able to do that is if you made sure you were getting your salad and vegetables that didn't affect your macros, and then a piece of lean protein, and then potentially you could get a little bit of well, I guess you get the carbohydrate from the mars bar and a little

bit of fat from that, so you were keeping all the other components of that meal low in fat and light, so it would allow you to have a mars bar as part of your diet. Now, I think philosophically it sounds really nice because it means you take away from that idea that there's good and bad foods. In that model, it's about choosing the foods you want to eat but still achieving your dietary goals. But I am yet to

see it really work in practice. And my understanding is that where it comes up most of all these people who are perhaps doing physique changing or specifically bodybuilding, where they have a much wider range of calories and macros that they can fill, and so it doesn't matter if they eat a packet of lollies because their carbohydrate intake or requirements are very high, Whereas I really struggle to see how it could fit for my clients who are small people who don't have a lot of calories to

play with. And I can tell you straight away that if they would doing flexible dieting and still including a high fat, high sugar food most days, they wouldn't achieve their diet your goals because they just don't have that much room to move calorie wise. So for me, it fits to a much larger frame person who has a lot more energy and calories to burn as opposed to the clients that I work with.

a type of diet. But I think people get away with it saying, you know, you can eat mar as well as you can eat donut. You can eat whatever you want as long as it fits into your macro nutrients. But I think you make an important point that a lot of the proponents of this diet, and a lot of people who are promoting it, have super high requirements. So if you're a bodybuilder, you're doing twenty twenty five thousand steps a day, you're doing seven workouts a week,

you're in three thousand plus calories. Yeah, you're gonna have a lot more calories to play with than the average person who sits at a desk job might get three or four workouts in a week, but their deficit in terms of fat loss is more around that fifteen sixteen hundred calorie mark. You just don't have the luxury or flexibility of having a lot of these higher calorie processed foods. So I do think you're right it it matches a certain client tell more than it's something that fits everybody.

But also I think for a lot of people it's it's kind of just an excuse to eat processed foods. And as you said, you know, trying to eat three thousand plus calories specifically focusing in whole foods is actually really hard to do. Like there is people who you know, they will eat a bag of lollies just to get their carbs and their sugars in. They will just add you know, a mass bar on top of their porridge in the morning just to get their carbohydrates right up there.

After a training session, they're taking down bulk protein powders because their protein requirements are like one hundred and eighty grams a day, and good luck to you try to eat that in you know, whole foods, there's a lot

of protein. So I think for a lot of people, yeah, it is, you kind of do end up a lot more processed foods in And then clients that I've worked in the past who come into my coaching services, obviously this isn't something that I recommend, but they've tried this before and they say, I don't want to do it again because I you know, the tracking and the weighing and that sort of thing just drives me insane. And I get to the end of the night and I've

got like, say, only two hundred calories left. I'm starving. I've got no carbohydrates left because I ate it all lunchtime. And what am I supposed to do with Like, you know, I've got to eat sixty grams of protein or something, and I've got no fat left and no carbs left.

So I think unless you're really planning out your day and you kind of know what you're going to have for dinner, you can get very stuck in terms of using all of those you know, with the flexible dieting, it's like I want to go have a burger in some fries for lunch. Okay, that's cool. It might fit your macros now, But by the time you get to dinner, you've got no fat left, you've got barely new carbohydrates left. You've got to eat a hell of a lot of

protein for dinner on very very low calories. So what are you going to have a piece of steam fish and two green beans. I think it's just it's not as flexible, I think, as what people really think it is. And The other thing is that most people don't consider a fib or a mac nutrient targets, So I think a lot of people aren't actually tracking their fiber intake EGY, which we know for general health and particularly gut health

is so incredibly important. So I think that a lot of people are going, yeah, I'll have a burger and fries for lunch, and I'll just have some steamfish for dinner and a piece of broccoli. But they're not getting anywhere near the required amounts of fiber or that diversity of fruits and veg every day as well. And you know, they're eating a bag of lollies, whereas you could have a nice fruit salad and you're gonna get a lot more nutrients in from the fruit salad, but probably a

similar amount of carbs and sugar in there. So I do think there are some negatives to it. It definitely does fit a particular type of clientele, as you said, larger bodied, higher requirements, super super active, and also those online calculators and the people that tend to set your macro nutrient targets. It's not really something that's really based on I guess research and science, and probably should be adjusted quite regularly as people's weight comes down or their

training sort of differs as well. But a lot of people will set their macros at the beginning and say, you know, I want to lose ten to fifteen kilos and that never changes the entire way through. Then they hit a plateau and they wonder why.

And I think straight away this lends itself to psychological management of food intake as opposed to responding to natural hunger and fullness signals, because you're mentally calculating and eating along that line, as opposed to what your body's telling you. And the other issue I have with it is that there's gross in accuracies in macro nutrient and calorie composition tables.

So even though it might look like it is perfect and it's five grams of carbohydrate here, as you and I both know there's a lot of inconsistencies in the databases. It's not always completely accurate. So when people start to count their macros to within a gram of recommendations, it's

not a healthy way of doing it. It's really in a way promoting disordered eating because you're saying, I had an extra gram of carbohydrate here, you know I need to duck two from there, and then you might be deducting it on a vegetable which probably doesn't really even count anyway. So you're starting to isolate nutrition down into individual foods and macros, when that's not really how we eat. We eat a diet of food and the overall balance

comes from the meal patterns and the meal balance. So I think it's trying to break down a behavioral pattern of eating into numbers, and for me, it just doesn't work. And I find it makes people really confuse. They don't necessarily understand the science in the degree of being able to balance well, and most importantly, they're not listening to their bodies anymore. So I am really not a fan of macro nutrient counting, even though I do do it with for my clients myself, and the way I would

describe it is when you go to the accountant. I don't want the account to tell me how to calculate my baths. I want him to do it. So when I see a dietitian, I want the dietitian to get the balance right for me, as opposed to start to do it yourself, because you never do it as well as the accountant or the dietitian because you're not factoring in all those other very so the only people and I have seen it, I guess you're describing with bodybuilders,

they might add lollies and things. The only time I've ever had to do that is with very young NRL players early in their career, where they might be a winger who weighs eighty kilos and they are six foot two and they're doing two or three training sessions a day. And those people I might send to McDonald's. You know that you would never publicly state because that's how many calories they're burning. But for most people, I just don't

really understand where it fits. And if anything, I think it can do more damage because you start to, you know, lend itself to indulging yourself on these foods that really aren't healthy for us. And give yourself permission to be eating them psychologically without even listening to your body in terms of what it really really wants. So it's not something I use. I think it's great to be aware of it, but if someone was asking me about it, I generally think it's an excuse to eat more more rubbish.

And you know, we all follow a diet lean all of us ere a diet, whether we like to admit it or not. But for me, a diet is about sustainability, and it's about developing habits and patterns of eating that you like, as opposed to thinking about it in your head and thinking what you should be eating in numbers terms. And that's where we sometimes feel wrong with principles like this, which are asking us to calculate things. And we don't

eat according to a science. We eat according to a behavioral pattern.

necessarily an indicator of health. As you mentioned, a lot of these super lean people aren't necessarily healthy, and a lot of them have, you know, super low iron levels, they've got you know, chronic and autoimmune diseases. Just because somebody looks a certain way and follows a certain diet pattern doesn't necessarily mean that they're healthy. And so I think that's a really important thing to notice. Tracking your macros is all well and good, What about your micro nutrients?

I would say that your micro nutrients matter as much, if not more than your macro nutrients. And are you tracking things like are you getting in enough selenium? Are you getting in enough fol ate? No? Probably not, because when you're putting everything into an app, you're just not

getting that diversity of foods. And again, people fall into that rabbit hole where they're like and this is a perfect example of my husband when I met him, he ate the same thing for breakfast, lunch, He had a second lunch and then dinner every single day because he was doing flexible dieting. That's what he did. And it was one vegetable at each meal. It was like broccoli and then beans, We had greens twice a day. He had chicken, he had turkey, and I think he had

either chicken or beef for dinner. And breakfast was like this high protein nudugrain sort of cereal with milk, and that was it, And that was his start because it perfectly. He had perfectly calculated his macros on a daily basis based on what a fitness coach had told him. Then I came in and he started dating me. Here this is years ago, and I just plipped on its head because we shouldn't eat the same thing every day, and just because it can calculated in an app doesn't necessarily

mean that that's healthy. He'll probably kill me for saying the story on him.

and are they true markets of health? Probably not. Probably a good thing to sort of reassess what you're actually doing.

to guide your food choices. That is incredibly, incredibly important, but something that comes up a lot for some of my clients is constant hunger, and sometimes I will start someone on their plan and their feedback very quickly is that they can do it, but they're feeling really hungry, and that kind of incessant hung go where they can't stop thinking about food and they're obsessed and they're eating

their dinner at four thirty. And this for me is a big, big concern, but it's very, very common, so we did think it was a really good opportunity to

talk it through. Now physiologically, if you're consuming a well balanced meal that ticks the box on your macro nutrient but is also really micro calorie load, So you know, you have a lunch that's got some salad or soup, and then a sandwich you'll rat with a decent amount of protein, or perhaps some leftover dinner that's got again a serve of lean meat and lots of veggies and a little bit of good quality carbohydrates from some sweet

potato or some brown rice. That meal that might clock in between three to five hundred calories for the average person, should in theory keep you full for at least three to four hours. So as soon as I have developed a plan, or clients are eating reasonably well balanced meals, if they're feeling hungry within an hour or two after consuming that meal, I'm a bit worried because it's telling me that something's not quite right with the way they're

processing their hunger or potentially their hormones. So Indeed, with some hormonial conditions like insulin resistance, because insulin is not metabolizing carbohydrate overly effectively, you can have quite fluctuating glucose levels which can really drive that incessant need for sweet food. Indeed, it can be behavioral if you have programmed to eat every couple of hours. Indeed, the brain will seek out that stimulation if you are consuming inadequate amounts of carbohydrates.

So if you're actively cutting your carbohydrates out, So for example, you might have had an omelet for breakfast with no other fuel, no toast, or you might have had a chin a salad for lunch with no carbohydrate added. Indeed, it's not uncommon to get those sugar cravings an hour or two, So incessant hunger is a sign that you do need to have a step back and say, why

am I not getting the satisfaction and fullness. But in my experience, lea and the most common reason is that there's hormonal issues driving it, which is an indicator to me, I may need to get those hormones under control, or that the meals they're making up or developing according to what they think is balanced or healthy does not have the right macro nutrient mix or balance of food groups that is going to keep them full for that three to four hours.

to half of what they're having. I've do the amount of sales and veggies, and they've kind of got a bit lazy and they're like, Okay, I'll hit the carves, I'll hit the you know, the fat and the fiber, but I didn't have enough you know, salads. Old kind of like won't bother with that. Or something like that. So I think that hunger for most I would say eighty to ninety percent of my clients will stabilize within

about a week of working with me. So I think that's just that difference in you know, the body, the hormones, even the mind as well in terms of just doing something a little bit different. So I think that that constant hunger, if it's in the first week, if you're doing something new or working with a new program or a dietician or something like that, give it a week, suck it up and see how you go. And if it's still there in the second or third week, then

it's definitely something you need to look at. When the second most common reason, I would say then besides, it just needs you know, your body just it doesn't like change necessarily, and sometimes it doesn't do that well with change. So just give it a good week and see what happens. And if you're still feeling hungry all of the time in a week two or three, that's all we need to sort of shake things up a bit. Are you

eating enough fiber? Are you eating enough protein? Most of Australians should be having thirty grams plus a fiber a day. I personally think, Susie, that our fiber recommendations are too low. It's twenty five grams for healthy women and thirty grams for healthy men. I quite often will easily have my clients on thirty thirty five forty grams of fiber a day. I personally think that our Australian recommendations are too low. Just my own opinion, but I will absolutely drive up

the fiber and the protein and their meal plans. And the other thing is for a lot of is is it true physical hunger? It's that difference between I'm just craving something because I know I'm you know, following a meal plan and trying to be quote unquote good, or you know, it's Wednesday and I haven't had any chocolate since Monday. Whatever it is. But it's just that emotional drive to eat what I call head hunger, versus that true physical hunger or that stomach hunger. So I think

that's really a big thing to ask clients. Are you actually truly physically hungry? If I said to you, go and have an extra veggie souper, go and grab three or four carrots with some homas or salza, could you do that and they're like, oh no, no, I really

just feel like some crackers. And it's like, if you've got a driver need for an exact or certain type of food, it's more probably that head hunger or that emotional hunger versus that true physical hunger, because if you were truly physically hungry, you would eat any vegetable on the planet. I would just drink, you know, gallons of water if I was truly physically hungry and that was the only thing that was available. So I think it's really important to sort of differentiate between is this true

physical hunger or stomach hunger. So I think they're probably the two most common reasons. And I think probably the third one is clients who are trying to do it themselves and they just put themselves at a far too big a deficit. I had a dam from a girl just yesterday who was like, he's an online calculator. I know you always say you need to be in a deficit to lose weight. Well, my deficit was I think it's just like oney, one hundred calories or something like that.

And I was like, oh, it's too big. And I said why that deficit? And she said, oh, the blog I read said it should be a five hundred cow deficit, and I just think for too many of us, we're just putting ourselves in two bigger deficits. Of course, we're going to feel hungry if you're you know, she was gaining weight beforehand. You know, she's probably on two thousand plus calories, has now taken herself down to eleven hundred calories, ramped up her exercise in the the process as well

because she's trying to lose weight. It's just too big. It's too much for the body to cope with. Like I really do think slow and steady wins the waste, so I think not enough protein and fiber. Is this actually true hunger? Or is this just more cravings and that constant need or want to eat because we're so used to it because it's a habit for us. And are we in too big a deficit? They're probably the three biggest things I think about when clients are saying I'm hungry and hungry, I'm hungry.

a plane tuna salad. Now what happens in my experience with that is because they have restricted at the time of day when they're often most physically active and need the most energy, that they get a rebound hunger all afternoon, and that is where you have that constant need to snack, and you know at two o'clock you're hungry again, and then at four o'clock it's like you can't get enough

food in. So you really want to pile the day with more fuel, in particular that vegetable bulk at every meal, including breakfast and lunch, and make sure that those first two meals are balanced, and you will notice that your hunger is a lot more in control on those days. Because my argument's always been your race of good nutritions one in the morning, kind of like trathlon. The race is one on the bike. So if you front load and get breakfast really well balanced with some veggies as well,

to bulk it up. A well balanced lunch that contains all of your nutrient groups, you will find you won't

have that constant need to snack all afternoon. But you're right because the other thing that people do in the afternoon is they grab the crackers or all carbohydrate without their balance of their macros and getting some protein, getting some veggies, and the more of that really quickly digested carbohydrate you consume, like the rice, crackers and the hommus and those ready to eat you know, snacks, it primes the brain to look for more of those really starches,

those really processed carbohydrates, and that drives you're overeating all afternoon. So it's about getting the balance through the day helps to control your hunger and in the afternoon. And when a client presents and says that they're starving at five o'clock, I know they haven't eaten enough in the day. So

it's about what's happening earlier in those meals. And inevitably, when I look at food pictures or food diaries, my constant feedback is where are the vegetables, where's the salad, because I might pile a whole salad with lunch or add lots of veggies to it omelet, and my clients will have nothing. They'll have a slice of tomato. So it's that shift and getting that balance right through the day, and that helps predict that hunger management in the in

the afternoon and then in the evening. A lot of it, as you said's habitual. It's because we're programmed to have a lot of sweet food. So it's working through that and really thinking, right, the truth is, I'm not actually probably hungry, it's just wanting something in my mouth. So how can I have something in my mouth that's not going to be too many calories?

you haven't eaten enough. Maybe you've eaten enough, but it's the wrong type of food, or it's the wrong mix of foods, or you've had just a huge leg day at the gym, you know, and you actually need to eat more than other days. And again, this is why I hate it, or not that I hate I don't encourage clients to caloriecount and macro account because most of the time you're trying to eat the same thing every day, but you don't do the same thing every day. And

I know, Susie, not right now because I'm pregnant. But when I do a big leg day in the past at the gym, I'm hungry that day, like hungry, like I'll go breakfast, snack, snack, lunch, snacksnack, dinner, Versus if I just go out and just do, say my ten thousand steps for the day and that's all I do. I can normally hold off of my break ea till you know, around ten o'clock because I'm just not genuinely hungry.

Then go to a later lunch and then maybe have one sack in the arbor and have dinner, and I'm done for the day. Like my calorie lodal intake for that day is just significantly lower than if I'm doing a big heavy leg day in the gym, because I'm just not burning as much and I'm just not as hungry. So all of these things I think come into play, but it's really it's going to come down to an

individual basis. And again we're going to plug dietitians here, and that's why it's so important to be working with a qualified professional because yeah, sure you can do it yourself, but you know, I could do my tax myself, but I'd probably be losing out on you know, hundreds or thousands of dollars, So you know, in terms of what I could actually be claiming, I could attempt to fix my calm myself, am I got to fix it? Probably not.

I could attempt to you know, clean my teeth myself and not go to the dentist for years and years, but eventually, I think my teeth are going to pull out. So I think the need to see a professional in what those professionals are qualified in is so so important. In nutrition is just one of those scary areas where because there's so much online or because everybody eats, everybody thinks they're an expert in nutrition. So absolutely is a good time for us to really rate the importance of

seeing a dietitian. If you have specific goals around your nutrition.

is my weight? How many calories should I be eating? We can't give that personalized advice over Instagram, but we are more than happy to chat about listener questions and the different products that you send through to us as well, so please do send them through. We've got quite a list now, don't we, Susie. Our listeners are really enjoying the podcast, which is amazing. But today we're chatting about a product somebody has sent in called PEB two. So

it's essentially powdered peanut butter. So on the front of it, the marketing says ninety percent less fat and six grams of protein, So I mean it looks pretty good. I think it is gluten free, and it's a vegan product as well. So for two tablespoons of this powdered peanut butter, it's sixty calories. It is one point five grams of fat, so significantly lower fat than if you had two tablespoons of actual peanut butter. It's gone ninety milligrams of sodium,

and it five grams of carbohydrates. So obviously, because peanut butter is more of a fat, we don't expect a huge amount of carbohydrate. A gram of fiber for the two tablespoons a powder peanut butter and six grams of protein, so six grams of proteins is a big whack in two tablespoons and quite low calories as well, at just sixty calories. So I've actually got some sitting in my cupboard at the moment, SUSI, A brand I think in the past is center to me, or I don't know,

it's ended up somehow in my cupboard. I did mention to you because SUSI said, where do you actually buy this from? And I said, I've seen it in my gym, because my gym has this big fancy venue machine. They sell you know, broccoli chips and protein cookies and all the health kalos that we've talked about in the past. But this is actually something that I don't consider too bad.

Actually a sort of a fan of it, SUSI, because you can get the taste of the peanut butter in it for a lot lower calorie, a lot higher protein. So again, if you're in a deficit and you're trying to lose body fat's a good option. It's nothing like real peanut butter. I must admit. You kind of mix it with water and it forms like a little bit of a paste. So I've actually put it in porridge

in my prods in the morning. I've sort of put some of this in and the taste is there, but it's just nowhere near is concentrated in terms of the taste as normal peanut butter would. But I guess it is sort of what probably at least a third of the calories that two tablespoons of normal peanut butter would be. So I think it has a time and a place, and it's definitely something that I'm not going to completely discount at all, but for the right type of person,

I think it could be quite helpful. What are your thoughts.

in peanut butter, so I'll be very careful here. I think it's really interesting because you're right, it gives people an opportunity to potentially enjoy the protein rich benefits associated

with peanut butter with a lot less fat. It does have added sugar and salt, which a number of the peanut butter's on the market now, including the Range, don't have, so there's a downside to that, and I think for people who potentially are counting their fat or really love the taste of it, it's an option, but you're going

to pay for that. You know, it's ten dollars per jar, which isn't insignificant, and I just think, wow, I guess the other thing going through my mind, and we haven't discussed this before, Like, do you think you'd lose some of the sort of antioxidant potential with some of those nuts in the way that it had been processed.

can see that it has a place, I guess. But you definitely do need to be using I think I sort of originally added about a teaspoon to my approach and I literally couldn't even taste it, So you do have to be using quite a lot of it, like sort of the one to two tablespoons that's recommended in the serving size, which again the container is not actually that big, and for ten bucks a pop, you know, the price does add up quite a lot.

I would probably use it there. I wouldn't use it as an alternative to peanut butter because I think that there's better one hundred percent nuts spreads out there that are better to spread and things. But if I had it at home, I would actually use it as a base to a bliss ball as a way of getting the protein in there without using protein powder. Yeah, and interest because only two tablespoons.

to school because then they have a nut base. But for adults at home or why the kids are all homeschooling, if you were making bliss balls, you know, you could do peanut butter banana balls with that really easily.

You're actually going to be quite limited with your protein if you're a plant based and b don't like adding protein powder. So I think this is a really good option to get a little bit more protein into something like a smoothie as well. So I do think it definitely you know. I think the perkose of it is the six grams of protein for only sixty calories. I think that's amazing, particularly for people following a plant based lifestyle with the love of the fibers a little bit higher,

but you know, Lisa's a gram in there. But I think overall it's it's a medium sized product that we could recommend. I definitely recommend it. I wouldn't I wouldn't shy away and say it's not recommended. But I think it has a time and a place, and for the right type of person, I think it could actually be quite beneficial.

like that for it. So I think again, you know, there's a few different flavor combos there as well, so definitely, yeah, a few interesting and exciting products coming to the supermarket. But yeah, I don't mind this one overall. And I do think, as we mentioned, from someone following a plant based lifestyle or trying to keep their fats or their calories overall quite low, it can definitely have a time and a place very interesting.

that are proven to have a beneficial effect of probiotics. And for anyone who's not familiar, probiotics are the good bacteria that exists naturally in our gut, and we get them in fermented foods, so you often see them as part of yogurts or even probiotic shots like You're coolt, and we see them in more and more of our

foods in general to support my gut help. So specifically then that the areas of nutritional science I'm aware of that have been shown to have proven effects of probiotics being added to the diet are more for digestive health issues, things like alternative colitis, diverticulitis. I know there's some evidence to help reduce collig in infants and babies.

evidence I found around mastatists. But I think you know, by the town you got masst artists, I think you're, yeah, you're probably not wanting to really do too much rather than just get those antibotics and as fast as you can to help you out. So yeah, there is definitely some specific health conditions, but with probotics, it is absolutely around the strain that needs to be research to support the strain, the amount and the type as well that you're having. So I think that there's a few things

to think about for probotics, but for general health. If you wanted a black and white answer, my answer would be no, I don't think that probotics are needed for general health. In a capsule form, I think we can take probotics in our foods. But what's more important, and we have research to support this, Suzi, is that probotics for general health matter far more than what proverdics do.

So our proverdex are a good bacteria. Our probotics are the things that feed our good bacteria, so they create fuel for our gut health, and probotics can naturally help to strengthen our gut lining and our gut health as well. So there's not enough research for probotics and general health. But the way we should be putting our focus is on naturally occurring probotics and for a lot of people with gut health issues in ibs, there are a lot of our high FORODMAPP foods, so I think just be

really careful. But we don't absolutely want to cut out probotics in general, even though they might trigger us and cause a few symptoms. We still want to include as much as possible and as much diversity as possible into small amounts, even if it's sort of every second day as you can, because the research is really strong for general health and probotics, not so much of probotics just for those specific health conditions we mentioned.

miso and foods like that. So I think when you're ticking the box on those what we call superfoods that have pack full of nutrition in general and great daily additions, I definitely don't retain recommend people go and pay for extra probiotics for all of these reasons. Plus there are another expense, and I would rather my clients are spending on good quality fresh fruit and vegetables and increasing the load.

As we know, the wider the range of those products, the better our range of gut microbiome is anyway, So it comes down always to me to a good quality yogur and things like that, just to be ticking the box when you're with your daily food choices rather than popping another pill.

you're going to get there. But the problem is we all want the miracle and the pill. We all want to pop something and hope that it helps, rather than actually do the hard work and reduce our stress and focus on sleep and focus on eating more whole foods

so much that goes into a holistic, healthy lifestyle. And I can promise you that probotics would be maybe five percent of benefit for the majority of people, unless, of course, we're talking about those specific health conditions, and if you did have one of those specific health conditions such as

inflammatory baladices or antibodic associated diarrhea. Absolutely crucial to touch base with either your DP but probably more importantly your dietician because they will know the exact strain and the exact type of probotic. If you had, you know, a bit of Barley Valians some travelers diarrhea. You're not just going to go and grab a random probatic at the chemist. You're going to want an exact strain and an exact amount of that to take, and an exact time frame

as well. So again you're not wasting your money, You're getting the true benefits which are proven in the research. So I think that there is, you know, some really great emerging science around probotics, but I think for general health, majority of people probably not needed. Absolutely focus on probotics from food first, and also your probotics from naturally occurring foods as well. Alrighty, Susie, that brings us to the

end of Nutrition Couch for another week. I'm more sad on it comes to an end, but I do think we cover so much content. I mean it's been nearly forty minutes, so I think we've done pretty well this week.

we would love we all know somebody that does. Let's be honest, grab someone else's far and give us a good rating in the Apple podcast app. We'd appreciate it so much. That influences the chart ratings and the higher we rank on the charts, and thank you for your support. We've been at number one for pretty much since we launched about fourteen weeks ago in terms of the nutrition podcast charts in Australia, so we can't thank you enough

for that. But those charts are really influenced by your subscriptions and your ratings, So if you haven't done so already,

please leave us a positive rating or review. Because the more the higher up the charts we are, the more people that we can reach and actually help and get some great evidence based nutrition messages and science out there to the general public versus you know, some of these influencers who are promoting all sorts of terrible things, Susie, So we do appreciate your feedback and me thank you

very much for that. Give us a follow on Instagram at the Nutrition Catch podcast and we will catch you guys, same time, same place, next Sunday morning.