Welcome to Effortless Swimming, the podcast for swimmer, triathletes and coaches. Joy Australian swim coach Brenton Ford as he reveals the latest techniques and information to improve his swimming. Let’s dive right in. Welcome to another episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. I’m here with my favourite nutritionist. I’ve got Steph Lowe on the line again. So Steph is a friend of mine here from Melbourne. She’s a triathlete. She’s about to head off to Hawaii for Half Ironman over there. But today I want to talk to Steph about two big misconceptions about food. And the reason I want to talk about these two things is because I’ve made some changes to my diet recently and the results have not been good. So I want to talk to Steph about why these misconceptions are out there and what it can mean to your health and to your weight if you make these changes in your diet. So welcome again to the podcast, Steph.

Hi, thanks for having me. So the two misconceptions that I want to talk about, well the first one is fats in the diet. So lately I’ve been having a lot more fat in my diet but my weight hasn’t been increasing in fact it’s been going the other way. So let’s talk a little bit about the misconception about a lot of fats that people generally eat. Yeah, great. I think that’s actually the most common misconception that we have. So I guess it’s important to start by discussing that we actually need to consider that it’s not food that controls our weight but it’s our hormones. So what we’re looking at from a food perspective is eating the right food to get the desired hormonal control or impact. So fats in particular are really complex molecules. They have a high, what we call, thermic effect of food but that just means that our body has to go through a lot of work to digest and assimilate and absorb, which is actually a good thing because it gives us that satiety and I know that you mentioned you feel full when you eat those good fats.

So you do get that satiety, which is obviously really important. My final point of view, we get blood sugar control. So we don’t get the high spikes in insulin, which is what sugar or refined grains give us. So we get a nice, stable energy supply and that’s what a meal should do. It should offer us that energy delivery into the morning or into the afternoon or if it’s a main meal, certainly that energy value. Thank you. Yeah, and one of the things that I’ve noticed, so basically what I’ve been doing for breakfast is I’ve been having bacon and eggs, another thing called MCTOL and what I’ve noticed is that I’m not really getting hungry until about one or two o’clock in the afternoon but even then it’s not, you know, I’m not as hungry as I was when I was eating sushi. Another thing is the energy delivery. So how are fats different to, say, carbohydrates in terms of energy delivery? Is there one which is better?

Yeah, so I guess there’s a couple of points here we can discuss. So if we look at our traditional breakfast options, cereal and toast, they’re really high in carbohydrates, which at the end of the day are just sugars, so the carbs get broken down into the sugars. What those sorts of foods do is give us short-term energy, a big insulin spike, and then we come down of what we call like a rollercoaster and that’s when you get the hunger. So you’ve probably experienced it before that you eat your cereal and toast and then by 9 or 10 o’clock you’re craving like a muffin or some caffeine to pick you up from that sugar crash. So the opposite happens when you eat fat and protein, which obviously you’re getting from your eggs and bacon as well as the good fats. So both protein and fat give you that delayed energy delivery because they are more complex modules to break down and our body doesn’t require insulin like it does when we eat carbohydrates.

And then I know you are on your website, thenaturalnutritionist.com. You quite often talk about the difference between butter and margarine. So one of them is good for you, one of them is not so good for you. So what’s your take on those two? So I mean definitely butter is the best choice and we know now why. Margarine was definitely invented back in the low fat era where everyone became really fatophobic and low fat products became the next best thing. I think the perspective I can give you is if you look at the number of ingredients in butter there’s going to be two, maybe three versus the number of ingredients in margarine. There’s definitely 15 or more and I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen the colour of margarine before it died to be sellable. It’s actually like a really foul grey looking colour because it’s been highly processed and I think you need to ask yourself whether you want to put that inside your body.

Yeah and one thing that annoys me but it’s good marketing by the margarine companies is they talk a lot of big claims are lower your cholesterol and they make it sound like it’s really healthy to eat margarine. So are those claims true or is it funded by the margarine companies? Those claims aren’t true. I think the most important point is that we can’t be victims to food marketing so it’s really important to learn how to read labels and look at the ingredients list and certainly learn to avoid those unsubstantiated claims. So margarine they can get away with saying that because of the Omega 6 content so people assume that all Omega’s are good but we know that it’s actually just Omega 3 that we want from a heart health and cholesterol point of view and margarine is actually high on Omega 6 which is actually inflammatory so it’s something we need to be avoiding for overall health but from an athlete point of view

particularly from a recovery point of view. We want to be as anti-inflammatory or as alkaline as possible. And then you’ve also got the, well I remember growing up in school and they would basically teach that saturated fats are bad but polyunsaturated fats and I think monounsaturated fats all these types of fats are good for you but based on what I’ve been reading lately is that that’s not quite true either. Yeah we’ll just come back to what I think happened. It started about over 50 years ago now with a certainty research studies that were very much manipulated in terms of what the data set produced and I think back then we didn’t have any other evidence to go on so those research studies bled into the food industry and then products were created and we were just pretty much told what to believe. It’s a very different story now we’ve a lot more research and like longitudinal studies that obviously you know when it’s done over a long period of time

you can get some decent evidence so we now know that we’re not linking saturated fats to things like heart disease and cholesterol and there’s actually something called a saturated fat heart disease myth because it’s obviously been disproven. Yeah and that’s you know it’s quite interesting that a lot of the stuff that we’ve been taught in the last maybe two decades or so with you know you should eat both fats and all these changes but you know even with milk like you’ve got skim milk and no 9% fat free milk but you know are you better off just having the full cream like your normal milk as opposed to the skim milk. Yeah definitely I mean we’re looking at the blood sugar control so if you have a little bit more fat in your dairy in general then that’s going to give you that energy, that satiety, that blood sugar control which is the key to weight management. The perspective I can give you is you know you don’t want to change things from their natural state

so at least that dairy is close to how it comes out of the cow whereas skim milk has gone through a large range of processing to get it to be cholesterol free and that’s another one similar to margarine. It’s actually a really foul colour before it died to be marketable. Yeah right and what about for the coffee drinkers out there you know soy is sort of marketed as the healthier option to milk but you know based on what I’ve been reading soy milk’s not the greatest thing to be having either. Yeah I think we need to think about milk in general. I mean soy milk is usually really high in sugar to start so we know that we want to avoid inflammatory foods and sugar is certainly one of the big culprits. To be honest I don’t think we need dairy at all whether it’s wool fat or not purely because we want to think about food giving us nutrition that we need and unfortunately the dairy that most of us have access to is pasteurised

and obviously that has to happen at some level to be in the actual supermarket but what it means is that most of the nutrition is actually destroyed so the question I always ask people is why would you want to drink something that’s not providing you with any nutrition? Yeah that’s right. Well what do you recommend for coffee drinkers and how do you recommend they have their coffee? Well I actually use unsweetened almond milk for my coffee most of my clients end up doing the same thing with a little bit of a twist of the arm but you can always go for a long black or if you want to reduce your dairy intake to start obviously like a macchiato or something with a lot less dairy is the best place to begin. Yeah cool because that’s what I’ve been wondering is I drink probably more coffee than I should and how do you reduce that milk intake while still having any coffee? Yeah well I mean it comes back to blood sugar control as well

whether it’s full fat or skim milk will always have like the 4.7g per 100 of lactose which is the milk sugar and so if you’re having a 200ml cup of coffee you’re nearly getting 10g of sugar and so then if you’re time doing that by two or three a day you’re having more than your day’s intake in your liquid and that sugar is giving you that insulin response which is the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve remember? Yeah that’s it and that kind of ties into the second misconception that I want to talk about and that’s with wheat or gluten so I read in the middle of reading a good book called Wheat Valley which I think I might have seen you recommend on your Facebook page but it’s just really interesting as to the changes that wheat’s gone through over the last and how it’s so different to what it used to be in terms of it’s been genetically modified and changed to be able to cope with different weather conditions and things like that

so and you’ve been gluten free for how long now? I think I’m coming up to eight years actually Eight years and you haven’t looked back in eight years? It’s been a good journey I mean to be honest I think it comes back to where we get our nutrition from and like you mentioned the wheat these days is really a process it’s hybridised to create big yields so it’s all about the dollar at the end of the day and refined grains are also really high in phytic acid or phytates and what that means is that these compounds in particular really inhibit nutrient absorption the reason why you would go wheat free and or gluten free is to remove a high phytate content and to allow your body to absorb nutrients better? Yeah well I’ve been well actually I was on holidays the last two weeks and I completely went the other way but before that I was not having any wheat or gluten for a couple of weeks there and it felt really good

I felt like I was able to think clearer I felt like my body wasn’t like my hunger wasn’t as much as it used to be so I didn’t really get the cravings that I used to from it so I’m back on that sort of diet so to speak and just avoiding wheat and avoiding gluten as much as possible because I think it’s such a good way to go and after looking at all the recipes on your website and things like that you know that I follow them almost religiously with your recipes on there but you know there’s a lot of good food out there that you can have that doesn’t you know you don’t need to have gluten or wheat in your diet You certainly don’t I think an important point is that if you’re filling up on those sorts of foods it’s highly likely that you’re not getting adequate nutrition from protein and vegetables if you think about a meal that might be high in wheat or gluten you know standard would be say pasta or pizza you’re never going to get a full-serve of protein or cups of veggies in those sorts of meals

unless you’re really creative so if you reduce your reliance on those cardi grains it allows you to fill your plate with good protein which is really important for lean muscle mass development but also exercise recovery and it also allows you to meet your daily veggie requirements and vegetables are really where we get all of our antioxidants and nutrients, vitamins and minerals so you know we can’t allow the really complex carbs to get in the way of that intake and in your so you’ve got a high performance weight loss program for athletes and a lot of this stuff that we’re talking about now sort of ties into that can you explain to me how you know how that program works and you know how do the athletes that go through your program how do they get those results with the stuff that you do? Yeah absolutely so I mean I guess I help people first understand why we’re making these changes and it really depends on where the athlete is starting from

so my high performance weight loss program is very tailored so we start with an initial consultation and generally focus on day-to-day nutrition so make those changes over the course of a few weeks so they’re obviously sustainable and then we also tie in some exercise nutrition as well so I mean obviously the priority is what you do most of the time so that’s the day-to-day stuff and then we look at how we can get the most out of your training and nutrition is a big element of that so we work together with follow-up consultations that might go fortnightly or monthly moving out to say a six month catch-up to make sure that everything’s in check and that obviously our plan is now integrated as part of their lifestyle and that’s the big thing too because I mean with the people who like to switch from diet to diet it’s not a sustainable way of losing weight is it? Absolutely I think you hit the nail on the head there

like I don’t really like to use the diet word at all because it means a short term approach so you want to find the changes and they might be obviously completely new to you so they’ll be an adjustment phase and that’s also completely normal and there’s certainly a way to make gradual changes each week that then accumulates and then in say eight weeks time or 12 weeks time it’s definitely part of what you do but you’ve learnt that like you would learn any new skill like you would learn how to do butterfly you learn how to integrate these new nutritional guidelines into your life Yeah that’s exactly right so if you want to change your freestyle technique you can start with one part of it that might be your body position for example and you focus on that you get that right for a couple of weeks you make the change and then you move on to the next thing so it’s sort of integrated into your stroke just like you would implement these small changes

one at a time into your lifestyle and your habits and things like that Absolutely and that’s the way it becomes sustainable I almost feel like then it becomes integrated in your DNA it’s what you do without thinking twice One of my favourite changes that I’ve made lately is on a Sunday night I’ll cook up a big meal that I’ll have for either lunch or dinner for the next couple of days after that and it’s just stopped me from snacking it’s stopped me from looking in the cupboard in the fridge multiple times a day for something to eat so it’s just got that food there so it not only saves time but it just means you’ve got something that you can go straight to when you’re hungry Yeah I think food prep is a big part of it particularly if you’re trying to fit in full-time work and training you know healthy food doesn’t appear on the table by itself so a little bit of prep goes a long way so whether it’s snacks to have in your training bag

so you can eat as soon as you’re finished to help accelerate recovery or if it’s a big meal that you cook a double or a triple batch of so you’ve got something to take to lunch or for lunch the next day or even chuck it in the freezer for later on in the week when you’re home late from training it really sets your week out for success my favourite one recipe from your website is the spinach bread that you’ve got on there and I know you’re making a banana breadmine too soon but that’s what I found there so what I do on a weekend is make up the spinach bread cut it up into a couple slices and you might go to 8 or 10 slices and wrap up each one individually put it in the freezer and then you can take that along to training to have afterwards and that’s stopped me from stopping off the supermarket on the way home from training and buying two years ago it used to be a packet of donuts and a block of chocolate so I think it’s not exactly the perfect recovery feel is it?

No, not at all but when you’re hungry and you haven’t eaten for a while and you’ve had a big training session that was my go-to recovery snack and that’s why and that’s why snacks in their training bag are really good ones that you do make the right choice but remember we want to be eating some proper fuel in that 30 minute window post exercise so if you’ve got a drive home or go to the grocery store or start cooking I guarantee you’re going to miss that window so even something like a banana in your training bag is a great place to start but you can certainly cook one of my muffins or bread recipes which are all gluten free and refined sugar free and that’s a great snack to have ready to go and now with protein you recommend the the pea protein so why is that and what’s the difference between that and say whey protein? Personally I’ve just moved away from dairy just because we know that dairy is an inflammatory nutrient so if we’re looking at being

as alkaline or as anti-inflammatory as possible it’s not something that we need to rely on so there are some good quality whey protein isolates out there which obviously have the dairy element removed but personally I just chose the pea protein because it’s obviously really natural which is what I do with everything I put in my mouth and the pea protein I find like obviously it’s cost effective and it tastes good but it’s also highly bioavailable so you’re getting that protein straight in after training yeah cool I haven’t tried it yet but once this this batch of protein runs out I’m going to give it a shot so if people want to find out more about more recipes or they’re interested in your high performance weight loss program whereabouts can they go and find that information the easiest place is online so it’s thenaturalnutritionist.com.au recipes are up on the blog on the homepage but there’s also quite a lot on Facebook

so jump over to Facebook and like the natural nutritionist awesome thanks for that and you’re off to Hawaii on Friday I am so I fly out Friday and I race the half Ironman next week on Saturday the 1st of June sounds good well good luck I hope you go well and thanks so much for jumping on the podcast again it’s always a pleasure to have you and as you know I fly your recipes so I’ve shared a lot of the things that you post on the effortless from your Facebook page because it’s really good stuff and it’s really good for athletes I think so thanks again and I’ll hopefully see you back on the podcast sometime soon Thanks for having me Brinton Bye