Registered Dietician Andrea Schwartz talks with us about how she works with athletes in-season to hit their weight goals while not getting themselves off-track.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Trevor Connor: Hello and welcome to Fast Talk your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host, Trevor Connor. Here with Coach Julie Young and Chris Case, most endurance athlete know the importance of weight to performance. Having extra pounds to contend with can slow us down, especially when climbing, but losing weight is challenging.
It can hurt our performance more than the couple pounds we lost benefits us. This is why it needs to be done in a healthy way, and most importantly, it’s why it’s beneficial to focus on it during the off season. But what happens if you went to a few too many holiday celebrations in the off season and you’re still well over your race weight going into the season?
Then you have a few questions to ask yourself. Can you still take off the weight? How quickly should you lose it, or can you stay at your current weight and still perform? They’re tough questions and how we answer them can have a big impact in how we train, recover, and ultimately perform. Here to help us navigate this difficult scenario is Andrea Swartz.
Andy is a registered dietician, certified strength conditioning specialist and a former team USA triathlete. She is also the founder of a BS Nutrition and Fitness. She understands a lot about the dietary challenges of athletes. She’ll talk with us about how to set your in-season target weight strategies to lose weight during the season that balance your weight goals with continuing to train and perform.
And she’ll talk about some key considerations like whether you should weight train to prevent muscle loss, increase protein or carbohydrate consumption, and whether getting a body composition assessment can help. Joining Andy, we will also hear from Dr. Stacey Brison, the founder of Draft Responsibly Coaching, who will talk with us about how our bodies respond when we try to lose weight too quickly.
So time to step on that scale and let’s make it fast. Well, Andrea, first time on the show, welcome to Fast Talk.
[00:01:52] Andie Schwartz: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:53] Trevor Connor: So we’ve got an interesting and challenging conversation today ’cause we know that this is something a lot of athletes struggle with. We are talking about most effective ways to drop a little weight, and we are gonna dive into things like, should you be losing weight?
What is optimal weight for an endurance athlete? But this particular episode, what we really wanna focus on is, yes, you should be. If you’re gonna lose weight, you should do it in the off season, but you miss that window. You now feel you have five to 10 pounds to lose. We’re gonna talk about how to lose weight in season.
[00:02:34] Andie Schwartz: This is such an important topic, Trevor. I’m so glad you brought me on to discuss this.
[00:02:38] Trevor Connor: So we’ve got some landmines. Chris is just looking at me, kind of smiling,
[00:02:42] Chris Case: smiling, going, you had a big grit on your face. No, that usually means you’ve got some exciting research to talk about or some, as you said, not landmines, but complicated conversations to have about topics that I know you love when it involves nutrition.
You love it.
[00:03:00] Trevor Connor: This is a complex one. So let’s start with why is it that you want to lose weight in the off season?
[00:03:09] Andie Schwartz: That is the ideal time. So the reason why you’d wanna focus on the off season is typically most athletes do not have the same energy expenditure that they do in the competitive season. They might still be training, obviously doing all kinds of activities, but they don’t have the same energy expenditure, losses, and the same demands on their body.
So they’re in a better ideal time to actually do some sort of energy deficit.
[00:03:34] Trevor Connor: Well, let’s then dive into setting your target weight. So I didn’t know if we wanted to have more conversation about the off season, but let’s just leave it there. That is the optimal time. You’ve now missed that window. So you are in season, you’re trying to lose some weight, but you wanna still maintain your performance.
My first question to everybody here is how do you figure out what is that weight that you wanna achieve? And also making sure that it’s a good target weight. I know a lot of athletes sometimes set a target weight that’s actually too low, and I love, I read a study leading up to this podcast where they were helping athletes in season.
Achieve their target weights. And there were several athletes that they actually had to have them start eating more because they had way too low a target weight. And they were trying to do way too much of a calorie deficit. So sometimes it’s actually people are doing too much. So how do you go about figuring out what’s that weight that you wanna achieve?
[00:04:40] Andie Schwartz: I get asked this all the time, or more often. They tell me, the athletes I work with tell me what their target weight is without even having that awareness that it might be too low, like you said, Trevor. And I think without giving an exact percentage, I think the majority do actually shoot too low. And what I always try to remind them is that athletes aren’t like the general population when it comes to dieting.
You can’t cut calories and you can’t even cut your weight to a lower level and expect your performance to maintain at an optimal level.
[00:05:10] Trevor Connor: So what’s your first step when you’re working with an athlete to say, here’s the weight that we want to get you to.
[00:05:15] Andie Schwartz: So it usually involves, if possible, having them do some sort of body composition measurements.
And that doesn’t have to always be like the gold standard dexa. It can be even the home scales, like the smart scales. Just something to differentiate the actual scale with their body composition. And then from there we look at like where that might fall in like their norms. Some people might just generally carry a little extra body fat and that’s doesn’t mean that it’s harmful to their performance.
We all have different like genetic body compositions. And just because you might not be at the like ideal body fat range for an athlete doesn’t mean you won’t still perform very well for you. So we’ll look at what their trends have been. Has there been some like weight gain or weight loss over the last maybe three, six months to a year?
And try to come up with something that’s more in line with their trends than something they’ve maybe read online or on a social media post about what percent body fat or what weight they should be at for their performance.
[00:06:12] Trevor Connor: So I imagine this is a particular one in endurance sports cyclists are always very concerned about watts per kilogram, the weight going up a hill.
And I’m sure they’re reading about their favorite cyclists who, you know often. I, they think Todd a POC is what, five foot 10 and 140 pounds?
[00:06:32] Chris Case: Yeah. You hear
[00:06:33] Trevor Connor: these statistic
[00:06:33] Chris Case: leans. Yeah, they’re, yes. Lean
[00:06:36] Trevor Connor: and feel well, I’m similar height, so I need to achieve a similar sort of weight. What’s your reaction when somebody comes and talks to you about that?
[00:06:45] Andie Schwartz: So that is a very common conversation. I’ll have that whole comparison, body comparison or performance comparison.
[00:06:52] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:53] Andie Schwartz: And I really do try to come back to like, what is their norm? And that can be a difficult conversation because I think so many of us want to be. More than we are. And that’s not a negative, wanting to improve ourself or wanting to improve our performance, but I think setting those realistic goals of, here’s where I’ve been most in my life, or here’s where I’ve been at least the last couple years.
Not comparing high school weight, but if we’re talking about more of a age group athlete, let’s say in their thirties or beyond, having that same expectation of being at your high school weight or when you were just at a much leaner weight, like for my females, perhaps before children or before they entered the real life mom life.
It just, we really have to set those realistic expectations, and I do that in a way where I’m not trying to. Take away their motivation or take away their hope for improving their body composition. Mm-hmm. But just doing that in a way that is very realistic and individualized to them. Not someone that has a completely different genetic profile, different mother, father.
We really can’t compare our body types to other people that are not us. It’s just not realistic,
[00:07:59] Chris Case: I would think. The fact that most people are not living 24 hours a day with the goal of being as lean as possible is also part of the conversation. You have to set some expectations around what is possible, and the fact that your favorite cyclist looks a certain way is because they’re paid to perform day in and day out, and you are not that person.
So let’s back away a little bit from the objective of first the comparison, but also reaching that same very lean plateau, if you will.
[00:08:33] Andie Schwartz: Yeah, agreed. Chris, I think that’s such a good point too, because maybe let’s say they did have. The older, let’s say above average genetic potential for Leanness, but they do have a very demanding job.
They’re still trying to fit in their children or their spouse or just anything outside of training. It isn’t really realistic to expect to have the same focus and same results. So I do talk about lifestyle, talk about that type of factors too, but I think it still sort of hits deaf ears sometimes because there’s like such that, especially now with social media and having that visual feedback all the time, it’s almost like people just want it more and they, they see more what is out there versus what is actually in front of them.
[00:09:16] Julie Young: It does seem that there’s so many factors guiding this, like the context of it all. Like you said, the body type, I think the individual’s goal, like their fitness. So I think you’ve talked about maybe like folks that are busy professionals that have families, but then there’s the, you know, more competitive, let’s say U 23 athlete that’s kind of on a trajectory.
So I would imagine that’s different. And then of course the type of races that they’re doing. So I think like obviously you know, like these world tour riders, we see they’re really skeletal, but then you have people doing more gravel, like ultra type events. They need to be more durable. So I would imagine all that comes into play.
But it was, it is interesting to me to hear you say you don’t use the body fat as guidance, that you don’t think that’s a good parameter in terms of understanding how much weight you can lose.
[00:10:06] Andie Schwartz: It’s so true how your distance, I mean we could look, even just compare the distance of each of the endurance sports out there.
It really does depend on your distance. And I go back to when I was a youth athlete and I started off as a sprinter in middle school, quickly learn that for me to go higher level, I was gonna have to change that 100, 200 to a longer race. And once you got into high school, you really saw the differences in body types and some of these different events.
And I think back, especially when I did it, there wasn’t as much. Awareness about strength training and lean body mass and just the benefits of really focusing on lean body mass, not leanness. And I think when I got into the distance sports, there was so much comparison. Well, you look more like a sprinter, but you’re doing these distance races.
And I’m like, sure. Like that’s my body type. I’m a more muscular person and that doesn’t mean that I can’t be successful in the mile or cross country that I did, or eventually half iron Man. It really is your lean muscle mass that matters. Not just how much body fat or scale weight that you’re holding.
So I think that really getting that out there to the athletes, that that’s the focus is optimizing your lean body mass, optimizing all the things we’ll talk about today with our fueling strategies and a little less focused certainly on the scale weight, but even on that body thought percentage. ’cause that’s not really what we’re utilizing in our performance.
It’s the lean muscle mass, BO two, all those types of performance physiology.
[00:11:32] Trevor Connor: I’m kind of interested, you must have had this experience multiple times where somebody comes to you and says, I wanna lose weight, I wanna lose X pounds. And you tell them, I’d recommend against that. Or even tell them, I don’t think you should be losing weight.
What’s the sort of reaction that you get? How do they feel when you tell ’em that? Because I’m sure that’s crushing their goal. Is crushing their ambitions to hear that.
[00:11:56] Andie Schwartz: So excellent segue. Yes. So I’ve been doing this for decades now, and what I’ve been really trying to do over the years is not come off with that right away.
It’s that cliche we hear like meet the client or meet the patient where they’re at. And so I really try to find not so much or focus, we’ll say on that particular goal they have, but what do they really want outta this weight loss? Because lots of times there is something else they want besides just the weight loss.
So is it that they want to feel more c. Do they wanna feel more vital or have more energy? Lots of times there’s this. Illusion that the weight loss is going to give them what they really want. So I try to sort of take that more into account when we’re working together and then also still work on improving their health.
Because let’s face it, most people probably outside of Boulder do have sometimes weight to lose.
[00:12:51] Julie Young: Yes,
[00:12:52] Andie Schwartz: right. They do have some weight to lose. Two thirds or more of our population are overweight and obese. So I do not mean at all to discount the need for people to optimize their health. And sometimes that is actually resulting in weight loss and fat loss.
But I think that we’re so diet culture still that there’s too much emphasis still and undereducated as well. We think that the scale weight is the same as body composition and lean mass, and it’s not the same. So. A lot of reeducation. Definitely Trevor, when I’m educating and working with these clients, but still really finding why they want it and then trying to educate them on they still or will likely achieve those outcomes, but it doesn’t have to just be measurable by the scale weight.
[00:13:35] Trevor Connor: Yeah. I’ve always found it interesting where I will look at studies comparing different dietary approaches and their entire metric is weight loss. And you’ll read in the conclusions, they go, well, people found it easier to lose weight on diet A than Diet B. Therefore diet A is healthier. And you go, well, diet A might be better for losing weight, but how does that equate to being healthier?
And I found that interesting that that’s really the equation we now use to measure a healthy dietary approach. Do you lose weight or not?
[00:14:10] Andie Schwartz: Right, and that it’s so shortsighted and it’s something that has actually really inspired me to speak up and to actually do the work that I do because not only has the story I shared as a youth athlete and high school college athlete that I felt was a negative message.
Honestly, to me, it, it has really inspired me to demonstrate that it’s health is not about weight. Yes, it can be depending on certain biochemistry labs, if, if that tends to be involved, but it is really such a bigger conversation than just the scale. And in these studies as well, like we really need to look bigger picture at what we’re actually measuring and not just the scale weight.
[00:14:48] Trevor Connor: Yep.
[00:14:49] Julie Young: Speaking of scale, weight, we’ve spoken about some parameters in terms of how to guide this decision making, like body comp, fat percentage. Do you think there’s a difference for someone, like do you think resting metabolic rate is important in this process, and if so, do you think people can rely on what their garment is telling them in terms of those predictions based on formulas?
Or do you think it’s valuable for someone to go into a lab and have that measured?
[00:15:15] Andie Schwartz: Excellent question. This actually happens all the time, or very often with me, is they’ll, usually it’s an app, so they’ll go to MyFitnessPal or these different nutrition apps that are available, which have these formulas, and then they’ll actually plug in what their talk about target weight, what their target weight is.
And then from there it computes what a caloric deficit would be every day or what their kind of caloric deficit would look like. And it does take into account their resting metabolic rate with that equation. But it’s not really, I mean, studies show like it’s, it has some level of accuracy, but it’s really not giving them the full picture once again of, well, it depends on what I’m training for.
It depends on when I’m training that I should eat this calic range. And the resting me metabolic rate does give a guideline, but it’s also the expenditure we really have to count as well. So it’s that activity factor plus the resting metabolic rate. And then if there is some weight loss to lose to really do a very conservative certain amount of calories.
Per day, or maybe even just within certain training weeks versus a daily deficit. ’cause we get into a lot of trouble when we just have this very generic plan of this amount of calories all the time. Not really taking into the context, not taking into the training demands. And it can really cause a lot of inaccuracies in the formula if you that makes sense.
It’s really not an accurate formula, but it’s a good starting point.
[00:16:43] Chris Case: If you spend enough time in endurance sports. You’ve probably heard athletes talk about GI distress during long training sessions or races, but there’s actually a physiological reason for it. During prolonged endurance exercise, blood flow is redirected away from the gut and toward working muscles that reduced blood flow.
Sometimes called exercise-induced Gut ischemia can stress the intestinal lining and disrupt the balance of bacteria in the microbiome. For some athletes that can lead to inflammation, poor nutrient absorption, and the GI symptoms that show up during races. One way to support gut health during heavy training is through the microbiome.
Riga from Samira MD is a probiotic and prebiotic formula designed to support microbiome balance and the gut muscle axis. Each capsule delivers 35 billion CFUs with 17 probiotic strains, plus Croce Bilar, along with the prebiotic inulin to support beneficial bacteria. Rega also uses a delayed release capsule designed to deliver those strains to both the upper and lower intestine.
Its physician formulated made in the United States with clinically researched ingredients and manufactured in f FDA inspected CGMP certified facilities. To learn more about supporting gut health visits, mira md.com/fast Talk and use Fast Talk 15 for 15% off your first order.
[00:17:59] Trevor Connor: So wanna shift here into talking about the strategy.
It sounds like what we’re saying when you set a weight loss target, particularly in season, probably be a little less ambitious than if you had set a weight loss target in the off season. And just also make sure that the weight loss goal is what you’re trying to accomplish here. Meaning if your ultimate goal is performance, are you certain that losing the weight’s gonna give you the better performance or should you be focusing other things?
But let’s say now they’ve had a talk with you, you’ve set with the athlete a weight loss goal, and again, they’re in season, they’re doing races. What are some of the considerations that need to be factored into the strategy here that wouldn’t be as important if they were doing this in the off season when performance just isn’t that critical.
[00:18:49] Andie Schwartz: So going back to that target weight, little Trevor. So I do at times when medically appropriate, recommend a modest weight loss, and that can be something most of the research says around like less than 0.5% of their total weight. So that way we really are individualizing it because that can look very different for a small endurance athlete female with a larger male, especially if it’s a cyclist or velodrome depending on their sport.
So we do use, or I do use that percentage to help target that. And then based on what their training demands are, we really try to focus on getting the majority or. Let’s say the primary nutrient load around the pre intra and post cycle of their training day. So they’re properly fueled before they’re properly fueled during, and then they’re definitely properly fueled after to optimize their recovery.
So that’s where we don’t do the deficit. We’ll say that’s a primary nutrition focus. And then throughout the couple hours post-workout, we’re still more hypermetabolic. And then later in the evening, maybe at that point we start to taper calories a little. So it’s more after the workouts that we do some of the deficit work.
[00:20:01] Trevor Connor: What about the concern of losing lean body mass? ’cause they’ve shown, even in studies where they are looking at weight loss in obese subjects and they have them lose weight, they’re not entirely losing fat, they’re gonna lose some muscle mass. And that’s if you’re an athlete. You need to be aware of that you might lose five pounds.
But they were saying in some studies it can be from 30 to 85% of the weight loss can actually be muscle mass. So if you’re an athlete and you lost five pounds and three pounds of that is is muscle tissue, that might actually hurt your performance. More than the loss of five pounds is gonna help you.
[00:20:38] Andie Schwartz: Absolutely. And one thing, just to add to that, Trevor too, it’s the loss of glycogen as well, right? So, so especially when we’re in a caloric deficit, unfortunately lots of times athletes’ strategies will be to reduce carbohydrates. It could be also total calories, but lots of times it’s reduction in carbohydrates.
And that results in the reduction of glycogen stores, which is often shown on the scale, but often felt is like an actual fat loss. So, so there’s that important aspect that we need for training that can be lost. And then to your point, the lean muscle mass as well, if we’re not using carbohydrate at the right ratios with our protein, ’cause so many athletes are focusing on protein, we don’t have the same protein utilization or the same protein synthesis to actually rebuild and recover those muscles.
So then we can actually accelerate that lean muscle mass loss as well. So it’s a combination of, let’s say a. The mild low energy availability and then not the right ratio of macronutrients potentially when we are really striving for that energy deficit.
[00:21:40] Trevor Connor: Here’s Dr. Stacey Brison, explaining why our bodies may not respond well to a rapid weight loss in the season and why it’s so important to be conservative and cautious.
[00:21:50] Stacey Brickson: Weight loss is a little bit out of my lane, but I have certainly got an interest in it and took Kristen Arnold’s recent online class just to educate myself a little bit more. And I think trying to lose weight in season is really dicey, and I’ll only speak from a woman’s perspective because I am one who were hormonally a bit different and the body is really made for survival mode.
And when you try to lose weight in season, your body doesn’t always know that this is on purpose and when you’re asking it to do so much on the bike. Then you’re taking away from part of its survival, which is you know, the body seeing that you’re restricting food and it doesn’t know that you’ve got a grocery store right down the road.
It actually puts you into a state where your metabolism’s dropping and you’re more likely to gain weight.
[00:22:45] Trevor Connor: Well, that makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, because if you think of it, our body interprets times when we are in that caloric deficit as times when there just isn’t a lot of food availability.
Like at the end of the fall when the winter’s coming on and you just can’t get as much food. So that’s when your body says, okay, we need to conserve, so it’s gonna lower your resting metabolic rate, it’s gonna make you more fatigued so you don’t burn as many calories. So yeah, it’s gonna make it tougher on you and as an athlete, those aren’t necessarily the reactions you want.
[00:23:18] Stacey Brickson: Again, not being a registered dietician, if you can explain that concept of just basic physiology of survival to your athletes, you may get a little bit more buy-in. Why it’s counterproductive to try to lose weight during the season, and that’s better probably for the off season.
[00:23:37] Trevor Connor: So I found this really interesting.
This was a study I actually read last night called Effective Two Different Weight Loss Rates on Body Composition and Strength and Power related performance in elite athletes. So this was. E exactly what we’re addressing right now. They were taking athletes who were trying to lose weight while they were also trying to perform and looking at different strategies.
And so one was a slower 500 calorie deficit per day. The other was a faster thousand calorie deficit per day until the athletes achieved the target weight that they had set with the researchers. But something they did that was really interesting in this study is they increased protein consumption. So they even said they didn’t quite go with recommendations of keeping the athletes high carbohydrate.
They put them on a moderate carbohydrate diet, had them eat a much higher protein diet, so upwards of about 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight and then had them strength training four times a week. And you actually saw in the fast weight loss group, you saw no loss of lean body mass. In the slow group you actually saw they put on a couple pounds of muscle even though they were losing weight.
[00:24:50] Andie Schwartz: Yeah, that’s interesting. I would argue that I’m actually so very surprised about the deficit, the fast loss group. ’cause that is way higher than recommendations. But usually we’ll say somewhere below 500 calories per day at most. So optimal. I usually do two to 300 for my athletes. But that’s interesting ’cause it doesn’t make sense that with the caveat of their strength training, I’d be curious on what that strength training was like, what that actually consisted of.
But you are certainly going to, and then the 1.8 per kilogram is on that upper end. So I guess optimizing that. 1.8 per kilogram, gram per kilogram plus that strain training if it was like a two or three day a week. And if it is more that sort of three set, six to eight rep range, that would make sense to me.
’cause that’s what we know with research does tend to maintain muscle mass, or to your point even maybe create hypertrophy or some gain. But it’s still very, in my opinion, in my experience still. Way too high to go really 500 or over if you’re really looking at performance, because I guess that study didn’t, it was probably just looking at the actual muscle and weight related changes.
I would think if you added in performance outcomes, you might actually start to see a decline. Even with those body composition improvements, I think there would be that high risk of having some performance declines or even worse, some other metabolic or hormone changes. So I think it can be really dicey getting into that 500 or more calories per day.
[00:26:18] Trevor Connor: They did have performance, but it was general performance ’cause the athletes were from all different sports. What you did see is in the slower weight loss group, you saw improvements in things like bench press and squats, jump tests, things like that. You saw really almost no improvements in the fast group.
And they were surprised by that. They were expecting to see a loss of performance, but part of the explanation was these were general tests of performance that they weren’t doing ahead of this study. So there might have been a bit of a learning effect there.
[00:26:52] Andie Schwartz: Right. And I’m also thinking too, like you said, it was like bench press and squat.
[00:26:56] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:57] Andie Schwartz: Usually in sport, we’re looking at a longer duration activity, which is going to use energy availability a lot more, and. I would also argue that maybe those measurements were more specific to that strength training protocol. So it’d just be interesting if they actually did the apples to apples with the endurance running or endurance cycling or whatever particular sport as you said they were in.
It’d be curious to see if there were any performance declines over time or even beyond the study over time, like long term.
[00:27:24] Trevor Connor: Yep.
[00:27:24] Julie Young: Andy, you had mentioned one of your strategies is changing it based on the week as opposed to make everything look the same across the days, is what I’m understanding. And is that like you would take advantage of those rest weeks, for example, and maybe try to implement it a little bit more, that weight loss during those weeks?
And also you’d mentioned the 200 to 300 calorie deficit. Is that something you would do in season as opposed to off season when it might be closer to the 500 calorie deficit?
[00:27:55] Andie Schwartz: Sure I’ll answer first about the cyclic or like the puritization nutrition that I do. So it would, yeah, it would absolutely be around when their peak volume is.
So I look at the minutes per week. How much of it is like aerobic, anaerobic. Obviously in season it’s gonna be a mix, but you know, the more intense and the more volume we have, the more we have to focus on the fueling and be very careful with the deficit. And then even with, if they’re doing like two a days, or if they’re doing like strength training in the morning and let’s say they’re longer endurance in the evening based on which exercise or what timeframe’s gonna utilize different, even micronutrients, I’ll time that differently as well with them.
Like the post or, or during. Or pre. So it is like very. I’ll say very sport or expenditure specific. And then also just within that cycle of is it this volume? Is it towards this race? Do we have this race coming up? We wouldn’t wanna go in a deficit, obviously leading up to our a race or our top races. So like a lot of periodization on like race performance goal races and just training volume and intensity concerns.
And then you had asked about doing that in the off season with the calories. The two to 300 would be more an in-season. I’d say an average in-season range. Again, we could go a little up to 500, but if we’re talking like a five pound weight loss, if the client’s already pretty lean but just wants to drop five pounds or less, that’s when they have less to lose if, if that makes sense.
So we’d wanna be a little more conservative on what that weight loss would look like, and that’s when we go basically into that percent of their weight. And what a healthy target weight, or at least what I would, what. Guide them on being a target weight would be so that they aren’t gonna compromise too much muscle mass loss.
And in the off season, sure, we can certainly go above the 500. It just really depends on how they’re feeling and that’s why I use those other metrics of not just what the scale or the body comp is measuring, but you know, how’s your sleep, how’s your mood? ’cause we can see a lot of mood declines. I use more than just the calories to measure how low or how high we can go.
There’s a lot more we need to look at.
[00:30:00] Trevor Connor: And for a lot of people counting calories is tough and it’s a real hard thing to get accurate. So what sort of weekly weight loss would you say is a good target for athletes? And I know that’s gonna be highly individual, but what would be some guidelines to say, you’re losing too fast, you need to adjust here.
So I,
[00:30:20] Andie Schwartz: I did a few calculations for you guys to sort of look at like those percentages I shared about the 0.5 or so. And so usually, and this is gonna surprise, probably surprise you guys, but for a lot of people it’s gonna be very modest. It might be something like 0.5, I mean really less than half a pound a week, which for the client or the athlete is probably frustrating ’cause they’re so used to diet culture saying, well aim for at least two pounds a week or more weight loss.
Or you see these different, we’ll call ’em interventions out there today that they’re losing even more than that right now. So I think again, reeducating on something very low, again, 0.5 even 0.25. So a quarter pound to half a pound really at most. And even looking more at, well, is it just slowly starting to decline over this month?
I really like to focus more on the monthly plan than just a weekly plan because there can be so many shifts week to week, day to day, and, and our body can be a little unpredictable too if we didn’t have great sleep or we’re traveling. We might have some hormonal changes or just some eating habit changes.
And that’s not really taken into account what we’re actually doing. It’s just the lifestyle reality that we talked about earlier. So it’s more like a monthly check-in that I’ll do, but looking at something like that, so like 140 pound athlete, I would have, yeah, about 0.3 to 0.7. And again, this is all under a pound per week.
180 pound athlete, again, maybe they could lose a little more. So maybe half a pound to just shy of a pound 0.9 pound a week. And that’s in line with that 0.25 to 0.5% body loss on those two athletes. So that keeps them in the very safe range. And then I’d say to the not safe range that you were asking, really anything much higher than that would put us in that, I wouldn’t call it a red flag, but I’d put it in like we really do have to watch other measurements to make sure that we’re not losing other things like performance, hormonal effects, that kind of thing.
So certainly if it’s two plus pounds a week, I would put that in a red flag.
[00:32:14] Trevor Connor: So let’s give you a scenario. You have an athlete, a cyclist who comes to you and says, my target race, which is a hilly race, is in a month. My race weight is 160 pounds right now. I weigh 1 71. Can you get me down to my race weight in a month?
How would you respond to them
[00:32:33] Andie Schwartz: and do you say they were an elite racer? I forget what category. If you said that I missed it.
[00:32:37] Trevor Connor: I didn’t say, let’s say a cat one, cat two rider. So not pro. Okay. But not
[00:32:41] Andie Schwartz: right, but close. Yeah.
[00:32:43] Trevor Connor: So 11 pounds in one month. Yeah. They come to you and say that.
[00:32:46] Andie Schwartz: Right. Thanks Chris.
Thanks for doing the math for me because Sure. Well, I personally, so again, I always try to err on. What I would want someone to do for me. ’cause athletes don’t always have the perspective of health and safety, right? Mm-hmm. And I think back to even again, when I was racing and was given some very bad advice early on, and I did what I was told because to me that was like being a good athlete.
I’m listening to my coach or I’m listening to people that know what they’re talking about. So I take my role pretty seriously on that people are coming to me as an expert. People are coming to me for my professional advice. And I would honestly say what, just like I’m saying to you guys, I don’t advise on this weight loss during this time.
And then I would explain, or maybe I’d even back it up, going back to what do they really want? Do they wanna succeed? A certain performance outcome? Certain qualifying I’d focus on, well, hey, let’s try to do that this way. And let’s see how your body composition or how we can just say weight in this case, how your weight might adjust as we’re doing that.
And so again, I don’t wanna crush them and say, no, I won’t do it. But since we’re talking about the ethics, I think behind it, I’d want to make sure that I’m first and foremost doing something safe for this athlete. Because anytime we do get into these more extreme energy deficits, I mean there are a lot of potential harm that we can do when you’re racing at that level.
So again, I would try to work with the athlete on maybe finding something that would make them confident that they’re moving in the right direction, but just educate them that that particular weight loss might not be the best idea in such a short period of time.
[00:34:25] Julie Young: So Andy, what if someone had a more realistic goal?
[00:34:30] Trevor Connor: I’m glad you’re asking this question. I wanted to see your response. That was the answer I was hoping you would give, because there is a point where you go. That might be what you wish, but this is what we have to work with. Right. And I’m glad that’s basically what you said. So Sorry Julie, go ahead.
[00:34:44] Julie Young: Yeah, well I think also you can spin it and say, let’s like do that next year.
This is what we can do now and we can do it the right way in the coming years. But, so maybe this is a little bit more like realistic. Somebody just did their first race, let’s say in February and they, their goal race is July. And they’re a young, like a female and they wanna lose five pounds before their goal race.
So one thing I’m curious about is in this scenario, if you’re giving someone like those macro targets, are you working off their current weight or their target weight?
[00:35:20] Andie Schwartz: Excellent question. So addressing the first one about the about five months weight loss timeframe in five pounds, that honestly for most people should be very realistic.
’cause again, we’re looking at 0.25 pounds a week. So I think that’s very realistic. However, what I always keep in mind is just because on paper, or based on what we know for metabolism and muscle preservation, not every athlete, especially depending on. Female versus male, different age demographics that may not be a linear weight loss for them.
So in theory, it’s safe, in theory, it’s achievable, but there’s a lot of things going on in people’s biochemistry, going in their hormones, you know, their hormonal health, their metabolic health that might impair that rate. So that’s when I circle back to try to educate them like, this is our goal. We will work towards this, but let’s honor our body first and foremost and see how this goes as we’re doing this plan.
Right. So you put that in there so they don’t get disappointed. Right. If they’re not necessarily, or feel like a failure. The biggest thing we wanna avoid is them feeling like a failure because then. All things can go south. Right. So then the other part of the question, Julia, I’m gonna have to have you re-ask that ’cause I actually forget.
[00:36:32] Julie Young: No, yeah. So, so let’s say you are in this scenario and you’re gonna give someone, I don’t know if you work this way, but like target macros, like you just said, you periodized that and in that case would you be targeting their current weight with those macros or target weight?
[00:36:48] Andie Schwartz: So again, depends on their starting point.
So we do need to always fuel. I think the stance I can confidently take is that we always have to fuel the body in front of us. And that’s a hard conversation sometimes. ’cause I have some certainly obese patients that come to me and they’re athletes and they’re training for these very long distance races and I do understand that that is going to be challenging for their performance and just even challenging for their body to carry this extra mass.
But if we, again, go into too extreme of a calorie or energy deficit, we’re still at the risk for low energy availability. We’d have to focus on the needs not being extreme. Now, it can matter because there’s more fat to be used as fuel in some cases, of course, if we’re obese. But again, we can’t go in too much of that low energy availability or really any of that low energy availability and expect our performance, and more importantly, our health to be safe, to be optimized.
[00:37:44] Trevor Connor: So we actually had Dr. Stewart Phillips on the show just a couple months ago, and we were talking about protein consumption. And I know this is an area that he has really focused on and he’s really hammered on for athletes to lose weight and mitigate a lot of the negative effects to increase protein consumption when you’re losing the weight.
And also to get in the weight room to help maintain that, that lean muscle mass. And I think particularly of a sport like cycling, which is a catabolic sport, if you’re putting yourself in a caloric deficit, you’re really putting yourself in a catabolic state. How do you feel about if you have an athlete that’s in season trying to lose weight, saying, yeah, we need you in the weight room.
We also need you to be consuming a little more protein.
[00:38:29] Andie Schwartz: Sure I’m familiar with these protocols and totally agree that the protein in the weight room is critical if you have an athlete that’s highly motivated, able to execute that successfully and has the right training plan. So it’s really a strategic strength program that we need to implement.
And then again, we do still need to periodize those protein goals. 1.8 is a great range. Anywhere between 1.4 to 1.8 is standard for sports nutrition. It’s also the quality of the protein, again, the timing of the protein. Along with the strategic strength training program, which for most people, they, they don’t do it strategically, right?
I mean, they’re doing their best. So I’m always saying, okay, everyone, at least we’re trying to get in the gym or get in the weight room. However, I think there’s a real misconception on what that looks like, especially if their particular sport or them as an athlete did not train them on that. I thankfully had a in track and field, a strength coach that worked with me, and I mean, it absolutely changed my performance.
Absolutely changed my body composition. So we don’t all have that one-on-one or have that group training. So I always would say, if this is something that you’re really going to go for. Get the right coach, get the right trainer, that that really knows how to do this correctly in season specifically.
Because what we don’t want is we don’t wanna have it to be where you’re over training now and then you’re not recovering, or let’s say the timing of your strength training sessions is too close to when you’re doing your other sport training. And we know that can be a real negative. So it’s not just the wrong plan, but it’s the wrong time too.
So you don’t wanna necessarily have them back to back. And if you are gonna do them back to back, you’d wanna have strength training first followed by the endurance session or optimally, one in the morning, one later in the afternoon or evening. So back to the whole timing matters, quality matters, and trying to really dial that in so that you are able to achieve the results you’re looking for.
[00:40:26] Trevor Connor: I love that you called it strategic weight training.
[00:40:29] Andie Schwartz: It is strategic.
[00:40:30] Trevor Connor: I was about to ask you what the, that was.
[00:40:32] Andie Schwartz: I know I wanted to explain because like we said, so much of what we hear about optimizing performance is generalized and it really, we can’t do that and actually expect people to get what they want out of it and get the results they want out of it.
Everything should be individualized based on goals and again, their expertise in the weight room. Like if I had, my women that come to me for Julie had asked, and they’ve never done Olympic lifting before or never done full body lifting, just more of the traditional lightweights high reps, let’s say single joint versus compound movements.
It’s a very different strength training program that I’m gonna recommend and build for them. So it really, it takes a lot of support to really get them to do what some of these studies are claiming strength training does. They’re not. Always doing what these studies or what we know actually accomplishes those goals.
[00:41:23] Julie Young: Andy, you mentioned type of protein. Do you feel that the type of carbohydrate during this, if you are in season trying to lose weight, you had mentioned really concentrating the nutrients around the training load and in that case, I would imagine really simple carbohydrates and then maybe in the evening going more towards those complex type of carbohydrates.
Do you think that could play a role or that’s significant in reaching these race schools in season?
[00:41:52] Andie Schwartz: Excellent question. ’cause there is the quality certainly of carbohydrates that matter. So I’ve really done a lot of soul searching on this whole simple, complex category of carbohydrates because.
Obviously there’s a lot to know. Not all carbohydrates are the same. And even within the simple to complex, we know there’s a lot of other factors that have influence our performance and influence our weight loss. So I actually focus more on the glycemic index and the glycemic load and then the timing, obviously, right, and I should say the athlete’s tolerance to those carbohydrates.
So I have a lot of athletes with, let’s say IBS or just call it GI sensitivity around training and post training post during. It’s so specific, again, to what they can tolerate. So I try to avoid too much simple carbohydrate just because yes, we’re trying to focus on performance, but I also don’t want to cause GI irritation or cause you know, let’s say other blood sugar or just long-term health issues.
So when we need to, certainly simple carbohydrates intra fueling. I, I do lean on those more, but pre and post, I really do try to educate clients more about the glycemic index and load and then just making sure they’re timing that appropriately to avoid the GI distress. That’s more the approach I take that they know the difference, know when they need to, but obviously trying and see what their bodies actually can tolerate before they just, okay, this is what I’m always gonna do.
’cause that might change environments, intensity, duration. So I give them like different scenarios to work through all those different race situations they might encounter.
[00:43:29] Trevor Connor: We’ve talked about it on the show before, but just to, to remind people ’cause it’s been a while. What is the difference between the glycemic index and the glycemic load?
[00:43:38] Andie Schwartz: Yes. That’s where, again, we can get caught in the weeds with some people. This is really what I do, Trevor. I have them tell me the carbohydrates that they will typically enjoy, and then I will pull out my chart and show them, well, here’s where they’re ranking the low, moderate high. And then try to get them to be obviously moderate or low in most cases to optimize their performance and weight loss.
And really the glycemic load is just like another level. If we look at carbohydrates as being like grams, okay, that doesn’t tell us a lot about the quality of that carbohydrate. And then the index would give us another glucose response aspect. And now the load’s gonna take into account not only the glycemic response, but the volume of food they’re eating within that index.
So now we’re even getting more specificity because it’s not just. Generic carbohydrates. It’s not just, here’s the index, but here’s the actual volume that’s gonna be affecting our blood sugar that way.
[00:44:32] Trevor Connor: Yeah, and this is particularly important to people who are trying to lose weight because basically this is a measure of how much the foods you’re eating are spiking your insulin.
And insulin is not a satiety hormone. It’s the exact opposite. It. When you spike insulin, you become hungry. So if you’re eating high glycemic index foods, you’re actually gonna get hungrier. It’s gonna make you want to eat more. And it’s one of the arguments they’ve made for if you’re trying to lose weight, increase protein consumption, because that actually increases satiety.
So certainly also, as you said, focusing more on low glycemic index foods, more low glycemic load foods, so you’re not spiking the insulin and making yourself hungry all the time.
[00:45:15] Andie Schwartz: The hunger can be very challenging, especially for anyone that’s tried weight loss. That’s probably one of the main reasons people tend to give up is because they have this appetite control struggle and it makes sense if we’re also restricting too much or restricting more than we should.
Our bodies trying to keep us safe and it’s trying to encourage us to eat more, to maintain with the hunger and the appetite to eat more, to maintain our safety, our energy balance. And to your point, Trevor, having the protein at that higher 1.8 level really does quiet down that change as long as we are still keeping it in the safe range and with insulin, as you said.
Sure. It definitely will increase that appetite and, and necessarily not help us lose fat as much because it really is, I hate to call it like a fat storage hormone, but its goal isn’t really to reduce our fat. It’s really more of the fat storage process. So yeah, being really careful with those glycemic index load foods, keeping them low and really keep carbs in the diet, but in a safe way.
[00:46:14] Julie Young: So, I know fasting is a very controversial term, but I, in my opinion, it runs the gamut. You know, it can be super extreme or more strategically placed. What do you think about the strategy of, and I know this is sometimes it’s hard for most people that don’t have luxury of time, but if someone were to wake up either black coffee or just completely fasted and go out for a 30 minute spin or a 30 minute run and then eat breakfast and then do their main workout of the day, do you think that helps stoke the metabolism?
[00:46:47] Andie Schwartz: So I wouldn’t say stoke the metabolism or increase the metabolism. I think it, it can certainly help with their perceived energy or how alert and motivated they are to get up and do the workout. So really the 30 minutes is a reasonable duration to not. Have to fuel. So I do always look at that. Like if they’re gonna say I’m going for a six plus mile run and they’re at a slower 10 plus minute pace, well then sure, we’re gonna have to probably look into actually fueling to not affect the metabolism.
But I’d say in that 30 minute range, we’re not doing a whole lot either way to modify the metabolism at that point. It’s really more let’s get food in us as soon as we can to actually turn back on the thyroid hormones, all these different metabolic hormones. So our body’s expecting that as we get up and as we move and we need to time that.
As close as we can to when we’re gonna do an activity, especially like I said, 45 to 60 minutes plus in the morning. And that can take a little bit of teaching people when they’re not used to having breakfast. I hear that all the time while I’m just not hungry or I’m not a breakfast eater. And that’s where we need to like reshift our identity and reshift well, why do we need to possibly change to get our results of stoking the metabolism and getting that metabolism up and on versus it being suppressed because it’s conserving when it doesn’t have a fuel source there available.
So it is a really tricky controversial, Julie, I agree with that. That’s, I feel like that’s something I talk about so much with so many of my females, especially on watching the whole fasting culture and how to incorporate that or not.
[00:48:20] Trevor Connor: Whenever we have talks about nutrition, I always want to talk a little bit about making sure that we’re focusing on health as well.
What are some other considerations or advice that you would have for somebody trying to lose weight in season To also make sure that they’re doing right by their health. They’re not doing anything that’s unhealthy for them.
[00:48:40] Andie Schwartz: Yes, that is so important to me. As I said, as a practitioner and a former athlete, really current as well.
I learned so much how we don’t always see that, as I mentioned earlier, so having these signs and warning signs so that we may avoid the red flag or like the actual health issue that might happen is so important. So the biggest thing I see, and when I look back to my experience that I shared with. With both of you guys, it was the decrease in performance.
But I’d say secondly, it was the, again, little different considerations with females, but it’s the reproductive health in females. And if we have a female that’s lost more than three consecutive monthly cycles, we know that’s a very big warning sign of their being. Low energy availability in the weight loss, or just even if they’re not trying to have weight loss, but they are in low energy availability.
And that is a really important consideration, not just for fertility and just the overall reproductive health of the female, but really for their bone minerals and their bone mineral density. One way I knew that this was happening to me is I ended up developing a stress fracture my senior year in high school.
And, you know, I had the decreased performance. I, I had the, uh, hypothalmic amenorrhea, but again. That many years ago, I’m not gonna tell you how many, that it was not something that was really on the table. For most physicians, it was, well, you’re an athlete, it’s common, or it’s, it’s not a big deal. Like you’re just healthy and it is not a sign of health to to lose your menstrual cycle.
And that is for females, very important to make sure that’s not. The case with men, it may not actually be, ’cause of course they’re not having daily cycles, but it could be like low libido or different other hormonal changes from like hormone suppression that we may see. So even with mood as well on both sides, irritation, irritability might be more increased, having difficulty sleeping or just different, you just feel off your normal self and state are different and it may not be something that you can actually measure, but you can just feel off.
And then of course, getting blood work done. I know we know that there’s a lot of changes in blood work, especially with liver enzymes and obviously hormones if we’re measuring those. And even with cholesterol, it’s amazing what the body does to conserve. When it doesn’t have enough, which is really why the reproductive health, it’s like the body doesn’t have enough to have that monthly cycle.
So it’s conserving by withholding the monthly process. So it’s those main things. I would say brain fog can be another one ’cause we need a lot of energy for our brain and cognition. And then just general sore a lot because you’re not having enough energy or recovery to refuel and repair your muscle cells and different growth hormones as well.
So, so many hormonal and metabolic. And I’d say mood would be sort of my top ones to definitely look for.
[00:51:26] Chris Case: How are you tracking the mood in individuals? Is there a questionnaire? Are you just simply observing them? Relying on their assessment of their own mood? ’cause that seems like it could go sideways pretty quickly as people are not the best judges often of, of their own moods.
[00:51:44] Andie Schwartz: You definitely said that, right Chris? It is actually one of the hardest things to explain. So I work with. A lot of youth athletes, teen college, and the parents will often contact me for that reason. They will observe that their child, or this could even be a different parent, just a family member I should say, observing these mood changes.
And I think that’s where it is such a slippery slope is that as athletes, we aren’t even aware sometimes how what we’re doing as an athlete in training and then what, who we are in the real world. The difference there, like we can be, I shouldn’t say everyone, but we can be so hyper-focused on the outcome that nothing else is really the focus or matters at that point.
And so I think I have questionnaires that I do for disordered eating and eating disorders, but truly I’ve been moving away from them because I think. Least from my years of doing this, we can answer those in a way that’s favorable to us.
Mm-hmm.
Most people, and we’d love to think that these questionnaires are being answered honestly and genuinely, but lots of times, again, depending if it is disordered or if it is just an unaware, we don’t tend to get as honest of answers versus more someone outside of the athlete observing it.
That’s where I think we can get the most validity is a spouse, perhaps again, a family member, parent, et cetera, might notice these things versus an adult. Although I have had a few females come to me and say that like, Hey, I’ve been very moody, and I’m like, interesting. And so then we’ll go and talk about that.
But it is, I’d say to your point, Chris, very lower tends to be a lower awareness measure for sure.
[00:53:25] Trevor Connor: So before we move on to our final topic here, just out of interest, are there any things that you have seen athletes or people that you’re working with when they’re trying to lose weight, where you just look at it and go, no, just please stop doing that.
Don’t ever do that again, as in suggestions to our listeners of, please don’t do this.
[00:53:47] Andie Schwartz: How much time do we have? So I probably have hit on a lot of the things that don’t do this, but I would say don’t do what everyone else is doing. I know that sounds so generic, but I think that we tend to be so stuck in this anecdotal, well, I hear this works for my friend, or I hear this works for this influencer.
I’m following all these non-evidence based protocols or interventions. I just would love people to just take a minute and instead of just following the herd or just doing what. We may think work or here works for other people, especially the mom groups. I hear this a lot in my mom groups and I’m always like sitting there trying to just take it all in before I respond.
But there’s, there’s so much noise right now, especially with a lot of the medical interventions that have come on the scene right now that I think we, we all just need to reflect on really what our goals are, what might be a good start instead of trying to rush into some other interventions that that may be shortsighted and not appropriate for us.
So I think just taking our time and not jumping in too fast would be sort of what I don’t want people to do.
[00:54:56] Trevor Connor: Good advice. So last thing that we did wanna touch on here, and I think it’s just touching on it, ’cause each of these could be their own episode, is just any specific considerations for female and male athletes.
And also when working with younger athletes like juniors in U 20 threes and they’ve come to you and say, I wanna lose weight. What are the considerations you need to have there? And Julie, I think you also were interested, should we even be talking about optimal weight with a junior or U 23?
[00:55:29] Julie Young: Yeah, I mean, Andy, I too came from like an athletic background competing at the highest level of sport, and as you said, it’s a slippery slope.
But as a clean athlete, it seems like the most obvious way to get your edge, to find that competitive edge. So I guess from that background, for me, like when I was racing, it was like eating was cheating culture and just exactly what you’ve described. I think that was in running culture, gymnastics culture, and uh, we’ve become so much more educated on that.
But I think for me, having that kind of background, I’m so hesitant. To even bring it up with my young athletes. But that said, if I don’t talk about it, we’re so bombarded. Whether it’s social media or that teammate that’s sitting next to you that has lost a bunch of weight and have this, it seems like a bump in their performance.
And so you can have great experts around you, but it’s really your peer group that is influencing you the most. So I always grapple with this. Do I just kinda. Sweep it under the carpet or do I actually address it with young like juniors and U 23 athletes?
[00:56:38] Andie Schwartz: I am so excited that you asked this question, and this is actually really where I’ve been segueing, niching, whatever in my career, is that I see so much of this in the older, like not even master, but even like college 2030s where we’re kind of undoing so many years of diet culture.
And then of course with social media having such an impact so quickly that if we can address this earlier, if we can educate teams earlier, and I think it’s done to your point with the peer group, at least initially better in a group environment. And I have a lot of one-on-one youth athletes as well.
But it’s just such a different conversation and I think the reception or the willingness to sit there face to face with a practitioner and actually go deep about maybe some underlying weight concerns that they may have or different teams that, that may have kind of more of that weight centric culture when you do that one-on-one, I think the lower ages, of course, that we’re talking about it, it can be very intimidating and almost there’s this guard up or this like kind of, well, that’s not me.
Or there’s just this lack of awareness and denial. So, so my focus really has been trying to get more team talks, more team and coach nutrition sessions going so that it can become more of the team culture and more of even the coach’s culture. ’cause the coach really can set the stage significantly for how these individual athletes eat.
And I’ve, and I have sadly heard this over and over again that the coach may have been. Never the cause, but an influence in why different teams or athletes had gone down the wrong path. Because the, let’s face it, some of the coaches were still back caught up in those different diet culture or disordered eating patterns that weren’t having the same level of awareness and treatment that.
Thankfully we have today, and quite frankly, the statistics show that, I mean, we’re looking at about 50%. I’ve even seen up to 60% of the female athletes having symptoms of low energy availability and reds. So we are certainly not out of the woods yet, but I think really coach as sort of the leader. Really starting with the coach.
And then also if you do the team talks, the coach can be right there. ’cause sometimes the coaches don’t always want to have them be addressed either. So the team talks, I think can be so effective in addressing these concerns. Or not even going into the concerns right away, but talking about, well, here’s really why you wanna fuel this way.
Here’s what you can expect out of your performance and your body. If you fuel this way and then if needed, then you can go into more of the negatives. Of course, start with the positive first, not the negatives. We don’t wanna scare people, but we wanna let them know that there, there can be a real mental and physical impact like reds if we’re not doing these measures and these types of fueling patterns.
So, but yeah, one-on-one would be great too. It’s just, I think that team environment tends to be for that younger group, usually a better first step.
[00:59:32] Trevor Connor: It sounds like it’s almost a critical thing to be educating coaches on this, because from everything I’m hearing from you. Kids are gonna pick up on this, on TikTok or wherever, and they’re usually gonna get it from an influencer who’s probably not giving them the best suggestions, best ideas, like the all cucumber diet that I had to address a few months ago.
[00:59:52] Andie Schwartz: There’s always a new one, Trevor.
[00:59:54] Trevor Connor: There’s always a new one.
[00:59:55] Chris Case: It’s better than the all Snickers diet, I suppose
[00:59:57] Trevor Connor: it’s yes. Oh boy. But it sounds like having a coach not only, not avoid it, but being educated in this and be able to give good, healthier direction to the students, to the athletes would be critical so that they’re getting that better perspective and not just the influencer view.
[01:00:18] Andie Schwartz: Yeah, and I do think the more elite U 23 programs seem to have dietician support, but from my interaction with different colleagues and rds that are doing that, it tends to be more when there’s an athlete with an issue. So it’s sort of like that triage. So they don’t necessarily, or maybe they may have a team talk occasionally, but it’s not certainly in at the level or depth that they really need.
’cause what do we hear? Like 10% of what we’re taught. So we need to keep following up on that. Not just maybe one team talk, but having like a sequence or like a series of event of different talks to address different aspects of nutrition. ’cause it is so complex. A one and done may not really get through to the athlete, but typically it is if that, if we even do have a one and done, it’s usually more just the athletes that have some either medical diagnosis, like again, maybe I-B-S-I-B-D autoimmune, something that’s really impairing their performance or unfortunately a disordered eating or eating disordered diagnosis.
And that’s really not the goal. The goal is not to wait until it breaks or wait until the athlete’s struggling, but to actually give them that proactive information and really empower them that there’s so much we can do instead of going to these other options that really are not going to be good short term or long term.
[01:01:29] Chris Case: So, Andy, you said something in there that really piqued my interest, which is people aren’t taught how to eat, and I think that we can step back from that statement and make that almost a universal statement about people not knowing how to eat, at least in the United States when it comes to health and fueling for performance or eating for any particular reason.
If you’re relying on your parents as a kid to teach you the quote unquote right way to eat, or the ways to be healthy, or if you’re a youth athlete and you’re relying on your parents or that coach that has no background in nutrition to teach you how to do it well or right, so that you’re healthy and performing well, then I think most people are going to, it’s only going to be by chance that they get it right.
That would be my take. What do you say to that? Is that, do you see that often in, in the people that you’re working with, that by and large, most people need to be. Educated as to how to eat for health and performance, and those are two different things.
[01:02:32] Andie Schwartz: Agreed. Yes, they are definitely two different things.
And I would say, again, I’m always kind of, do I give the percentage, but I actually feel so confident about this answer that I think 90% or more of the people I work with, probably 95, have either the improper wrong information and not, not in a judgmental way, but just that they lack the knowledge of really how to fuel their bodies growing up from caregivers, parents, coaches.
But also to add to that, it’s like undoing the harm that has often been done that I think really makes me stay motivated in, in working in this space. So many girls that watch their mothers diet and suffer and the fear that that brought to them, like, is that gonna happen to my body? Is that going to be something that I have to worry about?
And men too. And I think there’s just so much fear around food and fear around our bodies and just not knowing how to. Navigate through that when you’re growing up and we’re not educated in school, I, I remember again, not to date myself, but back when I was going to high school, we had just a health class and to my knowledge there was really very little to no nutrition education in that high school environment.
And I think today with my children, I have a 13 and 11 year olds, when I do see some of the information they’re getting from school, it is really not targeting how for them to apply that to their daily life. So I think we have wrong information either from family members, coaches. Or very minimal non-applicable information coming from schools.
And then we’re left to kind of navigate in 2026 with social media trying to direct us. So it’s so hard, and I think that’s really truly what keeps me motivated to just, not that I know everything, but sharing what I do know and sharing my experiences and trying to, if nothing else, bring to light that there is a better way or an important way to focus on both our health and our performance, maybe at different times, certainly at different times when we’re in season, but that we, it is something we need to actually really focus on and it is important for us, for our health and to know, know where to find that information.
[01:04:37] Trevor Connor: Where do you recommend starting?
[01:04:41] Andie Schwartz: Well, no, it’s, so I definitely think starting with. Knowing what your goals are. So if it is that you have a, a health issue. ’cause honestly, I have a lot of patients that have come to me living with a health issue for decades and have not addressed it. They may have spoken to their doctor or the doctor diagnosed the health issue like the IBS is one I’ve talked about a lot today.
But it’s, it can be very problematic living with that and, and very negative on your health, especially if you’re suffering from like the IBSD where you’re having a lot of malabsorption and so people just get used to not feeling well or not. Actually addressing things ’cause they don’t know how to do it, so, so I do think looking for a registered dietician, it’s important.
We have different resources, websites that eat right.org, which you can find a registered dietician near you. There’s, it’s really important to get that support because a lot of the physicians just either don’t have that time during their sessions or don’t have a dietician referral at that office or in that hospital system.
So just making sure that you are going to a nutrition expert and really addressing that, those missing gaps that you may have in your knowledge and your health or in your performance as an athlete. It’s really important.
[01:05:58] Trevor Connor: Well, I know we could keep going with this conversation, but I think it’s time to wrap it up for today.
So Andy, you’re new to the show. We finish out our episodes with what we call our one minute Take home. So each of us has one minute to give the message that we think is the most important message to take away from this episode. And I will start by asking, do you want to go first or do you want to go last?
[01:06:22] Andie Schwartz: I’ll go first.
[01:06:22] Trevor Connor: Okay. You have one minute. And I’m not timing.
[01:06:26] Andie Schwartz: Athletes can’t diet like the general population. Cutting calories aggressively might help someone short term and might help them lose weight, but ultimately is going to cause or can cause a reduction in performance and poor recovery. So let’s try a slower way next time.
[01:06:44] Trevor Connor: Good, simple short message.
[01:06:45] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:47] Trevor Connor: So Chris or Julie, which one of you wants to, we’ll give one of you the last words. So who wants to go next?
[01:06:51] Chris Case: Can I just say ditto because I think she summed it up really well.
[01:06:54] Julie Young: Works for me.
[01:06:56] Trevor Connor: Oh, come on. You guys have your own.
[01:06:59] Julie Young: So for me it’s finding a good source of guidance that is based on science and practical application to help yourself get those good tools to figure out what works best for you, but also be willing to take the time to figure out what works best for yourself as opposed to, like we’ve said, you’re kind of bombarded by all this comparison and opinion and what other people are doing around you.
So that’s my one minute.
[01:07:28] Chris Case: Yeah, and I would sort of echo off of that, which is something that Andy stated emphatically, which is do not compare yourself to other people because you are not them. So if you can successfully. Assess what you need as an individual, that’s great. If you can’t, then you probably need somebody to help you with this process so that they can individualize it for you and only you.
[01:07:52] Trevor Connor: Mm-hmm. I was gonna let you go last, but you jumped in, eh? So I guess I go last, I have a few and I’m trying to decide which one. I think I’m gonna give ’em all kind of split it between two give, I’m gonna give two.
[01:08:04] Chris Case: Okay.
[01:08:05] Trevor Connor: Because I think one of us needs to state this as a, a final take home. There’s a lot of information out there.
There’s a lot of advice. This is an area that influencers in particular really jump on. And I’m just gonna say be really careful about that information. Most of it is not based on science. Most of it is not good advice. Generally, when you’re hearing advice on how to lose weight really quickly, it’s not good advice.
It’s just not. So the take home I wanted to give SOEs, sorry, I’m giving two. Is as an athlete in season trying to lose weight, there is no way to do it except to reduce the amount of calories you are consuming. So you are putting an additional stressor on your body. You’re not potentially not giving it as many nutrients, you’re not giving as much of what it needs for recovery.
All this is gonna have an impact on your body. So when you are doing it in season, you have to be really careful. Really monitor what you’re doing so that you can still train, so that you can still perform and you can still maintain your health. So be conservative, be careful. Monitor it closely.
[01:09:19] Andie Schwartz: Agreed.
Yes.
[01:09:21] Trevor Connor: Well, Andrea, real pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.
[01:09:25] Andie Schwartz: Thanks. And it was great talking to you guys. You guys all added some really valuable contributions to the talk. Thanks.
[01:09:31] Trevor Connor: That was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast.
Be sure to leave us a radio and review. Don’t forget, we’re now on YouTube. Give us a like and subscribe there too and help us reach new audiences. As always, remember that the thoughts and opinions express in Fast Talk are those are the individual. We love your feedback. Join the conversation at forums.
Do Fast talk labs.com or join us on social media at at Fast Talk Labs for access to our endurance sports knowledge base. Continuing education for coaches as well as our in-person remote athlete services. Head to Fast talk labs.com. For Andrea Schwartz, Dr. Stacy Brixham. Julie Young and Chris Case, I’m Trevor Connor.
Thanks for listening.
