In this episode, Jill Bartholomew and Lisa Franz discuss the critical role of nutrition in endurance sports, particularly for women. They explore common mistakes new athletes make, the importance of balancing diet and training, and strategies for weight management. The conversation also delves into the unique nutritional needs of women, especially during hormonal changes, and emphasizes the significance of recovery, sleep, and strength training. Lisa shares insights on addressing nutrient deficiencies and the role of supplements, while highlighting the growing presence of women in endurance sports.
Jill Bartholomew (00:00)
Hi, welcome to another episode of the Be Fierce Multisport podcast, which is now the Be Fierce and Tri podcast. Yes, we're in the middle of rebranding everything. So keep an eye out for that new branding. today we are going to be talking to Lisa Franz. She is the owner of Nutrition.
coaching and life, which is a nutrition focused, business. And, know, we've been chatting about, you know, this podcast and my, my business is all about endurance athletes. And we've been chatting about like, you know, how, nutrition plays into our ability to be endurance athletes and, know, of all ages and abilities. So Lisa, I want you to introduce yourself and.
Yeah, we'll get into it.
Lisa (00:47)
Amazing. Well, Jill, thank you so much for having me on. It's a true pleasure. And I think we've both both already discovered that we have a ton to talk about. So as you mentioned, my name is Lisa. I'm originally from Germany. I haven't actually lived there since 2009. I moved to New Zealand for about 10 years and have been digital nomading, so to speak, for the last six years. So traveling around the globe and working remotely, I have a
Master in Exercise Science, Health Promotion and Nutrition and that hopefully signifies that I love not just nutrition but also any kind of movement and just in general the notion of exploring how far we can push our body or any kind of like pursuit that we might have whether that is an endurance sport or more in
you know, whatever other sport you might be practicing or passionate about. And I have just chosen for myself that nutrition is the vehicle that I want to use to help people achieve what they want to achieve, mostly because I have struggled with nutrition for quite some time myself as well. I was going through various diets and just always thought like, okay, can I not actually enjoy the way that I'm eating and have a body that I love and...
feel good in the body that I have and perform well, or do I need to choose one or the other? Because it always felt like either I was following a super restrictive diet or I was happy in my body. And then I thankfully discovered a way of, right, I can do this both. I just need to approach it logically and actually from a science-based perspective. And yeah, I've been super, super passionate teaching that to my clients or disseminating that information through my podcast as well since then.
Jill Bartholomew (02:31)
Well, I'm super happy that you agreed to come on and chat about this and coming, you know, me as an athlete, know, I'm, you know, female, middle aged and totally resonates with, you know, I looked at my race pictures from last year and I'm like, my God, I was like, I felt like horrible about my body at the time. And now looking back, I'm like, yeah, I was like 20 pounds lighter.
this time last year or when I was at World Championship last year. And we have those ups and downs. And it's like, OK, well, for me, the classic advice of a little car bloat, it's like, no. But anyways, so if you are, let's say, a new athlete.
and you're just getting into endurance sports. You're learning a whole lot of new stuff all at once, right? You're learning a lot of stuff about yourself, including questioning life decisions that led you to the decision to do endurance sports, right? I remember when I did my first half marathon.
I was like, why in the world am I doing this? This sucks, right? It's like, know, once you get past the first hour running, it's like, are we done yet? Are we done yet? And then you add in, you know, with triathletes, you add in the bike and the swim, and it's like the same thing over and over and over again. It's quite a training commitment. If you're doing multiple support, multiple sports,
I do enjoy the little saying that you see going around. It's like, why be great at one sport when you can suck at three? Right? So from your perspective, what do you see people?
doing maybe that that they shouldn't or like what advice would you give to especially a new athlete who's going from maybe just being a casual recreational runner to like doing their first 5k or 10k or half marathon or whatever.
Lisa (04:18)
There's so many points to this. First of all, you mentioned you're a middle-aged woman and going through the struggles that might be associated with that. A lot of my clientele falls into that bracket too, would say. While we do work with men as well and people, I think the most senior person I've worked with was 67 or something like that. So a wide range, the majority of people kind of fall into that.
Jill Bartholomew (04:27)
Yeah, that's fantastic.
Lisa (04:46)
35 to 55 sort of range. And there are certainly some hormonal changes that fall into that category as well that we have to battle with and where you sometimes might get to a point where you like, everything I used to do that was working is no longer working or is very different. The diet that I was like, I haven't changed a thing and now I feel completely different. Why is this happening? So yeah, if you're listening. Right. Yeah. And I mean, the science is actually unfortunately kind of backing this up that
Jill Bartholomew (05:07)
yeah, I gain weight breathing. Yeah.
Lisa (05:14)
in the menopause transition, we're just redistributing body weight. You might not necessarily see the scale go up, but maybe you're feeling fluffier and accumulating more belly fat rather than in other areas. And so it's kind of something we have to battle with. But there are strategies to tackle that as well. And I'm happy to get into those later on. But more to your question in regards to what mistakes I might be seeing within people that start.
endurance training. And again, like you asked earlier about my normal clientele, we do work a lot with people that engage mostly in strength sports and saying that also a lot of hybrid athletes and a few people that are in really in the endurance space, but just generally speaking, often a bit more strength focused, but nonetheless,
So what I see across the board, regardless of what sport you might be starting off with, is sometimes you're actually putting too much on your plate in the sense of starting too big. So you might be thinking, I've not run in ages, but I'm signing up to this 10K. Tomorrow I'm running 5K.
Jill Bartholomew (06:24)
Well, think
But there's a lot to that, right? As athletes, whether you're a sprinter or an endurance athlete, we're always freaking hungry.
There's no point where we're not hungry. I could literally sit there all day just eating. But it's only carbs that my body wants. I buy pop tarts for the kids and every time I walk by them, I'm I want one, but no.
Lisa (06:43)
Yes.
Well, two mistakes that relate
to this actually come to mind. The first one being that even though we like, some people feel like, okay, now I've started running or exercising. I can eat as much as I want. Unfortunately, that is not the case. And even if you're
energy expenditure tracker is telling you something. And I mean, they're getting more and more accurate, especially if you have like a good one that's around the chest as well, like a good heart rate monitor and so on. But nonetheless, they're still very inaccurate. Like the research shows that they can be between 20 and 80 % off. So if you think that every time you run a 5k, you're burning 1200 calories, very unlikely, unfortunately, very unlikely. So, you know, you still cannot
Jill Bartholomew (07:12)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
Lisa (07:38)
undo a poor diet with a hard training. So that's like point number one.
Jill Bartholomew (07:43)
Yeah, I hear
that a lot. You can't out train. You can't out exercise a bad diet.
Lisa (07:48)
No,
and unfortunately, our body is so adaptive. And I mean, that's a great thing. Our bodies are designed to keep us alive. That is literally their main task.
If we're running a 5k and the first time we might be burning, I don't know, 800 calories doing that. The next time you're already getting more efficient, that's that whole feeling of like, I'm getting better at that. And therefore your body needs less energy doing that. And the more trained you're getting and your, your body is becoming more, literally more efficient. And therefore, yeah, we need to kind of like,
account for that and to your example of like not being able to out burn or out train calories. I don't know if you have heard of Ross Edgeley. He's like a crazy person who does ultra things as well. And so for instance, he took about half a year swimming around Great Britain or I think it was yeah, I think the UK anyway, so, you know, half a year, literally 12 hours in the water, 12 hours out of the water.
Jill Bartholomew (08:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
f-
Lisa (08:48)
and he ate about 10,000 calories every day. He purposely went into like a calorie surplus, purposely eating more food than what he was burning. And you'd think swimming 12 hours a day, like there's no way that this person gained any weight. He gained like 20 kilos of body fat and lost body, like muscle mass during this.
Jill Bartholomew (08:56)
Mm-hmm.
I was going
to say like that, that's one of the challenges with, with swimming in particular is, you know, and you can look at like heart rates, right? Unless you're like a competitive swimmer and swimming in like your zone for all the time relative to other sports, it's kind of a lower energy activity, right?
Lisa (09:28)
Right.
Nonetheless...
Jill Bartholomew (09:29)
Now that does
not to say that it's not a great activity for your body and that is not hard, but relative to others like calorie burn per hour, it's on the lower side.
Lisa (09:34)
100%.
Exactly. just like message being, don't rely on whatever your watch or so is telling you that you burned. You still need to kind of like, rein it in and not necessarily listen to your cues.
Jill Bartholomew (09:41)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I prefer what
my Garmin tells me I burned over what my Ultra tells me I burned, but I prefer how my Ultra tells me I'm awesome over my Garmin telling me that I suck. Yeah.
Lisa (10:00)
Interesting, okay cool.
That's a good thing to know. I guess another mistake that I do see on the flip side is people thinking, okay I'm starting this now, this is a great opportunity to lose weight and you know a lot of people obviously want to or need to lose weight when they start up with endurance training or any kind of training. However then
Jill Bartholomew (10:12)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (10:21)
really under fueling is something else. So if you think, okay, I'm going to pair this with a really low calorie diet and go down to like 1200 calories per day, you're going to get injured very quickly if you're serious about your training too. And so it might go well for even a few months and you're seeing the pounds and kilos fall off there, but then eventually your body is going to say, stop, I've done this for some time. And now you're asking me to
go up from a half marathon to marathon to a triathlon and whatever and you're still not keeping up with the energy requirements? Yeah, please.
Jill Bartholomew (10:54)
Mm-hmm. So let's talk about that for a second. ⁓
So I think you're right, especially running in the 5K, maybe 10K distance.
And maybe sprint triathlons, like shorter distance stuff. I think you have a lot of people who are doing these either for the first time or a little habitually, but like, you know, they got into it because they're like, hey, what can I do to be less sedentary, to get more healthy, probably to, you know, possibly to lose some weight.
And like, how can they do that? And lose weight. Like for me, I know it's actually a lot easier for me personally to lose weight when I'm not actively training. Like I gain weight when I'm training. Right. Well, right. You're not as hungry and you know, the types of food you crave is different. It's like, know, like for me, I crave like carbs and protein. That's it. If it's got color in it, I really don't like.
Lisa (11:39)
Because you're probably not so hungry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
thread.
Jill Bartholomew (11:55)
desire it, but when I'm like not actively training, it's like my diet gets a lot more colorful, which is, it sounds backwards, but.
Lisa (12:01)
Right. Well,
I know what you're saying though. I think, I mean, again, it applies across the board. I see this in people just in general, starting with any kind of training, not necessarily only endurance training. But the answer is the same across the board being we want to go into a moderate calorie deficit. There is nothing wrong with wanting to lose a bit of weight or often people actually have to lose a little bit of body fat.
Jill Bartholomew (12:13)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (12:28)
But if you're just blindly cutting calories and maybe even cutting out entire food groups and saying, I'm only eating vegetables and protein, that paired with an endurance sport, mean, obviously, is not a great idea to begin with. But let's just say.
Jill Bartholomew (12:39)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (12:44)
Calculate your energy requirements. That would be my first recommendation. And nowadays you can go online. You don't necessarily need a nutrition coach. I would say that most of the calorie calculators online are a little bit faulty. They don't know your dieting history. They don't know if you have, if this is the first time you're trying to lose weight or if you've tried 10 times before. So that plays into it. They don't know your hormonal levels and so on. So all that.
Jill Bartholomew (13:09)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (13:10)
plays a role, but once you know, okay, what are my actual calorie requirements? And then reducing that by, you know, maybe 10 % as opposed to cutting it down 25, 30 % and more. That makes it a lot more sustainable. You're still giving your body at least the baseline nourishment that it needs for a lot of things. And you're still going to lose weight, just not as aggressively. That's point number one.
Jill Bartholomew (13:34)
So as a woman, an adult, I need to be clear, right? Because it's different if you're like a teenager. FDA says, what, 1,700 calories these days? Like it changes over time? Well, right. That's where I'm getting to is like, so how do I figure out what?
Lisa (13:46)
Well, no, I mean, it obviously depends how tall you are. Yeah. So there's so many factors. Yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (13:56)
knowing that what my watch tells me is wrong, how do I figure out what's my basal metabolism, what's my basic metabolic need? And then for the activities I'm doing, what's my need on top of that? how do I get to that number so I can take 10 % off?
Lisa (14:01)
Hmm.
Right, you know that's a really great question.
Jill Bartholomew (14:14)
Cause if, if I look at
like, if I look at my metrics for like yesterday, right. My watch reported my basal metabolism at like 960, but then I went and I did a hard bike ride that reported 1700. So if I add the two together, that's a big number, right? And if I take 10 % off of that, I'm still gaining weight.
Lisa (14:33)
Sure, mean that to begin with.
So even your basal metabolic rate is not like sometimes people say, today I took a rest day, can I still eat, you know, a certain amount because my basal metabolic rate or my scale tells me my basal metabolic rate is only 1200 calories or so. So first of all, that's only one component of your metabolism. On top of that, we also have something called meat. So even just from sitting, blinking, gesturing as I'm doing here.
Jill Bartholomew (14:43)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (15:01)
All of this also burns calorie needs, stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And that's another sort of 20 % or 15 % that makes up for your metabolism on top of your basal metabolic rate. And then on top of that, you do have the exercise component, of course, obviously. And then we also have something called the thermic effect of food. So your body also requires energy to...
Jill Bartholomew (15:22)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (15:24)
break down the food and that in and of itself, it depends if you're eating more carbs, more fats, or more protein, because they require different amounts of energy, but that makes up another sort of 10 % of your total daily calories. So if you think only my basal metabolic rate is what my metabolism is, that's not true. You get to eat more even if you are just resting, if you're doing nothing. Yeah, but of course we need to account for height, age,
Jill Bartholomew (15:38)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (15:51)
activity level and so on. So you can do that very simply. And again, it might not be super accurate, but there are many, calorie calculators online. So literally, if you just Google calorie calculators, you will find various and they use various formulas. The formula that I like is called Harris Benedict. It's just a very well-true and tested formula that for most people gives a reasonably accurate
Jill Bartholomew (16:10)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (16:16)
guesstimation. mean, everything is just the best possible guess and even the best calculator is not going to know it. Even the best coach is not going to know it. And then you enter your activity factor as well. So for example, if you're working out four or five times a week for an hour, you just multiply that with a factor of like four or whatever. calorie calculator will tell you that. But you know, for someone like you, if you're saying like, even though your basal metabolic rate yesterday was shown as
Jill Bartholomew (16:19)
Yeah.
Lisa (16:43)
only about a thousand and then you're training on top of that, I would say on average, you easily burn or need somewhere between 2000, 2700, calories on a daily basis across the board. And I don't know how much or how high your training volume is at the moment. But yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (17:01)
Yeah.
So yesterday I did what? About a 90 minute reasonably hard bike ride. I PR'd a couple of my power numbers. So it was, was, it was an effort. Uh, it was kind of funny. It was one of those things I put out like, Hey, you know, let's go do a group ride. And the only person that shows up as a former pro cyclist. I like, okay, okay. This is going to be fun.
Lisa (17:08)
Right.
Amazing.
Bossing me.
Yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (17:24)
Um,
not the group I expected, but you know, it's the group I got and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, this would be fun. Um, and then, uh, 90 minute, you know, progression run, which ended up on the treadmill. hate running on the treadmill with a passion. Uh, it's, it's, I don't know. I, you know, I think there's two types of people.
Lisa (17:30)
Ha ha ha
Yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (17:45)
There's people who enjoy running on a treadmill. And then there's the rest of us who think they're really weird. I like, no. Well.
Lisa (17:51)
I just like the outdoors too much to not want to do
that outside.
Jill Bartholomew (17:55)
Right.
And like your body mechanics changes just enough that like if you're not accustomed to treadmill running, I feel it's harder. Like my paces are much lower and my heart rate is higher on a treadmill. like, I work harder to go slower kind of thing. Although that's, I think that's the same as like aging, right? We work harder to be slower.
Lisa (18:13)
You
Jill Bartholomew (18:14)
Although I
was listening to something the other day that was implying that studies suggest maybe that's not actually true. Maybe there isn't an implication that as we get older, we need to get slower. I don't know. Looking at race results implies a difference. ⁓
Lisa (18:29)
think it
depends on a type of race as well. think anything that's more explosive and probably short duration, fast twitch, muscle based, I do think that age plays a role. I do think that when it comes to more stamina and slower, slow twitch fiber muscles, then yeah, age could actually be an advantage.
Jill Bartholomew (18:49)
⁓ for sure.
When I was actively speed skating, you long track, the guys and women who could go and like skate circles around us were all the older folks, like 60 plus years old. Like they had so much endurance. And I was like 20.
Lisa (19:02)
Amazing.
Jill Bartholomew (19:09)
And we're like, you know, after like a 10 K or a 20 K on the ice, we're pooped. Right. And they're like, come on, we can do this for hours and hours. And like, man. So I do think like there's, don't know. I think as you age, you, get more endurance, either that or like you just became come numb to it. Like that could be too. Yeah. I know for me, like, like there's, there's a skill that you develop at some point. That's like.
Lisa (19:28)
That could be it. ⁓
Jill Bartholomew (19:34)
Shut up legs. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You just am like, it's not pain. It's discomfort. Ignore it. So, okay. So we're talking about nutrition, um, not, weight loss, right. And, and I want, I want, I want to make that clear, right? It's like, um, you know, we had the conversation on like, you know, calorie calculation because not because we're trying to lose weight. Although some people
Lisa (19:35)
You just switched off your brain,
Hahaha!
Yes, we want to refill into a calorie moderate.
Jill Bartholomew (19:59)
get into sport because of that, but because we need to feed our bodies to perform the things that we want to perform, right?
Lisa (20:02)
Right, exactly.
Well, and that's
the important part to that. I mean, as you said, if we need to lose weight, sure, we're going into a calorie deficit. So, moderately reducing maybe 5-10 % or so the requirements that you actually have. The thing that a lot of people fail to do though, at the end of their diet or when they get to their goal weight, they're so afraid of starting to eat more again that they just stay at this low calorie level.
potentially even increasing their training because they might now have decided they're doing a marathon instead of a half marathon. And so they're just staying at this low calorie level and not keeping up with their new requirements. And this is what we call a reverse diet. And that is also something we do at the end of like when someone who is not endurance training or not training at all, we always want to make sure we're finishing our weight loss phase with a reverse diet.
Jill Bartholomew (20:44)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (21:00)
because otherwise if you just say, I'm just going to intuitively eat and stop after I've stopped my diet, you're going to gain it all back because your body will actually tell you to regain the weight. And that's why we have this issue with yo-yo dieting as a population. We're actually pretty good at losing weight, but we're terrible at keeping it off. And that is not because of the diet itself. It really is just because we fail to slowly and gradually teach the body again.
Jill Bartholomew (21:09)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (21:27)
burn more. And so if we're, I often say this to my clients, like when we have reached our goal weight, they're like, okay, Lisa, I think I'm ready to go out on my own. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now is the most important part actually, where we slowly and gradually bring your calories back up to your maintenance level and then practice staying at maintenance for a little bit at least. And then I'm happy to see you go because I know now that you have the tools and your body is in the right place.
Jill Bartholomew (21:38)
huh.
Lisa (21:53)
to actually maintain the success. And that's in the end actually my goal that I want to see for everybody. don't want to keep working with people for 10, 20 years. I want them to be able to manage their own nutrition long-term. So yes, very, very important to bring up your calories again in a gradual way once you have reached your goal weight.
Jill Bartholomew (22:12)
So I see online, right? And like, I have to preface it that way, because like that by itself, like causes the hair on the back of her neck to stand up, right? It's like there's all sorts of advice, good, bad, and really bad hanging out there. was reading something yesterday about this woman on TikTok who has.
managed to hyper capitalize on intentionally giving people bad advice. And it's resulted in people losing massive amounts of weight, but super unhealthy. And like, so ignoring that kind of stuff.
I see a lot of different advice for athletes from like, no, you should eat lots of, lots of eggs and proteins, you know, chicken. had someone the other day tell me that I need to, I don't really eat like I'm not a vegetarian. I've at points, I become like an accidental vegetarian. it's like, like meat, but it's not always like in the diet. so, but I do eat like a fair amount of chicken and.
Lisa (23:02)
Yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (23:08)
You know, had someone the other day tell me they're like, you know, he's talking about like, um, kind of revamping how I think about nutrition for, for like training, because I have this issue where like on full distance, it's like swim. Great bike. Great run. First 13 miles. Awesome. Mile 14. I feel like I'm going to puke. Right. It's horrible. And it's all nutrition. Um,
And he's saying to me, he's like, no, you got to eat more red meat, blah, blah, Okay. So if we want to treat our bodies right, build muscle, maintain it. As you said, with the swimmer, not like overindulged, right? But still like not always be hungry. Cause like always being hungry kind of sucks too. How should we think about it?
Lisa (23:51)
Yeah, great, great and loaded question. totally. But yeah, I guess also going to the point of being hungry and that is the great thing about once you have calculated your calorie needs, you can also kind of alter that from day to day depending on how hungry you are. So let's just say you do have a really long...
Jill Bartholomew (23:55)
It's a podcast. Every question is loaded.
Lisa (24:14)
and hard training session, you could make that a higher calorie day and then the next day when you have a rest day maybe reducing it a little bit because you might not be so hungry.
Jill Bartholomew (24:21)
So would you, so
on that point, I've seen different kinds of guidance on this. I subscribed to a service called fueling. I don't know if you've heard of it. I have yet to figure out how to make it useful for me. I'm like, just tell me what to eat and don't make me guess, but it, like they kind of ignore what you take in during.
Lisa (24:34)
you
Jill Bartholomew (24:41)
the exercise, right? And so, like their guidance is based on like, what you need to sustain yourself. And then they give some guidance on like, like how many calories taken while you're exercising. I've seen others that are like, no, just holistically, it should look like this, right? Like, what do you think is right?
Lisa (24:43)
Right.
You mean
like in terms of food timing, if you should eat during or not or?
Jill Bartholomew (25:04)
Well,
just like, like total intake timing. ⁓ and like every athlete seems to find something different that works for them. I'm kind of in the, like on the bike, every something, every 20 minutes on the run, something every like two miles to 30 minutes in that range.
Lisa (25:09)
Right.
I think you said something great there in the sense of everyone finds what works for them. In the end, do think that adherence and compliance is the most important thing. So if you're listening to this and you're like, cannot for the life of me eat this and that during my run, then cool, by all means. And in the end, from a physiological perspective,
Jill Bartholomew (25:25)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (25:43)
The majority of things comes down to total daily and total weekly calories. So even if one day you're like running around in business, you're failing to eat all your calorie requirements, you can eat more the next day. And even if vice versa, one day you were super hungry and you went over your calorie requirements, you can balance it out with the next day. But to the point of like what is optimal, because I guess that's what most people are thinking about from my read of the literature, it is good that after
about an hour or maybe an hour and a half or two hours, we are starting to refuel our body in the sense of giving it more during as well. And what is even more important in my opinion is just that post and pre workout nutrition. like, what are we, how are we replenishing our stores in order to help our body refuel and recover as quickly as possible? Because of course, as we know, not the adaptation doesn't necessarily
Yes, it comes throughout training as well, but it comes more after training, like your body's recovering after training. So the quicker and the better we can recover, the better. And I mean, to your question also in terms of carbs versus fats, meat versus not meat. Again, overall, calories and overall macro compositions of protein, carbs and fats is what matters the most to me. Whether someone chooses to be plant-based or an omnivore.
Jill Bartholomew (26:45)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (27:06)
doesn't necessarily matter so much to me. I do think that if you're plant-based, you might have to supplement a little bit more and pay more attention to certain lab work. So for example, iron can sometimes be low if we're not eating any red meat or any meat at all, or we might have to probably supplement with vitamin B12 if we're completely vegan and all these things. But everything can be achieved even on a plant-based diet.
Jill Bartholomew (27:28)
Mm.
Lisa (27:32)
And I think it's just kind of important to prime your body in one direction or the other. think sometimes the mistake that people make is they go more meat based for like a week and they say that doesn't work for them because obviously a week is not a long time to give your body a chance to adapt. And then I see it also the other way where you're like, oh, I tried to be vegan for three days and I didn't adapt. Well, you know, your digestive system needs to adapt to that. And also
Jill Bartholomew (27:49)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (28:01)
how your body relies on which energy source, whether it's more glycogen based or whether you're ketone adapted, it takes time. So whatever you're choosing, do give it time, please.
Jill Bartholomew (28:11)
Yeah. So I always,
I always heard it was take 60 days to really kind of develop a habit, right? And a thousand hours to get good at anything. So 60 days, like if I changed my diet, what you're saying is like, or I changed my approach to fueling, right? Which is the more salient thing. Give it 60 days to adjust. Right. so maybe in the middle of a race season isn't the best time to, like completely radically change your approach.
Lisa (28:21)
Yes.
I would say 60 days is great. Yes. Yes.
Jill Bartholomew (28:38)
and, but a thousand hours, right? That's solid six months. If you're, if you're working for a company that's six months of work, right? So a thousand hours is a, is a reasonably long time. but it takes a, it takes a thousand hours to, to really. Master like your, your approach, like 60 days to develop the habit six months to really like nail it. Is that how I should think about it?
Lisa (28:48)
Ha ha ha!
I like that.
Yeah, I think the thousand hour rule, I mean, it probably depends more or applies more to like skill-based things as opposed to physiological adaptations. But yeah, I think when it comes to physiological adaptations, like after two months, you can truly say you have given something a real go and it doesn't work for your digestion or you felt better on a higher carb approach or higher fat.
Jill Bartholomew (29:19)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (29:27)
approach, whatever it might be, but that's probably a reasonable amount of time. I think what both though have in common or what is often overlooked is the protein. Especially in endurance sport, yes, we are very, very focused on let's refuel, let's give our body enough energy, but nonetheless, we need to support our connective tissue as well, like joints, ligaments and so on. So to give someone a practical
Jill Bartholomew (29:37)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (29:52)
Takeaway because I mean the first one kind of being calculate your energy requirements second one being making sure you're not staying in a calorie deficit for too long that you're bringing up your calories again and third one being to consume at least something like the the minimum that we like to see no matter what sport is 0.7 times your body your goal body weight in pounds. Let's just say your goal body weight
Jill Bartholomew (29:57)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (30:19)
is 130, I'm not very good at math out of the top of my head, but that you're consuming about 100 grams of protein per day, roughly. That would be like the minimum requirement. and that can be through, again, plant-based sources or not. But yes, that would be a good guideline to have ideally more like one gram per goal body weight.
Jill Bartholomew (30:29)
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yeah. And I'm just thinking like last time it was 130 people thought I was dying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's like, that as part of my point is like, you know, we all have different builds and musculature, right? And like,
Lisa (30:48)
Well, let's just say, you know, like you're okay, lean body weight sort of thing.
Jill Bartholomew (31:01)
You know, I see some, some athletes that are, you know, six foot tall and like 110 pounds and they're super skinny, uh, long lean muscles and you know, others that are the same weight and five foot tall, right. And just like not fat, but you have different builds, right. And yeah. So, you know, trying not to look at like the elites.
Lisa (31:17)
Right.
Jill Bartholomew (31:28)
Actually, maybe we should look at the elites because not all of them look the same. I don't know if you follow. Ileana the the US rugby player. She was on the Olympic team,
Lisa (31:32)
Right.
No.
Jill Bartholomew (31:44)
And she is very masculine in her build, right? She's very tall, very, very muscular. But that's her job on the rugby team is to be a tank. She still needs to run. But her job is to block and tackle. To do that, you need to have the mass. And you know.
She is such a body positive image that it's, amazing to watch her and her, Tik TOKs and, and, and, Instagram posts and whatever, but, she gets completely skewered online. Right. Because she doesn't fit like that typical athlete mold. So I kind of want everybody to hear that light. Like we all have different body types, right? and we need to feed it.
Lisa (32:26)
Yeah, and I love it when
that happens when there people that are like completely rupturing a perception of what we have whether that's like a muscular ballet dancer or you know like there's always going to be like a verse in whatever category and it's great when that ripple some effects and I see that more as a positive thing than a negative one but of course for her it will be hard to tune out all these these comments.
Jill Bartholomew (32:36)
yes.
I don't know. Like if, if I was an Olympic medalist and got on the cover of sports illustrated, I could probably do a good job of tuning out the haters. Right. But just kind of situations she's in. Yeah. Yeah. so anyways,
Lisa (33:00)
Yeah, you'd hope so. You'd hope she pats herself on her back.
Jill Bartholomew (33:07)
Okay. So we talked about like post race or post workout and find that really interesting because one of the fascinating things to me when I first got into like half marathons and marathons is, and you don't really see this in the shorter distance as much, but like at the finish line, I don't think it's, it doesn't happen quite as much now. but every finish line had beer.
And like, there was this thing with runners and there still is of like, no, no, no. You know, an IPA is the best way to replenish the fuel that you lost while you're running. And I'm like, yeah, and ended up doing like some, reading on it afterwards. And turns out that like alcohol after running has some minor benefit, in that it can deliver carbs and sugars to your body, like super quickly.
Lisa (33:55)
Well, I mean, you're speaking to a German, so you're speaking to a bit of a strange German, because, well, number one, I don't drink alcohol at all. But number two, my parents and like literally anybody else you'd probably ask in Germany is going to be like, beer is an amazing isotonic refreshing drink. And I mean, there is some truth to this wives tale or whatever it is, because of the carbs. And there are some other like electrolyte
Jill Bartholomew (33:56)
But then it has all sorts of negatives associated with it too.
⁓ It
totally feels like one of those things though where like people are like, no, I want a beer afterwards and then find a way to justify it.
Lisa (34:23)
benefits.
Well, I 1 million percent agree
with you and I would never like prescribe that to anybody post an exercise. But yeah, if you participate in any races in Germany at some point, you're probably an extra bear.
Jill Bartholomew (34:40)
So, okay. All right. So, he determines
that maybe like having a beer after a race might not be the best approach. ⁓
Lisa (34:51)
Yeah, at least,
like, I would say, like, maybe you can find one without alcohol. In Germany, there's tons of, alcohol-free beers as well, so I would say go for that, yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (34:57)
Yeah. Yeah. it.
Yeah. I know it's totally off topic, but there's a lot of brands in the U S now that are, non-alcoholics. I'm really good too. Like, yeah. Like, I mean, everybody at this point, I think knows, Heineken zeros everywhere and it tastes really not so great. It tastes like Heineken.
Lisa (35:08)
I'm happy about that, yeah, honestly.
Yeah
Jill Bartholomew (35:17)
But we also have like athletic, a lot of small breweries are doing it. Sam Adams has them. My favorite one though is like Guinness Zero. I think tastes better than actual Guinness. It's not bad. Yeah. Well, so for me, like, you know, we're casual drinkers, right? I mean, like most Americans, right? But
Lisa (35:29)
Okay, I wouldn't have a clue, but you know, great to know that there are so many alternatives nowadays.
Jill Bartholomew (35:42)
You know, once I, once I got into like full distance Ironman training and I was like, my training plan was like six plus days a week. I could not do have a drink at night. And then the next morning get up and do like a two hour endurance ride or an hour.
You know, run or anything really, cause you're so groggy in the morning. Now I know lots of people who do it, but I couldn't do it anymore. So we went non-alcoholic at that point and I'm fortunate to have a spouse that supports that. And, you know, so basically there's no alcohol in the house anymore unless we have guests over. Um, and I know a lot of people who are kind of in the same situation. They're like, you know, my training got to a point where I just couldn't do it anymore.
Right. That's not to say that after a long, long race or a PR, we don't go out and, and celebrate, right? Cause we do. Um, but getting back to the topic. So like post-race, like how, you know, how would you suggest people approach like replenishing their bodies, bringing in what they need and like, see all the advice like, no, you should have taken like a protein shake or something within like 30 minutes.
to like, you know, bring in tons of carbs to, you know, I saw recently some stuff suggesting, no, like after an endurance activity, you should really just go on with the rest of your day.
Lisa (37:02)
Right. mean, I do think that replenishing energy sooner rather than later is a good thing. There is not such a thing as the window of gains or anything like that when it comes to muscle mass that's been debunked, the thing that we used to think for a long time. However, again, in my opinion, it's more of a neurological and hormonal thing as well. So of course, any kind of exercise is going to bring up your cortisol. So your stress response, your body's literally in
Jill Bartholomew (37:11)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Yeah.
Lisa (37:31)
doing mode and the quicker we can balance that and bring the cortisol down afterwards, the sooner we're going to start recovering and any kind of food that's coming in, carbs more than protein and fats as well, but any kind of food is going to counterbalance cortisol. And so that's often also while when we're super stressed, we want to eat something, especially carbs because it helps blunt the cortisol. So if you can eat something, I always say if you can eat something or drink something which contains calories within
Jill Bartholomew (37:50)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (37:59)
an hour or two after your training, at least that would be awesome. I don't think it necessarily needs to be a protein shake with something in it. I do think that depending on what you're adapted to, so again, going back to our earlier point of, you prefer higher fats and just be ketone adapted, or do you prefer a higher carb approach? Lean into whichever one you are and have a decent meal, have...
Jill Bartholomew (38:15)
Yeah.
Lisa (38:24)
depending on how much you of course burned or how long your exercise bout was, but replenish that with some protein and some either fats or carbs or both. Important part being in this meal though that it's easy to digest. So yes, we want to get at some point of the day our vegetables and our fiber and so on, but this is not the time. You want your body to be absorbing whatever you're eating pretty easily. So if you're more carb adapted,
the rice, the pasta, the bread and so on. Like all these more processed things are actually really fine. And likewise, you know, with fat, you don't want to have a meal that's just like very, very difficult to pull apart. But yeah, something that's easy to absorb by your body that also contains protein.
Jill Bartholomew (38:58)
Mm-hmm.
I'm terrible post-race. know, like in an Ironman or even a half or a full marathon. You you cross the finish line, there's usually food of some sort, right? Like the Philadelphia marathon is great because you walk across the finish line and there's hot dogs waiting for you.
Right. Because, you know, Deetson Watson is based here. So Deetson Watson sponsors the race and they, you know, you can get like as many hot dogs as you want basically at the finish line, which is great. You know, I find like for myself in like the first 20 minutes afterwards, I'm not hungry at all. Like I don't want food. Right. So I'll walk through the food line, grab stuff, knowing that I'm going to be hungry later.
but by the time I'm hungry, I'll have ditched most of it. But what I am is like, I don't know, I probably go through like three bottles of water between the finish line and the end of the finisher shoot. I'm always like, the first thing for me is like, I'm always just so thirsty when I get through the finish.
Lisa (39:46)
Ha ha.
Well, and
what you mentioned last time before we recorded that you often have, you know, burger and fries and stuff like that. And the good thing about these things, the good thing about these things is exactly what to what you mentioned. You also get your sodium and you get your potassium. So if you're hydrating that much, you just want to make sure that you're also replenishing your electrolyte.
Jill Bartholomew (40:07)
Mm-hmm.
yeah, I did tell you that.
Mm-hmm.
So by the, well, you're right.
By the time the hung for me, like, you know, Ironman's different, right? It's a long race. yeah, we tend to stick around the finish lines for longer. but especially like in a half, by the time the hunger kicks in, I'm usually like on the way home. So we, we've kind of said, okay, after a race, McDonald's is okay.
Lisa (40:38)
you
Jill Bartholomew (40:43)
And like we never eat McDonald's, but we will go through the McDonald's and I will single-handedly admit to this. will put down two double cheeseburgers on my own and I will love every second of it.
Lisa (40:43)
Yeah.
Well, I love it. I
mean, you said some great points here. You said you hardly ever do this. This is your post-race, you know, thing. And I think that's really important for people to hear. This is not something that you do after every single training session or whatever. So, yes, while after your training, I
Jill Bartholomew (41:04)
Yeah.
man, I would be,
I'm 5'10 and I think if I did that, I'd be 5'10 in all directions.
Lisa (41:18)
Well, yeah,
so I mean, after your training sessions, I would still like for your food to be easily absorbable. So if you're consuming something that's more processed, then this would be the time of the day to do so. So, you know, your breads and so on and your simple carbs, if you're more carb adapted or not.
Jill Bartholomew (41:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Lisa (41:35)
But yeah, save those things for the special occasions. The point being though, you do wanna replenish your energy within a couple of hours and you do wanna pay attention to hydration and also electrolytes that those are coming back in.
Jill Bartholomew (41:48)
Yeah, I'm good at justifying like crap food after a race. When I do a full marathon, a lot of times we'll go out and have steak that night. And like, it's bringing protein back in. It's good for you.
Lisa (42:00)
you go, exactly. Well,
I do want to go back to the original point of what mistakes I see people make. And I think, again, it kind goes into both directions. sometimes people are...
Jill Bartholomew (42:03)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (42:11)
too much of the processed food crowd and they are like, okay, I just need energy coming in. So I'm mostly eating cereal and Pop Tarts and just kind of neglecting fiber and micros altogether. Or I see again, the other under eating crowd that are like still trying to refuel of salads and.
Jill Bartholomew (42:15)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (42:30)
some seeds here and there and that's just not gonna work either way. We kind of want to bring them both together. So in the meals that are not close to your training sessions, that are not close to any races, yeah, look for fiber, have some fruit, have some whole grains and other things that are harder to digest. But then when it comes to close to your training sessions, make it more easily absorbable and so that your body is performing well, that you're not having as many digestive issues throughout your race.
Jill Bartholomew (42:35)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
I was going to go there. I was reading something on one of the Facebook groups. I'm in like a ton of Facebook groups, running, triathlon. And you see a lot of concern in the weeks before a big race about having digestive issues. And there was this one guy, he's like, I'm doing a half Ironman. And he's like, I know I'm going to have to stop and poo like four times.
And I'm like, need to fix that because that's a nutrition. mean, unless there's a medical problem, which there could be. I mean, if you don't have a medical problem, that's a nutrition thing you can solve.
Lisa (43:29)
I think if he's, you know, if he's...
I totally
agree. And I think he's probably like trying to get by with a ton of just gels and all that kind of crap. that that or maybe just even a bad type of gel. Like I have from what I have heard, some are very different than others. So you want to find what's kind of like right for you.
Jill Bartholomew (43:40)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think as athletes, tend to focus on glycogen and how do we get, you know, how do we get the sugars in? And I've sat through a bunch of presentations on like, you know, how many grams per hour should we be taking in based on age, gender, weight, you know, effort levels, blah, blah, blah. And I know that like for me,
The recommendation is around 90 to 110 at race pace on the bike and about half that on the run. If I was taking anywhere close to that in, I would be in like really rough shape.
Lisa (44:12)
Mm. Yeah.
Right, yeah, so again, you need to find out what works for you and it doesn't have to be like, even if it's according to the science, like optimal, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily working for you. So just trial and error, but don't trial on your race day. I would say like that is probably the main thing, like do on your race day as you have practiced before as well. And don't just suddenly bring out this new brand of gels that you've never had.
Jill Bartholomew (44:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Oh yeah. Although I am, you know, when you talk to the pros though, it gets really fascinating because every one of them is so vastly different. And I was talking to one last year who his entire fuel strategy is gummy bears. And I'm like, if it works for you, man, but how do you carry those around? But you know, when, when these guys are doing like sub 10 hour, you know, eight hour, nine hour.
Lisa (44:52)
Yeah.
Well, but it works for him.
Jill Bartholomew (45:10)
full Iron Man's like, okay, well, maybe you don't have to carry as much around that I do. Right. Yeah. I'm like, I'm I'm like taking a bit longer than you are to get across.
Lisa (45:13)
Right, yeah.
I do have like two
more points that I definitely want to touch on in terms of mistakes. the other one, as I mentioned, was kind of like, oftentimes people forget to address nutrient deficiencies. So if we're just focusing on overall calories and, know, sufficient carbs, protein and fats and so on, that's already big chore. So sometimes people don't look at their micronutrients, but we should get blood work done at
Jill Bartholomew (45:24)
Yeah.
Lisa (45:46)
ideally every half year, at least every year. And so looking at that, on average, the majority of people and especially athletes don't consume enough magnesium, don't have enough vitamin D. Again, if you're more plant-based, you're probably low in B vitamins. If you're exercising a lot and you're not consuming dairy, you might also be missing your calcium. You're probably gonna benefit from having some creatine and some omega-3.
Jill Bartholomew (46:04)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (46:11)
There is a lot like while nutrition, whole food nutrition should always be the base and your training is really, really important in how you modulate that. But there is a lot that can be helped with in terms of your supplements. So that is another area I would look into.
Jill Bartholomew (46:15)
Yeah.
So
I have so many questions on this one. So first, I totally agree on the testing. I out in Texas a couple of months ago, six weeks ago, whenever it was.
They had a vendor I'd never seen before. I don't know if they're a new startup or I just, I'd never seen them before, called Rhythm. And I am not like trying to be an ad for them, but it's like a fairly low monthly subscription price and they send you a kit every month. And you take a vial of blood through a
Basically a little prick on your, on your arm and it like slowly drips into the thing. And then you send it in, it's in a prepaid like overnight FedEx thing. And then a couple of days later you get your results back and it, the amount of stuff that it's like, basically a full CMP. plus, for women, you know, estrogen, progesterone, all the hormonal stuff, you amend testosterone.
And, you know, it gives like this like super long, like I was shocked to how much stuff they're testing for, especially for the little amount of blood that you're giving them. I'm like, when I go and to, to lab core and get a CMP done, they take a lot more blood than that. Right. And the results take longer too. But anyways, you know, it was, it was really insightful to me. Like some are not.
Lisa (47:25)
Amazing.
Thank
I it.
Jill Bartholomew (47:42)
Not surprising, right? As adults, all have, at this point in our lives, most of us have underlying health issues of some sort. And I'm potassium deficient, so it wasn't surprising to see that my potassium levels were low. But I'm like, it's so insightful. So I think my next test kit shows up tomorrow. And I'm like,
I wonder if things change. I want to see how it changes month over month, because one data point is just a data point. But when you start getting three or four six of them, then you can start making information-based decisions on that. So I told my husband, I'm like, let's try this for six to 12 months. Let's just see. Let's just see, because the total price isn't outrageous.
Lisa (48:03)
Yeah, there you go.
100%.
I love it. Absolutely.
Jill Bartholomew (48:26)
yes, they had like some, I mean, you know how it is. Yeah. It's like sign up now and it's discounted, but if you do it here, we'll even further discount it. Right. But here's a code. If you do it at home, that's your price, which is lower than the price. If you, if you don't use this code, but if you do it right here in front of me, it'll be even lower. So of course we did it right there in front of them. Come on.
Lisa (48:44)
But I absolutely love it. Cause I mean,
most people that are listening to this are probably a little bit like type A or a little bit of data nerds like you and I also. Right.
Jill Bartholomew (48:55)
I
think by definition, if you're in these sports, you are type A.
Lisa (49:01)
Exactly. this is like
more data is better in our perception then. And therefore, if you can get regular data on your blood work as well, and especially going back to the point of being a middle-aged woman, the more information you have on your standard baseline level before you even head into the menopause transition, the better. And so at least then, you know, like what is where I was at when I was feeling optimal and why am I feeling off now?
Jill Bartholomew (49:05)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Um, yeah. So anyways, one of the things, you know, we're talking about nutrients. So one of the brands is not the only one that gets like really hyped. And I just know them because they're a big sponsor of the sports I do AG one. Right. Um, but again, they're not the only one there's 20 others are just like them. They just aren't as good at advertising to that crowd.
Like, what do you think of them? Like, are they worth it? Because it's not cheap.
Lisa (49:50)
⁓
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of anything that is like mixed ingredients. I always prefer it if there is like, if you have a single ingredient thing that you can then tweak. I mean that they have, I don't know, 50 different ingredients, right? So you don't know all is it the...
Jill Bartholomew (49:56)
Mm-hmm.
The list is long.
Lisa (50:07)
Tiny bit of ashwagandha why I'm feeling a little bit better or is it the rhodiola in there? So I prefer targeted supplementation number two I always get a little bit weary when there is something that is this expensive and promoted by that many people and I do think that they're just getting a lot of
Jill Bartholomew (50:22)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (50:25)
benefit from promoting that. And it might be beneficial, but I think you can probably find something almost equally beneficial that costs like a third of the price. And yeah, just generally speaking, I don't know.
Jill Bartholomew (50:35)
Like, you know, I've been taking it for
like, so I've been subscribing to for like two years because, know, you know, I'm like, I'm like, okay, okay, I get the freebies and everything. Fine. I'll try it. And at this point, I'm like, do I feel like, like I feel better when I take it, you know, then when I don't.
Lisa (50:46)
you
Jill Bartholomew (50:53)
And it's so hard to tell us like, is that like just in my head? Cause I knew that like I deviated from my habit that day or is it something in it? And I'm like, ⁓ yeah.
Lisa (50:57)
Right.
And I mean, the placebo effect is so strong. So, you know, if you're listening to this
and you believe that it works, please go ahead. But it's not something I would ever, I would advertise.
Jill Bartholomew (51:11)
Oh, yeah. No, it's like,
you know, I think of the folks that that I know, it's like 50 50, right? Like, you know, half people are like, yeah, it's the best thing. I spread the other half are like, I don't know so much about that. And I'm like.
If I stop, am I going to feel worse? Right. That's the thing that goes through your head after you've been doing it for a while. So, like what you would suggest is more like through your diet itself, bring those in versus like taking a supplement like that.
Lisa (51:29)
Yes.
Well, I would say make sure you get your vegetables and fiber and stuff like that covered through diet. So not just saying, I'm taking the AG, AG one. that's why I don't need any greens in my diet. No, no, no, me either. Me either. Absolutely not. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely not. But I'm also not promoting it. So would say you need to cover your diet first. And then I would say, look at your lab work.
Jill Bartholomew (51:50)
Mm-hmm.
And I have nothing against AD1, I'm just picking on them because like, they're the ones I know.
Lisa (52:08)
Also think about how you're actually feeling, because if you're like, I am feeling amazing. Do I really need this extra dollar and 50 or whatever per day? Or could I spend that on a potentially high quality omega-3, which is going to help with my inflammation a little bit better? So where are we spending our money? That's just essentially what I want people to think about. I want to just.
Jill Bartholomew (52:10)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (52:29)
pivot a little bit into the last point that I wanted to make in terms of what I often see people doing wrong. So if they're starting with their endurance training or any kind of, yeah, more endurance training, I guess, sometimes neglecting the benefits of strength training all together. And I mean, yes, especially if you're training for a triathlon, that's already a lot of time commitment. I totally, totally, totally get it. However,
Jill Bartholomew (52:44)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Lisa (52:52)
If we're so focused on doing all these things just in one plane, we're just moving forward, you know, like, and you're swimming, moving forward, you're running forward, you're cycling forward, we're just neglecting a lot of other muscle groups. And over the course of time, you're probably going to feel some deficiencies, not just like postural-y, but also more being more injury prone, not feeling as great or even things like
Jill Bartholomew (52:59)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (53:16)
you could be getting a faster time if you're addressing your poor ankle mobility or you could be feeling a lot better if you're not having pelvic floor issues and peeing yourself every single time. those are some things where I'm like, okay, it seems like a quote unquote waste of time at first, but if we're investing, let's just say five minutes a day or twice a week, 15 minutes or something like that into some
Jill Bartholomew (53:41)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (53:42)
additional targeted strength work, you can actually achieve a lot and ideally pairing that with a little bit of mobility work as well and you have a match made in heaven.
Jill Bartholomew (53:54)
So
I will say, totally agree with you. Every one of my athletes has no less than two 45 minute sessions a week for strength training. Or maybe it's two 30 minute, either way, it's like between an hour and hour and a half. And I have this discussion on a regular basis, right? So like I coach on the Try.platform, there's...
Lisa (54:03)
Amazing. Amazing.
Jill Bartholomew (54:16)
other ones out there, know, different coaches use. Even if it's just a spreadsheet that your coach is using or that you're using, it's like, it's, the one discipline where people can cheat on and their coach won't know. Because like, if you're cycling, I know that you did it because you've got metrics. If you're running, I know you did it because you've got metrics. you know, same thing for swimming, right?
Whether it's off your watch, which is not very great for swimming or like smart goggles or something. I've got metrics of some sort that at least measures at a minimum the length of the activity. For strength training, I don't have any of that. Maybe you did like a Peloton app workout or you started a strength workout on your watch. But beyond that, I don't know anything.
Lisa (55:05)
Right. Yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (55:05)
Right.
And for the most part, it's like people going into, whether it's try dot, you know, training peak, something else and saying, yep, I did it. If they even do that. Right. So I had this discussion with an athlete last night. I'm like, it is the first thing that you're going to want to throw off your calendar. And it is the last thing that you should. So I started giving like orders of priority. Now, in this case, this is a runner.
Lisa (55:25)
Mm-hmm. How do you perceive that?
Jill Bartholomew (55:30)
who in this example, right? This is a runner. She's training for a marathon. And she's listening. Sorry, hun. She's training for a marathon. Her projected time, so her projected times, the marathon's in November. It's in a small city in the Northeast. We won't name which one. But it's the first weekend in November. It's pretty, some people have heard of it. And you know, her projected time.
is just shy of BQ. So we're trying in the next, what do we got, four months, five months, to take the extra 10 minutes off to get her not just in BQ, but solidly BQ. Because we all know, Boston qualifier, there's the time they say you need. Well, that just lets you apply. And then there's the time you actually need. And last year, there was an eight minute difference.
year before that, was like five minutes. And, you know, I'm like, you will get more benefit from strength training and increasing your speed. Then you will from the cross training because all my athletes have cross training. Right. So this case, she has like five sessions a week of run of different types, two of strength and two on the bike. I'm like, if you got it, like.
take one of the bikes off and do the strength. Like if you have to start cutting corners, like, like do that, not that, because like, just like you said, you know, people who don't strength train get, get fractures. ⁓ they get tendonitis, tendinosis, all sorts of other injuries that are avoidable.
Lisa (56:49)
is absolutely.
Jill, I love your approach, absolutely.
Beyond that, I always also want to think even like a step further ahead than my clients do. Cause most of the time we are thinking about like qualifiers and so on, but I'm also thinking about where do I want to see them in 20, 30, 40 years time? Like I'd still love to see them running in their 70s, 80s, whatever. Right? So we do need to think a little bit more long-term. And I think if you're listening to this and you're like, okay, cool. I'm going to incorporate more strength training. Often the first inclination is like, what can I do to strengthen my hip flexor to run better? Or like my.
Jill Bartholomew (57:04)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Lisa (57:26)
my calf or think of the things that you're not already addressing in your running and so on. So like you probably need more posterior chain movements or more for your glutes and a lot more lateral movements. like lateral step ups, sumo stance things, abductions, that kind of stuff that always fall short when we're like moving in a just in a frontal plane essentially. And then I guess the other point that I was touching on with regards to like stretching and mobility work.
Jill Bartholomew (57:39)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (57:54)
that should fall into that category as well where you're like, okay, cool. Even like, I'm a huge fan of habit stacking. So if you're watching TV, can you do a little bit, like can you do a couch stretch? Can you do a lizard pose? And even if it's not necessarily fun, like lean into that and make it a habit. Cause only the things that we're doing regularly, like I'd rather see you do that five minutes every single day than once a week or once in a blue moon going to a yoga class.
Jill Bartholomew (57:57)
yeah.
100%. And there's a phrase that I've seen recently start to show up, which I think is right on. And that's, know, recover as hard as you train. Right? And at first, you listen to me, and like, what? What do you mean? It's like, if you spend an hour training,
Lisa (58:34)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Jill Bartholomew (58:42)
then you should be spending, maybe not an hour, but you should be spending as much effort in recovering so that you can show up the next day.
Lisa (58:52)
what I want to caution the type A people like myself here with, because I hear that and I'm like, okay, how can I cold plunge harder? How can I then go into an even harder sauna session? How can I, like, we're just thinking like hard, hard, hard, hard, hard. But for me sometimes like taking a rest day is so hard, like not doing anything, it feels so hard, but that's often exactly the hard that we're talking about.
Jill Bartholomew (59:02)
Yeah. Right, right.
Well, right, but
the rest day doesn't mean you sit on your butt watching TV, right? It means you don't have as...
Lisa (59:17)
Not doing anything. No, no, no, no. But like it means maybe going for a walk or spending
time with your family or so, but it still feels harder to me than if I'm like, I'm going to go for an extra hard cold plunge session today.
Jill Bartholomew (59:30)
Yeah, no, in this case, I'm like, guys, like get in your foam rolling. You know, if you, you know, you're those who are like coming off of races or, or in like race prep and have like 16 plus hour training weeks is like, you know, use those compression boots. You know, you know.
Do the things, the stretches, you know, for me, uh, this is, know, you said like habit stacking. It's like, yeah, at night when we're watching TV, I'm sitting there on the floor of foam rolling. Well, while my, my family is vegging on the couch, you know, it's like, but that that's like the habit that, that I've got because, you you know, it's like, ideally you do it straight off of a workout, but you know, I'm a mom, I have two kids, you know, I have.
Lisa (1:00:05)
Thank ⁓
We love it.
Jill Bartholomew (1:00:18)
a busy life. I have two businesses I own in addition to having everything else going on. And so like, know, fitting in that two hour workout, I don't have the time to spend another 30 minutes immediately after doing stretching, but you know, still making sure that you get it done. Otherwise you're going to show up tomorrow.
Lisa (1:00:35)
Exactly. Yeah. Practical is better than optimal.
Always.
Jill Bartholomew (1:00:38)
Right, right.
Cause otherwise you're showing up tomorrow where you've got stuff on your plan. Uh, cause you have an evil coach like me and you know, that doesn't give you a rest day every other day. And you know, you're like, Oh my God, my life sucks. I'm so tired. My legs are heavy. And like, that's, that's the worst feeling when you show up and you're looking straight into like a three hour.
Even if it's like a zone to ride, which is done to ride isn't necessarily easy, right? That can be high stress. Like if it's long, it's not like easy. And you're like, Oh my God, my legs are so sore from yesterday. It was like, that's, that's the worst. So like you want to avoid that and strength training, you know, conditioning, stretching, like those are the things that help us avoid that. But you also have to feed your body.
Lisa (1:01:17)
Yeah.
resting. And I think into the...
Yes, yes, exactly. All of that. I just wanted to add one more category to that rest bucket and that is sleep, which I used to undercut for a really, really long time because I was like, I'm one of these rare individuals. I don't mind only sleeping, you know, five to six hours on average, and I can get by just fine. Little did I know that...
Jill Bartholomew (1:01:39)
Yeah.
Lisa (1:01:49)
how great I could actually feel and how much better you can actually recover. So again, if you're listening to this and you're thinking I'm doing just fine on five or six hours, I highly, highly encourage you just to build on that and try and increase it even just by 10 minutes and then two weeks later, another 10 minutes. And it often just falls with having a good bedtime routine. And that's what we kind of need to work on knowing when you should be in bed, considering what time you want to get up and so on and working on the quality and quantity of that.
Jill Bartholomew (1:01:51)
Yeah.
100%. I used to be one of the young dumb in college and then had two jobs and then two jobs and two kids. And I used to tell people I'm like, I'm like, and I sleep so overrated. I'll sleep when I'm It's like now I'm like, no, no, no, no, I still probably don't sleep as much as as I should. Although, although every once in a while, Garmin is like good job.
Lisa (1:02:35)
we can all improve on our sleep for sure.
Wow!
Jill Bartholomew (1:02:41)
I don't wear my Apple
watch to bed, but like if I if I wore my altar instead of my garment, it would be like it'd be like, woohoo, go you. You slept more than two hours. No, my garment, like for the first time the other day, it's like we came home from a race and we had flown in and I think I had slept for like eight hours, which never happens. And garments like sleep 99 percent and like like, wow.
Lisa (1:02:48)
Yeah, they say.
That's amazing.
Jill Bartholomew (1:03:05)
It does know how to do,
it does know how to do more than more than 50 % on anything.
Lisa (1:03:12)
Well, and they do say, and not for no reason, that sleep is the most underused or underrated performance enhancing activity you can do. like literally, like if you're not doing that, those five minutes of stretching, cool. I'm happy with that. As long as you focus on your sleep.
Jill Bartholomew (1:03:17)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And to
my son, if he's listening, that doesn't mean 14 hours.
Lisa (1:03:32)
Yes, okay, that's the other extreme.
Jill Bartholomew (1:03:32)
Dude, yeah,
don't know. Teenagers, especially teenage boys, they value their sleep. But I don't understand what it is because on a weekday, these kids, you cannot get them up in the morning for school. But on the weekend, they're getting you up at the same time you're normally trying to get them up.
Lisa (1:03:39)
Yeah. Yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Hahaha
Jill Bartholomew (1:03:55)
I'm
like, I'm like, dude, it's the weekend. Go back to it. It's like, no, it's the weekend. I need to maximize it. Yeah.
Lisa (1:04:02)
Sleep is so interesting and how it changes over the
course of our life as well if someone listening is interested in more There's an amazing book I recommend which is called why we sleep by Matthew Walker He's also been on numerous podcasts So if you're not a reader listen to some interviews and he just knows everything about sleep that you possibly want to know
Jill Bartholomew (1:04:20)
that's a fabulous reference. I haven't read that one. I might give it a look. OK, so we did have one more topic. And that was like, hey, a lot of my clients, and in fact, a lot of the world population, are women. And in particular, middle-aged women. nutrition, recovery, all these things we talked about, how do we think about them differently when we're talking about
women here maybe like, I mean all women, but especially like if they're like perimenopausal or even menopausal, right? Like does it change and how?
Lisa (1:04:53)
So
technically, doesn't necessarily change. However, our bodies just become less resilient to a lot of the things it was tolerating before. That's often how I'd like to describe it. So it's a rewiring in your brain. And so if you have been thinking, okay, everything I've been doing so far, felt great. And now suddenly, why don't I? It's kind of that it's suddenly saying, okay, I was happy tolerating your alcohol tolerance until now.
Now my hormones are not playing along anymore, so I'm going to prioritize that and I'm no longer tolerating the alcohol so much. before that I was tolerating that you were training super, super, super intensely. Now my hormones are out of whack and I'm going to prioritize that. So I'm rebelling against the training as well. So essentially what I have seen with a lot of the women I work with is that we just need to be a bit more in tune and help our body.
with hormone balance by the way of supporting the liver, by the way of eliminating some of the more environmental toxins that we might be having. So paying a little bit more attention to are we eating out of plastic a lot? What kind of skincare and cleaning products are we using? Can we switch that to more organic stuff as opposed to those that contain endocrine mimicking chemicals? Can we maybe buy a bit more organic?
with fruit and vegetables as opposed to those that are laden with chemicals. But also just when it comes to training, like one of the things you mentioned earlier was sometimes pulling back can actually be helpful a little bit if we're tending to lean on the side of not necessarily over training, but like having a really high or intense training volume. So it's just, we want to do everything that we possibly can to support our body through those hormonal imbalances. And when it comes to
nutrition specifically, the research is kind of clear that yeah, we want to absolutely hit that protein target in menopause for sure, because otherwise more of the muscle that we currently have is going to be sort of transcribed into body fat. So that's point number one. Point number two would be we want to make sure we're definitely getting in our fiber because that in and of itself will help the liver, especially if we're thinking about like cruciferous vegetables. So things like
Jill Bartholomew (1:06:48)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (1:07:07)
broccoli, cauliflower, kale, that's super, super helpful. And then just overall also actually making sure we're not under fueling the body a lot. So like not under eating all the time because that is sort of a message also to your body that it's in a state of emergency or like not an optimal state. And therefore we're putting even more stress on the body. So that's kind of like from a, can I take away from this in terms of nutrition?
protein, fiber, and not under eating, obviously not way overeating either. In addition to eliminating or at least moderating alcohol, very, very beneficial during that time.
Jill Bartholomew (1:07:45)
So what I'm hearing is basically that the things we could get away with before, we now have a harder time getting away with, which I think kind of mimics my own experience. So yeah, it's like.
Lisa (1:07:51)
Yes.
Yeah, no, that's
like, if you can summarize in one sentence, that is exactly it. And unfortunately, sometimes it hurts hearing that, but it's just the truth. I mean, once we do acknowledge and address that and getting out of the initial sort of victim mindset where we're like, no, why am I going through this period? Everything is changing and just kind of accepting it as, hey, actually, this doesn't need to be something negative. I just need to pivot with it. ⁓ I have seen...
Jill Bartholomew (1:08:02)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa (1:08:24)
women thrive through it and actually like really embrace that time in a very, very positive way.
Jill Bartholomew (1:08:29)
Well, I think it's really interesting. I'm in that age group of women who, we all had kids in, I guess, middle school age, late elementary age during COVID. And we were competitive before then. Now the 40 to 49, but especially 45 to 49 group.
is consistently the largest age group showing up at races and the most competitive. I think seven out of the last 10 races that I've done, the 10th place finisher in my age group would have been the first place finisher in the next two age groups younger than ours.
Lisa (1:09:10)
Wow amazing
Jill Bartholomew (1:09:11)
And it's like
amazing at how many people, how many women in this age group are showing up that didn't used to and like how competitive it's gotten in every, and you see that even in like the, the, the BQ times, like they're coming down and you know, it's like, it's just, it's amazing to watch.
Lisa (1:09:21)
That's so cool.
That's very cool.
Jill Bartholomew (1:09:33)
And someday someone's going to look and be like, why did that age group show up at that time in a way that other age groups didn't? And I think there's a lot to it, right? Like it's post-child rearing. know, kids are getting older. They're little humans now instead of. Right. Right. Yeah. It's like.
Lisa (1:09:40)
Right. Yeah.
you're starting to prioritize yourself more again, hopefully. And yeah, yeah. And I think
often it comes with like the, not necessarily search for meaning, like purpose and you want to join a community again and you want to feel like you have something that you're working towards. So yeah, I love it. I can absolutely understand it.
Jill Bartholomew (1:10:02)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Yeah, and you know, I think also there's, you know, people who come in and out of sports and
this age group is they're coming in, but they don't seem to be exiting at that the same rate that that other ages are. And, you know, I'm like, I think it's great. But I'm like, like, could I be like five years younger or five years? Well, I don't want to be five years older, but like, you know, like, you know, you know, I, you know, I'd I'd do better in my age. I mean, I.
Lisa (1:10:20)
That's awesome.
Yeah.
It sounds tough, but I know you're in that
category for a reason, so yes.
Jill Bartholomew (1:10:43)
Yeah.
you see a lot, you know, I talked to a lot of new coaches and whether it's like triathlon, running another sport, nutrition, personal trainers, and even like that age group, a lot of like new coaches are showing up in that same age group. like, I don't know what it is. Like this age group is kind of coming out, you know, hard really.
Lisa (1:11:01)
Right.
All the
power, all the power though. Yeah, it's thriving. Love it.
Jill Bartholomew (1:11:10)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, this is great. And most,
and most of us have like, like really stressful, you know, demanding day jobs on top of it. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. These, these, uh, middle-aged type A's are coming out in force. Uh, yes, hopefully we'll see. Um, so anyways, uh, you know, Lisa has been great conversation and we've, we've obviously covered a ton of, ton of topics.
Lisa (1:11:18)
Go get her women. Love it.
Taken over the world. I love it.
Great, thank you.
Jill Bartholomew (1:11:37)
For listeners, I hope this was useful. Again, that's Lisa Franz of ⁓ Nutrition, Coaching, and Life. She has clients globally, I believe. You said mostly in the US, but outside as well.
Lisa (1:11:49)
Absolutely. US or Canada
and Europe, a few in Philippines and Australia and New Zealand as well. But yeah, mostly that kind of area.
Jill Bartholomew (1:11:58)
And you
yourself are a bit transient, so that kind of checks. Right.
Lisa (1:12:01)
Yes, I'm currently in South America, that, mean, time zone wise doesn't matter. That's the beauty of working location free.
Jill Bartholomew (1:12:08)
So anyways, thank you for coming on. look forward to ⁓ catching up. Absolutely. And, know, for our listeners, let me know if this was helpful and, you know, stay tuned for our next episode, which should come out on Tuesday.
Lisa (1:12:08)
and greet.
Thank you for having me, it was a true pleasure. I hope this was helpful.
Jill Bartholomew (1:12:24)
Our next episode, we're gonna talk about spectating. And if you're an athlete, how do you support your spectators? And if you're a spectator, definitely tune in because we've got a lot of experience floating around, whether it's a spectating or running race, a Disney race, an Ironman, half Ironman, ⁓ should be fun. And with that, I think we're gonna say goodbye.
Lisa (1:12:41)
Thank you.