The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Intuitive Eating: What It Is, What It's Not, and How It Might Transform Your Training, with Pam Moore (#231)
Overview: Intuitive eating coach and journalist Pam Moore joins Coach Adam Pulford to discuss the ins and outs of "Intuitive Eating", what it really means (hint: it's not just eat whatever you want whenever you want), why it might be important for your lifestyle and eating habits, and how to incorporate it into your nutrition program.
Topics Covered In This Episode:
- What is Inutitive Eating?
- Examples of cues or prompts that fit into intuitive eating
- Why we lack awareness of how we're actually eating
- Is there a place for tracking calories/macros in intuitive eating?
- Going from "the least you can get away with" to "the most I can tolerate" during exercise.
Guest:
Pam Moore started out as an Occupational Therapist before committing to her passion for writing and becoming a journalist. A regular contributor to The Washington Post, her work has also appeared in Time, The Guardian, and Runner’s World, Bicycling Magazine, and for well-known brands like Peloton. She earned a certification as an Intuitive Eating Counselor, and says, "As an occupational therapist and a journalist, I bring my intuitive eating coaching clients a deep understanding of human motivation, what it takes to make sustainable behavior change, and most importantly, how to ask the right questions and listen deeply to the answers."
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Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more than 14 years and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance, even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now onto our show. Welcome back, or welcome to the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford.
Speaker 1:Today we'll have a change of pace. We're moving away from the super detailed training advice to focusing on aspects of general nutrition. Why? Because food is fuel for your training and it's the building blocks of recovery between training sessions, beyond the athlete's scope of just fueling healthy habits, and food keeps us on track, not only for our goals in sport, but for our happiness beyond athletics too. Now, I'm not a fan or a huge subscriber to any one diet or method of eating, other than equipping yourself with knowledge about food and what works for you as an individual. Education, awareness, trial and error are all part of that process. I'm here today with Pam Moore to talk more about this and help us to look at it from perhaps a different angle than what you've looked at it as an athlete and as a listener here on the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. Pam's an occupational therapist by trade. She's a former columnist at the Washington Post. She's an endurance athlete and a podcast host herself. So, pam, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hi Adam, Thanks for having me so good to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad this has finally come to fruition. You and I have worked together in writing some articles for Bicycling Magazine and a few other things, and I always enjoy our interviews and collaborations together. Same Well, thanks, well, thanks For our audience, who doesn't know you like I know you. Could you tell us a bit more about yourself, about your podcast and your story of how you came to be a thing in the health, wellness and endurance athlete space?
Speaker 2:Thank you. Wow, I'm a thing, apparently. That's exciting. Let's see. On top of all the things you said about me in my intro, I'm also a certified intuitive eating counselor and, in a nutshell, let's see, I was not athletic as a kid. I was like picked last for every team discovered running by way of lacrosse, got into lacrosse, I think, because of peer pressure, I don't really even know. It was a total disaster, but I realized I liked running, I could do it, it was simple. So that turned into marathoning, turned into triathlons, became a cyclist along the way and really kind of just gradually developed an identity as an endurance athlete through doing endurance events, gradually taking on more, eventually doing Ironmans, and that's actually a lot of what led me to Boulder.
Speaker 2:I'm from the East Coast. I moved to Boulder, colorado, in 2008, largely because it's an endurance mecca, because I was really into like Ironmans at the time, left my career as an occupational therapist after having my second child, who's now 10 and a half. For a lot of reasons, but mainly because I wanted to explore a career as a writer, which led me to freelance health and fitness journalism. Because I wanted to write about what I was passionate about and what that is is telling people about healthy lifestyles. Both, you know I've covered fitness, as you mentioned bicycling, that's how we get to know each other covered mental health.
Speaker 2:I've covered nutrition topics and my own struggles with body image and food led me to the intuitive eating certification, because I discovered intuitive eating about six years ago when I just you know, all my life I was committed to, I think, what I would have called healthy lifestyles and air quotes, which were really just diets.
Speaker 2:But you know it's not sexy to say that you're on a diet or you want to lose weight, right. But I thought athletes look a certain way. I don't think I look that way. So my goal for the longest time was to eat as little as I thought I could get away with to do the sports that I was wanting to do and couldn't figure out why I was often not recovering well, fading at the end of a ride, just attributed it to like, oh I'm just not as fit as my training buddies, I need to work harder, and more than once kind of dug myself into an overtraining hole, not realizing it. It went until you know, lots of hindsight later, yeah, exactly, and long story short, I think the pinnacle, what's the opposite of a pinnacle, the lowest point I was going to say.
Speaker 2:But so many of my habits were disordered and I didn't recognize them as such because most of them are normalized culturally and, I think, especially within the athlete community. You know things like low carb eating quote unquote, clean, avoiding sugar, intermittent fasting, skipping breakfast all of these things that are actually really detrimental to our performance and our mental health and our relationship with food and our bodies are so normalized that I just thought I'm doing it wrong, I'm not doing it hard enough because I'd be adhering to all these random rules and then falling off the wagon, so to speak, at some point, and just eating myself into an oblivion and feeling like garbage and then starting over, which I think is probably pretty relatable to a lot of people. And yeah, ultimately got into CrossFit, got into macro counting from there and finally just got this like epiphany. The macro counting had got to the point where, like it was a part-time job, I was with a spreadsheet at six in the morning trying to figure out if I could have Dairy Queen with my kids on the last day of school as a celebration, and like what I would have to eat in order to accommodate a stupid vanilla ice cream cone.
Speaker 2:Right, and finally it just like hit me. I was like damn, I'm almost 40. At that point I was um. Why am I relying on an app to tell me what to eat? This is, can I say? Can we swear on this podcast?
Speaker 1:I was like this is bullshit.
Speaker 2:I know what I should eat, I'm just not listening to myself. And then I sort of dove into like reading and researching and learning more about what is intuitive eating and just by following the principles. There's 10 principles and I think a common myth is that intuitive eating is eating whatever the hell you want, whenever you want. It's not that simple, but it is kind of a philosophical framework for having a healthy relationship with food that is not predicated on weight loss and it just really changed my life. It changed my relationship with food, changed the way I train and I've been so much happier and so I was like I just want more people to know about this. I'm going to get the certification and coach clients so that I can help other people experience what I've experienced.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I'll be the first to admit that there is a lot of confusion in the nutrition space as well as the training space, and part of my goal and objective with this podcast, as well as what I do as a coach, is to clean some of that up, make it simple and give that actionable advice to people that are confused and people like you and I that have struggled our whole life trying to figure it out Right.
Speaker 1:And I think when one of our collabs at bicycling we just had a side conversation about intuitive eating and I thought I was like man, it just sounds like a lot of the advice that I give to my own athletes, because some of it is common sense, what I perceive as common sense, but, like you said, it's a framework, and I think that those frameworks and frameworks that I've shared on this podcast before help people to start to think differently about something and then have some guiding principles to it. So let's start with the basics. I know you're passionate about intuitive eating, so, please, what is it and why should we care about it?
Speaker 2:What is it and why should we care about it? It is essentially taking back your agency about what you eat. It's accepting that you, and not some guru or plant or app or diet or lifestyle they don't know more about you than you. You get to decide what's going to be most nourishing to you in a way that also honors your hunger, your fullness, your energy needs and we can dive more into that, because sometimes your hunger is not an accurate indicator of what your energy needs often are. I think we've all had the experience of coming back from a long training day and you just don't have an appetite. So we can circle back to that. We'll put a bit in that, but according to your culture, your taste preferences and finding a way of eating that adheres to all of that. And while, yes, food is fuel, let's accept that food is also social. It's okay to have cake at someone's birthday, even if cake is quote unquote empty calories. I don't really like that term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same Pam, but I do want to toot my own horn here for just a second. I had a podcast with Renee Eastman, a CTS coach. We were talking about some holiday stuff and we're like, yeah, like chill out on the holidays and go ahead. And Renee was like go ahead and have pie for breakfast once in a while and I've had so many comments from people like dude, I had pie for breakfast and it was awesome.
Speaker 1:And it's like yeah, for sure, like, maybe not all the time, but like once in a while for sure. Because, yeah, there's no, anyway we'll get into it. There's no bad food there's there. There, there can be. Um, there's no bad food. There are habits that you can change, right, and this is part of what intuitive eating is more about. So sorry, I digressed you on your whole framework here.
Speaker 2:No, that's great. Actually, I'm glad you brought up the pie for breakfast, because I think one of the biggest misconceptions I hear about intuitive eating is, if I ate intuitively, I would intuitively eat a box of Oreos. I would eat a Costco size serving of filling your favorite quote unquote forbidden food here. And the thing that I think is so hard to grasp and which was hard for me to grasp for the longest time, like there were many, many foods that I just wouldn't keep in my house because I was like I will eat it all at once and I don't want to do that. The truth is, the more you restrict, the more you're craving the food, Just like if you've ever been around a child or, or I don't know, been a child. We've all been a child and sometimes I act like a child. So I.
Speaker 2:I think we all do this. You tell a kid not to do something. What do they want to do? They want to do the thing. That's all they want to do, it's all they can think about.
Speaker 2:So the minute you tell yourself dessert is off limits, you might just find that you're obsessed with dessert. You might also find that you are quote unquote emotionally eating dessert every night. Why am I doing this? Oh, this is emotional. Emotional eating is bad.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're eating ice cream at night because, number one, you're obsessed, because you've told yourself you can't have it. And maybe, number two, you've been eating food all day that wasn't actually satisfying. You were eating what you thought you should eat, which was maybe an omelet but no toast, maybe a salad with like five crackers and maybe, before your big training ride, like a banana. That's not enough. And then, after dinner, your, your body is smart, it knows that there is a deficit and it is compensating. And maybe it's compensating with ice cream. And now you've, no pun intended, you've fed yourself this narrative of like I'm out of control around food, I'm out of control around ice cream, can't have it in my house. Well, try giving yourself full permission to eat all the ice cream.
Speaker 2:And this is hard. This is easier said than done because we've been conditioned in so many ways to think that these foods are bad and that it's unacceptable to gain weight, because gaining weight means all of these moral failures, which are just that's culture. That's not true. Right, like when you were a toddler, you didn't have thoughts about your chubby thighs, that was just your body, right? We've been conditioned to believe that chubby thighs are a sign of something terrible. When you can get in touch with your body's signals and you can say all right, I'm just going to let myself eat ice cream Now, if you've been restricting for a long time, you may find that you're overdoing it on all of these foods that you've restricted for a while, but then it's like a seesaw.
Speaker 2:It should equalize. You know, in the absence of major trauma, which can often disconnect people from their bodies, in the absence of medications that can be messing with your appetite, you should find an equilibrium and you will find. You will reconnect with your ability to identify what actually feels good to your body. And I think for most people, especially athletes, we don't feel good when we eat pie for breakfast every day. We're going to stop doing that after a while when the novelty wears off. And I can't, I could. We could be on a whole hour long podcast where I'm listing to you, adam, all the foods that I thought I couldn't have in the house, that, like I absolutely can, I just had to neutralize them by eating them over and over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And two things. One it's like feeling good, right Feelings. Let's put that maybe aside for a second. Everybody wants to feel good, but the feel good is long-term, it's not the short term, it's not the pleasure, it's more about the joy, right? That's the feeling that we're talking about here. So it's like number one. Number two is when we had this conversation, I thought, or I just observed some of the advice that I was giving to my athletes, so I'll read a couple of those that kind of fit into what I think intuitive eating is, and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong. So the first one is I told one of my athletes I go, don't view foods as good or bad, just view them as what works for you and what doesn't, what your body needs and what it doesn't need. So would that fit into intuitive eating?
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. Actually, a great example of that is like a friend of mine was eating a lot of energy bars that were nut based on long rides, and I think, from like a wellness perspective, one might think, well, that is, quote unquote better than like a sugary gel, right, because we've, that's a simple sugar. Simple sugars are like the worst thing, right. But then she's telling me I feel like I don't have energy, I get stomach aches, I get bloated, what do you think could be going on? And I'm like I don't know. If I were you, I would experiment with eating more simple carbs and less nuts and see what happens. And she came back and was like I tried that a few times, it totally worked. And so there's the right food for the right time. I think those nut bars, those are great for, like when you're in the car for three hours and you need a snack. I wouldn't do that during a ride, you know. So it's just yeah, no morality. And just how do you feel? How does this food make you feel?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to that point, you know, in my opening lines here you know I said a lot of this is trial and error and a lot of it is awareness. So when you make an error you don't feel good or you don't perform well. Why is that? Well, when you're cycling or running at a higher rate than you know, sitting there or zone one, the protein and fat will slow digestion. Simple carbohydrates will speed up digestion and therefore you'll have less GI stress up to a point, assuming that you're feeling that you're staying hydrated throughout, and that's part of the mechanism of why that is. But when you tune into oh, my stomach hurts, oh, my stomach doesn't hurt, and you view those two, that's intuitive eating You're tuning into what it is Absolutely, and because it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, any type of intuition is somewhat based on past experience. It's not, yes, it's a gut feeling, but that gut feeling is usually based on oh, I've been down that road before, so you're looking at not just what sounds good like, what sounds like it would taste good right now, but how do I think I'm going to feel three hours from now, based on what has happened before?
Speaker 1:Exactly, Let me read you another one and we'll see if it fits. I told one of my athletes I go, let's try to avoid getting super hungry or empty, because you'll likely eat those calories back and then some later in the day or maybe even the next day.
Speaker 2:That is. I love that one that's underrated, People don't know. Yes, a hundred percent agree with that. Um, something that I tell my clients a lot is like, say, even like not in an athletic context, say, you have a meeting from five to seven. You normally eat dinner at six, not hungry at 445. Definitely eat. Something Like intuitive eating isn't just responding to hunger cues, it's taking care of future you. It's a form of self-care to go. I don't want to be overly hungry when I walk in my house at 730. And, to your point, just eating what's quickly available in the pantry, not even having time to like reheat your nice meal that you had planned on or you know, cook it and you will. You will probably overcompensate because you've reached this point of like biological hunger, like that. Oh my God, my stomach is eating itself, feeling you don't want to get there.
Speaker 1:No, you don't want to get there. And I think, too, this goes a little bit in what you were saying before. It was like it's not always eating when you're hungry, even though that's a huge part of it. If you come back from a five hour ride and you're like, ooh, I'm not hungry, for all the reasons why you're not hungry, after you just been like, uh say, out in the heat a 90 degree ride, you know, here on the East coast, and you're super dehydrated, and you're like, oh, and you're super dehydrated and you're like, oh, my God, I just want to barf. You should probably put in a recovery shake and hydration to mitigate that bad feeling in the moment. For a longer term joyful feeling and kind of healthiness, so that intuition of, oh, I just eat when I'm hungry it's not necessarily the case, especially in the athlete context where we got to hit that recovery window 100% percent.
Speaker 2:I actually was a great example of like totally ignoring my intuition. So even as the I guess expert, I mess it up Sometimes. I did a really hard race this summer. It was like a 67 mile gravel race at high elevation, tons of terrain I was completely uncomfortable with, like just a really hard race and I had not. My nutrition went poorly.
Speaker 2:Again, a dumb thing that I did was I ate the burrito that they giving this like breakfast burrito before the race. I was like I feel like that's a bad idea, but I'm going to do it anyway. And it was a bad idea. It threw off my whole nutrition for the race so I couldn't eat well during the race, ate whatever they had. After stopped on the way home for an ice cream sandwich and called it dinner. Such a bad idea. And before I went to bed I thought I know I should eat a real dinner. I don't have the energy. I don't want to. I don't care what happens next. Well, adam, I was up at three o'clock in the morning eating, tried to go back to bed, was up again at four eating, and it wasn't a huge deal because, like where it was in my season, it wasn't like I had to recover quickly for my next race, but like would have been a lot nicer to recover more quickly. My legs were trashed for longer than they should have.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 1:And so the third one that I'll read you here and again. Just observation what I tell my athletes. Our listeners are getting the point here, but there's both the science and the art of being an athlete, being a human to this. But this one, I think, will hit. And I told my athlete there's no food that's off the table here. Kind of like what you said as soon as you restrict, that bad thing starts happening. So there's no food that's off the table here. Kind of like what you said as soon as you restrict, that bad thing starts happening. So there's no food that's off the table. Tune into what helps your body perform at its best, starting with science and adjusting for it based on your own needs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I mean, obviously, let's just make the caveat If you have an allergy or a sensitivity, or for religious reasons or ethical reasons, of course that's going to take precedence. But yeah, a hundred percent what you said. I have nothing to add.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So I mean my observation, the, the, the reading kind of preparation before this, um, this podcast, intuitive, eating it. It's not rocket science, okay, but it's it's awareness, it's a lot of awareness. Yeah, and I think that athletes, humans, americans, all of us, like we, are lacking awareness. So my question to you is why do you think that we have this lack of awareness as a society and we can view it as the athletic context or just the human context, and what can we do to turn it around? What can we do to gain awareness?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Why do we lack awareness? So many reasons, depending on what family you grew up in. You might've grown up in a family that was like you can't have dessert until you eat what's on your plate, or you can't have seconds on the pasta until you have at least three more bites of chicken. Those things are seen as very healthy. But especially when you're telling a kid you can't have dessert until you finish your plate, you're basically instructing them to disconnect from their body because everyone wants dessert. Right?
Speaker 2:I used to say, oh, I have a second stomach for dessert. I had actually trained myself to think I had a second dessert stomach and now, since I've become an intuitive eater, there are a lot of times that dessert looks amazing and I'm just like you know what? I'm actually full, I don't feel like I need to eat that. I'll be able to get a good dessert when I need one in the future. I used to never say no to dessert and I think also we again, depending on like what culture family you grow up in, we are often told to ignore our instincts. Right? Like women and girls in particular, we are really valued for behaving well and being quiet and being nice and making life easier for other people, but anyone I mean, I think, a lot of us to get along in the world we have to suppress who we really are and what our instincts are. And I think it's okay to a point like obviously there's cultural norms, there's empathy, there's a lot of reasons why sometimes you have to avoid your instincts and do the right thing. But that's tricky. I think as kids we come into the world being so embodied and so attuned, like if you've ever watched a toddler, you can see how they're feeling with their whole body. You can see if they're sad, bored, happy, excited, joyful. It's all over them and we learn to disconnect. So to me, intuitive eating is a lot of unlearning. It's unlearning and I don't know about you, but like me, when I was like 14, I remember that was the first time one of my friends was like you're only supposed to eat X amount of fat grams in a day and from there on out I got that in my head, that number, and I was like okay, it doesn't matter how I feel or what I want, that number is more important than anything else.
Speaker 2:And it's weird because as athletes, it can be such an asset to disconnect from our body. If you can avoid giving into the pain that you feel in your legs on a tough climb, that makes you a really good athlete. If you can look at your watch and be like this interval is over in 90 seconds, I know I can grind through for 90 more seconds. I know I can do that, that's great. But then you're like okay. So why can't I intermittent fast? Why can't I just be like I'm not going to eat until 11 o'clock? I know I can do it. It's different. It's different.
Speaker 2:So why we disconnect? A lot of reasons. How can we reconnect? I think it's different for every person, but a simple practice you can do would be like something you could start doing today is if you've historically been somebody who eats according to shoulds like I should have a salad, that's the healthy thing. What if, just for one meal, you actually tuned in and said what do I feel like eating? And if that's sort of overwhelming, you're like whoa, there's so many choices, I don't know. Break it down, go. Hmm. Would I feel like something hot today or something cold, or even something room temperature? Do I feel like something crunchy or something chewy or something smooth? Do I feel like something spicy, something mild. Break it down by temperature, by texture, by like mouthfeel how hungry am I Think about. Try that for one meal. And when you eat that one meal, try eating it without your phone, without a magazine or a newspaper. If anybody reads those anymore not on their phone, you know, not in front of the TV or your device Just sit there.
Speaker 2:You don't have to like chew in a mindful way, you know just try tasting the food and try slowing down a little bit so that you can check in with your hunger and fullness. Um, that would just be like one simple way. I mean there's meditation, there's journaling, there's like a million different ways, but I think what I describe as an accessible thing that somebody could do today ways.
Speaker 1:But I think what I describe is an accessible thing that somebody could do today. Yeah, no, I fully endorse that and I need to practice it too. I think that some days I do it well, some days I don't. I cook a lot in the house but we're busy, like Kristen and I are just going from phone call to phone call, zoom, meeting, podcasting, getting our workout in walking the dog, connecting with friends whatever we do Right, and you, you know, breakfast and lunch are usually pretty sped up.
Speaker 1:Dinner we try to slow down and, and I think, eating slow, I think having a slow meal, I think you know practicing cooking. That's the other thing. Like, if you're, if you want to get good at intuitive eating, if you want to get good at the food, almost has to become a hobby. And if you're an athlete, I would challenge someone to find more time in their day, to spend more time you know cooking, preparing and thinking about food, because that, as I said before, it's it's fuel for your body, but it's also building blocks for your body. As you said, it's woven into our culture Like it's a very it's a thing to connect over with people. So it's an important aspect of our life and I'm only spending one podcast on over four years on how food works with your body versus all the other.
Speaker 2:But I want to challenge you on making food a hobby. As an intuitive eater, I don't know if you have to do that. I think if you want to, you can. But I think that could be a barrier for a lot of people. Some people just aren't interested or really don't have the time. And I think that, like you can still eat healthy and in a way that is nourishing for sports, even without making it a hobby.
Speaker 2:Like, for an example, a tuna melt with some sliced up bell peppers on the side. That is a meal that gives you some carbs, some fat, some protein, some fiber. That's a great meal and you don't have to really know a lot about cooking to make a tuna melt. You know in like my single girl days a go-to dinner for me. Not that I was like an exemplar of healthy eating back then I really wasn't but like I would eat like an omelet with like a banana, and I was afraid of bread back then, so maybe I wouldn't have eaten the bread. But like today I would say are you in a hurry and don't like to cook? Maybe on Sunday you just dice up a bunch of vegetables in advance, saute them, add the eggs, add whatever kind of cheese you like, make some toast. Boom, that's a meal.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You need more carbs. Add a banana, add a piece of fruit. You get a lot of fiber and a lot of micronutrients there. Boom, that's a meal.
Speaker 1:You're right. I mean, as you said before, some of this is unlearning, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so in that way, yeah.
Speaker 1:My advice, I think, is like, if you're so sped up on life, just like slow down and make a sandwich, like Pam talked about, but like slowing down is not bad.
Speaker 2:I think that slowing down is not bad and slowing down enough to go. What do I want? Like, do I really want this low fat cheese or fat free cheese on my sandwich, or do I really want the good Munster or the Brie? I'm telling you, if you put the good Munster or the Brie on the sandwich that you really wanted and you put the good bread that you wanted good Munster or the brie on the sandwich that you really wanted and you put the good bread that you wanted instead of that like low carb cardboard stuff you will feel more satisfied, and not just in a hunger fullness way. Satisfaction is more than just how full did you get? Because I could eat a huge bowl of salad and it could make me really full. But will it satisfy me if what I was really craving was a grilled cheese?
Speaker 2:No, it will not, and that's when I'm going to find myself raiding the pantry at 930 at night when I probably should be in bed with a book. So just tuning into what's going to satisfy you, your eating experiences will just be better and you won't find yourself sort of like doing that thing that puttering around the kitchen just looking for something but you're not sure what.
Speaker 1:When you're satisfied all day long. You don't. You don't do that. So last last topic I want to ask about because, um and this could be I think that this is a little counter intuitive to intuitive eating Um, but I still use it in my practice, and you mentioned it before tracking calories and counting macros. So for, uh, listeners, what we're talking about is total cal you're putting out via exercise and activity throughout the day, and for some of my athletes, I use this. I'll tell you why, but I want to hear your take on that.
Speaker 2:for some people, my take is fun because I would say it depends, which is probably, you know, everybody wants an answer, but I would like, if I were a cycling coach, I would start definitely by asking the athlete what's your history? Do you have a history of an eating disorder or disordered eating? Um, and if they say, even if they say no, I might dive in a little more. I would ask some specific questions, Cause, like, if you had asked me 10 years ago, do you have a history of disordered eating? I would have said, oh my gosh, no, I totally did, and that knowing that I had to, like, turn something into a coach probably would have been triggering for me.
Speaker 2:So, but I do think there's workarounds, right, like, if you suspect that your client has had issues and this might bring up some old stuff that you don't want to, maybe they can just text you a photo of what they ate each meal, rather than asking them to weigh it and measure it. You can get it, you know, I'm sure you. I think that, like, at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself why am I doing this sport? Am I a professional?
Speaker 1:I'm thinking 99.9% of your listeners are not professionals.
Speaker 2:What do you think Correct? Yep, okay, um, if you're not a professional and this is just for fun, you have to take into account. Where does my mental health fit into this? You have to take into account. Where does my mental health fit into this If I am overthinking birthday parties, graduation parties, vacations, going out to eat? What's happening here? What's my definition of fun? It's up to you, right?
Speaker 2:Everybody gets to decide how much, for lack of a better, how much weight they want to put on their diet. You can just I would never tell somebody you have to give up weight loss goals or you have to do this. You have people can do whatever they want, whatever feels good. But if you're finding that like you don't want to be giving as much mental energy to your eating as you are, then it's good enough. You can take the good enough approach.
Speaker 2:Like text your coach a picture of your food. They can probably look at your meal without knowing all of the weights and measurements. They could probably look at your meal and go. You know what? I think you could use a little more protein, especially because you're telling me that you're tired. Oh, you just took all these photos of food and you know, what I don't see is any potatoes or fruit or bread. And you're telling me that your legs are tired but you're not sure why. Maybe you need more carbs. I don't think you need to tell your athlete necessarily you need X calories worth of more carbs. But you could say to somebody why don't you try adding in a piece of bread or a half a potato or a banana to every meal or snack and then see how you feel? Now, that said, if the person has no history of anything with food, definitely I think tracking for three days or a week just to get a baseline of, like, what you're generally eating and how you're generally feeling is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, good, good to hear that that's exactly how I do it. I think, too, all cards on the table, looking back on my childhood, all the way up through college wrestling and into this sport of cycling. I went in sixth grade. I mean, I had a full-on eating disorder too, and you get all the crazies. I mean I went from 160 down to 119 and I grew three or four inches in that time. But, as you said, those cultural norms of just like suppressing everything, including the pain and the hunger and everything else, you just like go for it, right, because that's what the great athletes are doing. Yeah, you have a goal and you're going to meet it Exactly.
Speaker 2:Whether it's a performance goal or a weight goal. It's like that's how we're conditioned and you get so much praise for weight loss. Yeah, it's like that's how we're conditioned and you get so much praise for weight loss. Everybody's like you look great. What did you do and like, especially for women? I think men to a great extent too, but we're so conditioned to believe that our weight is our. I'm sorry. Our worth is our appearance. So when you get compliments on your appearance, you don't want to give that up. That's social capital, I mean. It might sound vain, but I think I'm just being real, like everyone likes to hear that they look great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that you know there's some element to being an athlete. That's part of that too. And I think then, when it comes down to what can I control? Is you know these numbers right? When you go to the numbers, you go to the science. Is you know these numbers right? When you go to the numbers, you go to the science. And that's why and this is the, this is why I bring it up is because it's still the numbers, it's still a science.
Speaker 1:If you want to lose weight, decrease the amount of calories that you take in and have a healthy amount that you're putting out, and if you're taking in a little less each day, you will lose weight over time. However, I would say that, based on having the experience that I do, I got a pretty good radar for, uh, if something is going to be triggering to somebody. So, as I'm talking about food, I'll see if those you know counting macros is going to trigger anything, and I won't go there. But I will use the picture thing and I do that for my juniors a lot too, because that is, you know, they always got their phones, so we're doing it and they start to get awareness just on that and they use that picture thing to get an understanding of their habits and how things are going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I know somebody can handle it. They're good with numbers. My fitness pal is one tracker where there's some good things going on there. That's helpful, I think. Still, though, when it comes to performance tracking the amount of carbohydrate that you're consuming in grams on the bike per hour you should get dialed with that if you want performance, right Because-.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That was such a game changer for me to go from what's the least I can get away with to what's the most I can tolerate. I am so much happier. I'm just like I can go for longer and feel better and recover better. That's what I want and I haven't found that I have experienced a big shift in my weight Now had I? I'm not sure, but here's the thing.
Speaker 2:Like you said, if you decrease calories gradually, you should lose weight. Generally, right, but to a point, your body. We have a set point that our body is kind of ready to be at, based on genetics. You can't veer too far from it and if you do, it's probably not sustainable, and it is. And while you might I think this happens to a lot of athletes you initially see some great performance gains, especially in a sport like cycling where the power to weight ratio is huge. But what people forget about is the power part of the power to weight ratio. If you have lost so much weight to where you're not eating enough calories to adequately recover and fuel your workouts, you can't produce the power that you need.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, like for a lot of people, they find, oh, you know what, when I gained a little weight and was closer to my biological imperative, and I was actually performing better than when I was in a deficit because I had the resources. I had the glycogen stores. That can be hard to accept in a culture that values thinness so much. And, of course, let's not ignore, I guess, except for mountain bikers we're wearing spandex. That's no small thing. It's like your body is on display. It's hard. I hope that nobody comes away from this podcast and thinks, oh, it's supposed to be easy. No, it's hard. We're packing as much as we can into a short episode, but it's hard.
Speaker 2:So I just want to acknowledge that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no acknowledgement received, and I think listeners should too. Living the examined life is challenging, but it's also rewarding, and I would much rather live that examined life and have a high awareness and deal with the burden of having that awareness rather than being ignorant and not knowing why something's not working, not knowing why I'm gaining weight or I can't hit my power numbers or I'm always sick. You know, in, in, in. If any of that resonates with people on there, like the the struggle bus of their athletic journey, of the ups and downs and I can't figure it out Intuitive eating, google it, reach out to Pam, start learning more about it and I think to like take this thing home.
Speaker 1:My summary points here are pay attention to your food. Increase your awareness with how food and food quantities make you feel, perform and recover. Educate yourself with sure nutrition labels, but slow down. Feel the food. Think about, like what Pam was talking about, of, like how you want your food to taste and feel and what are you craving, and go ahead and have a little bit of that. You just eat it slowly. You don't have, you don't need to have massive amounts of food all the time, and so in that way you'll become more intuitive with your food. You'll be more aware of everything with it. So, pam, if there's any summary points from you, let's hear them.
Speaker 2:Gosh, I think you did a great job. I think, um, one thing I would encourage people to do if they're walking away from this podcast like huh, okay, but where do I begin? Um, I would say first are you eating three meals a day and at least two snacks? Like, especially if you're training heavily, you've got to be eating those snacks. Are you eating those? Start with the basics, eat those and then see how you feel that for a lot of people, that's enough to avoid the cravings and uncontrollable night eating. It could just be you're not getting enough calories.
Speaker 1:It's a good recipe.
Speaker 2:And if you're not hungry, if you say, well, I don't need to eat till noon because I'm not hungry until noon, I would challenge you. I would say, look, if you haven't been eating until noon for a long time, your body gets smart. It's like I'm not going to give you all my hunger signals because you've been ignoring them, so I'm going to stop making them. Sometimes it takes just reintroducing the regularity to bring back the regular hunger cues. But hunger cues you might not be aware of are like losing concentration, being irritable, not wanting to train, having GI issues, like being constipated, having diarrhea alternating, getting bloated. Oh my God, I had so many GI issues in my 20s and I didn't know what the issue was. I look back and I'm like, yeah, the issue was my eating was totally erratic and I wasn't supporting my energy needs. It's so obvious to me now.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, I would say just start with three meals and two snacks, or at least one snack if two feels overwhelming. And I would also say just slow down enough, not just when you're eating, but all day long, to listen to this voice in our heads that I feel like many of us have just internalized, such as you know, it might say things like you can't eat pizza you already had a bagel today. Or you can't have dessert you had dessert already. You can't eat a donut for breakfast that doesn't have any protein. Like be aware of your internal dialogue. You don't have to change it. The first step is just being aware of it. That's it.
Speaker 1:Yep, one of the principles of intuitive eating is challenge the food police, and that's what you're talking about, right, that's exactly and before you even challenge it, just recognize it. Yeah, oh, I do feel like we could talk for hours and hours about this, and maybe we will.
Speaker 1:Maybe we'll do another podcast on intuitive eating part two, but for right now, let's leave it there, pam. One thing I did want to ask, though, is your intuitive eating coach. If people resonate with your message here and they want to connect, find out more about what intuitive eating coaching looks like, where should we send them? How do they connect with you?
Speaker 2:Great question. Come to my website. It's pam-morecom. You'll find everything you need there. Um and yeah, and there's a lot of free resources on my website too. If you're like, oh, that sounds cool, I don't know if I want to commit, I give away a lot of information for free through my newsletter and through my podcast, real Fit. So those are great resources too. Um, yeah, and honestly too, just the book intuitive eating. I think the fourth edition is the latest edition. Check it out.
Speaker 1:Cool, perfect. Well, we'll put those in our show notes everybody. But if you're like me and you listen to podcasts and you don't ever go to a landing page, just Google Pam Moore intuitive eating and you'll find it. You'll find it. Go check her out. She does some really good stuff, especially in her podcast, so also check that out, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Adam. It's been so much fun being here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, pam. Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to train rightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we covered here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.
