The None to Run Podcast

Hello everyone, this is Mark Kennedy and you're listening to episode 25 of the Healtheonomics podcast. Today's episode is all about helping you lose weight from running. And to help with this, I've invited Emma Andrews onto the show. Emma is a registered holistic nutritionist, certified plant based culinary professional, and the co founder of The Pineapple Collective, an education strategy and content marketing agency for working with natural health and wellness brands. Emma specializes in sports nutrition, longevity, education, and plant based cooking.

Emma has also been a product developer at an award winning natural health company and freelancers in recipe development and nutrition writing for the industry and consumer publications. If you've just started out as a runner and you're looking to lose a little bit of weight and become a healthier version of yourself, I think you'll get a lot out of this episode. Some of the topics we chat about include: Common reasons why runners don't lose weight Foods to swap, emphasize, or exclude Nutrition timing and how this affects weight loss Meal and snack ideas Managing cravings and appetite Food journaling, calorie counting, and should you do it how to develop a positive body image as a runner, hydration and weight loss, and much much more. All the links mentioned in this episode will be available at healthenomics.com/20five. And if you wanna get some help getting started running, sign up to my free email series for beginner runners.

You can sign up over at freerunningcourse.com. Let's get started. Welcome to the Healthenomics podcast. Boosting your health and fitness IQ one episode at a time. And now your host, Mark Kennedy.

Alright, Emma. Thanks so much for joining us on the Healthinomics Podcast today. It's great to meet you. I've been following you on social media, your running updates and etcetera, and your nutrition tips, so it's finally good to chat and I'm sure you'll be able to give a lot of great advice for our listeners and people who follow the Healthinomics blog.

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited.

Yeah, no worries. So first, why don't we get started? Just tell us a little bit about who you are, sort of where you grew up, and where you are now, and what you're up to with regards to work wise and sort of running wise as well.

Totally. So I usually tell people from the very beginning that I was born in New Orleans, if we're gonna take it right back to the beginning. And why that's relevant is that's actually where I did my very first marathon about twenty eight years later. So I think sometimes we dismiss the importance of our roots, especially when we think about running and setting goals, it can become really important later in life. So I started in New Orleans and then moved to Calgary and spent the better part of my youth growing up there, actually just outside of Calgary in the foothills.

And that is definitely where my passion for the outdoors really began. And I started doing a lot of different sports and activities as a youth. So I got into running by playing soccer and doing cross country and track and field and ultimately, growing up in a small town, you play all the sports. And so learned at a very young age that running was something that I really loved and a life of activity was definitely something that I wanted to pursue. When I moved to Texas to start my career, I actually found a nutrition college called the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition.

And that's where I decided to put into practice my passion for living an active lifestyle, but combine it with understanding nutrition and what actually fuels an active lifestyle. So I took that. That was six years ago that I was taking my program. Actually during the program, we experienced the loss of my dad to a heart attack. It was something that my family certainly did not see coming.

He was a very active individual, and I think that's where a lot of my own inspiration came from as well. And so experiencing this loss while studying nutrition and having this passion for a lifetime of activity, it all kind of came together that my approach to nutrition was really going to be rooted in longevity. So everything that I recommend up till today and including into the future will always be based on foods and supplements and lifestyle practices that set you up for a lifetime of activity and promote longevity. And so after graduating, I started working in the natural health sector and working with different brands and organizations to help with education programs to help deliver the message that was really natural health and wellness Best option for longevity. And what I realized as an athlete and practicing a lot of these principles that I was working on in programs and strategies is that as an athlete, not just as an everyday individual, but as an athlete, natural foods and supplements are So there's the nutrition side combined with the passion for an active lifestyle, and then the experience working in natural health and wellness that I've really started to create these philosophies and mentalities and approach towards my training and toward longevity as well.

Okay, maybe now you can get into how running plays an impact in your life right now.

So, I mentioned from a really early age, I got into sports like soccer and doing track and field. So, there was always kind of underlying love and appreciation for being active. But I didn't realize that I loved running and truly endurance running until moving out to the West Coast. And I'd hate to say that it's because of the beautiful weather out here that that's the reason I got into running, but it certainly didn't hurt. So I think, you know, when we think about all the different times of years that we can start to be a runner, January seems to be one of the biggest, you know, gung ho times of the year, but it's also one of the ones that works the most against us in terms of climate.

So if you're thinking about starting running, definitely encourage starting in the summer.

I agree.

But, yeah, I moved out to the West Coast, and thankfully, I was living quite near a very large park. You'll probably know of it near UBC called the Pacific Spirit Park or the UBC Endowment Lands, they're called out here on the West Coast. And so it's a protected park. Yeah. Beautiful.

Hey.

Tons Yeah. I've run up there a few times and, yeah, really miss it. I'm jealous. Keep going. Sorry.

Yeah. No. You can imagine how much that would make it easy to get into some of the longer runs. So I've been running maybe five to eight kilometers routinely, done a few 10 kilometer races here and there, but hadn't really consistently called myself a runner. So I just made a habit of getting out into the forest for my daily runs.

And before I knew it, I was getting distracted with the surroundings and getting into longer and longer training runs. And then all of a sudden, once I was routinely doing 10 kilometers, I thought, why don't I try my first half marathon? And I had a colleague at the time that roped me into it with her. And so that peer positive peer pressure definitely helped motivate me through my first half marathon. And actually, contextually to what we're talking about today, That was one of the first times that I felt really strong and really happy with my body weight as well.

I realized that just the consistency of training was something that my body composition really thrived off of. And so that did definitely help me to stick with my training program beyond the half marathon. But it was really the mental benefits that kept me going even longer than the shorter term benefits of physique improvements. So once I started to realize that running could be a big mental stress reliever, could be a big confidence booster, mood booster, a great way to work through the thoughts of the day. That's definitely what we what kept me consistently running.

And so over the past, gosh, six years now. So since moving up to the West Coast, I've graduated from routinely running half marathons to now doing marathons. I'm coming up on my fourth marathon and also now getting into trail racing and trail running too. So I think, you know, you get one foot in the door and then all of a sudden the door is wide open. And that is definitely my my story of running is just the more you dabble into it, the more you realize how much you love about it, and the more you try different things.

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. One thing that kind of resonates with me, and I hear that a lot from people that follow me through the podcast, etcetera, is you you were running for a a bit of time before you actually considered yourself a runner. Do you know why that is? And I I think it's quite common.

Like, I think people think that they need to be, you know, racing or enter races to to be a runner, but, love to hear your thoughts just just on that sort of general comment about, you know, when you can consider yourself a runner or who's a runner. What do you what's your, opinion there?

I love that question actually. And it's funny because I haven't been asked that before, but as you're asking it, what's immediately popping into my mind is if you're a solo runner, and for many people, when they start running, they don't think of themselves as a group runner or I I run-in partners. I might run just by myself. And so the only association that you have with, quote unquote, who a runner is is more of the mainstream media's projection of who a runner is, so who you might see on the cover of a magazine or on a running blog or that kind of thing. And so for me, it was when I really started to get out and run with more people.

So even just with friends, getting run clubs together at work, for example, or joining run clubs at different fitness studios around the city or different retailers around the city, you really start to see what a true runner looks like. What that is, is a million different body types. And the more you get into racing, the more I think you realize that everyone can run. There isn't a specific body type. There might be a body type that's more specific to an elite athlete, but that doesn't mean that anyone can't be a runner just because they don't have that aesthetic.

Yeah, I like your thoughts there. My wife and I actually, when we were living in England, we went to an art exhibit, and there was this one little room, and they were showing a video of marathon finishers, and it was on a loop, but it was over the course of like thirty minutes or so, and there was no sound, so you just sat in this little dark room and watched these people finishing a marathon, and it was And I hadn't done a marathon at this point yet, but it was fascinating because you see all these people, different sizes, shapes, colors, everything, and they're all out there, and a marathon hurts a pro just as much as it does sort of someone finishing in five hours, so everyone's sort of looking rough near the end. But anyways, it was just really amazing, and something my wife and I, like, still talk about it today whenever we sort of see, you know, we're at a race or I'm doing a race or whatever. Just, yeah, really impactful.

Immersive. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Was neat. So what would your running oh, sorry. What would your life be like if someone said you can't run anymore?

What how would that affect you, sort of your your daily daily life and and how you sort of manage your life, I guess?

Totally. I guess we've all kind of dealt with that in some small way, whether we've been sidelined by injury or illness. And so I often think about that actually, especially if I catch, you know, the common cold, but it sidelines your training for a week and you realize how you start to get cabin fever and to go a little stir crazy in your thoughts because you haven't had that release. So I definitely personally would have to find something that would be endurance related because I really do love and savor my long runs on the weekends. So I'm sure I could find many ways to be physically active even if I couldn't physically run.

But I think the endurance component would be the biggest challenge. So finding something that pushed me beyond my comfort zone and the regular routines of exercise into that endurance zone, just for the mood boost and the mental relief that I get from that.

Yeah, kind of the same. We have two little boys too, so sometimes that can be stressful and also fun and rewarding. But sometimes my wife, she can see if I'm getting a little anxious or stressed and she's like, You need to go for a run. I'm like, Yeah, just like a dog, go for a run. Yeah, so

like You always feel better when you come back, right?

Yeah, exactly. I think that's where, for people just starting off running, that's when it turns into a powerful habit. When your life like you can't imagine your life without the running or without whatever activity you choose. So and, you know, it takes a while to get up to that. I realize to everyone.

But for me, I just found it it got really powerful, and, I could never see myself not running just because of how good I know I'll feel after a run or, you know, getting through a run. It's just like part of who I am, I guess part of my identity.

Totally. Totally. I think it's reminding yourself of that feeling when there's times that your schedule might be thrown off or you might not be able to train as consistently as you hope or want or have in the past. And so just savoring that moment for when you need that motivation again in the future, whether it's recovering from an injury or coming back from an illness or what have you, but savor that sensation because it is such a powerful motivator.

Yeah, absolutely. So anyways, today we are going to focus on weight loss and running for weight loss and a little bit of sort of weight loss in general. You were kind enough to provide some some topics that we can go through today. So that was awesome. Thanks for that.

So why don't we start off from the top and some common reasons why some runners find difficulty losing weight and losing weight from running specifically.

So I'll preface this, I put a blast out on social media to ask some questions, of crowdsource some ideas, if you will, because in my practice as a nutritionist, I often get similar questions, but it's really nice to capture what the general pulse is. And so all the questions that we're going to run through today, I'd like to say are crowdsourced by my Vancouver running community. So what? Yeah, whether it's something I've seen in my own personal practice or other runners have dealt with themselves out out there. Yeah, that should give us some good good context.

But the first question there is the most common, I guess, faux pas that I see of runners, especially when they're trying to lose weight, is not emphasizing quality of the foods that they're eating enough. They're focused so minimally on calories in versus calories out, which we know fundamentally is important for weight loss, that you've got to expend more calories than you're taking in. But of those calories we're taking in, it's really important to emphasize quality. And by quality, I really define that with whole foods. And the reason being, the more we start to process and refine a food, the more empty calories that we're getting.

And so we're not actually fueling our body to perform well as a runner. So it's kind of like a negative feedback loop. We're giving ourselves the minimal calories to meet that minimal calorie goal, but we're not giving our body the nutrients it needs that it actually needs to perform well as a runner, which then, in turn, helps with weight management. So when we think about real true whole foods, it's obviously coming back to things that are in a package compared to things that are whole food. But I encourage you to look one step beyond that even in reading your ingredients, because there are packaged foods that can be made from whole foods and making sure that they're right quality.

So nothing artificial, nothing synthetic, nothing that's really refined or heavily processed. And the connection there to weight management is that if we're eating foods that are highly refined or there's artificial additives or a lot of isolated ingredients when we're reading the food label, we don't understand what they are. Those are toxins, essentially, in our body. And so when we eat a lot of these toxins, our body retains water to try and dilute those toxins. Often, lot of the weight gain and bloating can be related to those toxins in the diet.

Also, those toxins as well, when we're eating them in the body, they create inflammation. And that also leads to excess weight gain because, again, we're hanging on to more inflammation in the muscle tissue, there's less range of motion, so it impacts our performance pretty dramatically the more of these types of toxic like foods that we eat instead of the real whole foods.

That's interesting. I didn't really know that about the toxin aspect and your body's retaining more water as a result, I guess, as a protective mechanism not to poison itself, I guess. I'm not sure.

Exactly. Yeah,

exactly. Is it a good rule of thumb, you always hear this, but like when you're looking at a label, so like if you don't recognize the ingredient, it's got a real sort of periodic table scientific name, that it's probably not a natural occurring ingredient in that typical or in that food?

So there's some, the only caveat that I would give is there's some foods that might be fortified. Okay. That might have vitamins and minerals that are added to a food. So in that sense, there might be a few vitamins and minerals that you might not recognize, like pyridoxine, for example, is a nutrient. Should be declared on the label is if it's actually been fortified.

It should usually be declared as vitamin and mineral blend. Then it will show those in brackets as well. So sometimes you can look at the ingredients that are within brackets and identify that those are sub ingredients of something overall that's in the blend, like a vitamin and mineral blend. That would be okay in that instance. Particularly for runners, not necessarily everyone needs a multivitamin, but there are some foods that can be fortified, like almond milk, for example, with calcium that I would still recommend.

So use that caveat with a grain of salt that sometimes the unrecognizables might actually be nutrients,

but you just might

not know how to pronounce them yet.

Excellent. And then going on, so you mentioned like eating, trying to focus on whole foods. What are some types of foods that you should emphasize in in your diet when, you know, you're trying to lose weight and you're and you're trying to get into running, and, you know, maybe foods to eliminate from your diet and swap them with something that's a better option. What are some of those options?

Totally. The one that I find is one of the most important for runners trying to lose weight is carbohydrates. And your carbohydrates break down into three different categories. There's starches, there's fibers and there's sugars. And really sugars is the one that I want to zero in on because when you're trying to lose weight and manage your weight, anything that's got added sugar should be eliminated from the diet.

Now, as a runner, you need quick instant energy often right before you head out for a training run, whether it's in the morning and you're waking up with maybe only thirty minutes before your run or it's afternoon runs or evening runs that you're doing. And you might need to have a bit of a snack to be well fueled for your run. So ideally, we're reaching for things that are quick, simple energy, and that is typically sugar. So what I'm going to recommend is instead of reaching for anything that has added sugar, you're reaching for whole food based sugars. And so that will come exclusively from fruit.

So managing your sweet tooth with fruit instead of refined sugars or foods with added sugar and reaching for fruit as your pre workout option instead of something, again, that's a bit more refined or sweetened. So again, if you're reading nutrition labels, if there's an energy bar and you're reading the package and you see that it has syrups added in different types of sugars, whether it's in the chocolate coating or in the inside, putting that one back and instead favoring an energy bar that's made with dates. So that's your whole food based sugar. So that would be one of the easiest kind of switches or swaps or ways to put emphasis on a better food than a not so good food for weight management.

Oh, that's great. Is there any particular energy bars with sort of more natural sugars that you'd recommend or that you like?

Yeah, I mean, the most widely available one is going to be Lara Bars. Those are super quick, simple ones. You can find them at a lot of different retailers. I do encourage looking for some local options too because that's kind of the neat thing with natural foods and health foods is that your local health food store, you'll likely find bars that have been produced locally. Here, for example, in Vancouver, we have a bar called the Prima Bar.

Okay.

And they're amazing. Yeah. A lot of great different flavors, just some variety in the mix as well compared to the Larabar as one option. Again, look for some local options. And then the other one that I would recommend is it's by Vega.

It's called the energy bar. And that one is a date based bar as well too. So usually, it's gonna be dates that are the base. Sometimes you'll find things like figs or raisins, for example, but usually it will be dates, which are nature's best source of energy.

That's great. And that's good to hear about fruit as well because sometimes in this whole sugar thing, you hear it a lot, don't eat sugar, don't eat sugar, and it trickles down to even fruit. And it's almost kinda like, hold on. You know, everyone I thought fruit was a healthy thing to eat. So what you're saying is that it is.

It's it's a good form of, sugars and, and carbs and energy, as and especially when you're replacing it with, you know, something that's, you know, pure sugar, like, I don't know, like a chocolate bar or a soda pop or something.

Totally. Yeah, exactly. The thing when you think about good carbs and bad carbs, all good carbs have fiber, vitamins, and minerals in them. And so fruit has fiber. It has a water content to it as well.

So that's why you're able to eat a lot without filling up or you're able to eat a fair amount of it, but you fill up on on water as well as the actual fiber there. And then it has vitamins and minerals too. So that's why it's going to be superior to something like just honey or maple syrup. For example, if you're having like toast and you're spreading maple syrup on it, maybe trying toast with a bit of almond butter and a sliced banana instead.

That's great. Okay. So moving on, you mentioned nutrient timing and, and how nutrient timing affects weight loss. And I'm not familiar with nutrient timing really at all, so I'll let you, dive into that and let us know what nutrient timing is and, how they can use it, to help them with their weight loss.

For sure. This is one of probably the most important principles that I've noticed personally has changed my performance for the better. Then working with clients too, it's one of the pieces that they might eat all the best foods in the market and they show me their diet log and they're eating all the right foods. But it's really the timing of when they've eaten them during the day that can affect both their performance and then their body composition as well. So just kind of laying the scene first, and then we can dive into some of the ways to tweak this based on weight management goals or weight loss goals.

When you're looking at your workout, you've got essentially two timing windows before your run and two timing windows after your run. And it depends if you're a morning runner or an evening runner when these timing windows fall. So the first timing window is about an hour to two hours before you run. And if you're a morning runner, you're probably thinking right now there's no way I'm waking up two hours.

Yeah, exactly.

Run. So if you're a morning runner, you can actually excuse that timing window. But if you're running, for example, a longer run on the weekend or you're running in the evening or you're going for a noon hour run, then you would be counting that one to two hour pre run timing window.

Okay.

The next one is twenty to thirty minutes and that's right before your training, right before your run. So if you are waking up in the morning, you do have hopefully twenty to thirty minutes before you train. You've got your run itself. Then post run, it's the same timing window. So pretty easy to remember.

Post run, you've got twenty to thirty minute window immediately after your run, and then one to two hours later.

So you're saying basically don't eat in between those periods. So if you don't eat in the first twenty or thirty minutes after a run, wait until an hour after your run?

Well, it'll actually break down those timing windows, break down the type of nutrients that you should reach for in each of those timing windows to have the biggest impact on your performance, but also the biggest impact on your body composition too. The first two in the morning there that one to two hour window prior to running, this is a big chance to load up on nutrients in general. If you're eating that far in advance from your run, it's less particular what type of nutrients you reach for in terms of proteins, carbohydrates or fats because you're giving your body enough time to digest them and turn them into usable energy before you run. So if you know that you're trying to limit overall carbohydrates during the day as part of a weight management goal, you might be eating more fiber rich things, but a little less of the starchy carbohydrates, for example. So in that one to two hour window prior to a run, you could eat a little bit more fat and a little bit more protein.

So it might be a blended smoothie, for example, with a little bit of protein powder, maybe some nut butter in there, or it might be an apple with almond butter that you're dipping in hemp hearts, for example. So again, you can have a little bit more fat and a little bit more protein an hour to two hours before training, and that should top up top up your energy levels enough that you might not actually need to reach for something twenty to thirty minutes before you run. It's going to help keep your blood sugars much more stable than if we're just reaching for quick instant sources of energy. Again, if you can include some of those proteins or fats.

Okay.

Twenty to thirty minutes before you run. This is if you're feeling hungry and peckish and you know that you're likely to cut your run short or not train as hard because you're feeling hungry. So you might need some additional energy or as we said, if you're waking up really early in the morning, that's all that the timing window that you've got is that twenty to thirty minutes. So this is where fruit comes in. And that's why I recommend fruit for that timing window because you are getting additional nutrients, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals.

And if you're reaching for fresh fruit as well, you're getting enzymes there and enzymes help with digestion and they help with boosting energy levels as well. So my favorite fruits to reach for in that timing window would be pineapple or papaya. And both of those foods actually have a lot more enzymes than any other fruit and they specifically help eat away at inflammation in the body. They're great for runners too if you're just feeling inflamed in general. Bananas and usually about a half a banana if you're going out for a thirty to forty five minute run.

You could have a whole banana if you're a larger body mass like a man compared to a woman, for example. You could have a whole banana as well. The other option would be coconut water. So liquid calories can be a great option in the morning if you don't want to sit down and eat something, but you just want to have something quick that's both hydrating and refreshing, but will provide a little bit of energy as well. Unsweetened coconut water would be a good option in that timing window.

And the whole point there of actually eating something before you train is so that when you're actually exercising, you're not burning and breaking down muscle tissue. So if we don't eat enough before we run and we're running and doing a good training session, this would typically last longer than thirty to forty five minutes. So maybe you're doing a warm up, a run, a cool down and maybe some core work at the end. If we're not consuming adequate calories before we train, we break down our muscle tissue. And so that is to detriment of our body composition.

We want that muscle tissue to help burn more calories at rest than fat, and it keeps us strong as a runner. So those timing windows are important to make sure that we fuel our body well to get the most out of our workout and then in turn improve our body composition.

That's great. And then so what would the foods be then after your workout? What would you reach for immediately right after your workout and an hour after?

Right after the workout, this is when I recommend liquid calories. This is where it can deviate so easily for runners. Fast, quick, convenient, ready to drink options often are laden with sugar. So this is where I really recommend reading your labels. There's a lot of great fresh pressed juices out on the market or pre blended smoothies that you can buy.

So there are healthy options out there. But do read your labels because a lot of things like chocolate milk, for example, has sweeteners added to it. So just make sure that it's not added sugar, that it's naturally occurring. And again, that would come from fruits ideally. So a fresh pressed juice or a smoothie.

If you can make it at home, this quick time saving tip is make one big batch of smoothies every week and then freeze them into either mason jars or containers and then take them out each day so that you've got a fresh smoothie ready, defrosted by the time you come home from your run. It'll save you a ton of time and blending it up in a liquid form is just way easier for your body to digest, assimilate, absorb the nutrients and start the repair process. And when we fuel our body with carbohydrates right after a run, that blended fruit fruit juice or blended fruit smoothie is going to have a little bit higher carbohydrates because you're using fruits as the base. But what you're doing is replenishing glyc glycogen. That's the sugars that are muscles use for activity.

You're replenishing that first right after your training session. And then that far this timing window that I mentioned, one to two hours later, that's where we really want to emphasize higher protein foods. And that's where the muscle tissue actually redevelops is through protein. But it's not going to synthesize quite as well if we didn't replenish carbohydrates first. So that first time in window, twenty to thirty minutes, higher carbohydrate, I.

E. In the form of fruit in a smoothie, fresh pressed juice, that's ideal. And then we can have a higher protein meal about an hour to two hours later to build muscle most effectively.

Oh, that's great. That's a lot of information that, like, AI wasn't familiar with. And, I mean, you know, we're gonna go into cravings, next, but, yeah, I mean, after my run, I'm like, give me a beer or

Hey. At least it's carbohydrates.

Yeah. Exactly. Liquid form. So I have a geeky I have a geeky smoothie question. We have a Vitamix.

So we we do smoothies all the time, and we give them to our, two boys, and we, you we throw in spinach and kale and stuff. We try to keep them, you know, really healthy. But, when you add bananas, is it true that they that the smoothies don't keep as well throughout the day, or are they changing color? Or do you know that?

That's funny. I've never been asked that before, and I do notice sometimes my smoothies change color during the day, I usually add a lot of berries and other stuff too. It's turning from a bright vibrant purple to maybe a little ruddier brown. It could be the bananas that are turning on the inside, but I'd say leave it in the freezer if not the fridge. But you can definitely defrost them if you put them in the freezer.

Yeah, don't know.

I don't know where

I heard that. My wife was telling me too and we're like, maybe it's the bananas. Then the big color change, we're kind of like, oh, is this smoothie off now? Can we drink it later?

Yeah. I'm just thinking it could be oxidizing. So even if you can try putting a lid on top of it, like a little silicone Mhmm. Lid or something on top, see if that helps because it's probably just the oxidization of anything that's in there. Yeah.

Exactly. Okay. Well, let's go on to cravings and, yeah, managing cravings and appetite. And the cravings is huge for me. Like, I've been you know, I've never really had a weight problem, but I do like I'm a carb fiend.

And, especially at night since a kid, I've, you know, had this habit of eating cereal before I go to bed. And, I go through stretches where I try not to, and it's so interesting. It's just like my body's so used to it, I crave that, I guess, and it's not super bad sugary cereals, but it's a processed food. I'm sure all cereals you buy in the box have a lot more sugar and salt than you think. So anyways, let's talk a little bit about how people can manage their cravings and their appetite.

Totally. I think when you're not dealing specifically with your run, so when you're looking at what you eat before and after your run, carbohydrates are a lot more of a focus there. So through the rest of the day, it really needs to be the fats and the proteins that we're emphasizing, and that's what helps our body recover. And a lot of times we can't satiate that incessant craving cycle as a runner because our body is just demanding calories and energy at such an increased rate. So fat is really what I come back to time and time again with runners if they're trying to manage cravings for weight loss or they're just trying to manage their appetite period so that they don't put on weight through the running cycle because being lean and light and agile on your feet is an advantage.

So fats. So what I recommend is having a couple of options on hand because sometimes it might be that you want the crunch. Sometimes it might be that you actually want a sizable portion of something to sit down and eat like a bowl of cereal or like a bag of popcorn, for example. So having a couple of different options on hand. So I like to have mixed nuts that'll make up into trail mix every week so that you can vary it all the time.

Avocado, olives, for example, having some protein shakes on hand as well, too. So other options in the mix than just carbohydrates. And the more you start to satiate your body with nutrient dense calories that come from things like whole food fats, like avocado, like olives, for example, that really does help to satiate and actually curb where the craving is stemming from in the first place. The other thing that I recommend though, too, is your body might just be generally craving nutrients. So part of that craving can come from hunger, and that can be managed by increasing fat and protein.

But then part of that craving might actually come because it's not getting enough vitamins and minerals, the micronutrients that are in the diet. So at a very baseline, that person might want to try a multivitamin, for example, One that's whole food based as well too. So do shop from a natural grocer. I definitely recommend that as much as possible. But a multivitamin might cover off some of those bases that you might not have realized you were deficient in, and that's where some of the craving is stemming from your body's innate signal saying, consume more food in the chance that you're consuming more of this nutrient that I really need.

One more that I'll mention specifically to look for, it's a mineral called chromium. And it's actually been linked to cravings, food cravings as well. And so oftentimes, if someone's trying to curb a sweet tooth in particular, supplementing specifically with chromium or making sure that your multivitamin has chromium listed as one of the nutrients can be really helpful if you really just can't kick that sweet tooth habit.

Sounds like I need a healthy dose of chromium.

Nuts and seeds, keep eating those. That's a good source of the diet as well too. But truly, switching some of those cravings into fats and just being consistent about it for a period of time, I think you really will notice your sweet tooth or that incessant craving shift.

And I have heard of people that gain weight when they start a running program. And my wife and I actually have a friend, she ran her first marathon in London and she ran a great race, great time, she's really happy. But, I think she put on weights over the course of all, you know, the four months of a training program. So is that common or?

It's not necessarily common, but it's not unheard of either. And we spoke about it a little bit earlier in the interview as well too, about inflammation in the body. And so, when we're ramping up for a marathon, it's a greater degree of inflammation and inflammatory response that our body is used to. And so what it can do during those times as a protection mechanism is hang on to fat, hang on to calories in the body. It shunts the metabolism a little bit as a protectionist mechanism.

So that can definitely be a part of it. One of the things that I'd recommend if someone's experiencing that is really looking at their recovery. So are they doing things like getting massage or acupuncture or having an Epsom salt bath or foam rolling to help flush out some of the excess built up lactic acid and help to reduce some of the inflammation in the body. And then looking at their diet as well. So we might say, I eat clean.

But if we actually logged for a couple of days what we're eating, we might see that we do actually eat more refined foods than we think or more foods and packages than we think. Shifting back to a whole food based diet, one that's really rich in fruits and vegetables, your highly antioxidant foods, that can also help to reduce inflammation as well. And if we need to take it one step further, specifically foods like tart cherry juice and turmeric and our omega-three fats like hemp hearts, for example, those superfoods can also be really helpful to reduce inflammation. So we might have to be more specific about some of those anti inflammatory foods as well.

Okay. When you mentioned, Ashley, there, it's a good segue, about keeping awareness of what you're eating, and, you know, I found that I took, kinesiology in university, and I took a couple nutrition classes, and we did have to take a food diary for a week or two. And, yeah, it's eye opening. You don't really realize what what you're putting into your body, until you write it down and, yeah, it just builds a great awareness. So is that something you recommend?

And you hear it a lot, you know, people who count calories when they're trying to lose weight, it's it helps them become successful at their goal. So is that something you recommend, is keeping a journal and counting calories?

I recommend it if someone is focused on either specific performance result or they're focused on a specific weight loss goal. So I don't recommend generally that runners log every meal or log every calorie that they're eating, by all means. So I use it personally if I know that I'm starting to feel really low energy. So I might start to track my foods and see, am I getting enough iron in my diet, for example, or am I eating enough protein in my diet to be recovering properly from my workouts? Is that why my legs feel really fatigued, for example?

So you might be doing it in reaction to a symptom that your body's presenting you with, But you might also do it for education purposes as well. So again, if you are looking to lose weight through running and it's not happening or it's sluggish or you just generally want to see what you're eating, then the tool MyFitnessPal is the one that I recommend. There's an app and then a desktop version too. But what's great about it is, a, there's a lot of foods already logged into the system. So even if you're eating something that comes in a package, but it is a whole food, you can still scan the UPC, and it will load all the nutrition information for that food right into the system for you.

And if you know you eat routinely some of the same meals and snacks, again, you can log the recipe for that, and it will create the nutrition profile for that meal or snack for you. It becomes more easy the more you use it. I'll use that for a couple of days in a row. The whole point of that is just to see generally how am I doing compared to how I think I'm doing. Exactly as you hit on the head, we think we're doing better sometimes than we actually are.

It's a great way of getting just a quick accurate picture. Yes, how many calories am I taking in? But also, am I getting enough protein? Am I over consuming sugar, for example? Is there too much sodium in my diet?

Is that why I feel puffy all the time? So those quick snapshots can be really great tools to help you course correct if you're not seeking the help of a professional or if you haven't learned enough yourself to kind of make those tweaks over time, which you learn using tools like MyFitnessPal. Over time, you definitely get more savvy and can do it more intuitively.

That's great. Yeah. I know my mom's had success some some success with using that app. She's not a runner, but, just helping with weight loss, and, yeah, it really increased her awareness. So, yeah, I know it's it's quite popular and, a good tool if people are interested.

Now I wanna move on to, another, topic within the weight loss, and for beginner runners especially. In my beginner runners email series, I I ask people in the in my first email what their sort of number one struggle is with becoming a runner, and this comes up a lot is, people just being, embarrassed, and, they feel silly out there running that they don't look right. And, and, obviously, someone, in your Vancouver Kickstarter campaign mentioned it as well, was developing a positive body image as a runner. So can you talk a bit about that and the struggles and what people can do to help with that?

Totally. I think for me, if I'm getting too caught up in the aesthetic side of things is to get out into nature. That's something that's very forgiving about trail running versus road running is that there's less eyes on you.

If you

feel like that, scrutiny is holding you back from getting active, then picking more natural park spaces and more natural environments where there isn't as many cars, for example, or pedestrians that you might feel might be, projecting some of that judgment, which is far more in our head than is in their head. So getting into nature, for sure. I think having mantras that you can use while you're running is also really important. So I use this during racing also, as just having a statement or a phrase or a saying that's motivational to you that you repeat. And it's kind of like a positive reinforcement that you're repeating to yourself over and over again as a bit of a meditative component to your running.

And so, could be anything that's personally meaningful. It could be a quote or a saying that's really relevant to you. It could be something someone's told you at some point that you really want to hold near and dear to you, but having it positive and affirmational versus negative. For example, you wouldn't be saying to yourself, I'm running to lose weight. As you're running along, you'd be saying, I'm running to feel good, or I feel good because I run, or whatever that affirmational statement might be.

So having that kind of mantra in the back of your mind, I think is really useful. And then the other practice that I would recommend is keeping a bit of a journal or a log of how you're feeling. And that can be a really positive motivator along the way is, at the beginning of your training cycle, if you're ramping up for your first ten ks or your first half marathon, a few different parameters like how you're sleeping, how your energy is, how your mood is, and how you feel in your body. And then again, doing that a month later, and then again, a month later. And I guarantee, if you've been consistent with your running and nourishing your body with good foods, you will notice improvements in some of those metrics.

So instead of just focusing on the numbers on the scale and getting down about that potentially, you might realize, Oh, geez, I totally have more energy than a month ago, or I'm sleeping better, or my moods are more balanced, or I just generally feel better in my body. Having some of those can be a really great way to keep the motivation positive about what your body's allowing you to do.

Those are great tips. And another one I'd like to ask, your opinion on is people who feel like say they're just starting out running and, you know, maybe running feels a little bit awkward to them and they feel self conscious. What advice would you have to to someone like that?

I really adopted the run and walk approach. I now am definitely able to run steadily through a marathon, but I think being realistic about the progression into running and that it's okay to take some of those approaches where if you don't feel like you can hold this perfectly poised and graceful running posture for thirty minutes, then don't worry about it. Focus on it for a minute, even if that and build up from there. So don't put that pressure on yourselves to look a certain way for the entire duration of your run. Just take it in small, bite sized, meaningful amounts.

I often almost I wish that we could have little numbers floating above our heads sometimes as we run to say, I've been out here for thirty minutes, and it's the longest run I've ever done to date. Just so that as you're running, other runners could be like, kudos. You're doing awesome. Like, don't worry about how sweaty you look right now. You're cranking it.

So Yeah. I I felt like that sometimes training for my marathon and trying to grind out your 30 ks long run near the end of your training. And a 75 year old walking at a brisk pace is coming up beside you and you're like, I've been running for 30 kilometers, I swear.

I swear, I swear.

Yeah. But anyways, that's a good point. It's just it's not, don't compare yourself to anyone out there because you don't know someone's been out there for two minutes, ten minutes, it doesn't matter. Find when I'm in the car or on my bike or something and I see anyone running, it's just motivational to me. I don't care what their form looks like.

If their form, if it looks like they're a new beginner, I'm motivated even more. I'm like, wow, good on you for being out there and that's fantastic.

Yeah. Totally.

Let's move on to hydration and how that factors into, weight loss and, how people should be hydrated and especially even more important to to help them with their running as well. I know probably people that's a common question people have is, you know, they think they should be drinking, you know, tons and tons of water, but, you know, is that the case or what's the best method to go about for hydration and weight loss?

One thing that I recommend to you is spacing your water intake throughout the day. Oftentimes, cue in our mind, Oh, I forgot to drink water all morning. I need to drink water. And then we might pound a liter of water, but our bowels just can't tolerate those big dumps of water all at once. So thinking about spacing it out throughout the day definitely helps you set you up for success.

But the big piece with hydration and our body composition, it always comes back to me to the point about inflammation and toxins that we've been speaking a little bit about. So the inflammation that happens in our body naturally as a result of running, we produce some different compounds in the bloodstream like lactic acid, for example. And if we're not well hydrated, our blood is more viscous. So it takes more energy for our body to move those toxins out of the bloodstream and flush them out of the body. So for us to feel nice and limber and agile after a workout really depends on the amount fluids that we can take in to help flush out some of those metabolic byproducts like lactic acid.

So fluids are a really important part of that recovery, reducing overall inflammation and helping your body to feel optimal and not retain excess fluid because it's trying to dilute some of those toxins in the body as well. Toxins or inflammation that I mentioned too. So the toxins pieces, we need enough fluids to help flush that out if we've taken them in through the diet as well. So it's important to reducing inflammation and to helping flush toxins out of the body that we might swell as a result of having in our body.

Yeah, that's great. What about coffee? A lot of people drink coffee and, you know, you you always hear that coffee, will dehydrate you, but then, from, you know, stuff I've read, research is actually the fact is that actually it doesn't dehydrate you, and coffee is actually made up of mostly water, and the caffeine can actually be a performance enhancer, maybe not for people who are running shorter events, but certainly in the longer ones, and it can help offset some of the pain you're feeling, especially if you're running a marathon. So, yeah, what's what's the deal with coffee?

Totally. I recommend thinking about it in terms of caffeine instead of just coffee as well because caffeine is related absolutely to performance enhancing benefits both motivationally, but also as you mentioned in regards to your pain receptivity or perception of pain as well. Personally, I found that I can't drink a cup of coffee and go for a run, but I can have a source of caffeine and go for a run. So for anyone out there, I'd recommend playing around with different sources of caffeine. It could be green tea.

It could be yerba mate. It could be matcha. It could be coffee. There's lots of different ways to get that caffeine into our body. The thing that I recommend is if you are gonna have straight up black coffee is to pair it with a bit of fat or protein.

So I've started it myself actually is blending it with coconut oil, and I would call it the runners version of a bonk proof coffee or a bulletproof coffee is calling it a bonk proof coffee instead. So blending it with a little bit of coconut oil and actually coconut oil. It's a bit of a digression here, but for runners, coconut oil is a phenomenal source of energy because it digests really quickly like a sugar, like a fruit based sugar, but it burns nice and long like a fat. It's just the consumption isn't as ideal as a banana or an apple, for example. If you're feeling hardcore, you could take coconut oil off a spoon, but if you're not, like me, you could blend it into your coffee.

So that might be something you could reach for, for example, like an early morning run session. You might have coffee blended with coconut oil, and you're getting the benefit of the caffeine, but you're also giving your body a little bit of fat to burn during the run as well. So that could be a great way to just kind of boost the body's performance rather than take away from it. You get really jittery, for example, because there's no fuel in coffee, usually you might get really jittery that could affect your performance. Yeah, think about caffeine more holistically and branch out into some other different sources.

Just see how your body responds. You might find your gut feels a little bit better, but you still have the energy if you use something like a matcha tea instead of coffee. So just play around.

Okay. And you touched a bit on this topic when we talked about nutrient timing, but, how do you ensure that you're not losing, muscle and you're ensuring you're losing fat when you're, you're starting running and you're looking to lose weight?

So it comes back to making sure that you're fueling your body versus going into what's called a catabolic state. So a catabolic state is when there's an energy deficit, you're not consuming enough calories and our body starts to break down muscle tissue and it's releasing amino acids that are stored in the muscle tissue. And those amino acids can be absorbed for energy. But we've done it at the detriment of our muscle tissue. And you might recall at the beginning, we were speaking about if we can retain muscle tissue and build muscle tissue, it will burn more calories at rest than maintaining fats.

We want to protect that muscle as much as possible. Refueling or sorry, fueling before we run helps to protect that muscle, but then also fueling properly during our run and fueling properly after our run. So if you're running for longer than forty five minutes, or I should say longer than sixty minutes, we do wanna be consuming some additional fuel. And I recommend that at around the forty five minute mark. And the reason being is that after sixty minutes, our body does start to switch over into a catabolic state, breaking down the muscle tissue unless we refuel.

So if we refuel at the forty five minute mark, we give our body a little bit of time to digest. So when it's starting to click into that catabolic state, we've actually digested the fuel we've just taken in, and it's now burning off the fuel you've taken in versus breaking down our muscle tissue. So that's why things like gels come into handy for the endurance events. And it comes back to our discussion about reading for quality. So look at the ingredients of your gels and make sure that they're as natural as possible.

Ideally things like dates or fruit based sugars or whole food sweeteners and some of those endurance options.

Okay. But to reiterate, if you're not running for more than an hour, you don't need any, caloric fuel during your run. I mean, I guess on a hot humid day, you might want to bring some some water, but, is that the case?

Exactly. Yeah. And that's why those timing windows before your run are important because you're consuming, adequate fuel to help sustain you for your run. So, yeah, it's more of your endurance athlete that's training for longer than sixty minutes. They start to get into the muscle wasting scenario, and that's what you might lean out in a negative way, not muscle that you can use for training.

You're actually eating up your muscle tissue. So again, it's more for those endurance athletes that need to be proactive about consuming fuel to protect that muscle tissue.

Okay. So what are your top, or your favorite snack ideas and meals that you like to, prepare to help you in running and, just getting through your day to day busy life, eating, you know, healthily.

Yeah. For sure. I'm a big big time foodie, so I have to admit I like playing with a million different recipes. My husband sometimes loves it because he's like, can't we ever make, like, something that worked again? There's a lot of meals that I really liked.

Let's make them again. Yeah. I call it the kitchen playground. I'm always exploring new recipes and having fun in the kitchen. Some of the ones that I do come back to time and time again, particularly for pre run or just really good hearty, energizing meals, is oatmeal, but really making it kind of a superfood oatmeal.

I talked about coconut oil a little bit ago, and I recommend trying this. Don't knock it till you've tried it, but a spoonful of coconut oil stirred in with your oatmeal. It makes it really creamy and it's a delicious texture, but it will also help sustain the energy for your run as well. If you are going for a longer run on the weekend or if you need that bowl of oatmeal to last through your entire morning of meetings and then you're going go for a lunchtime run, for example, stirring in coconut oil can really help to prolong the energy release and just makes it a nice hearty meal. The other thing that I've been trying with my oatmeal as an upgrade is taking pumpkin pie mix.

If you can find it just the pumpkin itself, not necessarily all of the sweetener added in, but adding pumpkin, mashed pumpkin into your oatmeal as well too. Then you can add things like cinnamon and nutmeg and make it like a chai spiced pumpkin oatmeal. That sounds Yeah, it can be a really great way to get extra carbohydrates in before a longer training run. And that would be something like if you're running for 10 k, for example. That would be a great one to two hours prior meal idea.

The other one is I love sprouted bread. So if you're eating bread or gluten, it's by Silver Hills Bakery, is the bread company and it's a sprouted grain bread.

Is that available just on the West Coast Of Canada or is it elsewhere?

That's North America wide actually.

You'll be

able to find that pretty readily. There's definitely other sprouted options out there. If you see another brand and it does say sprouted, the whole point about that is it makes better net energy gain for you as the consumers. When you're eating it, you get better energy return from foods that are sprouted. So sprouted grain bread, and you can spread coconut oil if you like, or another nut butter, like almond butter, and then sliced banana, and sprinkle it with hemp hearts on top.

So that would be another one of my favorite go to meals, easy to pack and roll with if you're running away from home. Twenty to thirty minutes prior. So I mentioned things like pineapple, diced pineapple, or you can take a papaya, slice it in half, scrape out the seeds, and sprinkle in a little bit of nuts and seeds into the middle instead, edible nuts and seeds, and have like a papaya bowl. Okay. If you're doing that exact same thing post run, you could add a bit of yogurt in there.

I wouldn't recommend yogurt right before you run, but if that was a recovery meal, you could add in yogurt for a hearty source of fat and protein into that papaya bowl. So like a granola bowl, but in but in a papaya. And then dates are another good option for the pre run. So a couple of dried dates would be a good option or coconut water before you go out running. And then after your run, favorite ingredients for the blended smoothie to help you recover would be a cup of berries.

So blueberries, strawberries, a source of protein, so either hemp hearts or a spoonful of nut butter or a scoop of protein powder. I really like plant based protein powders. They're much, much easier to digest right after you train when your body's worked so hard. And then a liquid base, so something like an unsweetened almond milk or coconut water as the base there. And then an hour to two hours later, some of my favorite meals to reach for would be things like a roasted root veggie bowl.

So roasting things like beets and turnips and squash in the oven, and then you can top it with things like a miso gravy, crumbled tofu or crumbled tempeh. And those are plant based sources of protein. Or you can do things like a quinoa stir fry

Mhmm.

And wrap it up in burritos. So like some brown or black beans and quinoa, stir fried vegetables, wrap it up in a burrito, or living on the West Coast, I definitely love sushi. Getting some of my omega three fish, through sushi as well and lots of great hearty carbs to recover.

Oh, yeah. Miss the sushi out there as well. Have to make a trip out to Vancouver, this summer. Let's do a sushi run.

We'll run for sushi.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Alright. Let's, one more question, then we'll we'll end it.

I wanna be conscious that we're not taking too much of your time here, but, juice cleanses and detox diets and stuff that that's you hear that, it's it's all the rage still. Think it's been happening for probably a few years, but what's your stance with regards to juice cleanses and detox diets? Are they a good thing or no? What do you think there?

For sure. They can play a role. They certainly have their time and place. I've tried them myself actually, the biggest thing that I find challenging, particularly with a juice cleanse, is maintaining the consistency of your training. So regardless of what I say next, if you're going to do a juice cleanse or some kind of detox diet, really be realistic about the amount of training you think you're going to get done during that.

So having said that, if you are going to do a cleanse or a detox diet, what I recommend is incorporating some foods with sustenance. And so if you're doing, for example, just fresh pressed juices for a period of time, having a few meals in the mix like chia seed pudding, for example, or a salad just something that's a bit more satiating can help you if you are trying to maintain a bit more of your physical activity during the cleanse or the detox, which I think is the biggest challenge there, people expect to be just as active while doing a cleanse or detox. If you are tapering back your activity and still going forwards with it, you don't have to go full fledged into a juice cleanse to get the benefits of detoxification. You can still detoxify by eating all whole foods, nothing that's refined. So even refined grains, for example, it would mean that you're cutting out gluten from your diet, cutting out dairy and cutting out sugar.

So there's ways that you can detoxify just purely through whole foods. It doesn't have to be all the way to a juice cleanse, and that's much more sustainable if you're trying to keep up with your training. So I think just balance it out with what you need to be doing physically during that time.

That's great. One last little fun question. Do you listen to music or podcasts during your running, or are you one of those runners that just likes to be in your own mind?

Oh, man. I am dabbling with everything right now. I used to always be music, all the time music. And then, lately, I've been switching it up. Part of that, I attribute to being more in the trails over the past couple of months running in the trails of the North Shore Of Vancouver is just from a safety perspective.

You don't have headphones in as often. So I've started to really appreciate the sound of my breath. And there are those times when your music fails you. And so I know that I need to be okay running without my music. So occasionally on the Seawall, I'll go for maybe a kilometer or two without my music.

But really, the me the music helps me when I'm on the Seawall. So just depends if it's trail or a road.

Yeah. And I'm the same. I've yeah. I'm definitely I'd say the last couple years, mostly podcast. But I went through phase a.

Was all music all the time. And then I just one day, was like, I can't handle it. It was just too much. You know, you're trying to focus on your running. It was just too much.

I need my brain needed a break just to, like, be in my own body. So

Inevitably, every marathon, I've popped out my earphones at some point. And it's funny because during training, I never never got annoyed, but I know what you speak of. And it's just sometimes your your body is overstimulated, and it just needs the quiet. Yeah.

Yeah. It's too much. Anyway, so Emma, thank you very much for for your time and all this great information you provided. Where can people learn more about what you're up to, or reach out to you on social media? If you're on social media, what are the the best places?

Yeah. For sure. So the best way kind of on a day to day basis is for sure through social media. I'm quite active on a number of different platforms, so recommend people can check me out there. It's at emmazing_life, and it's Emma, e m m a, and the a becomes the a in amazing.

So mamazing_life. And if you're on your desktop, what is that? Yeah. No. If you're on your desktop, you can check out emamazing.com.

I'm producing some new tools and resources that will be loaded on that site in the coming months, you can stay tuned there. Or you can find out a little bit more about my work as well through a site called Pineapple Collective.

Yeah, so what is Pineapple Collective?

Yeah. I work with natural health and wellness brands with their education strategies. So not just working one on one with athletes on their meal plans, actually working with the brands that create the products that we love to use as athletes and general wellness enthusiasts too. I help them with their product education, different engagement campaigns that they might do to help educate people about what's so great about their ingredients.

That's fantastic. So I'll be sure to put links to all these, your social media outlets and the Pineapple Collective in the, in the show notes for sure so people can, can follow you there. And, again, thanks very much for your time and good luck. You've got a couple races coming up. You you told me before we started the the podcast episode here.

So all the best in those and, yeah, I hope you you could crush it and get the goals you're looking to to achieve.

Thanks so much, Mark. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Healthinomics Podcast at www.healthinomics.com.