00:00
Hey everyone, Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia and this week on the podcast I speak to returning guest Dr Tony Boutagy about fueling for the athlete. This conversation came on the back of an exchange I had with Tony just a day or so after my episode with Dr Paul Laurson came out in which Tony said, hey, I agree with a lot of what Paul says. However, this is where we differ.

00:28
And I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to jump on a podcast with Tony and really delve into some of the areas which he might have a different opinion on. And look, Tony is great. He works with a bunch of different athletes across the spectrum from the general public right up to the Olympian. And he's changed his focus in the last few years to delve into sort of physique sport and getting people ready for physique competitions. So he

00:56
really has such a wealth of experience in the fuelling topic, I thought it would be great to have a conversation with him. And it's fair to say that Tony Paul and I don't always agree on everything, but I mean, if you did, that would be like being in an ecco chamber, right? So one thing we do agree on though, is that context is everything when making recommendations to athletes, regardless of ability, experience or performance.

01:22
You guys know that I have had Tony on the show before. I will link into the previous conversation that we had. He is a strength coach and exercise physiologist based in Australia with his undergraduate degrees in human movement and a PhD in exercise and sports science from Charles Darwin University. And his coaching career has spanned close to 30 years working with, as I've said, a range of different athletes.

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He's also been involved in education since 1999, having held various educational positions in exercise science, physiotherapy, and personal training. And he also runs his own educational programs with personal trainers, allied health professionals, and the general public. Tony has also been an editorial board member for the University of Sunshine Coast's fitness research department and an editor for the Journal of Fitness Research.

02:18
a member of the Australian Institute of Fitness Personal Training Advisory Panel and has sat on the Expert Advisory Panel for Fitness Australia. Tony is a guy that works with so many people but really grounds himself in being able to educate and inform anyone in the space of health and fitness. So I was super pleased to have another opportunity to chat to him. Before we crack on into the interview though, I would like to remind you that the best way to support this podcast is to hit the subscribe button.

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on your favourite podcast listening platform because that increases the visibility of Micropedia and amongst literally thousands of other podcasts out there. So more people get the opportunity to learn from experts that I have on the show, like Dr. Tony Botaaji. All right, team, I hope you enjoyed this conversation.

03:09
Tony, how are you? Nice to speak to you this morning. Great, Mickey. Yeah, really great to chat to you. And I'm excited to have this conversation because I always love hearing different perspectives, sort of almost workshopping, I suppose, like different ideas. And you contacted me on the back of the podcast I did with our mutual colleague and my friend Paul Lawson, who I love. And you were like...

03:38
bit of pushback on this episode and some of the things that we talked about. And I'm like, oh cool, let's jump on a podcast and chat about it. And I'm really interested because, and other than that, we haven't really delved into some of the different perspectives you have, Tony, but I'm always here for it. And I'm interested to see where you and I are aligned. And also actually where you and Paul are aligned, but just more conversations give people the

04:07
a broader picture and a broader perspective. A lot has to do with the context and what kind of athlete or exercise do you like doing or if you're a coach, who do you work with? Because often when you get that knee-jerk reaction of, oh, hang on, that doesn't sit well with me or I have a different viewpoint. When you look at it at its application, it's when we're working with a very different body in front of us.

04:36
we as coaches where we're paid to be right and give the right information, we often lack this. And this is, I find Paul, the typical perfect example of someone who is open-minded. But when I reflect on myself, especially in my junior years, where we had to be right and whether my friends were lawyers or doctors, it's that same mentality. When people are paying for advice, they expect that you've done all of your work. And that's the answer.

05:03
And then you realize that the field of nutrition and exercise and human individuality is so broad that you need this toolbox of a number of different approaches with an underlying perspective of what are you really trying to optimize? And you two talked about this. Are you trying to optimize Olympic Ironman performance or are you optimizing for health, fitness, longevity, which means you might be a little more temperate with your carb advice?

05:33
as opposed to trying to optimize outcome on one day, and then you can potentially repair your health at another time. So that's what I'm looking forward to discussing today. Yeah, nice one. And I mean, I've got a, like, just what's floating around in my head right now is a conversation I've had with a client this morning, and also my own training this morning as well. So I'm working with a guy, and I see this a lot in endurance-based athletes. I got a lot.

06:02
at his raw data for his... He did his VO2 max measured, but within those measurements, you're able to see the amount of carbohydrate he's oxidizing and fat he's oxidizing. Plus, he is struggling to lose weight. He's got some massive cycle tour, which sounds amazing, coming up in June or July next year, or this year. So we are working on building his fat metabolism.

06:29
He is coming off one of those typical high carb approaches and I am getting texts from him or WhatsApps from him most days and he's like, but I've got to think about my power output. I feel really terrible and this is what I'm doing. And it's literally been three weeks. And I'm like, and I'm, I'm, I don't often have the WhatsApp communications with clients because that is over above and beyond what I would normally do, but I sort of want a neat has buy-in for him to actually

06:59
improve. And so I'm like, you just got to trust, I told you, you were going to feel terrible for the first three weeks, it's going to change. And I think with a lot of athletes who hear about these high load carbohydrate approaches and think like my client, this is what I have to do, understanding that that's not the only road or the best road for them, I think is really key. That's right.

07:27
A lot of freedom comes with this idea is that there are a lot of approaches, but most of us as coaches, if we're over the age of 30, have certainly come from the legacy that carbs are king and you should be on a carb diet. Even the big voices for carb advocacy are being more temperate with their approach and saying, well, you fuel for the demand. I don't know if that has really trickled down.

07:55
You were talking with Paul about one of the great up and coming ultra distance runners, who's very big on carbohydrates. And somebody was speaking to him recently about, well, you're pushing so much carbs and you could maybe do low carbon. He was very strong in his opinion that carbs are king, but fuel according to the demand. So if I'm expending 800 calories an hour, I'm not going to be able to replace all of that with carbs anyway. But when we talk about a carb

08:25
to that demand. And this is where I think I might have a little bit more, the pushback, but I'm not really pushing back, is that you do need to find that if you know what you're expending in an hour at what intensity, does it really make a big difference if you're oxidizing a bit more carbon, a little less fat, and you're comfortably able to take that on board, or whether you're more fat and less carbon, you can do as say,

08:53
Dan Ploos did and had 30 to 50 grams of carbs an hour during his Ironman age group world record. It really does depend on who you are. I just don't see this big argument of whether you've been a little bit more of this and a little bit more of that. Are we really arguing, does that really need to be an argument? Well, it's a good question. So a couple of things which I asked Paul about in the interview, and I'm really keen to get your perspective too, because that's on the energy demands of the

09:24
exercise because you get a readout that you've burnt like 1250 calories. I mean, what do you do with that? I mean, have you really actually burnt 1200 calories? Yeah. And this has always been the question. And I think this idea of looking for perfection versus getting a ballpark is what's really helpful. I'm going to use that information when we look at models of red S and low energy availability. No one in physiology thinks that

09:51
I did a 45-minute workout just before this call, and it said I did 400-something calories. Yes, of course, I would have burnt 60 at rest anyway sitting on the couch. So yes, that's got to be deducted from it. But I don't think it was 446. No one does. But is it directional? Because there's an epoch period afterwards. We're using this information to say, are you a thousand calorie expender a day, 2,000, 4,000? And then are you eating enough to stay weight stable?

10:21
or are you losing weight? These things are just directional information and not exact numbers. And I think the public like to think, I expended 882 calories. So I'm going to eat. Well, our job is to say, well, directionally, it was more than 400 and less than 1000. Let's start there by replacing part of that so that you're not under fueling. And I don't think

10:47
And yes, some tools of reporting energy expenditure are just absolutely lousy. If you go to a local gym and you jump on their bike and it tells you that everyone should know that that is like the fat burning zone, that's not telling you anything. No. If you're using, say, a Polar H10 heart rate monitor and you're pretty consistent with your intensity, so you're not stochastic up and down, so there's not a huge epoch period. And the heart rate doesn't really capture that acceleration and the energy demands of acceleration. But let's say you're pretty constant. You go for a 45-minute run.

11:16
That H, Polar H10, it's going to be pretty accurate within give or take 50, right? Of that session minus what you would expended that hour. And that is the ballpark you've expended for that session. Where it gets really tricky is something like weight training. Oh, completely. Like that's very difficult because it's, you're not, yeah.

11:36
I don't even know how you measure stuff like that, to be honest. No, we try and essentially use two metrics. A metric would be a wearable, whether it's a whoop strap or an aura ring, but aura rings are dreadful when you're lifting, but let's call it a whoop strap. And then a chest strap heart rate monitor. So we're getting the direction. So we're looking at two different measurements of energy expenditure via heat and heart rate.

12:01
then we say, okay, that was 300 calories. And if you're getting really different figures for upper body versus lower body and looking at the volume, you're probably on the right track. So it's close enough is good enough for me as to, well, how much do we need to replace or how much deficit do we want? Because ultimately, we want people to be weight stable, or we want them to, in rare cases, gain weight and in most cases to lose weight.

12:28
We're not going to be able to do that accurately until we have a ballpark of what you're expending. The way that I view those numbers, those caloric burns, is to your point, and I think Paul probably mentioned this as well, to be honest, Tony, I get amnesia after every single podcast. I completely forget what we even talk about. Thankfully, I've got notes from Paul's podcast in front of me, but I don't have all the finer details.

12:58
agree with you on the directionality, like the difference between a lower intensity and a higher intensity workout and what you might need to consider with regards to replacing those calories. But if I go back to your point as does it matter whether it's fat or it's even protein as it's an energy source like BCAAs for ultra endurance athletes, there is a use case for them. I know that in the strength and conditioning world, BCAAs have been chucked out, but it

13:26
endurance, that's actually where the use case for BCAAs is because we do burn maybe up to 10% of calories on these extended runs. Also, they can help or assist with delayed onset muscle soreness post-session. With regards to the oxidative metabolites that are generated through carbohydrate burning, I think there's a use case for a lower carb approach for endurance athletes to help with recovery. That's the

13:56
The other point of it's not just what happens in the session, it's how well are you able to recover when you get up the next day? And the other point I think that Paul and I might have talked about was what's happening outside of that session with regards to blood sugar with these middle-aged athletes, of which you and I are. Right. And now this is getting to the context. Totally. Yeah. And that is, to whom are we giving advice?

14:23
And are we dealing with a 40 to 50 year old male or female who's carrying too much body fat and is over fueling for the demands and expends 500 calories in a training session, but surrounding that either during it or afterwards is consuming more energy. Well, the issue is an energy issue that you're over fueling because you're only going for a seven kilometer run. You don't need to fuel for that. When we talk about fueling, we're talking about multi-hour events because your liver and muscle is more than adequate to...

14:53
cover the demands of an hour of exercise easily. Well, to your point, I just did a two and a half hour run. Oh no, it wasn't. No, it was quicker than that. 2.15 maybe. I don't know, did a 24K run. I had a protein bar before I went and just had electrolytes and I sped up during my run. And I actually felt better at the end. But that comes down to, and I certainly don't think I've depleted my muscle glycogen. I think those ideas are, I think that's interesting.

15:23
trying to talk to my client previously about like, I feel like if you've got good fat metabolism, then that's a really good sort of indicator of that. I agree. And I think this comes back to presenting the muscle with contraction environments that have different fuel sources. And that is maybe three or four mornings of the week, run first thing on black coffee, glass of water.

15:49
and expose the muscle to lower liver glycogen, potentially lower muscle glycogen, and push your duration from whatever you can do before you get symptoms of hypoglycemia and push that up to a relative timeframe. And I have, I've done, and I know many people who go for multi hours, but I've also seen blood work on guys who've gone multi hours and the testosterone has come back unmeasurable. Yes, it bounces back, but why put yourself?

16:18
Well, I can go for eight hours with just water and salt. So yeah, but why give your testicles that experience? Why give your testicles that experience? That's great. It doesn't sound like it sounds heroic that why you can push your fat metabolism over a gram a minute to provide for. But why? Why not one or two hours? And then and then something else. But these are just thought experiments which people can make up because it's a personality of somebody to say, I did six hours on just water.

16:48
Oh no, I totally agree. And in fact, back in the day, and I'm talking back in the 2010s, early 2010s, like that would be what people would do before we knew better. And then we did better. Albeit, of course, you've got the likes of, and this is moving into the elite sport category, like Kelly and Jaunaid, like doing his like massive long ride, sorry, run, just to test that mental resiliency. Right.

17:14
which you and I probably don't actually need to do. No, and there's the reason why there's only one Killian. He's remarkable across any aspect. You look at his personality, his physiology, he's remarkable. But yes, clearly he's being able to push fat metabolism through the roof, but with an exceptionally high VO too. Now is that the same as somebody who wants to do an Ironman or an Olympic distance or a marathon or a 10K?

17:41
we need to address that person, their body fat level, how much they can train. Draw upon principles of best practice, but the best practice is not 240 grams of carbohydrates an hour. That's for somebody who's expending a thousand calories an hour for seven hours. Yeah, and with the likes of the Norwegian athletes, right? Right. And they have their methods born in test, retest. Let's try something, let's measure it.

18:10
Does it improve performance? If so, yes, great, let's continue it. Let's push the boundaries. If not, now, if they, to speak to your point about recovering in between with glucose metabolism, if they're not able to hold down prodigious volumes and intensity of training because they are such carb burners, we would know about it already. A hundred percent. They're exceptional fat burners as it is, but they also have an exceptional tolerance to burn carbohydrate. And the reason why they're doing it is because it improves performance.

18:38
But if they couldn't recover day to day, then they're clearly fueling exactly for the demand. So they know that they're expending X and they replace it with the equal amount of carbohydrate. And it doesn't seem to impact anything with their ability to go between short distance, middle distance, long distance at the world's best breaking world records from year to year to year. So when they go from that to being normal again...

19:04
their definition of normal, then they would still fuel to the demand, but it's not seven hours a day. It might be two hours a day and then everything comes back down. And I think we falsely extrapolate these high carb diets all the time. It's high carb for the demands of that individual, as long as you're also potentially presenting the muscle and metabolism with contracting in a number of different fuel environments.

19:34
Yeah. To recover. I mean, that is like part of their job, whereas the likes of us, we get back from our training and then we are at work. We're not like, we're not in saunas, we're not in infrared, I don't know, rooms. We're not using recovery boots or anything like that to get a massage and things which also help with that muscle recovery. And I feel like this is where that contact is really important because I've got friends who...

20:04
are my age and they go out for a 45 minute to an hour easy ride, zone two ride with 90 grams of carbohydrate in their body. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is the misapplication of science, isn't it? And it's the job of the coach or the experienced friend to say, well, the demands of an easy ride is to do that on fat metabolism. You don't need anything while you're out on that kind of a ride. Believe me, I have tried.

20:32
Yeah, I have tried and it's so interesting, isn't it? And, and I guess the thing, the thing that is probably on their mind is, well, I'm lean, it doesn't really matter because we so often associate health with body composition, which, which right now for them, it's actually okay, but maybe in five years time, it won't be, but other health indicators are, are.

20:59
sort of presenting themselves. I think it's always prudent to not mistake being lean with healthy. That would be point one. Point two is to just have yearly markers, whether it's a yearly month or two weeks using a CGM, and then to look at insulin in response to a glucose challenge. Because these things show signs of dysregulation years before then they show up as frank health issues. This should all be part.

21:28
of the overall. And if you do, as we probably both have friends who do, super lean, 90% carb diets and have glucose levels of 4.2 and insulin that's unmeasurable. That's just who they are. Now, I walked past a carb this morning on the way to this and my glucose went to 13. So there's all different types of phenotypes when we're talking about nutrition and giving advice. But ultimately it does come down to really solid prescriptions that

21:58
Train some time fasted, train sometimes post meal, fuel to the demands. Now, if you're doing seven watts per kilo, when you're doing rides, then you're spending a thousand calories an hour, and by all means have 200 grams of carbs now, because that's 800 calories and you're still gonna be in deficit. But if you're going for an hour ride and you might be doing intervals, your liver will still take care of that. So you're not elite. So why are you following the advice for people who are doing a five hour stage race?

22:26
See, I would never tell anyone to have 240 grams of carbs, regardless of the fact that they're burning a thousand calories an hour. But to be fair, how many people would actually be doing that? Also, who do that day after day after day? Yeah, completely. So that's again, the context. Yeah, yeah. Is that it's either a once-off event where you are at 94% of your VO2 max for seven hours, which is what they report the world record Ironman was, then it doesn't really matter what that crossover is. You're not going to be able to do anything

22:57
without supplemental carbohydrates for that and keep oxygen requirements so high. Yeah, for sure. So they've already worked that out. But in the tour races, we're looking at a Pogachar and saying, well, if you're doing seven watts per kilo and you're doing five hours, that's best practice. I'm going to do the same. And you go for an hour. Well, you're no Pogachar and you're not doing a 21-day stage race. So you need to fuel for your demands.

23:22
of that hour or two hours. And this is just the weekend warrior mentality. I'm gonna buy the same bike that he's got. I'm gonna buy the same, and I am that person. I just weigh 50 kilos more. Yeah, no, 100%. And it's super interesting. And you and I were talking offline before we jumped on to record. Just, you know, Twitter is a great place, or X is a great place to see where the most informed and where the scientists and...

23:49
see the things that they think about and talk about each day. And so most recently there's been sort of back and forth between the likes of Tim Noakes and Javier Gonzales. I always want to say Gomez, and I'm not sure where I get that from. It's the triathlete. Oh, there you go. No, not him. And the most recent study, which I'm hoping to talk to Andrew Kutnick about, about the 10 grams of carbs an hour and what you're able to achieve.

24:19
that small amount because it's not the muscle glycogen is the limiting factor, it's that hypoglycemia. Very, very interesting. And what we need is information across the different exercise demands. And when we're looking at something that's generally steady state without surges in power and speed, that for most people would be the best candidate for pushing fat metabolism through as high as you can get it.

24:46
Yeah. And then supplementing with enough carbs to keep one from going hypoglycemic. And as we mentioned earlier, Dan Ploos seems to be the case study, which was from memory, and you know him, it was 30 grams an hour, or maybe he pushed it to 50 towards the end. This is very, very low, because his fat metabolism accounted for everything else. Well, interestingly, in his, I believe, most recent race, he had one gel for the marathon. Yeah. And that was it. So he...

25:13
I think he supplemented, yeah, you're right, between 30 to 50 on the bike, and I can't recall which, but he got a lot of pushback from people to say he literally just had one gel. Well, I can see how that plays out. Yeah. It ultimately tells us a few things, doesn't it? Is that there are many different options which are at our disposal. Now, most people don't want to do what Dan probably did to build that fat burning capacity.

25:41
They either don't want to go through a period of four to eight weeks of suffering of performance. They've got kids and they don't want to have a special diet for them and a special diet for the kids. It's very difficult for a parent to clean up spaghetti bolognese and see there's half a plate left over and just chuck that in the bin. I see it and go, well, I can't go to waste. I got to eat that. There's a lot of things that go into making somebody a super fat burner versus maybe...

26:10
equal. And these are decisions that the athlete has to make, assuming that we're not getting marked excursions in glycemia. And I think that's a really important discussion to have, stick a CGM and find out what's happening. We had a discussion where I did it last year and I was routinely getting one time up to 13 after I had some, I think it was Maltesers or something like that watching. I mean, for experimental purposes only did I consume those

26:40
marked periods of time above nine millimodels. And that just says that something has to be done. Yeah. Oh, no, I agree. Yeah. And it's interesting, actually, you mentioned that I have a client and her HbA1c persists above 41. And I believe that's above 6% in what you guys might have, the pre-diabetic range, which let's be clear, with HbA1c, the cutoff is actually quite arbitrary. So there is not an

27:09
massive jump in risk if it's your 39 to 40. You're just increasing that risk. She sat down at CGM, and the app that she used told her that normal range was between 4 and 10. Yet her A1c average was still in that pre-diabetic range. I'm like, that's because that range that you're given, that's just too wide. Whereas if you look at the likes of people who really are into this area, they'd tell you that

27:38
three to seven is much more appropriate. Maybe even for an athlete, it might even be lower. I'm not sure. Right. This is this concept of time and tight range. Yeah, totally. When you're looking at a CGM. Right. You can debate the surges and so forth, but it's that time spent in hyperglycemia that can be a problem. It can also be a problem for the post-insulin and cortisol response. Do we need to mitigate?

28:07
exercise in response in time to the meal that you're having is a distress issue. Does it's quarters? I mean, we've all experienced this, poor sleep, high stress, massive glucose. But I only see this as opposed to other people in our industry who think it creates eating disorders. And I really just, yeah, that doesn't make sense to me. It's another tool to help with change in lifestyle or exercise habits.

28:36
And so immediately I added excess post walks to meals. And my glucose levels would drop back to four point something within 10 minutes and then would relatively stay low. And I think what we do need is more information on carb based athletes who do use them because I, with kids, I would have more carbs than I probably need, even though I'm weight stable, but the glucose levels keep surging post meal.

29:04
And that could just be because my body is having a lot of gluconeogenesis from protein as well. And these things are going to show up on a CGM. So it's not straightforward in its interpretation. But any, and I appreciated this with Paul's change in thinking, because I can remember interviews with the professor and the doc, which was, well, I ate a pear in my glucose level search. I'm not going to eat the pear. I'm glad that with reflection and time, we can say,

29:32
It's probably a little different to having some gummy bears and it going to 13 or Maltesers in my case, versus having a banana that's wrapped in fiber and the phytochemicals goes up and goes down. That's what it should do, right? That's what happens when you eat carbohydrate. It goes up and then it goes back down. Yeah. Now totally. And a few things I was thinking of, Tony, as you were talking. First one is that you work with physique athletes, right? And so many I see on social media. So I'm shifting gears from endurance to physique. And...

30:01
It's like some sort of win if they, you know, to push the carbs up as high as possible, yet remain weight stable and lean. And you know, and even some of them like check and show you what their fasting glucose is in the morning, but they don't know what's going on during the day for their 380 grams to 450 grams of carbs. And I just, I struggle to understand how that is a healthy way to be.

30:30
No, well, it's not. There's nothing too much about the preparation of a physique athlete that's particularly healthy. But I've slapped CGMs on some of the most talented physique competitors in the world. And when they are up around that 500 grams in a build phase, then yes, there's a little bit more glucose disturbance. In the dieting phase, they keep fat, in my experience, very, very low and survive off carbs.

30:58
But because they're in energy deficit, their glucose levels barely get above five, even after a meal. Yeah. So it's that calorie deficit. It's the calorie deficit. So when we say fueling for the demands, they're not. So you could still have 300 grams of carbs, but that's just getting sucked straight into muscle. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Because that to me is, I think 300 grams of carbs is quite a lot, not for an endurance

31:27
pushing in the real key phase of their training and doing like long hours. But for the likes of someone, dare I say it, even someone training for a marathon probably doesn't need 300 grams of carbohydrate as an average. Yet, if you look at the latest New Zealand nutrition survey, which was done in 2008, 2009, crazy.

31:54
The average carbohydrate intake, I believe, for men was maybe 360, for women was 320 or something like that. So it's still relatively high compared to the activity level that they've been undertaking. And that's what it comes down to. Are you running three hours a day? Then maybe that's not a big deal. And what's your energy status? But it's difficult to think that you could eat that amount plus get two grams per kilogram of body mass.

32:23
of protein and then a gram to a gram and a half per kilogram of fat and then still be weight stable. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. That's where you work. So that's how I, my framework for working with any athlete is what are the demands, what phase of training are you in? Are you building? Are you maintaining? Are you peaking and losing weight? So that's the overall framework. And then is what is the demands of training for that day? What's the intensity? What's the duration? Is it stochastic or is it...

32:52
Now the physique competitors, they're typically in the weights room. So it's stochastic up and down, but it's all glycolytic. And that might be 60 to 90 minutes, five times a week, with an emphasis on lower body, large muscle group, full range of motion, working in very close to one RMs, or at least compared to endurance work closer to one RM. A lot of that we feel with carbohydrate, but I get an idea of, well, what do you expend?

33:20
in that session directionally. And it's not perfect, but okay, you're doing 600 calories on Tuesday, Thursday when it's upper body is knocked down at 280. Like the difference is astonishing between upper body and lower body. And then we fuel to the demand. So we give the extra carbohydrates on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then we don't, because now your total energy expenditure is now 2000, not at two and a half, we bring everything back down. And when we slap the CGMs on with that approach, the glucose just stays under six, even after meals.

33:50
was very carbohydrate fueling for that demand of that day. So you can get the most out of that session and recover well into that next session. And I would say the same is true of endurance athletes if they were, you know, when you train more, you eat more, you eat more carbohydrate, but ultimately, because it's a ketogenic state, which some low carb athletes will just naturally fall into, that's driven by those low muscle glycogen and low liver glycogen.

34:20
And that if you train enough, then you're going to sort of, even if you have a sort of 200 grams of carbohydrate, you're still going to be that relatively low carb state. I couldn't agree more. And then you could live there habitually and get the benefits of 24 hour low insulin levels. And then you can feel in the session as required. And that is first hour, nothing. And then if you're into hour,

34:48
one to hour two, well, what's the intensity? Are you going hypoglycemic? Would you benefit from 30, 50 grams of carbs, whatever? But the rest of your day, you live at a normal, healthy diet. Now, that's a framework that I would use rather than what the public often have been led to believe in that is, I wanna do a marathon, so I'm gonna eat 500 grams of carbs a day. Well, why don't you just eat 100 grams, but where needed on those long runs, then you can supplement at that point.

35:17
and train your gut and all those kinds of things. But you don't need to be on a high carb diet if you're training one, two hours a day. It's sort of a normal diet to cover your energy needs. And then you can supplement as needs. Yeah, absolutely. And I will, I mean, you probably know this because you follow me on social media. Beer would be one of my carbohydrate choices. Unquestionably. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, on the days that I tend to go for a longer run tends to be around the weekend, tends to be when I enjoy.

35:46
a beer or two with a nice craft beer. It's the trade off, isn't it? And that is how maniacal do you want to be about? Did you really want to be monastic or do you want to exercise as part of your life, your health, your goals, your mental well-being as part of holding down a job and friendships and all those things? It fits into that. But we must not confuse. We are not world champion triathletes or cyclists or whoever that is. So the advice does need to be.

36:15
individually given with caveats. And those caveats are that nutrition should be healthy, healthy driven for your goals. And that we increase carb when you've earned the right to have those carbs. Yeah. And do you know, that's funny that you say that because that's how I see it as well. But gosh, if you put, have you earned your carbs out on social media, make the push back. Yeah, that's right. Do that, Tony. I can't wait to take me in that reel and I cannot wait to share it with the world. But I agree with you. Like that's where

36:45
carbohydrate to me sort of fits because protein and fat both deliver essential nutrients. I think there are absolutely is a place for carbohydrate though. Like I know, and I know that people with gut issues cannot have a high fiber diet, but one of the benefits for all of those that like me that can tolerate fiber, like fiber is such an important part of the diet. So if you can tolerate it, I really like people to include it and things like legumes and other carbohydrate sources.

37:15
can be really good at delivering that fiber, but I do feel like there's something like burn and earn, burn the energy, earn the carbs. I think that's a great rule. And we just need to perhaps give some caveats so that there isn't that immediate knee-jerk reaction of you're creating an eating disorder and what are you actually really saying? And that is that certain exercise intensities and duration require more fuel. That fuel makes sense that it can come from carbohydrate because it's a very glycolytic activity.

37:45
And we want those enzymes to be well developed to be able to use that in your top years. But you have to provide the right exercise stimulus to burn those. And that's we use the phrase earning the right for it. Now, if you're going for a walk, you haven't earned the right. In other words, that's the wrong fuel source. So just have the right environment exercise wise for the right fuel. Yeah, 100%. And

38:10
The other thing that I think is worth mentioning, because we're sort of going on a few tangents here, but I think it's all worthwhile stuff to note, is that if you are someone, like an ethic, who does have heavy energy requirements for the day, then not to contradict what I literally just said, but there absolutely has to be a place for those simple carbs as well, actually. Or because it's very difficult to get in enough calories if all of your...

38:38
diet is just the really good stuff because you play, like I'm a volume eater, but You won't be able to. No. Unless you've really trained your gut and you look at examples of the vegan ultra athletes, whether it's a Rich Roll or a Scott Jurek. And Scott Jurek running Spideyathlon in his book, he would talk about having been burritos while running kind of four minute kilometers for hours on end.

39:04
No normal human could do that. You need a special microbiome and gastrointestinal tract to handle that. When we talk about simple carbs and sugar, it's in a very niche context for a very rare percentage of people who are training 20 plus hours a week. But you don't need it in that first hour. And if you're eating normally and you're covering your energy needs, you're doing it very strategically for the demands of that exercise.

39:33
Yeah, it's super interesting, isn't it? Super interesting. It gets very polarizing until you actually get into the nuance and say, who, to whom are we giving advice and what is their ultimate outcome? And that's a very different conversation. You give us a hundred different people. We have a hundred different bits of advice. Yeah. And I would say as well, Tony, is I don't see that you and all are necessarily saying different things. If I'm... No, I think we're very, very clear.

40:03
that we agree on 99% of those things. And I've looked up to Paul ever since he did his PhD in interval training and I've inundated him with requests and clarifications on interval training. So to me, he's a God in the field. And when he was becoming more low carb, I had some questions more on methodology than actual information. Because as we've talked about, what we know in exercise and nutrition,

40:31
It's not really rigorous science. What we would like to see is rigorous methodology being applied to both sides of the argument. And you'll often on the low carb, they will pull apart the methodologies on the high carb. But it should really be done both ways and being open to, well, we actually don't know a lot about this. So let's maybe trial a few different strategies with broad themes in mind. What are we ultimately trying to achieve for an age group versus a recreational

41:00
versus an elite. They have very different fueling needs and different outcomes at the end of the day. And then perhaps we need better support for elite athletes who are going from a more carb oriented world to being like Dave Scott after winning Ironman. He went very much into protein and fat because he realized that he didn't need that anymore. But that's now fueling for the demands of an ex-athlete. And I think that's important to make that transition. You're not Ian Thorpe anymore.

41:29
swimming 30 hours a week, you're now swimming two hours a week. So you're not going to eat the same and that transition is not an easy thing to do. Well, no, because it's not just determined by appetite. A lot of it is determined by habit as well. Absolutely. And we'll know this for those of us who exercise, is that for whatever reason, if we don't exercise to our normal standard, we still tend to eat the same kind of food. You still can get hungry. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah. And like your body will...

41:57
will anticipate when that next meal is coming based on what those previous inputs, right? So you can wake up feeling hungry if you typically have something before you go out training, but you're not training. That signal will probably still be there. Right. I couldn't agree more. Tony, now talk to me more about your physique athletes when they're in a deficit. I'm interested to know. How much does...

42:27
How much does hunger, this is a completely different topic actually, but what strategies or what type of deficits are you using with your physique athletes? And do they experience some of those, I imagine that they do, side effects of hunger, like inability to sleep, irrational thinking, inability to focus, et cetera? Yeah, no, they don't. And that's just because I use a more moderate approach.

42:57
two-phased. One, we use a longer dieting phase, which would be a minimum of 16 weeks, often 20 weeks. So let's say 20 weeks. Almost every week, we have a return to energy balance. And that will either be one day or two day, depending on how comfortable they are with energy deficit. In terms of running an energy deficit, it's a roughly 30% underneath energy balance, give or take.

43:26
but we never go more than 35%. Yeah, okay. A lot of people run 50% and plus, but they're also running PEDS, which is very protective of their muscle mass, but I only work with clean individuals. So we have to, this is why there are all sorts of advice out there, but it does depend, are you taking performance enhancing drugs or not? So in the clean individual, which means we can apply this information to anyone who wants to lose fat and maintain muscle mass, I think the slower...

43:54
five, six days a week of energy deficit, 25 to 30%. And then we return back to balance Saturday, Sunday, or maybe Sunday. And then we drop back in. And that approach has worked really well when we've looked at CGM data, looked at reproductive hormones, looked at anabolic hormones and the thyroid family, and measured all of those things at time points with DEXA.

44:18
Yeah, that's super interesting. Like I, in my Monday's matter program, every fortnight, there's a diet break whereby we were like, we don't count calories on my program because the vast majority of people, they go in thinking they want to count calories. But actually when they realize what's involved and how rigorous you have to be very much, they're like, okay, well, just give me the plan. And so I do. And, and, and I'm, I'm very confident for 99% of people. It's, it's a successful approach.

44:49
Initially, as I educate them throughout the program on ways to eat so they don't have to follow a program, but anyway, beside the point. Right, right. Yeah. And then with the diet break weekends, we just lift calories slightly. And I think this is where people in the weight loss space get it a bit wrong, is because there's no plan for the plan after. You know, they're like, I'm no longer on a diet. Oh, what do I do? You know? Right. Yeah. And this is where reverse dieting comes in. This is where, what do you do afterwards? And this is...

45:17
the area that needs the most support is once you have reached a goal, how do you maintain? How do you not blow out? Now, their physique competitors is very different. You tend to hold them in a bit of deficit and then you stepwise them back out. But for people who are just training to look good on holidays, how do you change that? And my experience is that if you've done it with the methods that I've outlined,

45:42
there often isn't this psychological blowback because there's only been moderate deficit and you've been returning to balance every weekend anyway. So there isn't this, I am dying to have a Kit Kat. Well, you had that on Saturday, every week. Yeah, yeah. And for many people who can't live without chocolate, we just put it into their daily, it's just accounted for. Back to counting calories, now, physique competitors are different, of course. They are the masters of manipulating body composition. So they measure calories. What many don't do is they don't measure energy output. So they just guess.

46:11
gives me eczema and raises my blood pressure that if you're going to measure one thing, you really do need to measure the other. They are pretty, I can ballpark those things. But for the general public, just one week or at least two days in the week, and then one weekend to measure your calories, just as a once off is an incredible tool to say, oh, I had no idea that macadamia nuts gave me 700 calories. I had no idea.

46:40
And that healthy granola or that I had that scotch fillet and I kept the fat on it. I didn't realize I've got a thousand calories from that. I just thought it was all. So as a tool of saying, Oh, that portion and that kind of food is giving me rough. Now, once they can eyeball that, then we tend to not use calorie again. But as an educational tool, I had no idea that I, that amount was in that. So I had to do it myself. Yeah. And isn't that interesting? I, I like weighing. I like.

47:10
people to weigh what they do because everyone's terrible at eyeballing. But also my pushback to the idea that, oh, that's a lot of effort and a lot of work is, well, there's no pushback. I'm like, yeah, it is actually, but you're worth it. It is worth the effort and it isn't forever either. You know, like I think Tony, and I don't know how you feel about this, but in the space of diet and exercise, people really struggle with the idea that they need to put an effort. They will put effort into everything else. But

47:38
feel like, for whatever reason, they think it should be easy for them. Well, that's also because many people in the space keep saying it should be effortless. When you adopt a ketogenic diet, it is effortless. And I just find that abhorrent advice, because there will be times that you're hungry and that's OK. It's OK to be a little bit hungry. It's OK to finish a meal and think, oh, I could probably have a bit more.

48:05
It's probably the only way that you're going to get into deficit. Now, if you're in energy deficit, 30% every day for five days, and you don't feel hungry, there's something wrong there. And this is where I would maybe give a bit of a pushback against the apistat and eat to your satisfaction. That might work great for some people, but not for others who have a dysregulated apistat or eat for other reasons other than satiation. They comfort eat.

48:31
distracted. Yes, you can say that's all part of the education, but in the real world, sometimes you might feel a bit hungry and that's totally okay. Yeah, yeah. And as long as that hunger doesn't lead to hangryness. Right. Yeah. And then we can deal with that. And we're not talking about ravenous. But if you finish a meal and you think I could probably have another serve, but you don't, then you're an energy deficit. Yeah, yeah. No, I totally agree. So interesting, Tony, we

48:59
We're also going to discuss low energy availability and your thoughts. And for what it's worth, like there has been, just to sort of update the listeners, there have been some publications of late talking about the idea that we have potentially overestimated the prevalence of low energy availability in certain populations, because to the points that we were just discussing.

49:26
people don't know what on earth they're doing with regards to their diet. And even if they are keeping a record, they're likely to be underestimating what they're putting in. And I'm just going to say upfront, I, I do think actually that we have overblown low energy availability in a whole group of people, given my sort of clinical experience over the last 30 years or 20 years. So can you hear your thoughts? I think a lot of people like labels.

49:53
and they like to be given a diagnosis. The reason why I'm not experiencing being able to achieve my goals, lose weight, whatever it is, is that I have relative energy deficiency in sport or I'm in low energy availability. What I care about as a coach is putting in place a system to prevent future decline in performance or bone injuries.

50:22
or effects to females, menstrual cycle, ovarian hormones, or even loss of muscle mass. Yeah, testosterone as well. Is it not, Tindulia? Right. But it does lead to this, how do we arrive at these conclusions? And these papers that you've mentioned have rightly called into question, well, how do you define energy availability? How do you measure energy output? Do you account for the resting? Because the original formula is just energy expenditure full stop.

50:52
And most people are notoriously lousy at measuring energy intake. But I don't let any of those things dissuade me from having a system in place to earmark clients who I think might be a candidate for being over-exercises, under-eaters over the long term. When you do measure T3 or testosterone, we can't typically measure.

51:19
bone, but we can look at it longitudinally with Dexa, that you're probably at higher risk of being under-fuelers based on the demands. I have seen a number of instances in the physique world where even though they're bone-loading, have had femoral or pelvic hip fractures in their 20s.

51:43
And these are individuals who routinely under-fuel for the demands of training. But to your point that you've made previously is that perhaps they're under-fueling carbohydrate based on the glycolytic demands, but they're not, they eat so much protein that they're knocked out of a ketogenic state. But these all things that go into, well, I don't want to debate about how do you define this and how do you measure these things. Well, what's the outcome?

52:13
they have habitually suppressed changes in hormones or a trend downward in bone. That's what I care about because sometimes these things just bounce back. You measure someone's testosterone, as I mentioned with a friend who went for a long cycle fasted, and testosterone literally came back at zero. It was hypogonadal, unmeasurable. But then the next day, it was trending back up. As I said, why would you even want to expose your body to that situation? But when we look at these girls, they're down and they stay down.

52:43
Even when the body fat goes back up and they now have excess body fat, their testosterone or their estrogen, once estrogen was unmeasurable for extended, and these are people in their 20s. So that's what I'm concerned about is not this academic debate. That's perfect for scientists. But for coaches, what are we telling our clients? What are we looking for to avoid having consequences to health? And that is rooted in the philosophy of, well, don't stay in energy deficit.

53:12
too long. That's why we come out every weekend. And I've got coaching friends who go, oh, studies on diet break show that there's no difference and so forth. Right. If you're creating a 200 calorie a day deficit, you're not at any risk of developing any low energy states. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I 100% am on board with that. And to your point, it's who's in front of you and what are the biomarkers sort of telling you with that? Because, and I guess if you look

53:41
studies that sort of assess low energy availability and looking at these markers, they're looking acutely post either training or post a short-term quite large deficit in calories and not looking necessarily like a week down the line or whenever as to sort of what's going on. Yeah, and we've seen this very much with the bone literature, where they've either induced a energy deficit that they've called low carb,

54:11
or they've really gone low carb energy balance, but bone turnover markers change. But we don't see changes in bone in keto adapted females. So you have to account for an environment where the muscle of the bone or the hormones can adapt to that new status. But four days is simply not enough. But we do need longitudinal measuring of our clients to say, are you at risk of a bone injury?

54:39
and measure the proxies along the way, measure estrogen along the way and see what's going on. Does it go down and then come back up? It's not difficult to get a full blood panel if you're going to experiment with a few different things. Measure that to see how you're responding because you won't physically know, but your blood will say, well, that's trending in a certain direction. Yeah. And it's interesting what you say because when you mentioned the physique athletes and stuff, I just thought, is it just part of being in that sport? I don't know. Is it just

55:08
bad practices, not, was it just uninformed practices that lead them to the place where they're at? And is it just an expectation actually that there are gonna be some complications or, but actually even upon saying that though, I know the likes of you, the likes of my friend Brandon, you guys are very good at keeping your athletes healthy along the process and probably a lot of coaches might not be and I hide it. Sometimes we're not liked.

55:36
I've had clients who have blamed me for not getting lean enough when I was just not willing to drop them lower. That's just how it is. We won't compromise your health and give you extra exercise and get you running on fumes so that you can compete on a certain day. It's not worth it. I'll take the blame. I'll sleep at night. But these things, it does attract a certain psychology. Of course it does.

56:02
But so too does distance running. And I can think of just as many people who run on fumes and then eat salads all day and do this classic under-eaters. And yeah, you go measure their estrogen and their testosterone, and there's nothing there. They're unmeasurable numbers. Oh, that was me in my 30s, basically. How amazing is it now in my late 40s to be able to eat the amount? If my early 30s knew what my late 40s knew,

56:31
man, it would have been so different for me. Yeah, yeah. And that's the role of people like us to say there is an alternate way of fueling and thinking about food. It's not self-punishment and it's not push your body on nothing and water for as long as possible. You can feel good, get the body that you want while still maintaining your health. Yeah, and eating. Right. Yeah, and the joy of eating. Right. Yeah.

57:00
What's your favorite meal, Tony? Do you have a favorite meal? I don't. I just like food full stop. And I go through stages where I'm obsessed. I have an obsessive personality. So does my son. It's like a very hyper-focused. So it'll be on Thai, then it might be Italian, then it might be Indian. Yeah. What are we, what are we hyper-focused on right now? Uh, steak actually. Oh, I love it. Yeah. I've just come back from a vacation where I had access to a good barbecue. So I'm not deficient in vitamin D or iron at the moment.

57:29
That's awesome. I'm trying to think of what I'm a bit, I get a bit in, I don't think it's obsessive, but I'm like, what will I have for breakfast? And I just go back to my usual because I love it so much. But the usual breakfast sort of lasts for maybe six months, and then I will nine months and then I like, you know, change it up. And what is your current breakfast? Well, it's a smoothie bowl that might it has either berries or mango, frozen and has cauliflower because that bluffs it up.

57:59
Um, it has my protein powder in it. Um, sometimes it has my collagen, but I have collagen on the side with my creatine often, uh, and then on top of that, obviously almond milk, et cetera, and put a grind of salt in there. And then on top of that, I have berries this morning. I had banana as well because of my 24 K run. Um, and then I had, I have this bread called protein sparing bread. Have you heard of it? I have not. So you may, it's.

58:27
Look, it's less bread and more polystyrene, I will say, but it is egg whites and protein powder, baking powder, a bit of salt. You blend it up and it's sort of like meringue and then you cook it. And it's called protein-sparing modified fast bread. But it's basically just a, it's almost like a solid protein shake. And so I put like, I take a quarter of that loaf and I chop it up and put it on top of my

58:55
smoothie. And then I back and that's quite a voluminous meal. Right. And then I often have half a protein bar afterwards. I mean, usually I'm still just a little bit hungry. So right. Right. Right. And I found the smoothie meal to me, it doesn't tell my brain that I've consumed food. And it could be enough of all the macronutrients. But I think because I'm having coffee and tea, that when I sit down to a meal, I got to chew my way.

59:22
through it. And I've got a lot of clients who are more than happy and it solves the problem and they get the calories right. But I'll often have leftovers of what the night before was. And it's always so not before it was a curry. Last night I made burgers. So I had a burger for breakfast. And it was just be but that eating for me then I can go for for hours. Yeah. See, I enjoy the smoothie bowl as a thickie rather than a... Right.

59:50
Yeah, right. So you can actually spoon it. And the bits, yeah, the bits on top, the fruit on top. Yeah, you get the crunch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got that. But I agree with you. I like leftovers, but I prefer them sort of lunchtime-ish. Lunch, yeah. Yeah. We're all individuals. We are all individuals. Tony, can you let the listeners know where they can find you? Absolutely. I am socially active on Instagram and it's my name Tony Batarji and I have a website which...

01:00:18
talks about the courses that I run, which are primarily for personal trainers to teach them the art of program design, whether it's general programs or fat loss or how to fix weak links and energy leaks. And that's my name as well, www. And if you are interested in more program styles, I offer a lot of actual, you just download the app and follow the program at Haley Happens Fitness, which we both do some work for Haley.

01:00:47
And there are tons of programs that I have written there for strength, for power, for agility, for fat loss. And you just look those up and download and off you go. Amazing. Tony, thank you. I will pop all of them in the show notes and it's always great to have a conversation with you. So I look forward to next time you do this. Likewise, look forward to doing it in person. Yeah, see you Tony. Thanks, Miki.

01:01:20
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that. It was a real pleasure to connect with Tony again, and I always value his opinion and his knowledge. All right, team, next week on the podcast, I speak to Dr. James Dawling, all about mechanisms for weight loss and energy expenditure and calculations of. Really fascinating conversation. Until then though, you can catch me over on Instagram,

01:01:49
threads and twitter @mikkiwilliden, facebook @mikkiwillidennutrition or head to my website mikkiwilliden.com and book a one on one call with me. Alright team, you have the best week.