Today's episode tackles a "weighty" topic: a triathlete's relationship with their body weight. How do you know what weight is optimal for you? Is leaner better? Is there an ideal “race weight” you should strive for? Should you measure body fat percentage and know your BMI in addition to information from a standard scale? Dr. Krista Austin and Advanced Sports Dietician Taryn Richardson answer these questions and more! Krista and Taryn help you identify areas of improvement by discussing weight from a health and performance perspective. A big thanks to UCAN for being a long time partner of the podcast! At TriDot we are huge believers in using UCAN to fuel our training and racing. To experience UCAN’s LIVSTEADY products for yourself, head to their website UCAN.co! Use the code “TriDot” to save 20 percent on your entire order. Don’t forget to sign up to get updates and early access to the TriDot Mark Allen Edition to be released Fall 2022: https://tridot.com/mark-allen-signup/ For more information about joining Taryn's Triathlon Nutrition Academy: https://www.dietitianapproved.com/academy
TriDot Podcast .153
Body Weight, Performance, And Triathlon
Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.
Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot podcast! Really interesting topic today, and I’ve got two nutrition experts with us to talk about it. We’ll be talking about the triathlete’s relationship with weight. Is leaner better? Is there an optimal race weight that we should all strive for? How does weight affect us on the swim, bike, and run? Our first guest joining us for this talk is our resident nutritional expert, Dr. Krista Austin. Krista is an exercise physiologist and nutritionist who consulted with the U.S. Olympic Committee and the English Institute of Sport. She has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology and sports nutrition, a Master’s degree in exercise physiology, and is a certified strength and conditioning specialist. Krista, welcome back on the show!
Krista Austin: Thanks Harley, I’m glad to be back! And we’re talking about a topic I consider to probably be one of the most important to triathletes in how they view performance. So ready to go today!
Andrew: Also joining us for this conversation, from Brisbane Australia, is Taryn Richardson. Taryn is an advanced sports dietician who specializes in helping triathletes unlock their potential with the power of nutrition. She is the founder and director of Dietician Approved, as well as the host of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. She has worked with endurance athletes for over 13 years, spending six years as the sports dietician for Triathlon Australia. She describes herself as a retired age‑group triathlete herself. But there’s still time, so we’ll see about that. Taryn, for the first time, welcome to the TriDot podcast!
Taryn Richardson: Thank you so much for having me! I hope to give you a perspective of a down-under dietician, and hopefully you can understand my accent!
Andrew: I absolutely can! I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always we'll roll through our warmup question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with our cooldown. Lots of good stuff, let’s get to it!
Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.
Andrew: It’s hard to be an athlete and not appreciate a good Hollywood film about athletes. Some sports movies set out to inspire us, some try to make us laugh, and some just aim to tell a good story. Taryn, Krista, from the classics to modern day and everything in between, what sports movie sequence would you say is your favorite? Taryn, since it’s your first time on the show, I’ll go to you first here.
Taryn: Ah, Harley, you’re killing me! No judgment, but I’m not a huge movie buff.
Andrew: No worries!
Taryn: There’s going to be people who will probably go like, “What is wrong with this girl??” But yeah, I’d much rather get outside than sit down for 2½ hours to watch a movie. I’ve watched a fair amount of movies as a kid though, so when you asked me this question the first thing that comes to mind is “The Mighty Ducks”. I played a lot of ice hockey when I lived in Canada, and I just remember it really distinctly as a kid. They’re the underdogs, they suck at ice hockey, they spend the whole movie sucking, and then they win the championship with that final shot. That’s probably one of the key memories I have as a child watching movies.
Andrew: That, Taryn, to this day is one that my wife and I will go back and revisit. Mighty Ducks 1, Mighty Ducks 2…they are classics, they never get old. Dr. Austin, we have one nomination for the classic 90’s sports film, “The Mighty Ducks”. What are you going with here?
Krista: The first one at the top of my list, if you were to go from start to finish, is “Chariots of Fire”. A real old movie, but a good movie, a great message to it.
Andrew: It’s got a classic soundtrack.
Krista: Yeah, very classic soundtrack, great messaging. I’ve had other favorites over the years, but I think all mine have a theme and a message to it. The other two that always come to my mind that I’ve loved is “We are Marshall” and “Remember the Titans”. I think if you look at any of my sport movies, they’ve got a key message that they’re giving us. I really like it, but it takes me a few years, two decades I guess, to get through all the movies I actually have come to mind.
Andrew: “Remember the Titans” was one that I thought about saying here, so Krista you took that one before I could get to it. That sequence particularly where Denzel Washington’s character, Coach Boone, has them running through the woods, and they arrive at Gettysburg Battlefield and there’s the motivational speech, and the whole sequence of the team coming together as a team, that one just really stands out in that particular film. Great pick there.
Did either of you see Will Smith’s newest film, “King Richard”? That one came to mind for me. As a tennis fan – Dr. Austin, I know you’re a previous tennis player as well – there’s one sequence in there where Will Smith’s character – “King” Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena – he’s been coaching the girls since they were kids. He’s just been driving their careers forward and doing anything he can to see them succeed. There’s a sequence where Venus is playing her first professional match on a main court where there’s a big crowd, a big audience. Richard Williams is watching the match from the tunnel. He’s not even watching it from the stands, he has to go in the tunnel and watch from courtside. It’s just a really emotional sequence to see this father, who’s poured so much of his heart into his daughter’s tennis career, just realizing that in a way she’s made it. That was a really, really great sequence from that movie. That’s my pick here.
Guys, we’re going to throw this question out to you as we always do. Make sure that you are a part of the I AM TriDot Facebook group. We throw this question out every single Monday when the new episode drops, so go find the post asking you: from all the sports movies out there in the movie-verse, what sports movie sequence really hits home for you? Whether it makes you laugh, makes you cry, or inspires you, I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…
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No matter what kind of relationship you have with your scale, we all weigh something. But is it the right something? And how does that something affect us on our swim, bike, and run? Here to educate us on the triathlete’s relationship with weight is Dr. Krista Austin and advanced sports dietician Taryn Richardson. Now Taryn, our audience is very familiar with Dr. Austin, and they are big fans of hers. We’ve gotten to know her pretty well over all the episodes she’s joined us for. So Taryn, since it’s your first time on the show, let’s start today just getting to know you a little bit. What led you to become a sports dietician?
Taryn: Yeah, great question. I don’t have an amazing backstory. I’d be really terrible on a reality TV show because I don’t have anything crazy interesting. I didn’t go through any crazy hardship to get to where I am today. But I guess I just love sport. I’ve been swimming and cycling since I could walk, basically, and played netball all through school as well. I’m from a very, very active family, a very competitive family, and I really loved science at school. I was really good at biology, and absolutely love anatomy and physiology. It took me a while to understand that sports dietician was the ultimate combination of those two things together –
Andrew: Yeah, good point.
Taryn: – but it really is a match made in heaven. I knew when I studied dietetics that I wanted to be a sports dietician. I never wanted to be a clinical dietician or work in any other space. It was a bit of a journey. For Australian dieticians it takes a four-year undergrad degree, then I did an extra two years for the International Olympic Committee sports nutrition course as well, and I did a two‑year fellowship at the Australian Institute of Sport. So it’s been a long slog journey to get there, but it’s just perfect for me. I absolutely love what I do.
Andrew: And it really shows that if somebody has a distinction of being a dietician, they’ve put in the work to earn that distinction, which you have. So you pretty much exclusively work with endurance athletes, and you love triathletes in particular. Why did you decide to specialize in triathlon nutrition?
Taryn: It was definitely just a natural evolution. I started doing triathlon myself right out of uni, and fell in deep love with the sport. I love the training, and I love the crazy people that like to do and fit three sports into their week. That’s definitely me all over. I found a local triathlon squad at that time, and it was the best years of my life. I know a lot of triathletes will resonate with that. It’s just so fun, and you make friends for life because you are deep with people, right? You see them in hurt holes. You see them at their worst, but then you also get to hang out with them through those really high highs as well, so really deep friendships formed over those years. I’ve raced all over Australia. When I lived in London I raced over there as well, and the Worlds, and I just love the sport. And working in private practice for many years, I saw a lot of clients from all different sports. When you start, you just kind of do a bit of everything and figure out what you do and don’t like, and I figured out really quickly that endurance sports nutrition was definitely my interest. Like, the longer the better, the crazier the better. Working with triathletes, I get them, and I understand the sport. They’re my kind of crazy.
Andrew: So Dr. Austin, Taryn, you both work with athletes on their nutrition. As you do that, what are some of the myths that you encounter when it comes to body weight? What are some of the mindset corrections you find yourself making with triathletes on the relationship with body and weight?
Krista: I guess what I find with a lot of athletes, and I think it’s just a misconception that’s happened over time, is how are they truly supposed to view weight in the context of their sport? For the most part, they don’t know how to look at it from a performance perspective, versus health, versus even what the media imposes upon them with regards to perceptions around body weight in the sport itself. So I would just say on the whole that’s one of the biggest differences with me.
Andrew: Yeah, because those are very different things, what my body needs to perform, versus what I need it to be just for general health. Taryn as you’re working with athletes, what are the things that you’re noticing that you have to debunk just in the relationship with weight?
Taryn: Yeah, it’s a really hard one, because triathlon is not an aesthetic sport like gymnastics, but you’ve still got to get into a pretty tight tri suit, and you’re on the pool deck semi-naked a lot of the time. So I know triathletes are quite conscious and self-conscious about their body composition. The hardest part for me is trying to get them to understand that their weight is not necessarily linked to performance in an age‑group sense. We’re talking about having enough energy for training – not bonking, hitting the wall, falling into a heap, getting sick all the time, and further along that continuum, ending up in things like low energy availability that people put themselves into because they’re constantly striving to be leaner, to be lighter, to be faster. But does that really matter for some people? The foundation really has to come from eating healthy first, and a lot of people don’t really get that. They do crazy things with their diet, they starve themselves, or they overeat, or they cut carbs to lose weight, and then they don’t have the energy to support their training and their performance. So with an age‑group population, it’s trying to get people to understand that weight doesn’t necessarily equal better performance. Look at Blummenfelt, right? He’s getting a lot of media at the moment for his body composition, and I don’t really want to put more limelight on this because I think it’s just a ridiculous conversation, but he is what, in people’s minds, not the idea body composition for triathlon. But he’s smashing it, so what does it really matter? It’s finding the ideal weight and body composition for you so that you’re healthy and you’re functioning to the best of your ability, and your performing doesn’t necessarily always mean you have to be the lightest and the leanest to get there. I guess it’s trying to get people to understand that, that what actually matters first and foremost is that they’re healthy, rather than always trying to get to race weight, get as light as possible, because that doesn’t always equal better performance.
Andrew: Getting to attend a lot of Ironman events, a lot of Clash Endurance events here in the United States, it’s really cool. When we’re out on course and we’re cheering on TriDot athletes and we’re watching folks racing. You see the pros go by, and their body compositions are all very different. Some of the pros are shorter, some are taller and leaner, some are a little bulkier like Kristian Blummenfelt, the example you gave. Same thing on the women’s side, and when the elite age‑groupers come through. It’s always really cool, and it’s a great reminder just spectating, to just watch the athletes go by and realize that there are a lot of different shapes and sizes to strong and fast. Tall and lean isn’t the only shape you can be to be strong and fast. But as age‑groupers watch elites, and they watch the pros, and Krista, as you’re working with triathletes, do you find that the Jan Frodenos and the pros who are long and lean, does it give off this misconception that we’re supposed to be light and lean as triathletes?
Krista: You know, this probably gives you an indication of my age, before those athletes ever really even came onto the scene, I was working in triathlon and I had a female athlete that people were always kind of surprised as to where she started the year, prior to going and really smashing it on the international stage. They would comment about it because she was heavier. She did carry more body fat. But our strategy was that we would eventually get to where we needed to be. That we would enjoy our food, stay eating and make food a part of life. Then yes, over the season, eventually, you get to her better – I don’t want to say ideal – but better race weight. But we never focused on the scale, and what people noticed was that she was never the “leanest” athlete out there. I think genetically, to be honest with you, she was never going to be that person. But she sure did smash it. So I guess because for so long I’ve had those athletes where I kind of chucked weight and body comp out the door and we just performed and performed well, they have the medals to show that, I think I never really had one stereotype. I remember working with George Dallam when he was building Hunter Kemper here in the U.S., and he talks about how they actually approached nutrition with him, because he has a phrase in his book where he talks about how he got him to give up Krispy Kreme donuts.
Andrew: Oh no!
Krista: Because here he was #5 in the world, and if I remember correctly, I’m going off of memory, he said, “He went from donut-eater to leader,” and became #1 in the world. And what happened was, it was like, “Hey, let’s give up some of the Krispy Kremes,” and next thing you know, you do have an athlete that’s leaner. He probably was also lighter maybe. I can’t really remember, but it was like, “Hey, you’re close to being on top,” but he was that tall, leaner, longer-legged athlete. So yes, is that body type there? Have my own athletes shown that body type over the years? Yeah, at the very elite. I can tell you the guys that are under eight hours for the Ironman, yeah, they may be standing there at 6'3” and 165 to 170. It’s not overly light. I coached another professional triathlete that was very lean, but he didn’t have the height. He didn’t have the height-to-length torso ratio that you see in some of these elite athletes. But was he very good? Yeah, absolutely. So I think for me it’s always been kind of, “Here’s everyone I’ve worked with. We’ve worked with their body, gone with it, gone with what works for them, and just kept going.” But I think that’s a function of years of just being fortunate enough to be around some of the best coaches in the world, that never focused on body weight or composition but rather performance, and just accepting that whatever body showed up, if we can train and we can improve performance, let’s just keep going, let’s just fuel our body and fuel training. If we fuel our body, we can do a lot of work. We can train smarter not just harder, and try to optimize performance. So I think for me it’s been so many years, Harley, of seeing athlete after athlete, that I just have said, “Okay, we can make anything work.”
Taryn: That’s a really good point, I think Dr. Austin’s nailed it there. It has to be individual, right? You have to work with the athlete in front of you, and we shouldn’t all be fitting into this one norm that we may be looking at the elites for. The ultimate is performance, right? You could be super light and lean and suck. And maybe putting on a little bit of muscle mass, putting on a little bit of weight on the scale – not necessarily fat mass – might mean better performance for you. It’s really just about N=1, working with the athlete in front of you, and figuring out where you work best rather than trying to fit into what is the idea.
Andrew: Taryn, for triathletes, what would you say are the health implications of being overweight or underweight, and how does that affect our swimming, biking, and running?
Taryn: Yeah, it depends when we’re talking about overweight and underweight, are we talking about clinical overweight, obesity, that sort of thing? The health implications that we know the more body fat you have on, to that point where we’re in an unhealthy weight range: your high risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, that sort of metabolic disorder type of thing. We don’t necessarily want to be there. Then underweight has similar health consequences as well. We run the risk of under-fueling, being in low energy availability, being sick all the time, getting stress injuries. So there is this nice middle ground where we do want to see it, but it doesn’t mean that there’s people outside of that scope of the spectrum as well. You see athletes that are potentially overweight or carrying a bit too much body fat, and they’re healthy and that’s just their body type. Then the other end of the spectrum you see people that are really lean and really under-muscled, low levels of body fat, and they’re not particularly healthy either. So with triathlon, we want to be fast, and the message probably in history was the leaner the better. But now we’re really understanding that you need to be strong. You have to have that power on the bike, particularly when we’re seeing more draft-legal racing on the circuit. You have to have a strong swim to get out there on the front on the bike like the elites race, and then have the strength to then push through and run off the back of the bike. It’s about strength now too, rather than just being light and lean and fast. It also depends on the distance of the race, too. A sprint distance athlete might have a completely different body composition to an Ironman athlete. But I guess my philosophy is that you can’t out-train a bad diet. You can eat a whole heap of crap when you train for three sports in a week, but that doesn’t make you a healthy athlete no matter what sort of weight or body composition you have.
Andrew: Absolutely. Very, very true. Krista, as you’re working with clients and athletes, have you seen what effects of maybe being a little bit too heavy or a little bit too light have you seen in your athletes?
Krista: Well, I think what you have in terms of the spectrum that comes through is that I have people who are overweight, and they’re using triathlon to help them get medical conditions under control. Which isn’t a bad thing. They really use the triathlon community to help provide that support, and I think it’s a great level of support, where we do have to teach them that weight loss is okay under those circumstances, because it’s a different circumstance than the athlete that shows up and says, “Well, how fast can I get if I lose more weight?” So there’s different types of weight loss that you’ll see in the sport. Then there’s even those that show up as transfer athletes from one of the individual sports, and they have to learn things like gaining weight actually is going to help you on the swim or the bike because you need more power. You’re too light, you’re a runner, and just as a function of body type, you’re not strong enough. But if you want to do this, then you’re going to have to put weight on. At the same time, I’ve had ones that are naturally very light: an actress that actually came for nutrition support, she was using triathlon to get ready for a movie. And she had never actually really trained. But when she showed up, she had been a model, she was naturally just very thin, a very healthy female, good bone density, the whole bit. And she used triathlon to gain weight to go prep for her movie. And she found that she got that much better at the disciplines of triathlon as she gained about ten pounds of pure muscle mass over a six-month period. You’ll see a lot of different things, but in that individual’s case the question is what would happen if she’d just stayed as light as she was and didn’t have to put on muscle mass. It would have been interesting, because she was naturally very light. So I get those athletes that naturally are that small, and they do quite well, to be honest. They can develop the strength, develop the power. So what I’m always trying to remember with them is at what point do we hit a performance plateau, despite the fact that you eat everything including the kitchen sink, and you’re still super tiny. So sometimes we find that we let them stay small until they do hit that plateau, and then it’s like, “Hey, we’ve got to figure something out here.” So what are we going to do to improve power on the bike? Usually for me it’s the bike that they come in for, because they’ll hit a plateau there, and that’s the first plateau they hit.
Andrew: Now Krista I know you’re not going to name-drop and tell us who the actress is and what movie she was preparing for.
Taryn: Aw, come on!
Andrew: Although I am super-duper curious. It could have even been somebody in Mighty Ducks, Taryn, we don’t know! Maybe that’s the role the actress was getting ready for, to be a hockey player, and “quack quack quack” it up on the ice.
Taryn: Interesting that she chose to do triathlon to gain weight. It wouldn’t have been my first pick of sport if you needed to gain weight.
Krista: Well, you needed to gain lean body mass, right? You’ve got to learn to weight lift too. The actress was learning to do combatives as well, so needed a good cardiovascular system to really recover from those combatives, because those were pretty intensive for the movie.
Andrew: So it was a fight movie!
Taryn: Yeah, getting more insight here, Harley! Getting warmer!
Andrew: So, completely anecdotally, I feel fit and healthy when I’m clocking in around 138 to 140 pounds. That’s 65.5 kilograms, thank you Taryn for that in our notes. I haven’t been below that since maybe 5th, 6th grade. Above that, I start feeling a little weighty above 145 pounds, 65 kilograms. But that is all purely anecdotal, and that’s for me as a smaller guy. So Krista, how can we all identify what a healthy weight is for us?
Krista: With my clients, when they talk to me about manipulating body weight, I always find out where are they truly in their triathlon journey? Are they in a place where manipulating weight is really the answer to improving performance? And if so, how do we test drive a small enough yet meaningful shift to help get them to a point where they can truly evaluate whether or not weight loss or weight gain long-term is actually helping them. So it’s one of those things where I say, “Look, you can have an acute effect, where you think you’ve improved performance, but really the long-term question is when you sit there and you stay there, what happens to your ability to get gains in training?” So for me, there’s never one “here’s the answer, you’ve got it written out.” To me it’s about a process that we take more long-term to understand the response that occurs over a time of training. It’s, “where do you perform your best?” And some of my athletes, I don’t even really focus on weight. I think I asked one the other day, I said, “Do you ever weigh yourself?” And they’re like, “Yeah, every once in a while, I haven’t really thought about it here recently.” I guess that’s the perspective I come from, is that if they just want to ignore weight and focus on fueling their bodies, doing good workouts, I’m okay with that. And ironically they get better and better, they get faster and faster, and I like the fact that they take the focus off of their body and actually start to get so into the performance side. Also their questions don’t become about body weight or composition to me, they start going, “Okay, am I going to hit my plateau in my max power? Am I going to improve my FTP?” Then I notice they’ve had this huge shift from body weight, in coming to me nutritionally for things that are more or less related to concerns over how they look, and they all of a sudden have a focus on performance. I think that’s the shift we’ve got to get every triathlete to make, in my opinion.
Andrew: Yeah, and they’re asking you about that as opposed to asking you, “Hey, should I be five pounds lighter or heavier?” Taryn, what are your thoughts here?
Taryn: Yeah, I’m with Dr. Austin on that. I’ve evolved my practice over the years as well. Going from having triathletes come at you constantly, wanting to drop five kilos or ten kilos, which I don’t know what that is in pounds, sorry, you’ll have to convert for me.
Andrew: No worries.
Taryn: Yeah, flipping that script to more health and performance, that’s definitely my focus now. I don’t weigh people either, and I’m doing less and less skin folds over time, because it’s really about how you feel. Are you performing in your sessions? Are you actually healthy at that weight? So for you, you figured out your sweet spot in a way, you’ve been doing this for a while now. You know where you feel good and where you don’t feel good. Most triathletes know that, generally. As long as their weight is in a relatively stable range. I also get a lot of Ironman athletes that will use Ironman to drive shifts in body composition. They come and want help with their whole prep for an Ironman, knowing they need to lose ten kilos in that process, and then they use the Ironman training to drop their body composition, and then I’m like, “Okay, this time I want to see you after your event, and we’re going to work on balance afterwards, so we don’t have this big shift in body composition to lose next time.” Sometimes they go a bit radio silence, and they come back for the next Ironman, but my priority at the moment is trying to get them to really fix or get that deep underlying thing that’s shifting their body composition in huge ranges over their season, like what is actually going on here. Because that’s not great for our health, if we have huge, big shifts in body composition and you use triathlon to drive that in a way. So I’m with Dr. Austin, same sort of thing. It's all about performance for me, and making sure you are healthy. That’s the number one thing, then once you’ve got those foundations right, then we can start looking at really fine tuning, tweaking, and finessing things. And remember that your body composition is going to shift over time too, potentially. The longer you do the sport for, the fitter you are, the faster you get, your body composition and your ideal weight is going to evolve. It's never going to be stationary at this one number. You will probably gain muscle mass over the years, and strength training, the fourth discipline, you’ve got to do that too. Not many triathletes do strength, but try and change that. Your number on the scale is going to shift and evolve, and you have to be okay with that and understand what that means for you. But you will know in yourself where you feel good and where you don’t feel good. A lot of triathletes will have a number in mind for their race weight because that’s where they’ve performed well in the past, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the exact number you need to get to the next time to perform well. It might be slightly different to that. A word of caution around having an ideal number, because it needs to be flexible in your approach in that. But I guess having an understanding of what you’re trying to achieve in the first place: first and foremost, performance is key, and overall health too. Because like I said before, you can be skinny fat. You can be really underweight, under‑muscled, and not healthy. And conversely, you can have more body fat on and have a really healthy diet and be performing really well. So it’s got to be individual. I’m going to say that again. It depends on the athlete in front of you.
Andrew: It’s interesting you bring up race weight, because I hear athletes all the time talk about, “I’m a certain weight most of the year, and I know I’ve got the Ironman on the schedule, or I’ve got that Olympic or sprint on the schedule,” and it almost becomes like New Year’s Eve, “I’m going to get back to a healthy weight because it’s a new year.” And for us as triathletes, it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to get back to a healthy weight because I have a race on this date.” That’s essentially what that guy is doing when he comes to you and says, “I want to see this number on the scale by the time I go race Ironman.” Dr. Austin, when it comes to race weight, it seems just by the way we’re talking right now that race weight is a myth. It’s not a thing. We shouldn’t strive to be a certain weight on race day. I know a lot of athletes do have that mindset. So when you’re working with folks, what do you tell them about pursuing a certain weight by race day?
Krista: You know, I think they come with that question, and it’s about finding the way to talk them out of that focus when they’re there with you, and to teach them the lessons you’ve learned over the years about how your body changes by jumping into a sport, or how even being in a sport, the body will change if you’ve been doing something for ten plus years. And Taryn can probably speak to this, that even during Covid what I noticed was that, even for myself and a lot of clients noticed this: because we weren’t in the weight room as much, or we weren’t training as much out in the pool, our body overall shifted. You just have shifts in your structural changes. But they said, “Well, it was actually kind of beneficial, Krista, because all of a sudden I got better at X or Y, but I still weigh the same. So why do I still weigh the same, and now I have this body structure?” Then all of a sudden they start to learn that there’s no magic number on the scale. So I try to take the focus off. But when they do come for that reason, typically it involves working with them more long-term to let them see that outcome and the fact that it did work, and maybe have a little bit more faith in the training that they’re doing, or at least a little more patience. Because a lot of times it’s the patience factor. Especially with Ironman racing, that is a “want-it-now” culture. And I’m like, “No, you’re talking about a sport where you bring up one discipline a year. So if you want to get better, it’s going to take you three years to fully realize where you want to go.” So I say, “Just prepare to be diligent with your nutrition for three years to see where it actually gets you.” And then if they are, they might come back to you and say, “You know what, I learned a lot in the process about foods, their properties, the whole bit, and sure enough, I got where I wanted to go, and naturally my body morphed towards the training that I was doing.” Or not doing, sometimes, during Covid-19. So I think a lot of time it’s just about walking through that journey with them and getting the messaging that they do hear from the media out of their mind, and then realizing, “She really doesn’t believe that there’s a magical race weight.” So I think we have to sit there and say, “Here are the elite athletes, where they may have to find that race weight, they may have to be cognizant of it, the impact on bone density, things of that nature.” Then there’s the rest of it, to be honest, where we have to remember we need to enjoy this, do it for health, and just really enjoy what it is you’re engaging in. But you know, with the elite athletes, we have found some good thresholds that we’re cognizant of, but the question is how do we get there each year, how do we protect the body?
Taryn: Taryn, as you work with age‑groupers, which I know you’re fond of doing, if they come to you and they have a mindset of, “I need to be X number on the scale,” and that’s a mindset we want to discourage, how do you talk them off that ledge of being so obsessed with that number on the scale and instead focusing on their performance. What are the tips and tricks to kind of switching that mindset around, if that makes sense?
Andrew: Yeah, working with the age‑group population is so different to the elites. I’ve had that range of the spectrum, so I’ve done both and everything in between. Working with beginners who don’t even know how to clip their shoes into their bikes yet, all the way up to Kona winners in our Australian Elite Triathlon team, and everyone in between that. In working with age‑group athletes, which is what I mostly do these days, yeah, they always talk about race weight, and my biggest strategy for them is that they’ve got so many things to get right first before we even start to talk about that, right? They don’t have any idea how to eat properly for recovery. They suck at that. They have no idea what to do for pre‑training nutrition. They don’t know what to do in a training session. There are so many things that you can do first. Most commonly, when you get somebody eating properly, and eating well and fueling to support training, eating fruits and vegetables and all those sorts of things, their body composition naturally changes without having to chase it and without having to drive it. I guess that’s a really common theme for me, with age‑groupers, is that first and foremost we’re trying to get them to eat properly, and get them to understand how to eat on a day-to-day basis to support training for three sports. If you can do that better, then your body composition will naturally change. You’re going to drop body fat without even having to try and do that. You don’t have to count calories, you don’t have to put yourself into a calorie deficit. Let training drive some of that change, and interlace that with perfect nutrition. Not perfect, you know, we’re all human. But doing the right things with what you’re doing for day-to-day periodization with your fueling. Recovery nutrition, what you’re doing in your sessions so you’re not hitting the wall at the end of a long ride and then spending the rest of the day on the couch asleep because you’ve just smashed yourself and not fueled properly. So with age‑groupers there’s so many bigger fish to fry first, and what I find is that your body composition will naturally change, and you’ll lose body fat, just by focusing on other things. I guess that’s my tip or insider trick or secret when it comes to working with age‑groupers, is that there are so many things that need to happen first before you even tackle the race weight conversation. I don’t tend to get people to weigh themselves. I will do skin folds with people that are local, I find them quite useful. We’ll talk about it I’m sure, but scales are not a great way to track body composition. Doing all of those other things first is a really easy way for them to see that they can change their body composition without trying, just by focusing on eating well.
Andrew: Very interesting. I know that there are some triathletes, and you both have shared stories about some, that come to the sport because they want to put on some weight or they want to lose some weight, and they know just from general health, “I need to lose X amount of pounds to be a healthier person overall.” Maybe it’s not about ideal race weight. It’s just about, “I’m making triathlon part of my weight-loss journey, or weight-gain journey.” How can we identify if we are a triathlete who maybe needs to lose some weight, and would just benefit in our daily health from losing some weight. What are some signs that that could be a positive thing for us?
Krista: For me, I go back to just general medical criteria, if they have any medical conditions, whether it’s high cholesterol or high blood pressure. I also talk about their joints, talk about their ability to sleep. Overall general health and medical aspects is when I typically ask the triathlete to say, “Maybe we need to take a look at weight loss or weight gain,” whatever it is for them. So there are those indicators. And overall I think what I find with most triathletes is that if you teach them good nutrition, everything changes anyway. Or if you teach them that once you begin to Ironman, that is not a license to eat anything you want, because they think it is. I remember the friend that first came to me and said, “Oh, I started marathon training, and I’m now eating all this pasta. I have no idea why I’m gaining weight.” And I said, “Well, you don’t need all the pasta.”
Andrew: Because you’re eating all the pasta!
Taryn: Not that pasta’s bad!
Krista: Not that pasta’s bad, but there was a license there all of a sudden to engage in more. So I think one of the things I see with the age‑group triathletes is that we’ve just got to get back to normative eating, teaching them about mixed meals, timing, snacking frequently, avoiding bad habits, and creating that progression initially. It’s like one of the TriDotters told me here recently when I gave him an example meal plan and he goes, “Oh, maybe that’s why I’ve gained weight. Maybe I don’t need keto, because what you’re telling me to eat is a lot less than I typically eat on a day‑to-day basis when I’m on, like, the ‘see-food diet’.” And I said, “Probably.” You just need to fuel to a certain level, and body weight will come into its own natural rhythm and steady-state, instead of you having these massive fluctuations. I think you have to realize that if they don’t pay attention to it and they are having health issues, that then you have an open door to walk through and help them start working towards it. On the flip side of that, I’ll have females come see me and their endocrine system’s been stopped out by the sport, and that becomes your open door to talk about what may have caused that, and how do we regenerate it. So I think there’s two sides of the equation there that you’ll see in the health metrics that we use, like standard medical testing.
Andrew: So Taryn, for an athlete who, maybe with where they are in their health journey, they know they need to lose some pounds and lose some weight, they want triathlon to be a part of that, it seems like, from our conversation, that if they train and they eat healthy, that will naturally happen anyway. I guess my biggest question is, how can somebody go about losing the weight they want to lose without under-fueling for their workouts? Because we still have to fuel our training, so how do we walk that tightrope of fueling for our workouts, but still eating at the rate we need to be eating to lose weight?
Taryn: Great question. If we’re talking about age‑groupers, then there’s definitely some bigger fish to fry with what people eat than trying to get them count calories, stick within a certain calorie budget, and really trying to chase that weight loss. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that with a triathlete. I actually don’t find that works particularly well in practice, because it’s really hard to figure out how much energy you’re expending on a day‑to-day basis. You can track your calorie expenditure on your watch or your bike computer and all those sorts of things, but it is an estimate. We use prediction equations, and you can plug things like your height and your weight in there, but it is still an estimate. Then there’s also challenges with tracking your intake too. If we’re trying to really track calories and energy intake, there is a huge range of things that affect those numbers. Like your ability to estimate, if you’re not a dietician and have some mad skills in that space. And also we know that what’s on food labels has a tolerance of 20% in either direction. So a muesli bar that is – what’s it in calories? Hold on. What’s a muesli bar, 150 calories? I’m trying to do American conversion in my head.
Andrew: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Taryn: Dr. Austin, help me out here!
Krista: Yeah, those are very variable in the U.S., just so you know. It might be 100 calories or 400.
Andrew: Yeah, anywhere from 100 to 400, yeah.
Taryn: Ah, no kilojoules. So if we have a muesli bar that’s maybe 100 calories, it could be 20% more than that in actuality of what’s in the packet, or 20% less. So there’s a lot of things that we need to take into consideration if we’re trying to do that. I tend to not do that with triathletes, because I don’t find it works. When we’re trying to drive some body fat loss in the age group population, there’s always bigger fish to fry. Is this somebody having ice cream before bed that they haven’t told you about?
That we can easily change. What I focus on, my whole philosophy with fueling, is getting people to do what they can to the best of their ability around a training session, find that’s where you’re going to get the best bang for your buck out of your body. If you’re doing good pre, during, and post‑training nutrition, that sets the whole rest of your day up, right? You are more likely to eat well for the rest of the day if you’ve done a good job of fueling and recovering for that morning session, and less likely to have “snack-cidents” or “snack-tastrophes” in the afternoon if you’ve done that. If you’re doing that, if you’re eating well, you’re full and satisfied from your meals, you’re ticking all the right boxes, then you’re more likely to make better food choices for the rest of the day. So the number one thing that I get my athletes to understand is how to eat for different types of training days. How to eat on a light training day, where you might only have one easy aerobic session, that’s a light day for a triathlete. Or that elusive rest day, how to eat on those types of days versus a really double-hard session day where you need to eat differently. Then eating differently on a really long endurance session like a four-hour ride or a two‑hour run. Your nutrition on those days needs to look different. And when you figure that out and get that right, then your body composition will, again, naturally flow into some decreased body fat. Because periodization is the number one thing I find age‑group athletes need to understand, and everything else slots in place after you’ve done that.
Andrew: Very interesting that you both are just repeatedly, if the training is right and you’re fueling for the training right and you’re not overdoing it on three desserts in the evening times, then the body composition will follow. As opposed to focusing on the body composition and trying to do certain things to drive that. Just do the right training right, eat the right things at the right times, and just let your body do what it’s going to do. It’s very interesting.
Taryn: Two dieticians are better than one, right?
Andrew: Absolutely!
Krista: You know what I find, Harley, with the TriDotters, is that every once in a while they give me a test to see how much I really know with regards to everything. And at the end of the day, they’ll go through the nutrition but they won’t be doing their training right, and I keep telling them that training is actually really important, that nutritional loan does not work. So they’ll work and they’ll get the nutrition right, I tell them they’ve got to get into a steady state, the whole bit, then they’re like, “You’re serious about this training component, right?” And I say, “Yeah, I really am.” Then they start training and they’re like, “You know what, you were right! When we burn calories in training, we lose weight!”
Andrew: It makes a big difference, who’d a’ thunk it?
Krista: Yeah, and they give you that little test to see if I really understand the interaction between nutrition and training.
Andrew: So on the other side of the coin, and Krista, you give a great story about our actress who may or may not have been Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider who was trying – she’s shaking her head now, so we’re going to keep making guesses.
Taryn: She’s going a little bit red there, maybe we’re getting warmer.
Krista: You can find out by Google, I think. If I remember correctly.
Taryn: Ooh, hot tip.
Andrew: I know what I’m doing after this episode is over. But with that story, we heard about an example of an athlete who came to you and wanted to train for triathlon, and wanted to tailor her nutrition towards putting on some healthy weight. There might be some athletes at home listening that are in that boat who know, “Maybe I want to take a test-drive of being five pounds heavier than I am right now.” Krista, what are the best practice for healthily putting on some pounds?
Krista: You know, I’d probably use the same approach we used with her. We’d use some good nutrient timing, but we also used some really good strength training. Strength training was a big part of her daily diet, I guess you could say. We timed the macros that we consumed, and we made sure it was in and around strength training that was designed to build muscle, that was designed for hypertrophy, for strength. And that really was the road she went down. Yes, she needed the cardiovascular side because you can’t try a triathlon without it, if you want to try one. You also need it, like in her case, to do combatives that were required for the movie itself. So at the end of the day, you had to balance the cardiovascular training, the triathlon training, the strength training and nutrient timing to create an overall effect where she could gain those ten pounds, and it was purely muscle mass. You have to teach that balance, and a lot of that’s done through the nutrient timing side, and understanding how crucial strength training is in building muscle mass, and the balance that comes with the actual cardiovascular side. I would say the actual tri training was not too much, if that makes sense. It was just enough to get her fit enough to truly try to do what she wanted to do, a goal, and to also support the ability to do the combatives. It’s a nice integration. You have to realize that all three of those have to become integrated appropriately. She had a great team. It was very impressive how the team worked together, from the nutrition to strength training to the triathlon training, and that’s what has to happen for everyone. But I start with the weight room typically, with most triathletes, and teach them about hypertrophy and heavy lifting and nutrient timing, and all of a sudden, the next thing you know, if you’ve done nutrition right you do have some good gains in muscle mass.
Andrew: So a big question, a lot of folks listening have heard both of you at this point on the episode reference that there’s not a whole lot of point in paying attention to the scale. Maybe it’s even best to not pay attention to the scale. A lot of us have scales at home that we’re used to stepping on every so often – some of us occasionally, some of us every day, some of us every week. For those athletes who, maybe they have a scale, maybe they’re used to tracking things like BMI or body fat percentage, talk to me about these metrics. Are these things, Taryn, that really matter and we maybe should occasionally pay attention to them? Or are they things, based on this conversation, we should just kind of ignore? Are you giving us permission to throw our scales in the trash can?
Taryn: No, you need to keep them so you can do some hydration testing yourself at home. So don’t throw them out. But it’s about having a healthy relationship with the scales, right? We don’t want to become obsessive and weighing ourselves every day, or multiple times a day, because they’re really just a blunt tool. They’re going to give you a number, and triathletes love numbers and data and spreadsheets and all those sorts of things, right? It is one tool that you have in your toolbelt, but you also need to understand that there are so many factors that can manipulate that number on the scale. You could drink a liter of water and jump on the scales and you’re going to weigh a kilo heavier. So it depends on how hydrated you are, or how dehydrated you are. Or how much content you have in your whole gastrointestinal tract. Like have you got a really high-fiber diet one day and so you weigh a bit more, or have you got a really low-fiber diet the next day and you weigh less. There are so many things that would change the number on the scale. And you need to understand that, because otherwise you get caught up in your head and it starts to mess with your mind, and you think, “Man, I’ve just gained weight and I ate really well yesterday.” So I definitely would not encourage you to weigh yourself very regularly. Maybe jump on once a month and just see what’s going on. But if you’ve listened to today, maybe it doesn’t necessarily matter, right? There are other things that we can do first without having to chase a decrease or an increase on that number on the scales. If you’re female, your weight’s going to shift across your monthly cycle as well with hormones, so don’t bank on that as your sole tool for measuring body composition. There are lots of tools that we have in our cap as a dietician to track body composition. There’s lots of inaccuracies with all of the measurements. It’s just about understanding N=1: who is the athlete in front of you, what are we trying to achieve? What is going to be the best way to monitor and measure, if that’s what you want to do, but not get caught up in our head around whether things are happening or not? Because there’s lots of inaccuracies with the way that we measure, whether that matters or not. How close are we dialing things in? You will be able to tell with your clothes and how they fit. A lot of men might use their belt buckle, and that’s totally fine. As long as you’re feeling good and you’ve got energy, you’re performing well. If you’re losing a notch on your belt buckle, then who cares what the scales say?
Andrew: I’m going to close out our main set with a question for our TriDot coaches. Maybe of our coaches listen to the podcast, and they are amazing at guiding TriDot athletes through their triathlon experience. How would you both advise triathlon coaches to best navigate conversations about weight with an athlete? Krista, what would you say?
Krista: You know, it really depends on the extent to which they are comfortable in addressing it. But typically what I want everyone to know, and this is what I would like coaches to send, the message is that we can’t magically know what weight is best for you without learning over time. Sometimes you feel pressured, whether you’re a practitioner like Taryn and I, or you’re a coach, that they want an answer. My biggest encouragement is don’t give a quick short-term answer. Rather, educate them that adaptations to training and performance over time can guide us, and then eventually we can find what is best for you with regard to body weight and composition. So I think it’s about not producing the knee-jerk reaction, in my opinion, and I think a lot of times coaches feel pressured to give that answer. I know I feel pressured sometimes to give answers, even with having that background. Or they say, “Well, we’re trusting the process, Krista. What’s going to be the magic outcome?” That pressure is there whether you’re a coach or you’re Taryn and I, to be honest. So sometimes I say, “Yeah, we have a process, and we’re going to take it. But at the same time, the outcome may not be 100% in the direction you want to. But we will have a process to get to the best that we can be.” So I know it’s tough, but don’t produce that knee-jerk reaction. I think they see the numbers – you’re working with Type A personalities typically in triathlon – and they want to hit that goal, hit the number. And I just go, “Okay, but we’ve got to realize that we’re working with human beings right now, and things may change.” I know that some of the challenges people have always said to me, “Well, you’re supposed to be really good at this right? You’re going to create these magical effects.”
Taryn: No pressure!
Krista: Yeah, no pressure! And I’m like, “Well, there’s your part too,” and there’s what the body can tolerate, and how you respond.
Andrew: Yeah, true.
Krista: And what I find is sometimes you get magical equations pulled together for people, it looks really good on paper. It’s usually how people hear about us, because they probably have great results with Taryn or they have good results with myself, and that’s what gets the word out that we’re supposed to know what we’re doing. But not every story ends the same way. But I think with coaches, just don’t produce that knee-jerk reaction. Tell them it’s a journey, and help them go through that journey.
Taryn: Yeah, it’s a tough one isn’t it, because you have a person in front of you, right? And those flippant comments about weight and off‑the-cuff things can ruin a person. I’ve seen many a tough thing said on a pool deck to athletes that just makes me cringe a little bit as well, because triathletes are Type A personalities. They like to do everything right. They want to be the best that they can be, and they treat themselves like an elite athlete, and body composition and weight is just one of those other games that they want to win. But it is a person, and you can set somebody’s whole future up with a flippant comment from a coach or another athlete, and set someone on this crazy spiral. I’ve seen some pretty heavy-going eating disorders come as a result of things like that. I’ve actually seen a coach put an athlete on a 1,200‑calorie restriction. It’s called “Light and Easy”, it’s a meal-delivery service. I’ve seen a coach do that, and completely destroy a female athlete’s life. I know that TriDot coaches are not going to do that, but it’s just being mindful that it’s watching your language, and just being careful with those off‑the-cuff comments. That it is a person, and you don’t know what’s going on the inside. As a coach, use your support structure and your support team to manage that with an athlete, rather than trying to tackle that yourself. You’ll be a better coach and you’ll make better athletes if you can lean on your support team to have those tough conversations. Use the dietician, use the psych for that, rather than try to manage that yourself.
Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.
Andrew: Intro-ing Taryn earlier on the show, I mentioned that she is also a podcaster. I just love what she’s doing with her show, the “Triathlon Nutrition Academy”. And if you want to work with Taryn on your own nutrition, you can join the next class of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy. Spots open up just a few times a year, so you’ve got to jump in when it’s open, and it’s opening soon. So Taryn, tell us a little bit about the program you’ve created with Triathlon Nutrition Academy?
Taryn: Awesome, thank you! I guess it evolved over time working with so many triathletes in private practice for many years, and seeing them all making the same mistakes with their nutrition. We’ve talked about a lot of those today. But I developed the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program to be able to help more triathletes over the world nail their nutrition, because I’m so passionate about getting evidence-based nutrition into more hands. There’s only one of me, and so many more people doing triathlon these days. So it was my way of helping more athletes in the same amount of time. I can only stretch so far. So I’ve built this program, it’s entirely online, and it’s a beast. It’s a 12‑month program over three phases, and each phase builds on the next. So the first phase we go through the foundations, like where are you going to get the best bang for your buck out of your training nutrition? We spend eight weeks going through exactly what you’re doing every day, and making sure you’re doing all those things we talked about: eating well for your pre‑training nutrition, you have a plan for your recovery nutrition, we dive into what you’re doing on every single day. Like a light training day, a moderate training day, a high training day, and getting that periodization right for you across the week. We also tackle iron and calcium, two really important nutrients that endurance athletes need to be making sure they’re getting enough of every day, and then we tackle in this first phase also what you’re doing on the bike and the run. So really good foundations that will set any triathlete up for success, no matter how long they’ve been in their sport for, unless they’ve seen someone like Dr. Austin and had really good sports nutrition advice before. Then our second phase, we go into a bit more advanced strategies and we start to work on their race nutrition. So we’re doing carb loading, and making sure that happens right because carb loading is not just eating a bowl of spaghetti the night before your race and hoping for the best. Pre‑race fuel and getting that right, hydration, we do your race nutrition for sprint and Olympic distance, and we start to talk about some of the performance boosters like caffeine and the concept of multiple transportable carbohydrates, so getting that right ratio of carbohydrate, depending on the level of fueling that you’re doing. Then Phase 3, we’re taking things to the next level. We’re talking about race weight, we have that conversation. We talk about what you’re doing on those long extended sessions, long rides, long runs, gut training and how to do that properly so that you can fuel to the best of your ability without spending your whole run vomiting or running to the port-a-loo. Sodium and hydration and where the research is that in that space in the moment, and do we need to be replacing sodium and how much and what sort of events do we need to be doing that for. We also tackle the half and full-distance race nutrition in this third phase, and then recovery and balancing that afterwards so that you’re not gaining ten kilos at the end of your Ironman and then having to lose it for the next one. It’s a massive 12‑month program. You can just dip into the first phase if you’re like, “I’m not sure who this random Australian dietician is,” and test it out before we spend 12 months together. But it’s all online, and there’s athletes in the program from all over the world. So if you do want to check it out, you need to go to the page dieticianapproved.com/academy. Doors are opening on the 10th of September for a week, and that’s the last time they’re opening for this year. They’re not going to open again until January 2023. So if you need help with nutrition, and you’re happy to listen to an Australian accent every week, then go check it out.
Andrew: An Australian accent who enjoys the Mighty Ducks trilogy, so you’re okay in my book. Yeah, we at TriDot want to equip our athletes to have a good experience with the sport, so if what Taryn just described sounds like a great educational opportunity for you, definitely go check it out at dieticianapproved.com/academy. And for my TriDot users, if you have a complete or a premium subscription, we have partnered with Dr. Krista Austin, and she has been doing for a while now some nutrition-focused sessions with small groups, a couple of them per month. They’re super-helpful, they’ve been great, I know they’ve been very well received. They pack out as soon as they open – I know we cap how many people are in each session. So if you’re in one of the lower-tier subscriptions, it might be a reason to bump up. Or if you’re a complete or premium subscriber and didn’t know this was thing, make sure you check those out! Dr. Austin, what have you been going over in those sessions, and how have those sessions been going?
Krista: The sessions have been going really well. We have different types. We have a nutrition question-and-answer, where you essentially get to come and ask whatever it is you want. No topic is off the table. And we spend our time just letting you kind of pick my brain, let other people contribute to the conversation that we’re having, and really it’s just an open forum that we can talk about your questions as a triathlete. Then there are others that are very topic-specific. We talk about race nutrition, we have one of those, and we cover short- versus long-distance triathlon. We do one on fad diets, is there even such a thing as a fad diet, or what is one. We talk about one, called “Fasted or Fueled”, where we talk about the befits and definitions of what does it mean to be fasted, what does it mean to be fueled? Do we need to stay away from intermittent fasting? Where did the concept of teaching the body to burn fat come into play? Why is it such a fascination? Then we’ll do others throughout the year as topics arise and athletes want to know about it, so we try to make sure those are covered as well. But those are just some of the funner ones, I guess you could say, we put out there on the table, and really let people dive into. It’s where they have their questions, and we try to make sure they get some straightforward answers that they can go out and implement. If there’s one thing they learned about me is that there’s no right or wrong, there’s no yes or no, there’s no absolutes that come during those sessions. It’s about teaching. You think through the process and understand if there’s a way to utilize what you have an interest in.
Andrew: Well that’s it today, folks! I want to thank Dr. Krista Austin and Taryn Richardson from the Triathlon Nutrition Academy for talking about body weight with us today. A big thanks to UCAN for partnering with us on the TriDot podcast. At TriDot, we’re huge believers in using UCAN to fuel our training and racing. To experience UCAN’s LIVSTEADY products for yourself, head to their website, ucan.co, use the code TriDot to save 20% on your entire order. We’ll have a new show coming your way soon. Until then, happy training!
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