00:02.82
Uphill Athlete
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. I’ll be your host today, Steve House, and joining me is Alyssa Leib. Alyssa is going to talk about diet and recovery. Alyssa, as you know, is our in-house dietitian. Welcome, Alyssa.

00:19.33
Alyssa
Thanks, Steve. Happy to be here. I know this is a really important conversation that I get a lot of questions about. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of athletes who I think initially, you know, reach out to me to work together because they find that they’re having trouble recovering.

00:36.15
Uphill Athlete
Absolutely.

00:37.22
Alyssa
Their coach, whether it’s you or somebody else, kind of sends them in my direction. So it’s very important to talk about.

00:43.35
Uphill Athlete
Yeah. And, you know, there’s also kind of this, I would say, lore around recovery. And remember years ago, somebody telling me there’s no such thing as overtraining, just under recovery.

00:58.32
Uphill Athlete
Which, you know, there’s a grain, there is like any of these things that sounds good, like as sound bites, there is a grain of truth to it. It’s not strictly true, of course, but… the diet and nutrition component of recovery is big. And I think it’s really important for our athletes community because we have a lot of people, whether they’re like trekking to Everest Base Camp and they’re staying in a different lodge every night, or they’re doing a mountaineering trip and they’re camping every night, or they’re on an expedition and they’re at a base camp for two months, or they’re training to do their first

01:37.48
Uphill Athlete
50K and they’re building up into running volumes that they’ve never experienced before. I mean, any one of these use cases is going to be, you know, calling into question and how well a person is, you know, providing nutrients to their body through their, through their hopefully primarily diet. And as we’ve talked about also possibly some supplementation, but this can be a real area where people can, I think, improve with just a few, iId say relatively simple tweaks and some basic good understanding and knowledge of how the diet can support recovery. So let’s let’s dive into it.

02:21.33
Uphill Athlete
How much does a person need to eat when they’re training for their first 50k?

02:25.88
Alyssa
Yeah, you know, and it’s again, like always hard to give a general recommendation, just because especially something like calorie intake is so individual, we’ve got genetic factors, individual metabolic factors, you know, everyone’s body is going to utilize energy more or less efficiently, just depending on, you know, whatever’s going on in their body. So there are a lot of factors that go into it. And this is something that, you know, I work with a lot of athletes on, is trying to just really be detectives and, and

03:00.22
Alyssa
help identify signs in their own body that maybe they’re not quite meeting their needs. So really looking at those subtle cues, you know, hunger, of course, being a less subtle one, if you’re feeling hungry, you need to eat, you’re probably not eating enough to support your training, support your recovery, but then really just getting in tune with how your body feels and being able to identify when something feels a little bit off when you feel like,

03:24.78
Alyssa
You’re, you know, not able to perform, your energy levels feel a little bit low, you’re having more fatigue than you’re used to, your recovery is feeling pretty bad in between sessions.

03:35.29
Alyssa
These are all going to be things that really help us dictate, okay, well, let’s, let’s bump up your nutrition, and let’s make sure that you are eating more so that you can support your recovery through all of this.

03:46.52
Uphill Athlete
Yeah, that’s great. And as I think about like my coaching and what the discussions, what discussions we have on the coaching team, you know, we talk a lot about the art and the science of coaching, right? And the art, I think, is often I move when I’m asking athletes about, you know, how are you doing today? How do you feel this morning? Just like just that.

04:08.91
Uphill Athlete
They think it’s just like nice banter. And on some level, of course, it is. But I’m also like I’m looking for those little clues, little words that they might say like, yeah, I’m still sore after that workout or, you know, I didn’t sleep that well. or And then those are things like I’m kind of drilling into because a lot of people will have this feeling that you know they should just be tough like I ah shouldn’t complain you know should of course I’m sore because i’m training a lot or of course like i’m not sleeping very well and because i have restless legs at night or whatever it is and and once a lot of times i’m just telling people like hey

04:37.19
Alyssa
Mm-hmm.

04:53.49
Uphill Athlete
you got to tell me when you’re sore or when you feel like restless legs at night or when, you need to eat, but you’ve actually lost your appetite or any of these things that can happen because those are those are things we actually need to dig into and andover uncover, like, as you said, be detectives about and like figure out what’s going on.

05:16.60
Uphill Athlete
Because that’s how we keep the wheels from like completely falling off by catching things as early as possible.

05:23.29
Alyssa
Yeah, it’s super interesting. And I guess, you know, I know this moves away from the nutrition conversation, but I would be very curious from your perspective as a coach, what level of fatigue and DOMS and soreness and, you know, lack of recovery is, you know, either expected or even in some cases sort of part of the intended training effect? because I know that’s just to your point. I think a lot of athletes sort of feel like, well, this is a normal component of it. And so they don’t think about it. Or on the other end of the spectrum, I also get athletes who come to me and they’re like, well, I was really sore after my workout yesterday. And I asked them more questions about it and, you know, came to find out that it was a really long run with a lot of vert and, you know, it was some soreness there is to be expected. So what is that appropriate amount

06:16.36
Uphill Athlete
Yeah, and of course, I’m sorry to say that the answer is it depends. But I kind of think about it and there’s this great chart that we have in the books about kind of the intensity as it relates to the recovery period.

06:34.34
Uphill Athlete
And it sort of is this, I think, that the textbook chart that’s in a lot of physiology books, so which will say, you know, a strength training, load, you know, you’re going to be sore for up to 48 hours, a zone to work out, you’re going to be fatigued for, you know, six to 24 hours as a one workout should, you know, make you feel better within a couple of hours, these kinds of things.

07:01.44
Uphill Athlete
And while that’s generally true, if you’re doing, when you’re doing, especially athletes that are more progressed in their training, and they’ve been training for more than four months, they start to get into some weeks where they’ve got some pretty hard workouts, you know, maybe a muscular endurance workout that’s hard, maybe a long zone two workout that, and you start to stack those.

07:25.47
Uphill Athlete
And this the we think a lot as coaches about the training density, which means like how close um together in time are the hard workouts and how much they’re separate or how much they’re separated by a recovery workout or a rest day.

07:42.29
Uphill Athlete
And you can really start with those lot big training loads pretty isolated from each other in terms of a seven to 10 day cycle. But as one of the ways you progress people is by moving those closer together, because that’s what the event is like, right? The event is that you’re going to do all this in one day or all of this in a two day period.

08:02.36
Uphill Athlete
So you’re, you’re building towards that. And so when you start to like, you, you know, you should be kind of treading that line where it’s like anything more than two days, I actually really want to know about it

08:16.61
Alyssa
Thank you.

08:16.88
Uphill Athlete
And I had an athlete the other day, he did 15,000 feet okay in one day. So just a huge workout. Yeah, that was four or five days ago now, and he’s still sore.

08:28.52
Uphill Athlete
And he was mentioning that today, which is great. And we talked about it, and we talked about how he could support his recovery and making sure he was eating enough carbohydrate and that kind of thing. But that’s a workout that’s so hard.

08:41.47
Uphill Athlete
And, you know, it’s like, yeah, OK, you know, I’m probably not going to prescribe that workout again right away. And maybe I overreached a little bit with it as a coach.

08:53.18
Alyssa
Thank you.

08:53.25
Uphill Athlete
And that was actually a little bit too much because I see now he’s sore four or five days later. But at the same time, this guy’s in his twenties, he’s young, he’s strong, he’s healthy.

09:07.04
Uphill Athlete
You know, I’m not really that worried about it. Like if that was an athlete, like one of my other athletes who’s like 57 and, you know, has some history of some, you know, uh, joints that are a little cranky, you know, that would be another thing. Like I wouldn’t be.

09:24.11
Uphill Athlete
going near him with that kind of workout. So you have to take this all into consideration. But I think that 24 to 48 hours is pretty normal. And when it starts to extend beyond and into 72 hours, you’ve got to really start asking questions.

09:43.23
Alyssa
That’s very interesting. And I think it also shows the benefits of having, you know, a multidisciplinary coaching team, right? So, you know, that’s something where we can be in conversation about, you know, mutual athletes who we coach to to get a better understanding of, okay, well, do do I as the dietitian really need to start tweaking this athlete’s nutrition because they’re experiencing this kind of soreness?

09:53.40
Uphill Athlete
Yeah.

10:07.76
Alyssa
Or was that the intended effect?

10:10.12
Uphill Athlete
And I think one of the things that we are most tuned into is carbohydrate, right? Like, especially during training.

10:20.03
Alyssa
Thank you.

10:21.17
Uphill Athlete
And, you know, we’ve seen this big shift in our approach and it’s been working great, paying great dividends. People are recovering better and basically just progressing better through their training because they’re eating enough carbohydrate.

10:38.71
Uphill Athlete
During the training, maybe I think it’s less of a factor, but especially after the training, before and after the training, and not going into these things fasted. I think that’s really proving out to just be a huge improvement.

10:55.77
Alyssa
Yeah, I have worked with countless athletes who are shocked because I think and I guess just backing up a little, I think a lot of us have this. Our kind of conception is that when it comes to recovery, what we care about is protein because protein is what we need to build muscle. And we do need protein. We absolutely need protein. But I think a lot of athletes are surprised to find that just some little tweaks in their carb intake, especially after a workout, can do so many incredible things to the amount of soreness that they feel moving forward. So it really, really often does come down to carbs.

11:33.61
Uphill Athlete
When I was training full time, I would, ah I mean, this just sort of developed instinctually, but I would make peanut butter and jelly bagel and have it there and in the in the car at the trailhead waiting for me because I knew when I got back, I was just ravenous after a big workout. And I also had read, you know, back then it was, you know, Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Bible. Remember that?

12:00.84
Uphill Athlete
mean, that was, was 25 years ago. And that was a state of the art and that’s what she was, you know, recommending back then. So that was that’s just good. Still sort of, I think of it as good hygiene almost like goats it’s dietary hygiene after working out to, to get that immediate snack in and get enough carbs and stuff.

12:24.27
Alyssa
Absolutely. Nancy Clark’s, by the way, is still the Bible.

12:28.39
Uphill Athlete
Is it still? Okay. It must be in like the 15th edition or something now.

12:33.23
Alyssa
It’s pretty, actually, I have it on my desk. I have the sixth edition. So it’s a couple years old at this point, but it’s very much still something that I commonly see recommended.

12:45.57
Uphill Athlete
Yeah.

12:45.82
Alyssa
I like it, I guess, just as a plug for anybody listening. I think it does a really good job of tying in some of the science without being overwhelming. So I think it is still pretty ah digestible for you know an average audience who maybe is interested in the science.

13:00.22
Alyssa
Yeah.

13:00.66
Uphill Athlete
Yeah, absolutely.

13:01.13
Alyssa
I’m not sponsored by Clark, by the way.

13:03.55
Uphill Athlete
No affiliate program here. So what are some of the you know things that you recommend? I mean, first thing is checking that people are getting enough carbs.

13:16.12
Uphill Athlete
People instinctively are probably already thinking about protein. We’ve talked about supplementing with protein in another podcast and article. What are some of the hacks that you’ve seen work for recovery?

13:30.96
Alyssa
Yeah, so I guess I will caveat all of this with if you are not meeting those kind of basic nutrition needs that you just mentioned, Steve, the hacks are really not going to do anything for you. So, you know, first and foremost, are you eating enough total calories? Because if you are not, there is no amount of tart cherry juice that you can take that is going to make you feel better. You need the calories. There’s no way around that.

13:54.55
Alyssa
Yeah. So beyond the calories, I’m also checking on, are we getting enough total carbs? Are we getting enough total protein? And then I’m also looking at just the timing of all of your meals.

14:05.45
Alyssa
So really looking at, okay, well, when are when are you eating relative to your training? Are you eating consistently throughout the day so that your body is getting a consistent stream of energy so it can continue to do that repair work? Um, you know, when are you eating relative to finishing your training? Um,

14:21.42
Alyssa
Is there a way that we can move that recovery meal closer? And so there’s a lot of different things going on when it comes to actual food. And once you have that kind of dialed in, I would say only then should you start thinking about some of these habits.

14:36.46
Uphill Athlete
okay

14:37.14
Alyssa
And there are you know, there are a lot of different sorts of approaches to this. The first one that I generally recommend to people who are kind of interested in that optimization like taking that next step is pretty simple glass of milk before bed um there is you know actually some substance behind this i’ve mentioned in in previous podcasts milk really has two different types of protein in it and so we normally think of whey protein that’s where you know most of our protein powders end up being whey

15:08.16
Alyssa
But there’s actually another protein in milk called casein that tends to sort of drive the show from a bedtime recovery perspective, which is pretty cool. So the glass of milk can improve your sleep quality, which is pretty nice. So that’s sort of why that’s the, you know, standard that our moms used to tell us when we were little drink your warm glass of milk before bed, you’ll sleep really well.

15:32.52
Uphill Athlete
Mom was right.

15:34.06
Uphill Athlete
Once again.

15:35.59
Alyssa
Usually is. She usually is.

15:37.05
Uphill Athlete
yeah

15:37.23
Alyssa
um Yeah. So that glass of milk or, you know, it could be a yogurt. In some cases, a casein supplement could be an option that will improve your sleep quality. And it also helps with just muscle recovery and repair while you sleep.

15:52.84
Alyssa
So sleep. And I guess I didn’t mention this with that sort of baseline thing you have to do around our nutrition, but getting enough sleep is the other kind of key thing that you really can’t hack yourself away from. You have to be getting enough sleep. That’s where most of our recovery happens.

16:09.17
Alyssa
But a glass of milk, pretty simple.

16:11.59
Uphill Athlete
Okay, what else?

16:14.22
Alyssa
Yeah, so yeah.

16:14.81
Uphill Athlete
I’ve done my milk, what do I do next?

16:17.98
Alyssa
um So next, I would be thinking about ah, what are some other things that we can do to promote sleep if that is a concern? So magnesium is the one that usually comes to mind for that. Certain forms, there’s magnesium. I know we’ve talked extensively about supplements at this point and how overwhelming it can be to walk into that store and see 30,000 options.

16:41.39
Alyssa
Magnesium, I think, is a really good example of this because there are so many different forms of magnesium, and many of them are sort of designed for different things. So if you are trying to improve your sleep quality or relax your muscles, and you take magnesium citrate,

16:58.11
Alyssa
you are going to wake up the next morning with a bathroom emergency. It’s not going to do the thing that it’s supposed to do. But when it comes to muscle relaxation, sleep, things that can support recovery, I’m normally recommending a magnesium glycinate or bisglycinate form. And really this just acts as a muscle relaxant. So a really common supplement brand that you’ll see is called C-A-L-M.

17:24.57
Alyssa
And it really is designed to be taken 30 minutes before bed. And it just relaxes your muscles, helps you to feel, you know, kind of sleepy, and then promotes that muscle recovery overnight. It doesn’t have to be a supplement either.

17:41.01
Alyssa
You know, eating a handful of nuts can provide you with some of that magnesium before bed. I can have a really similar effect. So that’s something else that I would try.

17:51.68
Uphill Athlete
Yeah, that’s interesting. So one of the things that we used to do alpine climbing was I would ah have a Ziploc bag of cashews. And because one of the things that happens with alpine climbing is you get to the place you’re going to bivy, then you usually have quite a bit of work to do to like prepare the spots. You can lay down and to get the stove going and all these things. And often you have no water or whatever, and we would just eat unsalted, dry roasted cashews or raw cashews.

18:19.90
Uphill Athlete
just because they’re like, it was ah one of these nuts that we could kind of get down when we were still kind of thirsty and we were starting to just get some, some, something in us, that was going to, uh, help just replenish calories.

18:35.44
Uphill Athlete
I wasn’t so concerned about the macronutrient distribution. It was just more like, what can we carry and eat that is relatively calorie-dense and easy to get, get in at the end of a long day.

18:49.56
Alyssa
Well, and there’s a lot of, you know, we’ve talked about this both on this podcast, and I know I have talked about it all the time, but at the end of the day, as an athlete, the most important thing you can do nutritionally is make sure that you are eating enough calories.

19:01.93
Alyssa
And nuts are a really great way to do that.

19:02.28
Uphill Athlete
Yeah.

19:05.06
Alyssa
Obviously, we’ve talked about the importance of eating carbs, and we talk about protein.

19:05.18
Uphill Athlete
Yeah. Yeah.

19:09.02
Alyssa
I feel like fat sometimes kind of takes a backseat. But at the end of the day, fat, which is, you know, primarily what nuts are, is a really incredible way to meet your calorie needs.

19:20.37
Alyssa
So you are probably, you know, supporting your recovery in more ways than one through that.

19:20.53
Uphill Athlete
yeah

19:24.80
Uphill Athlete
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Okay. So I’ve got a Cassian glass of milk, some tart cherry juice or some antioxidants and magnesium.

19:59.47
Alyssa
Yeah, the other big one, and this is one I get so many questions about, which is why I’ve kind of saved it for last, because I wanted people to hear about drinking milk and eating nuts first, is really these antioxidants.

20:08.69
Uphill Athlete
yeah

20:11.22
Alyssa
And there’s a few different ones that we’ve seen kind of pop up on the market. If you go on the feed, you know you can buy them in convenient little packets, or you know there are even pill forms that you can take them.

20:21.62
Alyssa
So they make it really easy for you to kind of maximize these antioxidants. I guess I can go into a little bit on just kind of what is an antioxidant and why do we want it, because I know that is very much a radicalized term that has, you know, kind of been thrown around to the point where I think most people don’t realize that it does actually mean something. But essentially, when we put in when we do work, when we put stress on our body,

20:50.67
Alyssa
our body produces these things called free radicals or free oxygen species. This is what whenever we think about like x-rays and the damage that causes, that’s essentially what we’re thinking about.

21:01.12
Alyssa
But exercise actually causes our body to produce these free radicals at a higher rate. And so the more you’re training, the more work you’re putting your body through, the more you are producing these free radicals that can really cause damage to your cells.

21:16.53
Alyssa
And that’s where antioxidants come in because they really help to almost, I’m going to use the word buffer, but that’s not the scientific process that’s happening.

21:17.60
Uphill Athlete
Okay.

21:24.45
Alyssa
But that’s essentially what happens is these antioxidants come in and almost buffer out these free radicals um so that it prevents this cell damage from occurring. So antioxidants are very much something that we’re still trying to learn about, you know, in the context of just regular nutrition and nutrients that people have heard of.

21:44.53
Alyssa
Vitamin C is a really powerful antioxidant. That’s an example of the mineral selenium is a powerful antioxidant. But plants also have these things called phytonutrients, which they’re not nutrients, but they’re just little compounds that we find in fruits and vegetables, and they can have antioxidant properties as well.

22:02.86
Alyssa
And so that really is where things like tart cherry juice or blackcurrants really have their power. And I kind of like to describe both of these things as almost like blueberries on steroids.

22:15.26
Alyssa
So blueberries have this really strong antioxidant effect because of the phytonutrients that they contain. Both tart cherries and blackcurrants have a very high concentration of very similar antioxidants like that. So it takes a smaller dose to have a larger effect.

22:32.31
Alyssa
And these are things, you know, you can buy tart cherries, you can buy tart cherry juice in a bottle. I assume that somewhere in the world you can buy blackcurrants. I have not personally seen those at my grocery store.

22:47.36
Alyssa
But that’s really you know, these supplements can be really beneficial. Again, if you just need that hack, that extra edge for your recovery, you’ve done all of these other things, and you just want to really make sure that you are maximizing your recovery.

23:00.66
Alyssa
That’s where turning to things like tart cherry juice or blackcurrants can really help with that recovery process.

23:10.38
Uphill Athlete
Yeah. And you know one of the threads I’m hearing here is that a lot of this, maybe not so much black, I mean, tart cherry juice is also kind of promoted as a sleep aid, right?

23:26.01
Alyssa
Yeah, absolutely.

23:26.82
Uphill Athlete
And so all of these things have this kind of thread of sleep through them, it feels like, like the glass of milk before bed, the magnesium, the calm, ah magnesium, the black tart cherry juice, all of these things. That is really our best.

23:46.39
Uphill Athlete
Having enough food, having high-quality food, having high- quality food Having enough carbohydrate, enough macronutrients, and then being able to sleep well, those are the was the those are the but that’s the thread. That’s the bottom line is everything is leading up towards that ah good night’s rest.

24:11.94
Alyssa
Yeah, absolutely. Which is, you know, especially for a lot of uphill athletes, and I’m sure the majority of people who are listening to this, it’s hard. You know, people who are balancing having a family, having a career, and then on top of it, you know, trying to do all of this training, it’s hard to find eight hours of sleep, let alone, you know, nine or 10, which is what many of us need, especially when we’re, you know, engaging in a higher level of training.

24:22.76
Uphill Athlete
Yeah.

24:40.96
Uphill Athlete
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, great. Well, this has been super useful. I’m going to go out and make sure I get some tart jerry tart cherry juice and see if I can find some sleepy magnesium concoction.

24:58.30
Uphill Athlete
But I will continue to listen to what mom said and drink my glass of milk before bed. It’s great. I like too that one of the best recovery things, I remember one time being doing climb in the Black Canyon.

25:14.31
Uphill Athlete
And when I got back to my campsite, my friend Josh Wharton had left me a little bottle of chocolate milk. And I love that chocolate milk is still, he’d taken some ice out of his cooler and sort of packed it around the carton.

25:27.28
Uphill Athlete
And it was sitting there on the table and it was all kind of melting by then. But I like that, you know, sometimes these very simple things, you know, what is… What does chocolate milk have it in it that makes it a good recovery drink? Well, it has caffeine, as you said, but it also just has sugar, has carbohydrates.

25:45.35
Uphill Athlete
And you know those are it doesn’t have to be super complicated and doesn’t have to be this blend of mysterious powders and everything else. It can it be, as my wife used to call it, science food.

26:02.06
Uphill Athlete
It doesn’t have to be science food. It can be just like regular old food. So that’s great. So drink your chocolate milk too. And that’s my that’s my recovery hack.

26:16.28
Alyssa
Also not an ad, not sponsored by chocolate milk.

26:19.08
Uphill Athlete
not sponsored by chocolate milk.

26:21.14
Alyssa
You never got asked to do one of those got milk campaigns in the ninety s two thousand

26:27.12
Uphill Athlete
Yeah, no, I was never, never that big. So thanks everyone for listening. Thank you, Alyssa, for your bringing your knowledge and helping us figure out how to support recovery through proper nutrition.

26:45.86
Uphill Athlete
Remember, we’re not just one, but a community together. We’re are uphill athlete. I’ve been your host, Steve House. Thanks for joining us.