Let's Talk Cardio with Stephanie Darby

This week we are joined by one of our fellow Metabolism Makeover Coaches Stephanie Darby to talk about cardio. Stephanie is a 8x marathon runner who provides functional nutrition for mother runners and everyday active women.
In this episode she addresses how nutrition looks different for runners and endurance athletes, talks about increased carb needs for proper blood sugar balance, and how to adjust your cardio to best support your metabolism and hormonal health.
She also breaks down what cardio should look like for those with weight loss goals compared to those who have training goals.
 
You can find Stephanie on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/stephaniedarbyrd/

If you have questions, or topics that you want to hear about, head over to our Instagrams https://www.instagram.com/nucrewnutrition/ or https://www.instagram.com/themomminnutritionist/ and send us a DM!

If you are interested in working with us in Metabolism Makeover you can sign up here! https://metabolismmakeover.co/programs/metabolism-makeover/earlybird/?affiliate=mocktailminutes

Featured Mocktails:

Cure Electrolytes - https://www.instagram.com/cure/
BUBS Naturals Electrolytes - https://www.bubsnaturals.com/ Code: Brianna20

Click play, sip back, and be empowered.

Transcript

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0:21

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of Mocktail Minutes. This is Bailey. And this is Brianna. This week, I am drinking the Cure Electrolytes, the grapefruit version. It is very delicious. So a little refreshing because we have nice winter weather right now, so I'm trying to escape it. What are you drinking, Brianna? I have the Bubz Naturals, like hydrate or dye. Also tropical, like, I have the coconut flavor one, trying to pretend like it's not cold, but In your 40 degree weather. Yeah, I was going to say, it's not, it's not your cold, so I'm just going to be quiet about it. What do you got? And then we also have a guest on today. So we picked a very special topic and we decided to call in an expert. So we have Stephanie here. Stephanie, do you want to introduce yourself and share what you're drinking this morning? Sure thing. My name is Stephanie Darby. I am a registered dietitian and I specialize in functional nutrition for everyday female athletes. So mother runners people that just have fitness goals, not, you know, high caliber top athletes, but like moms primarily. And it is negative seven where I am. So I am drinking a nice. Peppermint latte. Yes. We've been trying all the minerals today. Yeah. Cold. I got them in before I drank my coffee. Oh, there you go. Yeah, well there you go. Yeah, that's good. I'm excited about today's topic because I'm not an endurance athlete. Okay. And so I feel like, I'm not And I feel like people kind of choose between the two. They're either like, Ooh, string train or do endurance. But like, I feel like there's a place for both of them. And so, yeah, I'm excited that we're bringing on an expert to kind of talk about like how to feel your body around endurance exercise. And I feel like it's important to with being so all of us here are Metabolism Makeover coaches where in Metabolism Makeover, we do talk a lot about strength training. And so then we do have a lot of runners that come in or people like who enjoy running and they're like, okay, so I can't do this anymore. Like, no, no, no, no. That's not what we're saying. We just have to make a little bit of. Adjustments. So yes, that's exactly what we're focusing on today is kind of like, how do we fit in with supporting our metabolism, endurance and strength training? Like, how does this all fit in? Yeah, let's do it. Cool. So I guess first question, because in Metabolism Makeover, like the first thing we cover is how the heck are we putting meals together? And so we teach all about like protein, healthy fat and fiber. I think a very Biggest distinguisher kind of is the amount of carbs. I would say that endurance athletes, runners need is going to be different than the typical person who starts metabolism makeover. So do you want to kind of go over what, how does PHFF look different when you are someone who enjoys running or doing like many miles in a day? Yes, absolutely. Because we need carbs. Yeah. It's the biggest distinguisher. So protein, healthy fat and fiber is. It's definitely important for just daily meal composition, but depending on the endurance, the intensity or the duration of the training, whether it's strength training or running, there's an additional carbohydrate need on top of that. So instead of thinking about having one starchy carb a day, you're going to want two to three minimum, depending on that activity level. And you're going to want it before and after that workout, if you want to optimize that carbohydrate intake. So more carbs for sure. Not saying we can't do, we still want protein, healthy fat, and fiber as well. Yeah, and I think that's super important to point out because I mean, thinking of protein, healthy fat and fiber, there is no C in there for carbs. So I think it can cause a little bit of confusion where we're like, Oh, so we're not doing carbs. Like, no, even if you're not a runner, I mean, you need at least one starchy carb per day. And then the whole point, I think of what we teach is to be able to adapt it to your lifestyle. So that's what we kind of come in as coaches and do and be like, okay, well, if you are running. five miles a day, probably going to up those starchy carbs a little bit there. And I like to swap the fiber to say high fiber carbs for people because it helps them think about in terms of carbs. But then also for endurance running, you want, you really want low fiber carbs. And so it just depends on strength training or running. But as a general rule, I like to use that. I like to clarify with that fiber piece that. We want veggies, but we also can use high fiber carbs there as well to get some more fiber and that carbohydrate intake in. Mhm. I like, I like it's like a catch 22. So I like that we leave out carbs because I think it gets people thinking about fiber and, you know, fiber is carbs, right? Like technically, but it kind of makes people be like, oh, okay. Like I need to look at it in terms of fiber because like I say, like different carbs are good for different things. But I think the good takeaway is understanding that Whether you're an endurance athlete, whether you're doing strength training, or whether you're like not having a workout plan at all, you still need carbohydrates, no one is walking around like, I just don't need carbs, like that's not a thing. Like if you were eating carbs, you wouldn't have like your fruits and vegetables, I was watching, oh, Vanderpump Rules this morning. Old ones and they were like, oh, I made this lasagna. It's carb free, fat free. I was like, like, yeah, 'cause I made it with zucchini. I was like, well, I mean, zucchini is a carb, but okay. I guess you just didn't use noodles. That's a sad lasagna. It's probably super slimy. Marvin. Fat free. Like yummy. I love it so much. No. So yeah, I. But on the other side of being like, let's just call it fiber. I feel like people are very confused when it comes to carbs. Cause most people, don't know that carbs and fiber, like, you know, one in the same. So we kind of teach and we like walk you through this. Like how much starchy carb do you need? And again, we're just focusing on starchy carbs. So your overall carbohydrates for the day are going to be much higher than just like, Oh, one starchy carb. We just want to help you modify the starchy ones cause they take longer to metabolize and need more insulin. So we like to say everybody needs one serving. Like, bottom line, one serving, if you're strength training or you have other issues, you're going to be two, three. What does it look like for endurance athletes? Like, where is, like, your starting point? Or do you have, like, a general starting point? If someone is running three to four times a week, just, like, baseline miles or they're training, the starting point, I like to say, is a starchy carb with every meal. Like, so three or four. It's just adding that in. So, protein, healthy fat, fiber, starchy carb. putting it all together on your plate. So we're not just eating carbs plain. We are if we're in the middle of an endurance run and we need to fuel it like in the middle of the exercise. But for the meals around it, we're putting the carbs with the protein, healthy fat and fiber to help give long sustained energy, right? When we still don't want an energy spike and crash, we want it to last that whole time that we're training so that protein, healthy fat and fiber is still important. But I have them do that at every single meal and have them eating 3 4 meals a day. So there's 3 4 carbs. And I feel like people are going to hear that and some might panic, like, I'm sure you've like been, I'm sure you've talked to clients that are like, Oh, there's no way I can eat three to four meals a day. There's no way I can have carbs at every meal. Oh my gosh. What happens when you are running that amount and you're under fueling? And calories and carbs really fun. This is like my favorite thing to talk about. So what happens is when you're not giving your body the nutrients that it needs to fuel your activity, your metabolism is going to slow down to adapt to how much energy it's getting. So food is energy that you're putting in your body activities, energy, you're putting out, they have to match and if they don't match, then your metabolism is going to slow down and you're gonna end up with low energy availability. So you're gonna have less available energy to perform your workouts and you're not gonna hit your paces and over time as that compounds over and over again, even if you've eaten enough. For that day. If you haven't fueled to add the activity in, then the next day, if you don't make up for that and eat enough on your rest day, just because you're resting doesn't mean you should be eating less than it. That also helps compound over time to where your energy availability that you have access to is less and less and less. And you can perform less and less and less. And then. You're gonna end up with a whole host of hormone issues, bone issues in sport, it's called relative energy deficiency in sport. It used to be called the female athlete triad, and a lot of people think this only affects athletes, but this affects everyday women, moms, people who are too busy to stop and eat, and they're just running around, they're doing their, you know, hit class, you know, Peloton workout, and they're not fueling it well, they're still gonna end up with the classic signs, which are low energy, right? We're not getting enough intake. And then we're going to have bone issues whether it's fractures, osteoporosis, things like that. And we're going to have a menstrual cycle issues. So either irregular or lack of cycles and that's a health marker. So we need to make sure that we're having regular cycles. If we're worried and we're not getting there, you're not eating enough and we need to really ramp that up. And that can be really, really scary. Yeah. Cause you have, I'm just going to assume the whole like, What you put what you put in is not what's coming out type thing Like I still have dieticians real old school dieticians Like that I work with more of like in a clinical setting that are like just exercise 500 calories off and like that's your deficit or eat 500 calories less that day and it sounds like you're more like you need to feel to actually do the workout and I feel like it's important for people to hear that how would you approach this? If you have someone who really enjoys running, maybe they're training for a marathon and then they're also working on weight loss. And then they also know, oh my gosh, well, strength training is also great for weight loss, so I can build this muscle. How would you help someone in that perspective to lose the weight, enjoy their running, train for the marathon and kind of balance it all out? So I think that's where a lot of people struggle to first. I would help them say that you can't train for a marathon and have a really good, like a, have a goal for that marathon, like a PR goal and lose weight. At the same time, they don't, they're opposite. You have to pick one. You could not saying you can't run, but you're not going to, I would not suggest running a marathon. I would suggest if you're going to focus on weight loss to do shorter, easy runs and focus on strength training. If you really want to run a marathon, just know that weight loss is probably going to go on hold because you need to eat enough. Cardio, long form, long endurance cardio is not how you lose weight and a lot of people think I just need to go run more and I'll lose weight. But that that's not how it works. We need to build the muscle mass. We need the muscle mass to perform in the running at the same time too. So if you need to pick one of those three things, work on first weight loss, strength training or running, I'm going to pick strength training honestly, because it's going to be the starting point for the other two things. Yeah, And even with thinking about those, like our different types of workouts and you kind of mentioned different types of carbs to do you want to go over how like different carbs kind of play their part and two different times like before you go into a workout or before you go into a run during a run dinner time versus like breakfast before run, you know, like those types of scenarios. Sure. So, and this can go for strength training, but strength training is a little more, yeah, it's it's not it's not gonna matter as much for like GI distress if what type of carb you eat So specifically talking to running we want high fiber, right fiber helps us slow our carb release but before we go running We want to also make sure we're mitigating any GI Dysfunction so we don't really want our digestive system processing through all this fiber and all this fat and all this protein While we're running because it's gonna slow all those other processes so we can move right it's gonna defer To what's happening in front of us. We really want low fiber. We want what's considered a by most of us to be really unhealthy food. We want simple carbohydrates. We want the white bread, the white flour foods, the candy. Not necessarily by itself, but at that meal before we go running, we want to have maybe a lower fiber bread with our eggs and our avocado. And then give it an hour. If we're gonna go running right away, we probably just want a piece of plain white toast and then afterwards have Yeah. The balance protein, healthy fat, fiber, high fiber, carbohydrate to refuel and then during the run, we literally just want like glucose that's broken down as much as possible so that the body doesn't have to do a lot of work for it because by doing that work, that's where we get the digestive problems. We have the people that are like constantly having to go to the bathroom. We have runner's trots, like all that kind of thing comes from that higher fiber and that higher fat specifically. So it's very backwards thinking to what we generally think about when we think about healthy carbs. That's what I kind of tell a lot of people to, to help them remember. I'm like, remember when we talked about all those high fiber starch carbs? Now think about all the opposite foods. That's what we want to do to fuel these types of workouts. Yeah. So I think I have digestive problems. You might be able to get away with more fiber and more fat. I like I've trained my body to handle more whole food choices versus the process things. But still, when I go train for a marathon, I'm still going to be opting for the lower. fiber choices. So it just depends on your body and your needs too. And that's very individualized. And isn't it higher fructose foods like during your run? Can they cause more GI distress compared to like having more glucose in general? Isn't it? It can. So we want the glucose molecules to be as broken down as they can. And so there's different combinations of sugar molecules. And so having it It's broken as much playing glucose as you can have the better, but some depending on the endurance activity, you might want different kinds in there to fuel longer activities as well as like cyclists that are going to cycle 100 miles might want a combination of fructose and it just depends on the activity and what your body works in. So there's, there are sport products like sport, glucose, sugar products you can get for any different combination based on what your needs are, but if you want to stick to whole foods, think more in terms of. the straight simple carbs for sure. Yeah, because I feel like I always remember it was like juice was not recommended because of the high fructose amounts. Yeah, I think we can get really far into food rules too when it comes to fueling for fitness and like, Oh my gosh, this is not the right type of sugar. This is this type of sugar. Like at the end of the day, your body needs simple carbohydrates. So instead of overthinking too much, is this the right kind of simple carbohydrates? Play around with it and see what works for you. If juice works for you, like, everyone is just so individualized that we can get so far into the weeds in terms of, like, diet culture, but then also so far into the weeds in terms of endurance sport nutrition that we need to be careful about making sure we're not overthinking it to the point where it's causing more harm than good, too. That's what's cool about nutrition. I mean, you can always experiment a little bit with yourself where, I mean, yeah, we have all of our textbook knowledge, but at the end of the day, we're all a little different. And I mean, something that's always been a common recommendation is fruit snacks before a workout. So I would use to do that before boxing. And every time I did that, I threw up at those classes. I was like. Weird. Every time I do fruit snacks, I threw up. So I started switching it up. Don't have any issues now. So now I know like, yeah, my body does not like fruit snacks as a fuel. And that's fine. There's plenty, as long as there's plenty other simple carbohydrate choices and there's not like a, an issue going on in your digestive system in terms of all carbohydrates, then sure, yeah, pick what works for you. And I also tell athletes that are training like every marathon cycle is not necessarily going to have the same type of nutrition. I have fueled marathon cycles on Swedish fish, and I have fueled marathon training cycles on, like, making my own, bars out of dates. And nuts. And so it just depends on Where you're at in that season too, and what your body is able to handle right then. So it's always going to be different. I think it's important to like give yourself that freedom to kind of see like, what does my body really want? And I'm, I'm constantly telling clients that, cause we just want the right answers. Like we want to be doing it right. We want to be doing all the things. And it's like. You gotta just give yourself some room for some trial and error. Yeah, it's hard when there's no right answer for any one person. And as dieticians too, we can make suggestions, but we're not in your body. And so the client also, at the end of the day, like you have to trial and error it and see what works for you and your body and what you enjoy eating. So even though, you know, fruit snacks might be a really good choice, but you really hate them, pick something different. You know, like there's a personal preference in there too, not just what your body can handle. We want food to be enjoyable at the end of the day too. I know we're going to get this question because I get, I get this question a lot and this is like not my like area of expertise. And I'm very like open to be like, Ooh, I know a person. So since we have a person here, what, when is like a duration where you should be like, I need to be fueling mid run. Cause I know that some people will say anything longer than 45 minutes or then others are like, Oh, if it's going to be over two hours. And like, there's just all these ranges. So when is there like, Or what's your recommendation for the duration to be like, bring something because you're going to need to fuel mid run. I say one hour. So if you're going to run less than an hour, you're probably okay, unless you're like a really fast runner and running for an hour is going to mean running like 10 miles. I don't know if that's easily possible. I'm just picking numbers. But for most people, we're going to run for more than an hour, we need to start fueling and we start fueling at the 30 minute mark, not the hour mark. So if you know you're going to run for 75 minutes. Bring something to eat in the middle of that. If you're gonna run for an hour and a half, bring something that you can eat at the 30 minute mark, and then at the 60 minute mark, and then you'll be fine until you get home. It's my general recommendation for most average runners. Okay. So don't start at the hour. I, I used to do that. And by the time, if you start fueling, when you finally feel hungry, it's too late. So just like we want to be eating every three to four hours before we feel like we're in that hangry, like during the day spot, we also want to do that when we're fueling, because we need. our body to have enough glucose in our system before it's like we're out. We need to make sure we have those stores going. So we need to start before we feel like we need it. I think we're so used to feeling like, Oh, feeling hungry or feeling tired. That's like, Oh, the sign I need to eat. But that's usually like your body's last ditch, like hello. Like now I really need to eat, you know, like, so we should be, and I'm always telling clients that too, like. You don't have to wait until you're hangry, like you're going too long. So that's good to know. If I ever decide to pick up running, I aspire to be a runner. Like in my mind, I'm like, Ooh, I would love to be a runner. I want to run. I don't enjoy running. Then pick something else. I know I do. I love strength training, but I also run or have good cardio. There's so many other forms of good heart healthy cardio out there. That's not running. I have a problem where I love it so much. And after having kids. My body doesn't necessarily like it as much and I'm having trouble deciding this is something I should still hang on to or not, but the identity I love so I love the running community so much. I can't give it up even if I'm the slowest run Walker and I finished last. No, it's still something I have to keep doing. So the running community does not care how fast you are. I mean, we care about how fast and important and how we look in our running clothes and all this stuff. But the general running community is so important to us. Like welcoming encouraging. It's it's really fun to be in. I absolutely know that if I ever did a marathon I would be walking 20 of the 26 My very first marathon I had injured myself and I still did it and I hobbled the whole second half It's only couldn't finish it. But and you can finish it hardly walking but It didn't. You can do it if you really want to. You did. It wasn't my best decision, but it was a big race and I really wanted to finish it, so. I have a question, and I feel like this is a good segue because you brought up since becoming a mom, and I know you have like a functional approach, so is running something everybody should be doing? If they love it, like, are there ever clients where you're like, I think you need to take a break and focus on these things first, because maybe your hormones are unhappy, or maybe it's not the best for X, Y, Z. Yeah, I told 2 new clients this week that to stop running. And 1 was running a marathon. She's running a marathon today. And then we're taking a really big break. And she's okay with that. So. Functional nutrition and endurance nutrition are opposite. So if somebody is struggling with burnout, chronic fatigue, weight loss resistance, all that kind of thing, adding more stress from the long form cardio of marathon training. So I'm not saying like two to three mile heart rate easy runs. I'm saying like the big intense, like our body is, it's a stressor on the body. And a lot of us think, Oh, running's a stress reliever. What do you mean running's a stressor on the body? I'm getting all these endorphins. I feel better. But like physiologically on the body, we're, we're, We're using cortisol and burning, you know, we're using muscle mass. It gets stressing the body out and we need to have enough rest to recover. So if we're already in that weight loss resistant, you know, state of being, we need to make sure that we're not overdoing it. And so I don't recommend marathon training. So the athletes this week that I said that to, we're not quitting running. We're just moving back into a really low heart rate run, walk. Maybe two to three times a week, max and some athletes I've even said, like, please stop running altogether for a couple months. Can you do that? Depending on the state of burnout and, and stress that they're dealing with. But for a lot of them, it's our identity. We can't take something away. And we also have to recognize if we're going to cut back on this and work on healing other parts of our body. It is temporary. We're not saying quit running for the rest of your life. We're saying this is a season where you need to pick what is most important to you. Do you want to work on healing? What, you know, this, this chronic stress piece or you just want to run no matter what at all costs, you know It's like some people we get and metabolism maker They just want to lose weight at whatever cost like they don't care what they're doing to their body It's the same kind of thing like you you can't do both And so you have to make a choice like am I gonna keep running and training in which case you're probably gonna run yourself into The ground and never reach your goals Or are you willing to take a step back and really heal your body and make sure that you can handle? The carbs that you're putting in your body So if you're having weight loss resistance And you have insulin resistance, and you're not able to best utilize the carbohydrates that you're taking in your body, you're not going to have enough stores and utilization to still do the running. So it matters first that you get your metabolism in a place that can handle not just the stress load of the running, but also the nutrient load that you're putting in your body. And make sure you're eating enough, so you have enough energy stores, you don't have that low energy ability picture we talked about earlier, so when you say like if you had to cut someone back to like two or three times a week, how long would those runs be? Because I think we kind of think of it on different terms. Like a long run for me is like three miles. I'm like three miles and I'm done. But I know that's very quick. The time instead of distance because we're all different paces. I would say like 20 minutes. Oh, okay. So maybe 30 minutes, but like, we're not doing like an hour of cardio. 20, 30 minutes of something that's slow, slow. So we need to not be afraid of 12, 14 minute miles, and that can be hard for people that are used to running a lot faster, but. If we're keeping our heart rate low, if we're keeping it in like that zone two, we're, we're, we're moving our body a little bit, but we're not like overexerting it, and we're not doing it that often. That's kind of the sweet spot. Can you explain a little bit on zone two like, how do you know if you're in zone two? I like to think about zone two in terms of, you're moving your body enough that you don't want to be breathing out of your nose. You could breathe out of your nose if you wanted to, and close your mouth, because ideally we want to be breathing out of our nose, right? But you don't want to. Like, I'm moving enough that I could breathe out of my nose, but it's a little uncomfortable, and I should probably open my mouth and breathe out of my mouth. That is, I mean, because it's different for everyone, just like saying time and, and pace. So, if you're at the point where you're moving your body enough, that breathing is not like we're not sauntering around, but we're not like out of breath, that in, in between spot is where I like to Keep those athletes up. Yeah. I also like to say it's almost like if you were to call someone on the phone, like you could have a conversation, but it's one of those phone calls where you could tell like they're walking and doing something else. Absolutely. Absolutely. You can have a conversation, but it's probably not going to be a very long one or your best. You're going to be, you're going to be exerting yourself while you're doing it for sure. I like that. That's a good, that's a good one. Cause I know people get really caught up on like heart rate and where does it need to be? And again, obviously that's. It's very dependent on you and your fitness. Yep. Like on an, on a scale of 1 to 10 effort wise, I would say it's maybe a 7, 6, 7 is about that point where you're, you're breathing. So you could be running at that pace if you can run and breathe out of your nose, but for most of us, it's walking. So. Yeah, it's like a fast walk. Like something's chasing you, but you don't want to quite run. So I have a question for the individuals who are like, I run, but I'm not like, you know, always training for a marathon, but I also like to strength train. How would you balance that? Like the cardio to strength train balance. I like to see women's strength training three to four days a week. And I like to see women having at least two to three rest days a week. So then it's like, where do you fit in running? Yeah. And so depending on we're not, we're not working out and lifting weights for like an hour. We're not running for an hour. If we're in this maintenance season and we care more about our metabolism, we're not overdoing all the things. So it might be possible to do a workout where it's mostly strength training with like. 15 20 minutes of zone to cardio built in. We're doing a short run and we're doing strength training and we can still maximize having full rest days that are walking in mobility days. And so I really like seeing either three full body strength training days or four days where it's to upper body and to lower body. And then putting fitting running in around that or cardio in around that where possible. The important thing is that we're not doing activity six days a week. That's specific target working out. We really want to make sure we're having enough rest days to because The rest is when the muscle actually builds the workout is when we're breaking it down. So we need to make sure we're having the rest to build that muscle after we do that activity. I personally run four days a week and lift four days a week and have two rest days and people like that's 10. Like, how do you do that? Because I double up because I'm not running for more than 30 minutes on those days that I'm strength training. And then I'm strength training for about 30, 40 minutes. So it's about an hour total of activity and I sometimes break it up. So I'm not even doing it at one point in my day. But. If we're going to be in maintenance mode, we really only need to be running two, three days a week. And if we want to do three to four strength training days, then we can double up a couple, making sure we're still having two rest days. And it takes some playing around with, like, what days work best for you, what's your work schedule like, when do you have kids at home, how can you navigate, you'd rather do the weekends than the weekdays, and picking and choosing what works for you. But having some sort of even split, where there's a little more emphasis on strength training, and we're still having at least two rest, full rest days, that are just taking like a slow, not even zone two walk. To count as a rest is kind of where I like to see most women be anything else you want to point out about like the importance of rest days besides muscle recovery, we need to make sure we're eating enough on those days. A lot of women think if I'm not working out today, I need to eat less. And when I work with women to calculate what their actual needs are, I do like to calculate specific needs. I know we don't generally do tracking with metabolism makeover, but I like with women that are doing athletics and have performance goals to see Where the discrepancy is between what they think they're eating and what they actually need, like what they're actually eating is not usually what they think they're eating and then what they actually need is usually a lot more and for them to be able to see on paper that discrepancy and then we can work to building up to that because again, if we want to avoid that low energy availability picture, we need to make sure we're eating what we actually need, what we, not what we think we need. And so we need to make sure When we break that apart, I make sure that eating enough every single day, not even not just more on a workout day and less on a rest day because our metabolism is operating under the assumption that we're going to get X amount of food every single day, no matter what we're doing. So we take our energy or activity amounts that we're going to need and we divided across the day. So we're still fueling our body for our workout, but we've split it up so that our body knows every day I'm getting this amount of food and it's more stable to the body. It's giving the body more safety to understand I can perform well because I'm getting this amount of food even on a rest day. And I think that's really scary for a lot of women. I think I'm not working out. I still should eat four carbs, right? Like we need four. Yes, we still need four carbs. If you're going to be, if you're going to be lifting four days a week and running Three, four days a week or whatever we're doing, we're doing four to five activity days and into rest days. We need to have four carbs a day for most. If you're active enough, you know, depending on what you're the rest of your life is your job. If you're chasing around after your kids, how intense those workouts are, we pretty much need a carb at each meal, even on rest days. So, and I think it's important for women to remember, like, like I read, I think it's important for women to remember that. Our, like, mental load, it takes energy too, right? So, like, yeah, you need to be fueling. Like, you're doing all these other things. You're not just working out and then doing nothing else with your day. Like, you're working, you're chasing kids, you're dealing, you know, with life stressors. Like, all of that takes energy. I think we kind of just always think, like, we just need calories for activity, right? And so, so many women fall into that trap of, like, well, I'm not working out today so I could eat less. But it's, like, your body is still needing energy. For everything that it's doing. It's not just activity based. Well, and even if we're not a mom or we're not running around a lot, even if we have a sedentary desk job, our metabolism needs us to be moving during the day. Like, we need to be taking up and having regular movement breaks. We should be moving and hitting, you know, 8, 000 steps a day in non exercise movement. So, running first thing in the morning and then sitting day is not healthy for metabolism either. We still need to be moving our bodies and that takes energy too. So, to your point, yes. But we don't, we don't want to be sedentary either way. We want to be moving and then that movement takes energy and needs to be fueled. Absolutely. Kind of speaking of the carbs a little bit again, any of your like top tips for endurance athletes to also help just manage blood sugar throughout the day? Because I feel like that is something that becomes of concern as well was, okay, if I'm running and I'm supposed to be adding more carbs and my blood balancing my blood sugar. And if I'm doing simple carbs, like what's going on there, Can you give tips with that? Yes, so we want to make sure that when we're not in training season, when we're not like in peak marathon high endurance season, that we're eating the protein, healthy fat, and fiber, that we're working to make sure that we have stable blood sugar and all those metabolism makeover tips of protein, healthy fat, and fiber, moving after you eat, you know, making sure we have general, we're moving our bodies during the day, we're walking around, all that kind of thing is important because we need to have optimal glucose utilization so that we can store the glucose when we need to. We can carb load effectively before that marathon or that long run and then be able to pull that glucose out of the cells when we need it. And if we have poor glucose storage and utilization from imbalanced, you know, insulin reserves, then we're not going to have that. And so it really starts with before we get to the training season, we're eating enough food and we're eating protein, healthy fat and fiber and really prioritizing. Having enough starchy carbs, but having it alongside that protein, healthy fat and fiber piece. And then when we're training, we're eating lower fiber carbs, which can be scary, but that's not spiking our blood sugar because we're using it right away. It's getting put to use either whether eating breakfast and then we're going to go running or while we're, while we're doing that activity and we're eating in the middle of it, it's getting used right away. So we're not eating breakfast. That's a low fiber carb. And then sitting around for a couple hours, we're going to go. Hopefully go running within an hour and it's going to get used. So that's important to note, too. It's not just sitting around, you know, raising our blood sugar unnecessarily. But we need to have our, make sure it's, and that we have enough insulin sensitivity to be able to handle that, too. I sometimes, I have to tell clients to, like, look at carbs, like, just think about it as energy. Right. When do you need energy? You want it before a workout because you should feel fueled and energized and strong and, you know, whether you're running or you're, you're, you're, you know, strength training, you want to feel strong, you want to be able to actually effectively train and then when do you need it, you need it after because you just depleted your energy. So thinking about it in those terms, I think some people need to think about it like that because we do get very caught up. Right. On carbs, and I love that we're getting people to understand like blood sugar balance and what those carbs are doing in your body and all that, but realizing like there's different times of the day where I'm going to need bursts of energy and how do I do that, you know, and that actually made me think of something else that I see a lot in the metabolism makeover community when people are asking, like When do I eat before and when do I eat after? Like if you're going to do a workout that's an hour, I'm supposed to eat every three to four hours. You don't necessarily need to eat immediately before you work out and immediately after, right? We still want to be eating three to four times a day and having a break so that the, you know, our migrating motor complex and our gut can clean things out and we have a break from insulin utilization. So thinking about your day, are you going to eat breakfast and immediately work out and then have a couple hours? Before you eat again, like ideally we really want to be eating post workout within an hour and I know there's like a bunch of discrepancies on some people say you need to eat within 30 minutes if you're a female or you can go an hour and a half, but like, I just like to say, depending on the intensity and if you've just eaten, you may be okay waiting a little bit longer to eat, maybe bumping up that next meal a little bit, or if you're going to eat breakfast and then it's going to be an hour and a half and then you're going to work out for an hour. By the time you shower and eat again, it's been three hours. So when you think about to, we don't necessarily have to be like, Oh, I have to eat and work out and eat. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way. If you're running a marathon and you're running for three hours, well then absolutely. Yeah, it's been long enough. You're going to have to eat again right after. But that also takes some playing around with your schedule too, to make sure you're eating not so far out that it's been four or five hours before you work out or run. You need the fuel sooner than that. But then also, too, on the other end, we want to make sure we're not going too long after our workout before we eat again, but not too soon, either. And that takes, again, individuality and playing around with it and knowing, I might just need a little bit of a snack here, and then I can have my next meal. Especially in the morning, when we're used to, like, working out without food. Having a little snack and something, and then breakfast can be really helpful. Yeah, I think the idea that, like, you need to be walking out of the gym with a protein shake, I think that's like a It's such a gym bro thing, and the idea that our body isn't going to utilize protein if it's longer than 30 minutes after an activity is, like, wild to me from a metabolism standpoint. Yeah, but I'm also, too, like, if you're, if you're getting a headache After you're working out because you haven't most likely, then you probably need more food and you need more electrolytes and you need more fluids. So there's like a balance. We don't want to wait too long, but we don't, it doesn't necessarily need to be right away. If you just ate right before, but also right before, if you're going to eat right before you go running, you don't want protein, healthy fat and fiber. You most, you want mostly carbs with a little bit of protein and a little bit of fat. And so you're going to need to replenish the protein afterwards. You do need to. You do need the nutrients to build the muscle mass and recover the glycogen stores. And it just takes playing around with the timing of all of it. And that's where, you know, all of us can come in as dieticians and support that. Yeah, and it's training people to like, listen to that bio feedback, like your body is telling you, you just, again, getting really caught up on like, I want to do it perfect. I want to do it correctly because there's so many things on the internet. Like, you need a fast for this X amount of time. And then you need X amount of carbs after X amount of minutes of this and X like everybody's like, Oh, I want to be so perfect. But like, in reality, Those are like generalized recommendations that maybe work for most people, but it could be that they don't work for you at all. So learning to understand like, what is my body telling you right now? Like, yeah, that headache probably a sign that I need more minerals. Maybe I'm dehydrated. Maybe I didn't fuel my workout properly. So I need to do this next time. And with that being said, if you're a woman, especially still on your cycle, you will notice that certain weeks you need different types of fuel, just. depending on the type of time of your cycle that you're in. So allowing yourself to be flexible, we access less carbohydrate stores in our luteal phase. Like if you have a craving, like when we get those sugar cravings before a period, it's our body telling us we need more carbs. And if you're training, you're not gonna be able to pull from reserves as easily and you are going to need to make sure you're having four carbs a day and you're having that car before and after your workouts to feel that workout or you're going to feel really tired. And then after your period comes, the follicular phase, you probably don't need as many, you might find you can go longer on less carbohydrates because you can pull from the reserves better. If you have enough stored up, right, we've been eating enough consistently, we can pull from those reserves. We need to have them first. So yeah, absolutely. That our cycles do affect that a little bit. It could be like a whole nother episode. I'm really into that whole, like, I know, I could go into all that for too long. Cycle syncing thing, I'm like, ooh, like, I was like, I don't know if I should mention it. I don't know if she like really does this. So yeah, maybe we'll do like a whole other episode. Yeah, I don't, yeah, I think we can go to, to your point earlier about like, we see stuff on the internet and we can get to do it just perfectly in our body. So follow that. That also works with like, there's only, there's a limit to like cycle syncing your workouts. with your menstrual cycle. It can be helpful and supportive, but it's not like the end all be all at the end of the day. Right? Like all of our bodies are different and it depends on how we fuel it. And we don't, I hate seeing women get frustrated because they're not doing it perfectly like the internet says. And it's like, this is not taking into account your body and your needs and what your cycle is. And a lot of women aren't tracking their cycle. They're just assuming, Oh, every two weeks I viabilated and every two weeks I'm getting my period. And if they're not, because you're not actually in the phase that you're in and you might need to work on adapting that and to the stress piece from before we, if we, that accounts for things too. So there's a lot more factors that go into it than just following a formula on the internet for sure. Yeah. And I think that cycle syncing can be another stressor to some women, especially because you're trying to like make sure, all right, am I on this day? But then even kind of going back to what we were talking about, like you know your body pretty well. And I think as women, we can start to feel The time of the month where we feel a lot stronger or the time we're like, yeah, I don't feel so strong this week. Or we feel those cravings. And I think just knowing why those things are happening, then we can start to be in tune and be like, okay, at this time, I need a little bit more carbohydrates and that's completely normal and that's okay. Yeah. And I think we do ourselves a disservice a lot of times because we either shut down and squash those symptoms. We don't listen to them. We think I just need to push through. Or we see on the internet that we're not supposed to be lifting heavy weights or running at the. Luteal phase of our cycle because we're going to be too tired as we don't do anything when we feel like we could both extremes are not good So listening to your body and knowing if I feel my body enough I can still do this activity and still train for my goals I don't to take a full week off because I'm in my late luteal phase and I can't work out. That's crap we also to listen to our bodies if I'm feeling really tired, I don't really want to run Well, how else can I move my body? That's going to be supportive to my, I'm not just laying on the couch all day just because I'm too tired to run, I'm going to take a walk, we do some strength training, maybe some Pilates or a little bit like I'm going to move my body in some way that feels good to me to get that in anyway, so we really need to stop squashing the symptoms, recognize that the body is trying to tell us something and listen to what it's saying, but then still do the things we need to do to feel the way we want to feel at the end of the day, instead of, oh, this is too much, I can't do any of this. Or I'm not hungry, I shouldn't be eating. You still need to eat when you're not hungry, especially after a workout. Your body still needs those nutrients. Whether that's a snack, you know, like to build up, it's been a long, to a certain point, the nutrition rules help in terms of we should be eating every three to four hours. If we're not feeling hungry, something's going on. It doesn't mean not eat. So That's a whole nother thing I want to go into. And I'm like, my brain is going like, Ooh, there. I'm just like, there's so I go on so many tangents because I get so, I get so fired up about so many things. Oh, so do we. Like, I'm like over here making notes like, Oh, we need to talk about all of this stuff because it's so I'm happy to come back and talk about more of these other things later. Oh, yeah. Love it. I think we covered a good amount of pieces today. I think this is going to be super helpful. Anything you think that we missed or you wanted to add in that would not take another hour. I mean, we talked to a couple of some of these points, at least a little bit enough that that are important to touch on. So, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Do you want to share where people can find you if they want to learn more or get to know you kind of Yeah, my website is stephaniedarbyrd. com and I'm also on Instagram almost every single day and my handle there is at stephaniedarbyrd. And we'll put that in the show notes too. So you guys can just click on it. And I love chatting and answering questions. You can shoot me an Instagram DM all the time and happy to chat. So. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was, good to kind of cover all these topics and get all our, our questions answered as well. Yeah, it was fun. I like chatting with you guys. Absolutely. Well, thank you all for listening. We will be back next week with another topic. I don't remember what it is, but we have a couple planned out. They're there. We'll be there. So we will talk to you next week. Bye. Bye.