In The Flow

I sit down with my dear friend, Abby Mickey for a candid conversation on life as a professional cyclist, her struggles through a tumultuous career, nutrition, and what life now looks like after transitioning out of professional sports. For more on Abby, check out Freewheeling, the new podcast from the CyclingTips network: https://cyclingtips.com/2019/12/introducing-freewheeling-a-new-podcast-with-abby-mickey/

This week I bring you all a conversation with an amazing athlete and human, Sonya Looney. For the unfamiliar, Sonya is a professional mountain biker who has an impressive palmares in ultra-distance races including winning the world championships in the 24-hr distance in 2015 and crushing it all over the globe from Mongolia to South Africa. She is now a fellow podcaster, renowned speaker, author, and figure in the sport mindset and performance world and just has a lot of really great stuff to say. I first met Sonya for a podcast a few years ago on Thought For Food, so I wanted to catch up again and nerd out on themes that we both really care about like meditation for athletes, the purpose of the flow state, plant-based nutrition, relationship with food, and more. Learn all about Sonya at sonyalooney.com.

As athletes, we often ride that very fine line between maintaining and over reaching in training and balancing all the other things we have going on in our lives. As such, it's useful to learn to listen to our bodies while also monitoring and measuring critical nutrients like iron and vitamin D, and understanding what too much exercise looks like. This week on the show, I sit down with naturopathic physician and master's cyclist Dr. Steve Parcell to chat critical nutrients for athletes, considerations for older athletes, and the consequences of too much exercise. You can learn more about what Dr. Parcell is up to at https://www.naturemedclinic.com/.

I'm back with another questions and answers session hitting topics like raw vs. cooked food, athletic starvation/energy availability, rest days, intuitive eating, and more. Please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

As an homage to my previous podcast, Thought For Food, I want to repost some of my favorite episodes. Starting off with one of my proudest - What's the Deal with Fiber. My co-host Aaron Stuber and I break down everything you need to know about the world's most underrated and wonderful nutrient. As you'll hear, fiber feeds the vast colony of intestinal bacteria - our microbiome - to fuel the good ones doing all sorts of awesome stuff including immune function and cancer growth prevention, and of course implicated in those epic dumps we all love. For references, visit http://intheflownutrition.com/blog.

This week on the pod, I share my 5 favorite foods and 5 favorite meals for athletes either new to plant-based eating or who want to simply add some new ideas into their routine. It can seem daunting to start eating more plants as an athlete, and what to even buy at the grocery store is the first hurdle to overcome. So I've chosen 5 foods and 5 meals (which include all of the foods) to get you started, and each one is evidence-based for health and performance, and also inexpensive and accessible at any standard grocery store. You'll also hear from my buddies Vic and Ian who are vegan jedi masters, share their favorites and some tips. For more info and resources, visit intheflownutrition.com

In another installment of my series, The Research Report, I break down the recent set of papers published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that recommend us not to reduce our intake of red and processed meat based on the evidence. For more info and relevant links and resources, visit intheflownutrition.com/blog.

I talk nutrition for mountain athletes with performance dietitian Rebecca Dent. We discuss fad diets, the unique needs of ultraendurance athletes, plant-based nutrition, and the connection between what we eat and tapping into flow. For more on Rebecca, visit https://www.rebeccadent.co.uk/

Social media has become a ubiquitous piece of our cultural fabric, but do the positives outweigh the negatives? I share my thoughts on why I quit social media, craving attention vs. paying attention, the attention economy, digital minimalism, the Four Horsemen of the Social Media Apocalypse, and more. For more info, resources, and links mentioned in the episode, visit intheflownutrition.com/blog.

A key concern for athletes is low energy availability, and the consequences can be significant on health and performance. A recent concept and discussion point in the field of sport nutrition and exercise science is Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, also known as RED-S. It's an incredibly important thing to be aware of as athletes, so in this installment of The Research Report, I break it down based on some of the latest literature on the topic. I discuss:

• My own personal connection to RED-S and how that experience has influenced my goals in sports nutrition
• The definition of RED-S and low energy availability, and how it may happen either intentionally or unintentionally
• The mechanisms at play and their effects physiologically
• Plus more

For the articles mentioned and other relevant resources, visit the podcast page at intheflownutrition.com.