Steph Lowe joins me to discuss a real food approach to sports nutrition. Steph is a Sports Nutritionist who works with athletes at the top of their game. However, the lessons she shares in the episode are lessons for us all, even if you aren't an elite athlete. Steph's approach incorporates low carb and healthy fats, an approach that differs from the high carb recommendations traditionally promoted for athletes. We discuss the low-carb healthy fat approach and its effects on productivity and peak performance that is sustainable and low inflammatory, tools that we can all incorporate into our lives.

Selected Links from the Episode

Steph Lowe website

Steph Lowe books

Unstress episode with Dr Gary Fettke on low carb healthy fat

Unstress episode with Cliff Harvey on carbohydrate and ketogenic appropriate diets

Unstress episode with Prof Grant Schofield on fasting

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”, I’m dr. Ron Ehrlich. We've touched on the subject of low carb healthy fats but today we're taking a different perspective Sports Nutrition. Now, most of you probably think of yourselves as good sports all of the nutrition is important but when you're an elite athlete how should you actually prepare? Now, this is interesting because just like our programs of children's health where I said even if you haven't got kids learning about the health of the most vulnerable in our society, learning about what challenges their health and what are the best strategies for dealing with those problems. Well, they're actually lessons for us all. I think the same applies to sports nutrition, elite athletes and nutrition. Even if you aren't one there is actually much to be learned my guest today is Steph Lowe.

Steph is a nutritionist having worked with elite athletes. She has a passion for spreading a positive message about real food. Her approach incorporates low carb and healthy fats. Now the stereotypical advice to athletes was always to load up with carbs to give yourself the energy you need. Now does that sound familiar to any of you non-athletes out there listening? I think it used to be referred to as the food pyramid which was more recently morphed into the Australian healthy eating guidelines. So, you don't need to be an elite athlete to pick up some very important points here today.

The low carb healthy fat approach for elite athletes and for the listeners of this podcast and its effect on productivity as well as peak performance that is both sustainable and low inflammatory are some of the things we cover. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Steph Lowe.

Download the PDF transcription

Welcome to the show Steph.

Steph Lowe: Hi, Ron thanks for having me.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: It's a pleasure, it's a pleasure. Listen now you've got a book coming out, we're going to be talking about that later and you've been in this space for a while, but I wonder if you might share with our listener a bit about your own journey to this point.

Steph Lowe: Yeah, for sure. It's quite a long story but it did start back as a teenager actually when I decided I wanted to lose weight and very deeply into the calorie counting and low-fat world and quite ironic now considering what I do for a living and it's obviously very opposite to that as we'll explore today. But that was the trend back then as you listeners probably know and unfortunately, it didn't lead to very good results. I mean yes I lost a lot of weight but I had hormonal problems and I was suffering from, what I believe was depression it wasn't sort of diagnosed classically, but looking back we can clearly see that a significant lack of fats will really cause that imbalance in the brain considering how much it is made from those good-quality fats that we've been told to avoid for the last five decades. So, yes.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Recurring theme on this podcast but I've got a few hills to climb before we get that me...