S1E02 · Maddi Borg and Katie Dean

Good afternoon team and the entire Virtus family. Welcome to week two of the podcast. It feels like only yesterday we started this thing, so that's kind of exciting. Today we were lucky enough to speak with two of my very good friends and colleagues at Virtus Performance. Katie Dean, our senior performance coach, and Maddie Borg, our accredited practising dietitian. I'm pretty sure that's what APD stands for, but if not, I'm sure we'll find out. So we had a really, really good chat about what they do, why they do it, what issues they deal with with most of the people they speak to.

We also had a really, really good chat about creating a healthy relationship with food and exercise, and what little tricks and tips they've got to help you guys feel better about what you're putting in your mouths, and what you're doing with that fuel, and how your body's moving. So, yeah, enjoy. Alrighty guys, it's go time for week two of the podcast, episode number two. We have Maddie Borg, our dietitian here at Virtus, and Katie Dean, one of our performance coaches. Welcome guys. - Hello. - Hello. Maddie, so you're our dietitian. - I am. - What brought you to wanting to be a dietitian?

Where'd you start? - I kind of just stumbled upon being a dietitian. I always wanted to study med when I was at school. Worked my ass off to hopefully study med, and kind of got to a point where I was like, I'm just not gonna get the grades that I need to get into med. And once I start something, I feel like I really need to finish it, and I was worried that I would get stuck in this cycle of doing 10 undergrad degrees before I even got into med, and then I have to be a new person in my life, basically.

And so I was really lost as to what else I could study, or what else I wanted to do. And I knew what a dietitian was, didn't know a lot about what they did, but I knew that they worked with food, and I have always had a massive passion for food. - We all love food. - Yeah, well I love food a lot. I kind of went to myself, well if you love food and you love cooking, there can be nothing bad about going to uni and studying for four years about food, and what people think about food, and how people relate to food, and the role it plays in our life and our health, and all of that.

So it was kind of just like, okay, well let's give it a go and see what happens there. And here I am. - Awesome. So your business name? - Liv Nutritious. - Awesome. Instagram, get around it. - Yeah. - How'd you get to that name? Why'd you pick Liv Nutritious? - I wanted something that was kind of holistic. It wasn't specifically about food and being on a diet. I hate the word diet. And we'll talk about diets a bit later. (laughing) I don't really like them. So I wanted a really kind of neutral name that didn't promote anything like that.

And it was more about living a healthy and happy life. It came down to me just spending literally a day writing down names that I liked, and words that I liked, and kind of combining them, and seeing where I got, and spending a lot of time on the business name register, and just seeing what I could actually have. And I got down to a list of three names, and just put it out to family and friends, and got them to vote, and then we ended up with Liv Nutritious. - Excellent name, excellent name. What made you want to be a dietitian at Virtus?

- As I've said to you guys before, I never really wanted to work in a gym. Sometimes gyms have a really bad culture around food, and it's all about public programs, and cutting out this, and eating more of this, and I'm not about that. I don't agree with that. I don't think that we should have that mentality around food at work sometimes, but not for a general outlook on food. Someone showed me your post about wanting a dietitian, and I was like, "Oh, okay, yeah, no worries." And he was like, "Nope, you have to get in there.

"You have to go meet them." And yeah, it was kind of, once I walked through the doors, I didn't really want to leave, and you guys all liked what I had to say, and Katie was very on board with my philosophy with food, so that helps having someone in this environment that kind of backs that, and supports that, which everyone here does. So yeah, once I realized that you guys were going to be supporting that kind of outlook, and wanting to work with that, I was like, "Yeah, this is where I need to be." - That's really cool.

It was definitely the cheapest job advertisement I've ever done. - One single, one single Instagram post. Katie? - Yes. - Talk to us. - Okay. - A little bit of different route. - Yep. - Where'd you start? - I started, well, I started getting into this industry, basically, just with the history of playing sport. Netball, football, anything I could get my hands on. And I went to uni to actually be a dietitian. So I started with the idea of being a dietitian. I didn't know what options were out there for people who enjoyed sport and fitness.

I obviously knew that there was PTs and stuff like that. But I knew that I wanted to do something meaningful and challenging. So when I started my first year of uni, I was also doing sports science subjects, and I soon realized that was kind of more the path that I wanted to go down. And the dietetic stuff I soon realized, as Maddie would know, that it's very controversial. - Certainly is. - Yeah, very controversial. And it's a hard gig. I honestly praise dieticians for having that job because you deal with so many more opinions and controversial views than even more than us in the fitness industry.

We deal with it enough as it is. - That's debatable. - Yeah. (laughing) Anyway, so as the degree went on, I realized I liked physiology and rehab, and I just really wanted to help people. And even though I wasn't a sport, I basically wanted to do something meaningful, which to me was rehab and exercise for reasons other than aesthetics and looks and all those superficial things that, you know, which are great if you wanna improve, but I just, for longevity of health and fitness, you've gotta have more, and that's what I wanted to do. So yeah, I wanted to get into, I guess, lifestyle management, but also keeping sport and athletic development on the side.

- Yeah. - So did my masters, not did my masters, got into my masters, worked hard to get into it, and yeah, now I'm at Virtus, and it's a nice balance to have both. Yeah. - Tell us a little bit about your role at Virtus. - So I'm a performance coach at Virtus, I-- - What does that mean? (laughing) - It means I help people be better. So I think some people might hear the term performance coach and think performance or high performance, but it's not. It's just helping people perform like at home in their everyday life, be happy and healthier humans, I guess.

So when I actually found Virtus, I was like, yup, I want a job there. So I kind of forced my way in. (laughing) - That's true, that's true. - Yeah, I had seen a lot of what Lachie and Jesse at the time were posting, and I thought, I just, I kind of almost was like, this is where I need to be. Like I've found where I belong, 'cause it wasn't like I said about, you know, diets, like Maddie said, it wasn't about, you know, training, no pain, no gain type mentality. It was just really like holistic evidence-based, caring, down to earth.

That's what I wanted to do. - Awesome, awesome. So today, I guess the main topic we want to talk about is creating a healthy relationship with food and exercise, and putting it all together. I guess the big thing, the big driver for us creating Virtus was creating a holistic environment where people could come and talk about food, exercise, sleep, stress, work, everything, and we kind of put it all together to help create those happy, healthy people, and I guess, you guys-- - Sustainable. - Yeah, sustainable. And that's a word that probably doesn't get used in the fitness industry and probably dietetics as much as it should.

What, Maddie, what does a healthy relationship with food mean? - It's a rough thing that you can, a big word, sustain for your whole life. What we eat is in one space and time. We shouldn't be changing how or what we eat with the seasons or with the fad diets that come out or anything like that. It's about maintaining and developing a relationship and thoughts and feelings and habits around food that are gonna help us be happy and healthy for our whole lives. Not just now, not just for next summer. - Not for 10 weeks. - Not for 10 weeks.

Not for any community come December. It's so that you are happy and healthy and comfortable and feeling well all the time. And I guess that's a big thing and a hard thing to address in terms of diet because everyone wants the quick fix that gives them results, whatever that result may be, they want it now. And yeah, you can do that with a diet. But a lot of the time, that said diet is very hard to maintain and when it isn't maintained, then we end up back at square one whatever that is. And there's nothing wrong with being at square one.

There's always room. - Gotta start somewhere. - Yeah, room for improvement. And there's nothing wrong with changing and working with a diet or an eating pattern to improve it and get out of it what you want. Whatever goal that is, we can always have goals in terms of what we're eating. But it's making goals and setting goals and working towards goals that we can sustain for a longer period of time than just a quick fix, I guess. - Katie, same question, but adding in exercise as well. - Okay, so like Maddie said, I think my main thing and I've said this to a few of my clients is the faster you obtain something, the faster you can lose it.

The longer something takes, the longer you can sustain it. So-- - I'm gonna write that down. - Yeah, so with diet and exercise, if you make short-term goals or short-term changes over time you're more likely to sustain them and that's super boring and people might hear that and be like, oh, but I want that now and I need it by this day. But the thing is, is it gonna make you better than what you were? Is it gonna do that? Because I know with diets or even extreme exercise regimes you may be better or different for 10 weeks.

Where do you end up when that ends? And sadly, most of the time you are worse off than what you were in the beginning because you might have lost weight in the first place, just for example, but you're gonna regain that. You're also gonna gain a whole lot of anxiety about your quote-unquote failures with an unsustainable program. - And how you look and how you feel about yourself and self-esteem. - Yeah, that's exactly right. And the dieting and fitness industry kind of feeds off this idea that, look how much better your life would be if you lost weight or look how much better you would be if you did.

- Or shredded. - Yeah, exactly right. And it's not the case. It's just, and yeah, self-loathing and self-hatred promotes self-loathing and self-hatred. So I guess me and Maddie, it was awesome when Maddie came along 'cause I was like, oh, she's totally on the same page. - You kind of weaseled your way into this podcast like you're weaseling into birders. The same thing. - I just, if I want something, I just go for it. But yeah, I was stoked when Maddie came along because she had the same ideals around, I guess, wanting to reduce those short-term fixes that actually sometimes end up more negatives and positives.

- Most of those short-term fixes tend to be centred around a diet. - Exactly, yeah. - What is a diet? When you guys say diet, it's half of your job title, Maddie. (laughing) What is it? And how is it looked at the wrong way? - Okay, so a diet is essentially an eating pattern and we can't escape that. We all have eating patterns. We're going to have an eating pattern. We're not gonna stop eating. Everyone wants to stop eating, I don't know. But the word diet, I guess, in the common sense when people think about it, it's about changing the way we eat.

And more often than not, it's about creating restrictive patterns, often, that we only, or people will only follow for 10, 12 weeks to gain something or essentially lose weight, but to gain a change or see something happen differently in the way that they look, feel, act, do, that. But yeah, it's about, unfortunately, a diet refers to restricting food and shaming different foods and feeling bad for eating different foods and has a lot of negative thoughts associated with eating and food groups. - I'm only a humble strength coach, but I feel as though all of my

clients who don't restrict and everyone who has a healthy relationship with food, they look at food as kind of two things, something they can enjoy and something they look forward to doing with in mind that food is a fuel. Food fuels your body to get up in the morning to work, to run, to play football. - It might fuel you physically, but it might fuel you psychologically. You could be sitting there with your family, enjoying a meal, and you're having an awesome time because mum's cooked something that you've had since you were five years old. Think of Christmas.

In our society, Christmas is about a big Christmas lunch or a big Christmas dinner, a heap of food, and everyone coming together and everyone's happy and having fun and laughing and connecting with food. - And the dieting industry have turned that into an opportunity to do post-Christmas. - Ways to keep healthy over Christmas. - And it's just like, why do we have to have negative... Yeah, negative, I guess, attitudes towards something that should be positive and enjoyable? - Do you think? - Sorry. So yeah, I guess, like Maisie, the diet to me is, like in that kind of sense, is a restriction of calories or food intake with the intent of losing weight.

- Yeah, definitely, definitely. Do you think that we can restrict foods or food groups safely, and do you think it's necessary at times? - Yes, definitely. - Yeah, and it depends what it's for. - There are reasons that people need to be on diets. But there are a few reasons, for medical reasons, like a diet, the hard thing is, I hate the word diet because it has so many negative connotations, but it is just a word to refer to an eating pattern. And people have to follow different eating patterns for a whole heap of different reasons, whether it be medical or cultural or religious.

That's just the way we would, and we can change the way we eat from time to time, depending on these things. It's just that it's become a thing where healthy people are so caught up in this health industry, and they feel so compelled to do what someone else is doing or do this because someone else said they needed to do this because it's gonna make them better and it's gonna make them lose five kilos in two weeks or this, that, or the other. And yeah, it's become a bad word because it's got all these connotations to it that involve restricting what they're eating.

- Yeah, and that's why it doesn't work because like you said, diet is essentially just ways of people eating. And that's exactly why restrictive or prescriptive diets don't work because it's a one-size-fits-all for people who have a million different things. Like you get two people that've both got different work hours, for example. They've both got different taste preferences. They've both got different family values towards food. And you're telling these two same people to eat the exact same diet. - This is the right food. This is the wrong food. - Yeah, it's just so wrong, yeah.

- I feel as though there's a disconnect for most people between how they should feel when they eat and how they should feel when they eat certain things. But for me, if I've had a big day at work and had a good dinner, I love treating myself to like an ice cream or a crunch or a coffee or something like that. - You've just used a positive word like treat or pleasurable food is a really nice way to speak about it. Not I'm gonna have something naughty or bad. That just sets up a really unhealthy, like we're speaking about relationship with food.

- I got home yesterday, after being hurt for most of the morning, and I'd been talking to someone yesterday morning about Nutella. And I'd been thinking about Nutella from about nine o'clock in the morning from that point. And I got home and I was like, screw it. I'm getting the Nutella down and I'm having a spoon fit. I loved that, like it was amazing. I sat there with my spoonful Nutella on the couch and just enjoyed it. I didn't go, oh shit, now I've gotta go for a run or I've gotta-- - Or tomorrow I've gotta eat something different.

- Exactly, I don't have to cut out what I eat tomorrow. I don't have to train harder tomorrow. I ate the Nutella because I wanted it and 'cause it made me happy. And that's it. - And Maddie wrote something really good on the whiteboard. I'm not exactly sure 100% how you wrote it, but it was what today's meal is, you could probably rephrase it. - So it was to do with what you're eating today has nothing to do with what you can eat tomorrow or what you ate yesterday or what you should eat tomorrow. It's just enjoy the meal as it is now.

It's done, hopefully you enjoyed what you ate at that time and there's no reason to punish yourself or do anything like that because of what you ate today. It's a new day tomorrow, just start again, do what you wanna do, eat what you wanna eat and feel good about it. - And I personally have a history of dieting when I was a teenager. And when I read that I was like, that's exactly what I used to do. And the diet culture told me to do that. Like if, you know, and you can't control life, like life is not static, it's plastic.

So just say on Monday you've, I don't know, what's considered a pleasurable food, had a piece of cake. You go to a friend's birthday on Friday and there's cake and you go, hang on a minute, I had it four days ago, I'm not gonna eat it. That's generally what a lot of females have an attitude towards with eating and what the diet culture kind of tells you to do. Like, I don't, even innocent kind of things like, oh, just have chocolate once a week. That's a food rule and that's dieting mentality. Like it's, yeah. So when I read that I was like, bang on Matty.

- Yeah, do you think there's an issue with education in terms of what people know are good foods and I say good foods, there you go. But what people know are nutritious foods and what people don't know are nutritious foods. - There's a massive issue with nutrition education in my opinion and it's not what we know, it's what we don't know. I think, I've had this opinion for quite a long time throughout my career because we did a lot of stuff about the holes and the gaps in nutrition education for the general population and I guess I was lucky you guys were up in the house.

So we ate healthy, no missing quotes because what is healthy food, like there's so many-- - This is audio Matty, not a video. (laughing) - We ate a very healthy, balanced diet and I knew what food was and my cop has this massive big vegetable garden and we would go pick our produce and stuff like that. So I was very lucky in that regard. But what I knew about food just seemed like general knowledge and so when I was studying I was like, oh yeah, this is just a given, this is a given. Like everyone knows that they need to eat fruit and vegetables and we kept getting reminded that no, people don't understand that.

- Everyone starts from a different point. - Yeah, and I think the point that I, it really hit me was earlier this year I was working at a community center and I was doing a cooking program with young girls and we were making a stir fry and one of the girls pulled a vegetable out of the grocery bag and said, what's this? And it was a cat skin. And I just, like I was really taken back because I was like, how does she not know what a cat skin is? Like it's, it killed me inside to know that kids don't understand what different fruits and vegetables are.

It's something that I thought was such general knowledge. Like how do we have that gap in our education system and in our society where kids don't even know what vegetables are. - I guess it depends on like the, I guess, area that they live, the society that they're in. - Like the families that they grew up in. Like there's so many other factors that, like that's a whole other podcast. (laughing) We need to do something about addressing nutrition education so that the kids that are growing up now can teach their kids and they can teach their kids that we can hopefully eradicate this whole issue with people not understanding or just not knowing about food.

- And I guess, I think I've heard this too, and this is just a general statement, but the more food variety children and people have in general, the better off you are. Like, I guess they talk about people who, from the Mediterranean who had super healthy balanced varied diets because they ate seasonal. It's not possible for us to eat seasonal 'cause we can't all afford organic food and all that sort of stuff. But to open-- - We have this opportunity to eat whatever we want to do. Unfortunately, our food industry is a bit messed up that we want to be able to eat apples all year round.

So we get apples from everywhere. We grow apples all year round. We actually better grow them. - So I guess, yeah, like opening people's eyes up to all the foods, pleasurable and nutritious foods is only gonna improve their relationship with food and how much they're eating, yeah. - I don't think it's necessarily that people, as people don't know, people want to eat healthy and people want to look after themselves and people want to eat well. But it's hard when people genuinely don't know the difference between nutritious foods and energy dense foods. One of the quotes

that I love so much that I heard a couple of days ago that I wrote on the wall at Virtus is when you know better, you do better. So if people know, they tend to make the right decisions most of the time, yeah. We're all adults, we all tend to make the wrong decisions a lot of the time, but if we know better, we tend to do better. What, really, really simply, what's the difference between a nutrient dense food and an energy dense food? - To me, this is where I get stuck to try and explain it.

Nutrient dense obviously has the things that you want in it. It's got a whole heap of vitamins and minerals and protein, it's got a moderate amount of energy 'cause apple needs kilojoules or calories or energy. It needs that kind of stuff to get moving and to get it to do what we want it to do. And energy dense food is one that is very high in energy at the expense of having all these vitamins and minerals. So yeah, it's going to give out all the energy that it needs. A lot of the time it will give us a spike, so it will come down very quickly.

But there's no other benefit to eating the food. Apple doesn't get other stuff out, essentially. - Perfect. Think of an apple and a Mars bar. Which one's gonna have more energy? Which one's gonna have more nutrients? - It's a fairly, for us it's fairly simple 'cause we deal with it every day. But it's not as simple as it seems for a lot of people. - I think what I was gonna say before when you're talking about a healthy diet. A healthy diet has chocolate in it and it has coconut and it has a Mars bar.

Because that is healthy to eat that kind of food and to have that relationship that you don't feel bad about eating your foods and things like that. Unhealthy diet is one where you restrict all of that. - I think Maddie would understand as well, when you actually allow food freedom, you naturally drift towards those nutrient dense foods. You don't want to eat the energy dense foods all the time. You wanna eat those when you restrict them. That's just simple human behaviour. - I read a quote the other day and it was about essentially saying that when you tell yourself you can't have something, you want it.

And it's a base around this whole psychological process of you're telling yourself that you can't have chocolate. So you're obviously always thinking about not having chocolate. And when you think about not having chocolate, you are thinking about chocolate in it. And naturally you want chocolate - Now I'm thinking about chocolate. - Because you want chocolate. So when we tell ourselves we can't have something, we're always going to want it more. So it's about yeah, I can really have one piece of chocolate. I'm gonna have a piece of chocolate. Don't knock off a whole block on your own in five minutes.

Have a couple of mounds of the chocolate. Enjoy it when you have it. And then move on and go about your day. It's not a write off now that you get your one bag in. So let's just go for it and eat everything else that we want and you can find in the fridge. It's just, it's a napkin kind of day. You had some chocolate because you felt like some chocolate. And all foods are equal. - Where is that mixed question? This really cool thing that a girl sent this morning and I was just like, oh my God, it blew my mind.

- Feel free to find it. I'll ask Katie a question. - Yeah. We all have people that come in and say, I'm gonna start eating better this week or I'm gonna start training better this week or this is my time to really get everything going. Why do people fall down? Why don't those diets or training programs work? - Okay, so there's a lot of answers to that question. First off, I'll start by saying, by putting it this way, which does tend to make people think. People tend to blame themselves when they fall down. But my counter question is if the diets work and if diets are so effective, why couldn't you stick to it?

I think people, you didn't fail the diet, the diet failed you. Like when we look at, I guess, just say medicine, or yeah, just say if someone started taking a medicine and then it gave them like negative, I guess side effects like anxiety, weight gain, regain, two years later and it cut out things that they enjoy. We would deem that medication not a great option. - We hope. We'd hope so. - We would hope. But with diets, people tend to just blame themselves. And I would argue that the diet is the issue. You're not the issue.

The diet wasn't suited to you. - Correct. - So that's why. - There's a tipping point. We've got to take responsibility. - And if people talk about weight gain with diets, our bodies are primarily built to sustain or maintain our weight, okay? So if we go back to like, it's a primal reflex for our bodies to do weight maintenance. So people who go on restrictive diets quite quickly, and abruptly lose weight, your body will go into survival mode. It'll increase your hunger hormones. So like ghrelin and neuropeptide. Why is that right? Correct me if I'm wrong.

It increases those hunger hormones. So as soon as you lose body fat, your body goes, all right, I want you to get hungrier 'cause I feel like something's gone wrong here. Secondly, as Maddie said before, when you don't allow yourself to eat something, you want it even more. That's a psychological reflex. And food appears more desirable when you're on a diet. It honestly does. And this is why people, like your body is trying to stop you from doing what you're doing for one. And after you stop that diet, those hormones are maintained at an increased level.

So people do four or five diets and they think on the fifth diet, well, I kind of stick to this one. Two years ago, I stuck to that diet. Well, it's 'cause your body is fighting for you not to do this and not to lose weight. The other thing on that is your body, it needs fuel. There's no question, whether you are training or not training, just to walk from one end of the room to the other, to get out of bed in the morning, to get into your car. Your body needs energy to be able to do that.

- Can't drive your car without petrol. - That's right. - Same thing for the third body. - Exactly. - Unless you're on diesel. - When you restrict your body of that fuel that it needs, whether it's skipping a meal or cutting down on your portion sizes, unrealistically or doing things like this, your body needs stuff to keep running so it stores everything and quite often people find that they're gaining weight when they're actually eating less and it's because instead of your body going, oh yeah, I've got a meal, I'll use what I need to use and I will use the rest of it when we exercise and I'll store a little bit of it for later.

It goes, shit, I haven't had food for 12 hours and I'm running on empty and if this happens again, I don't know what I'm gonna do so I'm just gonna pop all of this in my reserve so that when I don't get food for another 12 hours, I've got stuff there. - That's right. And like, Locke, you're big on talking about cortisol. The psychological and physical stress of being on a restrictive diet and the anxieties that come with that, you're gonna get an increase in cortisol which increases your fat storage. So basically the diet is doing over time what you don't want it to do.

- Yeah, it's a vicious cycle. - We still keep turning to them. So it's a cultural thing, yeah. - Our body's just really in tune. - Yeah, your body's smart when you think of this. - It knows what it needs and it knows what it needs to do and it has so many mechanisms to try and overcome what we're doing but we become so stubborn and so insistent that this is the right way and this is what I'm gonna do. - This is gonna make my life better. - And the body's like, no, it's not

and I'm gonna do everything that I can which you don't realise because it's going inside and there's all those little bobs that are eating us. (laughing) But it does, it fights it and it fights a lot harder than we can. - Yeah. - I'm gonna be the devil's advocate for a second. What's the solution? I know there's a lot more answers than one but what's the solution? - And I have the exact same, when I discovered this whole non-diet approach kind of intuitive thing, I was like, I know this is what I need to do because I'm going batshit crazy otherwise.

- You're batshit crazy all the time. - Yeah, true. But I was like, but how on earth? And it's about, I'm gonna say retraining but it's not, it's about getting back in touch with your appetite and who you are as a person and also reducing the amount of weight that you give to that elusive body or that elusive lifestyle that you think is gonna make your life how you've always wanted it. If you drop the weight, what you consider that to be or how good you consider that to be, you're not gonna give a shit about it and you're only gonna be happier for it.

- And that's so true but it's so hard to tell. - Exactly. - And it's so hard to, I guess, train or go through that and get yourself to that point. It takes time but I guess everything that we do at Virtus is about taking that harder route to get better and more sustainable and happy results. - Harder choices, easy life, is it not? - That's not quite right. - No, I stole that from Tim Ferriss' podcast the other day. It was easy choices, hard life, hard choices, easy life. - That's exactly right. And it's persistence, but persistence was something that is truly going to suit you better in the long run.

- It gets us out of that instant gratification mindset where, hey, if I deadlift 210 kilos, I'm gonna be happy. If I lose 10 kilos, I'm gonna be happy. Need to find that happiness. - And the thing is, when you get to that point and you're not happy, where do you find your happiness being at? - 215 kilos. - Yeah, and you just keep going behind. You lose another 10 kilos and then you lose another one. - And that's when the dieting industry feeds off. It feeds off people's insecurities for not being happy with themselves. It's like, it's a $66 billion industry.

- That's a lot of billions. - They do not care that, you know, I was saying this to Locke and Maddie before, like 95% of people in five years time after starting a diet will have stopped the diet, will have regained weight. So, and the dieting industry, and when I say dieting industry, I'm talking about anyone that's selling you and eating restrictive eating pattern. Okay, that is what a diet is. And unfortunately the dieting industry isn't, the reason that the dieting industry is so bad is because it's not people that know what they're talking about. It's someone who may have done a crash course in nutrition or just everyone knows about food, that's a thing.

And everyone thinks that they have something to contribute, which they do. - Really? - Yes, people feeding the wrong facts and it's the quick facts that are gonna make a quick difference and change your life. They're the ones that pick the most. - It might be suited to one person, but the next person has that little aspect in their lifestyle that doesn't make that diet work for them. - And then when someone like me comes in with a way that can actually help a client or with a different perspective, that wasn't gonna give them the

overnight change, but it was gonna give them changes that work and are sustainable and are gonna make a difference to their health across their whole lifespan. And they're like, oh no. - Wait, so you're telling me it's gonna be hard? It's gonna take a long time? It's gonna take commitment and dedication? - Well, I'm gonna tell you that you can still have a slice of cake, so. - Yeah. - You can have your cake and eat it too. With Matty Borg. (laughing) She makes, she makes good cake. - This is a, so obviously at the moment, everything's a little convoluted and all over the shop.

I'm an internal optimist. Where do you guys see this going in the next 10, 15, 20 years? - Hopefully we can work, 'cause it's not just a diet system shop and it's not just your job as a performance coach. It's everyone's job, and it's a really hard thing to get everyone on board with. It's not gonna happen overnight. - It is a society issue. - Oh, it is a society issue, and that's an issue. Our diet culture is toxic. It is so toxic, and it sucks everyone in. As Katie just said, it's like a multi-billion dollar money-making industry.

These people don't actually care about your health. - They don't have ownership. - They care about the money that they can get from their detox tea or their 10-week meal program that they sell you for 15 bucks, but they're selling hundreds and thousands of them, exactly the same, to so many different people. That just shows that they don't care because it's not individualized. They don't know you, they just want your money. And it's just so hard to break that cycle, but as a society, we need to change the way that we're talking about food and feeling about food and thinking about food and just relating with food because otherwise we can't work on this.

- Yeah, so our eyes are open to it. I feel like I'm seeing more people shifting in that direction, but I don't know if it's because I choose what I see. So, Lachie, do you feel like you've seen more of a shift towards the lifestyle? - Yeah, to a point. I guess we're in an echo chamber, though, so we spend all day every day at Virtus. - That's what I mean, yeah. - With, I guess, a like-minded team. Our team, everyone's on the same page. I follow the Instagram pages and I read the research articles

and I follow the Facebook pages of the people that I wanna listen to, so there's a good chance you roll across down the road to another gym that they're gonna be following a completely different method and they're gonna be sponsored by supplement companies and they're gonna be on six-week meal preps and meal plans and 12-week shreds and all that kind of thing. So I like to think that it's changing and that it's gonna get better. And I guess to steal a line from Greg, how do you make the world a better place? One person at a time.

It's just a matter of educating the people that we are in direct contact with and hopefully the people that they're in direct contact with and it just gets bigger and bigger from there. - I'm sure you've probably discovered this. I could be in a cafe on my own with no one there that I know and I can overhear diet talk. Like two tables down and I just sit there and I listen to it and I listen to what these women are saying and sorry to be biased. There is a lot of-- - Sexist? - Yeah, but-- - It's 2017 Katie, you can't do that now.

- There is so much pressure on women to die. Like the pressure is higher on women. It is like obviously men deal with it as well. I was speaking to someone today who has struggled with it before in his lifetime. But the conversations that you hear, it's everywhere. It's like once the black mask has been taken off, it's just your eyes are open and it's actually really concerning. And sometimes I just wanna turn around and be like, there is another way. Like you don't have to do that seventh or eighth diet. - Like I was talking about the other day, you can't read a magazine these days without-- - Yes, I miss magazines before my eyes came out.

(laughing) - Because every second page is, this time of year, how to get through the winter so that you're ready for your summer bod. Like the newspaper on Sunday, the takeout that was, it was directly aimed at women. And the first page was a detox diet. And it's like, this is what we are giving to people every single day. Like how do we expect the culture to go away-- - Have the life you've always wanted by doing this detox diet. Have the life you've always wanted by, you know. And what's really sad is people put their lives on hold until they get that elusive diet.

Like I've heard of people, you know, not going to the beach because they're like, no, I'll go to the beach when I finally lose that weight. And it's like something so simple and relaxing and calming is going to the beach. - Yeah, can be taken away. - Taken away just because of how society looks at, you know, bigger body people or quite frankly, people who aren't bigger bodied, but they're so stuck in that dieting mindset that they put their life on hold, like, you know, they won't go for that job until they've lost that weight. Or, you know, when I finally lose those two, two to three kilos, then I'll be able to buy that dress.

- Yeah, because every one of those goals is based around looks and weight and things like that. If we started following a more health-based approach, then everything-- - Your world opens up. - Exactly, everything starts, you become more functional. You're able to walk every day. You're able to have more energy when you're playing with kids, when you're-- - And that comes back to like the all or nothing approach. You know, people stop doing simple things, like just moving or walking, because they're like, oh no, I'll start next week when I go on that 12-week challenge, which is, you know, a boot camp five days a week and a restrictive diet.

They stop the 12-week challenge, they stop everything, because it's like a swinging pendulum, do you know what I mean? Like it's, oh yep, I'm all right, I'm on the bandwagon, quote unquote. - Yep. - Once they're off it, they don't even do the simple things, which is so good for promoting health, like just adding more veggies into your diet, or going for a walk, or-- - One of my favorite, not favorite, but things I just, I can't comprehend with that kind of stuff is so, oh yeah, I'm starting a 10-week challenge tomorrow, and I've got five packets of cake and six boxes of chocolates.

I'm just gonna eat it all tonight so that it's gone. - It's not there anymore. - And what if you just ate it once a day? - There is nothing wrong with, yeah, exactly. - You can eat it all with lunch, your body doesn't go, oh shit, that was only one bag of potato chips, 'cause I ate it so fast, like, it doesn't work like that. And you're still eating the same amount of food. - And it's still fostering that diet, non-diet attitude. - Yeah, and there's no reason why we can't enjoy, you know, KFC once in a while, there's no reason why we can't enjoy a Milo, Pulsi, that one's for you.

- It doesn't make you a bad person. - Hot chips and gravy, mon, it's okay, go nuts. - Yes, it's like Bridge, hi Bridge, told me she had an Italian sandwich essay, and I was like, yes, I totally wanna go home and do that right now, and I enjoy it when people say things like that, like about pleasurable foods, because to be honest, there is shame in this society about eating those pleasurable foods. People keep it a secret, like it's something, like they're a bad human if they eat KC, you know? - Tom Curtis is a bad human.

(laughing) All right, so we asked the Virtus family, which is our, I guess, group of people that come into the gym and-- - Our humans. - They're our humans, they're our community. We asked them a bunch of questions to talk about, where there were a lot. We don't, unfortunately, don't have enough time to go over all of them, but we are definitely gonna knock over a couple, one of which was, how do you guys keep your motivation with food and exercise? - Okay, do you want me to go? Okay, was this KP? - I can't remember, I didn't remember.

- Yeah, I think this was KP, yeah. All right, so one thing I've learnt over the years is it's really simple, but I'll put it in technical terms so it makes sense or sounds more fancy, but obviously finding stuff that you enjoy, okay? So no one is going to stick to their exercise program if it is running five Ks a week, three times a week, when they can't even run two and they-- - If they hate running. - They hate running, okay? You can find other ways to challenge a cardiovascular system without doing stuff you don't enjoy.

So when we talk about motivation, there's two different types, or two main types. There's intrinsic motivation and there's extrinsic motivation, all right? So intrinsic motivation, like we say, is enjoyment or-- - How you feel when you do it. - Fulfillment, when you do it. You know, a lot of people at The Virtus Family, they love the environment, so they love the environment and they love the social support that they get, so that's an intrinsic motivator as well, because that's how it makes them feel. Or it might be a goal that they genuinely enjoy, achieving that goal.

So, you know, and counting the small steps on the way. All right, so with motivation, us at Virtus, we try to make small goals because the small goals that you achieve on the way, it instantly gives you positive feedback, improves your self-efficacy, you go, "Oh my God, that felt awesome," and you keep going. You don't get deterred by not achieving that goal that would realistically take someone four months by getting your hopes up to try and achieve it in a month. When we talk about extrinsic motivation, this is the superficial stuff. So this is what you look like to other people.

This is because someone else wants you to do it. So, you know, someone, I don't know, you might play sport in a team and someone's like telling you to do something. You really don't wanna do it. That decreases your control over the situation. So therefore you're gonna have low motivation. - Seeing photos on Instagram. - Yeah. - Seeing magazine covers. - Yeah, that is extrinsic motivation. That's other people influencing what you wanna do. So what I would do to improve your motivation is revisit those intrinsic things, write down why you do it and what it means to you, and then make small achievable goals on the way to achieve those.

That is the best way to keep going. And it's the best way, I guess, to ensure that you're gonna keep doing it 'cause you're not gonna do something if you hate it. - That's true, that's true. - You're not gonna do it. And if your only driver is weight loss, guess what? You're gonna get deterred at some point. You're gonna get disappointed. - Yeah. - And it's not gonna last 'cause it's not a meaningful, intrinsic thing. - That motivation, like anything, is gonna ebb and flow and you can have good days and bad days. And you've gotta find the little things that get you up and about.

- And the thing with that is when you do have a quote unquote bad day, you haven't dropped your ball. You can't keep going. - That is life. - I posted about this a couple of weeks ago. One bad day doesn't mean that everything else has been written off. It doesn't undo the 21 good days that you've had before that or the five good days that you've had before that. It's just a little bump in the road and we can keep going. And it doesn't mean that everything's blown apart and you just have to stop and start again.

Just keep going. It's not-- - Reduce the guilt on yourself. Have a bit of self-compassion with those days. - I use the iPhone screen analogy. If you have a little crack in your iPhone screen, that's a bad day. But the next day, if you smash it again, smash it again, smash it again, you're gonna end up with a smashed iPhone screen. So that's when you've gotta look at that little scratch. We take note of it. - Move on. - We're aware of it and then we move on. And then we look to the next thing. Moving on from that question, fairly similar question, how do you guys go about not comparing yourself to others?

'Cause I guess that's something that leads to, leads people down that bad or that negative path around it. How do you guys go about doing that? What advice would you have? - Okay, so I think I mentioned this before, is if something's not serving you well, so that could be you comparing yourself to Benny down the road that has all the money or Cindy who has a six pack and whatever. I mean, these are things that people typically, you know, with this like social media thing, typically compare themselves to. You need to stop weighing that so heavily in your life.

That's step one, I think. So if you don't think those things are important, you're not gonna compare yourself to them. You're not gonna think, oh, I wanna be there, I wanna be there. That's one thing I would do. And next thing is have self-compassion. So I talk about this a fair bit. You know, like be patient with yourself because you don't have to have the perfect life or the perfect exercise regime because nobody does. Every single person like on this planet has something that someone else wishes that they had. - Everyone's fighting their own battle. - Exactly.

You know, you might go, oh, but this person's never gonna want what that person has. Well, that person might, you know, have a really natural ability to get along with everyone. Someone might look at that person and go, God, I wish I was like that. And, you know, and that goes the same as all the superficial things that people usually compare themselves to, which is like looks, money, job, all that sort of thing. Everyone's battling their own battles. And what I encourage people to do, 'cause social media becomes a big problem in this, is to do a bit of a cull.

So if you have fitness models, if you have rich people or things that make you feel like shit, cut that shit off, get rid of it, cull it out. Like if it's not helping you as a person, why would you follow it? So I would cull them out. - Good, very good. - Yeah, and then I would reconsider what you value and what things in your life that you are thankful for. - Yeah. - Yeah. - The thing I've just written down is, what is your why? So why do you feel like that? And why do you wanna do, why do you wanna get to that?

And values as well. Values is, you figure out your values, you figure out what you stand for and what you wanna work towards, and everything else kind of falls into line. Next one. Should we have a tax for sugary foods and fast foods? - Yes. Yes, yes. - No. - Ooh. (laughs) You go first. - No, you can go first. - All right. For me, as soon as you hit 16, 18, you should be considered an adult, you should be able to make your own decisions, whether that's a positive decision for you or a negative decision for you.

If it's a decision that affects other people in a negative way, then that decision should be out of your hands, as far as I see. But as far as this goes, if someone wants to eat sugary food, someone wants to eat bad food, someone wants to smoke cigarettes, someone wants to do heroin, I don't care. Let them make their own decisions, because they're the ones, they're adults, they've gotta live with the consequences. If we sit there, and I guess nanny stated, for lack of a better term, and tell people that they can't do this, they can't do this, they can't do this, they can't do this, we've spoken about it for the last half an hour or so.

It's exactly what people wanna do. So if it costs me an extra five bucks to get a cheeseburger, then I'm probably still gonna get a cheeseburger. But if it costs the same, and we look at positive ways of looking at it, rather than taxing those things, let's subsidise some organic food, or some fresh produce, or something along those lines where we can actually look for a positive change, rather than just knocking down those negative connotations around it. - That is a question, are they going to drop the price of healthy foods at the same time as doing this?

- Is this actually a thing? - I live under a rock. - It's a thing in the UK. - Okay. - And they've been talking about it. - So Jamie and I was massive on this. - Yeah. - They got it passed in the 2017 bill. - Yeah. - As of 2018, there would be a tax on sugary and junk foods in the UK. - Yeah. - At the moment, Jamie is trying to encourage this to be recommitted in the next bill. - Yep. - With our whole option going on, like I was reading some of the stuff this morning, like all the different goals that he wants them to set, and meat, and targets, and things like that.

I get what you're saying about if people wanna do it, they're gonna do it, and I 100% agree with that. I guess it's kind of deterring people, because at the moment, as horrible as it is to say, sometimes it is cheaper to eat unhealthy food. - That's why I asked, are they gonna decrease? - I haven't heard that they are. So there's a lot of literature to show that people will, some families, it's just, it's more economical for them to go out and buy a family box of vegetables. And I know that this isn't going to curb the issue and take it away, and things like that.

But it's, I think it's something that could be a step in the right direction. I don't know, like there's talk of different levies that they're gonna put on, like percentage changes, and da-da-da-da-da. Obviously, it's not in motion enough at the moment for them to have something set in concrete. - Yep. - But I was reading a paper this morning, and some of the facts just like blew me away. And also these are all estimates. But from some of the predictions that they've been at, which are true in putting a levie on junk food, it's estimated that new diagnoses of type two diabetes will be decreased by 800 people per year.

And that it will cause about four and a half thousand fewer cases of cardiovascular disease. And 11-- - If it achieves what they say it's gonna do. - Yeah, if it achieves, yeah. This is all, like this is big ifs, and-- - There's so much that comes into that though, because-- - There's so many other factors to consider. - After smoking, physical inactivity is like one of the number one causes of cardiovascular disease. So how do they-- - Yeah, I know, and there are so many ifs, buts, maybes, like there's so many other factors that contribute to these diseases.

But they found a causal link, and-- - Yeah, I understand it can just, I think it seems like a band-aid in some respects. The other thing, though, is when they put this tax on it, the money that they are raising, the revenue that they are gaining from this, it needs to be used in the right places. - Correct. - And that's gonna be the-- - Put it back into health food options. - It needs to go back into health care. - Nutrition options. - In the morning, healthier foods and things like that. And that's gonna be, that's the thing that I'm most scared about.

Because if the government just gets greedy and takes this money and puts it into whatever the hell they wanna put it into, it's the cause it lost. - Yep. - I think the thing in my head, it's not about charging more for these foods. Hopefully that will incidentally deter people from having them as much. But it is the benefit that this money could be used if used in the right way. Like back into the health system and to promote healthy eating programs and be used for education and things like that. That is where I think this could be most beneficial.

But yeah, it's a big, it's kind of a big legacy I guess. - Yeah. - Because there are-- - There's so many variables. - Yeah, what you said was so right. Like people, it's their choice. And we've seen with the smoking tax, like if people wanna smoke, they still wanna smoke. - Correct. - And that's at the end of the day, they miss their choice and it's taken a happy-- - This is just a sugar tax here, it's not a junk food tax. - In the UK, it's a junk food tax. In Australia, I think they are just focusing on a sugar tax.

- 'Cause, correct me if I'm wrong. 'Cause I feel like I hear things and then I memorize them and I don't know where I got them from. (laughing) But there has been some information. Oh, where did I say it? Anyway, that sugar isn't actually the highest nutrient that some people who do struggle with obesity are eating. It actually is a lot of fat that they are consuming as well. So, I wonder how they separate that from high fat, high protein foods. Australians do have a really high protein diet. And also, is it demonizing sugar? - Yeah, that's a big deal.

- Like what we've been speaking about. Like, is it making sugar the devil, like what we've been speaking about? And giving that unbalanced relationship where people go, "Oh, it's bad. "So, I'll just eat it for a whole day "and then tomorrow I'll stop." And it continues that cycle. That's what I wonder. - I guess, as all the sugar documentaries that have come out in the last few years-- - I've never watched one of them. - Have told us fat was the enemy for so long and now, like they, I guess they cry, like they argue about fat being an enemy for so long and they've just turned it on sugar.

And now people go, "Oh, sugar's bad for you." In every single form. - They can now get money off sugar. - Correct, correct. - Do you wanna know what? People are still gonna be fat and that's okay. Like, one thing that I've learned is shaming fat people does not make them eat healthy and lose weight. So, maybe, I don't know. The conversation needs to change in general and sugar is not the only problem. People aren't moving as much. People are eating more and people have more access to foods and those nourishing, not nourishing, sorry, pleasurable foods, people eat more of them.

If they cut out, you know-- - Fat is not just because of food. We know that so much and fat is such, again, another word that I don't like because you can have a bigger body and be healthy. You can have a time when people would think it's fit and skinny and whatever other words they wanna throw in there. - They might have health problems. - They could have so many health issues that you don't realize and that they don't realize. - And I get the connection with like, obviously, I'm at uni, they talk about statistics all the time.

I totally understand the connection between obesity and metabolic disease and obesity and heart disease but you can actually change those metabolic factors and cardiovascular factors that make them have those diseases such as heart, blood pressure, heart rate, triglycerides, cholesterol. You can change all those without weight loss and one way to change it is exercise. - Or without drastic weight loss that they think that-- - Yes, that they won't maintain in the first place. One of those ways is regular exercise. - Just get up and walk. - It's basically the best medication you can find. I sound like a real exercise physiologist right now.

And just adding more nutritious foods in. If you tell them to cut them out, they're not gonna do it. If you tell them, you know what, just add more veggies each day. What are they gonna do? - Very, very good. Why do people binge eat? And why, what's the psychological reason for binge eating? - Okay, do you wanna go first? I feel like we're both gonna wanna, we're both gonna talk a bit about this. - It's not, it's like a lot of things with this kind of stuff there's no one answer, it's not one test of its all.

There's not, I can't give a perfect statement as to how we can fix this or how people control it or anything like that, but essentially, binge eating is often emotional eating. And we find comfort in food, like we do. People enjoy food and often it is the foods that we enjoy the most that can, are what people would label as a bad food, which I'm all for a piece of cake and all of that. I don't like labeling foods as good or bad, but that's the kind of connotation that they have. And when we think about binge eating it's the kind of foods that we think of.

And one of the big things with that, as I just said, is it comes down to emotional eating. And emotional eating is that kind of hunger that you get and it just comes on suddenly and you're only hungry for, I'm just gonna use chocolate as the devil, but you've, all you want to eat is a piece of chocolate and it just comes on in an instant. And that one piece of chocolate doesn't satisfy and you need some, and it needs some, yeah. And then all of a sudden you're eating two blocks of chocolate and you don't know, you don't even remember-- - Do you feel better?

- Do you feel better or do you still want more? And if you still want more-- - I hate myself. - That's crazy and that's not physical hunger. And one of the big things that it comes down to, identifying that's really, really tough. Like we're always going to be struggling with this and some people are really good at it and others just, like I struggle to get my head around it. Identifying when the hunger is emotional and when you are actually just physically hungry. And as I just said, an emotional hunger comes on like that, it's just there and it is for one or two particular things and nothing else is gonna occur about craving.

- And yeah, I think what you said about like the, like I think a lot of people say, like I've heard people ask me, why when I am bingeing or when I'm emotional, why do I crave those high energy foods? And like the simple answer is like when you eat particularly energy dense foods or like high sugar foods, it gives you like a, it's, I think they call it like a post-ingestive positive feedback. I think that's-- - A rush. - Yeah, and over time, so bingeing is essentially a habit, right? All habits are a process within the brain.

All habits are a neural pathway that's been formed and you connect behaviours together. So if you don't know how to deal with your emotions and you pair that with eating to relieve those emotions, that neural pathway gets strengthened every single time you do it. So like you said, Maddie, when you come home or whatever, and you're feeling emotional and you get that intense rush of I need to eat this certain food, that's something, that's a neural pathway in your brain telling you, all right, this is the behaviour that we do when this particular emotion arises. And we're gonna continue to do that.

And every time you do it, it gets stronger. And what I usually ask people is a couple of things like, is it emotional? Is it because you've been restricting the foods? Like I know when I used to restrict foods when I was a teenager, bingeing was like my best friend. So that's a massive driver. And I think you wrote, this is another one of Maddie's like quotes on the whiteboard about sitting-- - We haven't been good off on. - Sitting there for 10 minutes. Yeah, so being mindful is what I was gonna talk about. We're

not, as Kenny said, these thought patterns and the need to have these foods and we just strengthen these neurological pathways of the reward and then it just gets stronger and stronger and stronger. So it's hard to break, I'm not gonna joke about that. I've actually spoken to quite a few of my clients about my own experience of I'll go sit down on the couch, it doesn't matter if I've just eaten a massive dinner or I'm not hungry at all, I know that I'm not hungry. Why would I sit down on the couch and do the debate on I want something to eat?

- It's a habit. - I want some chips. - Yeah, and it's a period. - I want something, it is that, just that environment that I'm in and I know that I'm not hungry but I have to fight so hard not to get up and go to the pantry and I don't win all the time. And that's the thing, no one is immune to this just because we're in this space and I talk about this all the time and I know, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen to me and I think that's a big

thing to remind everyone, you are not hungry, this happens to everyone, we just need to talk about it and we need to work with ways that are gonna help you overcome it because what I am about to say, I'm a pelvic run and I'm struggling with it and you have good days and you have bad days but it's trying to recognise, am I really hungry? Think about that hunger, let it go away and then in five minutes, are you still actually hungry? Could you stop thinking about that for a little while or was it just

this grumbling in your stomach the whole time and quite often, if you can wait it out, you'll find that, oh, I've actually gotten on with something else and I'm not hungry anymore and it was just a craving and it does take time, it's not gonna be, it's not, I'm just gonna stop and it goes away. - I had a dietitian tell me once too, if you recognise that no, you're not hungry but you still wanna eat that food, just go eat it somewhere else. Change your surroundings, enjoy the food so you're not restricting it and

you're not going, oh my God, I can't eat this unless, you know, but change your surroundings, change your environment 'cause like you said, I remember when I used to sit, well, I still do some of the, sometimes I sit in bed and then I'm like, all right, it's chocolate time 'cause every, it's a habit, it's like a pathway and it's just-- - Battles the nickname. (laughing) - It's about rewiring or rewiring, reprogramming that software loop, do we-- - Yeah, and that's what I'm saying, like go eat the food and enjoy it. Often with in feeding,

you get to a packet of chips and you don't even realise that they're gone, like you put your hand back in the bag and you can't believe that they're gone because we just eat and we don't think about it and we're not mindful of what we're actually doing. - We need to connect that mindfulness back to food. - And eat the packet of chips. - And enjoy it. Enjoy the shit out of it. - Enjoy it. As lame as it sounds, put the fruit in your mouth and think about the texture of it and how

soft it is and how it feels when you put it in your mouth and how it feels when you crunch it and take two seconds to think about how good that one chip felt and then get it out of it. - Yeah. - Not only with the bag will last you a lot longer but you will have enjoyed it and we're just connecting them, like it's not just a mindless action of eating fruit because our emotions tell us true and not being aware that we're doing it. It's all about, yeah, connecting and being aware and

being mindful and thinking about backing out and feeling and behaving and then if you need to still have that fruit, thinking about it while you're doing it. - Stop, take a breath, think about it, make a decision. - Yes, yeah. - Cool. Do you need a go? - No, I've changed it. - Hey, awesome. Next one. Why do we get bloated? Before meals, after meals, late at night. Very broad question, I know, but. - Yeah, really broad question. Again, you guys are gonna get really sick of me saying this but there's no one answer. I think that's the big thing.

Everything that I say has to be evidence-based and I can't offer you guys a quick fix. I'll get my predication to eggnog me very quickly if I do that. So, why we get bloated differs for every single person. One food will make me really bloated and not affect Katie and might affect Lachie and then what Katie eats, I can eat and have no problem. We're all really different and what goes on inside us and our gut and our GIT is just completely different for every person. And the way we react to foods and the way our emotions are which affects the way we react to foods in our body stores because it's just all so different.

Obviously there are some culprits that we refer to quite a lot. Like some people will have an issue with dairy or with gluten, fructose and FODMAPs and things like that. There are culprits that we can refer to a lot but it's the way that our body reacts to these foods individually that causes these issues. I'm actually reading a book with a woman called "Gut" and I'm a little bit obsessed with it and once I finish getting through it, I will leave it. I'll borrow it after Katie's read it as well. I'll leave it up in

my office at the dentist if anyone would like to come and have a read 'cause it's a really good kind of anecdote, a bit lighthearted but there's facts and it explains a lot of what's going on inside us and it talks a little bit about why different foods can cause us to bloat and the different things that are going on when this happens. And it's essentially the way that our body is fermenting and processing these foods and sometimes that just causes more gases to be released in our stomach 'cause that's when you get that kind

of bloated feeling and it can come from a small meal because there's a certain food present but it can also come because you've just eaten too much. We eat a lot as a society, as Katie was saying before, we've lost our kind of intuition with our appetite and our hunger cues and things like that and we sometimes just can't stop eating. We just keep eating 'cause there's food on your plate. - And so hard to pinpoint what foods would be making you bloated. Like you really need to see a dietician like Maddie or get the appropriate screenings done.

- And one food will make you bloat one day but it might cause a reaction the next day and again it's to do with-- - That's what happens to me. - Your emotions and your stress, like there's a massive link between our gut and our brain and there's so much evidence coming up about that at the moment and there's still so much to learn about it but literally the way that we feel affects the way that our bodies react and different foods at any given time. So I can't give you an answer as to what

food will make you bloat or what will stop you from bloating because it's something that you have to work with on an individual level and it would be a matter of writing out a food diary and looking at the symptoms and you guys can do this. Write down what you're having and when the symptoms come on, what kind of symptoms you get, how long they last. - See if you can find a pattern. - And yet you have to look for a pattern because as I said, what will cause bloating one day won't cause bloating another day and it's looking at how long the symptoms last and what eases them and what you can do to control it.

Like it might be that usually after you have a big lunch, you go for a walk and that will help move along your digestion but yesterday you ate a massive lunch and then you sat down and catched and your food can just sit there and that will cause you to bloat because there's just food sitting inside you. Like all these organs that we have that digest our food are a certain size and they're designed to stretch when food goes inside them. When we put lots of food in them, they're gonna stretch more. Like your stomach, people say a part of a lot of people have been, no, it's not really that small.

Your stomach is like the size of your fist. And if you look at the fruit of your glaze- - You don't imagine it like that. - Can you imagine that whole steak and all those veggies in your cell and those chicks spinning inside your fists? - And all the bacteria in the bacteria is farting and it's creating gas and- - Yeah, and like it sort of stretches, like that's what it's naturally there to do but you're stretching it a lot. Like it's gotta go somewhere, so it's gotta distend your abdomen. It's just a physical, it has to happen.

- So I'm sorry that I didn't have an answer to give you about that. Come and see me and I can talk to you about it. - That's right. - But yeah, there's no quick fix to that money. (laughing) - So we had a lot of questions about specific diets or specific eating patterns and specific things cut out and all that kind of stuff. Obviously that's why we did this podcast because we wanna talk about the better ways of doing it. Obviously a lot of people will have food intolerances and people will have allergies and things of that nature.

How do we figure out what we're allergic to and what our body doesn't like? - Allergies is a big one that we can't self-dive post, like an allergy is literally your immune system being involved in reacting to the food. It's become a society that will quickly say, "Oh yeah, I've got an allergy to gluten "or I've got an allergy to dairy." And the thing that makes me most angry about this is that there are people that actually have diagnosed allergies and they have an immune response to these foods that can quite literally kill them. And we're kind of just like, "Oh, hell no.

"Everyone's got a gluten allergy now." - And those people are probably wishing they so badly could just have like a doughnut or something. - Or a bee. - Yeah, or like, and they can't. - They can't. - Yeah, and yes, they're a poor thing. - Gluten intolerances, and an intolerance is not, it does not involve your immune system. It causes discomfort when you eat food because your stomach or your body has a not-so-great reaction to the food. I'm not discrediting intolerances. They exist, they are there, they are real things as well. But they're not as severe as an allergy.

So we, as a society, we really need to be careful about how we use those words 'cause they're not interchangeable. In terms of working out whether you've got an allergy or an intolerance, an allergy needs to be diagnosed through multiple tests by a specialist for a gluten intolerance that involves colonoscopies, gastroscopies, sometimes a blood test, but these little skin-coat tests that are getting done everywhere at the moment, it won't diagnose a gluten intolerance. And sometimes these will give people misinformation, and that's one of the reasons why there are so many people walking around in the room who think they have a diagnosed allergy because there's so many incorrect ways of diagnosing it.

Another whole other thing to talk about again. But in terms of an intolerance, it's something, again, looking at the patterns of your reactions and the side effects that you get from eating certain foods and pinpointing what the food is. Because people say that they get bloated from a piece of bread, and so instantly, yep, I am allergic to gluten, but they never get a reaction to whipped eggs or crackers or beer. And guys, these all have gluten in them. - Yeah. (laughs) - Gluten's not solely in bread, gluten's in wheat and-- - Probably things you wouldn't even realize.

- Yeah, and so many different sauces and things like that, that just because you have a reaction to the bread doesn't mean you have a gluten intolerance. And I think it's just, it's become a thing where people want to have an intolerance because it gives them a reason not to eat that food. It gives them a reason to cut out a food group that they like less bad. And gluten's one of those ones because we have such a bad, a bad thought towards carbs. - Yeah. - And this is, again, going off tangent and making some-- - It relates back to the diet culture, though, doesn't it?

- It relates back to the diet culture and it gives people a reason to cut foods out of it. - We all want an answer, we all wanna, this is what's wrong with me, or we all wanna-- - Life isn't simple. - Exactly, we wanna play the victim and say, oh, this is the simple answer of this is what's wrong with me but at the end of the day, there's so many different variables and so many different things. And I guess we'll talk about this probably on another podcast about gut health and gut flora and fauna but that can be different day in, day out, depending on what you've eaten and how stressful you are.

- I was doing a webinar yesterday and it was about increasing the amount of fruit and veg we have each day and just quite simply as a nation, we are so bored at that. It's amazing how many people are not even meeting two steps of veg each day. And they were showing studies and really solid findings to show that just within 20 foot hours by increasing our fruit and veg intake, we can change our market behavior. And that just goes to show that one period of eating more fruit and veg or changing the way that

we eat in one day can significantly affect the way that our body works and what's going on in our gut and what's going on in our gut affects the way that we act through. So there's so much more going on every day that influences what we could think of in tolerance. So it's not just a quick, oh yeah, today I blooted and today I have an uncomfortable life to having a coffee. So I'm allergic to dairy. Like it's, it can't be, it's not a quick fix. It's not a quick diagnosis. And there's so much more to it than just identifying the food.

- That's good, very, very good. So we don't sit here talking all day. We're gonna wrap it up, but I want to, at the end of every podcast, I'm gonna ask whoever my guest is five questions and ask for five favorite things. So first question for you two, Maddie first. What's the nicest thing you've ever done for someone? - That's a hard one. - And I'm throwing you straight under the bus 'cause I haven't told you what these questions are. - I know. - Yeah. - God, classic hockey. - I know, yeah. (laughs) I don't know the nice thing I've ever done for anyone.

- Big one. - I surprised Brooke for the birthday hanging Sunday. - Oh, that's cute. - That was a delicious cake too. - Yeah. I threw a surprise 30th birthday for my partner, Nick Bradley. - Uh-huh. - Yeah. - Chocolate. - Yeah. (laughs) - Katie, if you could give teenage you one piece of advice, what would it be? And it can be to do with food or anything. - I'll do a couple of, yeah. I'll do food 'cause we're on the topic. So first would be thinking about what you eat and how you look every second of the day is not normal.

Second would be if you eat healthy, it doesn't make you a better person. If you eat quote unquote unhealthy, it doesn't make you a bad person. And just be kinder to yourself, yeah. - Good, Maddie? - Just because someone else is cutting out a certain food or a food group or a nutrient, and for whatever reason that may be, it doesn't mean that you need to do it as well. And I've personally been there and done that because someone else is cutting something out, I was like, oh yeah, that's working for them and they look good and they feel good, so I'm gonna do that.

And that's not the way that it works. So reminding myself that what works for one person doesn't work for another, and just 'cause they're doing it doesn't mean that you need to do it. Enjoy food, keep enjoying food all the time. And do not use food as punishment or a reward, just enjoy it. Food is just food. - Good. What was the last book you read start to finish, and what was the main teaching point you got from it? - The last book that I read start to finish was not an educational book. (laughing) - Doesn't matter.

- People might wanna read it. - What'd you learn from it? - I can't even remember what it was. It would've been a long time ago that I read a book start to finish. I think I remembered how much I liked reading. I just generally did not tell you what it was. - It's okay? - Every summer, I read a heap of books because I was finally free to read, and I didn't have to read stuff like that. But I'm reading part of the room, and I loved. - Awesome, sweet. So next podcast, you can tell us what you learned from it.

Katie. - M-body, E-M-B-O-D-Y, by Connie Sozak, yeah. I don't know if I'm pronouncing her last name right, so. - I'm sure she probably won't do this. (laughing) What was your main teaching point that you learned from it? - Probably, well, it actually reinforces a lot of what we were talking about today. So stop weighing superficial things so heavily in your life. So stop weighing looks and stuff like that so heavily, which, yeah, I already kind of knew, but it was just a really good-- - Just nailed it down again. - Yeah, yeah. - Good, awesome. Who in your field or outside your field are you interested in reading about, and who do you look for when you want new information?

Katie Dean. - In my field, as in like-- - Inside or outside your field. So it doesn't necessarily have to be coaching or performance coaching. Where do you go for new information? - Okay, well, this ties into the question about not comparing yourself and stuff like that. Breen Brown, everyone should watch her TED Talk for a start, then buy a book. Yeah. - I'll leave that one in the office as well when I get through that. - Yeah, just teaches you a lot about just being like a happier human and yeah, yeah. - Cool. - Yeah.

- I'm very lucky to have tied down almost Fiona Sutherland as my mentor for my first year as an APD. And she's really big in the mindful eating space. So I'm looking forward to learning a lot from her this year and hopefully being able to enhance my skills as a dietitian in this space to better all of you. Hopefully I'll have some more interesting stuff. - Awesome. - Yeah. - Cool. Tell us something about yourself that nobody knows. - No one here will know, I'm absolutely petrified of birds. (laughing) - You should not have told me that.

- Yeah, no. (laughing) - Like big birds, little birds? Just birds? Swooping birds, swooping birds. It got to a point where I wouldn't go for a run around my house because I couldn't map out all the route rides and know I would get swooped. - That's elite, that's awesome. - And I'm actually at the moment like-- - That's incredible. - It's okay to go for a walk or a run at the moment 'cause it's not swooping season. You may have more months and I won't go for a walk. - Treadmill. - Yeah, we have a plumber that lives on our garage roof and he's a fool.

- I want you. - He comes back every round, August every year and I sometimes cannot get to my car. - That's the best story ever. - Because I'm so worried like, yeah. - Katie? - I've been asked this question so many times and I never have an answer because I just blurt everything about myself to everyone. (laughing) Maybe the listeners, I did hairdressing for a year. - Did ya? I didn't know that, that's awesome. - Yeah, I did hairdressing for a year. I didn't like it, obviously. Anyway, yeah, 16, just thought I'd give it a crack.

- Play on. - Yeah. (laughing) - All right, so first thing that comes into your head, I'm gonna ask you five things. What are your five favorite things, all right? First one, what's your favorite quote? - Work hard. No, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. - The Dr. Seuss one about the more you read, the more you learn, blah, blah, blah. - Cool. - That's really bad, but I didn't actually know what I had, but-- - Yeah, jeez. - Under pressure, though, we're under pressure, come on. - Favorite book? - Probably, yeah, probably Embody or what else did I read?

Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff is a good one, yeah. I've got a couple, I don't know. They're all self-help books. - I can't give like a title of one, but a cookbook. Give me a cookbook and I'm happy. I'll flip through and read and, yeah. - Keep cooking for us. - Favorite movie? - I really like to see movies. - Don't we all? - I really love The Lion King and Kanye West. - I'm like not a movie person, I like TV series, sorry. - Katie hates fun. (laughing) - I seriously do. - Favorite music? - I wasn't into anything.

- Yeah, I'm anything and everything. Obviously, I like-- - Cool, stay on the phone, Sam. - I like Kanye West, Don't Hate Me, just like his tunes, and I also like Flume, Odessa, I like how you say it. - No idea. - Yeah, anyway. - What's your favorite podcast? - Birders. - Good answer. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - What's really your favorite podcast? - I don't listen to a lot of podcasts. They're trying to get me onto M&M, I know, and I'm trying to get on it. - It's all I do with my life. - It's all I work to it, yeah.

- Hand coach. - That one that you made me listen to the other day, I really liked that. - Joe Rogan. - Yeah, that one. - Shout out. - And-- - Favorite. - If you don't have to, you can have a pass, that's pretty great to say. - Awesome. - Yeah, I was listening to a eating and food relationship when it was like, this woman, she's literally from the other side of the world. - You might have to narrow it down a little bit. - Yeah, I'll have to write it down. I used to listen to Joe DeFranco's one a fair bit, but yeah, I got a bit tired of it after a while.

Yeah, probably those two. - Awesome. - Give links to the one that I'm-- - Favorite food. Last question. - Chocolate. - I can't give you one favorite. - Yeah, it's fast. Chocolate and cheese. - Anything Maddie bakes. - On cheese, yeah. - Chocolate and cheese. Is red wine a food group? (laughing) - Maybe. - So it's like getting back on the phone. - Yeah, that's true. Well, thank you, Maddie. - Thank you, Locky. - Thank you, Katie. - Thanks, Lock. - Do you guys have any more for any more? - Um, no. Me and Mads will give you guys some links to the books and stuff we're talking about.

- Yeah, we might put up a-- - Resources. - Yeah, we put up a resources page with it. But, yeah, thanks for listening. If you guys have any questions or queries or anything, you can contact any of the three of us. Contact Virtus Performance, info@virtusperformance.com.