Ep 02. Nutrition for endurance, performance, and good health with Mikki Williden

Transcript

CAM HARPER

Welcome to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. My name is Cam Harper and I am your host for Season 1, Beef, Lamb and Ironman, where we will be bringing you nutrition and good health from New Zealand's finest beef and lamb. Today we will be talking to nutritionist, ultra marathon runner and triathlete enthusiast Mikki Williden about the importance of nutrition for endurance, performance and good health. And stay tuned for our sprint to the finish segment at the end of the podcast where we do a series of quickfire questions. Mikki, how are you?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

 I'm well, thanks Cam, how are you?

CAM HARPER

I'm very well, thank you. So, tell us about your sporting background, and look, I've known you for a while, and I know it's extensive, we could do an entire podcast on your sporting background, but give us a bit of an idea about your sporting background first, then we can get into your professional background as well.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Awesome, so I am predominantly a runner, as you said. I liked the title ultra marathon runner, but in truth, I am much more sort of a seasoned road marathoner, but I am getting into the ultra-marathon sort of distance. And if someone asked me my career highlights Cam, the reel would include a Rotorua Marathon 2005.

CAM HARPER

Yes, winner. Winner, thank you.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

You remember, great. Yep, absolutely. And also, but much more recently, however, I just completed the Queenstown Marathon a couple of weeks ago in 3 hours 22 I think.

CAM HARPER

That's competitive, Mikki, that's very good.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

I was really happy with the execution of the race, the training leading up.

CAM HARPER

So Queenstown Marathon did that recently, so what's your current training plan at the moment? What are you gunning for? Tarawera 102. Are you?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Okay, yes. I haven't, it's been on the agenda for a few years, but of course COVID has sort of curtailed that up until this point and I'm excited to train and do it.

CAM HARPER

Oh, that's fantastic. And talk us through, you got one heck of a pedigree as an athlete, talk us through professionally. Talk us through your background there and what's brought you to where you are now. Okay, so I studied undergrad science and physical education at Otago and then completed my masters there before coming up to Auckland for a job subsequently sort of joining AUT faculty and doing my PhD there whilst I was a lecturer. And then all the meanwhile also seeing clients just on the side because of the sports nutrition interest but also a real passion for health and helping people be as healthy as they can. And from an athlete perspective, you can't train and be the best you can be unless you're healthy right? So, the two sort of intermingle. I have spent probably the last 15 years in and out of lecturing but also being a clinician and currently I see clients one on one. I run group programs around fat loss but also sort of athlete performance, sort of self-directed stuff. I think this will be a theme of a lot of what we talk about today is balance right and it's so important that so many people get it wrong don't they?

CAM HARPER

Yeah, they do and sometimes it's, you can get a little bit caught up either in, not fads necessarily, but doing things the way that others might do it because you haven't quite figured out what works best for you. So, you know, you follow the lead of someone that you might look up to or what your mate's doing or what your coach sort of tells you to do. And I'm not saying any of that is wrong, but then can sort of, you can become quite myopic, I think, in certain areas. So, you know, to be healthy does require a level of balance. Having said that, when you do train for an event like Ironman, it does require, that balance does tip a little bit in a direction, I suppose, for certain weeks of the year or certain sort of periods of the year, but I think that's just par for the course. So, you know a lot about preparing and competing in endurance events. So, what role does nutrition play in training for and competing in an endurance event like Ironman? And specifically, if you look at like ANZCO Foods with beef and lamb and that iron intake, and we'll talk a bit more about that, but just getting good wholesome food, beef and lamb, that kind of thing into you leading up to the event, at the event, post-event, very wide-ranging question, but you know what I mean.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Yeah, I know what you mean. And you know, to be a successful athlete, you have to be healthy. And as athletes, and particularly endurance athletes, often we focus on our carbohydrate requirements, and it is essential to be able to meet the requirements of both the training and recovery and of course in the event. However, protein is extremely important as well and much more important than I think a lot of endurance athletes have previously sort of thought about but it is becoming more sort of prominent in the nutrition sort of talks and so many of the athletes I speak to we have a real focus on ensuring they have appropriate protein intake and particularly female athletes, but not just female, because I see a number of male athletes as well, really fall short on those really nutrient-rich, protein-based foods like beef and lamb, red meat, because it's such a good vehicle for a lot of the micronutrients, which we don't easily get in the diet. And just as athletes, we struggle to meet the requirements for, and that'd be things like iron, zinc, B12 and those micronutrients in addition to protein.

CAM HARPER

It was interesting, we were lucky enough in our last podcast to catch up with Braden Currie and Hannah Berry and it was awesome talking to them because they really did talk a lot about whole foods and especially leading up to an event like NutriGrain Ironman in Taupo and the week previous, but also recovery and how much of a part that whole foods and I always suppose both specifically spoke about ANZCO Foods with their beef and lamb and part of that for their recovery as well. It was really interesting.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Yeah, well if you think about it Cam, to be, to get fitter as an athlete, of course you do the training, but it's within the training where you have the muscle breakdown and adaptations that you then need to recover from and repair to then become a fitter, better athlete. And in endurance training particularly, where you're going for an extended period of time, you are breaking down amino acids. And protein-based foods like beef and lamb are some of the best sources of those amino acids that we then need to include in our recovery diet to help us rebuild and become more resilient and fitter. So, I'm not surprised that we've got our elite athletes in the sport, Hannah and Braden, who have a real focus on that because they are such a good example of athletes that continue to be consistent in their training and perform at their races. And it's very difficult to do that without including these whole foods. Not impossible, but certainly very challenging to do. How many times, I mean, it would be endless, right? It's the endless question. But as a nutritionist and somebody with the extensive background you do in sport and science, but people get it wrong and quite often by the time you realise you're doing it wrong, it's quite a recovery to pull yourself back out of that, to get up to a par where you can be fuelling your body properly, especially when you're under a heavy load of training like Ironman or ultra running or any other sort of endurance event.  Yeah, oh look, absolutely. And even when I sit down and have a conversation with an athlete who is aware of the importance of these whole foods and of having a much more sort of balanced approach to diet, they underestimate their requirements. And oftentimes this is because, and if we just again take protein as a really good example of this, it's... world experts in protein metabolism suggest that the recommended dietary intake that we are told is half of what we actually need. So we're told we need 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight per day. But that is like this minimum sort of threshold for surviving. Yeah. And so protein experts, they suggest that we double that to 1.6 grams per kg body weight per day. But then on top of that, you have to allow for the accelerated breakdown of muscle that occurs during endurance training, you know. So I, even athletes who think they're meeting the guidelines, I've yet to meet one that actually is. And so a really good practical tip for people listening is to actually just calculate and see where you're at for the day. It's as easy as getting a food app like MyFitnessPal, Easy Diet Diary, Chronometer, and then just start inputting the foods that you're eating. Even just, because you cannot manage what you don't measure. Yeah, and so unless you're aware of what you're doing, it's very difficult to make changes and to even know what changes might need to be made. Write that down everybody, was it? You can't manage what you don't measure.

CAM HARPER

 That's just poetry. It really is. So race is over, we've talked about this a little bit, but that recovery, I mean it's easy to go, you know what, I'm done, I'm just going to eat whatever I feel like down the pub, whatever it looks like. But you know, that recovery to get yourself back, because your body's in some serious trauma right after those events for a period of time and trying to bring that back to life.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Yeah, absolutely. And so it's, I mean, the requirements post-race, certainly we need to focus on that sort of healing aspect. So, you know, pub meal aside, which isn't the worst thing in the world because you can get a good steak at a pub, right? However, certainly I recommend people focus on upping their protein intake further. It might be up to 2.4 to 2.6 grams per kilogram body weight per day, just over the sort of next week, and really focus on those fresh sort of antioxidant type foods as well, like your dark green leafy vegetables and berries and things like that to help with getting rid of a lot of that oxidative stress and those sort of breakdown products. There's nothing easier than putting lamb chops under a grill for six minutes each side and then steaming some broccoli. And I'm not saying that's the meal, but that makes up a bulk of the meal. And also for athletes, it isn't just iron and zinc and B12 that we need to be mindful of. It's other things like, we do need cholesterol to help with our hormones. We need creatine to help support muscle recovery and our brains. We need carnitine, which helps with fatty acid metabolism. We need choline for our brain as well. And these are nutrients, and they're sort of termed zoo nutrients, because you get them from animal protein.

CAM HARPER

I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas you don't get them from plant-based protein. Not that plant-based protein shouldn't be included, but for people who do eat meat, it needs to, they need to ensure that they're getting adequate quantities of that really nutrient rich protein based foods like beef and lamb. So talk to us, we've been talking a little bit about metabolic efficiency as well. So talk us through that and you know getting enough calories at the right time and making sure you've again got that balance right as you lead up to events during events, post events.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Yeah, so Cam for an event like Ironman because it's such a long event, I mean you'll know this, it's the athletes that really succeed aren't the ones necessarily that speed up. They're the ones that are able to maintain their pace. And that should be the goal. And in order to do that, you need to ideally be able to utilise all fuel substrate that you've got. So your carbohydrate stores, which we deplete on a daily basis. And so we need to replenish because we cannot store, because we can only store 500 grams on average for a 70 kilogram person but also our fat stores. And even the leanest athlete has hundreds and thousands of calories of fat stored. But it can be difficult to access if you're in a food environment where the predominant sort of nutrient source has been carbohydrates. So there's definitely now much more awareness of utilizing strategies and training to help up-regulate the ability to burn fat, to become more metabolically efficient, to then be able to tap into both fat and carbohydrate during training, but of course during racing. And of course, we have the ability to do it, but it does take some training to be able to do that. And that largely comes down to fuel availability before training sessions, what you do during training sessions and setting up training sessions to specifically work on these endurance sort of base factors, timing of carbohydrate post-session as well. And the goal isn't to minimize down carbohydrate throughout your racing at all. It's being able to train in a way that allows you to utilize and maximize that carbohydrate in addition to fat. So come 11, 12, 13 hours into the race, or eight, nine, 10 hours into the race, you don't have any gut related issues and you're able to utilise both fuel sources. So you were talking before about the red meat with its iron, B12 and zinc.

CAM HARPER

So what role do each of those have on the body in our performance? Yeah, so iron is critical for the immune system, for the gut, it's critical to carry oxygen around the body, so energy and fatigue. It's important for the thyroid. Zinc is important for the gut, for our immune system, and you know things like this they come back to that, sorry, nutrients like iron and zinc, ultimately they're just key factors in so many places in our body that keep us healthy, that when you do fall short, you might not notice it at first, but over time recovery becomes impaired, you're unable to sleep as well, you start getting gut related issues, and these are all going to compromise your training sessions day in, day out. So you're never able to complete training to the best of your ability. So you're never able to become the athlete that you were destined to be. So that's how I look at micronutrients. Like they're sort of like the oil in a car, if you like. They keep everything running really well. But then, and the best way to get them in your diet is to include foods like beef and lamb because it's such a good vehicle for the micronutrients without you even really thinking about it. And it's interesting, you know, talking about nutrient deficiency. So you know, if you're competing in Ironman, how would I know I'm on the right nutrition plan for my particular body type and goals? So I mean, male and female athletes need different types and amounts, I'm assuming, of these nutrients as well? Yeah, yeah, they do certainly for some of them. So one of the first things to do if you can do it yourself or you're working with a health practitioner who can help you sort of interpret numbers is get baseline blood markers done actually Cam and you know this ideally is done at the start of a season so you know where your B12, your folate, your zinc, your iron markers like ferritin, your full iron panel and your complete blood count. What do they look like? And from that, from the laboratory where you get them done, they're compared against reference ranges, but they're not necessarily giving you the optimal number where you need to be. So that's why working with a health practitioner who looks beyond those ranges and can sort of determine, where a good level for ferritin is, for example, for an athlete, but then also compare how you feel to that sort of optimal number. So it is a mixture of biomarkers, qualitative markers as well. So where's your energy at? What's your body composition like? Are you sleeping well? Are you recovering well from training? Then you look at your blood biomarkers and if everything is within sort of optimal range, then that's a very good way to interpret how your nutrition strategy is working. Yeah. Yeah, whereas if it's not, then you know what you need to work on. And what I would say is that if you do these things and you are coming up a little bit short or a lot short, it is actually quite challenging to meet that through diet alone and that's where it is important to work with someone who understands supplements to sort of target supplements effectively.

CAM HARPER

I mean what I'm really picking up here, Mikki, is that people will get under the bike shop and drop X dollars on a set of wheels or some new shoes or whatever it is they're going to do and hey, power to them. But there's literally free speed just sitting inside your body that you're just not utilising.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Oh look, totally Cam. I took biomarkers and numbers and interpretation and all the rest of it, but it's actually not that complicated. You know, like you keep mentioning balance and whole foods and ultimately, you know, for an athlete, if you focus on the things that we were brought up eating, you know, meat, vegetables, potatoes. It's beautiful. Honestly, like that would get you 80% to where you probably need to be. And then it's just thinking then of course timing comes into it and whatnot, but having a really good solid foundation diet is a really good start.

CAM HARPER

So how much iron does an average person need?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

So for an athlete, female athletes need around what are recommended to get between 18 to 23 milligrams, and male athletes are required for around eight to 10 milligrams. It doesn't seem like a lot, but having red meat, around three to four times a week minimum. And in fact, I suggest that people try to hit that most days is one of the best ways to incorporate that. The bigger you are, the bigger your steak should be. Actually, yeah, I know. And- I'm going better than you. But actually, if we're thinking about a time-poor athlete, you actually might be more better off getting like a, you know, beef roast. Yeah. Or a lamb roast or something, putting that puppy in a slow cooker. I get hungry with these things. And then you've got like, you've got that prep done because a lot of a good diet, you know, preparation is required to ensure you've got what you need available because it is convenient, but for some reason, you know, grabbing takeaways appears to be more convenient for some people. Unfortunately.

CAM HARPER

You're listening to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. My name is Cam Harper and we have Mikki Williden as our guest today. So Mikki, meal planning is important with busy work and family schedules. Any tips to make it easier?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Yes, so the aforementioned slow cooker, that is 100% I recommend doing that. Spending, actually prioritizing 90 minutes sometime during the week, so you're planning your meals out. So not only do you know what you're buying at the supermarket and making it easier to navigate that, be it online or in person, but you're not wasting food as well. And then doing things like pre-cooking sausages, hard boiling a dozen eggs, prepping little containers of your oats and protein powder or whatever it is that you're having for breakfast. Do all that in advance and it might seem like you're spending more time at the start of the week, but when you are tired, you are training twice a day, you're juggling work and family on top of it, you definitely, note as a benefit from having that prep time sort of built into your weekly planner. It seems that more and more people in modern society are having general health issues and we're talking a lot about elite athletes but for the normal everyday person that could be listening to this or people that you may see in your professional capacity just walking around the streets, how does it work for them? How does red meat help with them with some of the issues they may face? We’re human. And all of us actually struggle with a lot of the things that we've talked about with meeting their protein requirements, knowing what it is that they need. And one of the best things that you sort of everyday average person could do is probably start the day with a decent hit of protein actually. Because what you eat at the start of the day really impacts how you feel and subsequently how much you eat for the rest of the day. And protein helps regulate appetite, helps even out your mood, which then leads into your energy levels. And as Kiwis, and actually most people in the Western world, if you like, we are quite light on protein breakfast and lunch, and then come to dinner and we've got a sufficient amount of protein there, but that looks like we're protein heavy at dinner because it's so much more than what we're having during the day. Whereas I mentioned sort of calculating protein requirements earlier on in our discussion, but if you were to distribute that three to four times across the day and build your meals around that, it would go a long way to helping address a lot of the problems that we see in sort of that general population.

CAM HARPER

And your favourite beef and lamb recipe, what's your go-to?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Gotta say, I just love mince, actually. Love mince, and what I did last week was really delicious, and this might… well if it grosses people out they need to sort of change their thought process around it but we got liver, we got mince, we mix it together  and then we put some Moroccan seasoning on it. So it took literally that took maybe four minutes and then we made it into meatballs and we air fried them. It was so delicious. So it's interesting you know I mean this is kind of away from what we're chatting about but I was brought up on a sheep farm back in the olden days and so we've always been brought up that just, you know, use what's available to you. So liver's no issue. Yeah, and I think it's certainly sort of come back around, you know, with regards to using that nose to tail. Yeah. And it's so cheap. And, you know, we've been talking about iron and zinc and everything there, but actually beef liver has most recently been shown in published literature to be the best source of these nutrients.

CAM HARPER

Really?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Seven grams of it. Yeah.

CAM HARPER

That's incredible. So finally we're going to end with a sprint finish. You love a good sprint finish. Is that going to be you at the end of the Tarawera 102k?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

That is my goal. Maybe a sprint crawl. Yeah, maybe.

CAM HARPER

So I'm going to ask a few questions. Yeah. And the first thing that comes into your mind is what your answer will be. Is that okay?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Yeah, yeah, sure.

CAM HARPER

So you ready? Yeah. Okay. You're a morning person or a night person?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Morning. Yeah, I think everyone is. Yeah.

CAM HARPER

What's your favourite hobby that's not sport?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Drinking craft beer.

CAM HARPER

You know, if you look at your, this is out of the Sprint British stuff, if you look at your socials there's a lot of that. I love it so much. You and Cam Langsford. It's fun. Is nutrition an art or a science?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Both. It is isn't it?

CAM HARPER

Definitely. And you're off to a barbecue, which meat do you take? What meat do you take?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Steak.

CAM HARPER

And when that gets cooked, what are we talking, are we a rare, a medium rare, a medium, what are you looking for?

MIKKI WILLIDEN

I'd say rare because it often comes out medium rare.

CAM HARPER

Yeah it does. Yeah, hedge your bets. Yeah it does because you kind of got to go for the rear because you've got to let it rest. Exactly. There's an art to a barbecue, isn't there? Yeah. Well, Mikki, thank you very much for everything today. You've been an absolute star. Thank you so much for coming along.

MIKKI WILLIDEN

Oh, thanks so much for having me, Cam. It's been great.

CAM HARPER

We've made it to the finish line of our second podcast of Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods, season one, Beef, Lamb and Iron Man. Thank you, Mikki, for joining us, and thank you for tuning in to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. If you enjoyed our podcast and want to find out more, head to anzcofoods.com/ironman for more insights and news. Make sure you tune in next time when we'll be talking to Nick Gill, All Blacks Strength and Conditioning Coach, about what you need to do to achieve your full physical potential.