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Ep. 77: What is bulking and cutting and what should teenage athletes be doing instead?
277 Plays11 months ago
Do you know what bulking and cutting is? Has your teenager asked you to change what you feed the family, veering between carb-loading and keto-style meal requests? If you're worrying about your sporty teenager's attitude to food, this episode is worth a listen.
My guests are Kate Shilland and Fran Taylor, registered nutritionists who have seen how teenage athletes are influenced by TikTok creators to resort to sometimes extreme measures to get 'the perfect physique'.
We talked about toxic masculinity, self-esteem and body image in young men and teenage boys in last week's episode, and this is the perfect follow up conversation for anyone who's 14 year old is asking for a gym membership and scrutinising their diet.
Kate and Fran explain how good nutrition will help boys as well as girls build the muscle they need for strong athletic performance, without the need for special powders and supplements.
Who are Kate and Fran?
Kate & Fran are Registered Sports & Public Health Nutritionists with over 15 years’ experience in helping people understand how to fuel their bodies better in order to perform better. They work with teen athletes and their parents, and have teenage athletes of their own; they say the consistent thing they see is that there’s a lack of good sports nutrition advice for young people, and an overload of terrible information, especially on social media, that can be challenging to navigate.
That’s why they started Performance Canteen, a go-to resource of easy to follow, science-backed facts on sports nutrition and practical recipes and tips on how to make healthier choices. The aim is always to make the healthy option the easy option, to arm young athletes and their parents with the knowledge and skills needed to build the best versions of themselves, whatever the goals may be.
Their recommendations and resources are based on feedback from teens, parents, teachers & coaches, with the aim of providing everyone with the same good information.
More teenage parenting from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at Actually Mummy, a resource for midlife parents of teens. Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast or want to hear more on parenting teenagers contact me on Instagram and Twitter @iamhelenwills.
For information on your data privacy please visit Zencastr's policy page
Please note that Helen Wills is not a medical expert, and nothing in the podcast should be taken as medical advice. If you're worried about yourself or a teenager, please seek support from a medical professional.
Podcast produced by James Ede at Be Heard production.
Transcript
Introduction to Healthy Eating vs. Online Powders
00:00:00
Speaker
There are some really good things that create a good response. It doesn't have to be in the form of a powder that you've brought online. There are things that work. We say there's this really amazing thing. People say, what can I take? I say, there's this really amazing thing. Like, what is it? Oh, it's good food.
Introduction to Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast, where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult time in the teenage years but came out the other side in a good place and has insight to offer to parents and young people who might be going through the same.
00:00:52
Speaker
Have you heard about the trend of bulking and cutting? Now it's not what you think it is, but it is something to be concerned about if your sporty son is spending hours at the gym or asking you not to serve him rice and pasta in an effort to gain muscle.
Meet the Nutritionists: Kate and Fran
00:01:11
Speaker
If this is something you can relate to, listen to this chat with Kate and Fran. They're registered sports and public health nutritionists with over 15 years experience in helping people understand how to fuel their bodies in order to perform better. They work with teenage athletes and their parents to give good sports nutrition advice for young people.
Social Media's Impact on Body Image
00:01:33
Speaker
We talk here about how teenagers are influenced by social media, the rise of body image anxiety in teenage boys, and how some teenagers are being negatively influenced by trends on social media. Their aim is to help teen athletes understand the best ways to gain strength and muscle without resorting to unhealthy strategies and protect their growing bodies.
Hosts Reflect on Teenage Experiences
00:02:03
Speaker
Fran and Kate, welcome to Teenage Kicks. It's so good to have you here. Thank you very much for inviting me upon. Thank you. We're going to talk about a really, really important topic, and it's something that I knew nothing about until my kids started talking about it, and I had to do a little bit of Googling.
00:02:21
Speaker
But before we get into that, I just want to ask you, as I always do on these podcast episodes, about your own teenage years and any difficulties that you had growing up. Because, I mean, let's face it, all of us had some issues as teenagers. It's just it comes with the territory, right? Yeah, absolutely. Fran, do you want to go first? OK.
00:02:45
Speaker
what you want to know. What was it like growing up for you and when you hit teenage years? What sort of age did you start to realise that you had to grow up?
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, so I lived in Suffolk, so I lived in quite a rural place. I lived in a small town. I was quite sporty. I liked cross-country running, and I did all of that, and I really enjoyed that.
00:03:17
Speaker
you know, I think you get to a certain age and a lot of sports sometimes, if you're not really good, sport can kind of fall by the wayside. And I kind of went from doing lots cross-country to not and to kind of, you know, usual teenage things, really. And I think, well,
00:03:42
Speaker
kind of in my later teenage years. So when I was doing my A levels, I my dad got ill with cancer and died when I was 17. I think I guess that was quite a age of growing up and having to realise all of that. So yeah, that was a bit challenging. But previous to that, you know, kind of I was I, I say I had a fairly
00:04:09
Speaker
easy teenagers like I didn't have any major kind of angst or issues or anything like that really. So I've always wondered because I was the kid at school whose PE teacher back in the 70s couldn't stand her
00:04:26
Speaker
and was really awful now by today's standards. I was rubbish, I didn't have great coordination so team sports were a struggle for me and she really was quite cruel and so I fell out of love with using my body really, really young
00:04:47
Speaker
And I was really jealous of the kids at school. So when I got to teenage years, the kids at school that seemed, from my standpoint, to have a good time and feel confident in their skin, although I now know that no teenager feels confident in their skin, were either the really popular ones who smoked and had boyfriends,
00:05:09
Speaker
and we could go on all day about what their hang-ups were or the really sporty ones because they had something, they had a focus and they were performing and achieving at something that was quite cool. Whereas I was academic and that's not cool. Did it feel like being sporty kind of helped you go through that journey of
00:05:32
Speaker
adolescence a bit more confidently? Not really, no. I think on the outside, probably, but on the inside, I think you still have the insecurities and you look at the popular ones who are doing other stuff and think, oh, maybe I should be more like that. So I guess, yeah.
00:05:55
Speaker
From from the inside. I don't think I felt like I had an easier ride because I was And to be honest, I wasn't like Kate is is very sporty and is good at all sports I was quite badly coordinated. I wasn't very good at things like tech
00:06:13
Speaker
I played netball, I enjoyed netball and was good at netball, but I could run and I could run across country and that was my thing. But it wasn't like, you know, massively kind of super popular and ahead of all the sports teams.
00:06:29
Speaker
Unlike Kate. Okay. Fair enough.
Kate's Teenage Sports Journey
00:06:32
Speaker
Kate. Okay. So how was it for you being a popular sporty person as a teenager? Well, do you know what? It's really funny because I had the other end of your PE teacher deal. Like my PE teacher was so like, I could never do a thing wrong that it was then everyone took the mic out of me for it because
00:06:49
Speaker
Oh my god! So actually, it was quite embarrassing. And we still talk about it like now. So yeah, my teenage years, just like Frances, I was sporty, I used to run a lot, so sprinting, but I did a lot of other sports as well.
00:07:06
Speaker
And I think it definitely helps because it creates a different group of friendships outside of your school and you're introduced to other people that are quite like minded, which is great. But I don't think you're ever immune to stresses around it because then it comes with other stress of it's really competitive and I'm good enough. And also we all have the thing of my bum looks fat in this and you've got to wear those small little shorts. And it's funny now because the teenage girls all want their bums to look nice and big. And we were all paranoid about the other side of it.
00:07:36
Speaker
So I think that it was brilliant because I had formed amazing friendships from that and I loved it and it was something that sort of drives you. But I became one of those sad statistics that we're trying to work hard to kind of combat now that I probably... So I was quite compressive level. I did sort of English schools and ran for the county and then probably about 16, 17
00:08:01
Speaker
I think my, the friends that I kind of enjoyed their company most at running started to, we used to go from sort of six days a week to maybe four, then to three, then like other things would take preference or all my friends would be going to parties on a Friday night and I'd be, I can't come because I'm racing tomorrow. And suddenly it's like the, the priorities change a little bit. And I think I wasn't good enough.
00:08:24
Speaker
to just do that I think I was sort of on the cusp and then yeah just different choices come in and you realize what your friends are all doing and you think well that's quite appealing um I think I'll do that and then yeah I think I probably stopped running maybe about 17 18 which is so sad because that's such a typical like time that young girls do um I mean I'm back
00:08:51
Speaker
and then I kind of had a bit of time out and then I got back to it but I think that whatever you're doing whether your sort of strength is sport or academia or socialising or music there's always going to be a challenge because you're always kind of I think teenage years come with that sort of insecurity however confident you seem on the outside sometimes you are
00:09:13
Speaker
thinking about or overthinking and Fran and I did a talk with some young people before and we said you know someone asked what advice would you give your younger self if you had to go back and meet yourself then and I think we both said like oh just don't overthink it because I think that's the thing of you're constantly stressing of is this the right thing or should I do that oh I shouldn't have done that and
00:09:36
Speaker
I'm not saying I don't do that now. I'm still bad at that. But I think sometimes, yeah, we just have to kind of trust the process more. Anyway, I'm waffling. But that's a snapshot of my teenage years. And I still got all my friendships from teenage years. We're still a really nice close group of friends, which is lovely. And I think sport definitely helped with that, as did the nights in the pub.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, amazing. No, it's really important stuff actually, because as a parent, I think we get so used to our kids being what they are and loving what they do. And then it's kind of nice to hear that nearly all of them are going to drop all of that in favor of the pub and parties, but they are probably going to come back to the things they loved before. And for parents, it's kind of
00:10:27
Speaker
keeping the faith that whatever your kids give up on, if they loved it passionately before, they will probably come back to it in later life once they've got the hedonism of 16 to 24 out of their system. As a parent of sporty kids, I just really like the friendships that they build around their sports, the like-minded
00:10:51
Speaker
kids that are sort of driven and motivated and wanting to do something other. My daughter often says about school friends, why don't they want to do other stuff? Like, where's their other goal? So it's nice. And I think as a parent, you think, oh, don't give up sport,
Risks of Bulking and Cutting Trends
00:11:05
Speaker
because then you lose all those really positive influences on your life. But it doesn't mean you start valuing them. And you've still got that embedded. And you, like you said, you do go back to that. And you know what makes you feel good, don't you? And so you kind of
00:11:18
Speaker
You have to test all things to know which thing actually is that you truly like. Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say, perhaps Fran, you can answer this first. Both of you alluded to body insecurities, which is really a nice segue into what we were here to talk about today. So I think we will go straight into it.
00:11:47
Speaker
For me, as a girl growing up and with a daughter as my eldest, I've been very, very aware of girls' insecurities about their body, shape, size. Like you just said,
00:12:02
Speaker
big bums are really fashionable now and everybody wants to augment the size of their hips and I'm like you are made the way you are made and actually it doesn't really matter whether your body shape is in fashion or not that's what we that's the whole
00:12:18
Speaker
I was going to say patriarchy and then I thought, no, it's such a cliche. I can't say it. And then I'm like, well, that's what it is. Let's just call a space fade. We need to get away from that. But whilst I think there's been so much work done on that, there hasn't been so much in my head of boys. I just thought, boys get away with it. It's got free. They're fine. And then
00:12:45
Speaker
My daughter hit 16 and started coming home from school saying that her boyfriend was constantly in the gym.
00:12:54
Speaker
And could she invite him round for dinner, but could we have no carbs because it's cutting season or more carbs because it's bulking season? And I'm like, what, what, what the heck? First of all, I was like, hang on, what's cutting? What's cutting? I need to know about that. So maybe Frank, you can start us off with explaining, explain what cutting and bulking is.
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, so bulking and cutting basically are two phases of a kind of muscle building regime that certain people do that involves kind of manipulating calorie intake to increase muscle growth and to minimize body fat. So during a bulking phase, the premise is that you eat more calories and you focus on weightlifting to build muscle mass.
00:13:44
Speaker
And then the cutting phase means reducing calories to kind of strip away body fat and accentuate the muscles that are in the bulking phase. And if you look on TikTok or Instagram and you put in teen athletes or young muscle building or whatever, you'll see loads and loads of teenage boys talking about bulking and cutting and
00:14:13
Speaker
you know, promoting different things and powders and all of that, as well as older people talking about bulking and cutting. And as Kate was just talking about before we went on air, you know, there are lots of people that we deal with, young athletes that we deal with that are
00:14:33
Speaker
that that kind of take that and want that as part of what they do as part of their training regime, whether that be rugby or rowing or football or whatever. And yeah, it's something that that we have heard more and more about. And I think
00:14:51
Speaker
is because social media is, you know, highly visual platforms, things like TikTok and Snapchat and all of that, you know, are all about image. And whilst girls have always had those magazines that talk about image, I think that was less so for boys, whereas now,
00:15:13
Speaker
they have that constant reinforcement of the supposed ideal body type for a teen boy, which is muscles and being big. And they get that reinforced time and time again when they're looking at things. And that then helps to drive that thought and need that they need to be bigger. And just because it's common doesn't mean that it is okay.
00:15:40
Speaker
um and that it is normal and that it is healthy because it is not so can i can i add to that it's a it's a kind of um it's basically like yo-yo dieting for team boy um but the the thing is like fran said it's sort of we call like generation z there's so much information at the tip of a you know or your fingertips but that information isn't good
00:16:03
Speaker
good, useful, healthy, not information for young, growing bodies. And the problem is that they're bombarded with that and you can't really pick out what's the fact, what's the myth. And there's also all these promotion of not just ways to eat, but by this powder, you've got these overnight bulk, extreme bulk, but there's the big kind of FOMO
00:16:24
Speaker
If you're in a sport or in a gym where you're trying to get a girlfriend, if your friends are doing it, you think, well, I need to do that too, because I'm not going to be the skinny one in the gym. I don't want to miss out. We've had loads of parents message saying, my son's just bought this online. Is this okay? You think, gosh.
00:16:40
Speaker
The fact that you can just go on Amazon or whatever and press it and you might be like a 14-year-old boy and no one's regulating this. And when your body's still growing, it's so, so important. You're investing in your long-term forever self. So it's so important that you understand what you're putting in your body. And those things aren't designed for a growing body. It's really important that you actually understand what's in those things, what you're putting in your body and why.
00:17:08
Speaker
and I think that's what's missing and I think most of the people are just taking this because their mate's taking it and they don't want to be the one that isn't but they're not seeking advice from the right people or they're kind of worried about asking the question because they don't want to look like the the nique or whatever it is and then it's just become the norm and like Fran said because it's normal it doesn't mean it's it's right
00:17:32
Speaker
So I'd like to know you're as professionals who understand nutrition and understand young people and specifically understand young people who are sporty and athletic and who work with athletes
00:17:47
Speaker
Is any of this bulking and cutting okay? Or is it awful? And how do you recommend kids approach it rather than doing it off their own back?
Nutritional Education for Young Athletes
00:18:03
Speaker
I'll just start and you can finish, friends. But the most important thing is education. You build your body from the food you put in it. So it's about giving young athletes
00:18:15
Speaker
proper information about what their bodies need and helping them understand actually quite how much fuel is required just to exist. Even if you were to sleep all day, your body needs a lot of energy anyway, you're growing and you're laying down muscle, you're developing anyway, so we need a lot of food anyway. But it's about getting the foundations right because everyone wants the bit on the top and just want the quick tricks.
00:18:40
Speaker
But you can't build if you're only focusing on the top. We say, you don't build a pyramid upside down. And that's what people want. So we need to educate on how to invest in the foundations and helping them understand this is actually how you build your body. And this is what your body responds to. And this is how you build muscle.
00:18:58
Speaker
and because the more knowledge and understanding you've got like we say you know your most amazing bit of sports kit you'll ever own is your body but it doesn't come with a manual so you have to learn how to use it and operate it and that's where we come in and I think we communicate okay the science of it but in a kind of practical way of like okay you don't have to be complicated get the basics right and you'll see really big differences the lad I just saw he's made phenomenal
00:19:24
Speaker
a difference in his body comp in four weeks just by eating well and understanding how to eat and his mum said oh what's great is he now knows the science of it and and he knows why not just what
00:19:36
Speaker
So I think that's what's missing. Sorry Fran, you go. So if you say, is it useful bulking cutting? It's not really because it just demonstrates a misunderstanding of the process and it's about people marketing and making money from vulnerable young athletes, which is never a good thing.
00:19:59
Speaker
And you can't mess around with your body like that. Restricting calories is never a good thing when you're trying to grow anyway, because if you go into a deficit, you stress the body and you increase risk of illness and injury, especially if you're training hard, but under fueling, then you're risking injuries and muscle stresses.
00:20:17
Speaker
And I think just before we came on here, Helen, I just did a little search on TikTok for bulking and cutting and teen muscle building. And I was looking at the videos and a lot of them are, here's what I eat in a day as a teen boy who wants to build muscle. And I was just looking at some of them and just seeing kind of, okay, let's look at how balanced what they eat in a day are.
00:20:45
Speaker
And a lot of it is an excessive amount of protein, not very much color, and not enough carbs. And when we talk about building a balanced plate and having a balanced diet, we always say, if you look at your plate, make sure you've got carbs,
00:21:09
Speaker
color, so fruit and veg, healthy fat, and some protein. And the proportions of that will vary depending on how much training you're doing, what meal it is. But if you're ticking off those four things, then you're looking at a nice balanced meal or snack.
00:21:28
Speaker
in a lot of cases you're not seeing that you're seeing a lot of protein some fat not very much color and a little bit of carb but carbs are not seen as as particularly you know you shouldn't have very much of them in their minds
00:21:44
Speaker
which we are always talking about having more carbs because actually carbs are the thing that fuels our body's brains and also fuels muscle growth as well. Like we need protein but we need carbs to help our bodies use that protein as well.
00:22:00
Speaker
So I think there is that kind of continuing, repeating, that's normal, that's what I should be eating.
Dangers of Misinformation on TikTok
00:22:09
Speaker
And the thing is, I think with, again, social media and TikTok, you know, one of the most widely consumed types of content on TikTok is health and nutrition. But it is often by people who are not
00:22:23
Speaker
Nutrition professionals and the information that they are giving is oversimplified. It's very black and white and nutrition isn't black or white. It's a nuanced subject and often the people who kind of shout the loudest
00:22:39
Speaker
you know, with the most basic messages are heard, whereas actually, you know, what you need is, as Kate said, the science and a little bit of understanding and it doesn't need to be complicated. But, you know, it's not do this, don't do that. And I think that's where it's difficult to kind of, you know, for young people to see really.
00:23:04
Speaker
Also, I think it's so important to remind young people that there's only one them on the planet. You're you, you do you. And comparing yourself to what someone else does and what they eat and what they do doesn't make any difference to you because they're not you. And everyone's slightly different and your taste buds are different, you're eating habits. There's so many things to consider.
00:23:23
Speaker
So it's about understanding you and the better you understand you the more you have confidence in then your choices and your habits and I think a lot of for teen boys a lot of what is important as well and what we're trying to do is to
00:23:39
Speaker
broaden the net and not just talk to them but like okay talk to coaches talk to parents so everyone's got the same message so that they feel safe to say no to things or the coaches are understanding actually why they need carbohydrates here why they went what to eat before and after training because sometimes again coaches are sort of old school and they've come from a time when maybe nutrition was even
00:24:02
Speaker
more poorly communicated and carbs are more demonized or low fat, you know, there's all been, you know, you can't open a newspaper or anything without the next fad, the next thing, the next thing coming up, it's confusing. So it's about getting those messages out to
00:24:18
Speaker
the places where they're training and just making sure that there's a sort of safe space with good information that doesn't make you feel pressured to bulk or cut and to realize actually if you do it the right way you have much more effective long lasting results for you know you like as we said before you have one body for your whole life when you're young you're building it
00:24:39
Speaker
forever. So you're making investments and laying down investments for the future. And what you do now helps your long term bone health. It's all many things that obviously a teenage boy doesn't want to hear because that's boring. But it's about like, actually, how can we get simple, effective messages in that actually are appealing to a young boy? And I think the proof's in the pudding, you just have to get a couple of people to try it. And they realize, oh, yeah, this actually
00:25:06
Speaker
it works and look at my muscle response to this amount of training, this amount of nutrition and this amount of rest because that's again, it's training, nutrition, rest, those three things, the performance triangle, they're all optimized. Most boys are saying, I'm going to the gym, I want to get stronger. They come to us, they say, right, I want to get strong. Okay, what are you doing? I'm going to the gym all the time.
00:25:27
Speaker
but they're not thinking about eating or they're not thinking about resting. So you think, well, you're not getting the results you deserve for spending all this energy and putting all this effort in, but you're not actually getting the rewards from it because you're missing two essential parts of it. So again, it's like if you rest and eat as hard as you train, then you're going to start seeing progress. Okay. Resting and eating aren't as kind of trendy or cool or whatever as the training part. So it's about, again,
00:25:55
Speaker
I don't know, we kind of keep laboring the point, but it's like trying to make it simple and let them see actually where food fits in and it's about eating proper food. You don't need these powders and things that you don't know what's in them. Well, I'm going to ask you in a minute to just as best you can in a short space of time on a podcast, explain what these boys who do want these results should be looking at. But first of all, I want to know,
00:26:24
Speaker
If you've got any horror stories, what is the worst that can happen? Or what's the worst you've seen or heard of if boys are not... Well, and girls. If anybody who's following this cutting and bulking regime that they've picked up from some super influencer on TikTok that isn't backed by science, what happens to their bodies? Why shouldn't they do it?
00:26:50
Speaker
Well, I think there's a couple of things really. I think firstly is if you're restricting calories at a point where you're going through a growth spurt and a growth period that you can impact your growth and your final height. So I think if you know restricting calories at a crucial point in your time,
00:27:14
Speaker
of growth is of concern. I think there are hormone elements if you are restricting and you're going through cutting and bulking, that your hormone health is massively affected. But then I also think kind of from the mental health side of things, like going through cutting and bulking has, you know, doing that binge restrict kind of cycle has
00:27:42
Speaker
it's been shown increases your risk of becoming, having disordered eating and having a negative relationship with food. And I think, you know, that is really, really important because that impacts, as Kate has talked about, you know, you're building your future self, but you're building your future brain and you're how you think and feel and, you know, eat.
00:28:09
Speaker
now has huge impacts on how you think eat and fear food in the future. And so I think the more kind of disordered you are around eating for supposed health and getting bigger is a negative thing because it's not about health, it's just about aesthetics.
00:28:31
Speaker
and about how you're looking. And I think that is a real concern. And I think that's something that we have seen for, you know, with young boys.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, and I think most people associate distorted eating with young girls, but actually we see a much more prevalence of it with young
Disordered Eating in Teenage Boys
00:28:53
Speaker
boys. It may manifest slightly differently, but they're not immune. And also in sport, it's really competitive, so you want to be the biggest. There's so many other pressures that you're putting on yourself, and I think it just adds to, yeah, it sort of creates more anxiety around it. And at teenage years, there's such critical stage of development, relationship building,
00:29:13
Speaker
habit-forming, you're building relationships with food and people and things that you enjoy like we discussed before. And they're long-lasting and those habits, they're hard to change. So we want to sort of educate from a young age so that you can sort of get those habits right and so we don't have to undo the bad habits that have already kind of been embedded.
00:29:37
Speaker
And I think, yeah, the sort of mental health side of it, really, really, one of the real big consequences that we need to think about. Also, physically, like some of the things, you know, we don't know your heart rate response to some of these chemicals or things that are added into these potions, so your heart rate response can be elevated to exercise or exercise.
00:29:59
Speaker
seems harder, which then feels stressful because you think, okay, why is this harder? But also, you don't want to be putting your body physically in a position where your heart rate is elevated, your breathing rate might, your breathing response has changed as well. These are physical things that we don't want to mess around with. We want to understand what we're putting in our body and how our body is going to respond to it. And it's just really important to keep in control of that. And even just things like caffeine, you know, it's obvious, you know, caffeine is a drug, but
00:30:29
Speaker
and it's socially acceptable I've got my coffee here now but it doesn't have a place in a young athlete's diet because again there's not enough research on how it impacts brain activity or heart rate response and also if you're doing all these things now as a teenager what are you saving up what have you got to kind of look forward to like when you're properly grown don't waste it all now so it's like do make the right choices and there are some really good things that
00:30:53
Speaker
create a good response. It doesn't have to be in the form of a powder that you've put online. There are things that work. We say, there's this really amazing thing. People say, what can I take? I say, there's this really amazing thing. Like, what is it? Oh, it's good food. And there's always a bit of a point there. But it's like, it's true.
00:31:14
Speaker
Well, so that brings us brings me round to the other question I wanted to ask is, clearly, you guys are nutritionists, you understand, and can help coach people through making the changes they want to make and getting the results they want to see. And I'll ask you to share where you are in case anybody does want to get in touch with you. But before we finish, but
00:31:40
Speaker
For the kids and the families who can't afford to pay for expert advice or don't want to go down that route, and the kids who just want to make a few simple changes, what would you say is the best thing that people should be doing?
00:31:57
Speaker
Shall I start Kate and then you finish? So I think key, let's keep it really simple, is that you're not skipping any meals, like you're having breakfast, lunch and dinner.
00:32:12
Speaker
And, you know, we know a lot of teenage boys and girls don't have breakfast and it's something, you know, so they are already, by not having breakfast, playing catch-up for the rest of the day. And breakfast is a great way of, you know, kick-starting and fuelling, you know, it's called breaking your fast.
00:32:35
Speaker
As a start, as a basic, making sure that they're going to school or college or uni and they are having something to eat before they do that. And it doesn't have to be breakfast foods, food, pasta.
00:32:52
Speaker
leftovers, whatever can be breakfast, that you're having three meals a day and snacks. I think that that's one. I think secondly is going back to what we were talking about earlier, which is about making sure that you're
00:33:09
Speaker
that your plate is nicely balanced and you're ticking off, you've got a good source of carbohydrate. So we're talking rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, that you've got a good source of protein and that's plant-based, that's beans, pulses, but also lean meat, fish, yogurt, eggs, stuff like that. Milk is really a cheap option if we're thinking about budget as well. Milk's a brilliant source of protein electrolytes and it really
00:33:36
Speaker
available everywhere. You can just grab that. It's a brilliant sort of sports drink. Yeah. That you've got some colour on your plate. So you've got some fruit and veg and that you've got some healthy fat. So that could be peanut butter or avocado, or you're using olive oil, or that you've got some seeds or nuts or whatever. So the
00:33:57
Speaker
And it's not about being perfect. It's about being consistent enough and good enough. So it might be that you don't tick all those boxes all of the time. But if you're ticking them more often than not, then you're on the way there to fueling well. I was just going to say, it's just having the mindset of thinking actually food is part of this process. If I've got a goal and I'm trying to build
00:34:20
Speaker
I have to think about food, like just kind of reminding yourself that food is part of the toolkit to get you towards your goal. And I think that's what's missing. It's just making that mental link between what I eat, what I put in and what I get out. And that's what people don't talk enough about. I think it's just having that awareness and reminding yourself daily, okay, what am I doing today? Okay, I need to put more into fuel it then. If I'm doing more, I need more to come in to do that.
00:34:46
Speaker
And I think that's the thing, just having those reminders, they can post it on the fridge or something, things like that. Yeah. It's a really good point, actually, because I think as a species even, but certainly in the Western world, we tend to look at food as something we eat for enjoyment and we forget that it is there to fuel the rest of our activities and not just as a
00:35:14
Speaker
a pastime and a hobby and a way of filling the the aching emptiness when our stomach's full and i haven't done it for a little while but i follow i'm liking what you're saying friend about having color on your plate and quite often you'll hear um
00:35:34
Speaker
nutrition advice. Eat the rainbow is one of the things that you hear said quite a lot, isn't it? Eat purple, eat green, eat red. I followed for a while
00:35:50
Speaker
someone called Deliciously Ella, who I think lots of people know on the internet, she's a cook and a recipe creator and an influencer and plant based and she used to recommend
00:36:05
Speaker
keeping a log of all the plant foods that you eat in a week and that it's not about eating the sunflower seeds at every meal, it's about eating 30 different plant foods over the course of a week. And I remember thinking, God, that sounds onerous. And then I realized when you factor in, maybe one day you use olive oil and the next day you use rapeseed oil and one day you use sunflower seeds and the next day you add a few chia seeds.
00:36:32
Speaker
and you eat something of every different colour, it's really quick and easy to get up to 30 different plant foods in a week. Also, what you're saying about the eating, I think that's the thing, the sort of, nutrition's a science, but eating's a behaviour, because we're bored, we're celebrating, we're fed up, not just because we're hungry, so it's about finding that kind of mental connection of knowing that it's a part of your toolkit for everything.
00:37:00
Speaker
And I think that's where sometimes the gaps are, and we neglect to think about, oh yeah, we run off to training, or we rush in from school to training, but the thing that often gets sort of sidelined is the fuel, which is actually the most important thing, because if you're going to train, you want to make sure that you get the most out of it.
00:37:21
Speaker
So it's kind of, yeah, it's just like you say, all thinking about the plant foods, it's just kind of making that mental thought process around it on a regular basis and creating that as a new habit.
00:37:33
Speaker
And I like what you said also about carbs are necessary because they are what fuels the process of laying down muscle and building muscle. Yeah, so everyone thinks it's about protein, but actually without it, they're all teammates, carbs, protein, fat, karma, like Ram was just saying, they all work together. So if you cut any one of those out, you're going to miss out. And I think that's the key thing.
00:37:57
Speaker
And I think thinking of teenage boys as well, they're at school, they're meeting their friends, then they're going to the gym. All of that requires mental energy as well as physical energy. And our brain accounts for 30% of our body's entire energy needs.
00:38:16
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's preferred source of fuel is carbohydrates. So if you're limiting carbohydrates, then you're affecting how you feel. And, you know, that's really important, you know, how you think, how you react, how you learn, how you respond to any criticism or comment on the pitch.
00:38:40
Speaker
in the gym with your friends, all of that is impacted. And if you are limiting the thing that is, you know, helping you deal with those things, then it's, you know, hard and miserable.
Role of Food in Well-being
00:38:52
Speaker
We've had quite a few parents say, oh my God, thank you so much. I've got my nice kid back because, you know, everyone gets angry, right? Everyone gets angry and they say, hey, he's actually quite nice. He's quite jetty. He actually now is eating.
00:39:04
Speaker
Because otherwise they just went, especially if you're in that cutting phase and you're just struggling through. You haven't got that mental energy to actually depend on being nice to your parents or your friends or whatever. So actually it's all of those things that food's involved in that we don't really think about, which is why it's such.
00:39:22
Speaker
it's so wrong that it's not taught in schools from a young age actually the role of food in your total well-being whether you want to play sport or do music or be more academic or whatever it might be it all needs fuelling so yeah it's just kind of understanding where it fits in.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's really good point. I really like that. It's a great mindset shift and one that I can take something from as well, actually, not just our kids. And I love the point you made earlier about the fact that when your body's still growing, so until you're 25, it's what's in my head or you'll tell me about the right ages, but it's really important to get all of that stuff right rather than to start. Unless you're an overweight teenager in which I guess
00:40:08
Speaker
in which case I guess you've got some other things to think about. It's really important. Also, just on that point, sometimes teens store a bit of body fat before they're about to go to a group. Sometimes it's, you know, don't stress about it too much. That's just a natural part of your body's development. And if you then start to restrict at a critical development stage,
00:40:32
Speaker
then it's going to be potentially problematic so it's almost being patient with the process because sometimes we see that in sport quite a lot or the coaches might give a player a bit of criticism for having a bit too much body fat but then fast forward three months and they're really strong they've put on those muscles and they've had a big growth spurt so there's a lot of things to consider rather it's sort of looking at the bigger picture in the context and
00:40:57
Speaker
thinking more about how you perform and how you feel, rather than just what your body looks like. I know that's really difficult, like easy to say, but difficult to hook onto, especially from the initial chat at the beginning of this call. But I think, yeah, it's trying to take the
00:41:12
Speaker
own us away from just the image and think more about the performance and the well-being. Yeah, absolutely. I like that what you're saying about how you feel in your head, how your brain feels, how tired you feel, and that food plays a part in that. And you've just reminded me that I used to always say when my kids
00:41:30
Speaker
when my kids were little, I would see them grow out first, and then suddenly up. And you were saying, and this is another thing that boys really worry about, that they worry about how tall they're going to be, and are they going to grow tall enough to not be called a short horse? And not that that should matter either. But if they're wanting to be as tall as they can, as their body naturally can take them to be,
00:41:56
Speaker
then they need to tolerate carbs, because that might be the thing that actually puts height on them. You don't think about that. You think of carbs as laying down fat rather than making you tall. But as you just said, they're preparing for a big growth spurt, and then they'll go out first and then up, and that's still happening. Is it up until 25? Am I right about that? I know that's when the brain fat finishes growing. Yeah. So for girls, it's slightly earlier, and for boys, I think.
00:42:26
Speaker
Not entirely sure, but I think for girls around 18, 19, I think for boys it's around 21.
00:42:39
Speaker
We've got patterns, but everyone is slightly different. And that's another thing. If you are going through a growth spurt, then it's really critical that you don't start cutting at that point. If you're trying to do your bulk cutting, that is, you know, that's only going to be problematic and increase risk of injury. And I think that's often boys at that age, they're doing a lot of sport in school and outside of school. Yeah. And there's a lot of stress on the body and it's not being replaced.
00:43:05
Speaker
Yeah and they might be they might be limiting their eventual height or their potential A level results. Yeah and their friendships and their mood and everything.
Parental Concerns on Bulking and Cutting
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah yeah no it's a really good point thank you so much guys there's some really interesting things that I even I hadn't thought about and that was just me at the beginning of the whole process of going what the heck is cutting and bulging I don't like it it sounds like an eating disorder stop it.
00:43:28
Speaker
So I'm really pleased with some things that I've learned. If people want to find you, because I'm assuming you're on social media and people can pick up tips.
00:43:41
Speaker
from what you say. Where can people find you? Fran, do you want to just explain how people can get in touch with you? Yes. So we are on Instagram as performance underscore canteen. We are on TikTok a little, but probably a bit more regular as performance canteen. And you can find us on our website, which is www.performancecanteen.co.uk.
00:44:09
Speaker
Thank you both so much for joining me today. It's been really helpful. Oh, thanks, Helen. Thanks for inviting us. Thank you. No, it's great to meet you. Thanks very much.
00:44:26
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Thank you too to everyone who's already rated and reviewed the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Amazon, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review. It really helps get the word out as well as making me very happy to read what you have to say. If this episode strikes a chord for you, please share it with anyone else you know who might be in the same boat and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
00:44:55
Speaker
If you have a story or a suggestion for something you'd like to see covered on the podcast, you can email me at teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or message me on Instagram. I am Helen Wills. I love hearing from all my listeners. It really makes a difference to me on this journey. See you next week when I'll be chatting to another brilliant guest about the highs and lows of parenting teens. Bye for now.