Ep. 89 Nutrition for Fitness: How What You Eat Can Help You Reach Your Goals

In this episode, we dive into the essentials of nutrition for fitness, breaking down how to eat based on your specific goals—whether that’s fat loss, muscle gain, athletic performance, or simply maintaining overall health. We cover the importance of aligning your nutrition with your training, emphasizing that fat loss requires a calorie deficit with high protein intake, while muscle gain demands a slight calorie surplus with adequate protein and carbs. For endurance athletes, proper fueling and recovery are key, and for general health, focusing on whole foods and balanced macronutrients is crucial. We also discuss how metabolic health, hormone balance, and inflammation play a role in optimizing your body’s performance. Ultimately, sustainable habits—not extreme diets—lead to long-term success!

Key Topics:
Understanding Your Fitness Goal – Aligning nutrition with fat loss, muscle gain, performance, or general health.

Fat Loss Nutrition – Sustainable calorie deficit, high protein intake, and metabolic adaptation considerations.

Muscle Gain Nutrition – Caloric surplus, protein for muscle repair, and carbohydrate support for training.

Athletic Performance Nutrition – Carbs as primary fuel, hydration and electrolytes, and recovery nutrition.

General Health & Maintenance – Whole foods focus, balanced macronutrients, and reducing processed foods.

Metabolic & Hormonal Health – Supporting thyroid function, hormone balance, and reducing inflammation.

Liver Function & Detoxification – Liver’s role in metabolism and strategies to optimize detoxification.

Blood Sugar & Insulin Resistance – Pairing carbs with protein, choosing low-glycemic foods, and meal timing.

Sustainable Eating Habits – Prioritizing long-term flexibility over restrictive dieting.

Pre- and Post-Workout Nutrition – Fueling workouts with proper macronutrients for energy and recovery.

Practical Strategies – Meal timing, structuring balanced meals, and small, sustainable lifestyle tweaks.

For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.

For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE. 

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Nutrition for Fitness: How What You Eat Can Help You Reach Your Goals
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict and combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking. I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to the fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady. And today we're going to be talking about nutrition for fitness. Um, I feel like there's just so much floating around in the world, especially in social media, regarding nutrition. And lots of people are just like throwing out some crazy stuff. And honestly, it's confusing. It's overwhelming when you are trying to piece together how should I be eating based on my goals? And what does this look like on a day to day basis? Um, so we're going to be getting into what it looks like as far as nutrition, kind of your intake, um, things that you want to be shooting for based on what you're trying to achieve right now. And this is going to change throughout your life, right? Like sometimes you might be focusing on your body composition, whether that's muscle gain or fat loss, which we'll talk about both today. There might be times in your life when you're more motivated by performance because you have a big event coming up, like a half marathon or a race or a big hike. And there might be other times when you're just focusing on kind of having a balanced, healthy lifestyle and there's really no other big goals and you're just trying to maintain your health. So this is going to be dynamic and changing throughout your life. Um, but let's talk about each one of those scenarios and just remember that everybody's fitness goals are different. So we really want to focus on optimizing your results with our nutrition based on what your goals are. Okay. So let's talk about first understanding your goal. This is crucial. If we don't know what we want our outcome to be, then we really don't have any guidance with nutrition. We're just kind of like doing whatever we feel like, not really keeping tabs on anything. And when we aren't keeping track of anything or really paying attention, that's when we get really less than optimal results. We're just kind of just shooting in the dark, honestly. And so if you have been maybe working out for a while and you in the back of your mind, you know, like I'm not happy with where I am necessarily with like my body composition or with my performance, I don't feel like I'm getting stronger. I don't feel like I'm getting leaner or seeing the results that I want to see. But you haven't really looked at nutrition. That is likely going to be a very important component that will change the game for you as far as results. You can do the exact same workout plan, and whether or not you're eating for your goals will drastically change what your body experiences and looks like as far as as result, change. So if someone maybe has a goal of fat loss, for instance, you can do the exact same weight training plan as somebody who has a goal of muscle gain. However, how much you are eating your nutrition targets as far as total calorie intake and protein intake will change based on if your goal is fat loss or muscle gain. So you can have the exact same program but see different results, and that's going to be based on what you're eating. Okay. So here are the different goals that we're going to be talking about today. Fat loss muscle gain improved athletic performance and then just general maintenance and health. And then we'll talk about a few like specific health considerations as well. So knowing what you're striving towards is going to be your starting point. So as you're listening to this try to have that in the back of your mind. Which of those four main goals sticks out to you? What are you really wanting to focus on right now? Because yes, you can do two at once, especially like General Health with maybe one of the other ones, but it's going to be really hard to focus on. For instance, fat loss and athletic performance or fat loss and muscle gain at the exact same time in tandem. It's better to do this cyclically so that you can really hone in on one goal for a certain time and then kind of move to the next phase, because otherwise your body's receiving mixed signals, right? So that's how I want you to kind of think about this is picking one to really focus on. And that's what I want you to perk up your ears when we go over that section. Okay. So let's talk about first nutrition for fat loss. So when we're thinking about fat loss, the main thing that we need to understand is that in order to lose fat, you need to be in a calorie or energy deficit. It is a crucial component in order to see fat loss. If you're not in an energy deficit, your body is just going to either maintain or if you're in a surplus, then you will slowly but surely gain weight over time. So it's important to understand what kind of your baseline or maintenance calories look like. And then you can establish a calorie deficit from there. And you want to do this in a sustainable fashion. Yes. You could absolutely just like completely slash your calories and stop eating or whatever. Take these drastic measures. However, that's not going to be sustainable at all. And it's also going to cause a lot of metabolic adaptation along the way. So we want to think end game. You don't want to just think short sidedly like, oh well, in a month I want to be down £10. So I'm just gonna stop eating and do tons of cardio. Yes, that might help you lose £10 very, very fast. But what do you do at the end of that month? How are you maintaining? What is your exit strategy here? Because otherwise if you don't have a good game plan and if you don't approach fat loss in a sustainable manner, you are going to just gain it back. It's going to be easier to gain it back. In fact, because your metabolism has now adapted to very, very low calories. Um, so we want to make sure that we are doing this in a sustainable fashion. So how do we calculate our maintenance? We have a very kind of scientific calculation process that we use with our clients at in Mountain Metabolic Coaching to see what our metabolic potential is. However, not everybody is actually reaching that. And there are a lot of factors that can affect your basal metabolic rate. So kind of just how many calories your body is burning at rest, like if you were just to lay in a bed all day and do nothing, but just keep your organs functioning, keep your body alive, keep your brain going, and you're not really moving your body at all. That would be your basal metabolic rate, how many calories you need just to maintain life on a very basic level. So we want to not only have this, you know, metabolic potential, we want to reach it. We want to be able to say like, yes, I can actually eat this many calories and maintain my weight. A lot of people can't say that, though, because they have, over time adapted their metabolic rate due to things like maybe having a bit of a sluggish liver or less than optimal gut health. Or maybe you have been under eating in different seasons of life, or just kind of chronically over time without realizing it. Or maybe you do realize it because you've been actively dieting for a long time. That's also going to adapt your metabolism. So it's important to kind of know where you're at right now, because, yes, you might have this metabolic potential, but you might not necessarily be there due to just suboptimal life experiences and things that your body is going through right now. So one easy way to kind of see where you're at in a realistic manner, because you can do all the calculations in the world. But if you're not meeting that potential, like I said, then that's not actually where you're at as far as maintenance calories. So to see your maintenance calories, you're going to have to keep a really honest food log for at least a week, probably two, because there's going to be days where it's different based on if you're going out to eat or doing social things, or having a super stressful, emotional day or just a regular day, right? So it's important to keep a detailed log of literally everything. Don't change a thing. Don't skip out on anything just to make yourself look good. Make sure that you're being as accurate as possible so that you can really see okay, at the end of the two weeks, what is my average? What is an average for me on a day to day basis. And this is factoring in weekends and weekdays, social events, all of that okay. So based on that you're able to see okay, this is what my body is used to in order to maintain. Okay. Given that you aren't like maybe gaining a ton of weight, if you see that you've gained weight during those two weeks, then you might say, okay, this might actually be more of my surplus calories. Um, and if you've lost weight during those weeks, then maybe you were eating a little bit different than normal because you were keeping track, and that might actually be a really good deficit number for you. Okay. So you really want to see what are what is my maintenance number. Ideally you're just kind of maintaining your weight during that time. You're doing your thing as normal. And then you can see what your maintenance looks like. Um, and that is a good starting point. Then you're able to subtract from there. So if you wanted to lose on average a half a pound a week, then you're going to need to remove 250 calories every single day. Okay. That will give you a half a pound a week loss. If you want to lose a full pound every week, then you're going to need to remove 500 calories every single day. That is a bit more drastic, especially if you're already kind of a smaller person. So maybe you find out that your maintenance calories are about 1800. Um, that's pretty average for a normal sized, you know, like, uh, average sized female, like five foot five, maybe £130 or so, moderately active. Um, that's pretty normal. So then you're going to have to go all the way down to 1300 calories seven days a week, consistently to lose a pound a week. In that case, I would maybe say go the slower route. The less weight you have to lose, the slower I would go. So if you're already at a pretty healthy weight, um, and you just want to lean out a little bit, I would go with a more moderate deficit, like the half a pound a week, um, because it's going to be more sustainable and you're not going to see as much metabolic adaptation. You're not going to be as miserable. You're going to be able to live your life. If you have more wiggle room, maybe you have more weight to lose. So you have a much higher basal metabolic rate. The more weight you have, the higher your calories you can eat, typically at rest, right? So if you maybe your maintenance calories are closer to like 2200, maybe you're quite a bit taller. You've been eating a lot for a while, and so that's kind of what your maintenance calories look like. Well then. A 500 calorie daily deficit is actually pretty realistic for you, so it might not feel too drastic and it's not bringing your calories that low. Okay, so in that case, you could take the £1 a week approach. I definitely would not recommend going any further than that. That is going to again cause some metabolic metabolic adaptations. And if you're losing more than a pound a week, maybe you do start out on this and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm losing like 2 to £3 a week. You're not actually losing that much in body fat. It's not going to be possible. So you're maybe losing some water weight because you are flushing out some excess inflammation. Maybe you're eating less overall salt and carbs, or eating out less those types of things that are going to lead to water retention. Also, based on where you're at in your cycle, you're going to see some water retention. So you can actually retain up to £10 of water weight right before your cycle. So kind of in your luteal phase, as you head into menstruation, a lot of women will notice severe bloating or you just feel puffy. You don't feel good in your clothes. That's due to this excess water retention. Okay. So where you're at in your monthly cycle will also affect how fast you are losing weight. So that's something to factor in too. Don't freak out if you're starting this in your luteal phase. And you either don't lose any weight or maybe you even gain a few pounds. Don't freak out and take drastic measures. Please, please, please, you have to trust the process and trust the numbers because you're probably just going to be bloated during that phase. Okay, so I would recommend maybe not starting out in a deficit, right, as you're going into your period. Um, because it's just going to kind of mess with you mentally. Okay. So that is kind of how you can go about in an easy way to figure out your maintenance calories and then create a sustainable deficit. Now, one thing when it comes to smart fat loss, and this is something that we focus on in mountain metabolic coaching, is not living in a deficit. We don't want to just always be dieting because of the metabolic component. If we want a healthy, thriving metabolism, we cannot constantly live in a low calorie phase. We need to get in and get out. Okay, so meaning we're not cutting forever. We're not always in a deficit. So you're setting a timeline. You're saying, okay, I'm going to do this deficit of this amount for 4 to 8 weeks. And then after that I'm going back to maintenance and I'm hanging out there for a while. Have a game plan, ideally with someone who knows what they're doing with this stuff, because otherwise it can create some metabolic considerations, and that just makes it a little bit harder naturally as you get smaller. So with fat loss, you will have a lower basal metabolic rate. The less body you have to maintain, the lower your basal metabolic rate will be. So the basal metabolic rate, or BMR will say to make this quicker for me of a very small person, so maybe five foot. £100 is going to be much lower than a large man who's six foot five and £250. Right? Okay. So you have to factor that in as you are losing weight. Your basal metabolic rate will come down slightly. That is a normal adaptation. However, we don't want to add fuel to the fire by just constantly staying in a deficit to the point where your body just expects really low calories. Because then when you do have days where you're eating higher, then it's easier to put on body fat. Okay. So we want to think again. End game here. We don't want to just live in a deficit. You want to do some cycling of your calorie intake to prevent adaptation. Okay. So let's talk about the macronutrient breakdown. So you might have heard the phrase macronutrients or macros counting macros. Um really this just refers to um three different things your protein, your carbs and your fats. Those are your three macronutrients. These are the main categories of food. Um, other than your veggies. Okay. So veggies are kind of. A league of their own. Um, but when we're looking at everything else other than your veggies are macronutrients, so they're going to fall into either the category of protein, carbs or fats. So what is the correct ratio for this? And and really how do we focus on losing fat with the right macros. Right. Okay. So the answer is and it's kind of an exciting answer because people will have you thinking you need to do all kinds of extreme things, when really the answer is you can have a very even macronutrient ratio. Mock fat loss. In fact, you will probably see the best success doing so because females really need all three of our macros in order to have optimal thyroid health, other hormone health, brain health, and and just overall muscle maintenance. We don't do well with extremes. If we're cutting out carbs for long periods, that can lead to issues with our thyroid. If we're cutting out fats, that can lead to issues with other hormone production, like your estrogen and progesterone. Um, and if we're not having enough protein, then we're going to have a harder time maintaining muscle, which definitely is correlated to a higher basal metabolic rate. So it's important to have all three macronutrients in your diet consistently doing this. Like, oh, I'm just going to go super low carb or keto or whatever. Is not a great plan long term. Yes, you're probably not going to see negative impact right away, but over time, you might have some symptoms hormonally that are not optimal for your health. So it's better to just have kind of an even macronutrient ratio where you're not going to low or too high with anything. So really, the main things that you're going to want to focus on when you're looking at your, at your calorie deficit is nailing the calories first and foremost. That's very important. But also your protein. You really need high protein to preserve muscle mass during weight loss. When we go just kind of average protein or we're not paying attention to it or protein is low, that's when we see equal rates of muscle loss and fat loss at the same time. So when you're losing weight, you're losing equal parts muscle and fat. That's not ideal. We want to maintain our muscle and mostly lose fat. Hence fat loss versus weight loss. We want fat loss versus just overall weight loss because this is going to help you have that kind of more toned appearance that people want. If we're just losing weight, then we're losing our muscle too. And then it's going to be harder to have that toned, lean appearance. Also, like I mentioned before, muscle is your metabolic tissue. The more muscle you have on your body, the easier it's going to be to stay lean, because your body has to work harder to maintain that muscle. So you're going to have a higher basal metabolic rate. It's just easier to stay lean when you have more muscle on your frame. So for those reasons, we really want to focus on muscle maintenance during fat loss. So a big part of that is going to be what you're doing with your workouts. So making sure that you're not just doing excess cardio and hit, but that you're actually doing things to stimulate muscle growth during that time, progressively overloading. Some resistance training, having a plan, having a structure which I've talked about on so many different episodes, but also where from the nutrition side, the thing that you can do is making sure you're getting ample protein. And most women especially, you know, we we look at this when our clients come into Mountain Metabolic in that first few weeks of kind of evaluating where they're at with their current nutrition, most women are under eating protein, um, and sometimes drastically, depending on if you've ever paid attention to it before. So this is a really key component of your macronutrient breakdown. If you are looking to lose fat, you want to make sure that you're getting high amounts of protein. So what does this look like? It's different for everybody based on your current size. Um, and I would also say based on how much you're eating to start, because if you're coming into this and you're only eating 40g of protein a day, then you want to set a realistic increase. You don't want to jump to 100g a day. Um, gradually increase with a goal of getting to 100g. That would be amazing. Um, so ideally you can say, okay, I want to shoot for about a gram of protein per pound of my goal body weight. But I would say, you know, if you have a higher body weight to start or your goal body weight is is quite high still, then you don't really need to go over about 150g of protein. Um, anywhere from 100 to 150 is going to be amazing. And another awesome perk of doing this, while focusing on fat loss, is that protein is the most filling and satiating macronutrient. So as you eat more protein, it's going to be easier to stay full, which is a huge perk when you are focusing on fat loss. If you're hungry all the time, it's going to be really hard to stay in your deficit. And as you continue on a fat loss path, you are going to have times when you're just a little bit hungrier. So making sure that you're eating really satiating foods is is going to be crucial. If you're constantly just eating carbs and fats, you're not going to be as full. You're going to be like hungry every few hours, especially if your meals are more just carb driven without adequate protein with the carbs, you're going to find that you're just hungry every few hours. So it's really important to optimize your satiety during a fat loss phase by eating enough protein. Um, as far as fats and carbs, you can really kind of figure out a ratio that works for you. There's no right or wrong answer here, as long as you're not going drastically low with either. Again, not trying to cut out either and just kind of finding a good moderate amount of both. And also it's going to depend on how you feel. Some people feel better with higher carb and just moderate fat, and some people feel better with higher fat and moderate carbs. So you can kind of play with those two and see what works best for you. Really, the two things that you need to focus on the most are going to be your your protein and your calories. And then the carbs and fats can just kind of be moderate and you can play with those and it can vary from day to day. In general, you're going to want to also focus on more fiber and high volume foods. So fiber tends to come in the form of veggies, fruits, legumes, beans, things like that. So you're going to want to make sure that you're getting enough fiber because fiber is extremely filling. Also very helpful for your overall gut health and high volume foods just means you can eat a lot of them without accumulating really high calories. So veggies are great high volume foods because you're not going to fill up or you're not going to, um, have to eat a ton of veggies to get full. They're just going to have more fiber content and be more filling naturally. And you're getting such low calories. So, um, if you think about a high volume food, you think veggies or like chicken, right? It's going to be really hard to overeat chicken because it's super filling. However, um, a low volume food would be like juice or liquid calories or chocolate or things like that that are going to be really easy to eat. They're very palatable. You can consume large quantities really fast, and it's not going to fill you up. So you feel like you're barely even getting any calories, when in fact they are very high calorie. Okay, so focusing on low calorie, high volume foods and those tend to be high in fiber. High in protein. As far as meal timing and frequency. Again, this is going to be kind of individual. In general, you don't want to go super long stints without eating, because then you're going to find yourself absolutely ravenous, so your blood sugar might be out of whack. Your hunger hormones are ramped up because you're just freaking hungry if you haven't eaten all day. And we see this a lot when people Intermountain metabolic coaching, where we look at their food logs from the first few weeks and they're just like not eating all day, and then they come home at like 4 p.m. or something, and all they've had all day is like some coffees and maybe like a protein bar or something, and they are just ravenous. And then they kind of spend the whole night like binging and eating a ton, and they don't feel good. And it's such a vicious cycle. So making sure that you're eating frequently throughout the day is a better tactic to prevent getting overly hungry, and you're just more likely to be able to get more nutrients in more protein, more fiber if you're eating more frequently. So I prefer the take of doing about 4 to 5 meals, aka snacks, you know? Not all of them have to be full on meals. Maybe three are meals, two are snacks. But you're not going, you know, hours and hours, 12 hours without eating except overnight, right? So trying to start your day with breakfast to kick start things in the morning, make sure you have a good high protein, high fiber breakfast that's going to sustain you for a few hours and keep your blood sugar stable. Um, try to have that with your coffee or before your coffee. And then from then on out, you're having frequently spaced out meals so that you're not getting to the point of just being ravenous and not being able to control what you're eating. Other than that, it's really up to you on your preference. So, you know, if you prefer to do a little bit of fasting or go longer without meals and it doesn't lead to you binging or being out of control with food, great. Um, however, I will say with fasting, some women can tolerate it and some women it can cause some hormonal repercussions. Not for everybody, but for some. So it's just something to consider if you have been having some hormone imbalance symptoms or stress is very high, I would say try to opt for eating more frequently instead of doing long stint fast. Um, as far as timing of your nutrition around your workouts, you want to make sure that you're trying to get at least 20g of protein within about an hour or two of a workout. It's not like your muscles are just going to shrivel up and fall off if you don't have protein within that window, right? But it is more optimal for muscle protein synthesis and kind of getting that process going and making the most of your workouts ultimately. So trying to prioritize getting a meal in or a snack that's high in protein again, at least 20g of protein within an hour or two of finishing your workout if you are getting ready for a workout. And it's been several hours since you've eaten and you're like, oh, I don't know if I have the energy for this. Um, typically a snack of some carbs and maybe a little bit of protein is going to be the best route to go. Fats are harder to digest, so it might not sit as well. If you have something that's high fat, um, carbs are going to help give you energy, and then the protein is going to help with your muscle building. So it's better to go with more of a higher carb, moderate protein snack. Nothing huge and nothing heavy that's going to just sit in your stomach and make you feel bad. Um, and you can have that, you know, 30 minutes to an hour before your workout and feel pretty good then. Um, so those are some considerations for your pre and post workout nutrition. Okay, so we've gotten through fat loss. Now let's go into muscle gain. So similarly to fat loss being very much contingent on being in a calorie deficit. Muscle gain is going to be contingent on you being in a calorie surplus. So we can't build muscle out of nothing. We need extra calories in order to do so. So instead of just eating at your baseline, you're going to actually need to eat at least you know 250 to 500 calories in a surplus over your maintenance in order to build muscle. So obviously, a big part of muscle building is going to be correlated to your workouts, making sure that you are doing high volume, hypertrophy style weight training to stimulate muscle growth. You know you can't be doing too much cardio. You can't just be focusing on like low weights all the time. You need to be progressing in what you're doing in the gym. Um, but when we're looking at the nutrition side of things, you got to be in a calorie surplus. So you got to eat more calories than you burn, especially if you're a very active person. This number might be higher. So if you're a basal metabolic rate is really high because you are super active during the day, maybe you have a very active job, or you're just always fidgeting or you're just like, never sitting down, then you're gonna need to eat a lot of calories. So figuring out your maintenance, you can do in this similar way that I described before for your fat loss. Um, and then so figure out what am I doing right now, what's my maintenance like? And then you can go from there. Um, it's easier to build muscle, I would say, than it is to lose fat because, um, you don't have to worry about the metabolic adaptation quite as much, so you can just go straight for a pound a week. Um, if you feel like you can tolerate that sort of increase without feeling sick or having digestive issues. Um, but I would say a slight surplus is recommended to avoid excessive fat gain. So if you're just wanting to focus on gaining muscle, yes, you're going to see a little bit of fat gain. It's just part of the process. The same way that if you're losing fat, you will naturally lose a little bit of muscle, but you can minimize the amount of fat by not just going crazy, eating whatever you want, and really monitoring your intake and doing it in a in a slight surplus. Okay, so again, 250 calories every day over your maintenance would lead to about a half a pound gain per week. And if you did 500 calories, that's going to equate to about a pound a week. Um, I wouldn't necessarily recommend going much higher than that. If you want to mostly just focus on gaining muscle and not putting on weight too quickly. If you are trying to like gain fast weight and you don't mind having some fat gain, then go for it. Like you can definitely eat over that. Um, but if you're wanting to minimize fat gain with your muscle gain, then doing the more moderate approach is is probably best. Another thing is that protein here is going to be key, just the same way that it is for fat loss. Protein's role in muscle repair and growth is crucial. So you really want to aim to get about 1.6 to 2.6 grams of protein per kilogram of your body weight. Um, so you want to just make sure that you're tracking protein and getting enough. So really, with both fat loss and with muscle gain, you might need to track for a little while. You might need to keep track because this is new. You are doing something maybe you haven't done before and eating a little bit differently, so you have to know how to navigate. It would be kind of like trying to get to a new destination without using the map the first time. You might need to use a map for a little while to figure out your route, and then over time, you don't need to anymore. Okay, so it might just be a necessary sacrifice for a season of life, or for a little while while you figure out what are the foods I'm typically eating that are like getting me to the protein goal that I need? What's a typical day of eating look like? For me to get 160g of protein and roughly 2500 calories, if those are your targets, right? Um, same goes for fat loss. Um, as far as carbohydrate intake. You are going to want enough carbs to fuel your workouts and aid in recovery. You don't want to be trying to go super low carb. If you're trying to push it in the gym and focus on muscle gain. You need glycogen in your muscles. So that comes from our carbohydrates. So the higher intensity of your training, the more carbs you may need to eat. And it's also just going to be a little bit harder to gain weight if you are minimizing any of the three macronutrients. So your protein carbs are fats. So again an even ratio is great to make sure that you're getting the calories you need supporting your hormones. Also, for men, you know, if you're listening to this and you're a man, it's really important to not neglect fats. They're essential for women's hormones. They're also essential for men's testosterone. So that plays a big role in muscle growth. So making sure that you're not neglecting any of the three macronutrients, whether you are focusing on fat loss or muscle gain, whether you're a female or a male. All right. Let's move on to athletic performance. So this would be someone who maybe has a goal of like an endurance event or, um, you are going on a big hike or you're just training for something that requires you to be doing, um, like one activity for long bouts of time, like hiking, running, cycling, swimming, whatever it is. Um, for endurance athletes, you're really going to need to Emphasize fueling your workouts properly and getting enough calories and carbohydrates when you're doing a long, sustained activity. Carbohydrates are going to be your main fuel, and you're going to want to make sure that you're getting, um, low glycemic carbohydrates, meaning longer sustaining energy. So carbohydrates that aren't just going to burn up fast, but that are going to keep you going. So things like oats or quinoa or sweet potatoes or whole grains, um, things like that, that are not just going to be really quickly digested into your bloodstream. Higher glycemic carbs would be like juice or, um, pastries, pop tarts, syrup, um, sugary drinks, things that are just really high in sugar but don't have any fiber content. Um, they're going to just kind of you're going to burn through that energy really fast. And that can be helpful if you are like in a situation where you need really quick energy for a shorter duration event. However, for longer duration events, you're going to want to focus on sustained energy and then maybe quick bouts of energy within that event. Um, like those energy gels and goos and things like that that you can have while you're in the middle of a race just to keep your energy going. But before leading up to that, while you're training, you're going to want low glycemic carbs that are going to help keep your energy stable. So you really want to make sure that you're not underfitting during this time. And this is why I don't recommend training for big performance events, while also trying to focus on fat loss. It's not a good idea, because you cannot have the sustained energy that you need to perform well while in a calorie deficit. It's just the two are completely at odds. So you really want to, you know, if maybe you have like a half marathon later in the year or a marathon or something big like that, and you want to be a little bit lighter while you're racing, focus on cutting or being in a fat loss phase for a few months before you get into the bulk of your training. Really hit it hard. Hit your targets. Try to get the town to that your racing weight that you want to be, and then you can dive into your training because you're going to really just be focusing on maintaining weight during that time. You don't want to focus on losing weight because it's all about performance and fueling accordingly. You're not going to do well in a calorie deficit during that time. Post-workout recovery will be really important to repair your muscle and replenish glycogen glycogen stores. So make sure you're getting adequate protein and carbohydrates after your workouts. You're also going to want to pay more attention to things like your electrolytes. So balancing your mineral sodium, potassium, um, for hydration during longer training sessions before and after those training sessions. Um, so you're just going to want to focus a little bit more on how can I fuel my body to do my best in these events. Same with like the same day of a big hike. If you have a big hike, you want to make sure that you're getting enough carbohydrates, enough protein to feel good, and maybe not eating a ton of, like, high fat stuff that could upset your stomach before or during, and bringing adequate hydration in the form of water, and then extra electrolytes if that's necessary, especially if you're sweating a lot or doing a really long hike. Um, and sun exposure. All right. Let's talk about just general health and maintenance, because not everybody has these like big body composition goals or performance goals. Sometimes you're just in a season of your life where you're like, I just need to do the bare minimum to be a healthy person. And I've totally been there. I feel like in this season of motherhood that I am right now, I'm just trying to maintain, do the best I can to support my body and eat as well as humanly possible while I'm trying to balance a lot. So let's talk about what it actually looks like to have a balanced diet. Um, you probably have heard this a million times, but focusing on whole foods is a really big part of a balanced diet. Yes, the boring basics are the things that are going to move the needle the most in your health. It's not going to be this flashy thing that you saw on TikTok or whatever. It's just focusing on eating less processed foods, eating out a little bit less, cooking at home, more trying to get your micronutrient intake up in the form of veggies and fruits, and just trying to eat as healthy as you can and not getting all of the processed stuff that's in our face all the time. Um, so like I said, my micronutrient dense foods are going to be your fruits and veggies. And then you also want to focus on lean proteins. Whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and healthy oils. All of these things are going to promote less inflammation in your body. Better gut health, as well as just make it easier to stay lean because they're not going to be as high in calories, and it's going to be easier to eat appropriate portions because they're not quite as palatable. They're not meant to be consumed in mass quantities the way that things like chips and desserts and things like that are people are literally designing those with the goal of making you overeat. So they're very palatable. They're usually a really nice combination of carbs, fats and salt or sugar. So then you just can eat and eat and eat because you're not getting full from them and they taste so dang good. Um, so when we're eating foods that we're meant to eat less processed, whole, more natural foods, we're not going to have that same response in our brain, and we're going to be able to eat just appropriate portion sizes for what we should be eating. Making it a whole lot easier to stay lean while still getting the nutrients that you want. So many people in our society are way over fed but don't get the nutrients that they need. Like we're we're undernourished, but overfed. Um, and that is a result of the crappy food quality that we have. So while we've been talking a lot about food quantity, you know, how many calories you're eating, your protein, things like that. Yes, that's important. But we also need to look at the food quality, because if all you're eating is hitting your calorie targets with crappy food, fast food, processed stuff in wrappers all day long, yes, you might still be able to hit your weight loss targets, but are you going to feel your best? Are you going to have a healthy gut? Are you going to have healthy hormones? Are you going to feel like fully nourished? You're probably going to have some mineral and vitamin deficiencies if you're not taking supplements, especially if you're not getting those needs met with your food. So it's really important to look at both food quantity and quality as much as you can. Also, there's the inflammation component. When we are constantly just eating processed foods, having tons of liquid calories, alcohol, caffeine, um, we're going to have inflammation in our body. And that often can show up in a lot of different symptoms. But the visible one is like having a puffy face or just feeling like bloated and heavy and gross. Um, because we're really inflamed and not eating in a way that's going to support our body. Um, so like I mentioned before, women do best with a mix of fats, proteins and carbs not going to low in any category for optimal thyroid and hormone function and body composition. So as you are looking at this, how can you focus on even macronutrients? Staying in a moderate calorie range for where you want to be based on what your goal is, and then just eating lots of fruits, veggies, lean proteins, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and healthy oils. Yes, there's going to be times when you have to eat things out of packages or you're eating out. But if you can even follow that, those basic whole food guidelines, like 80% of the time, you're going to be healthier than most people and you're probably going to feel a heck of a lot better. Okay, so those are some general rules of thumb for a balanced diet. You also have to look at the sustainability. And this is why I don't recommend taking drastic measures or following diets with names or trying to do something that's only 30 days, because that's not really doing much for you in the grand scheme of things. It's important that you can maintain these efforts long term in a flexible and sustainable approach for your health. This should not be something that you're doing with an expiration date. If you do, then you're going to completely lose the results as soon as you're done. And it's not going to do anything for your health long term. So focus on consistency rather than perfection. Instead of trying to do something where you're following all these strict rules for 30 days, 60 days, whatever it is. Focus on making small improvements. Maybe you have a habit of like sitting down with a bag of chips every night after dinner and just going ham or a tub of ice cream. How can you replace that one behavior with something healthy? So maybe instead of chips, you have, um, you like, slice up some veggies and have that and you mix it with, uh, plain Greek yogurt and a ranch pack to make it feel and taste like a dip. Um, but you're getting so much better. Protein content and fiber and less of the processed crap, and you're going to fill up faster because you're filling up on the good stuff, so you're not going to be able to overeat. So having a good alternative or if you overeat sweets in the evening, maybe instead you have a bowl of berries and melt a few chocolate chips on top, and that's your sweet treat. That's going to be so much healthier for you because you're getting good phytonutrient intake from the berries. Um, yes, you're still getting a little bit of chocolate, but you're going to drastically cut down on the calories that you're consuming and the sugar because it's a much healthier alternative. Okay, so looking for some small swaps and tweaks that you can make to be able to stay consistent rather than trying to be perfect. Okay. Now let's talk about specific health considerations. So I just was talking a little bit about inflammation when we're looking at lowering inflammation. Like I said before you're going to want to look at minimizing alcohol caffeine and highly processed foods. There's just no way around it. You got to look at your food quality. If you are experiencing inflammation, you're probably not eating the best quality of foods, also increasing phytonutrients. So eating the rainbow of fruits and veggies, getting different minerals and vitamins from these different colored fruits and veggies, not just eating the exact same. I only eat apples or I only eat strawberries. Or maybe you go days and you haven't even touched a vegetable. Really trying to increase your nutrient intake through getting more fruits and veggies in your day to day life. You can start with just shooting for a serving of fruits and veggies every single day. If that's something that you struggle with and you know that you just don't eat, um, fruits and veggies in your day to day life. Start small. Okay? Don't try to do everything at once, but do start somewhere and then build up from that point. Um, also increasing healthy fat intake from oils, nuts and seeds. Um, this is kind of a very Mediterranean approach. And the Mediterranean diet is considered the least inflammatory diets that we've ever seen. So they are very like moderate protein, moderate grain intake and, uh, pretty decent amount of healthy fats. So, um, making sure you're getting nuts, seeds and healthy oils into your diet. Um, and then if we want to look at hormone balance and lowering cortisol, there are different phases in your cycle. Um, as a female. So you can try to optimize how you feel in each one by paying attention to the foods that you're eating. Um, we have a really awesome resource for this in Mountain Metabolic Coaching that goes over what you can do activity wise and nutrition wise and lifestyle wise in each phase of your cycle to optimize how you're feeling. Um, sufficient carb intake. This is really important if you are a very high stress individual to minimize your cortisol, as well as supporting your thyroid and then healthy fat intake for healthy hormone levels, your sex hormones are affected by how much fat you are getting in your diet. So fat is not bad. We hear that word and we associate it with negativity, but it's really important to get healthy fats. Um, flushing out your liver. This is another health consideration. So did you know that your liver function accounts for 15% of your metabolic rate? So your basal metabolic rate, 15% of it comes from how efficient your liver is. So if your liver is sluggish, backed up, or having issues processing all the things that it has to process on a daily basis. You're probably going to have a lower basal metabolic rate. So when we were talking about not living up to your full metabolic potential, this is one of those ways. Um, so I'm really excited to share that we are going to be bringing the medically tested, functional liver flush to mountain metabolic coaching this spring. And this is something that helps immensely with people who are struggling with a sluggish liver. And this can happen just from being a person on this earth long enough, because there's so many toxins that we're exposed to. Crazy enough, by the time you are just born. So just in the womb. Studies have shown that in the umbilical cord there are 250 different toxins just because of what the mother is exposed to. Okay, so imagine now your toxin load over time. Say you're 30, 40, 50 years old. That's a long time to be accumulating environmental and product toxins, water, toxins, things like that. Um, and if you have a lot in your environment or specifically in your home, whatever's been going on and your liver isn't able to keep up with that or flush out excess hormones from being on the pill for a really long time, things like that. Um, then your liver is just going to be sluggish. So this is a way to kind of like change the oil, so to speak, and help your liver function more optimally. Um, so we're going to be bringing this flush to mountain metabolic coaching this spring, which I'm very excited about. Um, everybody could benefit from this. Um, but especially if you are having some gut issues, you feel like your metabolism is sluggish. Um, then this is going to be very, very helpful. Um, so if you're interested in getting on our application list for joining coaching, um, and this appeals to you, then definitely check out the link in the show notes you can apply there. And like I said, we're going to be able to provide this in the spring. Um, and then the last one is insulin resistance or diabetes. So if you have any sort of insulin issues, then you're going to want to pay attention to your carb intake. So not having naked carbs is what I call them. So carbs by themselves. Um, you always want to be pairing your carbs with protein so that it's not just a quick insulin spike. That's a big one. Also, lower glycemic foods like we were talking about before, not having things that are just extremely high in sugar or processed carbs that are, um, higher glycemic and are just going to be absorbed into your bloodstream really quickly, and that's going to spike your insulin levels. You want to make sure you're focusing on lower glycemic, um, slower to digest carbohydrate sources and foods, more fiber. And then meal frequency is another thing to pay attention to. Um, you might just need to eat foods more frequently and make sure that you have balanced macronutrients while you are eating every single time. If you have insulin resistance or, um, type two diabetes. So in summary, while there are some principles that will be applied to everyone, like everyone can benefit from eating veggies and fruits. Everyone can benefit from having all of the macronutrients in your diet, things like that. Nutrition is not one size fits all because we have a lot of individual considerations like our goals, mindset, roadblocks, relationship with food, lifestyle considerations, your schedule, all these different things. So this is why having a flexible plan not necessarily a meal plan, but a flexible structure or plan that fits your life, is so crucial. And this is why I actually don't like meal plans. And this is not something that we do in mountain metabolic coaching is meal plans are not typically sustainable for most people. You can maybe follow a strict meal plan for like a week or two, and then you want to be able to go out to eat. You want to be able to have flexibility to say yes to going over to your neighbor's house and having dinner with them, or we're doing a potluck with friends, things like that. So having more of a structure and having some targets in place without it feeling so rigid, like a meal plan is going to be much more sustainable in the long run. And it has to fit your life. It has to be dynamic. And this is where working with a coach can be really helpful, because they can help you troubleshoot and adjust as life happens and life moves on. Right. Um, so I have an awesome resource for you guys. If you found this helpful and you feel like you could use a little bit more guidance in what the heck to be buying at the store to have a healthy, balanced diet. I have a grocery cheat sheet that's just kind of an easy guide for shopping, and provides kind of a breakdown of what it looks like to shop for healthiest proteins, veggies, carbs and fats, and some of my top options and top options for my coaches and Mountain Metabolic coaching. So if you think that that would be helpful, um, just send us a DM at the fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page and just say grocery cheat sheet. If you DMs grocery cheat sheet, we will send that over to you. And hopefully that will be a really good starting point for, um, just balanced, sustainable eating and knowing what the heck to eat as far as these different macronutrient categories. Um, so I hope that today has been helpful for you guys in navigating your own nutrition journey. Um, again, if you feel like you could use more support with this, or you're just feeling a bit overwhelmed and want a coach to kind of spell it out for you and help you have some specific targets and help you with maybe specific issues that have been roadblocks for you mentally or with your nutrition. Then you can apply at the link in the show notes. Um, as always, thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate each and every one of you for tuning in. If you can leave us a A rating and a review, that's always helpful. Um, and also maybe sharing the word on social media if this is an episode that you enjoy. Just share to your story or share with a friend to spread the word. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on a trail. Com happy and healthy trails.