Before I take a break for the year, I want to leave you with five tips to help you survive the silly season.

I find that most people just completely switch off and let go of their healthy lifestyle and fitness goals as soon as December hits. We overindulge in delicious food and alcohol, are way more sedentary and just accept that a 2kg weight gain is inevitable. Knowing that we’ll hit the diet or detox hard come January.

I'm not here to tell you to be strict and not enjoy all of the delicacies. I really want you to enjoy this time. But I challenge you to change your attitude this year and implement my top five tips for surviving the festive season without having a massive blowout. 

1. Aim for Balance

• Find a comfortable middle ground where you can still go out and have a great time, but try and minimise the damage by going overboard
• Make healthy choices when you can and when you can't, don’t feel guilty for it. Focus on being mindful so you get maximum pleasure out of it. N...

My Triathlon Nutrition Academy members always love when I share ideas that can save them money and time when it comes to their nutrition.

We are heading into an even more expensive time with Christmas so here are a few ideas, including several Apps, that might help you save some dollars as we hurtle towards the silly season.

APPS

1. Eat Club: eatclub.com.au

If you are blessed with the ability to go out at night (without the challenges that come with children that need to go to sleep!) check out Eat Club. Restaurants list last minute deals to fill empty tables.

2. Super Cook: www.supercook.com

One of my personal favourites as it eliminates food wastage altogether.

If you are that person that has a bunch of random things left in the fridge at the end of the week that you just don't know what to do with then this App is for you.

This App allows you to add any ingredients you have in your pantry or left over in your fridge and suggests what you can make (assuming you only hav...

When it comes to choosing the key training sessions that every triathlete needs to include in their program to maximise performance, TriDot coach and age group triathlete, John Mayfield, has some great insights.

KEY ESSENTIALS 

John has coached hundreds of athletes ranging from beginners all the way up to Kona qualifiers and elite professional triathletes. Here are his insights into the essential workouts every triathlete should be doing.

The Swim 

• Proper technique - you can’t out volume bad technique
• Perfect practice makes perfect
• Overcome bad habits - drill seasons with a coach to reinforce proper technique
• Improve pace through technique then improve efficiency
• Develop muscle memory then develop strength
• Dryland exercises especially when a pool is not available
• Build threshold, build stamina
• Small tweaks can lead to big gains

When it comes to improving your swim technique, there is no substitute for practice and repetition. That being said, focusing on specific dr...

What is three-thirty-itis?

• Have you ever experienced a slump in energy after lunch? Where you feel tired and would love to take a nap?
• Or maybe you crave sweets here to give you a pick-me-up thanks to the sugar rush and just can't stop nibbling.
• Or maybe, you're the person who reaches for another coffee to get you through.

Chances are if any of these things sound familiar – your nutrition needs a shake up.

What causes three-thirty-itis?

When it comes to the afternoon slump, typically the cause is what you've done, or not done with your nutrition earlier in the day

How do you prevent three-thirty-itis in your triathlon diet?

Without knowing exactly what you eat, here are some general guidelines to get to the bottom of why you fade in the afternoons. Let's start with lunch and work backward to the start of the day.

Triathlon Nutrition - Lunch

• Is your lunch balanced? Does it contain all the macro and micronutrients you need to perform at your best?
• Is your plate perfectly...

 Hot Tip - Don't leave it too late

Often triathletes leave it way too late. They’re a last minute Larry and end up winging it. 

• They are not prepared
• They have not rehearsed – and that's my number 1 rule of race day!
• The result is often a horrible race. No energy on the run. You bonk or vomit. And you don’t race as well as expected/or as well as you're capable of 

Stop and think for a second – aren’t we doing all this training to piece it together into a decent race? And that doesn’t necessarily mean a win or get a spot to Kona – simply doing better than the last one, or having a good time or not bonking.

If you want to be successful on race day – whatever that looks like for you – start preparing early. The more time you have, the better. 

You don’t want to get to race week and go ‘oh shit’ – I’m out of sports drink powder. Or I should probably think about CHO loading!   It should already have been planned and practiced in training.  

Make time to understand exactly what y...

If you're new to the sport or you’ve stepped away from triathlon training for any period of time, you may not realise how important managing your nutrition is for your return.

It's a big stress on your body to go from not doing anything to suddenly doing something again. So we need to be really mindful of our nutrition in this key window.

If you’ve stepped away from triathlon, perhaps because of:

• Sickness
• Injury
• You’ve just done a big key event – multiple weeks off
• Drama in your personal life that puts a handbrake on training
• Taking a break
• Holidays, OR
• You’re just starting out and you’re new to training

 you need to ensure your transition back into training is managed correctly.

My Top 5 Strategies for Managing your 'Return' to Training 

1. Match your Daily Fuelling to your Training Load

It's really important you quickly align your day to day nutrition to your change in training routine to ensure you're eating enough to support your overall energy needs. Just 3 ...

Understandably, ex boxer, turned triathlete, Michael Welsh, who was a completely different athlete to Jason (who we spoke to last week), had a very different race nutrition plan.

Here is Part 2 of our podcast mini series where we lifted the curtain on athletes’ race nutrition plans for Sunny Coast 70.3.

Michael came to me because his old plan, from another dietitian, was super complicated, hard to remember and hard to get down! Only his third 70.3 but by making some changes he managed to smash his goal of going under 4 hr 30 mins.

This week I spoke to Michael where he compared what he used to do to what he does (now that he knows better) and the difference it's made to his performance. 

Michael also shared some of the fundamentals he took care of with his new plan. Namely: 

• His race nutrition plan
• How he practised his nutrition in lead up events
• His pre-race nutrition – his carbohydrate loading
• The bike and run fuel plan we designed to cater to his need to go really fast!
...

When building a race nutrition plan – no two plans are the same.

Every athlete needs to tailor to their specific needs based on their size, their race speed, the event and what actually works for them.  There’s no one size fits all when it comes to race nutrition plans.

To demonstrate how different the race nutrition needs can be from one athlete to the next, I recently interviewed Triathlon Nutrition Academy member, Jason Currie. We talked about his race nutrition plan for Sunny Coast 70.3 - where he smashed out a 1 hour PB!! 🎉

In Jason’s case, despite having done a crazy amount of racing (including 10 x Ultra marathons, 2 x half Ironmans, 1 x full Ironman and several short races in the space of 12 months!!), he had NEVER had a race nutrition plan prior to joining the Academy 😲. 

Jason explained that through the support and knowledge he garnered from being within the ⚡ Triathlon Nutrition Academy, ⚡ he was able to not only develop his own race nutrition plan he was able to tweak,...

When it comes to body composition - so we're talking muscle mass, body fat, visceral fat, BMR and bone mineral content, there is absolutely no point in measuring something if it cannot accurately track progress. That's why Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) scans are NOT the best tool.

When I was at the gym last week, I decided to do a spur of the moment experiment on myself - I did a BIA scan right before a gym session & again straight after.

Not planned – the machine just happened to be available – I thought it would be fun. And I knew it would highlight how easy it is to manipulate these types of scans.

So, a disclaimer – this was not a controlled experimental study by any means:

      ▪️ didn’t measure my sweat losses

      ▫️ didn’t empty my bladder before

      ▪️ was not fasted

      ▫️ glycogen levels – normal CHO stored in muscle

      ▪️ hydrated

Take a 🎧 listen to the latest podcast - Episode 62 and read the show notes for details on the experiment – what ...

If you are a triathlete who counts calories this is important to know so you can ensure you’re getting the kilojoules you need when consuming nuts.

The Atwater System (introduced over 100 years ago) is the system used globally for calculating the total energy value (kcal/kJ) of foods.

• Measures available energy of a food – they burn it in bomb calorimeter and factor in faecal and urine losses
• It determines kilojoules (kJ) based on grams of fat, protein, carbohydrate and alcohol in a particular food
• Carbohydrate and protein ~4kcal/g : CHO (3.87 – simple sugars) (3.57-4.12 – complex CHO) rounded to 4
• Fat 9kcal/g
• Alcohol 7kcal/g

However, new research out of the University of Wollongong (and presented at the Dietitians Australia conference last month) found that the actual kilojoule, or calorie content of nuts, that we actually absorb in our body, is significantly less than what's on the food label - up to 26% less calories!

They found:

• Almonds had 18 1/2 kilojoules per gram ...