A gentle reminder that when I share audio interviews, I highly recommend you actually listen to the audio! A non-edited, possibly quite messy transcript is below, but the audio is pretty darn good if you ask me. You can learn how to send Substack audio to your favorite podcast player here. But you do you. :-)
Before we get into today's interview, I want to set the table a little bit, so to speak, about why I think it's important to explore nutrition topics responsibly — and why I was so excited to connect with the New Orleans–based anti-diet sports nutrition RD Maria Terry for this conversation.
So, I get a LOT of questions — both from readers here and from my personal training clients — about nutrition. And there are certainly places where fitness and nutrition can and should overlap, especially things like making sure you're eating enough, preparing your body to exercise and refueling afterwards, and staying hydrated. But when it comes to more specific advice about things like protein (YES, we’re talking about protein), specific ratios of macronutrients, and individual dietary recommendations, that isn't my dance space as a trainer. And if a trainer or coach is giving you a bunch of personalized dietary guidance like that, it's a red flag, in my opinion.
That's because nutrition is incredibly nuanced: If our bodies move and respond to movement a little differently from each other, that range is even bigger for food — our genetics, cultural background, environment, gut health, personal history, and so many other things affect how we respond to food, both emotionally and in terms of measurable, like, molecular changes. Nutrition is its own extremely specific specialty, and it requires a great deal of education to be qualified to dispense individual guidance about it. As a journalist, if I'm reporting about nutrition, I will only speak to experts who have RD or RDN after their name, or a PhD in nutrition science. But even then, just like doctors or fitness pros, there's a whole wide range of perspectives, from people selling you diet teas and supplements all the way up to extremely thoughtful, trauma- and ED-informed, anti-diet dietitians.
So yeah: It's complicated, and I really lean on experts I feel confident will give advice in an evidence-based, responsible way. There are some wonderful anti-diet dietitians here on Substack, including
and , both of whom I've interviewed and really love. But I was extra psyched when I got a DM from Maria Terry. She's an anti-diet dietitian who focuses on sports nutrition, with the goal of helping her clients reduce stress around food while fueling well to be as strong as possible. One of YOU is actually to thank for this, because you subscribe here and work with Maria, and told her about how much you'd gotten from How to Move — she reached out initially just to thank me, which was like, the best message I've ever gotten, maybe. Thank you so much, whoever you are.Maria and I had such an incredible conversation, and I'm actually going to break it up into two parts so you have a little more space to digest each one. Just a small heads up that Maria is a fast talker! Feel free to reduce the playback speed on the Substack app or your podcast player if it helps, or just enjoy the fast flow of great advice.
Okay, here's Maria.
Anna: Let's start by having you talk about your work, your background. How did you come to the nutrition space and how did you come to the anti-diet approach specifically?
Maria: Sure. So my journey to becoming a registered dietician is quite windy. My first experience with a registered dietician was similar to a lot of folks in the nineties.
Two thousands, which was, I was too fat as a kid off the growth chart, you know, your weight's gonna kill you. Like this heavy, heavy, heavy fear mongering, um, for an eight or 9-year-old is, is, uh, quite the weight to bear in your mind. So I never really had an interest in becoming a dietician, to be completely honest with you.
I was a teacher for six years. I went into school administration and thought I'm gonna run a school one day. Cannot wait to do that. And I had a full blown nervous breakdown in 2016 that kept me from work. I had like an out of body experience from so much anxiety and I didn't even really know that that was happening.
I was just like a floating head. And if anyone has ever been in a high stress environment, I worked 80 to 90 hours a week on a very high need school. And it was never the kids, it was the expectation of me, to be someone who saves kids' lives through education. And that, um, is a conversation for another podcast about the dangers of working in a charter school.
And the language used around, you know, it is so all or nothing. So one thing about me is I was extremely all or nothing about many things at that point in my life. Work, nutrition, exercise, my relationships, my house, everything was either spotless or a mess. I was either eating perfectly clean orthorexic, or I was eating whatever I wanted and feeling terrible about it.
So I just lived that pendulum swing that so many of my clients lived. And when I took a hiatus from work, I had to start thinking about what do we actually wanna do? And I knew I wanted to keep teaching. But I also knew I needed a job where I didn't have grading, I didn't have to report to a bureaucratic system.
Um, what did I really, really love talking about? And at the time, this is not unusual for a dietician. I was very interested in nutrition and movement because my body was falling apart. And I thought, well, that will fix me. So a few months in, I decided to start taking community college classes. And nutrition.
See like, all right, what would it look like for me to go back to school and do I wanna become a nutrition coach? Do I wanna become a dietician? What does this look like? I took one class and was like, Hmm, I'm into this. I spent a year doing pre-reqs. I was like, I'm still into this. I was a nanny just on the side teaching yoga full time.
I was like, let me just like go back to things that I know that I'm great at. And then within two years I was done my master's degree. So it was a like a full throttle for myself in. And what brought me to the anti-diet space was actually school, which is not usual. That is like super strange 'cause uh, schooling around nutrition and dietetics is so polarizing.
Diet culture sometimes. And I just learned so much about metabolism. And how bodies work. And I thought, oh my God, I've had it all wrong all this time. And now I get to unlearn everything that society has taught me and my doctors had taught me, and my old dieticians had taught me, and I get to do things differently and then I get to teach other people.
So that brought me into the. anti-diet space. I did a long internship with Delina Soto. She's one of my close friends. Um, that, you know, fast forward eight years, we worked on her book together. So these connections into that anti-diet space also really grounded me because sometimes you feel really alone believing the things you believe and, um, that has.
Kind of kept me in this place. I never really had this like super weight obsessed practice that turned anti-diet, like I have been in this space since I started. Um, but certainly my, my experience was very diet culture ridden. So that brought me here. And now I run my own practice. We have six providers on our team.
Uh, we do one-to-one and group counseling, and we were having a blast.
Anna: Can you say a little bit more about kind of like what that awakening was in your education?
Like what was it that you mm-hmm. Kind of had thought all wrong all along and then I think people have some misconceptions about what a dietician does. So like if you're not helping people lose weight, what do you do?
Maria: That's such a good question.
Anna: I know the answer to that, but other people might not know the answer to that.
It's true. So I wanna just like open that up a little bit. Yeah,
Maria: absolutely. So I remember just. Distinctly learning that if you didn't have enough carbohydrates in the body, that your body could see a happy little carbon molecule sitting in your protein, in your amino acid, because the bulk of it is a carbon molecule and has a nitrogen, an amino attached to it.
And in the presence of. A calorie deficit and not eating enough carbs, your body's like, Hey, I know where to get glucose. Um, especially if you're not in ketosis, right? So the keto diet was huge at this time, and what we were learning is anyone following keto wasn't in ketosis anyway. They were metabolizing their protein for carbs because they were following a very high protein regimen.
Because they had it all wrong. People thought keto meant high protein, that low-carb meant high protein, and that diet is really reserved for some serious, conditions, right? Um, seizure disorders in children. And it's very rarely applied unless in a heavy clinical environment. So it was one of those moments where I was like.
Our bodies are playing tricks on us. And we thought we had it all together. And the second one was that I had been gluten-free for five or six years because I didn't eat anything. I couldn't pronounce, I did not eat gluten 'cause it was inflammatory. And I really thought I had a gluten intolerance. 'cause every time I ate it I was sick.
And every time I went to Europe, I wasn't sick. And all of these things that everybody feels all the time, right? And I was sitting in class learning about celiac, learning about gluten intolerance and I realized, wait a second. I think this is not what I think it is. I think I have damaged my GI tract because I simply don't eat enough and not eating enough disordered eating, eating disorder.
If you are, if you're someone listening to this and you're like, yep, that's real. Like you think you have something wrong with you. Um, you think you have a severe case of IVS and you might now, uh, but not eating for years and not eating regularly and following restrictive diets fucks with your GI tract.
I'm sorry I didn't ask if I could curse, but that just happened. Oh, totally fine. So, um, that was a, an ivy moment and I remember coming from school and telling my husband, I was like, I think I'm gonna try to eat gluten again. And I just piecemealed it as I was learned in school to slowly add it back in every seven days.
A little bit more, a little bit more. And then within a couple months I was eating pizza, I was eating pasta. I was eating bread and not spending a lot of money on gluten-free bread. And I thought, oh my God, I just hadn't been eating enough. I hadn't been taking care of myself. So that's, that was one of those, like, those are two really jarring moments of like, oh my God, I had it wrong.
Anna: And
Maria: I mean, you're
Anna: blowing my mind a little bit because I, I have a, what I think is a gluten problem, so we have to have a whole other conversation about that. But it's, we'll, we'll.
Maria: Which
Anna: like, I mean, I think the gut health thing is so real and something that people just like have a lot of misconceptions about.
But again, that's another podcast completely. Tell me about what an anti-diet dietician does for people. Yes, I wanna hear that too.
Maria: It's, it's a, it's a great question, and if you don't know as an anti diet dietician, you're gonna find yourself becoming someone's counselor. And I will say this, an anti diet, anti-diet, dietician's gonna hold a lot of space.
Hopefully, well, hopefully thoroughly and compassionately hold a lot of space for what you've been through and what you've been experiencing. And we are not therapists. So what's the line? Um, things that I help people with are things that you might expect a dietician helps you with. I ma make sure that you're eating enough food, that you're eating enough fruits and vegetables, that the food that you're eating, you actually enjoy.
That you are building a routine that doesn't feel restrictive, that you're slowly laying the groundwork for habits like drinking water, um, making sure that you're staying hydrated, fueling after your workouts. Like we get to do all the fun stuff. There are folks that meet me and they are post diet culture, post, uh, restrictive eating or eating disorder.
And they have a high A1C and they have high cholesterol and they're like, well, I guess I have to diet. So that's that pendulum. I call it Miley Cyrus on the wrecking ball, and I think we just assume we've gotta swing all the way back. We don't. What we need to focus on is what does nutrition do in the body and how can it help me?
I've had clients not lose any weight an entire year. And their labs changed dramatically. Why is that? Because we put a heavy focus on soluble fiber. We put a heavy focus on giving you your carbs a buddy. So we introduce these nutrition strategies that are not about what you're taking out. It's about how do you just pair things differently?
How do we work with the body instead of against it? Because restriction does not necessarily fix anything. Um, I've also had the opposite happen where clients lose 25 pounds come to me and they're like, my cholesterol cells have changed. So I get to be a problem solver. I get to be an educator. Um, I get to have a lot of fun in my job, and you have a little bit of a body image coach every once in a while too, um, of helping people kind of ground down into their body grief, which is that their body has changed and it's really hard.
Um, but a anti diet dietician is essentially what I think a dietician should have been doing all along, which is helping you learn how to eat with less stress and a lot of confidence.
Anna: So I told you that I get a lot of nutrition questions Yes. From readers and from personal training clients. Um. And I, you know, I, I am so mindful of scope of practice that I think I almost maybe swing too far where I'm like, I can't talk about food at all.
Just make sure you're eating enough. Mm-hmm. And, you know, but, but I, I think it is a little bit nuanced. Um, and I think it's important for people to know that nutrition, it's its own specialty. It's a master's degree. Yeah, it is. It requires a whole lot more education to become. A registered dietician than it does to become a personal trainer, um, as much as we do have to study to become trainers.
Sure. Yeah. So I wanna, um, I wanna hear from you about kind of those places where fitness and nutrition. Overlap and the places where like, we do need some more boundaries. Like why, why do we need both of us? Yeah.
Maria: Oh my gosh. We so need both of us. Um, because I am not able to say, here's what workout you can do to address this, uh, you know, asymmetry or to get stronger in your arms because you have some goal that requires that.
Like, that's not, I also, and I lift every, almost every day of the week. I'm a, a very consistent weightlifter. Um, I have a, you know. Yoga teaching cert, but when I'm putting my dietician hat on, I'm not always gonna lean into that. Right? That's not my, my hobby is not my expertise. I think that's probably something I'd offer to people that are looking for nutrition advices.
Is that someone's hobby? Is that someone's side project side hustle, or is this something that is their job that they do every day and they work with hundreds of clients a month, uh, or however many suits their business, um, where they are. Able to really talk the talk. I think the misconception is someone who looks like they have it together does my lifting partner is the iconic, like that guy lifts is ripped.
Like he eats one meal a day. Love him dearly, struggles with his A DHD does not always have a nutritious breakfast. Like he, he struggles and people will look to him in our gym and very clearly be like, tell me what you eat. I'm like, I hope you like eating. Five pound bags of white rice. 'cause that is the, the basis of his diet.
Like he eats carbs. Yep. Reality. So, uh, my feeling as someone who's practice started in a gym and now is in two gyms and our nutrition work is both in person in these fitness spaces and for virtually, is that a, I think a fitness trainer's role can be in cheering on really strong habits. Hey, have you eaten before this workout?
You seem a little. You seem a little off, you seem a little dizzy. Um, encouraging eating something after a workout. Staying hydrated in a workout, like I think the accountability aspect of a fitness trainer or a personal trainer is everything. And I need that. I need my clients being reminded because they don't always remember everything from their session.
So technically the line of scope of practice is general healthy habits. Where it gets blurry is you might not know a client is on Spironolactone and now they have different hydration needs. You might not know a client is on A-S-S-R-I and the recommendation you gave for hydration specifically to the number isn't gonna work for them because they have heat intolerance.
Um, it can, it can come down to even someone taking a GLP one, which are really common right now. And giving a blanket recommendation, but we don't know their comorbidities, we don't know their other medications that are interacting. Um, and that happens all the time, unfortunately. So owning that, you get to be the cheerleader, you get to be the accountability coach, I think is great.
Whereas a dietician gets to get in the weeds and say, here's what's happening underneath the surface. Here's what you're thinking about it. How do we bring those two things together to make sure you're getting what you need?
Anna: My scope in this area is general guidance. Listen to how you're feeling, especially during and after a movement practice session. Your scope is the weeds, the specifics. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The individualized advice. So I love that. Um, I did ask my readers for questions. Oh, lovely. And I think I, I am so not surprised that I got a lot of questions about like numbers.
I mean, so much in nutrition is quantified, which can be really helpful at times, especially when we're talking about. Individual situations. Mm-hmm. And specialized needs, but numbers can be really tricky. So, when can numbers be helpful and when can they be not so helpful or even harmful?
Maria: Yeah. Yeah. I think when are numbers harmful?
When are they not helpful, I think is such a beautiful question to start with, because they're not helpful when you're collecting data that doesn't have anything to do with your end goal. For example, someone comes to you, they wanna get, uh, better in a certain category of their fitness. And then three months later they go, well, guess what, Anna?
I haven't lost a single pound. We aren't even, we're using the wrong tool to measure success. So I always remind my clients, you need to know your markers of progress. It's okay to see the weight on the barbell go up. It's okay to see your hold in a Pilates movement improve. It is okay, even if you are someone pursuing weight loss.
To use the scale because that would make sense, right? But what doesn't make sense to me is when we're using the scale to measure things that we're literally not even needing that number for. So that is unhelpful. When it is harmful is when it becomes a grade, is when it becomes your gold star. Um, I had a client yesterday say, you know, I was feeling so good about everything I was doing, so I got on the scale and she laughed.
She like, finished the sentence before I could even ask a question. She was. I don't know why I did that. And I, I think sometimes we're looking for validation. All those numbers are our data. I teach people to see data as neutral, not always easy, right? Especially when it's either vilified or celebrated. Um, society makes that hard for us.
But when we collect data about how our stomach feels after we eat a certain breakfast or how we feel when we. Eat something and then do this workout? Like, does that improve? Just seeing it as data, it's just observation. It's just information. Then we get to say, huh, I'm collecting a lot of information on this.
Seems like I'm reacting to dairy. I don't love that. For me, it feels kind of restricted to say no dairy, but the reality is this data's telling me that I'm running to the bathroom after I eat ice cream, and maybe I shouldn't do that. It's not the sugar, it's not necessarily that it's bad, but it just isn't good for me.
So it's challenging to do that when your life, your identity, the way you operate in the world has been on, like being validated by doing it quote, right? And so we have to take that off of autopilot of like, I'm doing it right, I'm doing nutrition right? Because there's no such thing. It's just doing what is best for you and meeting your needs.
And we might have to call that out a lot. I think people assume I have a special sauce when they meet me and they're like, oh, like you talk about this so calmly. It can take years to get to that place in your relationship with food, where you can look at a food label and say, okay, that's interesting.
That's data, that's information that doesn't really necessarily call me in. Um, if you've ever had a client say, oh my God, I love this snack, but it has so many calories, oh my God, I love the snack, but it has no protein. It's like, well, what data? Is important, what data points are important? Um, because maybe the sodium doesn't matter to you.
Do you have hypertension? Is that something you're concerned about? Oh, no, not really. Okay. Well, like let's, that's just data, that's just a piece of information, so it's loosening the reins up a little bit, and it's also pulling out morality, pulling out value and goodness and worth from those numbers because.
They're, it's just information. That's, that's the goal I have for my clients. That might not be someone else's, other people might be like, I wanna look at calories and feel so good about it. That's not, I might not, might not be the girl for you. Like, I want you to be able to look at it and be like, okay, cool.
Moving on.
Anna: So I wanna get into protein because. Obviously it's all anyone is talking about right now. Oh my
Maria: God. It's, it is a mess. It is, it is unhinged behavior out there. Food marketing and food industry are like, have you heard about good culture? The cottage? The, the cottage? Yeah. The cottage cheese.
Their production went up some like 250%. They can't keep up. They like don't know what to do with themselves.
Anna: Oh my God. I mean, I have to admit, I have been buying that cottage cheese because it's very good.
Maria: It's delicious. Yeah. They got it dialed. They got it dialed in. I will give them that for sure, for sure.
So yeah, protein's. Protein's, wild.
Anna: Do we really need as much protein as the internet is making us think we need? Where should we be getting it from? Do we need to be counting our grams of protein and all of these things? Yeah. Do we need the, do we need K Chloe Kardashian protein popcorn,
Maria: baby? I don't think so.
Yeah. I, I feel like popcorn can just be a good source of carbs and fiber. That would be cool. And joy. Um, here's my take is I try to remind people. Your body runs on energy and where does it get energy from? Calories. But specifically what? Calories. Calories from carbs, calories from fat. Protein is not an energy source.
So if you think about the fact that I'm talking with my hands right now, or you're gonna go and do whatever you have to do today for fitness or for hanging out with your kids or whatever it might be, right? That takes energy. And if you're getting 50% of your calories from protein, you are getting some shoddy energy.
It's not a great energy source 'cause your body's gotta do all that. Back work I told you about earlier. To access that glucose. So what could happen if we looked at it from the angle of, well, average person who's average, totally general, this is not about maybe you specifically, but about 40 to 60% of your energy comes from carbs, ideally, and then another 25 to 35 from fat.
That doesn't leave a lot for protein. We're looking at 20 to 30% max. If you're vegan, maybe it's 15, 17%. And those are tiny little numbers that we don't need to get into. But the idea being, yes, you need protein. And if you are not getting in that range, that could be really problematic for you. 'cause you might not be recovering.
Your hormones might need a little bit more support. You might feel famish and hungry all day. You might get headaches, your hair, skin, nails might not heal, grow, et cetera. Like. You don't wanna not eat enough protein, but learning how to eat enough protein doesn't require a calculator. It doesn't require you to mince numbers and really think through every meal that you're going to eat.
It does require some nutrition understanding, and isn't that some of the biggest roadblocks for our audiences is that learning about nutrition is tied up in diet culture. So we think, oh, I guess it's more cottage cheese. Like absolutely not. Have you heard about aama? Would you like to try a lentil? Like there are things here that are so nourishing, but we might not even be seeing 'cause it's not in that popular discourse around how to get enough protein.
I don't think we need to add protein to pasta. I don't think we need to add protein to everything. And also some of those easier options have a place, right? Those convenience options have a place. So for me, I don't always teach my clients to track, right? Every single number, every single food. But I might say, do you know what 25 grams to 30 grams of protein looks like in a meal?
The answer is always no. Like, no, I have no idea. It's not that we need to track it, I think we need to learn how to visualize it. And often we're not eating enough protein 'cause we're simply not eating enough. Like often. And then if we're eating too much protein and not enough of the other stuff, we're constipated, we're dehydrated.
Protein's a very hot, spicy macronutrient. It pulls water. It's highly thermogenic. So if we're over protein and under fibering and under hydrating, you've got some, you've, you should be sponsored by MiraLax at this point. Like that's probably what's happening, right? So we don't want that for us. Um, I think the protein conversation is so welcome and so needed, especially as we are aging and going through power menopause and menopause, like we need it.
There's no doubt that we need it. And I meet a lot of clients that don't need enough, but to say that it needs to be the bulk of our concerns is, yeah, we have so many other things going on in this world. That is not it.
Anna: I do think there's a lot of questions as well about the timing of. Of eating and what kind of food you're eating along with exercise, love.
Okay. Um, so I'd love any just general guidelines about, and I know some of, a lot of this stuff is gonna depend on the person Of course. Totally. Totally. A lot of it will depend on the kind of workout that you're doing. Time of day, what have you been eating earlier, all of that stuff. But if we could talk a little bit about like what do you eat before a workout, when, how far before a workout, and then what do you eat after and when.
Yeah. I've heard some people, and I feel like sometimes I feel this pressure where I'm like, I just lifted. I need to get some protein right away. Uhhuh, you know, there's this idea of like, maybe like an uptake window or I don't know exactly what the terminology is.
Yeah. But, um, I'm in a, I'm in. Throw that to you and see what
Maria: you say.
Anna: Love it.
Maria: Okay. So when I was in grad school, this awesome research came out about the anabolic window and the anabolic window. AKA, the window of time that is ideal for you to eat something that's gonna build your muscles anabolic. Uh, it's not a window.
And people thought it was 30 minutes, you got 30 minutes in it. Otherwise the gains are lost. It's more of what the research shared was. It's more of a barn door, which is to say it is much larger than we think. There are certain populations where eating right after your workout is important. Perhaps someone who has type one diabetes or someone that is trying to manage their blood sugar or they have a very specific, they have a very specific need.
Also, women in perimenopause and women post menopause benefit from eating. Closer to that workout than if they were to wait two hours. There's really great study on that, which is so interesting, and that is tied to muscle health and muscle maintenance. Um, so the folks that ate a meal within 30, 30 to 45 minutes maintained more of their muscle mass and , were able to push their bench press a little bit further, uh, then those who waited longer, which is really awesome to know.
For general population, though, what we're looking at is kind of scary, kind of terrifying. What I'm about to say is, before your workout. Don't eat. Trail mix. Don't eat nuts or peanut butter. Have a simple carb. Eat like a refined one. Oh my god. Terrifying. If that freaks you out too much, like we can start with a banana.
Bananas are fine. Applesauce, graham crackers. Some people love gummy bears. Some people love fruit snacks. If you're an early morning workout person, you're like, you've got to be kidding me. Swig of orange juice, like a swig of juice, goes a long way. Why would we do that? Because if you are going into a workout and you maybe haven't eaten.
A meal in three hours. You need some circulating blood glucose to fuel that workout. And then let's layer in the fact that maybe you also haven't had enough carbs throughout the last 24 hours. Then our glycogen stores, which is the glucose stored in our muscle on our liver, might not be where it needs to be for us to feel really strong and sturdy in that workout.
So I recommend if you're someone who's feeling nauseous, dizzy, like you're hitting the wall in a workout, let's try. 30 to 45 minutes ahead of that workout. A very simple carb at a very small amount. Like a, this morning I lifted and I had a little container of fruit snacks. There's like, what? 10 fruit snacks in there.
I didn't even remember. It was six in the morning. Like I was fine, but had I not eaten, I would've been like, I'm hungry. I don't wanna be here. I don't wanna do this. I
Anna: interviewed a, a running coach a few months ago who said her favorite thing to grab before a run is a Pop-Tart. Yes. Yes. That's very common.
I would mm-hmm. Genius. I love it. It's easy to digest. It tastes good. It's not gonna like sit in your stomach and precise. You feel all yucky. Yeah.
Maria: Yes, yes. Because we do run the risk of that blood sugar getting too, too, too high. And then let's say your workout's only 15 minutes, it was a CrossFit workout or something, um, where it's high intensity, but low duration.
You might not be hitting your glycogen stores in that scenario, but I think even for folks that are doing some long distance walking, like, let's do the carb, let's do it. It. The caveat to this is if you get upset stomach, if that doesn't work for you, you can rely on your meals, but your meals need to have carbs.
Like we, we can't be messing around then. So if it's within three hours, you know, maybe you rely on your meal within two hours. Maybe it's a small snack if you have not eaten in hours. And you're, you know, like you just woke up from, from sleeping. Let's have a simple carb. And then after that workout, we're looking at anywhere from 30 minutes after to maybe two hours.
Maybe it's a lunch that's coming your way soon. The number one nutrient for you to get after a workout is hydration. Um, we've gotta cool the body down. All of that water, all that blood flow that was helping you digest your food has been recirculated out to your extremities so that you can do your exercise.
So we've gotta cool the body down, get that. That, get that blood flow back into place. Get your body temperature right. So eating a meal right after, you don't have to rush to the fair life, like you don't have to rush, but cool your body down. Get into a position to have a snack or a meal. If you are a protein shake person, let's pair a carb with it because you need to replenish any of that glucose you lost, or glycogen that you lost so that you're recovering.
Otherwise, where's it going to come from? It might come from your muscle mass. We don't wanna break down our muscle mass because we were trying to get lean. Like what an awful irony. It's like, I'm going to eat less, exercise more, but I'm, this happens a lot in the fitness space where I'm at. I don't look like I work out, I don't look like it.
I don't look like I have muscle. It's like, well, are we eating it? And, and Maria's, Maria's doing air quotes there, just so you know. Heavily heavy air quotes there. They're aggressive. And I, I mean there's, that's a podcast episode in and of itself. What does it look like to work out? Or what does it mean to look like you work out?
That's messy. But when people have that complaint, I know what they're talking about, and very often their body's not even able to make muscle because they aren't eating enough. So eating after your workout, is it a requirement? Well, let's have a meal, like at the very least, within an hour, hour and a half.
Let's eat something. What does it need to be comprised of? Carbs, like mostly carbs in the like endurance sport world. In the athlete world, it's three to four grams of carbs in a ratio to one gram of protein. That's three or four times more and people are not thinking that your fair life is 30 grams.
Okay? You prepared to to, to picture what 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrates looks like, and that's two to three, right? So I encourage people to not get caught in the weeds, don't get caught in the numbers, but do check that box of, okay, do I have a card present? Do I have a protein present? Do I, have I been hydrating?
The fats are gonna come naturally, but just keeping in mind that before and after a workout, fats and fiber are hard to digest. They take a little bit longer to digest. So if you don't wanna feel like you've got a rock in your stomach, or you're having a hard time digesting after a workout, let's save those things for a little later.
Anna: My next question was gonna be about hydration. I feel like we, we touched on hydration a bit. Sure. Is there more that. You wish people knew. I just wanna say, um, for those listening, Maria has like a, a great little, do you do kind of a series about just like fun ways to hydrate? I just on, I just started it.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So talk about why, like, what you're doing, why you're doing it. Sure. What do you wish more people knew about hydration? Yeah.
Maria: So I live in New Orleans. It's very hot and sweaty here, and as a result we're losing a lot of salt. And that might just be like walking to the, to get the mail right?
Like, it's like not even from exercise. Um, I have a lot of clients on SSRIs and stimulants for A DHD. Most of our clientele have a DHD, um, and we are navigating a hot summer with heat intolerance from those medications. So hydration's very important. Hydration is also heavily and over marketed, meaning you are gonna get, I'm sorry if you're listening to this, you're gonna get an ad immediately after.
For hydration, for a packet, for something that's better than the last one. Everyone is just like ganging up on Liquid IV all the time, which is so funny to me. It's loaded with sugar. It's 10 grams. 10 grams. That's two teaspoons. That is like not a lot of sugar. Y'all, I guess not that serious. However, that hype has called me in to say, Hey, you don't need to spend $30 at Costco on the new.
Flavor that they're sharing at the front when you walk in. 'cause that's where it is right now. You can make this stuff at home. What do you need? You need water or some sort of liquid. You need salt. That's your soda and chloride, and you need potassium. And a lot of folks don't eat or drink enough potassium.
Many people are not eating dairy if they have stomach issues, right? And there's a lot of potassium and dairy. So all that said, I thought, well, we could save money. We can have fun and we can have a fun little drink at home and never have to really spend anything extra and we'll feel much better. Um, I think hydration is important because we get to these, uh, we get into these rhythms where we're, I mean, I'm drinking coffee right now.
Yes, coffee in a, in, in some capacity is a, is a beverage right? Is hydrating in that way. Um, but it also can increase my anxiety and I can't survive off of that all day as much as I wish I could by three o'clock if I have a slump. I don't need coffee, I probably need a snack and I probably need water, so why not make it fun?
So that's where, uh, summer SIP series came from. And one thing I wish more people knew about hydration is that you can hydrate in way more ways than just plain water or some like elevated hydration powder water. In fact, a lot of those, uh, packets, they're heavy in B vitamins. And if you were to have a bunch of those in a day, you can have a toxicity from that a B six.
overload. There's actually videos on TikTok of this. It's hos people are getting hospitalized for it. It's called causing nerve issues. Um, you don't wanna play around with having to supplement your hydration all the time. So what else could you do? Well rely on other beverages. Do you like herbal tea?
Is there um, a fruit that you love? Fruit salad? Are there certain veggies you love? Yogurt and cottage cheese are hydrating. Do you like smoothies, popsicles. Um, can you make a fun little ice cube? Like, yes. I think having these options allows us to see hydration can be fun and just like protein.
Yes. You need hydration to survive. And does it need to be your personality? Does it need to be something that you are so fixated on that you forgot to eat, or now you're getting up three times in the evening to pee and it's not related to your age or you know, whatever else is going on down there.
There's so much that hydration can do for you. It doesn't need to be something that you are constantly focusing on. Um, and people ask for recommendations all the time, and that truly is. Down to the person. Um, also down to the culture. I have a lot of clients that maybe are from different, um, different upbringings here, different traditions, different cultures, and they're not water drinkers.
So like, it's like very western to like walk around, walk around with your Stanley Cup and drink a hundred ounces of water a day. Like we weren't doing that a thousand years ago. Uh, it's, it's highly marketed and when you can kind of open your eyes to that, you realize, oh, it's important, but it might not need to be that serious.
Anna: Interesting. Yeah. I feel like there's been some, some good, like myth busting recently about like the, you have to drink eight glasses of water a day. Yeah. Right. Kind of thing. Mm-hmm. I mean, if you are not in that boat where maybe you're taking a medication that makes, you know, a, an issue with heat tolerance, um, is it just kind of like.
Drink if you're thirsty. Like, is there like a good, just like boiling it down? Like what do you totally, really, really need to know at the essence?
Maria: Yeah, I think about it from like all the functionalities, like water hydrates and lubricates you. So if your lips are dry and your skin is dry, um, or you're feeling itchy and dry, like you probably need hydration.
If your eyes are dry, it's a big one. If you are not drinking water around your meals and you're feeling indigestion. You're feeling really bloated. That might be something that we try. Obviously caveat there, if you have bariatric surgery, we're not drinking and eating at the same time. If you're someone who's, whose, uh, routine or ritual is to get up and have a cup of coffee and you feel like you're riding a rollercoaster until noon, like you are a candidate to have water before coffee, just a couple sip would do you some good.
Um, doesn't have to be serious. There are definitely scenarios where people have increased needs, but generally speaking, like we have a lot of built-in cues, Anna, like we have thirst, we have these body cues that are like, uh, yeah, it might be time to drink, unless of course you lack that inter interoception, right?
A DHD, autism. Um, and you might need reminders. You might need a big cup. You might need a fancy new. To inspire you to drink water or remind you. Um, but generally speaking, I think if we start to get more connected with our bodies, we start to notice like, what works for me? You don't have to drink enough water to pee clear.
Like that's, that is over hydration. We don't need that. Um, but things like, you know, your pee being like a relative yellow school bus color, like that's kind of a sign if it's dark, maybe we wanna, we wanna check that out a little bit. Um, so yeah, sense of thirst, um, your urinating habits, like how about not peeing.
If you are not peeing, that's not good. You're not hydrated. Um, I was at the protest on Saturday and my co-partner and I were, um, running a little, a group in it, and she's like, I haven't pee. I haven't even needed to pee all day. Like, that's a problem. I've been holding my pee the whole time. And she's like, oh, yeah.
So there's all these other signs that are helpful. I, I recommend starting at something like a question, which is. How much water do you drink currently? And what could it look like to add six to eight ounces to that number just this week? So if you're drinking like 30 ounces of water, all right, what does it feel like to have 36 or 38 each day this week?
Feel okay? Feel like you loved it. Great. Keep it or add more, but go slow. Because the worst thing you can do is watch a video and they're saying you need your half of your body weight and ounces. You start doing that, and now you can't stop peeing. And it, it's like causing you, uh, distress. Right? Like take it one thing at a time so your bladder can adjust with you.
I hope you enjoyed this first part of my conversation with the amazing dietitian Maria Terry. If you're interested in learning more about her work, you can follow her on Instagram at @vitamin_ri, or visit her website at mariaterrynutrition.com. I'll have part two ready for you later this month.
