And as we age, sometimes getting to sleep is a little bit harder and so you just want

to do everything you possibly can.

If all the eating is right, then you're going to get a really good night's sleep.

So you want to just be really mindful of what your evening routine is in order to wind

your system down. Welcome to the Trailhead of Trail Runner Nation. We go on trail runs with all of you that are listening virtually every week. We bring on interesting guests that are going to help us become better runners, more healthy runners, and maybe just better human beings. This is another episode in our aging athlete mini-series, and today we're talking about nutrition. Last week I went out of run and the skies opened up and poured on my run. I wasn't prepared. That's exactly why the John G Reign Runner Pack Check-it 2.0 is now standard gear in both of our cars. When the weather flips, the jacket saves the day. And it's not just another shell. We're talking serious protection. A 2.5 layer laminate shell with PVC free water repellency. Fully taped seams and a 20K, 20K waterproof plus breathable rating. It means you're going to be bone dry, but still breathable. And it's built for runners, lightweight, ripstop fabric, 360 degree venting and a streamlined fit that layers smoothly without slowing you down. Bottom line, the RainRunner Pack Jacket 2.0 is the jacket you'll be glad you stashed. Find it in all of John G's Weather Ready Gear at JohnGee.com. And as a bonus for trail runner nation listeners, you get 10% off your order with the code trail runner. Do you know what I love most about the new Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro? It actually talks back. Yeah, the AI voice interface is a game changer. No more fumbling with the tiny buttons mid-stride. You just tell it and it happens. Ask it for your pace, set a timer, check the weather, all hands free, all while you keep running. Plus the mic and speaker are crystal clear. So whether you're on a ridge with wind whipping around you or in a downpour, you can still interact with it naturally. And don't forget everything else packed inside. A brilliant display that you can see in full sun, and up to three weeks of battery life, battery life that you can't believe, no wonder over 42 million people already trust AmazeFit. Runners finally have a smart watch that actually keeps up. Go to us.amazefit.com and use code trail at checkout for 15% off. That's us.amazfit.com slash trail. Use the code TR-A-I-L for 15% off today. Welcome to another or trade. What is this? In addition, is that what I say? Welcome to another edition of Trail Reign Nation. My name is Don Freeman, and I'm Scott Moore. Welcome back to the aging athlete, a mini series here at Trail Reign Nation, co-hosted and created by ultra-legend Chrissy male. Whether you're in your 20s, your 30s, your 50s, 70s, or maybe even if you're in your 90s, this series is about how embracing our evolution of our bodies and our minds on and off the trail. In the past episodes, we've explored how to train smarter as we age, not harder, but covering topics like adapting your training plans, hormone optimization, navigating minipause, and shifting recovery strategies. Today is our sixth episode, and we're going to discuss the fuel behind performance and longevity nutrition. Joining us is Meredith Teranova. She's an accomplished ultra runner. Catch this. She has over 100 ultra finishes and five ultra man finishes. Don, do you know what an ultra man is? No, no, I don't. I'm ready to learn. Chrissy, do you know what an ultra man is? I didn't know. Yeah, yeah. It's the, it's in the ultra triathlon or something like in founded in Kona. Yeah, it's a multiple day thing. Over three days, they swim 6.2 miles, bike 315 miles, and run 52 miles. So it's a pretty exhaustive endurance event. Meredith has done this five times and she's finished in the top five at the world championships. She's also very well qualified for this topic because she has a bachelor's in human nutrition, a master's in advanced nutrition and human performance. And she brings this science-backed experience rich perspective on how to fuel our bodies through the decades for energy, for recovery, and for resilience. Now, as we've said in all six of our episodes, we don't claim to have all the answers, but together with these experts, we're gonna hopefully discover some new knowledge that can help us become better and age with grace and make this aging thing our superpower. Chrissy, tell us a little bit about Meredith and why you wanted to have her on. Oh, Meredith and I go back and it was more as an overlap of running buddies along the trail. I, the one memory that stands out most as being at Cascade Crest, Paul was running. Meredith was there. She and I got to do some like, shake out runs and we even shared an Airbnb. They were the ones that introduced me to like, Norma Tech, the compression boots. They had a fancy new pair of those that we got to use after the race. And she, we kind of, we live in different states. We'd meet up if I was down at the running event in Austin when they lived there. But then all of a sudden, like, I don't know, probably five married, I don't remember if you know, in the years went by. And I saw her pop up on the UTMB livestream when I was announcing last year.

And I was like, we were all, all the announcers are trying to pick out different faces. And I was like, that's Meredith's, Teranova. She's crewing Katie Shide. And I had this, like, I've referred a lot of my coaching clients to Meredith when it came over the years, when they had nutrition, specific, specific, that they were looking for, a really good climbing buddy of mine used her skill set when it came to doing speedy

alpine ascents. He's no longer with us, Mr. Chad Kellogg. And I just always really admired how she approached nutrition and it's not in diet culture by any means. And so to kick off first question, we heard your accolades on the intro here, Meredith. How did the food science part get drawn into the world for you? Did food come first? Then you found these endurance events or vice versa? What was your draw to helping others with their dietary needs alongside these endurance events? Funny enough, actually, I was a chemistry and nutrition major in college and was not a runner. So, chemistry and nutrition went hand in hand and I loved food science and you got to take a pastry course because I was part of the hotel restaurant school for the food science part. And so I was like, well, that sounds fun. And so that's how kind of my degree happened. And then I became a runner. And it was actually as I was working as a chemist, I saw this need for nutrition for runners. And you know, this was back in the early 2000s when it just wasn't something that was talked about. It's interesting. Somebody was just recently, I was talking to an athlete and he was talking about how the cycling culture has changed. Same with the running culture when it comes to nutrition. At first, it it was like how little can you eat when you go out for your runs, how little, how thin can you be, how light can you be, and that used to be the culture and it would have been so fun to be part of the evolution of eating as cool, fueling as cool. You know, I remember being a cascade crest with Chrissy and like she and Paul eating real food before the race and around the race. And I was like, oh my gosh, amazing athletes are eating. And this is this is the culture that really everybody should be part of. You know, so for me, that was that was a cool transition. And so then, you know, things have evolved and now here I am. I work with both elite athletes and I work with the everyday runner. I work with young runners. I work with all different athletes of all different sports.

And, you know, as we are not 20 years old anymore, I'm working with this aging athlete population as well. You know, we've mentioned Paul, the name Paul a couple times already. We need to make sure we give him credit and props. Paul is Meredith's husband, and he is an amazing athlete in his own right. So Meredith and Paul usually go hand in hand as they attend these events, and they both are just amazing runners. So Meredith has a guinea pig that lives with her that she can practice on. You know Meredith, Chrissy brought up a question in our chat that we have that I'm very curious of. I don't know if I know the answer. What is the difference between a dietician and a nutritionist? What is the difference? Is one trying to make you lose weight and one's trying to optimize fuel?

No, that's my that's my answer

I don't know if it's right

Used to be and I don't even know if this is the culture anymore anybody could call themselves a nutritionist

You all could walk down the street and call yourself a nutritionist

Certified sports nutritionist or dietician is a degree and now, the requirement is you also have to have a master's in nutrition or do your dietetic degree and master's together. I think some of the programs are together now because I got my degree so long ago. I did not have to go back and get my master's, but I did in 2020 and 2021. I went back and got my masters because I just had, I was like, what else is out there? And I was still interested in still learning and then COVID hit. And so it was the perfect time to actually be in school and studying. So I was like, oh, this is great. And I actually wrote my master's thesis on gut microbiome and the endurance athlete was my topic of choice. So Meredith, shed some light on this for us. If we're listening to this, what happened when there was a shift from on that labeling? Could someone that claimed to be that position are they grandfathered in or should we be a little more careful and cautious when we're reading these degrees knowing that things changed and is Ernie overlap. Sometimes it's nice to get grandfathered in, but if you're a consumer, you might want to be aware of that. I think if somebody's not practicing, you know, and they're not, and they have a nutrition degree, like I, I know I graduated with people in the early, you know, in 1998, early 2000s, who are just not practicing anymore. And so, I mean, I don't, maybe if you lose, you know, you're not using it, you lose it a little bit. Maybe that's the thought. But I think just looking for somebody who is degreeed and who has the specialization in whatever, you know, their diabetic, or sorry, their diabetic specialists. Like if you have diabetes, you can go to that. If you have autoimmune disorders, there are people who specialize in autoimmune disorders. Like I wouldn't, I work with a few type one diabetic athletes, but they already have their diabetes under control. If somebody's looking to get their diabetes under control, I would send them to a diabetic specialist. So I think, you know, yeah, I think it's a buyer-beware kind of thing, but I also think that there are not that many people out there, you know, like a lot of coaches, a lot of trainers will give a lot of nutrition advice. It's not illegal for them to do that, but you know, you'd like for coaches to send somebody to a specialist. I wanna make note and we'll mention this a couple of times. The true of the podcast and also mention in the show notes, if what you're hearing is really resonates with you, you can learn more at de meritus website, eatingandlivinghealthie.com. Meritus, I'm curious. So I'm trying to think through my life in my early teens and 20s and even early 30s. I could eat as much of and as crappy of diet as I did. And maintain my weight and feel energy. And it really didn't matter what I was putting in the engine. Somehow when I turned 35-ish, that changed and all of a sudden the crap that I was consuming started to form around my belly. I'm curious from your perspective and the aging athlete theme that we have here, how does nutrition change? How does our body utilize the things? I'm not even going to say fuel because sometimes some of the things I put in my body were not fuel. How does it utilize that differently as we age? Yeah, unfortunately, unfortunately, I don't even know what the, if there's an unfortunate side of it, our bodies age and change in our hormone levels change and with that our metabolism slows down, you know, our ability to burn fat slows down. And so the quality, you know, it's not about going on a diet, you know, people are like, oh, if I just eat less, maybe things will shift and it's not about that actually. It's about really focusing on the quality as you get older. The quality matters more. And so where you could fill the bucket with all the things, all the things change what that is and it needs to just be more whole foods, less inflammatory foods kind of closer to the Mediterranean. What we've all heard about the Mediterranean diet where we're having protein and good fats and we're eating carbs but they're all of higher quality and that really just starts mattering more. In that age where you said 35 that could be 35, it could be somebody else's 45, it could be somebody else's 50, you know, but inevitably that shift will happen. Is it the hormone change that kicks this cascade of events off? Yes, especially for women that hormone shift, you know, and the unfortunate or the piece for women is it's totally different and the duration of that time is totally individual and different for everybody it could be a of months or it could be a 10 year process of kind of having this shift happen. And so it's just really adapting and saying, okay, where I got to eat all the desserts after every long run. I can't do that so much anymore. Adding on the noticing how it feels in your body. You brought up in your first answer that you noticed this shift from bean skinny, calorie deficit, eating very little on the run. I remember attitudes of like, oh my GI can't handle it or my summit can do it. And now we're seeing, thankfully, this other piece where people are trying to get as much as possible and kind of maxing out the system and training their gut. I was curious if you guys wanted to go in this direction, like kind of tagging in on some of the key pieces, like, I think of endurance fueling. And I've always been at this like two to four hundred calories an hour. We're seeing people counting it is 90, like upwards of 90 grams of carbohydrate an hour. So I wanted to do that on the like, where do we get these two hundred calories? And then breaking down carbohydrate fat and protein, like either in both in the daily and in the endurance fueling during an event and how how that might like Scott said, like it comes at us with whatever we want to put down our gullet. It'll have I remember those I could eat anything and out came running. Now like that doesn't always feel as good and sometimes it stops me from running if I put the crap in my body. So noting those things and then talking it in the scope of how it might work in your 20s, 30s, 40s and it doesn't have to be by decade, but the changes that we might notice and how do we still prioritize? I would say getting enough or like maximizing our calorie consumption for endurance. A-a-, Don, I think Chrissy set the record of number of questions being asked in one comment. I wasn't going to mention that. I used to have the record, Chrissy, and you very easily did that. Scott would like to add on to that because we're blending like three different episodes into one question. Go ahead Scott. I was just going to say all the questions that you were talking about. The one that peaked my interest initially is when I started running, there was this whole idea of car bloating and using carbs as fuel, regardless of age. And then all of a sudden it made this pendulum swing merit from

carbs bad protein good let's become

protein source and use fat for fuel

Where did that chain shift happen are we are are we still in this pendulum swing is there a balance?

What do you suggest carbs or protein? I going to address all those questions at once. No, kidding. It depends. It depends, right? That is the answer. No, I think the first and foremost is it doesn't matter where you are on the H spectrum. Oh. Fueling is super cool during training. Getting your gut ready. know know, whether you're taking 60 grams of carbs an hour, whether you're taking 90, whether you're taking 120, getting your body prepared. As we get older, if we get into a deficit, we are at higher risk for injury. So it's like, if're not just feeling for gut training, you're also feeling to like keep your muscles repaired, keep your body from getting behind the curve. It's also easier to eat healthy all the rest of the day if you haven't starved yourself during your run. If you starved yourself during your run, you're going to want the hamburgers and, you know, the french fry, pick your thing. And so I think that the best thing we can do is just fuel. So starting baseline, fuel your runs. That can be, that should be carbs as the baseline. Then depending on whether you have a high metabolism and you burn through carbs really fast, maybe you need to add some protein and fat during your runs to slow those carbs down. So it's kind of how do you burn carbs? You know this. So if you are eating something super sugary and then 30 minutes or 40

minutes later you kind of start tanking. It's because you've burned through all that sugar. You need to put something into the kind of start slowing down. And so that's where maybe adding some real foods in or having something like I said with a little fat or a little protein makes a difference. But baseline for me is like you should be fueling runs no matter what your goals are. You know if your goal is to oh I want to lose a little weight you should still be fueling your runs. If your goal is I want to get faster you should be fueling your run so you recover better for the next hard effort run. So it's all the things that you need to kind of remind yourself and circle back to and it all starts with the baseline fueling your runs. Yes, that range is big now. You know, it used to be, you know, 50, 60 grams. Now we hear 120's, 150 grams of carbs. You know, that range is going to be totally personal. And it's not for everybody. You know, the high carb is not for everybody. Boy Meredith, it's gotten I both raised our hand. Oh, but I did first. I think we all had the same golden nugget. You have to feel your runs and most importantly, need to. Like, people need to hear that. Right. But, you lean a lot of times you don't think of food and calories and all of that as the part that keeps us going, not just necessarily energetically, but like not being stopped by injury. So I thought that was a, I wanted to call out that golden nugget of preventing injury by fueling. That is a golden nugget. What I hope to tag on and add to that is maybe a myth buster now because, and I think the reason Scott raised his hand the same time I did, is there was a period of time that we heard to become fat adapted. An efficient runner, do not eat before your run and go out there and take the first few hours in so your body learns to metabolize its own storage, own fat into fuel. And if you do that, you can become fat adapted and an efficient runner. So address that myth. Right. That's exactly the question I was going to ask. That's why we were writing all the money. But the way I did it, Scott, just one question. Yep, you did it as last note. I did that. Yep. I'm learning to I'm not the popular Fat adapted person. I'm gonna be perfectly honest. We do have tons of fat available as a Secondary fuel source cards are always going to be our first fuel source if you're hiking and you're going slow enough Yes, we can tap into some of that fat so that we don't totally deplete ourselves at any moment. But the fact of the matter is that we need fuel to, you know, have energy. So a couple things on the don't eat before your run so you can utilize that. You know, everybody's different at the time at which they run in the morning. And I will say that because some people have just a finite amount of time and their stomach is finicky, some people will get out the morning for a five a.m. run and they don't want to put a lot of food on their belly because they also don't want to have to stop in the woods 30 minutes in and so like that could but to those people I always say make sure you take a gel with you on those runs so if you start getting hungry you have fuel to take it's not about being fat adapted it's just about like if you if you're worried about going to the bathroom, mind that, you know, and be yourself as a early morning runner that used to have before I was diagnosed with celiac, I had a very unpredictable stomach. And so I know that feeling. And so I know that there's sometimes I get out the door, but if I'm going on a long run, or I'm going on a workout, I don't leave the house without feeling beforehand. And I don't leave the house, I don't care how long the run is, I don't leave the house without having fuel on me, water on me, just to be prepared. Maybe you don't need it, but at least you have it available. You should not be going on a run over 45 minutes and hour, 90 minutes with no fuel available. Like, at this stage of the game, you are actually at a disadvantage to the person who takes their fuel with them. Even if it's Welch's Fruit Snacks, a Harbo candy, are at a disadvantage to the person who is doing that on every run. You are at a disadvantage if you're starving your runs. And then you're going to spend all day having to then make up for that lack of fuel. You know, it becomes so much harder work for recovery, for replenishment because you didn't take care of the run. You're blowing my mind, Meredith, and probably changing my habits. My question to you is you say fuel for your runs regardless of the length or duration. What does that look like? So So when you go out for a morning run and you've fueled, what did you fuel with?

Was it, you know, when I first started running, I'd take a goo energy gel and I'd slam an energy gel before I started running. Is that what you're talking about or are you talking about a nice Denver omelet? Mm. You know, it depends on your day. It depends like again, how long is the run? What time are you leaving the house? What's that duration? Yes, it could be as simple as a gel. It could be as simple and only because from Hard Rock, they were left behind. So I have Welch's gummy candies left behind. And I have been taking those on runs just because we have them but it's it could be something that small but it's just saying I'm gonna have sugar available if I need it during the run. You know if you're going on a 30-minute super easy recovery maybe not and you know maybe have make sure you have a great breakfast afterward you kind afterward. But if you're doing anything over an hour, you need to think about what does that look like in the grand scheme of my week? What does that look like in the grand scheme of my work day? Am I going to be dehydrated, depleted, and trying to have my brain working at 3 p.m. And then having to be making up all these calories, you know, and then the bigger picture, how many of these under-fueled runs am I doing a week? Like again, you could have one recovery run, two recovery runs. But if that starts becoming four or five runs, it's like, you're behind the curve, you know, you have not taken care of yourself

and that adds up. Amanda, I heard you say like being in calorie deficit and but then the word the thing I heard back and I agree I'm it totally of something's better than nothing. So I just want to have it explained a little bit better of why that plays forward. is a little packet of Welch's gummies or one gel that's a hundred calories on an hour run. But I have understand like that little bit does something to our metabolism to let us know that we have fuel on board and versus not having anything at all and then the idea of making up for it all day. The difference it's like maybe a hundred calories on a 45 minute run or nothing, but then the repercussions downstream. Is it something with our metabolism, with what we're able to access because we had that little bit during the hour versus the person that didn't have anything at all? Is that what's happening, like what's happening in our body by having that, what I would call like just a little bit versus the Denver Almonds, or the nothing. So anytime you have carbs, especially in immediate sugar carbs, you're making that readily available. So that's going to burn first. What What we're hoping to not do on a regular basis is tap into our energy stores and kind of start depleting those stores. And so by making a sugar available or making a fuel available. And again, you know, in an ideal world you're having more than just 100 calories. But if like that's getting you out the door, at least you have that first thing readily available. And then you can say, okay, that was available. I did go into my stores a little bit, but now I'm not so depleted that when I go to have breakfast, I'm already, you know, hundreds of calories behind. I'm already feeling dehydrated and depleted. And I think it's, you know, I think there's the balance of like what's realistic? Like of course in an ideal world we can say, have a good, have a good balance, you know, good carb, you know, a couple hundred calories before you leave out the door. But it's like that just that's not real life for everybody So it's like what we can set up as an ideal and what's reality for people. I think we Sometimes the textbook and what reality is It's okay if they don't match This episode is sponsored by LiquidIV. You know how fall hits, shorter days, new routines, and suddenly your energy tanks. That's why we've been reaching for LiquidIV's new energy multiplier. Sugar-free hydrating energy. One stick in 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone, and it us that boost without the jitters or crash. That's because it's powered by Hydra Science. Three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink plus eight essential vitamins and it's got natural caffeine so you get hydration and energy all in one. And that's why I keep a couple packets in my gym bag and my car. My favorite flavor right now, Blackberry lemonade. Frankly, I'm on team strawberry kiwi. Either way, it's sugar free, it's vegan, and always non-GMO. Ditch the glitch with a zero sugar and zero crash. Go to liquidiv.com and use the code trail for 20% off your first order. That's liquidiv.com. The code is trail. Meredith, I'm going to shift this a little bit because I was really intrigued with your master's thesis about microbiome. What are you showing off, Scott? That's pretty deep. Go ahead. And I just know, I work with farmers and agronomists, and we know how important in that profession, how the soil microbiome is so important to the health of the soil. How does the microbiome in our stomach relate to endurance sports? If we have a stronger or a more healthy gut microbiome, does that mean we can process food more efficiently and become more efficient as athletes? Yes, it makes us more efficient. It actually can make you faster. Wow. It your recovery better. You know, everything is centralized from our gut and so when we don't have a healthy gut, you know, and this is not an advertisement for probiotics by any means. This is just saying that if we create a healthy gut atmosphere, everything else follows in a really positive way. And so it is taking a look at what you are eating, you know, as we kind of talked about that aging athlete and cleaning up the diet, you know, not having inflammatory foods because everything that we eat while we're running and racing is simple carbs. It is all these things that are not great for our gut. And so it's in spending all the rest of our days creating a healthy gut can make a huge impact when it comes to race training and racing nutrition. My spreadsheet brain wants a list. What are like, I don't know, three to five things that you would say are inflammatory foods, and then what are three to five? See, I did multiple questions. Sorry, guys. And then what are three to five things that are, they would promote or help our gut health? Yep. So, the inflammatory are easy. Process food, fast fat food simple sugars You know anything that Really is over processed if you want to Even keep it more simple. It's if you turn over a package and it looks like a chemistry experiment It is probably going to to inflame your system. Our healthy gut foods are a good yogurt, fruits and vegetables, good fats like an avocado, avocado oil, not being afraid to eat salmon or sardines. Really having a good well-rounded diet, the more well-rounded your diet is the healthier your gut is in its own way. Where do fermented foods fall in there like kombucha and kefir and kimchi, all things that I love. Are those healthy probiotic

that will help my microbiome? They are great for some people. They are not great for others.

So, and it is totally a, how does your system to respond to them? For some people,

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