Episode 161 - What is a Sports Dietitian?

What is a Sports Dietitian?

As a sports dietitian I’ve studied for years to help you use nutrition to achieve your performance and health goals.  

That’s why it frustrates me to no end that people go to literally every other source (like Dr. Google, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, magazines) before talking to an expert.

People would rather listen to their coach, a training buddy, naturopaths, chiropractors, literally any other person instead of consulting a qualified sports dietitian. But none of these people are experts, and they shouldn’t be giving advice to others.

This is a big reason why there is so much confusion and misinformation around nutrition and I’m sick of spending so much time clearing it up. So today I want to talk about what exactly a sports dietician is and why we should be the gold standard source for your information.

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Episode Transcription

Episode 161: What is a Sports Dietitian?

Welcome to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. The show designed to serve you up evidence-based sports nutrition advice from the experts. Hi, I'm your host Taryn, Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Advanced Sports Dietitian and founder of Dietitian Approved. Listen as I break down the latest evidence to give you practical, easy-to-digest strategies to train hard, recover faster and perform at your best. You have so much potential, and I want to help you unlock that with the power of nutrition. Let's get into it.

[00:00:00] Taryn: I am incredibly passionate about elevating sports dietitians as the experts in our field. it frustrates me to no end that people go to literally every other source first before seeing a sports dietitian for advice. Think, you know, Dr. Google, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, magazines, the list is endless.

[00:00:44] Taryn: People go to Their training buddy for advice. Their coach gives them nutrition advice. Your daughter's boyfriend's personal trainer, health coaches, nutritionists, wellness coaches, naturopaths, chiropractors, literally every other person except the professional who has a degree in human nutrition. I feel like I spend 90 percent of my time busting myths and setting people on the right path because they're so misinformed and confused about nutrition.

[00:01:13] Taryn: Now everyone eats, but just because you eat food does not make you an expert in nutrition to give advice to others. And for the triathletes that I have the honor of working with, food is more than just fuel. It is a powerful tool to enhance performance and your long term health. With the right nutrition for you, you can do things like speed up your recovery, keep your immune system super robust and fend off illness.

[00:01:41] Taryn: Decrease the risk of injury is a huge one. You can ultimately train harder and smarter, And at the end of the day, that leads to faster and better race performances. As well as preventing gut issues and a long list of other things that can help you when you have your nutrition dialed in for you.

[00:02:00] Taryn: So what is the difference between a regular dietitian and a sports dietitian? And what exactly does a sports dietitian do?

[00:02:07] Taryn: Sports dietitians are a registered dietitian first, who specializes in helping athletes improve their performance through nutrition. Now, as a profession, we are very heavily regulated and are bound by our code of conduct. The pathway in Australia is you first need to obtain a bachelor or a master's degree from an accredited university in human nutrition. Personally, I did a four year undergraduate degree in nutrition and dietetics at Queensland's University of Technology. As part of that degree, you need to do a 20 week placement of clinical practice.

[00:02:45] Taryn: And back then I had to do two years of clinical experience first before progressing on to do my additional sports nutrition qualification. Once I'd done like bare minimum two years clinical experience, I booked into the sports nutrition course and completed further study. I also went on and did the IOC, International Olympic Committee Diploma in Sports Nutrition as well, which is two years.

[00:03:10] Taryn: Once you've done the sports nutrition course, you become a provisional sports dietitian and you remain provisional for a year under a mentor before you're able to become actually accredited as a sports dietitian. You need to complete around 250 CPD or continual professional development points to become accredited.

[00:03:30] Taryn: Now, personally, I'm an advanced sports dietitian, which means that I'm an accredited sports dietitian with significant experience in sports nutrition. I have more than five years of experience, and I have to do 1, 500 CPD points on a three year 

[00:03:46] Taryn: Reaccreditation cycle. Every three years I need to bank a heap of professional development to maintain that sort of higher level of qualification as an advanced sports dietitian. So it's not something you can do straight out of uni or when you first become a sports dietitian, you have to have all of that experience under your belt first before you can become an advanced sports dietitian.

[00:04:08] Taryn: So it's a lot of university tertiary education, which is why I get offended. When people go to everyone else first to get nutrition advice, rather than actually going to somebody that it is their profession and they have done the study to become accredited and qualified in human nutrition. Now, a regular dietitian, in comparison, is across the science of nutrition.

[00:04:37] Taryn: So, medical nutrition therapy, physiology, anatomy, chemistry, biochemistry, food science, food industry, all those sorts of things. That was part of my undergraduate degree

[00:04:48] Taryn: But a sports dietitian has that, plus takes it a step further and has additional expertise in exercise physiology, which is my all time favorite topic, plus specific sports nutrition strategies for that. So we understand the unique nutritional demands of an athlete as a person from a general and clinical perspective, plus we're equipped to guide you specifically through the complexities of fueling and hydration and recovery for your particular sport.

[00:05:20] Taryn: So we have an in depth knowledge about how food Interacts with our athlete physiology and apply that knowledge to optimize your training adaptations, prevent injuries, enhance performance and all those things that we do behind the scenes when we suggest things to eat. It is not just a, Hey, give this a go and see how you feel.

[00:05:41] Taryn: It is, okay, this is, All of the knowledge that I have, all of the clinical experience and expertise to then suggest this one or two particular things to drive training adaptations and help you be the best athlete that you can. So hopefully that clarifies what the difference is between a regular dietitian and a sports dietitian and would help you decide who to see based on what it is that you're looking to achieve.

[00:06:07] Taryn: If you're listening, then chances are you do a fair bit of exercise. And so I would suggest not seeing a regular dietitian. You would see somebody that is specific to your sport. And I think that's very important to recognize is that you wouldn't see, say me, for example, I only work with. endurance athletes, in particular triathletes, you wouldn't come to see me as a dietitian if you were in a making weight sport like boxing or wrestling and things like that.

[00:06:34] Taryn: I also would suggest you go elsewhere if you were a team sport athlete. So somebody that played footy or netball or hockey or something like that, because that is not my wheelhouse. That's not my area of expertise. But if you swim, bike and run altogether in one sport and love it, then I would be the sports dietitian for you.

[00:06:53] Taryn: Why do athletes need sports dietitians? I think gone are the days where sports dietitians were only available to elite athletes. We are very much accessible to anyone now, so many times I've had people say, but I'm not good enough, or I'm not an athlete, but Hey, if you train on purpose, then in my mind, you are, doesn't matter if you win or you come last, but if you're exercising on purpose, then I categorize you as an athlete. So for a lot of triathletes, Their training plan is organized and it's very well designed, and we're pretty good at ticking all the boxes, making it go green. But often what triathletes do is overlook nutrition, which is a key pillar for your performance Training. Breaks down your muscle tissues, it uses up your energy reserves. It is a physiological stress and what you eat can make or break your recovery, your endurance performance and your overall health, which is particularly important when you do a lot of exercise and train for three disciplines.

[00:07:59] Taryn: So the difference between not having a sports dietitian in your corner and having a Sports dietitian in your corner is massive. And one of the things that my triathlon nutrition academy athletes always say to me is, I wish I had have done this earlier, but sometimes you just don't know what you don't know.

[00:08:17] Taryn: So a sports dietitian can help you with customized fueling plans. No two athletes are the same and what you fuel with in terms of products and amounts and types and hydration and electrolytes in your training sessions, is specific and custom to you. You will have particular strategies to help enhance your training adaptations in whatever block it is you're in.

[00:08:42] Taryn: It can help with your body composition goals. And also understanding your food preferences is another reason to work with a sports dietitian so that even if you are the fussiest of eaters, like Christine, who we spoke to a few weeks back on the podcast, they can help suggest foods to meet your needs based on what you will and won't eat.

[00:09:03] Taryn: Balancing more than just your macronutrients because it's more than just if it fits your macros. We also need to be really mindful of our micronutrients and our hydration needs and make sure you have the energy that you need to survive your work week and your training week as well as race performance too.

[00:09:21] Taryn: I love working with athletes in the Triathlon Nutrition Academy. We learn together as a group, but everyone has their own custom and specific race plan or day to day training plans and has the ability to chat with me every week in our power hour session so that any tiny little question or thought or concern you have is dealt with really quickly.

[00:09:44] Taryn: I prefer that so much better than one on one consulting because we can make tiny changes every single week rather than waiting a whole month for an appointment and forgetting what the problem was because you'd already moved on and figureit out or you're still struggling for four weeks when you could have done that in a few short days.

[00:10:04] Taryn: The other thing that a sports dietitian can help you with is really improving your recovery. So many of my athletes had no idea how to do recovery nutrition properly before they joined our program. And you might think that, you know, and you can pull some data from the internet, but even those athletes that did that and thought they were doing well, when they actually understood how to do it properly, they were like, Oh my God, I was nowhere near what I thought I was meant to be doing.

[00:10:31] Taryn: Recovery is just as important as the training itself. You only adapt from the sessions that you recover from. So if you're smashing yourself, burning the candle at both ends, and thinking that you're doing a whole heap of training, if you aren't putting the right building blocks in your body to recover from that, 

[00:10:51] Taryn: then there's almost no point. You are burning yourself out and building so much fatigue that you're probably not actually getting fitter and faster from smashing yourself like that. So a sports dietitian can help you dial in your post nutrition after every training session, because you don't necessarily need to do the exact same thing after all of your different types of training sessions.

[00:11:14] Taryn: As a triathlete, no two sessions. in our week are the same. We have swimming, cycling and running, but within each of those sports and modalities, you have different drivers of training sessions. Now, take swimming for example, you might have a speed work session, you might have a strength session, you might have an endurance session, you might have a recovery swim.

[00:11:34] Taryn: And so your recovery nutrition plan for each of those can be slightly different depending on what we're trying to achieve. And also, what other sessions you have on that training day. Looking backwards and looking forwards, because we need to make sure our nutrition is periodized to our training program.

[00:11:52] Taryn: If you get your recovery right, you will recover so much faster so that you can train harder in your subsequent training sessions. You will also help reduce that overall stress from training and inflammation and top up your glycogen stores again, which are maybe on the low side, depending on what you've done.

[00:12:10] Taryn: And those things can help with your immune system as well. So it's more than just. Ticking the right macro boxes, there is so much strategy behind recovery that a sports dietitian can help you with. Nutrition is also key for injury prevention, particularly for triathlon. We have a lot of training stress and we are often running on tired legs.

[00:12:33] Taryn: So under fueling and imbalanced nutrition can definitely lead to injuries. And further along that continuum, we're looking at things like stress fractures and even soft tissue injuries like strains and tears. Not to mention compromised immunity, which is not what we want, because often when we taper, we get sick.

[00:12:51] Taryn: And that is the worst time to get sick, when you've trained so hard and built towards this key event, and then you finally stop and slow down for a second, and the body's like, Oh man, we are letting this viral thing take over. We're done. And that's because you didn't do a good job of your fueling in those peak weeks.

[00:13:08] Taryn: So a sports dietitian can help guide you to meet your needs, to make sure you are resilient and robust and healthy right throughout a training block so that you can get to the start line not sick and not injured, right? Tick and tick. The other thing which most people think about sports dietitians is helping with is your race day nutrition.

[00:13:29] Taryn: But for me, Race Day Nutrition starts with Training Day Nutrition, which is why the Triathlon Nutrition Academy is built the way that it is. We start with day to day nutrition, because you get the biggest bang for your buck out of the things that you do every single day, and all of the different strategies that we can use.

[00:13:47] Taryn: lean on into our training sessions to prepare and practice for race day. But a lot of triathletes might have a race plan that is maybe sports dietitian developed, but if you don't know how to build to that, practice to that, gut train to that, figure out all the different components that you need for it, if you're just blindly following a plan, then You don't have the best race performance plan ever, and I love to teach my athletes to tweak and finesse their race plans constantly, because it is not something that should be set and forget.

[00:14:19] Taryn: So I don't like writing race plans anymore, because athletes would come to me for, say, a 70. 3 race nutrition plan, we'd dial it in for that particular event, and then they would rinse and repeat that plan for every single 70. 3 they did beyond that. Now, they did that because it worked. But in my mind, I'm a high achiever, and I want to do everything perfectly.

[00:14:42] Taryn: I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. If you know me, I'm sorry. But there are things that you can tweak in your race plan for every race to optimize it as best as you can. And why wouldn't you want to do that? I just think following a plan blanketly for every event forevermore is silly. Let's not be silly.

[00:15:02] Taryn: So race nutrition includes All of your practice and training, week leading in, carbohydrate loading strategies for those races that need it, your race day nutrition, so what you're doing when you get up in the morning, all the way through your event and what you do afterwards as well.

[00:15:20] Taryn: And what a sports dietitian is good at is being across all of the sports nutrition products on the market to help guide you on the best thing for you to use. not just blindly following one product type or brand because perhaps your training club has a discount code or an affiliation with a company.

[00:15:39] Taryn: I try as best as I can to keep on top of all the sports nutrition gels and sports drinks and other products on the market, so that if somebody needs some help with their race nutrition, I have that knowledge to go, why don't you try this, this, and this. See what you like, see how it feels, and then we can fine tune it based on that.

[00:15:58] Taryn: Rather than going, hey, hammer gels work for me, you should try hammer gels too.

[00:16:03] Taryn: The value of seeing a sports dietitian that specializes in your sport is massive. So I'm an endurance sports dietitian. I don't do other things. I only do that. I only work with triathletes. But if you are a triathlete, you have unique nutritional needs. Very different to somebody that just runs, just swims, just bikes, or does just the gym.

[00:16:25] Taryn: You have long training sessions. You have short, sharp training sessions. You have races that are crazy long, and then also races that can be quite short. As an endurance system and a beast, your nutritional needs need to be matched to that, to the modalities of the sports that you do and the type of training that you do.

[00:16:45] Taryn: And a sports dietitian in particular is across all of those sports science things that can help you maximize your training and racing. One of the key concepts for endurance nutrition is periodization. And I bang on about this all the time, but it's adapting your nutrition plan to your training cycle.

[00:17:04] Taryn: Nutrition is not set and forget. It's something that needs to evolve with you and your training program. And as your training demands change, so should your nutrition. A sports dietitian can help guide athletes in adjusting all the things that you need to, carbs, protein, hydration, all of the other micronutrients that you need for that training block based on training volume and intensity and the goals that you're trying to achieve.

[00:17:30] Taryn: Is this a fat loss phase? Is this a get fast, prepare for race phase? Your nutrition should change through both of those things. And a sports dietitian is the type of person that can help you do that. A general dietitian is not going to know how to adapt nutrition for the demands of training. similarly, a dietitian that doesn't work with endurance sports is also not going to know how to do that.

[00:17:56] Taryn: I get so frustrated by hearing athletes tell me they've seen somebody and they've given them a calorie target for the day and they stick to that no matter what. And I'm just like banging my head against the brick wall thinking, man, like I just get so frustrated. I'm, I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna go into it cause I'm getting hot and sweaty.

[00:18:15] Taryn: I'm getting frustrated thinking about it. I have one athlete at the moment who's about to do an Ironman and is following a very low calorie target set by a sports dietitian a long time ago. And they are not feeling very good right now.

[00:18:29] Taryn: And that is because they're not eating right for the type of training that they're doing. So let's be smarter than that, okay?

[00:18:35] Taryn: Because working with a sports dietitian doesn't just improve your nutrition, it can also change your mindset about fueling. So often, triathletes in particular, I'm going to throw you under the bus, it's also actually, it's not just triathletes, it's cyclists and runners too, but we come at nutrition from a fat loss mindset.

[00:18:57] Taryn: Often. Probably one in every group of my academy athletes doesn't want to drop some body fat. 95 percent of the others do. So if we've always got that in the back of our mind, we are probably restricting ourselves and often, with triathlon, doing more harm than good. So a sports dietitian can help you of a performance focus with your nutrition.

[00:19:22] Taryn: And I always encourage people to see food as a tool that supports our sport and performance, but also longevity and health. We need to be healthy first, and almost performant second, because if we're not healthy, then we're not going to perform. So we need to kind of flip the rhetoric around that, so we're not constantly starving ourselves, trying to drive some fat loss, and shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that.

[00:19:49] Taryn: In the research, studies show that athletes that follow a personalized sports nutrition plan perform better than those that don't. They recover faster, they experience fewer injuries, and getting sick.

[00:20:02] Taryn: and what a sports dietitian can do is bridge the gap between general nutrition knowledge and deep exercise nutrition science. and apply it practically to you and your situation. So it's helping an athlete find what works best for them, regardless of whatever the latest fad or trend is.

[00:20:22] Taryn: It's also about being collaborative, right? It's the back and forwards, it's the discussion, it's the negotiation, it is taking ownership of your own nutrition, because hey, you're an adult, it's not about being dictated to saying you have to eat this, this and this and that's it, you should get a sports dietitian in your corner that can respect your food preferences and food choices and work with your lifestyle so that We can guide your specific strategies on things that have long term impact on your life.

[00:20:51] Taryn: This is not about quick fixes. It's not about eight week challenges. Fuck, they drive me up the wall. Excuse my French. Let's, again, be smarter about nutrition. Eight weeks ain't gonna do shit. It is probably more likely to do harm than good. If you need a bit of a reset period, sure. But in eight weeks, if you go too hard and too fast, It doesn't teach you anything about how to eat.

[00:21:18] Taryn: It just teaches you the all or none approach, which is not effective longterm. And two, you might have rapid weight loss, but chances are a whole heap of that is muscle mass. And we don't want that as an endurance athlete. We want to hold onto that beautiful muscle mass as much as we can. It is our metabolic driver.

[00:21:38] Taryn: It increases our metabolic rate at rest, which means you can eat more calories at rest. The more muscle mass you have on. Now yes, we don't want to be too heavy, like we don't want to be a bodybuilder type build to do triathlon, but lighter is not better. and Lena is not always faster.

[00:21:57] Taryn: So if you're serious about leveling up your performance, then investing in a sports dietitian is a game changer.

[00:22:04] Taryn: Not only does it improve athletic performance. But it builds habits thatsupport your health and well being long after your competitive years are over. And hey, they may never finish. If you want to be 85 and doing an Ironman, I'm here for that.

[00:22:21] Taryn: As a sports dietitian, I want to be more than that person that just tells you what to eat. I love to empower my athletes with the knowledge and skills to take ownership of their nutrition.

[00:22:34] Taryn: If you're committed to the sport and long term, then a sports dietitian is an invaluable part of your support team, alongside your coach, your massage person, your bike fit person, whoever it is that you need in your A team to do well. A sports dietitian is going to be right there with you, guiding you to optimize every aspect of your fueling and hydration in day to day life, as well as racing.

[00:23:01] Taryn: In our sport, where marginal gains do matter, and there are things that you can improve constantly, it never ends, which is why it's so addictive. That advantage, getting your nutrition right, can be huge. We always talk about one percenters. But getting a sports dietitian can be a 50 percent performance improvement.

[00:23:22] Taryn: It just takes a little bit of courage to take the leap and even a little bit of vulnerability I would suggest in sharing those deep, dark things that you have with food. But I like to create a safe space with our Academy athletes that we can talk about anything and you know, we all fail forwards together.

[00:23:39] Taryn: Nobody's perfect. But if we can do better and be better, then one, we're going to have so much more fun training and be happy with how we perform on race day, knowing that we've done everything that we can.

[00:23:51] Taryn: So if working with me on your nutrition is something that you are looking to do, then make sure you go and check out the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program at dietitianapproved. com forward slash academy. We open a few times a year and on that page you'll be able to see when we open again next. And if you are in the middle ground where we are not open just yet, then make sure you register your interest for our next intake.

[00:24:14] Taryn: And the next best thing you can do is take my Triathlon Nutrition Kickstart course. It is a great place to lay some of those foundations and a beautiful little stepping stone to do before joining the bigger Triathlon Nutrition Academy program. And your third way to help is to continue listening to the podcast.

[00:24:33] Taryn: I love delivering you little bite sized nuggets of practical, easy to digest nutrition strategies. And if you're not watching along on YouTube yet, go and subscribe to Dietitian Approved on YouTube. Thank you for putting me in your ear holes today. I will talk to you next week.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or want to share with me what you've learned, email me at [email protected]. You can also spread the word by leaving me a review and taking a screenshot of you listening to the show. Don't forget to tag me on social media, @dietitian.approved, so I can give you a shout out, too. If you want to learn more about what we do, head to dietitianapproved.com. And if you want to learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to helping you smashed in the fourth leg - nutrition!