Legumes are also great sources of plant protein. You're going to want to eat something pretty carb heavy like four hours before you're about to run. Some people struggle with something called reactive hypoglycemia, which means after you eat, your blood sugar falls.
Kristen: If you can tolerate legumes, they are high in fermentable carbohydrates or fodmaps. Legumes are also great sources of plant protein. If you have a question, drop it in the chat. I want to be a resource for you today.
You're going to want to eat something pretty carb heavy like four hours before you're about to run. Some people struggle with something called reactive hypoglycemia, which means after you eat, your blood sugar falls. Looking at doing a more long term carb load.
If you're iron deficient, you can obviously eat very iron rich foods. You can also do things like cook with cast iron or they make a product called an iron fish. Other things that can help if you're anemic include utilizing vitamin C.
Cauliflower contains iron since it's the miracle vegetable. Also high in fiber, which has a ton of health benefits. Next week, I promise I will have an actual topic.
Good morning, Cadre. Happy Saturday. Morning, Darla. Welcome to Nourish with Intent. I was gonna explain why I named it that, and I still don't have a good answer. It just felt right. Good morning. Good morning. Oh, some names I haven't seen before. It's good to have you here if you have never seen me before. My name is Kristen. I'm a registered dietitian. I live in the Denver area. Morning, Jules. I. Let's see. Historically, kind of specialize in disordered eating and intuitive eating and eating disorders and have worked across levels of care and ages, helping people in recovery and more recently, kind of specializing in the management of medical conditions through a food neutral kind of intuitive eating lens.
So that's a lot of words, but that's a little bit about what I do. If. Yeah, if I'm new to you, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. This first. I guess we're in the second. The second week of February, the end of last year, I did an entire intuitive eating series. This year I have not been quite as put together with what I want to talk about. And I was having one of those weeks where generally I was feeling pretty uninspired in the work that I do because that happens to all of us, no matter what you do for work.
And I wasn't really sure what I wanted to talk about today or what you guys might find helpful. So if you saw. I kind of just put it as like a. An ask me a question so that I could. Yeah, just spend some time with you guys. This is. I apologize if you came here for, like really strict learning because I don't know that I have that in me today. But I still want to show my face and be able to see the sunshine through my comments. So if you have a question, drop it in the chat. I want to be a resource for you today in whatever way that I can.
So please ask me something. I also just want to point out that if you haven't been interacting very much in the community tab, that's a really great place for a little bit of daily inspiration and just connection with other people. I know it was asked recently what we're excited about this weekend, so go share that. I know the super bowl is a big one. I'm not wearing green because I'm wearing for the Eagles. I am in fact a Chiefs fan. I'm so sorry. But I also like the Eagles. I have a lot of friends who are Eagle fans, so I heard it's good to eat legumes every day.
Because it supposedly gets rid of the bad bacteria in your intestinal tract. I have not heard that specific claim, but what's. I guess I can kind of break it down. It is if you can tolerate legumes, they are high in fermentable carbohydrates or fodmaps. And if you can tolerate legumes every day or even if you're on a low fodmap diet, there are also. There's actually they're not off limits. It's just a kind of restricted serving size at one time because it's a lot of work for your GI system. Legumes are high in fiber, both soluble and insoluble fiber.
And one of the characteristics of fiber is that it feeds the bacteria in your gut. And in that process there, that's where the fermentation happens. Your little bacteria are eating it, producing gas. So what you are doing is feeding the good bacteria. Not all, I mean you're really feeding all the bacteria. But it can help to kind of repopulate those good bugs. You want things like Lactobacillus. What's the other one? Oh my gosh. I should be awake by now. But I don't know if that answers your question.
It was not like a really solid full answer. But if you can tolerate it. Legumes are also really great sources of plant protein. So you're gonna get good chunk of amino acids. We need protein for a lot of things. You're getting a really solid dose of fiber. You're also getting things like phosphorus, magnesium, potassium. Lentils are a really great source of zinc, iron as well. So they are very, very nutrient dense. If you can tolerate them or even incorporate just a small amount, they are connected to a lot of health benefits because of how nutrient dense they are.
In terms of getting rid of bad bacteria. I think it really just depends on like what is the bad bacteria. Are we talking C Diff? Because that's not great. You can also take a probiotic or eat fermented probiotic rich foods. Sorry, my dog's drinking water in the background and that will help to repopulate the good bugs that you want. Bacillus. Yeah, Lactobacillus. I struggle with fueling my body. Sorry, that was a really bad answer. Struggle with fueling my body properly. During marathon training, I will randomly get low blood sugars throughout the day.
During non training times, I have no issues with it. Any advice? I would say it's sounding like probably just eating more or eating a little bit more intentional of a fueling strategy. I don't know if you are doing any specific sort of like carb loading. There's. When you think about sports nutrition and carb loading, carb loading is more of a. It's a little bit more long term than people think. If you just eat a big dose of cards right before you run, that's not going to be as beneficial as if you are really intentional.
There's a couple different strategies. There's like a five day strategy, a three day strategy, a two day strategy. You're going to want to eat something pretty carb heavy like four hours before you're about to run. And I know this gets a lot harder if you're running in the morning and then again maybe two hours before and then 30 minutes before. That is one strategy. There are, you know, I think you could try to incorporate maybe a little bit higher fat with your carbohydrates so that you aren't running through them quite as fast.
But I also know that some people struggle with something called reactive hypoglycemia, which means after you eat, your blood sugar falls. And there's not often, at least from my experience, I've, I've worked with this with people in eating disorder recovery. So it sports nutrition, it might be a little different depending on the needs of the person and the activity you're doing, but it's where your blood sugar is falling when you think it should be actually going up. It has to do with the influx of glucose into the cells out of the bloodstream.
So I would make sure that there's nothing else going on and maybe just eating more in general, making sure that you have as much glycogen stored up in your liver and your muscles as possible. Michael Phelps would do exactly what I'm saying. Carb loading during training in a swimming event. Yeah, yeah. And the reality is that everyone is genetically very different. So there's different types of muscle fibers that are going to utilize nutrients a little differently. And so that is genetic. And then also just our metabolisms are so different.
So some people run through. I think there was a. What is it called? The lumen. It was this little device that you like, breathe into to see what nutrients are burning. That's not necessary. And I don't know that's super reliable or helpful. But the idea behind that is that we utilize different nutrients just because of genetic differences. So you might be someone who utilizes carbs very, very efficiently. Yeah, I would say maybe looking at doing a more long term carb load, especially if you're Doing like a long run on the weekends, being really intentional throughout maybe three or four days leading up to that, rather than maybe just the night before or morning of depending on when you're running.
Hopefully that helps a little bit. There's also not, I will say from when I was the last time I read the research around the different strategies of carb loading, they all had a pretty similar effect. I have that when I eat certain foods, pasta and potatoes. Are you talking about like the reactive hypoglycemia? Yeah. I wonder if you're just. Your body's efficient at utilizing carbs. That's interesting. Yeah. Unfortunately, the treatment, I would say at least how I've approached it in the past with clients, is sugar drops dramatically.
Yeah. I would say looking at maybe increasing fiber and fat and protein to balance, balance those a little bit more so that it slows down the digestion and absorption of your carbohydrates. With that, I think there might be some playing around with what feels good for you because if you try to eat too much fat or fiber in combination with the carbohydrates and then go for like a 13 mile run, you might have some digestive distress. So I think playing around with what a good ratio might be for you personally.
But yeah, hopefully that gives you a little bit of a direction to go in. And if you're working with like a coach, like a run coach or some sort of like nutrition coach that is well versed in sports nutrition or dietitian, they should be able to help you formulate that so to your needs. So good question. Any other questions for me? I did have a random question this week that I think a lot of people may or may not know. I guess as I say that I have a client who's pretty anemic at the moment, iron deficient anemic.
And we were talking about strategies to improve those numbers aside from just like taking a supplement, because iron supplements are pretty notorious for causing constipation. And so we were talking about in terms of nutrition strategies, if you're someone who's iron deficient, you can obviously eat very iron rich foods. So those are going to be things like was mentioning earlier the legumes and also red meat is pretty well known high in heme iron. But you can also do things like cook with cast iron or they make a product called an iron fish that's literally just like a cast iron.
It's shaped like a fish and you put it in if you're making it could be soups or whatever, something that you can like kind of simmer the fish in it can leach iron out of your cast iron pan or your iron fish and help to increase the amount of iron that you are eating or consuming and that there is some research to support that. So if you need an iron fish, it's really a great tool. Other things that can help if you're anemic include utilizing vitamin C. It enhances iron absorption. Calcium inhibits iron absorption.
So don't I think the biggest one for people is probably like milk or yogurt when we're thinking about if you're taking supplementation in the morning, those tend to be breakfast foods. So avoiding those if you're taking a supplement. Trying to think if there's any other questions I had this week from clients that might be helpful for you guys. Like I said, I felt rather uninspired, but I didn't want to leave you all hanging today. So I figured I would show my face even if it was not as helpful as in weeks past.
But any other questions or just like anything you want to share, anything you're looking forward to about the weekend before I hop off? I also don't know how delayed the comment like this comment section is if it shows up right away. Cauliflower contain iron since it's the miracle vegetable. What do you mean by miracle vegetable? Do you mean like, we're making cauliflower into everything? Or like I'm so intrigued by that. If I were to point out like nutrients that cauliflower is pretty high in, like I wouldn't rely on cauliflower as a source of iron.
It does have calcium also. So that calcium is going to inhibit some of the iron. Oh, all of those things that you said, impressive nutritional profile, versatility and cooking, potential health benefits, particularly disease. All of those are true. The thing with so there's two types of iron, heme and non. Heme vegetables are high in non. Like between the two, they're going to be higher in non heme iron, which is less bioavailable than heme iron. It's not that it's not bioavailable, it's just less bioavailable.
And then it also contains a little bit of calcium. So you'll enter it'll interact with a little bit of that. But yes, it is very versatile. It does contain a lot of nutrients. Cauliflower is a part of the like cruciferous vegetable family and that group of veggies. So think things like kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts are high in something called sulforaphanes which in research have shown to potentially help reduce the risk of cancer. Cauliflower is also you're gonna get, depending on the color, I guess.
If you've ever had purple cauliflower, it's higher in, like, anthocyanins, which can help with heart health, lower blood pressure, things like that. Also high in fiber, which has a ton of health benefits. I've never heard it called the miracle vegetable before, though. That's really interesting. I want to look into that. But buffalo cauliflower is my favorite way to eat it. Actually, I take that back. I posted a recipe, like, probably two years ago on my Instagram and it was a harissa cauliflower with golden raisins.
10 out of 10, highly recommend. Okay, I am gonna call it today. Again, my apologies for not coming with anything specific to talk about. Sometimes it's just fun to talk to you guys. Even though I can't see your faces. It's. It's nice. So next week, I promise I will have an actual topic. One of the things I've been thinking about and I would love your feedback on is I don't know if it'll be like my whole chunk of time, but at least a piece of it. Talking about just kind of like nutrition in the news of that week because there's kind of been a lot going on in the.
In the food and nutrition world lately. I think last week I mentioned in terms of like, food recalls, things like that, and also just like, if there's any relevant information that I think you guys should know. So if that would be helpful, let me know and I'll continue. I'll start that, I guess just like, very topical with what's going on because that tends to get our attention. So I want to make sure that if there's questions or anything, I talk about that. But like I said, I'll see you back here next week with more of myself put together.
It's good to see you all. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend. If you're watching the Super Bowl. Go Birds. Go Chiefs. We'll see. I don't think the Chiefs are gonna be able to stop Saquon, but I will. I'm gonna hope. And Jalen hurts like incredible players, so if you're a Birds fan, just know I also respect that. I'll see you guys next week. Thanks for coming. Appreciate you all.
