How good nutrition can fuel your body, boost health and performance

Hello and welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Luke Corey and I’m a registered dietician and sports nutritionist. The topic for today is the power of nutrition and we’re going to look at how you can use nutrition to fuel your body, to boost your health and to power performance so if you’re tuning in and you have a question you can reach out to us on Twitter using the hashtag UCLA MD chat or you can comment on our Facebook page and we’ll be answering those questions at the end of today’s webinar all right so just a brief outline of what we’re going to discuss a day the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to take a look at nutrition and give it a new definition something that is a little more up-to-date and then we’re going to follow it up with talking about the impacts that nutrition has on your day to day performance we’re gonna look at the difference between poor nutrition and optimal nutrition and that will lead into what I call the five basics of optimal nutrition and then finally we’re gonna finish off by putting everything into practice you have a good understanding of what you need to do in order to truly maximize from this information you’re gonna receive today just a brief introduction as I mentioned I am a registered dietician and sports nutritionist I work out of the UCLA Health Sports Performance Center that’s located the UCLA UCLA health training center in El Segundo which is the home of the LA Lakers at our facility we provide performance training and fitness classes for youth high school and elite athletes as well as just recreational adults who are looking to get back into shape from my end of things I provide the nutrition support for all of those members and that comes in the form of evaluations and assessments body composition measurements and the creation of nutrition action plans that they can take and start to implement into their day-to-day routine so the first thing I want to discuss is is redefining what nutrition is so if you take a look in any dictionary a typical nutrition definition is something like this it says it’s the process of obtaining food the food necessary for health and growth which is great what they’re saying is you’re using nutrition to keep you alive and functioning I’m sure that’s what we all want but when we’re talking about optimal health and optimal nutrition I think we need to expand on this definition so this is how we define optimal nutrition we see that that it’s eating the right amount of nutrients on a proper schedule to achieve the best performance and longest possible lifetime in good health so essentially what that means is that we’re using nutrition to not only maximize health and happiness and well-being but if you’re athletic to improve your athletic performance as well and nutrition can have a profound impact not only on your daily health but if you’re again if you’re an athlete on your athletic performance as well so taking a look here just what day-to-day perspective what we can see is that good optimal nutrition habits can reduce your risk of developing diseases and disorders like cancer diabetes and heart disease it can also make it easier to lose fat mass and to gain muscle mass which is what is optimal for good health tissue quality so things like nails skin hair and teeth good nutrition supports those those particular tissues joint health is a big one especially as we get older good optimal nutrition can reduce your risk of developing arthritis and other degenerative joint disorders and lastly if you’re an adolescent and you’re in your growth period good nutrition can support that growth and development so that you can reach your full potential so the day to day impacts of optimal nutrition are are profound then from a performance standpoint so this can be athletic performance or this can just be day to day performance even work performance optimal nutrition can support cognitive function so things like focus and concentration and and quick decision making skills though it can all be improved and enhanced by good nutrition your ability to exercise so not only exercise longer and harder but to exercise at a higher intensity that’s all improved by simply incorporating good nutrition practices into your into your routine things like energy and endurance again from an athletic standpoint is very important but just the energy to get through a typical day is improved by good nutrition strength and power from a performance standpoint is improved your risk of injury decreases so if your injury prone you may want to look at the quality of your nutrition and good nutrition habits can reduce that risk of injury and also help you recover from injury if you’ve suffered one in the past and then lastly a lot of people suffer with poor sleep and a lot of times it is nutrition related so the quality of sleep can be improved by just making some modifications to your eating habits so what we want to take a look at now is looking at the difference between poor nutrition and a poor diet and what we consider kind of the optimal nutrition habits so if we look at those people who typically follow a poor diet what we see is that the consult consuming low nutrient foods so there’s really no quality to the foods that they’re consuming and then they’re also consuming those those foods and large portions we tend to see that these people have irregular eating patterns so they’re skipping meals or they’re skipping snacks or every day looks a little bit different in terms of their the schedule of their meals and snacks and then lastly what we see is that these people are typically dehydrated or the consuming unhealthy fluid sources so things like sodas and energy drinks and those sorts of things so if you’re following a diet like this typically your calorie consumption is is higher than it should be and that can lead to a lot of issues like weight gain and a lot of those disorders and diseases that we talked about in the previous slide so ideally we want people to gravitate more towards what we consider the optimal nutrition habits this is eating nutrient-rich foods so basically getting the best quality and every bite that you take consuming those foods in the appropriate portion sizes eating at regular times and we’ll get into this I’m in more detail later on and then being well hydrated and consuming healthy fluid sources so ultimately the goal today is to help whether it’s you or people you know gravitate from sort of this poor diet into something that’s a little bit more higher quality and will help you reach whatever goals that you have in mind so that leads us in to what I call the five basics of optimal nutrition see these are the five things that you can implement into your day-to-day routine that’s gonna help you reach your goal that’s gonna help improve your health and boost your performance those five things we’re gonna discuss our eating schedule the key nutrients that you want to be focusing on when you’re building your meals out the types of foods that you should be selecting in order to get those key nutrients we’re gonna look at portion sizes and then finish off with talking about how to stay well hydrated throughout your day so let’s start with eating schedule so there’s a few different routines that people typically follow as part of their their eating schedule some of those common routines include one that is considered kind of the most common which is eating every two to three hours so a typical day for somebody like this would be they have breakfast in the morning they follow that up with a snack mid-morning then they’re having lunch then they’re having another snack in the evening and maybe finishing off their day with dinner that’s a very common practice for most people and it’s a very healthy practice as well but there’s other people who might follow what we call the 3 square meals on routine where they really thrive off of just eating breakfast lunch and dinner they’re not really big snack eaters and that’s perfectly fine as well and then lastly there’s people who skip meals or they put themselves into a state of intentional fasting so what that looks like is perhaps on purpose they’re skipping breakfast every morning and then the first meal is lunch and then they’re having snack and then they’re having dinner and that’s a perfectly healthy routine as well right one thing to consider though is you do go into a fasting routine it’s not really recommended for those who are pregnant in their growth periods having impaired glucose regulation so if they have issues with diabetes or prediabetes or if they’re athletic and they want to gain muscle it’s just it’s just not a suitable eating schedule for those types of people but what the research shows is is it’s not so much the schedule that you follow it’s the consistency that you can maintain right so whether you prefer to eat you know every couple of hours or if you like three square meals or if you like to follow a fascinating protocol as long as you can stick with that day to day and that every day looks the same that’s when your body is gonna thrive so really picking that routine that you know you can follow on a day to day basis is where you’re gonna get the most benefit from and then what we want to figure out and determine are the key nutrients that we want to include within those meals so this four key nutrients that we want to ensure our part of our entire day and a part of every meal and snack the first one and probably the most important one is protein right so protein are the building blocks of our bodies they’re the building blocks of muscle bone tissues organs even our brains are all built using proteins and our bodies regenerate and replace these proteins on a daily basis so we want to make sure that our diet is rich in lean high-quality proteins in order to support these to this tissue quality while also keeping the body healthy and strong and for those who are in their growth phase making sure that they have the building blocks to grow to their full potential so every time we make a meal there always should be a source of protein with that meal whether it’s animal-based or plant-based and we’ll get into those foods in a second here but the second key nutrient that we want to include in our daily diets are carbohydrates now carbs have kind of developed a bad reputation over the last few years a lot of people are associating carbs with fat gain and unfortunately there’s not a lot of research to actually back that up so carbohydrates are a beneficial part of our diets we just want to make sure we’re consuming in the right portions which we’re going to be talking about in a few slides from now what we need to know though is that carbs are the main source of fuel for our bodies and for our brain so we want to make sure that we are including carbs as part of our as part of our meals and snacks if you’re active carbs are your main source of energy during exercise and then a lot of foods that provide carbohydrates also provide those soluble and insoluble fibers that support got health and cardiovascular health as well right so we want to make sure that we do include carbohydrates within our diets keep in mind though that the amount that we consume can be adjusted based on the goals that we have so typically what we see is for people who do you want to lose a little bit of weight you know we’ll cut back on their carb intakes but if you’re athletic and you train at a high level we want to make sure that your carb intake is sufficient enough to support all of those activities so proteins are a big part of our diet carbs are a big part of our diet we also want to make sure that we are including fat in our diet as well so again fat had that bad reputation a few years ago as well everything we ate was low-fat or no fat but what we found in the research is that we actually need fat in our diets right but we need the right types of fat the reason why is that some healthy fats support joint health right a lot of these fats have an anti-inflammatory property to them so if we’re talking about reducing our risk of our thright as’ or other chronic joint issues we want to may want to look at incorporating some more healthy fats into our diet those healthy fats also support cognitive function as well so making sure that we are keeping our brain healthy using these healthy fats and then lastly there’s a lot of essential vitamins that can only be absorbed by incorporating some of these fats in our diets so things like vitamin A D and K which are all vital to just the daily functioning of our bodies we want to make sure that our body is able to absorb these and the only way to do that is to ensure that we have enough for those healthy fats in our diets and then lastly we want to make sure that we are getting enough vitamins and minerals and we’re we’re consuming the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals with the foods that we eat vitamins minerals are like the you know the key and the ignition of our car what keeps our bought it’s what keeps our body functioning day to day right it essentially keeps you alive all right vitamins and mirrors also keep your immune system strong and healthy and protect your body from disease so overall when we’re building out our meals we want to make sure that we include all four of those key nutrients throughout our meals throughout our snack so by the end of the day our body gets everything it needs to support health performance and just day-to-day functioning so we’ve established our eating schedule that’s the first thing we talked about we have identified those key nutrients that we want to include in our meals and snacks now it’s time to focus on those foods that are going to provide us with those key nutrients so this is just a quick snapshot the thousands of different types of foods that can provide those key nutrients that we’re looking for so for example we talked about protein being a vital nutrient in terms of maintaining good lean tissue and and strong bones and so on well we can get protein from a number of sources not only lean meats things like fish and seafood and chicken and beef no sorts of things we can also get it from different dairy products as well right milk cheese Greek yogurt those all are very good sources of protein we have to keep in mind though that we also want to get some of those plant-based proteins in our diet as well so things like beans and lentils tofu tempeh and different nuts and seeds provide us with those essential proteins that our body requires right so making sure that we get a variety of those foods as part of our daily diet to make sure that our body gets all the different proteins that it requires what – carbohydrates there’s really two categories the first one are grain products so these are kind of the more nutrient-dense carb sources things like oats wheat bread wheat pasta brown rice quinoa barley couscous those sorts of foods provide us with a lot of those complex carbohydrates that give us the fuel source to keep our bodies functioning throughout the day but then we also want to make sure that we’re getting fruits and vegetables in our diet they provide carbohydrates as well things like apples and different types of berries and bananas and then vegetables like sweet potatoes squash carrots those sorts of things those are all carb rich nutrient-dense options that we want to include in our diets as well and then lastly those healthy fats that we talked about those come from things like nuts and seeds and different oils things like almonds and flax seed and chia seeds olive oil is a great safe source of those healthy fats even some foods like salmon which is also a protein source provides those healthy fats as well so getting those foods as part of our diet is essential to making sure that we get those healthy fats our body requires so we’re getting a variety of protein we’re getting a variety of carbohydrates whether it’s through grains or fruits and vegetables and if we get a variety of those fat sources that’s going to provide us with all of those vitamins and minerals that we talked about is that fourth key nutrient so the key here is making sure we get variety throughout our diets people people typically tend to eat a lot of the same things every day so we wanted to expand that palatal load there we want to start to really explore some of these different foods that we might not consume on a daily basis and ultimately when you’re building out a meal getting something from each one of these categories ensures that by the end of the day you’re hitting all your key nutrient targets so visually what that looks like is something like this what we see here is we see a lot of color a lot of variety just different foods that we can be including in our diet on daily basis so our lean proteins some of our whole grains fruits and vegetables even dairy products are healthy options as well so ultimately what you need to start thinking about is ways that you can upgrade your current meals to something that’s a little bit more balanced and something that includes all four of those key nutrients that we talked about so here’s an example here right a lot of people for dinner or for lunch have something like this maybe it’s some chicken strips with some french fries right yes this meal here provides protein and carbohydrates but unfortunately because it’s typically deep-fried you’re gonna get unhealthy fats as part of that meal right and then you’re missing out a lot of key vitamins and minerals that your body requires right instead what we want to try to do we want to try to upgrade from that meal and get something that includes all four of those key nutrients that we talked about so something like this we’ve got chicken we’ve got rice we’ve got vegetables fruit even a couple pieces of cheese what that’s gonna do is that’s gonna give us those lean proteins that our body requires good sources of carbohydrate in the rice and the fruits the vegetables healthy fat which could be a dressing on the vegetables and the the key vitamins and minerals from just that variety of food that again supports day to day functioning so if you’re kind of following along what we’ve done so far again is develop that eating schedule we have identified the key nutrients that we want to include proteins carbs healthy fats vitamins and minerals we’ve we’ve identified the foods that provide those nutrients now what we want to do is we want to focus on consuming those foods and the right portions so portion sizes have increased over the last few decades and I think we see a correlation with the increase in you know rates of obesity and being overweight and a lot of that is is attributed to two portion sizes kind of going out of control a little bit so we want to do is we want to use some perspective on the the sizes of the portions of food that you’re consuming on a daily basis and I’ll also give you some perspective on you know how many portions you should be consuming over the course of a day so the easiest way to understand portion size is to use your hand so for example if you have a protein source one serving fits in the palm of your hand so it’s about 3 ounces of something like chicken or fish or even like beans or lentils it’s whatever can fit in the palm of your hand that’s one serving for carbohydrates it’s one copped hand so it’s about a half a cup overall so that would be grains you know things like oats or cereal something like that rice it’s whatever you can fit in a cupped hand that’s one serving those healthy fats that we talked about it’s about a thumb size so about one ounce or a tablespoon right so if it’s oil if it’s not it’s about the size of one thumb and then fruits and vegetables a fistful would be considered one serving so that’s about one cup as well right so again if you’re preparing your meal take a look at the portion sizes you’re consuming and just make sure they fit with the recommendations here so to put this in perspective let’s get an understanding of what a typical day looks like for your average person so the average male consumes around 2,000 calories everyday if we were to break that down into portions and this is kind of the ideal breakdown we’re talking about eight servings of protein so there’d be about eight of those palm falls throughout the day of protein we’re looking at 13 servings of carbohydrates so that’s a combination of those grains and fruits and vegetables typically we try to do half or more of those servings as fruits or vegetables and then lastly we’re talking about nine servings or nine thumb sizes of fat as well for that typical male 2000 calorie diet females typically it’s about 1600 calories a day so you’re looking at about six servings or six palm fulls of protein ten servings of carbohydrates with at least half of those being fruits and vegetables and then seven servings of fat or seven unfolds so if you’re looking for a breakdown of how that’s distributed throughout the day if we take a look at that male 2000 calories again eight servings of protein 13 servings of carbs nine servings of fat if we were to break that down with this eating schedule here it looks something like this two of those palm folds so two of those servings of protein will come at breakfast maybe you add one serving of grain two servings of fruits and vegetables and maybe two servings of fat what that could look like in real life would be something like a cup of Greek yogurt a little sprinkle of granola maybe throw on some blueberries some strawberries and add some chopped almonds right that would hit that full nutrient profile in the right portions and then you just continue to spread out those servings throughout the day until you get kind of an even distribution between your meals and snacks and you reach your daily totals all right so the key theme here is is know your numbers and try to reach those numbers on a consistent basis day in and day out same thing with our females again some fewer portions overall but but still distributed throughout the day similar to on the male example there so lastly what we’re going to talk about is hydration and how you ensure that you are well hydrated throughout your day so the human body is approximately 75% water so small changes in hydration can really impact the body and you may have suffered from some of these symptoms of dehydration things like headaches constipation fatigue joint and muscle pain reduced athletic performance impaired cognitive function if you’ve ever had any of these symptoms you may want to take a closer look at your hydration you might be in a dehydrated state so in order to avoid dehydration to stay well hydrated it’s good to know how much water we actually need to drink every single day and an easy way to figure that out is to take your weight in pounds and divide it by two that’s the number of ounces of calorie-free fluid that you should be consuming every single day so for example if you weigh a hundred and fifty pounds you need to drink about 75 ounces or about two and a half liters of water every single day all right and I keep mentioning water because that’s your best fluid source but you can get that hydration from things like coffee and tea trying to avoid putting too much sugar or cream into those into those drinks unsweetened iced tea so low sugar calorie free lemon water so basically water with a slice of lemon in it just to give us some flavoring or again if you don’t like the flavor just plain water using a flavoring agent can help boost your hydration so trying to hit that number on a daily basis will ensure that your body is getting all the hydration it needs to function as and it’s best one way to track hydration is to look at urine color so we want something typically in this yellow to pale yellow that is that ensures that you’re in a hydrated state the darker your urine gets the more dehydrated you are the more you’re going to need to focus on your hydration intake in the future so again up to this point and in terms of our five basics we’ve talked about establishing that eating schedule identifying those key nutrients that you want to include throughout your day choosing the right foods that are going to provide you with those key nutrients even those foods and the right portions and then making sure you’re well hydrated alright to complement everything you’ve been doing up to that point so now it comes to putting this all into practice and there’s some simple things you can do in order to achieve that what I encourage people to do is to sit down and make a plan right just write things out you can start by writing out just your fuelling schedule so take a look you know your typical day look at your work schedule look at your exercise schedule your social activities and fit your nutrition into that plan and make sure you’re able to repeat that on a day to day basis – to maintain that consistency right so establish that eating schedule so write that down then you want to write out just how you want your meals to be built all right always making sure that some protein is part of those meals and snacks making sure you’ve got some good carb sources whether it’s grains fruits vegetables those sort of things and then including those healthy fats as well once you have that template in place it becomes easy to start to fill out the foods that you want to consume right so what you can do is you have your template and then you can build out you know Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and so on right just using that template there so what that looks like is now you start to pick the foods that you want to consume so if you go back to your your template you’re gonna have breakfast first thing in the morning you know you want to include a protein source maybe that protein source is Greek yogurt you want to pair that with some carbs a little bit of granola some blueberries and then as I mentioned earlier add that healthy fat in the form of chopped almonds or something like that and you repeat that throughout the day so that you’re hitting on all those key nutrients as you build out your meal plan from there you can even take it one step further and establish your portion sizes right so your Greek yogurt one one palm full or three-quarters of a cup your granola is one cup handful or about a quarter cup or half a cup and so on and continue to do that throughout your day because then from there what all you need to do is build your grocery list all right so now you have all the foods that you need you know the amounts that you need you just create your grocery lists from there go to the store do your shopping come home and if you have time start to prepare those meals so maybe you’re preparing you know bulk meals for the whole week or if you’re just preparing for the for the next day all right that’s going to help ensure that you’re getting all the proper nutrition you’re getting that optimal nutrition that we’re talking about every single day of the week essentially the more you do that the more it becomes a habit right so again kind of following this routine here you know establishing that evening eating schedule being consistent day in and day out hitting those key nutrients throughout your day choosing the best quality foods choosing those foods and consuming those foods and the right portions for you making sure you’re well hydrated throughout the day and then just repeating that day in and day out and again you can accomplish that with a little bit of meal planning grocery shopping and meal preparation so in summary I’ve given you some some pretty basic information but free for you to truly be able to implement it and to benefit from it the best thing to do is to set a goal for a lot of people they want to lose weight and those basics that I just talked about there that can help you do that right so set a goal whether it’s weight loss maybe it’s improving athletic performance maybe it’s just improving markers of Health have that goal in mind and then create your plan so take this information that we talked about it you may need to modify a few things but overall those are the typical recommendations that you want to follow that’s gonna be the plan that’s going to be the the roadmap for you to reach that goal something that can be really beneficial for a lot of people is to recruit people who are supportive so maybe it’s family members or friends people have similar goals who you can follow and take this journey along with it just makes it easier for you to reach your goal it provides you with that accountability that you’re looking for so recruit a team track your progress whether that’s just checking in with yourself every single day if you’ve set say you know a hydration goal at the end of the day check off whether you accomplished that or not the other way to track your progress is to meet with somebody like myself a dietitian who can track that progress along with you and then lastly a lot of this can be challenging making changes to your routine especially if it’s a routine default for such a long time can be difficult so celebrate those victories if your hydration is drastically improved right you know celebrate that posted on social media you know go out for dinner with your family your friends and just celebrate that accomplishment overall if you can implement that routine that we just talked about if you can track your progress celebrate your victories this is just gonna go a long way towards moving you down a more ideal and healthier path towards that optimal health and optimal nutrition so if you’re looking for more information you can reach us through our website UCLA health org slash sports performance if you’re looking for a one-on-one consultation you can reach out to us there as well but overall I just want to say thank you guys for tuning in and we’re happy to answer some questions so again if you have a question you can reach out to us on twitter using hashtag UCLA md chat so I think we’ve got some questions now all right okay so first question is what do you think about diet trends like keto diets and intermittent fasting so these are two of the more popular nutrition trends that we’re seeing these days both of yous typically in a weight loss you know capacity so people using keto diet or interim fascinating as a way to lose weight and there’s actually a lot of research to back that up the thing about keto diet intermittent fasting is that there they can be challenging diets to maintain and you really have to you know follow it as specified right so you can’t just do like a half a keto diet some days and then other day is just a regular diet it’s one of those things you really got to follow and stick to on a day to day basis I also recommend if people are looking to do something like keto diet or intermittent fasting to reach out to somebody like myself who has lot of experience and knowledge in those areas and can help just help you establish the proper guidelines that you need to follow in order to really maximize you know these these diet protocols all right any recommendation for eating during sports a volleyball tournament I have one to two hour breaks what are items that are promoted to be good but really or not so things like sports tournaments can be challenging because you’re on the road there’s not usually a lot of good healthy options in the area so what I typically recommend people do is one take a look at the schedule ahead of time understand where your breaks are and how long those breaks are and then plan accordingly I really encourage people to pack their own snacks and meals get yourself a little cooler that you can take with you to the tournament that’s got healthy options so you don’t have to rely on you know buying something from the from the cafeteria from the canteen or from you know a local fast food place and something that’s typically promote promoted as as being good but really isn’t especially for youth sports it’s gonna be things like sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade those are really useful for people who train or perform in a really high level but for your day to day youth athletes those are just really high sugar high calorie foods you probably don’t need at that point you’re better off suited with something like fruits and vegetables just plain water packing snacks like trail mix or protein bars you know even like a peanut butter and jam sandwich is just gonna be a better option for you at a tournaments and different sporting events let’s see here if my goal is to lose weight how do I modify these recommendations you provided so as I mentioned the those recommendations are pretty universal to most people no matter you know what your goal is whether you’re trying to lose weight or perform at your best in your sport establishing an eating schedule that’s consistent will help with that the only place you want to modify is probably with your your portion sizes alright so in the end if your goal is to lose weight you just need to be consuming fewer calories typically the easiest place to reduce from is gonna be your your carbohydrate intake so if you remember for the mail and a 2,000 calorie diet it was about 13 servings for a female it was about 10 so even just cutting back in those areas maybe dropping from 13 to 210 or 9 for the male and from 10 to 6 or 7 for the female that’s going to reduce that overall calorie intake and that’s what’s gonna help lose that weight the other part of the equation is just exercising more right so we want to be able to burn more calories than we take in and that comes in the form of exercise all right last one here so is plant-based diet the best solution for health and fitness I’ve seen many documentaries on Netflix supporting that I’ll just say that Netflix is in the business of making money so a lot of those documentaries that you see on there they can be very deceiving and they can really skew a lot of what the research actually says so plant-based eating is not necessarily healthier than just a regular diet that includes animal-based proteins what it comes down to like I mentioned is are you getting all those key nutrients that we talked about really when it comes down to health it’s making sure that we’re not at risk of a nutrient deficiency that our body is getting everything it needs in terms of carbs proteins healthy fats and all the vitamins and minerals that’s gonna be a better solution for good health than just going and starting a plant-based diet there’s nothing wrong with the plant days based diet you can certainly be just as healthy that way but it’s not you know the best diet out there all right so so thank you for your questions and I appreciate you guys 2 minute tuning in and I hope you have a great rest of your day thank you very much you