Mikki (00:00)
there are coaches out there who literally are like, you've burned 1200 calories in this three hour bike, this is what you need to replace. And then I have these athletes come to me and they're like, I am gaining weight.
Paul Warloski (00:36)
Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Today we're welcoming back Dr. Mikki Williden to discuss a controversial theory turning the fitness world upside down. It suggests that no matter how much you exercise, whether you're a couch potato or an elite marathoner, your body burns roughly the same number of calories each day. Dr. Herman Pontzer's research in his book,
burn is sparking this heated debate about everything we thought we knew about metabolism. We're not sure. Today we're diving deep into this constrained energy model and what it is and why it matters for everyday endurance athletes. So Mikki for listeners who haven't heard of this, can you just describe the constrained energy model and why it's causing such controversy in the fitness world?
Mikki (01:29)
Yeah. Hey everyone. Hey, Paul, Paul and Marjaana Great to be back. And I will just Clarify I'm a nutritionist. I'm not a physiologist. So I'm looking forward to this conversation as much as you guys are as in the trenches working with people and just my understanding of it. So I guess the constrained energy model suggests that that total daily energy expenditure, it sort of sits within a band.
Paul Warloski (01:35)
It's good to see you.
Mikki (01:58)
Right? So it does rise with activity, initially particularly, but it can and does appear to plateau out amongst various populations of which of course we can sort of chat about. So the body compensates for the high activity that it undergoes by reducing energy spent elsewhere on what I guess we could determine sort of non-essential processes like immune activity, reproductive hormones, stress responses.
non-exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT. I guess this, and of course this would contradict that long held assumption that the more activity you do, the more energy you expend. And I guess in some ways, if we're thinking about weight loss, which isn't necessarily the focus, but it's something that as athletes we are interested in from a body composition performance perspective, it might challenge that idea that more exercise you do, the more calories you
burn and therefore the more fat you lose. and with regards to, guess, where that plateau sits, looking at the likes of Pontzer's research on Howard's research that came out earlier this year, think Bass and colleagues literally just released a paper last week looking at this, sort of the upper average bound was about two and a half times basal metabolic rate.
doesn't mean that you won't and can't burn calories over and above this. You're in more sort of isolated activities. Let's say for example, Paul, you go out and run like four hours and usually you just run, you two hours. Like of course you're going to get an uptick in calories burned if that's the case. But as I understand it, on balance, there is that upper limit of two and a half times BMR. I will add one thing, however.
I did see an X exchange that included Killian Jornet and his Western States effort and I think he burned something like 16,000 calories during that. So, I mean, obviously there are exceptions, but that's my understanding. What do you guys think?
Paul Warloski (03:52)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (04:04)
I had a question during, so maybe just a clarification for listeners. What is, if you're saying 2.5 times BMR, what is BMR for us listening first and foremost? What are we talking about in terms of numbers?
Mikki (04:17)
Yeah,
yeah, nice one. it's the, it's essentially it's the amount of energy required for your body literally just to exist, to blink, to breathe for that physiological process for everything that's sort of occurring in the body. That's your basal metabolic rate. And that makes up on, on the average person, maybe about 70 % of overall energy expended in a day.
Although I do not think that that's the actual number for endurance based athletes. That would be probably like a smaller portion of overall energy expended because we spend a lot of time training, right? But basal metabolic rate is the, the, much the bulk of energy expenditure for most people.
Paul Laursen (05:03)
I'm sitting on the couch all day, what's a general number with a standard deviation kind of number? Like what are we talking, like 1,000 to 1,500 Kcals? So like what are we talking? Around that?
Mikki (05:09)
you
It's really dependent.
Yeah, dependent pull on age and sex and body weight and muscle mass, you know, all of those things. So it's really, I can't give a definitive number as a blanket, to be honest. Like you see numbers sort of, you see numbers bandied about like for a male, it'll be 2,500, for a female, it'll be, you 1,500 to 2,000, but you need to sort of, to, to,
Paul Laursen (05:41)
Hmm.
Mikki (05:44)
accurately sort of assess that you'd need to go into a laboratory and sort of spend time maybe in a metabolic ward or with a metabolic carton or you know there are varying ways of measuring that sort of with varying degrees of accuracy. Of course you can go online and do a calculation but yeah.
Paul Laursen (05:57)
Yeah, but that's great.
Yeah,
but you've given us a starting point, right? Okay, so it's gonna matter to like the size of the individual and the amount of muscle and fat that they have on them. All that requires energy and all of the inner workings of the body, we gotta just actually live first and foremost. And then it's everything else above and beyond that. And of course, the old model that you kind of just mentioned is the calories in versus calories out kind of.
Mikki (06:13)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (06:28)
kind of model, right? Is like that's sort of what we're talking about here. is that true? Is that the best way that we should be thinking about this? And isn't that a little bit about how this constrained energy model is talking about? What's the big issue with the constrained energy model first and foremost?
Mikki (06:28)
Yeah.
with the big issue with the constrained energy model.
Paul Laursen (06:49)
Well, or any of the ⁓ energy in versus energy out model and how does the constrained energy model kind of come into that? Like what is it challenging ultimately?
Mikki (07:00)
I think it's, isn't it challenging that like the limits of how much energy we can expend? Like literally, like the idea that there's this, know, the just the longer we go, the more we do, the more calories we'll expend and that it's this fixed linear sort of equation that we can predict. And I do think about this sort of outside of that model as well. And I think about just as athletes, know, like, so for example, you'll be on your, like your wind trainer, you'll have your power output.
your Garmin will be telling you that you're burning X number of calories for this particular session. I often sort of think, mean, how, the experience of the athlete, how efficient you are. I think all of this plays into how much energy can, like how well does this do at actually predicting energy output, you know?
Paul Warloski (07:33)
Mm-hmm.
Mikki (07:55)
Like we've all here, like sitting in this little room, like we're all midlife. know, we've been, what we've been doing, we've been doing literally for decades, and to compare the amount of energy we might put out, like there are two sort of ways of thinking about it. And this might be a slight tangent, but you know, a novice coming in and doing the same session as us, they may well expend way more energy because they're just not as efficient. Their body just is not adapted to that type of out.
put their mechanics aren't as used to it. So they'll likely put out a lot more energy as I understand it. So I think the calculations associated with those energy expenditure models can be problematic.
Paul Laursen (08:41)
Yeah, to say the least,
Paul Warloski (08:43)
Hehehe.
Paul Laursen (08:45)
like, we're talking, like, how do you really know any of these sorts of things? We're talking like, we're talking like, let's talk internal versus external load, first and foremost, right? We're talking like an external load marker and eat like the best one that we would potentially have might be the cycling power meter, right?
Mikki (08:54)
Hmm.
Thank
safety cover.
Paul Laursen (09:03)
⁓ That's the best sort of closed system one where we can actually, we can get pretty solid markers of power output. And then from that, can get ⁓ kilocalories of energy that are actually being produced around that. But again, we still don't know internally if that's correct or not, because we're not all walking around in bomb calorimeters. And it relates to efficiency. When we're talking calories, you're actually talking about like
Mikki (09:06)
system.
Yeah.
So it's like any context to
Paul Laursen (09:32)
the burning of fuel, the chemical energy, right? The chemical energy burning, like its conversion of chemical energy to mechanical energy. And that we know that's an inefficient process that, maybe 80 % of that energy is going to heat, 20 % of that energy maybe is going to the actual mechanical energy output. So there's, and there's a whole lot of assumptions that are coming in all along here. So...
Mikki (09:35)
Yes.
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (09:58)
We're having these Twitter wars that you kind of mentioned, but it's like you're really arguing over a lot of noise around there, and I'm not sure how much signal is actually kind of coming through, so I'll just mention that.
Mikki (10:12)
I totally agree Paul and it's interesting if I think about what this means for the athlete. And I've sent you emails before, I'm sure, hey Paul, do you ever look at the calories burned in your athletes and then get them to sort of replace those calories? Because there are coaches out there who literally are like, you've burned 1200 calories in this three hour bike, this is what you need to replace. And then I have these athletes come to me and they're like, I am gaining weight. I am, this is not only is my gut.
I'm really having issues with my digestion because I cannot tolerate this high number of calories my coach is telling me to have. But I'm literally gaining body fat. It blows my mind that any coach would actually look at these numbers and calculate, okay, this is what you need to be doing. If you're not doing it, then you're not doing it right.
Paul Laursen (11:03)
Yeah, totally. we follow similar people. You follow Ben Bickman and he's great at myth busting some of this sort of stuff. He's not really even in the sport world too much, but he's in the overall caloric world. But he's he's debunked much of this and just he's great at reminding us of all of these nuances that are kind of coming through here and that the energy in versus energy out model for calories is like...
Marjaana (11:04)
Yeah,
Paul Laursen (11:30)
It's pretty delicate ready to fall. But that doesn't mean that there's not some practical measures that kind of come back. like on the other end of this too, right? We know like is the, we talked last time on reds, right? So this is restricted energy ⁓ but it's like,
Mikki (11:54)
Yeah, relative
energy deficiency in sport, yeah.
Paul Laursen (11:57)
Relative
energy deficiency, right? And like, that's not a good thing too, right? Like if you're always deprived of energy and you feel that, well that is going to have kind of issues around driving some of these other really important physiological processes going on in the body. Reproductive hormones is just one of them. Again, going back to the red S, we're talking about the, you know, the tell ultimately.
in terms of the health of the body for females, of course, the appearance of a regular menstrual cycle. In males, it might be the appearance of an erection in the morning for testosterone because this is the HPA axis signaling to the HPA gonadal axis that there's an issue in the body and you are low in energy kind of thing. yeah, there's...
Mikki (12:47)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (12:49)
There's, I'm flipping all over the place there, Mikki, but you gave me permission. said it's a discussion and I should probably also let MJ chime in here too. I'm sure she's got some things to say and Paul.
Mikki (12:56)
Yeah. Yeah.
Marjaana (13:01)
I'm gonna reel it back. the constraint energy model, the way I understand it is that Dr. Pontzer research with the group of hunter-gatherers showed that their energy expenditure is similar to Westerners and that there's a cap of what we can burn.
Mikki (13:20)
Yeah.
Marjaana (13:24)
Well, clearly we have elite athletes throughout the years that have reported insane amounts of energy intake. Like Michael Phelps or Christian Plummenfeld. And we have these outlier super humans that can just intake and burn out like crazy amounts of energy. But.
Mikki (13:24)
Mm.
Michael Phelps.
Marjaana (13:50)
I guess the key pillars are that exercise calories don't simply stack up ⁓ on top of what like a basal metabolic rate or whatnot. And then where this becomes problematic is the red S like what Prof just said.
Mikki (13:56)
Mm.
yeah, that's totally as I understand it as well, MJ. it's, you know, and, and Pontzer describes it as that the difference and all the reason why they're so similar is because of that reduction in that immune response, in the reduction of the reproductive hormones and other physiology, a reduction in inflammation, like all of these processes, which are sort of non essential.
for that sort of immediate survival. but to your point, like I do think, and I was reading somewhere else that, know, Pontzer also says, you know, potentially limit of that sort of calorie burn or endurance really comes down to the ability to actually absorb and digest nutrients, which I'm sure we all know, like to your point about Michael Phelps and Christian Blumenthal,
Paul Warloski (14:45)
you
Marjaana (14:50)
Mm-hmm.
Mikki (14:54)
They are outliers, right? Like they've just got this ability to consume like vast quantities of calories and that's almost like last man standing who can actually consume enough to really sort of push the boundaries. I wonder about that too, albeit then the likes of Killian who actually for the amount of potential output that he puts out, he's not actually.
eating a lot of calories. It's not like he's consuming 16,000 calories during his event. You know, he's getting away with far less. So, you know, it's super interesting.
Marjaana (15:27)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (15:30)
It is super interesting, super individual, think, as well. I was on a call with one of those individuals that you mentioned, he ate the whole time. was on the call for at least an hour, and he ate the whole time. It was just like, yeah, finish what's in your mouth.
Marjaana (15:40)
I
Mikki (15:44)
Wow.
Marjaana (15:45)
as much.
Mikki (15:49)
⁓ dear.
Yeah.
⁓
Paul Laursen (15:55)
He was definitely
maximizing his GI system. That's amazing. So yeah, it's great. I would never even believe that was kind of the case unless I actually saw it myself. And I saw it.
Paul Warloski (16:11)
Yeah.
Mikki (16:12)
Yeah, yeah. And isn't
that just what sets those guys apart from the rest of us middle-aged age groupers? And I will say, my gosh, this is a tangent, but I'll say anyway, I struggle with the terms amateur versus professional because when you've been in a sport for 30 plus years, like that's not amateur, is it? Like we're not amateur athletes.
similar with recreational versus professional. Like we're not recreational either. That's why I like the term age grouper. Anyway, just a thought. But yeah. Yeah, thanks.
Marjaana (16:46)
That's a really good point. ⁓
Paul Warloski (16:44)
Yeah.
Marjaana (16:48)
But if can we explain like the non-essential thing, like one thing that popped into my head as a mom was that when you're pregnant or breastfeeding, the priority goes always like energy goes to the baby or the fetus, right? So if you're not
Mikki (17:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Marjaana (17:11)
getting enough energy as a mom, baby might be fine when you're pregnant, but you might struggle with health issues. Or when you're breastfeeding, the gets lower if you're not getting enough energy, right? So some of these examples that came to my head.
Mikki (17:15)
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Laursen (17:29)
Thank
Mikki (17:29)
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's it is it really is that what's required for survival, isn't it? Like, and it does make sense from a survival of the species, like if we always had to have sufficient calories to support activity across the the human history, well, we probably wouldn't be here because they've been, you know, like, from an evolutionary perspective, there've been times of famine times of feasts like
Marjaana (17:39)
Mm-hmm.
Mikki (18:02)
So the body has these sort of inbuilt mechanisms to be able to survive, periods of time where energy output was higher by reducing down these physiological processes. It just sort of makes sense, I think. And to your point, Marjaana like during pregnancy, like a lot of the mother's stores are absolutely shifted towards growing a baby human. And then this is why
Marjaana (18:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mikki (18:30)
post-pregnancy a lot of women can struggle because what we think of as sort postnatal depression might in fact be postnatal depletion of all of those micronutrients in addition to other stores, which of course is a complete, again, conversation, but it's to your point a really good example of that.
Paul Warloski (18:41)
Mmm.
So the energy availability seems to be kind of that a key concept in this whole discussion. How would you explain that to an athlete and why is it more important than just counting calories?
Mikki (18:57)
Yeah.
⁓ great stuff, Paul. basically, energy availability, measures the energy left for physiological function once sort of expenditure or training cost is sort of deducted, right? And if you look at the literature, there are values associated with sort of thresholds for where energy availability over a long sort of, you know, I'm thinking sort of chronic energy availability, like
what these thresholds are before we start dipping into issues with ⁓ energy deficiency or REDES as we were chatting about before. Those thresholds are set at around, I think it's less than 30 kcal per kilogram of fat-free mass for females and down at 20 kcal per kg of fat-free mass for males. And this is just based on data that has been collected
based on the intakes of the athletes who have been sort of researched, like what are they actually eating and subsequent outcomes associated with that athletic population. But there's also been pushback on energy availability as well, right? And I'm not sure if you're familiar, like is it Aretha, is it Jose Aretha might be one of the sort of key authors? And I wanna say it's Trent Stellingworth, but it might not be. So I apologize if that's incorrect.
Paul Warloski (20:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mikki (20:28)
it properly is. But essentially, how do we know what athletes are reading? Like, who accurately self-reports their intake? Anyone that works with any sort of human knows how just so inaccurate that process is. So it's not that energy availability as a concept isn't a real concept, but it's just, you know, once we start attaching numbers to it, that's when
I think that's when it can sort of become problematic. But the concept itself is true. Like the fact that at some point, you know, the cost of training in addition to, just living is more than the energy that is required. And so that will, at that point, it will reduce hormone production, it will impair recovery and adaptation from training.
you'll have negative implications for our immune resilience. It'll down-regulate thyroid and metabolic rate. this is, in that process itself, whenever you go into eating less calories maybe, like then into this sort low energy availability state, that's just a natural sort of metabolic adaptation anyway. And...
But if we think about energy availability from an athlete, what's less important, I think, than the numbers is, you what is the cost to training? What is the cost of performance? What is the cost to recovery? Like these are the metrics that we should be much more worried about than trying to necessarily attach numbers to it and sort of looking at biofeedback markers.
Paul Laursen (22:08)
Yeah, I love that, and especially the limitation part that you described. And it kind of goes back to when I was talking about the external load marker, where we're looking at some of our wearable devices and we're trying to capture an energy output amount from all of these, whether it's a whoop, an aura ring, a Garmin device, an Apple Watch, whatever, right? Again, this is an external load marker and you're...
Mikki (22:17)
yeah.
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (22:34)
mostly, I would imagine, and you're trying to kind of attach something to that pretty difficult lots of errors. And now you're trying to do this also for the energy intake using your favorite app. ⁓ I mean, what are you, this is kind of, again, this is, think, coming back to Benjamin Bickman's argument on what do we, how accurate are you really sort of being here?
Mikki (22:40)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (22:57)
But the other thing I wanted to mention is why I do actually like the word energy availability and my bias that I probably share a little bit with you, Mikki, is kind of around some of the philosophies around the LCHF kind of framework. like, we can keep, let's keep in mind the key regulatory hormone that we haven't mentioned yet here on the podcast, but insulin, it's just so important. And it's sort of a...
Paul Warloski (23:10)
you
Mikki (23:11)
you
Hmm.
Paul Laursen (23:23)
If we have insulin being high, and of course, don't forget insulin is mostly triggered by glucose availability or glucose amount that's kind of passing by the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas and it raises that insulin level. And then if that insulin level is always high, well, you're really clamping, you're putting yourself in this storage anabolic phase and you're not really allowing for any...
Mikki (23:33)
Mm.
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (23:49)
metabolites to be released, especially triglycerides from your stored adipocytes. So that in itself is almost dampening potentially your energy availability. Now in the converse, where you all of a sudden get that insulin level relatively balanced and even a little bit lower, then all of a sudden it triggers that cascade to allow you to be
Mikki (23:56)
Yes.
Paul Laursen (24:14)
free and open to leveraging some of the stored adipocytes and energy all of a sudden kind of comes out. And in my experience, a lot of we've had Phil Maftone on the podcast as well. And, you know, a lot of that kind of comes down to that healthy, unhealthy athlete kind of philosophy. And a lot of things are kickstarted. All the things that Mikki sort of mentioned, all the various different hormones.
Mikki (24:21)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (24:39)
and the immune's markers that all kind of comes back in place. And also the, in the female situation, you know, a show of a regular menstrual cycle. MJ knows what I'm talking about. So yeah, I'm just kind of spit balling around ⁓ what you sort of let off with there, Mikki.
Mikki (24:41)
with the perspective of life.
Yeah,
if I am allowed to use a personal anecdote then you know this year I did two multi-day run races so one the Southern Lakes Ultra it was 270 kilometers over
seven days and then we went to it was amazing and then we went and did the Grand to Grand which is the Grand Canyon to the Bryce Canyon in September and it was it was phenomenal and I really like just from I get goosebumps thinking about the experience because I wasn't sure that I'd be able to do it and part of it and it was never actually related to the fueling but I am mentioning it for the fueling aspect of it.
Paul Laursen (25:10)
Wow.
Wow.
Mikki (25:36)
⁓ But just the mental ability to get up and run and I'd never run longer than 80 kilometers and in both events I had to run 83 and 87 in a day, know, all of this. But then from a fueling perspective, like there were a significant portion of people who were really chugging down quite a lot of fuel and having significant gut issues because of the heat, because of the altitude and really struggling in that respect.
because of the years that I've spent training in a lower carb state, we went out there, because I did it with my hubster, we ran it together. And our carb intake was probably, was about, I'd say 20 grams an hour, actually, for the Southern Lakes Ultra, 20 to 25. And then in the Grand to Grand, we just lifted it slightly to 35, I think.
an hour, like if I had to do an average, totally fine. Energy was not an issue at all. And I do think it comes down a lot to what you were talking about, Paul, was just that ability to be able to tap into our adipocytes and release triglycerides. And it wasn't that, and even though we were expending huge amounts of energy, like we didn't drop weight really, like, and I didn't lose muscle and there wasn't any of that telltale sign really of sort of
Marjaana (26:35)
Mm-hmm.
Mikki (26:59)
overdoing it. I think so that's just in agreement with what you're saying, Paul, like there's real value in being able to teach the body to burn energy. And it's not about fat loss, actually, it's about, you know, utilizing your metabolic machinery.
Marjaana (27:13)
I think that there, what you're saying, Miki said that and Paul, there is, you always have to look at the history of the athlete, what are they used to feed themselves with. ⁓ But you said earlier, you said energy to perform.
Mikki (27:24)
now.
Marjaana (27:33)
versus energy to train. And then we're also talking about red S, which relates to the health, right? So if we're thinking about the constrained energy model and like assume that there's a cap of what we can burn, it doesn't make lot of sense to rely on their inaccurate measures of energy output or energy intake, and then try to hit like a daily
Mikki (27:41)
Mm-hmm.
Marjaana (28:02)
energy intake based on what we're doing, but maybe shooting an estimate of overall energy over a longer period of time, right?
Mikki (28:14)
Mm.
Paul Warloski (28:17)
Yeah, that's my question too. I mean, how do we individualize this? If we're not, you know, if Paul's saying that the calories in calories out model is not necessarily the right model, if that's what I'm hearing correctly, and we have the constrained energy model, how do we square that circle? How do we know how much to eat?
Mikki (28:36)
⁓
Marjaana (28:36)
I mean, take
Paul Laursen (28:36)
I
Marjaana (28:37)
an Ironman day.
You're hungry for days after because you can't stuff so much food. You can't replace all your multi-day races. You cannot stuff yourself so much. Maybe somebody who is working on doing this every single day because they are pro athletes, they can eat for an hour. But I cannot.
Mikki (28:44)
Yeah.
Marjaana (29:04)
feed myself enough after an Iron Man, you're not hungry and then just like, just don't feel like eating. So you keep eating for several days. You just like add a little bit more over several days to replace what you spent on a one big day, right?
Paul Laursen (29:21)
Yeah.
Mikki (29:21)
Yeah,
and I think, think, Paul W, your question is, I think there is a way to think about sort of what you eat in light of training. Cause I, cause I'm not standing here saying you don't need to eat more on a hard training day. You can be, you know, you're fine. Yeah, that is not what I'm saying. But I think what I'm saying more is because it does, it does trend up, but there is a cat.
Paul Warloski (29:35)
Right. Right.
Mikki (29:43)
But we cannot rely on the numbers that are associated with this to say, yes, I need to eat 463 more calories today because of this, and this is what I'm going to do. So my advice for athletes in this is to avoid the potential pitfalls of relative energy deficiency leading to impaired recovery and adaptation. If you're thinking about fat loss for an athlete,
Paul Warloski (29:55)
Right.
Mikki (30:13)
I never want an athlete to go into super low intakes when they're in key training phase. So thinking about cycling ⁓ or like if body composition improvement is something they really want to dial in and focus on, then you do that in the off season when training load is lower. So overall stress is lower. When we do have key training sessions, when you really do want to increase overall output, we're not attaching numbers to it, but you're
probably do need more food and fuel going in at that point to help with that recovery and adaptation. But it's sort of leaning into the biometrics and sort of assessing how you feel and sort of matching your input to that. Not in some sort of woo woo, like just, not that you never think about numbers or anything, but you're not so tied into the concept of X number of calories to support the training. Because to MJ's point, I mean,
Hard training really can suppress your appetite and make it difficult. You don't want to stuff yourself. You want to be smart about the type of fuel you're having, but it is really challenging to eat a truckload on some days. And it makes more sense to allow the appetite response to occur a couple, you know, which is pretty natural for most people to listen to that in the couple of days afterwards. I don't know.
Paul Laursen (31:30)
Yeah,
that's awesome, Mikki. And that's kind of what I was going to go at too. So you mentioned Appetite, the epistat, and the ability to listen to the body. And I don't want to shoot myself in the foot with Athletica and whatnot, because inevitably we are going to be merging some of this technology into Athletica. And when I'm talking about our partners like Hexis and whatnot that have these, they're really working hard.
Paul Warloski (31:35)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (31:57)
on these various different solutions to, know, for all athletes, irrespective of your nutrition philosophy, and whether you're taking a picture of your food that you're consuming and getting an estimate of the calories and the micros and macros that are kind of coming with that. That is all coming in this next year for sure. And I think you would use this in the same sort of way that you use Athletica. can't, and we say this as well, like you don't,
Mikki (32:17)
yeah.
Paul Laursen (32:25)
take the Athletica prescription for gospel, right? You've got to take it as a partner in your own, to help you kind of guide towards your own optimal and whatever that may be. And I think these texts that are kind of coming in here as well are gonna be, I think you should do the same sort of thing. So develop your feel, what feels right. You are an N of one experiment. Keep tinkering and tweaking these sorts of things and find out what is optimal for you.
Mikki (32:29)
Mm.
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (32:55)
use these tools at your disposal to help guide you and run that NO1 experiment. yeah, there's a, yeah, and it's an exciting time from that perspective where more and more individuals are gonna be, you know, have these sorts of tools accessible to them and can continue to get the help that maybe they've been looking for.
Mikki (33:00)
Yeah.
And do you know what, it's interesting with that because of course, I think these tools are excellent and the people who really love them, like the people who will buy into it are naturally geared towards wanting those numbers. Like, you you'll always have someone that will be telling me how many calories I need to, you know, support this training session or to drop body fat and they're really after that one particular number and there will always be people like that. So it's sort of like,
That's almost like the art and science of coaching, of coaching sport as much as it is coaching people around nutrition. It's to your point that N equals one, which can't be captured in the algorithms that are out there.
Marjaana (33:53)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (33:56)
Yeah.
Yeah. So many, know I was, I was in an investor tour in Texas and ran into MJ and our CEO Simon was moving us around to various different investors. I will tell you every single investor that was an athlete. They asked about nutrition. Does it integrate nutrition? They, so the, there's a huge desire that for that integration. I will just tell you, like, I know it's, it's very, very clear. and you know, I'm, I'm.
Mikki (34:17)
Yeah.
Paul Warloski (34:20)
Hmm
Paul Laursen (34:26)
So I'm being a little hard and scrutinizing some of the methods here I know, and I know we're gonna improve on them. But yeah, like it's, this is one that we, know, my area and Mikki's area, we need to merge these and do a better job because they are related and people want a solution in them.
Mikki (34:39)
Yeah.
And I think that scrutiny is going to be what sets you apart, actually, in the end, because too many people don't look deeper into, or don't account for some of these things, because, I mean, they're so hard to account for, but if you could find a way to be able to merge them both in a way that actually has the outcomes that the athlete benefits from, then, I mean, that would be amazing.
Marjaana (35:10)
I think these tools are really helpful in teaching athletes about nutrition, about training and about listening to their bodies and what the body tells. And I think it's like part of, the progress really, like we have to start at one point, even if the technology is not there quite yet, but it's that like one step ahead. Like you need to start somewhere if you want to get to.
Paul Laursen (35:38)
Agree.
Marjaana (35:39)
you know, point B,
Mikki (35:39)
Yeah.
Paul Warloski (35:40)
Mm-hmm.
Marjaana (35:40)
but you have to start. So I think the scrutiny and critical thinking is great, but in the meantime, athletes can learn so much, but don't get into like their, you know,
Paul Laursen (35:47)
Totally.
Yeah.
Marjaana (35:55)
black and white box, like think holistically.
Mikki (35:55)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Paul Laursen (35:58)
Yeah,
it's so good. I think of, I reflect on Dan Plews PhD, right? Think of us back in, when we started that in like, you 2011, when HRV was really scrutinized, what are you doing, But, you you got to start somewhere, right? And you have to start taking some chances and whatnot. credit to him and all the, you know, the supporting programs around at High Performance Sport New Zealand, Rowing New Zealand, et cetera, that supported that.
Mikki (36:01)
I it's a test. It's here.
Yeah. Yeah.
Marjaana (36:14)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (36:24)
And then carved a, he's pioneered basically an industry now that is again, technology that's embedded now within the backend of Athletica, but that wouldn't have started or wouldn't be here now if he didn't sort of take these chances, scrutinized it and continued to refine, iterate, develop. And now we have something and we'll do that with nutrition as well.
Mikki (36:38)
to take these chances to realize it and continue to follow it.
Yeah, 100 % and I will clarify I love what you MJ and I agree with you is that you know something like let's take counting calories as a good example of this like it is such an inexact, inaccurate process. The benefit that people get from this if they do it and I've spent 25 years at this point as a coach and only really spent about three to four years thinking about macros if I'm honest like
I never had to do it, but I always thought in food and thought in appetite and thought in response. I never thought, you need X number of calories. And it seemed to work for clearly the majority of people I worked with. But now with the sort of influx of macro coaching and those weekend courses, everyone's demanding it. I do spend a bit of my coaching in that area. And where I feel it's beneficial is that it does, to your point, MJ, teach people about food.
Where do you find protein that you need? Where do you find the carbohydrates that you want? Where do you find the fiber that we're after? If we're after it, where do we get those healthy fats from? How do we distinguish this? So people can start becoming educated about what's in food, what makes them feel good post-training, during training, pre-training. But it's never, don't, I mean, there are some people, and I have friends who've literally counted calories for decades.
and they will until they die, seriously. But most people, they use it as a great way to get educated around food and then you move from that to intuitive eating, which is a whole other conversation, but informed eating. know, they know they can put together a plate, they don't have to count calories to know that it's got what they need to help support recovery and to help keep them satisfied and that blood sugar is going to be stable.
I do think that there's a real learning process in that and it's actually quite valuable from that perspective, but not to try and balance that calorie counter at the end of every 24 hour period. Yeah.
Marjaana (38:50)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Warloski (38:53)
How do you, if individualization is, individualized nutrition is still important, when the model, the constrained energy model suggests that everybody's capped, and I put capped in quote marks, roughly 3,000 calories.
how do we make, ⁓ what makes the real, the biggest difference in real calorie needs?
Mikki (39:20)
So, mean, obviously, think like lean mass is one of the biggest sort of predictors of calorie needs. And so the more muscle mass you have, like the more calories you need to fuel the machine everyday life. So I think that would be certainly one thing I think about. From a training perspective, yes, there's a cap, but it's hard to push beyond that cap. So it does still count if you're doing
a lot of high intensity work. If you're doing a lot of long duration work, clearly the cost of that is going to be greater than easy 45 minute jogs on a down week. I do think that things like hormone status can shift substrate use. Like if you think about the luteal phase for a female, as I understand it, we are more insulin resistant during that phase. So that will change sort of fuel partitioning slightly potentially.
And also non-exercise activity thermogenesis. you know, how much activity are you, like, are you executing on an everyday basis outside of that training session? I think these are all things to consider with sort of overall caloric requirements on any given sort of day.
Paul Warloski (40:32)
Mm.
Paul Laursen (40:34)
Yeah. And I'll just, I'll just say anecdotally, it's spot on just one observation. So many of us know about Luke Evans who's a, who won Ironman Canada on Athletica and then he went on again to win Ironman Arizona. This is a big man and working with him on his nutrition as well was, you know, this is, that was one of the challenges. Like he's just such a big unit and a bigger person.
Mikki (40:49)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (40:58)
You got bigger caloric demands, right? And this guy is eating all the time, all the time. So just one of those many factors.
Mikki (41:02)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was, I have a friend slash client who came to me with her nutrition and she's tiny. She's tiny, she is like a little pocket rocket, very good runner. She's around my age, a little bit older and her intake was so low, like a thousand calories a day. Like too low actually. And so we worked at this just because she wasn't actually getting essential nutrients that she needed.
for the long term, not necessarily the here and now for training, because clearly she was doing very well, she wasn't injured. But in my mind, I'm thinking, I don't think you've got the substrates we need to help keep your bones healthy and to help keep your muscle mass on your body for the longer term. But her frame, she was basically eating at what her potential basal metabolic rate sort of was. And...
and eating very little in that. So it's almost the opposite of what you were saying, Paul because she was so little, her overall caloric requirements would have been far less than if she was 10 kilos heavier. Like that would have been a lot more to sort of support, but it is so individual. And her training load was high. Yeah.
Paul Laursen (42:23)
Yeah, great, great contract. Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
Marjaana (42:26)
I don't know if we have time to talk more about the perimenopausal changes and energy intake, protein and focusing on strength work to bring up the... Yes, let's go. As a perimenopausal woman who is active, how do you protect your bone? ⁓ Is it caloric intake? Is it protein? Is it...
Paul Laursen (42:36)
We are going to now. Go, Misty, go!
Paul Warloski (42:38)
Let's
Mikki (42:38)
Yeah, you can't just leave
us there.
Paul Warloski (42:40)
bring it up!
Mikki (42:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marjaana (42:55)
Tell us, everybody wants to know.
Mikki (42:58)
So, certainly those two things I do think matter. I think the timing of nutrients matters as well, MJ. Like we don't have a lot of good research on it, but that energy availability concept isn't just sort of an overall concept for sort of in general, but you there are studies to show that ⁓ bone markers, you get an acceleration of bone turnover without the rebuild, yeah, the bone breakdown without.
the rebuilding if you go for a long period of time without eating post-training. So I think that there is something to be said for nutrient timing and getting in fuel post-training, albeit there haven't been a lot of studies and it is short-term data. We don't know the long-term implications of that, but that is definitely a thing that I think about. I do think, you know, in perimenopause, not just I think, but we know that women don't tolerate carbohydrate as well because estrogen is
Marjaana (43:27)
Mm-hmm.
Mikki (43:56)
either really high and creating inflammation or it's on its way out. Well, it is on its way out, but it is low and therefore we're losing that insulin sensitizing impact of estrogen. lowering sort of carbohydrate intake, focusing primarily on quality carbohydrate that may be better from blood sugar stabilization perspective, but still getting in what you need to help support the nervous system. So moving away from processed refined carbohydrate, I think.
is usually a good move. I definitely have some element of that, and it's not like I never have anything like that, but we've just got to focus much more on quality and micronutrients. To your point, protein, I'm not opposed to lifting up protein pretty high actually. And in fact, I was having a conversation with Jose Antonio, like he's...
done a number of great studies and like his wife is an endurance athlete and she's on like three grams per kg body weight. And I'm like, awesome. Yeah, it's so you. Yeah. And it's so good from a micronutrient, from a brain, from a hormone, from a recovery and blood sugar stabilization sort of perspective. And, and I am, and I'm sure you are as well, a fan of strength training for bones. So, so that's important.
Paul Laursen (44:54)
Three.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That's carnivore.
Marjaana (45:02)
That's a lot.
I've been following
your Instagram how you've been working on your upper body strength and chin ups. Holy cow, that's amazing.
Mikki (45:28)
Yes. ⁓ And you know, but
what this showed me like a year ago, I could not do one chin up, couldn't do one. And I was in the gym like three times a week doing weights. And I'm like, if I can't functionally move my body, what's the point? And it actually just came down to consistency with them. Anyone can do them. It's just actually being consistent day to day with practicing and then, and
Paul Warloski (45:45)
Mm.
Mikki (45:56)
And yeah, it's just one thing I'm really proud of. It's just the chin ups that I can do.
Paul Warloski (46:00)
You should be.
Paul Laursen (46:00)
for you, Mikki. That's
Marjaana (46:02)
Yeah,
Paul Warloski (46:02)
You should be. That's no joke.
Paul Laursen (46:03)
awesome. That's incredible. Hey Mikki, you know, we were mindful of your time. We know you've got to move to your next interview after. Why don't you have the last five minutes? Tell us what you're doing right now and where listeners can go and find out more about you and get your help.
Marjaana (46:03)
amazing.
Mikki (46:04)
Yeah.
Paul Warloski (46:08)
Yes.
Mikki (46:20)
Thank you, Paul. So currently I'm wrapping up some group programs. I work primarily in that perimenopause sort of fat loss space, albeit as an endurance athlete myself, I do attract a lot of women like me, if you like, and guys as well. I have some, this is my personal goals for 26. I'm doing, hopefully doing Gold Coast Marathon and Chicago Marathon.
And the thing is that I really just want to enjoy them. I'd love to do well, but equally with Chicago, I literally just want to jog it. I'm ticking off the majors. I have a couple of longer run plans, but at the minute I'm struggling with a hamstring tendinopathy, which is a bit of a challenge. I've had to...
almost pull pin on an 80K run in February with a mind of wanting to do Gold Coast Marathon. Like I've really got to think, okay, what is, you know, what is my primary sort of goals here? But I'm just here in New Zealand. I've got my podcast, Mikkipedia, where people can sort of get more insights, both from me on my mini episodes and from guests that I have had on the show, such as Dr. Paul Laursen of course, and Phil Maffetone, Dan Plews, like.
all of probably the favorites of the listeners of your show. And I'm pretty active on social under at Mikki Willard and so I love to just share things on there like my chin up challenge.
Marjaana (47:55)
Yeah, I love your mini Mikki episodes. They are awesome, like 20-25 minutes deep dive into a topic. And knowing you, jogging a marathon is still pretty fast.
Paul Laursen (47:55)
That is so good.
Mikki (48:01)
Yeah.
Paul Laursen (48:08)
Pretty fast.
Paul Warloski (48:09)
you
Mikki (48:12)
Well, I hope so. I hope so. Thank you, MJ. ⁓
Paul Warloski (48:16)
Yeah. If you've not checked out Mikkipedia yet, that is definitely a podcast to listen to. is, is one of my regulars that I listened to on the bike and it's outstanding.
Mikki (48:24)
⁓
Thank you, Paul.
Paul Warloski (48:28)
Well, Mikki, thank you so much for joining us again to try to unravel this complicated topic and we appreciate your presence.
Mikki (48:36)
Thank you so much. And I just knew coming on, would just be a great opportunity to bring up some of the things that we think about when we're considering constrained energy expenditure model or calories in calories out, know, like practically speaking, what are the challenges and what are the opportunities to improve our understanding of it and how can we help, you know, the people that we coach. So thanks so much for the opportunity guys
Paul Laursen (48:57)
you so much, Mikki.
Paul Warloski (48:58)
Thanks for listening today to the Athletes Compass podcast. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together. Improve your training with the science-based training platform, Athletica, and join the conversation at the Athletica Forum. For Dr. Mikki Williden, Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you so much for listening.