00:00:06 Shreya: What is the reason so many athletes feel exhausted, bloated, or disconnected from their bodies is not because they are not disciplined enough, but because we have normalized fueling like machines instead of humans. And today we are reimagining sports nutrition, not as powders and packets, but as real food, real ingredients, real pleasure.

00:00:29 Shreya: Welcome to the Wellness Reimagined, where we gently question the systems we have inherited and explore what becomes possible when we think differently about health. I'm your host, Shreya, and today I'm joined by Chris Bellamy, co-founder of a new generation of sports nutrition built on one simple belief athletes deserve real food, not space food. With a background in engineering, regenerative design and sustainable innovation, Chris is bringing ecological thinking into one of the most ultra processed corners of the food industry. Endurance. Fuel. Today, we are exploring what it means to nourish performance in a way that scientific, delicious and deeply human. Welcome, Chris. I'm honored to have you on my show.

00:01:17 Chris Bellamy: Very happy to be here. And that was a wonderful summary.

00:01:21 Shreya: Thank you so much. And before we dive into the science and system, I'm really curious, when did you first start questioning the way athletes are typically told to fuel their bodies? Was there a specific moment when something just didn't sit right?

00:01:39 Chris Bellamy: Yeah. So I was a high performance athlete, uh, from about two thousand and eight, originally in the world of rowing, and then when I moved into endurance sport, I was racing Ironman triathlons, and it was about twenty fifteen when I started to develop a lot of health problems. I had lots of dental cavities, I had digestive problems, and I was pre-diabetic. As a result of constantly fueling, I was training for four, you know, four or five hours a day. And during that time, I'd be constantly fueling myself on, um, sugary sports nutrition. And what was happening was that my, uh, you know, from from my dental health. So when you're doing sport, you've got a lot less saliva to protect your teeth. But when I, um, also, I was drinking lots of sugar, which increases the pH in my mouth. And so that was starting to degrade my teeth. The digestive problems I was having was because of my microbiome. Because when I'm constantly eating sugary foods, it doesn't give a good support for the microbiome in my gut. So I was starting to develop leaky gut syndrome, and as a result, I was having digestive problems and also not able to properly absorb the nutrients from my food. And then finally, I was pre-diabetic because every time I was having a sugary drink, my blood glucose was spiking. And so I was constantly producing insulin to combat the blood glucose. And so my body became intolerant to the insulin because it was appearing so often. And that's one, you know, one of the causes of type two diabetes. And so I was in this in this situation where I was having so many health problems, but I was meant to be the fittest shape of my life. And so I started to question what I was eating. And that was, um, uh, was really an eye opening. And I switched to eating real foods. And my performance, um, and my health both improved dramatically. And I wanted to try and find a solution then, but it wasn't until three or four years ago until I met my co-founder and we came up with the concept of organic.

00:03:40 Shreya: That's that's amazing. And also like there is a strong narrative in sports culture that performance nutrition has to be hyper engineered, optimized, extracted, processed. So what is the biggest misconception you see about sports fuel today?

00:03:57 Chris Bellamy: Yeah. Well it's very interesting actually, because at the same time I was discovering my health problems, I was working as an engineer and I was designing electric vehicles. And so it was the most kind of pure form of engineering. We were designing them to be as aerodynamic as possible, as efficient as possible. Everything was calculated and measured, um, to improve the efficiency of the vehicle. And so I saw myself as a machine. I was actually training in the wind, the same wind tunnel that we were testing the cars in. And I trained in the same climatic chamber to get used to the heat. As you know, we used to test the cars in. So I was, you know, in my head I was a machine. Um, I was seeing myself as a body, you know, a very simplified form of of of of a machine where I put energy in and I get energy out in the sport that I'm doing. And so actually, you know, that the real transition in my thinking came when I, in twenty twenty, I stopped my career as an engineer and I retrained in a field of something called bio design, and bio design is all about. Instead of thinking things in a reductionist, simplified way, bio design is all about trying to think about things in a more ecological way. So it's looking at things and saying, actually, we are nature and natural organisms. Living things are incredibly complicated and incredibly interconnected. And so instead of thinking about, you know, very simplified form of the human body, I started to think about the human body as a very interconnected group of systems. We're a we're a living thing, and we've got a psychological aspect from our brain. We've got a metabolic aspect from our from how we digest food. We've got a microbiome aspect from the billions of bacteria that live inside us and help us with so many of our bodily functions. So when I when I started to think about my body as a living thing rather than as a machine, that was really, um, one of the big transitions that happened.

00:05:57 Shreya: That's amazing. And thank you for sharing this. And also like, uh, when athletes believe that story that more synthetic or more scientific looking automatically means better. What tends to happen to their relationship with food?

00:06:14 Chris Bellamy: Um, it's a very interesting one. Um, I think, you know, relationships with food is a is a fascinating subject. Um, whether it's, um, you know, the why we eat food, whether it's for pleasure, whether it's for nourishment, um, or, um, you know, or performance. But then also, you know, as humans, you know, we develop some very, um, you know, a diverse range of relationships with foods and whether that's through eating disorders or, uh, you know, for under-eating, for overeating or anything in between. Um, the psychology of food is, is really, um, is really interesting. And I think that's for me why I've always tried as a person to, to try and balance between the, uh, the arts and the sciences, because the sciences work with the rational, they work with the logical things. And so the brain says, if I eat more food, I'll have more energy. That's, you know, the rational, logical approach. Whereas the the arts, they deal more with the irrational, um, and the irrational behavior here is, uh, you know, an athlete knowing they need food, but they are sick of the flavor of something and they just don't want to eat because they're just not feeling hungry. And they they don't have the appetite. And so when you start to think about, uh, sports nutrition holistically, um, you have to think about both the rational about, you know, the science of, you know, molecules and carbohydrates and grams of food. But you also have to start to think about the irrational and the irrational things around psychology, around more systems thinking. Because actually, you know, when you're thinking like a, when you're thinking like an engineer, you think in terms of, um, you know, everything. You know, I understand this system so I can simplify it. And the interesting thing with the human body is that there is so much that we don't know, as you know, in the last five, ten years, what we've discovered about the microbiome. We there's so many things that we don't know about how we work as a human. Um, which is why, you know, things have unintended consequences. And so the the artistic way of thinking, the ecological way of thinking, the the irrational way of thinking, it's also a great way to try and, um, understand maybe the things that we don't fully know and we don't fully understand. So I know that, you know, um, you know, if I eat healthy foods, my gut will, you know, be more resilient. But in a race, I might be able to, you know, take a little bit of sugar and it'll be fine, because my, my gut's kind of more resilient now there isn't there aren't a lot of scientific studies around this. So there reaches a point where you've got to start using your gut feel and you've got to start, you know, listening to your body and understanding it in a, in a way that's, you know, maybe not as scientific as a lot of people would want it to be. Yeah.

00:09:03 Shreya: Yeah. Like what I'm hearing is that, uh, somewhere along the way, we equated convenience and control with superiority and almost, like, forgot that the body is already an incredibly intelligent system. I think that's that's such a powerful reframe what you said.

00:09:21 Chris Bellamy: Yeah, but you also make a very good point about, um, control and convenience. And, you know, our lives now are, are very busy and they're getting busier every day. As we as a species, we get more and more productive. Um, we're no longer spending our days just, you know, sat around thinking about what we're going to eat or or hunting for our food. And so convenience is a really, um, interesting subject. And that's why ultra processed foods are so appealing because they don't go out of date. They come in a nice packaging. I can store them not in a fridge. And and with Yana, what we've tried to do is we've tried to create a, an imperfect solution where we are cooking the real foods. We're making these delicious savory purees from chickpeas and pulses, and they're cooked in the south of France. And then we're putting them into a practical pouch format. And what that means is that obviously, while it's best if an athlete could cook a fresh meal to eat, that our busy lives mean that people don't have time or the energy or the space to be able to cook a fresh meal for every meal. And so by putting our, you know, real foods with no additives, they're completely natural into a practical pouch. The idea is it allows athletes to take real food with them wherever they are, whether that's in the car after a training session or whether that's in their office or or on the bike or out training in, you know, wherever they're training. And so convenience and practicality is really, really important factor. So you're very it was very important that you you raised that.

00:10:56 Shreya: Yeah. And also like for endurance athletes especially like runners, cyclists, triathletes gut distress is almost normalized like bloating cramps, energy crashes. How much of that is actually a fueling problem rather than a training problem?

00:11:15 Chris Bellamy: Yeah, I think that this is an emerging field of research. Um, we did a big study with the University of Caen in Normandy here in France. And what we found was that while there are certain foods that seem to kind of, you know, may have a slightly higher correlation with people, um, not finishing a race. And for example, if you look at something like an Ironman race, ninety percent of people have had to drop out of a race, and more than half of athletes have had to stop a race because of digestive problems. And what we see is it's, you know, there's there's no clear symptoms, there's no clear thing that's causing it. But it's a combination of putting, putting your body under a huge amount of stress. So the more you use your muscles, the more the muscles take the blood, and the blood then moves away from your digestive system. So your digestive system isn't, you know, when you're doing intense sport, your digestive system isn't operating at full capacity. And then on top of that, people will then, you know, take quite radical foods. So foods that are very concentrated in sugar or foods that are very concentrated in some kind of shape or form. And then the final piece of that is your body can tolerate quite a lot of stress and variation, but only if it's in a healthy place. And this is something where, you know, emerging research now is showing that while you're putting your body under stress from eating strange foods, you're putting your body under stress from doing exercise. Actually, it's about it's about preparing your body to withstand that stress. And so some people do this through gut training, where they will train their gut and their body to withstand, you know, very extreme foods, whereas other people look at it more from a health perspective and say, how can I get the quality of my my digestive system to be as good as possible? So how can my the lining of my gut be as, um, be as intact as possible? How can my microbiome be of as high quality as possible? Because that then gives you the kind of the the flexibility and the resilience to be able to withstand the stress. So I think that's, you know, for me, it's the the best way to think about digestive issues in sport is, on one side, the cumulative stress that you're putting on your digestive system, but on the other side, it's the natural resilience of your digestive system. And you hear this a lot from anecdotally from athletes, because there are many athletes out there who will say, oh, I can eat whatever I want. I've never had a problem in, you know, never had a problem at all. And there's other athletes who say, oh, I took one energy gel and I had to stop the race and go to the toilet. And that's down to your own internal digestive health. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see how that research emerges over the coming years.

00:14:02 Shreya: Yeah. Like so it's not about just pace. It's about resilience, about whether your gut or your nervous system, your whole body can actually sustain the demand you are placing on. And also like, uh, for someone who is listening and who trains regularly, maybe not an elite athlete, but someone who cycles, runs or lifts consistently. Where would you invite them to start rethinking

00:14:27 Chris Bellamy: Yes. And I think that you make a very important distinction, because a lot of the research that's done into sports nutrition is done on elite athletes. And, um, a lot of the research coming out now about very high carbohydrate consumption. So people are recommended to consume between sixty to ninety grams of carbohydrate, and now even up to one hundred and twenty grams of carbohydrate per hour. And those studies are done on athletes who are doing a very high intensity level of exercise. So sixty five plus percent of their VO2 max, and they're doing it for a very long period of time. So two or three hours or more. And the vast majority of the population, most normal people like you or I, could not sustain that level of intensity for that duration of time. And so a lot of the scientific recommendations are being made for professional athletes. And actually people are forgetting that they're not a professional athlete and they're forgetting to adapt the advice to them. And one of the really interesting things is that with your metabolism, once you drop below sixty percent of your VO2 max, you start to use more and more fat. And actually around fifty percent of VO2 max, you you get, you know, more energy from fat than you do from sugar or carbohydrates. And so what we need to educate people about is that you should adapt, or you can adapt what you eat to what you are, the level of exercise that you're doing. And for most people, eating real food that is tasty, that's delicious. That you're, you know, that doesn't have negative impacts on your health is more than enough to fuel most training sessions. And actually, for a lot of people, even the races they're doing, because the level that they're that they're racing at. So adapting your diet to your own needs and your own metabolism is, is a really important thing we need to educate people about.

00:16:26 Shreya: I love, I love the fact that you are not romanticizing it, and you are just making it very practical. And also like changing food culture feels like slow, especially in sport where tradition runs deep. So when athletes experiment with real food approaches and maybe hit a setback, lower energy one day, or fear of underfilling, how do you encourage them to stay curious instead of retreating back to the familiar?

00:16:57 Chris Bellamy: Mhm. I think it's um yeah. You know people I think, you know, thinking about your body as a, as a living dynamic thing. Um, so, you know, your body takes time to respond. Your body takes time to adapt, your body changes. You know, so many things happen in our body. You know, one day we wake up and we're in a bad mood. We've got out of the wrong side of the bed, you know? Why is that? Well, you know, we don't know. Things change. Things are variable. And most people accept that. Probably tomorrow they'll be feeling better and it'll be fine. And so I think accepting this uncertainty around the human body, um, accepting that, you know, we do change and we do vary and just, you know, instead of holding your body to a high standard and being frustrated if it isn't, you know, doing what you want it to do, the key skill is instead of, you know, being frustrated, just learning to listen and learning to pick up those signals. And your body is so clever. Your mind is so amazing at picking up on things that, you know, if we can just learn to be more intuitive about understanding our body, then, you know, that's a, you know, a way to get long term improvement while, you know, obviously it's really useful to have science guidelines, advice to maybe give us hints at what we should be trying and the direction that we should be going in.

00:18:20 Shreya: It sounds like, uh, this is not just a product shift. It's it's totally a mindset shift from domination to collaboration from, like, exaggeration to regeneration. And this is truly a very, very wonderful conversation. Like the the way you sit, everything you just made, everything so practical. And if after this wonderful conversation, my listeners want to connect with you and want to know more about you and, uh, explore Yana, then what's the best way?

00:18:50 Chris Bellamy: Yeah. So we have a website, uh, and Yana y a n a dot food. Um, we're also on Instagram, and our Instagram is you are not an astronaut. So Yana is an acronym for You are not an astronaut and the like. Exactly. Like you say, the whole project is really about a philosophy, um, where, you know, you're not an astronaut. So don't eat space food, don't take yourself too seriously and look after this planet. Um, and that's really the philosophy we're trying to encourage and whether it's someone is, you know, making their own snacks at home or whether someone is using our products, we really don't mind. We just want to, you know, make sure that people are out there having fun and being healthy. Because there's this weird paradox in sport where a lot of people are doing sport to be healthy, but actually we're eating things that maybe aren't the best things for our health. Um, so yeah, people can follow along and we try to have a lot of fun sharing what we're doing.

00:19:48 Shreya: Yes, and I will make sure to attach all these details and links below so that the listeners can find them easily and get in touch with you and want like, know more about you and Yana. And for my listeners, if today's conversation sparked something in you, maybe even challenge the way you think about fueling. Stay with that. What if nourishment is not about optimization alone, but about reconnection? And this has been the wellness reimagined. If this episode resonated, then share it with someone who trains hard and cares deeply about how they live on this planet. Until next time. Remember your body is not a machine to be hacked. It's a living system to be honored. And do not forget to hit the follow button. Subscribe and feel free to share your thoughts because your ears deserve premium content. Thank you.