#124 - Pia Seeberg - Protein Puddings, Eating for Health vs Performance, High Calorie Foods, and More...

What's up and welcome back to the Talk Nutrition Podcast. Today I want to share with you part one of two of a great conversation I had with my friend PSA Berg about all things tracking, kind of how to do it right. Basically, we talked about workout nutrition, a little bit about nutrient timing, as well as including more energy dense foods like nuts, oils, juices even. Plus we talk about macros. related to food quality. Like, is that the only thing? Like, are we just looking at numbers or tracking macros is not just a number thing. Like we want to actually address, Hey, what does your day of eating look like? And can we learn from that? So we're going to talk about food quality. We're going to talk about the ultra process debate. Basically that's going around in Norway. And then afterwards, which will be up on Thursday, we're going to dive into surviving Easter, which is a very big holiday in Norway. And we want it to. share our take on including social settings, vacations, etc. with you so that you can also just enjoy Easter, not be overwhelmed, not feel stressed or guilty around having some chocolate or having a good meal with the family. But again, that is for Thursday. So first we have some questions from Pia's community and then I'll be back with you with her on Thursday. Enjoy. What's up and welcome back to the Talk Nutrition Podcast. Today's episode 125 and Yet again, we are joined by Pia Sabeg. What's up Pia? How are you? I'm very well. Thank you. I'm honored to be here once again. Good to have you back. Do you have any Easter plans coming up? Classic of Norwegian, I'm going to the mountains to like do my skiing and eating my Easter egg. And then I'm going home, repack and then going to my cabin like by the sea. So that's me saying goodbye winter. I'm done with you. And then trying to welcome summer spring ish. Must be nice. So last time I told you about, we kind of get this like spring feeling and then it's just full blown winter again. That's now again. So the weather has been really bad and it's full of just snow and ice and all that. But anyway, spring sounds pretty good, but that's really cool. It's good to take some time off. Good to go to the mountains. Good to go to your cabin, you know. I'm going to take some time off as well because you can have a chill family basically, have some good food. And we'll talk about that today actually. Do you have any like family dinner plans and stuff or? Yes, a lot. I feel like like the whole Easter is like a family dinner. So my routines regarding food always get like mixed up. And I think that's why we wanted to talk about today's topic. We're going to do some questions and then dive into like. social settings, holidays and vacations, sort of give people the how -to guide. And I'm extra interested in listening to you considering you're like in a cut but you're going on holiday. How are you going to solve that? Because you're still cutting, right? How's that going? It's good. It's good. I think it is two more weeks. So almost done. Yeah. So you will be cutting in the Easter. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, again, when you have the experience, like it's doable, you know? We talked about this off air as well to the listener. It's like, I do have the experience, of course. And like, yes, I'm a nutrition coach. Like, you know, I should also be better at this stuff. But like I was telling Pia before this, I got the experience tracking, not because I was a coach, like, no, because I struggled with my weight and I got into tracking and I learned from that, you know? So I just have like, By now, it's like 10 plus years of like experience tracking on and off, by the way, right? That's not 10 years of just tracking macros, right? Or calories, whatever. Like, no, I've done it through muscle gain and fat loss phases and maintenance, I usually don't. But that's also why it's very easy to just do it, make it happen and then just make it fit, you know? But that's cool. Let's dive into those questions. But before we do, do you have any personal updates, anything going on in your app? Not really. Thank you for asking. I'm just working on being as prepared as I can for having the baby. It's not coming until summer. But of course, when you're running your own business, you need to be prepared. I'm going to have some help. But yeah, that's what I do these days, just preparing content and making sure that I can take some time off when the baby comes. So yeah, other than that, not much news. People are excited to first Easter and then like really starting their journey towards the summer. I feel like in January, in January people are motivated, but after Easter they're more like, okay, I have to get my shit together. And I like that vibe when people, yeah, really inspired to train well and eat well. Definitely. And it's a good time. Like, I think a lot of the early year can sometimes be overwhelming because there's so many, especially if you're new, right? You're just getting to, maybe they just sign up for your training app or maybe they're just trying to lose weight or whatever it is, or just eat healthy in general. There's so much noise. And we talked about this recently, but like there's so much noise on social media. It does get confusing. There's all these different things and different goals that I have. I'm trying to do everything all at once. But this time, you know, March, kind of like April, like you said, we're getting closer to summer. So it's like, Hey, we kind of, I, we, we have to kind of. Ran things up a little bit further, get a little bit more specific and yeah, get good results before summer. Cause I don't necessarily like. Fet loss phases and those kinds of things during summer. It depends on people's plans. Of course it's not that you can't do it. It's probably best to do before them, you know, Definitely be prepared and remember that the good feeling of stepping into summer in your holiday like feeling good about yourself knowing that you've done a piece of work Maybe you're not quite there, but you like you can feel It's a good feeling to be proud of yourself and that should motivate you already to like Get started on some kind of training routine and also eating well Love that And I have to say in my app stronger than the trend. Your nutrition resources have really been valuable. And that was the reason I wanted the information in the app. In my apps we do training, that's what I offer. But after working with Johan I of course learn more about how important nutrition is to achieve what you want, especially if you want to gain muscle or lose fat, or in general just learn more about nutrition. So that... that's been and is really valuable. The content is living in the apps and people just go through it as they want. But there's also some questions from time to time. So I'm going to do a couple of them if that's okay with you. Let's dive into it. And the first one is, what's yours and Johan's thoughts about protein pudding as some kind of dessert? Do you have any thoughts about... the ultra processed foods, I feel the perspective on food quality can get lost when you start counting calories and macros. Really good point. So there's kind of three things to this, which actually get a little bit more specific per part of the question. So I like that. So let's start with the first one about having protein pudding as kind of like a little treat. Absolutely. Go for it. I think it's a great option. It doesn't even have to be like the protein pudding, right? Like the specific, like the Eats brand or whatever. It could even just be like a Greek yogurt or cottage cheese or, you know, Scare or whatever it is. But generally speaking, yeah, absolutely. I think it's a great option. I really like casein pudding as well. Super simple. You just get casein protein powder, whatever flavor you want. You just add water or milk, stir it up and it gets more like... putting like, like way more than whey protein or sorry, whey isolate, you know? So that's a nice option to some berries, maybe nuts and seeds, whatever you want. Yeah, it's actually great dessert. By the way, because you talked about the ultra processed foods to, hey, even if you add some, you know, ultra processed, you know, zero sugar, like whatever sauce, you know, there's like really good like caramel, like strawberry sauces, like have some of that, like it's, it's cool, you know, it's fine. So that's the first part of the question. It's cool. If anything, it's probably better because you now also get more protein. Second part, the ultra -processed part, I do agree that if someone's diet is mostly ultra -processed foods, it's probably not great for their health. we are looking at a lot of artificial just stuff that's added, right? Which doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. It's always like the dose makes a poison, right? We can talk about aspartame and all these kinds of things. And sure, like really big amounts are probably not going to be great to give you an idea. I noticed personally, when I have a lot of artificial kind of like zero calorie kind of thing, you know, um, you know, the, the jelly, kind of like, like they have no sugar, like jelly, the raspberry one is really good. I got that as a treat recently. Um, and I was like, Oh, this is really good. You know, so I had a lot of it, but my, my gut was like messed up the next day. You know, I definitely noticed that. So personally, I don't like a lot of that stuff because it just doesn't make me feel good. But anyway, those makes a point. If we have, let's call it like the protein pudding and yes, that technically would be ultra processed. Whatever. What about the rest of your diet? That's what I want to know. Because that one product, right, out of all the meals that you have on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, right, is that really the thing that's the problem or not? So that's what we can't isolate single foods, you know what I mean? And you see this, we talked about this off air recently. you see the people in the supermarket like holding the products, right? This is going to kill you and this is going to kill you. And then oats are bullshit. And then, you know, and I get it. It's kind of like baby. And if you think about it, like that's the stuff that gets the views, et cetera, right? The stuff that actually works to basics that, Hey, to be healthy, you should probably eat some fruits, vegetables and drink water and sleep enough and lift weights. Like the stuff that actually makes a difference if you just do it every single day. for a long period of time. That's not sexy. And that doesn't get the views because you kind of know you should be eating veggies. You know you should be eating fruits and stuff, you know? So I do get it. And I do understand why those kind of videos get a lot of traction, et cetera. But I don't fully believe that the ultra-processed food debate going around, it's really big in Norway right now, is very helpful. Because first of all, Let's just completely just zoom out a little bit and understand that the social aspect of nutrition and health, right? Is really big too. For example, Easter. Is it healthy to eat like Easter chocolate like every single day of all year? Like probably not. Is it fun to go on a like Easter egg hunt with the kids and have some chocolate and have whatever candy you like? Probably is, right? And if that's a couple of days out of the year, who cares? And I think, especially with the holidays, people do tend to over stress it a little bit too much sometimes. But that's because of these kinds of conversations. But going back to the question, because I always go in every direction, with the ultra processed food debate, you can have it, but it's just like, just make sure that you get most of your whole foods, most of your minimally processed foods. because it's not either or and there's no like apps going around. I'm getting like ads on Instagram, Norwegian apps and they're worldwide too, but you can scan the label and it tells you, hey, this food is ultra processed or not ultra processed, but it's not black and white. We have single ingredient whole foods and then we have ultra processed and there's a whole range right there. It's a spectrum where of course there's so much in between. Technically, yeah, oats are processed because it's a little, right? Whole grain tortilla, it's like whole grain bread, whatever, like that is processed. But guess what? Like a lot of times that also makes the nutrients available to us, for example. I mean, if you think about it, if you chew your food, it's being processed, right? Also, by the way. But it's a very black and white conversation. It says nothing about the context. And I think we need to put more energy towards educating people. Hey, this is the stuff that you should be eating for the most part. So that your overall healthy and that when you have some ultra processed foods every now and then you're fine with that. Make sense? Yeah. And it's a big difference between like processed food and ultra processed food. At least I feel that's where the discussion is here in Norway, because as soon as it's a Ultra -processed, they add a lot of ingredients that a lot of people, experts here in Norway call poison, especially like Mari Kolby. It's good that she's putting it on the agenda, that people are aware about the food quality. But going back to the 80 -20 rule, as long as 80 % of your diet is nutritious whole foods, if you have 20 % of some ultra-processed products that pitch your macros, are... philosophy is that that's okay and that we would rather have people doing that, hitting their protein intake rather than going for, for example, almond butter on dates and exceeding their calorie intake by a lot just because it's natural, but it's still a lot of sugar. Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes it can even make things worse for people because now we're dealing with guilt and stress. Because hey, I'm eating this food because I legit enjoy eating this food. For example, like I really like Oreos and you know, Froot Loops and stuff. I currently don't get it because I'm cutting. But like I really like those. I'll get those from time to time if I'm at maintenance or whatever. It's learning how to be flexible to and learning how to be okay with those foods. Because you also shouldn't have to feel guilty and stressed around a single food because now people are saying, oh, that's ultra processed. You shouldn't be eating that. What about stuff you enjoy? What about stuff that's actually convenient? You know what I mean? Yeah. And I also have to say when I was working with you, like I had to, I was in a gating phase, so I had to up my calorie intake. And that's where you had to tell me that you can do some polar bread, maybe some Nougatty from time to time, like do the thing that makes you hit your calorie intake as long as you have a good base of nutritious food. And of course I had that, but when I tried to hit my calorie intake with those kind of foods, it was hard and I was like super full all the time. So I feel like when you log your food, and especially when you work with a coach, you always check my fiber intake. and micronutrients. So that's a big part of it because I feel when people hear about calories and macros they think that that's the only thing you as a coach look at. But it's definitely not. It's also like fiber and macros. So as long as you hit that you can add some Anugatti Polar Bread. But I think as your client you would stop me if my diet was like solely. I'm a diet better than you. But the third part of this question, right? The food quality most definitely in our approach is included with the tracking. And I will say there are a lot of programs where there's very little or no room for that to where yes, it is only macros. However, that's why I sent you that video, right? As feedback. It's like, hey, I'm going through your check -in, but now let's actually go into chronometer. and address your food log so I can see what you're having. Because this is something people also aren't taught. It's like, when you cover your bases, you have your fruits and vegetables, you get your fiber in, you eat your protein, you manage your overall intake, and you cover your your micronutrients, it is okay to have something more fun, right? More isn't always better. I will say, generally speaking, Whole Foods, that's going to be your better move, you know? But I'm saying, like, if you cover your bases for the most part, you're good. But for example, with like the clients, I was talking about in the check -in, she's like, I'm so hungry. I was like, okay, so we have the numbers, you're losing weight according to the plan, right? We see that you're losing weight. It's not too fast. It's actually like route. right where we need you to be between 0 .5 and 1 % per week. Let's go there. Okay. Very little fruits and veggies, a lot of bread and stuff, a lot of like jams and, and those foods are not bad per se. But if we're eating, I don't know, bread all the time with jam. Okay. Well, if we include more carbohydrate sources that are, for example, potatoes, which are more filling, there's research behind that too. That's going to keep you going a lot more, right? If we maybe and not that jam is bad, but if we can actually introduce the whole fruit, right? And we eat, I don't know, a cup of blueberries instead of the same weight in jam, right? It's objectively going to be better because you get the whole fruit, you get the water, the fiber and stuff as well. I'm there's like a lot of jams these days where there's like added fiber, but I'm trying to say is when you track, not only do you have your macros to look at, but you can go in and be proactive and address what's coming in. That's a huge one that gets skipped. It should most definitely include the food quality. Cause now you can see, Hey, am I hitting my one to three servings of fruit per day, two to four for veggies? Is it mostly whole foods? Do I build my meals with that framework that we follow protein, carbs, fats, and then color? Do I eat a certain amount of meals per day? Because that's a big one too. Sometimes people are struggling and it's like, okay, let's see how consistent you are. And then one day is maybe three meals and then six and then two and then four, right? Okay, yeah, but I'm busy. Okay, cool. That's something to work on. So we can now just improve the overall process. So the tracking should be way more than just doing it. It's like when you want to save money or something. like opening your bank app and proactively looking at, okay, what are my expenses looking like? Where can I do better? Where can I make improvements and what's going well so that I can do even better in the future? Make sense? Yes, I think we definitely answered her question. And the next one is, how big of a difference is it? So when you put together meals, how big is the difference when you're eating for better health versus better performance? Not much. Not much at all. The basic principles will always go. And I will say this. So it depends. OK, let's say general health. Let's say that will be maintenance then, right? When it comes to performance, we kind of want to get away with as many calories as possible. For performance, carbohydrate is going to be the most important. So it would be a high carb approach to where technically for health, we can do like a moderate to high kind of, like let's just say moderate kind of carb fat ratio. For performance though, yeah, it's like the biggest thing is like carbs are going to be more important. Maybe to get a little extra benefit out of it, we're going to look into nutrient timing to where we're going to move more carbohydrate. before, but especially after your training and maybe even during. And this is where some of those like carb powders or even like a Gatorade or something comes in. So we will be looking at more performance, kind of like the timing of the nutrients to support performance, but then also afterwards to refuel. And to your point, like comparing this to your journey, There are a lot of similarities with the performance and muscle gain because we're trying to get the calories up. We're trying to find that upper range, especially if it helps. I just talked to someone two days ago. If it helps introduce some of the more fun foods because you can get away with it as long as your bases are covered. Plus after training, you are what's called most insulin sensitive and you, your body's almost like primed to restore like pull back the carbohydrates into the muscle. And that's a big one. I think, and this goes beyond, you know, just the typical macros. Like, no, there's a purpose here, you know? If we train, we deplete our fuel tank, which is our muscle for the most part. Like your muscles, like that's your fuel tank. Sugar is stored there and then also in the liver. That gets depleted. So after training, We want to replenish. And I will say this, it takes up to like a day or sometimes longer, but we're almost like primed to refuel basically. So some of those quicker, like faster absorbed carbs, which is usually seen as like bad, like that could actually be beneficial because we're now absorbing it faster and we can use it. Last point. When we train heart, we do trigger a stress response as well. And that's good. We want that, right? We mobilize energy, right? That's kind of like fighting the bear or running away from it. Like that's a stress response. And you want that in a moment. You get the good workout in. Afterwards, though, you want to recover. And that happens in a parasympathetic state, which is also called rest and digest. It's really just, hey, that's where we build the muscle, where you digest your food. And that's where you want to get back to. You can almost use carbohydrate as like an off switch for cortisol, a stress hormone. to get your body back into that rest and digest state. And I know this sounds maybe a little bit more advanced. It's not too crazy though. But when you eat your carbs, you spike insulin, it's just a normal response. Everyone always demonizes this. Especially like the keto crowd, but it's just a normal thing. That's what your body's supposed to do. But you eat carbs, you spike insulin, and insulin kind of blunts cortisol. So after a heavy workout, Getting a lot of carbs can also bring that down and get you back into a parasympathetic state. So that's another little bonus there as well. Carbs for the win. Okay, and the next and final question. What's your thoughts on using juice, nuts and oils as an energy source to get in enough calories when the rest of your diet is like pretty good and well put together? Yeah, sorry. Sorry to interrupt you. My bad. Yeah, I mean, let's start with nuts. We should be having those anyway. When we recommend specific foods for people to eat, no matter what goal there is, they have. It's, you know, meats and fish and eggs and those kind of things, dairy for your proteins. You want to have your starchy carbs. You want to have your potatoes, your bread and those kind of things, you know, whole grains. Of course, when I have the fruits and vegetables. But when it comes to healthy fats, we always say like, hey, nuts and seeds, avocado, extra virgin olive oil, that kind of stuff. We want to have those more than maybe the process, you know, fats, the higher fat protein sources, depending right on the source. Salmon is really good. But generally speaking, we want to have a variety there. And we want to include the nuts and seeds. Maybe you've heard of, you know, seed cycling. And you know, people are really believing in like this is really good for my hormones. I mean, yes or no. It's not that the seed cycling is magic. No, you're just finally getting healthy fast for once. You know, and you're changing it up. Yeah. I heard about that as a tool to like manage your cycle as a woman, like eat the seeds in tune with your monthly cycle, but I haven't tried it. So that's the logic behind it. It's yeah. It's really just, you know, you're getting healthy fats and you're changing up. And so, yes, I mean, fats do support your hormones. This goes back to the questions. Just make sure to include those, because a lot of times I see people struggling to include them. But then again, also the fats they are getting is from a lot of other foods. So this goes back to the whole foods. If we have mostly whole foods, it makes it very easy to include those as well. So the nuts we would want to have anyway. And I really liked that as an addition to maybe smoothies if we wanted to. Same goes with seeds, right? Or maybe protein yogurts or any kind of yogurts or salads. Like it's a really nice addition. Then let me see when it comes to oils. Let me know if you're still there by the way, your camera kind of froze. You still there? I think we might've lost Pia. I'm gonna keep going for a little bit. Yeah, she just disconnected. She'll be back. So when it comes to oils, oils are totally fine as well. It just kind of depends what kind of oil we're using. And I saw, okay, Pia is back. I saw you had it disconnected, but you're here, so you're good. I just continue talking. So when it comes to oils, yeah, it's, that's a big one. That's a big discussion to seed oils and right. We, we probably want to mostly have extra virgin olive oil. Avocado oil is very good. Um, and there's other things like walnut oil, um, what's it called? Flax seed oil is really good too. Like there's definitely time and place for oils. And I think it's actually a really good fat source too. Now, do we want to have like, You know, the more processed kind of, you know, maybe like the canola oil and all that. It doesn't as much. Um, but then again, how much are you using? You know, let's say we're going with the options that we recommend. Yeah, absolutely. Extra virgin olive oil, um, walnuts, avocado, flax seed oil. Those all great. Yeah. Then juices also a big one that's often demonized, but yeah, sure. We get the nutrients, it's a good source of energy. Do we want to have all our carbs from juices and stuff? Probably not. But again, if we have a hard time getting enough in, it's probably a good idea to include some. Okay, so if I'm, I just have to ask you a question. If I were to in my gaining phase really struggling to hit my carbs and you saw that my fiber intake was decent, not... perfect, but like it was okay. It would, you would say yes to me filling up my carb intake with juice. Yeah. It depends, you know, like depends on how much, but I think it's fine. Yeah, absolutely. Have a glass with like a meal. Um, it's kind of nice too. So this kind of goes into like gut health and stuff, but so, no, don't keep this short. I'll try it. There are types of fiber called fob apps. which ferment in the gut, which is not bad per se. But some people may sometimes have some issues with that if they have a gut problem. So what's nice about some juices, assuming you get something that's actually like maybe like organic juice where we're actually still getting the nutrients. It's not like a concentrate or something. The nice thing is that you get the energy, which is by the way, also good for your metabolism and those kinds of things, right? Your thyroid needs carbs. So it's a quick source of energy. it helps you get enough in. You get the nutrients, but now you're also removing some of those to where it's also easy to absorb and we're not causing any gut issues. Now, of course, I also don't want people to think that Fountain Wraps are bad per se, because if you have a healthy gut, they're good for you, right? You actually want some of that to be ferment in the gut. But that's a little bonus too. Yeah. It can be a nice addition. Okay, what about if we're in the same scenario, I'm struggling to hit my calorie intake and you can see that I'm a bit low on carbs, but because I'm feeling so full and also I have a bit of, I'm struggling to get in that amount of carbs because I don't fully believe in carbs yet. I'm like more of the old school low carb keto person. So I'm asking you if it's okay that I. skimp on the carbs and rather just like eat more nuts and oil so that I can get my calories to where we want them to be. Would that be okay in the gaining phase? Yeah, I think I would still really like seeing more carbs because that will be better for performance in general for recovery and it's gonna help you build that muscle. But yeah, it's fats, it's also okay. Right. But I would like to see, okay, what are we? Like what are we struggling with? Is it a meal timing thing? How many meals do we have? When do we feel extra full? Should we have an extra meal? Should we introduce a smoothie? So there's, there's always nuance and like context, you know, so it really depends. For a muscle gain phase, I've seen the higher carb approach always work best. But that doesn't mean we can't go a little bit extra fat, you know what I mean? It is fine. just control how fast you're gaining. That would be a big one. With the healthy fats, because we do want to have them as well, I think this is where nutrition is also just supposed to be seasonal. Because I think if we always push one certain, let's take runners for example, right? If we always just focus on that, I think it would be healthy to maybe introduce a season where, hey, you know what, let's take that down a little bit. because first of all, we're only training one energy system. We're doing something that's really heavy, like impact on the joints, right? Okay. We've been really pushing the carbs, for example. Hey, maybe we actually want to switch a little bit because your body gets used to everything you do. Let's maybe move into a different kind of season of life. Because if you look at any pro athlete, for example, in any sport, it's seasonal, right? It's your pre -season, your in -season and post. That's exactly what our three phases are based on as well in our coaching, right? That's the idea. That's the principle. So maybe we can actually go into a different season where it is maybe a little bit more like a more just health focused season where we kind of take that down a bit. We introduce some different kinds of training. We do some weightlifting stuff like with an app like yours, for example, or we change it up. At least we train some different energy systems. Hey, maybe we can still do some cardio, but like zone one, two, whatever. We can also make changes on the nutrition side to hey, maybe let's go a little bit higher fat Go into a little bit more of a recovery like health focused season Because if we're thinking eating for health, yeah, those healthy fats like they're gonna be Probably Slightly more important than carbs, although I would still want to see both make sense I know there's there's so many like it depends like size to this but I also don't want to sound like I'm always kind of saying hey like you don't need those facts like no you absolutely do Yeah, but everything in its in its time everything has its time and place. Yeah Perfect. Thank you so much for answering I know that my people will be and they are very grateful and I also wanted to talk about as you mentioned when we started Like social settings holidays and vacations Easter is coming up