Kyla Channell
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Kelly: [0:00:04] Hey everyone, I’m Dr. Kelly Starrett.

Juliet: [0:00:06] And I’m Juliet Starrett.

Kelly: [0:00:08] And you’re listening to The Ready State Podcast.

[music]

Juliet: [0:00:17] This episode of The Ready State Podcast is brought to you by Momentous Omega-3’s.

Kelly: [0:00:22] Yeah, I want to get into this. You and I came about in the ‘90s, 2000s, really training, and fish oil was a thing.

Juliet: [0:00:29] We were taking like Costco fish oil though. 

Kelly: [0:00:31] Ew.

Juliet: [0:00:031] Ew.

Kelly: [0:00:31] Yeah, it turns out not all fish oil is the same.

Juliet: [0:00:34] Created equal.

Kelly: [0:00:35] For sure. I want to talk about the way we think about fish oil as a food. And we don’t eat a lot of fish in our family. I try to go out for the tuna sashimi whenever I can. But our kids our anti-fish. Caroline specifically, very anti-fish.

Juliet: [0:00:50] She’s very anti-fish.

Kelly: [0:00:51] She’s dramatic when it comes to fish. But I’ve trained her in the morning because I’m the best dad ever, #, she will take an omega-3 pill from Momentous. And it doesn’t… She was like, “I’m going to burp it up.” And I’m like, “Nope.” And you won’t. And I test drove that on black coffee and fish oil, which I normally don’t do. I did that for you, tested it. But the idea is, man, we have to be getting some of these essential aspects of good nutrition in, and we don’t eat a lot of fish in our family.

Juliet: [0:01:16] And what’s cool is the omega-3’s that are in Momentous Omega-3’s are the most easily absorbed in the body, which I’m sure also helps with not having fish burps after the fact.

Kelly: [0:01:28] Yeah, and we’re always about what’s the minimum effective dose. We’re not taking massive amounts. Another thing that matters for me, third party tested. This stuff is clean, pure, doesn’t have a lot of impurities, doesn’t have any impurities. I mean this is the fish oil I take for a reason.

Juliet: [0:01:41] This is good stuff. You guys should try it. Head over to thereadystate.com/momentous and use code TRS for 20 percent off your first purchase.

Juliet: [0:01:50] This episode of The Ready State Podcast is brought to you by ChiliSleep.

Kelly: [0:01:54] Dude, we’ve got to talk about it, we’re in the middle of a heat wave when we’re recording this right now.

Juliet: [0:01:56] It is so hot.

Kelly: [0:01:59] We just set an all-time record.

Juliet: [0:02:00] It was like 113 degrees where we live.

Kelly: [0:02:02] Guess who doesn’t have air conditioning?

Juliet: [0:02:04] Starretts.

Kelly: [0:02:06] That’s right. We live in a mid-century modern house that just didn’t believe in air conditioning at the time.

Juliet: [0:02:09] Well, I don’t think they needed air conditioning.

Kelly: [0:02:10] Well, guess why you don’t need air conditioning? Because I sleep on a Dock Pro, I sleep on the greatest thing. My sheet was ice cold all night long. And guess what? I actually pulled the cover over me because I was so comfortable. This thing is a game changer.

Juliet: [0:02:26] Yeah. It doesn’t even need to be 113 degrees in a house with no air conditioning for this to be a game changer. It’s really improved our sleep, our sleep quality, we wake up feeling better and more refreshed. This is a serious thing in the Starrett household.

Kelly: [0:02:39] If you sleep cold, we’ve got you covered. This thing will run warm water underneath your sheet. If you sleep hot like most of us, not like you maniacs out there, I have had my life changed by not sweating through the bed in the night.

Juliet: [0:055] Seriously. It’s life changing. We can’t recommend this product enough. Head on over to chilisleep.com/trs to learn more and save off the purchase of any Cube, Cooler-

Kelly: [0:03:05] Do it. Do it.

Juliet: [0:03:06] Or Dock Pro sleep system. There’s an offer available exclusively for The Ready State Podcast listeners, and only for a limited time. That’s chilisleep.com/trs to take advantage of our exclusive discount and wake up refreshed every day.

Kelly: [0:03:22] Because what do you do?

Juliet: [0:03:23] Just like us.

Kelly: [0:03:23] What are you afraid of? Sleep?

Juliet: [0:03:25] Being awesome.

Juliet: [0:03:27] Kyla Channell holds a master of science degree with honors in nutrition and human performance. She wrote her thesis on training stress and menstrual dysfunction. She holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of California of Davis in clinical nutrition and she’s also a coach. Presently, Kyla is the owner and operator of her own nutrition consulting company called Nutritional Revolution where she works one on one with clients and offers a variety of other services like recipe books and training programs for endurance and other athletes.

Kelly: [0:03:59] Yeah. This is such an important conversation because so much of what we have come to understand about performance nutrition really came out of endurance nutrition. And I feel like we went through this phase of ‘90s and 2000s where it was like every gel was hyper precise and then there was this revolution back towards-

Juliet: [0:04:17] Normal food.

Kelly: [0:04:17] Right. You must eat a hamburger while you run because it’s a whole food. And all of a sudden, we’re realizing if you’re not paying attention to some of these details when you go long—hydration, sweat loss, fueling—you can’t go as fast as you want to go.

Juliet: [0:04:30] The other thing I thought was so interesting we learned right at the beginning is that there aren’t that many actual programs in sports nutrition and this is really something that these experts kind of have to learn on the job by working with athletes and studying the literature and that’s what Kyla’s done.

Kelly: [0:04:44] We have two daughters, we talk to a lot of families, there is a lot of third rails out there around being a little too obsessed with your nutrition, eating for body composition. But I really refreshed because we’re talking about not eating to lose weight but eating-

Juliet: [0:05:03] For performance.

Kelly: [0:05:03] To run a marathon as fast as you possibly can.

Juliet: [0:05:06] Spend 12 hours swim, bike, and running.

Kelly: [0:05:08] People don’t do that. We don’t get to have that conversation very much. And it’s interesting how you’re going to turn the dial up and turn it back down because I feel like people are really lost about what they need to eat and fuel.

Juliet: [0:05:16] So in full disclosure, Kyla is a dear friend of ours and member of our Failed State Bike Club. But the other thing is she’s been really important in changing how we approach our own nutrition, especially when we go for longer bike rides, in the form of we actually eat before and during.

Kelly: [0:05:33] Intra carbs. As you’ll learn, carbs are king.

Juliet: [0:05:35] Carbs are king.

Kelly: [0:05:36] This is a really great conversation. Kyla is a smarty pants. And if you walk out of this, I think you’ll have some better tools to understand a little bit different framework about how and why you should eat for performance.

Juliet: [0:05:50] Enjoy our conversation with Kyla Channell. 

Juliet: [0:05:53] Hey Ready State listeners, if you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes to help others find our show.

Juliet: [0:06:00] Kyla, welcome to The Ready State Podcast.

Kyla Channell: [0:06:03] Thank you guys for having me. 

Kelly: [0:06:05] Okay, wait, where are you coming from? Where are you podcasting from?

Kyla Channell: [0:06:08] I’m podcasting kind of over the hill from you guys in West Marin in a little town called Woodacre in my office; my home office.

Kelly: [0:06:17] And that’s the setup because you are a member of the Failed State Bike Club. You’re one of the founding members. We ride with you. You’re one of our good friends. And I want to set this up for everyone, one of the people that has highly influenced how we fuel for sport. So I just want to set this up for everyone.

Juliet: [0:06:32] And we’ll probably repeat this multiple times in the thing, but what I can start by saying is when I first started riding with Kyla, I would not eat anything before the ride and not eat anything during the ride and I’d be like, I wonder why I don’t feel so great, whatever. So anyway, I’ve learned a lot. We can talk more about that.

Kelly: [0:06:48] Baby, you felt fine. You were just slow. 

Juliet: [0:06:48] I was slow. I mean and I still am slow. But anyway, so Kyla, welcome, we’re stoked to talk to you. I just want to go really way back to the beginning because I think it’s sort of interesting. I’m not even sure Kelly knows this. Maybe he does. But back to your childhood.

Kelly: [0:07:03] Whoa. No, I don’t know this. Tell me more.

Juliet: [0:07:06] Your mom was like the Marin County sheriff.

Kyla Channell: [0:07:09] Kind of.

Juliet: [0:07:11] Okay. Well, you can say about what your mom was. But tell us what it was like to have a mom who did what your mom did and growing up like that.

Kyla Channell: [0:07:19] Yeah, my mom was the first ever female highway patrol officer in the Marin County Office. And I’m sure that made her pretty tough and that’s probably why she is the way she is. So yeah, grew up with a lot of fear I think would be the best way to say it.

Kelly: [0:07:39] Serious question: Fear for you or fear for your friends?

Kyla Channell: [0:07:41] Probably both. Fear for my life. No, she’s shared a lot of scary stuff. As a child, I mean goodness, every car accident type of crash you could imagine she was telling me about. Or before I could drive, people who would kidnap children. You name it, she drove the fear into my brain.

Juliet: [0:08:01] Is that a lingering fear or were you able to be… Are you the most conservative, amazing driver, or are you kind of like, nope, I’m just going to ride with the wind?

Kyla Channell: [0:08:12] Yeah. I think I’m a very good driver now. I did get a speeding ticket in high school.

Kelly: [0:08:21] Ooh.

Kyla Channell: [0:08:22] Yes. But now I am a very good driver. No speeding. Actually, when we go on road trips, my dad actually drives significantly faster than me, which is a bit concerning. So Sid might argue that point though – my husband. 

Kelly: [0:08:34] The firefighter. But he’s got the jaws of life in his back pocket, so he’s good to go.

Kyla Channell: [0:08:38] Exactly. Yes.

Kelly: [0:08:40] Juliet tees this up perfectly because you grew up in Marin. You’re kind of a local Davis grad. You’re still here and Marin has a lot of superstar cyclists, runners, sort of outdoor athletes. How did you come to understanding and occupying your role around nutrition, given that you were in the Bay Area? How did you find that and ended up specializing in that because I want to get into where you came from, but I think that is an interesting piece around there’s a depth of nutrition power here, not too long ago, and there still is. Can you explain that?

Kyla Channell: [0:09:16] Yeah. Well, I mean I think in Marin we’re just very lucky. We have amazing grocery stores and there’s tons of local farms, out in West Marin. So we get access to a lot of amazing quality, like fresh, whole, real foods. And then there’s… Yeah, it is easy. So what kind of got me into nutrition is discovering that I had celiac in high school and everything kind of made since why I had to leave every sleepover as a child because I was in immense pan from the pizza party.

Kelly: [0:09:53] Did you make that connection yourself or did someone else do it for you?

Juliet: [0:09:55] Yeah, tell us that story a little bit.

Kelly: [0:09:56] That’s pretty crazy.

Juliet: [0:09:56] I mean tell us the celiac story.

Kyla Channell: [0:09:58] So I was having just stomach pain for a while and I didn’t know. Celiac wasn’t really a thing. That was back in early 2000s. And it was not a thing that was talked about. So I had gone to a couple gastroenterologists and they just, they’re like, “It’s IBS. Take a probiotic.” And that did not solve the issue.  So eventually they ended up figuring out what was going on and then the solution was just avoid it, which was fun to learn and figure out, which led me into a lot of baking and making my own food from home.

Kelly: [0:10:36] You were saying in 2000 there weren’t a ton of gluten free options?

Juliet: [0:10:38] Yeah, I mean I just want to set the stage here that it’s like you can buy gluten free now, but I mean even 10 years ago, it was like, whoa, there’s one gluten free cookie on this weird little side aisle. But it’s like when you were first diagnosed with it, there was nothing. And it was kind of weird. You’d be like a weirdo. It’d be like, what, you don’t eat gluten?

Kyla Channell: [0:10:56] Yeah. Some people still look at me as a weirdo.

Kelly: [0:11:00] But also, what’s gluten?

Juliet: [0:11:01] Yeah, also, what’s gluten?

Kyla Channell: [0:11:03] Yeah. What is it? I joke with people and tell them I’m not a fun person to go out to dinner with. But I feel like there are a lot of fun options nowadays and it has become a lot easier. And so many other people have other allergies, so.

Kelly: [0:11:17] Yeah, joke’s on you and Sid, your husband. You guys are both jacked and fast. Ha ha.

Kyla Channell: [0:11:23] See what gluten did. Didn’t do.

Kelly: [0:11:26] Do you feel like, just as an aside because we’ll get back to the main thing here, but do you feel like being a celiac has been hijacked by people who are like I’m gluten intolerant, and do you feel like you’re like, no, you just shouldn’t smash a whole pizza and drink a pitcher of beer by yourself; I actually, my gut dies when I eat gluten. Do you feel like those things have been sort of conflated?

Kyla Channell: [0:11:47] Yeah. I think there are a lot of people avoiding gluten definitely who don’t need to, for sure. I think it became just like a popular thing to do. Kind of like going vegan at one point was very popular to do or cutting dairy was very popular to do. It became a trend. I think if you can tolerate gluten, by all means, it can be a great part of your diet. So why not enjoy it?

Kelly: [0:12:08] Listen to you, sounding so reasonable.

Juliet: [0:12:10] So reasonable.

Kelly: [0:12:10] From the other side of the fence.

Juliet: [0:12:11] Can I tell you one quick celiac story about Kelly? Kelly actually diagnosed way back in the early days before anyone knew what celiac was our friend Molly as being… He suggested to her that she might be a celiac. And she was in her like mid to late 20s I think at that point. And she had become a fine artist. And after-

Kelly: [0:12:30] She was having like Hashimoto’s and crazy stuff.

Juliet: [0:12:32] Yeah, it was serious.

Kelly: [0:12:32] And I was like, huh, this is like an autoimmune thing, I wonder what’s up.

Juliet: [0:12:35] Yeah, so Kelly said, “Go have them check and see if you’re celiac.” And she was. And the funny story that she always said is that if I had learned as a child that I was a celiac and didn’t go to school feeling horrible all the time and-

Kelly: [0:12:48] Foggy.

Juliet: [0:12:48] With a stomachache and foggy, she was like I definitely would have been like an investment banker and not an artist. 

Kyla Channell: [0:12:54] Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. 

Kelly: [0:12:57] She’s like I just thought you ate breakfast and then you feel like shit.

Juliet: [0:13:01] Yeah, yeah. Because she’s older than you too. So it was like everybody just ate a giant trough of Lucky Charms for breakfast. And so she would eat that and then feel horrible and foggy at school. So anyway, that’s my celiac story and Kelly.

Kelly: [0:13:14] Okay. So I feel like there’s so many times when people discover something about themselves and you sort of become interested and you’re into cooking. What’s the next step because you work with a lot of very high-level athletes, and you have a specialty. In your coaching group, how did you get to there? How did you get to college where you’re like I’m going to study nutrition and then back into where you are now?

Kyla Channell: [0:13:39] Yeah. I mean nutrition became of interest for sure with the celiac thing. And then I played basketball in high school and had anemia. And that was a big game changer. I also learned a little bit about electrolytes. I look back and realize it now. My dad was having me drink pickle juice when I would play basketball. Maybe electrolytes weren’t as popular then. I don’t even know. But it made a big difference, when you’re actually hydrated. So he got me into mountain biking when I was in high school. And I think a lot of my nutrition desires and schooling there was really just biased self-interest, 100 percent. I wanted to learn more about how to help me and help me be healthy and what are things I can do to live a longer, healthier life and well fueled and support the sports I want to do. 

And I got into Davis and did, at the time it was a clinical dietetics program was offered. So sports nutrition was not much of a thing, honestly, at the time. It’s even hard to find a sports nutrition undergrad or master’s program now. At the time, the workaround was to do a double major in clinical and then kinesiology, and then it was up to you to put those pieces together. But in your nutrition courses, you never learned about sport. It was all how do you set up these specific ratios for a tube feeding patient in a hospital. It was very different.

Kelly: [0:15:14] Not about performance.

Juliet: [0:15:15] Not how do you fuel for a five hour triathlon or something and how and when and what do you eat.

Kyla Channell: [0:15:22] Yeah. So in the clinical dietetics program, the requirement is to do three different internships. It’s a community nutrition, food service management, and a clinical nutrition internship. And so I did all three of those. And there was an internship offered by Dr. Liz Applegate, who ran the whole D1, sports nutrition, at Davis, for a sports nutrition internship on campus with the athletes. And it was not required and it wasn’t as well known. And I applied to it and did it and I absolutely fell in love. When I did my clinical nutrition at the hospital, it’s one of those things where I’m so happy I did it because I knew right then and there, I never wanted to go down that path, harsh as that sounds. But it’s one of those things where it was a big eye opener for me where I knew I didn’t want to go that direction. And then when you get to do the sports nutrition stuff, everything kind of clicked. Yeah, and fell in love. 

And then after Davis, I got to work with Dr. Stacy Sims when she was still at Osmo. And she really took me under her wing. I actually was going back and forth from Davis, I’d come home on the weekends and coach CrossFit, and Stacy was one of my CrossFit clients. So she just pulled me under her wing and opened my eyes to the whole sex differences in sport stuff, which was really neat, and yeah, trained me to take over her position at Purple Patch working with athletes. And then started my own private practice, went to grad school, did all that fun stuff. And here I am today. 

Juliet: [0:17:04] Okay, so private practice is not what I would have thought of when you describe your business. But I mean I guess that’s what it is. But tell us what it is. It’s called Nutritional Revolution? I think of you more as like an entrepreneur nutritionist than as a private practitioner, but tell us-

Kelly: [0:17:20] I’m a private practitioner in the same way that you are. But that’s super weird. I would never describe myself that way either.

Juliet: [0:17:28] Yeah. So tell us about the company and what you do and who do you serve and what’s going on.

Kyla Channell: [0:17:33] Yeah, so company, like you said, it’s Nutritional Revolution, and started by me in the beginning days working with athletes and it kind of evolved from the Purple Patch situation to when I was working at Purple Patch, I was working solely with… They primarily focus on Iron Man athletes so a lot of long distance, endurance, nutrition and hydration programming. And then I started my own Nutritional Revolution to help people who are non Purple Patch athletes. And that’s just kind of grown and grown. And continue to work with primarily endurance athletes: runners, gravel cyclists, Iron Man, you name it, runners, all kinds of stuff. Even ultra runners. We get some fun, unique sports like tactical athletes every once in a while. But yeah, primarily work on whether it’s day to day nutrition, if it’s specific sweat testing and gut training. We might do race build, so breaking down their requirements for certain durations in heat and humidity and what those requirements are. So lots of math.

Kelly: [0:18:42] I’m going to play dumb here for a second, but is it that specific, can hydration and nutrition… I think about the average person, like I go to the gym, I work out, do I need… I mean besides really trying to dial in body composition and quality, for sure, I mean does that aspect of nutrition really matter at the highest levels for folks? Because I feel like I’m good enough, I did my CrossFit workout, I eat some food, I don’t really need to do differently in my CrossFit program, do I? Does nutrition make a big difference towards these longer durations?

Kyla Channell: [0:19:15] I would say 100 percent nutrition and hydration makes a difference. You will not finish if you do not program your nutrition and hydration accordingly. I mean some of these people are out on the course for 12 hours. And when we learn about their sweat losses, some of these people are losing 86 ounces an hour. So if you think about that times 12, if you’re not getting some fluids in you-

Kelly: [0:19:38] A vampire who hasn’t eaten another human being in a long time.

Juliet: [0:19:42] So Kyla, what does it look like for one of these, I mean like maybe just give us some snapshot of some athlete who’s going to do a five-hour triathlon or, I don’t know, you choose the time. But what does that actually look like? What are you advising their eating and drinking? I realize it’s individualized because again, you’re measuring things like sweat loss and everybody has different body composition. But just generally speaking. And the reason I bring this up is because I think people need-

Kelly: [0:20:09] Because Juliet and I are the same size and we need to eat the same amount.

Juliet: [0:20:12] Yeah. I mean I think generally speaking, those kinds of athletes, in order to perform at the level they are, are eating and drinking way more than people realize. So I don’t know, can you give a day in the life in the race of an endurance athlete eating and drinking?

Kyla Channell: [0:20:28] Yeah. So I was just building a race plan right before I hopped on the podcast with you guys. So one of my clients, he is an older male. He’s doing Maple Valley, 70.3, so that’s a half Iron Man distance. And he’s going to be-

Kelly: [0:20:44] Oh, just a half Iron Man. I see.

Kyla Channell: [0:20:46] Yeah. Just a half Iron Man. He’s in his 60s, by the way. Yeah. I’m constantly impressed by my clients. They’re so inspiring. We calculate out what his time will be in each event. So it starts with a swim, you go to the bike, and then you finish with a run. And he guesstimated he would be swimming for an hour, on the bike for three and a half hours, and running for two and a half hours. And then we have to account for transition times, things like that. So he’s not going to be eating or drinking while he’s swimming, so we have to account for getting those fluids in, that nutrition in him on the bike and in the run. Many times, with endurance athletes like this, the run is a harder place for people to definitely have a desire to drink, but just more prone to GI issues, just the stomach jostling and stuff.

Kelly: [0:21:35] And let me just say, I ran one race ever, that was like I did the Quad Dipsea.

Kyla Channell: [0:21:40] Oh nice.

Kelly: [0:21:41] Let me just tell you how fun it is to eat anything or drink anything when you’re jogging.

Juliet: [0:21:45] No. Yeah, no, no.

Kelly: [0:21:47] Much less racing. I don’t race. I was surviving and I was like, mmm, I don’t think I’m going to eat on this one. No, I’m done drinking today.

Kyla Channell: [0:21:54] Yes, that’s the reason why I want to become a gravel biker with Juliet, so we can just stop at all the coffee shops and eat all the pastries, get all the coffee.

Juliet: [0:22:04] Cappuccino and pastries. 

Kyla Channell: [0:22:05] Yeah. The gluten free pastries. Yeah, so with something like that, we had this client sweat test.

Kelly: [0:22:11] What does that mean?

Kyla Channell: [0:22:12] The simplest explanation or way to sweat test is hopping on a scale immediately before you start your training session, going through your training session, and then hopping on the scale immediately after your training session to assess for weight loss.

Kelly: [0:22:25] And that’s even like I’m drinking, I’m doing my normal thing?

Kyla Channell: [0:22:28] Yeah. So you are drinking. Say it’s a session, maybe he went for a two-hour bike ride that we’re sweat testing for, you do want to account for, and we basically add back in, we have a whole calculator equation system, where we will account for fluids coming in. So he’s hydrating during. And then if we want to get nitty gritty about it, we can even weigh foods that he’s consumed and come back and weigh the empty wrappers to get super detailed with it, to assess fluid losses in certain environments. So we can then go back and say, okay, when client x was sweat testing in 55 degrees, he was losing 18 ounces an hour and then when he switched up and started sweat testing in 85 degrees, his sweat rate when all the way up to 45 ounces an hour. And so then we have a reference range to look back on.

Kelly: [0:23:16] Forty-five ounces. Are those actual numbers that you’ve seen before because I think if someone is like, wow, a soda pop is 12 ounces and I’ve lost four cans of soda pop in an hour, is that a reasonable amount of sweat loss? That’s not a made-up number? Oh.

Kyla Channell: [0:23:31] That’s actually low. That’s a moderate… So I just had to do a bunch of stuff pulled together for a hydration podcast I did, and one of the things we were looking at in the literature is a common rate of loss is one to two—they put it in the metric system—so one to two liters per hour. So that’s 33 to 67 ounces per hour is the normal more common place to be, up to four liters per hour they see in some athletes.

Kelly: [0:24:01] So if my name happened to rhyme with Nelly Narnett, you’re saying that I might need to drink a lot more on-

Juliet: [0:24:09] I think maybe you and I don’t need to bring the same amount of water bottles on our bike rides.

Kelly: [0:24:13] I don’t think we do. Food is a really tricky subject out there right now. I have seen you really… You’re one of our good friends, I have coached you for it feels like a long time. I see you talking about eating whole foods whenever you can because I think when people think endurance, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you eat a gel or a GU when we’re riding. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I think it is. I haven’t seen one. But you really are, have been a proponent towards whole foods. Can people do these races, do they need to be like, oh, I’m going to go run a 10k, I immediately adapt to drinking this sugar paste. Do I have to do that in order to do these things?

Kyla Channell: [0:24:54] Yeah, that’s tricky. I mean I would say the more recreational athlete, likely no. I think when you start getting to a higher level of performance, like the competitiveness is very serious, it might be more in your favor to rely a little bit on the simpler stuff. But for our Failed State Bike Club rides, we’re stopping and chatting. And so relying on a quick sugar digesting thing I don’t feel is necessary for something like that. If I were out going, doing maybe interval work, something like that, I might bring along something like that, like a quick digesting gel. But I think you can get away with using more real food stuff. Where you can start to get in trouble is there’s some things that will just slow gastric emptying. And so if an athlete is-

Kelly: [0:25:44] Wait, wait, wait. What does that mean? What’s gastric emptying?

Kyla Channell: [0:25:46] So how fast something empties out of your stomach into the small intestine.

Kelly: [0:25:50] Why does that matter?

Kyla Channell: [0:25:51] So if anybody listening to this has noticed burping, vomiting, stomach sloshing, diarrhea, any of that stuff-

Kelly: [0:26:01] Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying that’s bad.

Kyla Channell: [0:26:02] Yeah, that’s not fun. It’s not fun.

Juliet: [0:26:05] People don’t want to have diarrhea when they’re running a marathon.

Kelly: [0:26:08] The reason I mention it is that happens all the time. 

Kyla Channell: [0:26:09] It does. Yeah.

Kelly: [0:26:10] People feel terrible when they fuel and they go long or they up their intensity. I mean this is a real thing. 

Kyla Channell: [0:26:17] Yeah.

Kelly: [0:26:19] You even hinted at gut training. Can you talk about what that means just a sec because I want you to come back to this. You said gut training earlier and I was like, ooh. Because I do gut training with cookies every night.

Kyla Channell: [0:26:30] There you go. Exactly. So gut training is a little bit newer I would say kind of area that’s being a bit more publicized. But just as an example, there are Tour de France athletes consuming 120 grams of carbohydrates per hour while they’re racing. So for a really long time, there was this kind of takeaway from the research that you could not consume more than 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour.

Kelly: [0:26:54] That’s a really clean number. Not 61, 60. All humans are the same.

Kyla Channell: [0:26:59] Exactly. Yeah, they determined one gram of carbohydrate per minute is what the research showed. And what they realized then is that they were only looking at one type of sugar, which is glucose. And it did seem that in fact glucose kind of tapped out at 60 grams per hour. So then research started to look at combining two types of sugars. And the common mix is a little bit of fructose and the 60 grams of glucose. So they’ll do a two to one is most common: 30 grams of fructose, 60 grams of glucose to tap out at 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour. Because fructose utilizes a different intestinal transporter to get into our system. So basically, they were saying the glucose molecule kind of backed up, tapped out, filled up all the sodium glucose transporters, and then you would need a different sugar to come in to then continue to get more energy to exceed 60 grams of carbs per hour. What we’re seeing now is that you can in fact gut train. So you can train the gut to tolerate and absorb more than 60 grams, more than 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour.

Kelly: [0:28:09] Girl, I could have told you this. You should have seen me put down a whole bunch of Georgia’s cookies. I can way exceed 100 grams an hour in cookies.

Juliet: [0:28:16] Except for you’re putting down Georgia’s cookies and then sitting on the couch.

Kelly: [0:28:21] That’s because it’s the only thing I can do. Oh, run a marathon? Oh, just saying.

Juliet: [0:28:23] This is a different kind of gut training, Kelly. This is a different kind of gut training. 

Kyla Channell: [0:28:27] This is strictly related to consumption in a state of exertion. So yeah, you can easily consume, I’m sure take down more than 120 grams when you’re chilling on the couch, right? But yeah, in a state of exertion, there is decreased blood flow to the gut, so it can increase the likelihood of GI distress or irritation. And so when we gut train, and gut training consists of slowly increasing your intake of carbohydrate per hour in your training sessions. Ideally, these are training sessions that represent some or include some race pace intervals or something like that. So it simulates the race as best as we can. And you’re consuming these carbohydrates and you’re just increasing incrementally, up a little bit each week. 

And in doing that, we see that you can do three things. You can increase how quickly the stomach empties into the small intestine. So you’re not leaving the food sitting around in the stomach, which can lead to burping, is one thing, vomiting, for sure, nausea, if it’s hanging out there too long. And then emptying out of the stomach is cool but we want to make sure that we actually absorb it out of the small intestine. So the next thing that can happen when we gut train is we can actually increase the amount of carbohydrate receptors that are lining the small intestine to then pull those carbohydrates out rapidly and then actually be put into the bloodstream and used as energy. So those two things are really important. And then the third thing is we can decrease just the perception of gut discomfort over multiple gut training sessions. So that’s usually what we’re aiming for when we’re gut training.

Kelly: [0:30:00] By the way, this doesn’t sound fun at all. Eat this sandwich; now eat a little bit more.

Juliet: [0:30:03] Now I just want to go back and I want to go back to our 60-year-old triathlete guy. So you’ve sweat tested him. So you’re going to make sure that he drinks per hour the right amount of fluids to replace or exceed that. And then what’s he actually… Like what’s the guy going to eat? Like what’s he going to be eating during this thing?

Kyla Channell: [0:30:23] Yeah. So this client in particular, I’ll just give this as reference, but I will say many clients are very different. I’ll always check with them on what products they want to use and then based off of the sweat test data, we may tweak things, when we actually find out sweat sodium concentration. So many times, there are gels out there or products out there where they’re meant to be a fuel source, more so a fuel source because they’re very carbohydrate dominant, but when you actually look at the sodium content, it is very low. And everyone is so unique in their sweat losses and fluid losses and sodium concentration in their sweat. So I highly suggest doing that. But this individual, he’s actually using… Do you want me to say product names?

Kelly: [0:31:05] Sure.

Juliet: [0:31:05] That’s fine.

Kyla Channell: [0:31:06] Okay. He’s using Tailwind which is a liquid carbohydrate and electrolyte formula, in addition to GU gels. And so this is something he’s used for a long time; his gut’s very used to it. He actually has never had any GI issues. He’s one of my very lucky clients in that manner. And he’s consuming 114 grams of carbohydrate per hour in that combo. So he’s doing one and a half servings of his Tailwind per hour, plus three GUs an hour. So about every 20 minutes he’s taking down a gel and along with that he’s sipping his Tailwind product. 

Kelly: [0:31:45] Because he’s going out for six or seven hours.

Juliet: [0:31:49] So obviously, a recreational athlete wouldn’t need to be eating that much per hour. But what would that look like because we’re talking about GUs and you’re talking about something you’re putting inside his water bottle, the Tailwind stuff. But if you were to turn that into food that people could relate to, is that like three GoMacro bars that he’s eating per hour? Relate it to some kind of food that people understand what it is to explain how much he’s actually eating.

Kyla Channell: [0:32:17] Yeah, so just for some fast math, so 114 grams of carbs per hour is equivalent to roughly almost six bananas an hour, just for reference there.

Juliet: [0:32:30] Okay. All right. See, that’s helpful.  Yeah. That’s really helpful to know.

Kelly: [0:32:34] Two banana club is my jam. Can I eat two bananas in a single setting? I’m feeling dangerous. But six bananas an hour, whoo. I’m going to have to up my game.

Juliet: [0:32:42] Do you think you could actually do it?

Kelly: [0:32:45] Let me ask you this: One of the things that we’ve seen is, look, Stacy is a great friend of ours, Dr. Sims. I’ve aimed her at some serious people before. I know that you all are experts in this. One of the things that I have perceived is that parents especially think performance especially nutrition, especially as we go for performance endurance sports, not I’m going for a hike and I’m just going to keep my heart-rate at 135 for the next six hours. That’s a different fueling need. They have taken those precepts and aimed them back at their kid for a 20-minute event or a single soccer game and there’s real confusion there. Could you shed some light on it? If Juliet and I are going for an hour bike ride, what do I need to eat? Do I need to eat? How should I think about that?

Juliet: [0:33:33] Yeah, or like a CrossFit, whatever, CrossFit, you go to like a one hour fitness class or a one hour bike ride.

Kelly: [0:33:40] Or do I need to worry about my kids playing a water polo game, watch your sweat loss and choke this down. Are those things different?

Kyla Channell: [0:33:50] Yes and no. I mean I do work with some high school athletes, specifically swimmers and water polo players, and there are some of them that are putting in more hours a day than my Iron Man athletes. So in both situations, they need to eat like it’s their job. 

Kelly: [0:34:07] Let me stop it there. Do you think that that’s different than performance nutrition, like they’re smashing gels and drinking calories versus chronically undereating, which is one of the things that we see massively? We were just talking to a whole bunch of families of boys who are athlete swimmers and water polo players and the boys were talking about gaining weight. And we’re like, you’re barely eating what you need to maintain your current body weight. You’re losing weight during the season. Gain weight? It’s a joke. You’re not even eating enough food to cover your basic nutrition needs. 

Kyla Channell: [0:34:38] Yeah. I think that is really common. I see that with high school athletes as well as adults in sports. I think that there is some under fueling that can be going on for sure, just outside of training, definitely in training as well. But yeah, I’ve seen that. Particularly, so not enough carbohydrate; there’s such a carbohydrate fear.

Kelly: [0:35:02] Carbs make you fat, bro. Everyone knows that. Just kidding, everyone. Lisa just checked her watch. She’s noting the time. That’s when the internet killed Kelly.

Kyla Channell: [0:35:12] I mean I think probably when I’m saying carbs, people are picturing Starbucks muffins and cakes and stuff like that. But carbohydrates are also beans and rice and sweet potato. There’s more micronutrient dense ways to get in carbohydrates as well. And you don’t need to be afraid of those things. And actually, they’re hugely beneficial to performance and definitely endurance performance as well.

Juliet: [0:35:40] Hi guys, we want to take a little break in this podcast episode to actually tell you about one of our own products, and that’s our Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach.

Kelly: [0:35:49] Yeah, the app literally is the first place you should go if you’re trying to feel better, if you’re trying to solve an old movement related problem, if you’re just trying to not be as sore from your workout. 

Juliet: [0:36:01] There is so much going on in this app. We have a mobility test that is comprehensive and designed by Kelly Starrett himself.

Kelly: [0:36:09] It’s pretty good. 

Juliet: [0:36:10] So you can figure out what your biggest limitations are and start to work on that. There are sport specific mobilizations if you want to try to lift more or run faster.

Kelly: [0:36:17] Fact.

Juliet: [0:36:17] There is a pain area. And we even have a ton of bonus content. You can do challenges around squat and ankle and a bunch of other specific body parts so you can just generally get more supple and awesome.

Kelly: [0:36:29] JStar, you’re killing it. You should talk about this app more often. We started the original mobility project back in 2010 trying to help people solve problems for themselves. We think that every human being should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves and we want you to be able to engage in some self-care in a really reasonable, responsible way. One of our favorite parts of it, daily mobility. You have a 10, 20, or 30 minute follow along with me. If you just have a ball and a roller, think you want to feel better, move better, play along. I mean we really feel like that’s the base camp practice and you can add in what you need.

Juliet: [0:37:03] We’re really proud of this and what we’ve created here and we think you should give it a try. Head on over to thereadystate.com/trial and use code Pod 20 for 20 percent off your first month. And just FYI, including your two-week free trial, that’s literally six weeks for $11.99. You can’t beat that. There’s so much amazing content to help you feel better and move better for $11.99.

Kelly: [0:37:27] In the words of our podcast producer: bananas. 

Juliet: [0:37:31] So Kyla, I know that your primary clientele are these serious people who need these very specific nutrition plans. But I also know since you’re my friend that you work with some normal people including some kids, like you said, and not just athletes, but also some kids that are struggling with eating disorders. And there’s two things that I’ve learned from you: One of them is low energy availability, which I think is a huge problem, especially in female youth athletes. And then I’ve never heard of it before, in fact, I was just telling Kelly about it the other day, a term called orthorexia, which I have to think is gigantically huge, especially in a place in Marin where people are so active and it’s so easy to hide behind your health habits, even if they’re unhealthy.

Kelly: [0:38:19] So break those two things down.

Juliet: [0:38:21] So yeah, could you break those down? What are those and what are you seeing?

Kyla Channell: [0:38:25] Yeah. So the first one you said was LEA, right, low energy availability. That term actually has evolved a little bit into RED… Well, there’s a couple of terminologies. At first it was Female Athlete Triad, which was we know that that is one thing, but also, low energy availability isn’t solely prominent in females; men can have low energy availability has well. And so the term has changed a little bit to RED-S or relative energy deficiency in sport. And it is kind of what it sounds like. I mean they’re not eating enough food. And sometimes that can be totally unintentional because of lack of appetite. So for example, runners tend to get a lack of appetite post training and sometimes it’s really hard to get them to eat some recovery nutrition right away and it takes a while. And that has to do with just elevations in fight or flight hormones and lack of blood flow to the gut and stuff like that. And then orthorexia, that’s a little bit-

Kelly: [0:39:23] This is why I don’t run, everybody, because running made me not hungry; I’m out.

Juliet: [0:39:26] Yeah, you’re like, no thank you.

Kelly: [0:39:27] This is crap.

Kyla Channell: [0:39:29] Exactly. And then orthorexia, it can be an obsession with clean eating too. So only eating organic or only eating vegetables or they have to be able to read the label. There can be a bit of an obsession there. And interestingly enough, I have seen that in a handful of Iron Man athletes. I think I find that a lot of them are very Type A and they want to do things right, and they think eating loads and loads of veggies is the right way to go, which yes, we need those, but what ends up happening is they get so full off of veggies that they’re not getting anywhere near their carbohydrate target that they’re not getting anywhere near the hours and hours and hours that they’re putting in of training per day. And it can set them up in these states of relative energy deficiency or low energy availability. And when we don’t have enough energy circulating around our body to help us do the things we want to do, the body’s going to start kind of cutting costs, if you will, in areas that it can. And that might be not allocating as much energy to building your bones up. It might be not allocating as much energy into your sex hormones, so we see women that are losing menstrual cycles or we’ll see men with low testosterone. The body’s really smart and it wants you to survive so it’s going to cut costs from somewhere. And it’s a little bit different for everybody, but definitely common areas are bone mineral density. We see a lot of increased injuries, fractures, stuff like that, and then loss of menstrual cycle in our female clients, unfortunately. 

Kelly: [0:41:05] If I’m trying to fuel for performance because I feel like every diet out there, or every eating regimen, is all geared toward calorie restriction, or being in the energy deficit or caloric deficit. Whether it’s Keto or intermittent fasting, people are trying to change their body composition. How much body composition work do you do? Or do you find those things are really at odds, that hey, we’re going to be fueling for performance, and also, Kelly, you’re too fat on the bike and you need to change something like that. Do you do that kind of thing too? Because I feel like that has just muddied the water. Everyone’s like I’m too fat for Instagram. And then I’m like, by the way, you’re eating in a way that you’re going to go slow the rest of your life. Are you finding that to be an issue?

Kyla Channell: [0:41:51] Yeah. Definitely. I think one of the things we have to educate our clients on quite often is when there is a weight loss goal or a body recompositioning goal, that timing that accordingly with where their races fall is really important. Because especially if the goal is weight loss, many times the things we need to do with nutrition are going to be almost opposite of what we want to do if the goal is performance. And so I think many times people, they want all the things, right? They want good performance, they want to lose weight, they want body recompositioning. But we can’t support performance when we put you in a caloric deficit to achieve weight loss. And so it’s timing those things accordingly and being comfortable with switching throughout the season. So we may in the early phases or off seasons, great times to work on body recompositioning when your goal’s not performance, for sure. And then when the goal’s performance, we need to up your intake and your carbs and shift some things around to support that.

Juliet: [0:42:55] So when you get… You see obviously a lot of new clients and maybe one of them is that, maybe I’m going to answer it myself, is that they shouldn’t fear carbs. But in this world where there’s still a massive amount of nutrition information and confusion and nobody knows whether they should fast or not fast or do Keto or be a vegan-

Kelly: [0:43:14] Cheetos are dangerous

Juliet: [0:43:14] Whatever. Is there one kind of big, what’s the big misconception? What are people coming knocking on your door that you’re having to constantly- 

Kelly: [0:43:24] And remember everyone, listeners, Kyla is coming from a performance nutrition perspective. You can talk to all of these different things, but that’s the lens we want you to be working with, right?

Juliet: [0:43:35] Yeah. But what’s the biggest misconception that you have to combat with your clientele?

Kyla Channell: [0:43:40] I think the most common thing we see and have to combat is the fear of carbohydrates. And we see time and time again in the literature that carbs are king. I’ll say that. But carbs do always outperform or support performance better than they’ve done studies looking at ketones or mixtures even including protein or amino acids. And carbohydrates always win. And so that is something where many times when we start doing the calculation based off of the literature what some of these athletes needs, it’s a big shock, an eye opener to them, of how much I would like to see them hitting, or how much they might need prior to a training session or even during a session.

Kelly: [0:44:27] But I want to go fast and you’re telling me I should have to eat this much. You can’t do that. Sorry. 

Kyla Channell: [0:44:34] Yes. But once they do it it’s so neat because immediately you hear from them and they’re like, “I felt so much better, I could go so much further in my run.” Or you hear that stuff. And their recovery’s better. And they’re not as fatigued and craving chips or popcorn and pretzels later in the day because they hit and replenish their glycogen following their training sessions and didn’t fully deplete themselves. So yeah. Carbohydrates.

Juliet: [0:44:57] I still think I could do better, Kyla, because I’ve only gone so far as eating before we ride, usually some protein and oats. And then sometimes I’ll have like half a bar.

Kelly: [0:45:11] But you’re not throwing down.

Juliet: [0:45:12] You think that’s fine.

Kelly: [0:45:13] In my nonexpert advice.

Juliet: [0:45:13] You think that’s fine. How am I doing?

Kelly: [0:45:14] You’re doing so much better.

Juliet: [0:45:16] Yeah, it’s true. I’m improving.

Kyla Channell: [0:45:17] You are. Caroline was eating like-

Kelly: [0:45:22] She had a pocket of sausage.

Kyla Channell: [0:45:24] Sausage or something. Yeah. 

Kelly: [0:45:26] You’re like, you know, I’m not sure that that’s when your fire’s really hot.

Juliet: [0:45:32] For context, we have a German woman who joins our bike club and literally has shown up with a pocket of bratwurst.

Kyla Channell: [0:45:40] Yeah. That’s what it was.

Kelly: [0:45:43] Okay. One of the things I think is really confusing for people is water and hydration is hydrate or die. I think the pendulum has swung back a little bit. You are really advocating for this idea of, hey, you’re losing all this water when you sweat, when you’re exercising, and you’re not really paying attention to that and you can get away with that for an hour or so but you can’t get away with it for a lot longer. One of the things I’ll add onto that is we have heard, hey, whenever you can, don’t drink your calories. Do you still ascribe to that generally?

Kyla Channell: [0:46:18] I think there’s really an exception to everything. So it’s hard to say in generalized-

Kelly: [0:46:22] Okay. So I’m a working dad who doesn’t want to get fat. Should I drink my calories?

Kyla Channell: [0:46:28] I would say probably not. 

Kelly: [0:46:29] Great. Okay. My heartrate is 180 for the next three hours, which is impossible. But let’s just pretend it was. Probably not going to be able to chew a sandwich while I’m racing fast, right? Is that a good example of why I might need to supplement with calories?

Kyla Channell: [0:46:45] Yeah. And the other place I see that it can be really helpful is, honestly, with my athletes who do lose their appetite post training, I tell them I’d rather see them get in something than nothing in that post training window. And so if they prefer to rely on a liquid recovery source, whether that’s a smoothie with some Greek yogurt in it or if it’s a simpler protein powder with some powdered carbohydrates, I will take that. If they can get that in and start that recovery process and glycogen replenishment when glycogen synthase is elevated I want them doing that rather than nothing at all. 

Kelly: [0:47:26] One of the things that we talked about briefly, in your sleuthing of trying to understand the neighborhood because this is something I do, people come in and I’m like, okay, you’re telling me this one little hyper, local idea, but I need to understand what a bigger picture is, do you feel like people really are super nerdy and love to track this stuff, and then the rest of the meal and the rest of the day is less important in their brains? How much do you have to be like, hey, you’re talking about going faster in this 10K or this Iron Man or whatever and you don’t eat breakfast? Does that happen a lot to you?

Kyla Channell: [0:48:00] It does. I think what we see is people will often eat the same thing for breakfast throughout the whole day on a day they do nothing and they’ll eat the exact same thing on a day they go for a six-hour bike ride. And that needs to change. They need to increase intake a bit more leading up to that six-hour bike ride. They need to consume obviously nutrition during that bike ride and they need to hit the energy intake pretty hard after that six-hour bike ride. So yeah, they need to shift the nutrition a bit and kind of find a routine that can work to support different levels of output, is what we’re trying to kind of educate our clients on.

Kelly: [0:48:43] So I had this really, really close friend who’s trying to do this 24 hour ride and this is the first time in his life he’s ever gone long. And it’s like he’s a baby learning to step, stand for the first time in terms of eating and he’s like, “Look, I ate some oats before my bike ride and then I ate 200 calories an hour.” And I’m like, “You’re a 230-pound man and you just rode for six hours. You may be under fueling a little bit.” How would someone begin to understand how many calories? So it’s not a race but it is going to be long. Let’s say that Juliet and I are doing some long through hike or something, how would I begin to know what a rough guideline is for what I should eat every hour based on continuous output? I’m not just saying, hey, we’re doing a hike and we’re not elite, we’re middle-aged people, and we can eat meals. But when someone’s going to do that for the first time, are there basic guideposts of fenceposts for him? For them?

Kyla Channell: [0:49:37] For you?

Kelly: [0:49:40] It’s not me. It’s not me.

Kyla Channell: [0:49:40] It’s not you? Okay. Yeah, I mean if we’re talking about hiking, if you’re carrying a pack, if you’re at altitude, those are things where your hydration and your carbohydrate intake is going to be slightly greater than maybe if you were here at sea level walking around the block for sure and for continuous effort. You do want to minimize the glycogen depletion as best as you can. Otherwise, you’re going to bonk. You’re going to hit the wall eventually. And so if we can delay that by keeping some nutrition coming in, I think it depends on your effort. So how hard are you breathing, is it a conversational pace? If you’re not able to have a conversation, you’re pushing really hard consistently, and you’re breathing really hard, you’re likely going to want to lean more towards carbohydrates as your primary fuel source. And then if you are walking and you can have a conversation, you might tolerate definitely a lower caloric level, but probably a combination of some carbohydrates, fats, and protein. And that could be something like a GoMacro bar.

Kelly: [0:50:44] How many calories an hour? Is there a rough guideline? Because I feel like people just feel like they are going to… We just see people eat way too much on the trail. We’re like, hold up. And then people who are-

Juliet: [0:50:55] Undereating.

Kelly: [0:50:56] They’re undereating.

Kyla Channell: [0:50:57] Yeah. I mean that’s hard. From a hiking perspective, I can’t think of any.

Kelly: [0:51:01] Let’s say biking. Let’s say I want to ride my bike for this long period of time. Juliet and I are going for a big bike ride.

Kyla Channell: [0:51:08] Again, if pace is easy, a minimum would be 30 grams of carbs per hour, which is equivalent-

Kelly: [0:51:15] You’ve ridden with me. Even your easy pace is not my easy pace. It’s a hard pace for me.

Kyla Channell: [0:51:19] But then if you start pushing and you’re going to be out there longer, the recommendations kind of shift and say aim for 60ish grams of carbs per hour. And then if you’re going to be out there three plus hours, then we’re looking at, and it’s a hard push, so think of 90 grams of carbs per hour. So that’s where you kind of where you can try and be. And those suggestions too are based on did you glycogen load leading up to that. Because even when you glycogen load and you saturate the muscle with carbohydrates, you can still completely knock those out in 90 minutes all-out effort. It’s something to keep in mind. You can deplete those stores pretty rapidly.

Juliet: [0:52:00] So basically what you’re saying is if I eat a giant bowl of oats and then I blow myself out, in 90 minutes I’m completely depleted; like totally depleted.

Kelly: [0:52:06] No.

Kyla Channell: [0:52:08] You could be.

Kelly: [0:52:09] You can’t work that hard.

Juliet: [0:52:10] Yeah. Too old to work that hard. But I mean theoretically, Kyla. Theoretically. 

Kelly: [0:52:14] It would be 91 minutes for you, J, because you’re the shizz.

Juliet: [0:52:18] Okay, so Kyla, I want to just shift since we’re running out of time here. One of the things that you and I talk a ton about on our bike rides is what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and small business owner. And I mean I know you think of yourself as in private practice, but what I see you as is running a small business because you have employees and people working for you and websites and all the challenges that go with running a small business. But this is sort of a two-fold question. What surprised you the most about running your own business and what have been the biggest challenges?

Kyla Channell: [0:52:52] Oh my goodness. Well, you’ve been my business mentor for sure. I bring all my questions to you.

Kelly: [0:52:58] So say we all.

Kyla Channell: [0:53:00] Yeah. But oh goodness. I mean tax season is always a fun surprise, when they like to knock you there, which is always fun. But oh goodness. I mean all of it was such a learning curve. I mean just everything from having to register your business name and going to the Marin County Civic Center to register that and posting it in the newspaper. It’s all just like all that stuff was self-learned I guess. And yeah, and then bringing on employees was a whole other thing of trying to figure out how that all works with registering as an S Corp and doing all of that stuff was all… It’s consistently a learning curve. It will forever be, I think.

Kelly: [0:53:47] Is it better working for yourself or is it easier to work for someone else?

Kyla Channell: [0:53:51] I personally love working for myself. I think it’s great. And especially with Sid’s schedule, my husband’s schedule as a firefighter, we can coordinate stuff definitely easier. I’m in control of my schedule, which is nice, my calendar, when people can book. So that’s always really nice, definitely. I do like that.

Kelly: [0:54:12] Where do you feel like trends are going in this space? One of our friends who we interviewed a long time ago said that when you got a nutrition coach, it felt like you were turning pro. We’re seeing more and more people working with outside nutrition coaches and it being a real turning point in their performance. When would I need to do that as a person? Could you give me some examples when I might seek out someone like you as a performance nutrition coach?

Kyla Channell: [0:54:39] Yeah. That’s an excellent question. My answer to that, honestly, is when you’re ready to make a change because it’s going to be a change. And we see plenty of clients come to us that I think they want us to make the change for them. They want the information but they’re not ready to apply it whatsoever. And yeah, you need to be ready and willing to make the change. I’m here to give them all the information under the sun, but they are the ones essentially that do have to make that change and make that initiative. I’m not the one who’s there doing their grocery shopping or cutting up their veggies or putting together their recovery shake. They need to be the ones that are responsible for that. And if they’re not ready to take that on or find ways to implement that into their life, they don’t have time for it, then it’s likely going… They’re just not ready for it yet.

Juliet: [0:55:33] I do think it’s a positive trend in this space though that there are so many more accessible nutrition coaches out there because it’s such a challenge for so many people. People haven’t for years batted an eyelash about being like, well, I need personal training so I’m going to hire a personal trainer or I’m going to run a marathon so I’m going to hire a marathon coach. And it does seem to be a more recent thing where people are like, oh, nutrition’s actually complicated and whether I’m trying to change my body composition or trying to perform in a sport, it’s super complicated. Actually, I should hire an expert for this. It seems like we’ve really sort of made a shift culturally that people are more open to it.

Kelly: [0:56:10] We would do these body composition challenges because you just found some photos from back in the day, and people kept food logs, we just sort of like, “Hey, do you even know what you’re eating?” And when people would reflect back sometimes and share, they’re like, “Well, I had a really bad day so I ate a bag of peppermint patties.” And we’re like, “And what else?” And they’re like, “No, that’s it because I felt so bad about eating the peppermint patties, I stopped eating.” We’re like, “You ate a bag of peppermint patties today. That was all you ate? Okay. So what the hell do you think is happening to you?” It’s kind of crazy when we forget some of the… You’re talking about nutrient timing and food quality and what to fuel with, but man, people are just swimming out there, I feel like.

Kyla Channell: [0:56:50] Yeah. We have seen that. The binge and repeat and then the shame and the guilt. That’s an unfortunate cycle that needs to be worked through for sure with a professional definitely to get… I mean you need to get nutrition, micronutrients in your diet. You’re not going to get those from peppermint patties, unfortunately. 

Kelly: [0:57:12] How many peppermint patties to hit my RDA Vitamin C? There’s got to be a number.

Juliet: [0:57:16] By the way, can I just, I’m going to wrap this up, but I have to tell you a funny story, that when the fat free diet was all the rage in the ’90s when Kelly was coming of age, and we would all buy these giant tubs of Red Vines at Costco because-

Kelly: [0:57:28] Fat free.

Juliet: [0:57:28] They were fat free. And so you’re like, yes, I can eat like a million Red Vines because they’re fat free. So but Kelly and his friend Shane couldn’t read the nutrition label and they thought there was 10 grams of-

Kelly: [0:57:40] We were in college.

Juliet: [0:57:40] They thought there was 10 grams of protein per-

Kelly: [0:57:44] No, no, no. Every gram of Red Vine we thought has one gram of protein.

Juliet: [0:57:48] Has one; had a gram of protein.

Kelly: [0:57:49] And so as we’re driving across the country from Colorado to Tennessee to race, we’d be like, piece of cake, I just had 10 grams of protein.

Kyla Channell: [0:57:56] Oh my God.

Kelly: [0:57:57] And then we realized it was 10 Red Vines.

Juliet: [0:57:59] Ten Red Vines for one gram.

Kelly: [0:58:00] Is one serving. And I was like I think I have the diabetes. I think I feel sick. I’m still not hitting my protein macros. We’ve come a long way.

Juliet: [0:58:09] It’s complicated. Okay, so Kyla, you have a lot of different things going on in Nutritional Revolution in addition to one-on-one coaching, but tell us a little bit about that and where can people find you? You actually have your own podcast.

Kelly: [0:58:23] And you teach on the socials every day. You dance and point a lot. I see it. 

Kyla Channell: [0:58:30] I need to record some new ones of those. Yeah, so at Nutritional Revolution on our website, we have-

Kelly: [0:58:38] Nutritionalrevolutoin.com?

Kyla Channell: [0:58:40] Yes. Yeah. And we have prerecorded webinar content for talking about low energy availability. We have some webinar content on that. We have loads of different meal plans and recipe books for people looking, whether it’s for pre and post fueling, homemade real food ideas, if they’re looking for more preppable things to get the nutrition on track on the weekends and stay prepared during the week, we have options for that as well. And then of course, we have our one-on-one services. And then also doing a little contract work on the side for a hydration company to help bring out a new fueling product that you might see at the bike club one day. So we’ll see.

Juliet: [0:59:23] And what about the socials? Where can people find you there?

Kyla Channell: [0:59:25] Oh, yes, @nutritionalrevolution on Instagram. I don’t have a Twitter. And I think we have a Facebook. Yeah.

Juliet: [0:59:33] What’s the name of your podcast?

Kyla Channell: [0:59:35] Nutritional Revolution. Yeah. We like to interview researchers and athletes and talk about how they fuel. And then researchers on different, whether it’s hydration and cooling techniques, things like that I’m fascinated by. So I just think it’s so fun.

Kelly: [0:59:52] It’s true. And I just want everyone to know out there, if you’re using Kyla as a performance guide, she has been testing extensively on our local community bike club and she knows everything she knows because she works with elite athletes every Saturday in front of our house. And I just want to say, you’re welcome for all that information.

Juliet: [1:00:11] We’re so elite, Kyla. You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

Kyla Channell: [1:00:13] You guys are. You guys are the real pros.

Juliet: [1:00:16] Kyla, thank you so much for chatting with us today.

Kyla Channell: [1:00:19] No problem. Thank you guys so much for having me. 

[music]

Kelly: [1:00:26] Thank you for listening to The Ready State Podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, check out all our episodes here or at thereadystate.com. And be sure to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes to help others find our show. 

Juliet: [1:00:38] Check us out and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @thereadystate.

Kelly: [1:00:43] Until next time, cheers everyone.

[music]

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