 So welcome back or welcome to the 19th edition of the RCA training tip show. You know, as a road cycling coach, I get this question a lot. And that is, how do I effectively lose weight and get lean without losing power on the bike? So in this video today, I'm joined again by an expert sports dietitian, Steph Cronham, who consults to swimming Australia, the Queensland Academy of Sport, the Australian Paralympic team and the high performance department at the University of Sunshine Coast, all while working with a number of road cyclists in her private practice in the Sunshine Coast. In this discussion, Steph, first of all, provides an overview of the telltale signs when somebody is perhaps over indexing on weight loss and affecting their power output on the bike. And then she transitions into the right approach that people can take if they're looking to get as lean as possible before a specific event or race date. Just know that this is the last video in the series with Steph on the channel. So if you've gotten value from her videos and this one today, don't forget to give the video a like. Let's get into it. What are they? So the top things that are gonna, and it can be over a long period of time as well. So it's not as if one week that you've been in a really large calorie deficit, these things start appearing straight away. So you've just got to be very switched on as to how you're feeling. So if straight away your training intensity has reduced because you're not able to train your performance, I should say has reduced, that's a pretty big sign that you haven't fueled well. But there's other things that can come into that. So if you aren't sleeping very well all of a sudden that can be a sign that you're just not getting enough nutrients into your body to help it recover. So you can lead to restless sleep. If you're consistently getting little niggles and things like that or more serious injuries. If your mood starts to change a lot, that's a big sign that you're just not getting enough energy into your system to support your brain function and things like that. If you can't concentrate a lot of the time, if you're always fatigued, as I said for females, if you start to have a really irregular period, that's a really big sign that you're not getting enough food into your body to support those basic functions. And if you're consistently getting sick all the time as well, colds and flus and things like that, that's a big sign. And these things can run off the back of people trying to get there too fast. You're saying people try and get there in three, four weeks. So if you're trying to get to an optimal lean state, how long should you, what's the process? It depends how long, sorry, it depends when your event is, but it also depends on what sort of state you wanna try to get to. So if you've got a large amount of weight to lose, that could be a 12 month journey. If it's only a small amount, we talk about athletes' optimal body fat percentage or optimal body fat for their performance. Now, it's important to understand that that might only be kept for a month or so. And there's a reason why it's optimal for performance, but it's not optimal for overall health. So, you know, it's often we are compromising health to get to that optimal race weight. Right. So it's important for athletes to understand that because what happens generally is they get to this weight or they get to this body fat composition and then they wanna maintain that all year round. And it's just not always gonna be sustainable. So it's therefore it's okay to slightly tip over the edge in order to get to your optimal ratio. Under guidance, very much under guidance. And I'd say, you know, ideally we don't wanna tip over that edge. Some athletes will, but it really depends on, you know, we can't compromise too much health at all. And ideally we wanna have that really nice balance of being a really fit, healthy athlete whilst also being lean. And that might mean that we get them to a lean estate for that, you know, final couple of weeks of a race. And it's not about, you know, having a complete blowout after that and then just going health or leather for everything you can see and drink. But it's just about that fine line of we wanna get you to a state. You might only be at that state for that particular event. And then we, you know, we might add a little bit more food and be a little bit more flexible so that your body fat percentage can slightly increase to then support, you know, your health goals as well. Yeah. So how are you measuring them when they're getting to this finite state? Like obviously the best way for somebody to do it is to see a practitioner like yourself. So how are you, you know, balancing act? Yeah. So it's not just the dietitian that's gonna be involved there. You know, I would be talking to the coach in a bit more depth, getting a really good idea of what the training program looks like, how they're performing. Cause sometimes as an athlete, you know, we're so caught up in so many different aspects of our life in our training, nutrition, physio, massage, et cetera, that, you know, it's great to have somebody else on board to say, can you just learn the gaps of how I've been training? You know, I think I'm training well, but maybe I'm not, or I think I'm training poorly, but you actually think I'm training really well. So definitely getting the coach on board would probably likely have a sports doctor involved as well that could look at some blood tests just to make sure that iron levels are okay, that vitamin D levels are okay, B12, you know, we're still looking after hormones and things like that as well. Interesting. So as a dietitian, you know, I would suggest that someone's comes to me sort of months prior to an event. So ideally it would be great for six months, but at an absolute minimum, I would say three months. Right, okay, interesting. So we can get a really solid nutrition plan going. We can look at training nutrition, we can look at their day-to-day nutrition, and then we can start to create a race plan from that as well so that on the day, they know exactly what they're doing, what they're having. From a body fat composition point of view, we're generally measuring that through skin folds. So that's these little great calipers here. Yes. So basically what this does is this gives us a really accurate measurement of subcutaneous. Should we pull this out, pull it out and show it for us? And that's quite an expensive instrument, isn't it? It is, it's about $500 these months. So as accredited sports dietitians, we will generally all be Isaac level one accredited. So what that means is that we've done a certain course to take skin folds appropriately. So we're finding particular bony markers, we're finding exact sort of places on the body that we take a skin fold. Yes. And that provides a body fat sum of seven. So what that means is we're taking seven different sites over the body that gives us a millimeter number. And then I can sort of describe to the client or the athlete what their current state is, what their goal is by race day, and then probably what their sustainable skin folds might be over a season as well. Okay, interesting. Looking at subcutaneous body fat. So we would also do some composition, some circumferences and things like that to get a better idea of visceral body fat and things like that. So for people who I'm seeing online, who might be interstate overseas or whatever that might be, obviously I can't see them face to face and do skin folds. So I'd be relying more on those circumference measures. So mid arm, chest, a couple of abdominal, different measures, mid thigh, mid calf, those sorts of things. Interesting. When tracking that, there are numbers and there's guides of what is too low and we're trying not to get too low. So the idea is that we get you to that optimal state while still making sure that you're healthy because there's no point rocking up to a race, you know, sick or injured because you've gotten so lean that you just can't perform as a healthy athlete. So there's a number of different things that we're taking into consideration. Interesting. So if there's somebody really looking to push the boundaries of this, then they really should be seeking the advice of a medical professional. Otherwise they're gonna potentially do themselves, not only some damage on race day, but maybe physically. Long term as well. Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, as a, I guess, an ex-athlete myself, I didn't work with a sports dietitian when I was racing. I think it's, for most sports, it's kind of a new thing that basically we're kind of the last sort of profession that people look at, which is unfortunate because I think there's just so much value in it. And I look back at my career now and just think there's, I could have been such a better athlete if I was more educated about nutrition, about my training nutrition, about my race day nutrition, you know, my off season nutrition and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, I think it's an essential part and I think you can become a much better athlete having a sports dietitian on board. If you're not willing to go to that level though, I do, you know, understand that some people will like to do on their own and, you know, there's financial reasons that can come into that as well and we just need some more buy-in, I think, as dietitians to say, we're really good at what we do. This is what we do and this is how we can help. Yeah. But, you know, I would definitely suggest that people start writing things down because it's really interesting to see what happens when you put it on paper and you can have a look at, you know, when you're eating, are you getting enough protein throughout the day? Are you having enough vegetables? Where are your carbohydrates sitting in the day? What does my weekend look like compared to my weekday? Yes, I can.