Modus Energy

09/01/2025

January can be a time of thinking about a fresh start when it comes to nutrition and fitness. It’s tempting to focus on eliminating "bad" foods like fast food, sugar and fat loaded sweets, and ultra-processed convenience foods. Treating these foods as off-limits can potentially lead to stronger dichotomous aka “all-or-nothing” beliefs, which can detract from nutritious eating habits. Holding dichotomous beliefs about food and eating may be linked to fixed dietary restraint, which can hinder ability to maintain a healthy weight…..and it’s quite challenging to completely eliminate enjoyable foods over the long term, perhaps setting ourselves up to feel like we’ve failed.

Let’s turn this view on its head - instead of thinking about foods to eliminate, we can focus on adding nutrient-dense foods into our diets.

Priorities for Adding Nutrient-Dense Foods

Vegetables and Fruits
Packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber, fruits and vegetables are low in calories and support weight management. Examples would be to add aside salad to dinner, add greens into a sandwich for lunch, or a handful of berries with breakfast.

Lean Protein
Lean protein sources like chicken breast, whitefish, tofu, top round, egg whites, and low-fat dairy will support increasing protein intake – especially important for repair and growth of muscle! Yogurt cups are an easy snack to add. Eggs for breakfast? Mix in liquid egg whites with whole egg.

Beneficial Fats
Foods that are rich in heart-healthy balance of Omega 3’s and 6’s include avocado, salmon, nuts, and seeds. Top a yogurt bowl with almonds, stir chia or flax seeds into overnight oats. Explore quinoa or wild rice as a side dish.

Whole grains and legumes
Give rolled or steel cut oats a try for breakfast, include beans in burrito bowls! Steam bags of edamame make a great snack.

Flavor up
Turmeric, ginger, oregano, rosemary, and basil are flavorful and offer antioxidant and benefits.

These are general recommendations; there are specific strategies and tactics that could be helpful to you personally. As always, reach out to me anytime with questions or if you want to work together on building a stronger base of habits for healthy eating.

20/08/2024

Hot off the press! Just published a new paper in the Journal of Science in Sport and Exercise "Effect of Endurance Exercise on Markers of Oxidative Stress: A Systematic Review”. Think ultrarunning, ironman, military training, and similar – the types of events lasting many hours to days.
Dr. Mallett and I conducted this systematic review towards building a better picture of the relationship between markers of oxidative stress and ultra-endurance exercise and current limitations of the research. We uncovered a good number of observational studies and yielded insights mainly related to intensity, duration, and training status. Given the nature and range of these extreme events, limited sampling, methodological differences, and tests implemented in these studies, it’s clear that more standardized approaches need to be developed and ideally include larger cohorts – particularly including more females who represent a growing population in endurance sport.
As a scientist, research gaps represent opportunities to conduct future studies and incorporate technological advancements - I'm excited to continue this work AND bring practical takeaways to you.

We need more focus on the nutrition side of the equation, which in most instances was not assessed nor controlled. Out of the thirty studies included, one study (Stein 2023) begins to build a correlation to dietary patterns and oxidative stress in populations requiring extreme endurance – higher diet quality was associated with resistance to oxidative stress. Soldiers who were selected for continued Special Forces training enter the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course with metabolites associated with healthier diets and better physical performance, whereas non-selected candidates had higher levels of metabolites that may indicate elevated oxidative stress, which could result from poor nutrition, non-functional overreaching/overtraining, or incomplete recovery from previous physical activity.

Reach out to me if you would like a copy of the paper, or want to discuss your nutrition goals as an endurance athlete.

20/08/2024

Just published! “Effect of Endurance Exercise on Markers of Oxidative Stress: A Systematic Review”. Think ultrarunning, ironman, and military training – the types of events lasting many hours to days.

We conducted this systematic review towards building a clearer picture of the relationship between markers of oxidative stress and ultra-endurance exercise, and current limitations of the research. We uncovered a good number of observational studies and yielded insights mainly related to intensity, duration, and training status. Given the nature and range of these extreme events, limited sampling, methodological differences, and tests implemented in these studies, it’s clear that more standardized approaches need to be developed and ideally include larger cohorts – particularly including more females who represent a growing population in endurance sport. As a scientist, research gaps represent opportunities to conduct future studies and incorporate technological advancements.

We need more work on the nutrition side of the equation, which in most instances was not assessed nor controlled. Out of the thirty studies included, one study (Stein 2023) begins to build a correlation to dietary patterns and oxidative stress in populations requiring extreme endurance – higher diet quality was associated with resistance to oxidative stress. Soldiers who were selected for continued Special Forces training enter the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course with metabolites associated with healthier diets and better physical performance, whereas non-selected candidates had higher levels of metabolites that may indicate elevated oxidative stress, which could result from poor nutrition, non-functional overreaching/overtraining, or incomplete recovery from previous physical activity.

More to come! Pleasure collaborating with

29/11/2023

Carrying a rowing machine through the mountains and then rowing at the peaks? Thanks to Operation Dark Horse, it happened! Find my review and tips here, link also in bio.

https://www.modus-energy.com/gbf-dark-horse-review-and-tips/

25/11/2023

Perfect time of year of pomegranate! This month's newsletter covers their health benefits and how they may act to enhance athlete recovery.

https://www.modus-energy.com/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzUsIjAwYThlOTUxNzMyMCIsMSwiMTY4NDhhIiwzLDBd

06/09/2023

I reviewed a recent statement put out by the American Heart Association comparing popular diets against AHA recommendations for heart healthy diets and discuss the overlap between popular diets and considerations for athletes. Check it out!

How do popular diets stack up against current AHA recommendations for heart-health? What should athletes also consider?

03/08/2023

Almost anyone can do something successfully once. Sustaining success is the hard part.

Build up and solidify the environment, support, and tools that make habits easy to keep winning. 👌🏻

CrossFit ATR Athletic Training Redefined
STS Performance Therapy and Strength

31/07/2023

Do you eat a lot of water?

Food selection strategy can be useful to support staying hydrated and it's also a lever of manipulation for competition in weight restricted sports.

A highly ultraprocessed diet will contain less water and is associated with total lower water intake. In the US, average contribution of total water intake from food is about 20%. Some countries in Europe and Asia (likely owing to higher fruit and veg consumption) it's closer to 40%.

19/07/2023

Severe dieting and muscle don't play well together.....why we reinforce a manageable calorie deficit when fat loss is the goal.

Insightful new study released comparing a moderate calorie deficit (16%) versus an extreme calorie deficit (52%) in trained female lifters for a period of 10 days during intense training. Both groups ate the same amount of protein.

As expected, the extreme deficit group lost more fat mass (1.3kg) than the moderate group (0.5kg). HOWEVER, the extreme group lost 0.4 kg of lean mass, whereas the moderate group GAINED 0.4 kg muscle.

This represents significant body recomposition for the moderate group. When people want to look more "toned", what that really means is loss of fat AND gain of muscle (through recomposition or linearly). While the extreme group did lose more fat, it certainly isn't worth it from a physique perspective, and their diet certainly wasn't sustainable. Plus, training must have felt awful!

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP284967?fbclid=IwAR2QZqQslGJGweQ-vUYMML6FNS-v
wSJqxJ-_X4zEMVP-1n1dEmAt18J3DrY

Abstract figure legend Ten days of low energy availability in trained females performing supervised exercise training resulted in reduced daily integrated myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic muscle protein...

14/07/2023

Less/more > all or nothing

My response to folks that believe that a "perfect" diet with enough protein must rely exclusively on chicken breasts and egg whites 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is not a complete list of foods you could throw into the mix.

14/07/2023

No such thing as failure, unless you stop learning. But win or learn, you have to start somewhere. Keep exploring!