In this episode, Dr. Gemma Sampson addresses the common misconception surrounding the popular 1200-calorie diet, especially in the context of female athletes and active individuals. She emphasises that most people require more than 1200 calories just to maintain essential bodily functions. Dr. Sampson highlights the negative effects of low-calorie …

In this episode, Dr. Gemma Sampson hosts former Canadian cyclist Svein Tuft for an insightful conversation. They discuss Svein's journey from professional cycling to setting up gravel touring camps, his upcoming book, and the lessons he's gathered on training, nutrition, and lifestyle balance. Svein shares his approach to coaching, the importance o…

In this episode, Dr. Gemma Sampson discusses the often-overlooked difficulty of getting started on personal and professional goals. She shares her own experiences with various goals, such as writing a book and improving in cycling and strength training, and highlights how starting and sticking to tasks can lead to enjoyment and achievement. Dr. Sam…

In this episode, Dr. Gemma Sampson shares her insights and experiences as a sports dietitian assisting the Luca Cycling Club on a coast-to-coast trip in Italy. She emphasizes the critical importance of proper nutrition in enduring long cycling days, where athletes ride between 100 to 150 kilometers and climb up to 3000 meters daily. Dr. Sampson det…

In this episode, Dr. Gemma Sampson welcomes back Dr. Nicky Keay to discuss perimenopause, menopause, and overall female health for athletes. Dr. Keay's upcoming book, 'The Myths of Menopause, A Guide to Increasing Your Menopause Wisdom,' addresses common misconceptions about menopause, such as the belief that it marks the end of active life and tha…

In this episode, host Gemma addresses a listener's question about the practice of weighing food portions, especially when dining out. The discussion covers topics such as the benefits of weighing food for understanding portion sizes, nutrient intake, and managing stress around eating. Gemma also highlights the potential downsides, like increased an…

In this episode, host Gemma welcomes pro female cyclist Sarah Gigante to the podcast. Sarah, who rides for AG Insurance Soudal, recently finished 7th overall in the Tour de France Femme. They discuss Sarah's nutrition journey over the past few years, her meticulous fueling strategies during races, and the vital role of team support and proper nutri…

In this episode, Gemma hosts Frankie Hall, an elite female cyclist from the UK, currently riding for DUS Hutchinson Brother UK. Frankie shares her transformative journey over the past six months, emphasizing changes in her fueling strategies. She discusses the impact of proper nutrition on her performance, recounting a recent race where improved fu…

In this episode of 'Ask a Sports Dietitian,' Gemma responds to Clare's question about whether it's effective to eat a larger evening meal before a big event if a big breakfast is challenging. Gemma emphasizes the importance of optimising nutrition at various key time points, including the night before and the morning of the race. She discusses the …

In this episode, Gemma talks with Carina Hamel, a lifelong athlete, mother, and co-founder of Bivo drink bottles. Carina shares the story behind Bivo and how she and her husband identified a gap in the market for non-plastic hydration solutions for athletes and everyday use. She discusses her journey from a career in footwear product development to…

In this podcast episode, host Gemma interviews Dr. Jose Areta about the energy needs of female cyclists, particularly during events like the Tour de France. They discuss a recent study on energy expenditure in female athletes, highlighting surprising findings such as high daily caloric needs and energy deficits similar to male cyclists. The convers…

In this episode, host Gemma sits down with pro cyclists Lizzie Holden and Nick Schultz to discuss the concept of 'Pock-it Fuel' and its role in sports nutrition. They explore how their interest in baking and nutrition led to creating homemade training snacks. The cyclists share personal insights on the importance of fueling correctly, overcoming fl…

In this episode, Gemma sits down with Georgie Howe, a professional cyclist for Liv Jayco Alula. Georgie shares her journey from rowing in Australia to becoming a cyclist, including her struggles with non-selection for the Tokyo Olympics, transitioning into management consulting, and finding her passion for cycling during the COVID-19 lockdown. She …

In this episode, Gemma shares her most overlooked and undervalued piece of nutrition advice: increasing the variety and quantity of plants in your diet. She explains how adding more fruits and vegetables can significantly improve gut microbiome diversity, enhance satiety, and aid in weight management. Gemma provides practical tips on incorporating …

Is there anything about your life that you regret or wish you could change looking back? One of the most impactful books I've read is the top 5 regrets of the dying by Bonnie Ware. Sounds morbid but it is a very inspirational book and thinking about these regrets helps me make decisions and live a life full of intention. Episode show notes: www.gem…

What's changed in pro cycling nutrition? I joined Tim Podlogar, Sam Impey and David Dunne at Hexis Elite Cycling Nutrition Conference Q&A panel to discuss fuelling practices, whether we need to fuel at 120g per hour, cyclists using ozempic to lose weight, protein, vegan nutrition and more. Episode show notes: www.gemmasampson.com/podcast/57________…

How do you learn to like eating healthy? This is a question I received on Instagram and I found it very interesting because the meaning we attach to the word healthy can influence how easy or difficult we perceive it to achieve. In this episode I discuss what healthy may or may not look like for you and steps to help you make changes to live a heal…

Often people come to me with these idealistic goals and visions of what they want to do achieve or change around their nutrition. Kind of like how at the beginning of the year we can get sucked into the whole new year new me resolutions kind of things. This year I'm going to be different. We make all these changes, but they are so far from our star…

If you get dropped on a ride - does that demotivate you or does it motivate you? Maybe I'm weird, but for some strange reason when it comes to group rides, being dropped REALLY motivates me to work harder and to ride my bike more regularly. It all started with the Sefton park chain gang 9 years ago. Episode show notes: www.gemmasampson.com/podcast/…

It's time for another edition of Ask a Sports Dietitian where each month I select a question submitted to answer - just like I do each week on my private podcast for Fuelled Team members. Susan asks: Hi Gemma, I am a 57yr old female Cycling endurance athlete. I like to compete for overall and AG in 80-100mi sportive/fondo/ races. I am using a train…

Have I always had a good relationship with food? This week on the podcast I am doing something a little different. One of my Fuelled team members asked a question about my relationship with food, how that has changed over the years as a dietitian and things I recommend you consider to improve yours. Episode show notes: www.gemmasampson.com/podcast/…

When it comes to sports nutrition for cycling and triathlon, I like to view it in three distinct, but related components. We have Everyday nutrition, Training nutrition and then our event or racing nutrition. They have overlapping but distinct needs and challenges to address, which I teach my 1:1 clients privately in our 1:1 sessions as well as onl…

Nutrition can either make or break a ride, and it's when you put it to the test and experience this properly for yourself that you really understand that it's not just a flukeAnge Hookham is a cyclist personal trainer who joined my Fuelled team and has been learning my Fuelled Framework over the past few months. After sharing some of her wins on In…

What does it take to fuel a Kona slot when you are an Ironman triathlete? Today I have invited Dan Barry, a triathlete and previous client onto the podcast to share his experience learning how to optimise his everyday, training and race nutrition through 1:1 sports nutrition coaching. He recently won his Age Group, breaking 9 hours at Ironman New Z…

Have you ever thought about what motivates you? What drives you to do the things that you do or don’t want to do? I’ve been speaking with a number of people lately about the topic of motivation and how it influences us, how it shifts how it changes throughout different phases of our life or even different seasons of the year. Whether it’s a goal th…

The number one nutrition goal cyclists of all ages and abilities have when they want to work with me as a sports dietitian is to lose weight and improve their power to weight ratio. Many cyclists assume that if you weigh less your power to weight ratio will be higher and you’ll perform better on the bike.While this CAN be the case - it is not alway…

My blood tests show that I am anaemic. I don’t like eating meat and am not a huge fan of eating eggs. What foods should I eat more of to help increase absorption and help manage fatigue? If you don't like meat or prefer to follow a plant based or vegetarian diet, getting enough iron from plant based sources can be difficult to achieve. Difficult, b…

For female cyclists, and female athlete, there is a lot of debate about whether our menstrual cycles influence our performance... how, when and what to do about it.A recent systematic review and meta-analysis concluded that performance may be reduced during the early follicular phase (which starts with the arrival of your period) but the quality of…

If you could snap your fingers and change something about your nutrition within the next 24h, what would it be?What's your Amazon overnight order?How awesome would it be if we could press send and within two days (or next day even) our desired goals arrived?When it comes to our health and nutrition, often we seem to expect lasting changes and trans…

What would a man know about female cycling?! Female cyclists have a few more things to consider for their training and their nutrition than their male counterparts. And a man is never going to fully understand the changes that we are continually going through across our lifetime. However, that doesn't mean the conversation needs to female exclusive…

How many foods right now are on your 'not allowed to eat' list?Maybe it's cookies. Maybe it's chocolate. Maybe it's icecream. chips, cheese..... It might even be hot cross buns! Whatever the food that you've got on your 'forbidden list - I want to challenge you to think about what happens when you restrict those foods - and try using permission ins…

Are you training for the 3 peaks Challenge in March? Have you thought about training your nutrition as well as the physical training you need to ride 235km with >4000m climbing in less than 13 hours? One of the things that fascinates me is that I will often see cyclists spending thousands of dollars on equipment, coaching and gear, training for mon…

I am currently in Adelaide at Tour Down Under this week and was asked the question what does a successful athlete look like to me? Such a great question!Typically when it comes to success, most peoples minds would go to performance, winning races, crossing the line first, winning the gold medal, rainbow jersey. However I think success goes much dee…

You don't have to give up any of your favourite foods, go on a crazy diet or start an extreme exercise regime this January if you don't want to.At the beginning of the new year there can be a lot of pressure and diet culture guilt that you should totally change your life and create a 'new you''.But it's totally okay if you don't have the brain spac…

There are a lot of labels attached to the word 'hungry'. Sometimes people think this can be considered a 'good' thing, for others it's a bad thing. Especially when people are trying to lose weight I often see people feeling hungry all the time, fighting themselves and their hunger all the time because it's not time to eat or they don't think they a…

Rather than using nutrition tracking as punishment to guilt trip or shame you into action (which rarely works in the long time by the way), I like to use nutrition tracking intentionally as a tool to help you rewrite the way you eat on and off the bike. The first step if you want improve your nutrition is get clear on what you are eating, when and …

What life lessons have you learned this year? Can you see ways in which you have grown and developed and changed? In a previous episode I shared some of the life lessons I've learned over the past 6 years, and as we wrap up 2023 and head into 2024 I wanted to share a couple more of my lessons from this year. I have been sharing them with friends an…

Josh Bradwene is a cycling coach and long distance cyclist who has been making major cycling performance gains since shaking up his nutrition approach. He joined my online Fuelled team six months ago and learned how to apply my cycling nutrition framework to his cycling training and racing. He has been experiencing more and more cycling fuelling su…

Protein pancakes, protein brownies, protein smoothies... there's even protein chocolate bars and protein popcorn in the supermarkets now! Protein plays a key role in muscle growth and repair, it forms enzymes and hormones to keep our bodies functioning normally and performing optimally. It's good stuff, and is often overlooked by many of the cyclis…

How long does it take to learn a lesson and stop repeating the same mistake time and time again? Why do we repeat making the same mistakes time and time again? And how do we change and make progress? I believe the key is in self reflection, taking intentional time to review and reflect on what we are doing, why and make a plan to change. This is a …

I went riding with a cyclist recently who told me that during their off season they kept training anyway (despite being told to take a break) because they didn’t want to gain weight. Fear of food, fear of stopping training and fear of gaining weight has been the common theme in conversations I've had on and off the bike these last few weeks. Are yo…

One of the biggest changes I have seen in the past 5 years of cycling is the amount riders are fuelling during competition. Five years ago we were aiming for 80-90g carbs an hour, whereas now I am seeing an increasing number of riders fuelling with 120g per hour and seeing their performance skyrocket. Tim Cutler is one such example - winning Dirty …

Have you said to yourself that you know what to do when it comes to nutrition, but you just aren't doing it?Let's unpack why that might be, what's stopping you and how to start doing the things you already want to do and aren't doing. Episode show notes: www.gemmasampson.com/podcast/30__________________You can find Gemma atwww.gemmasampson.comwww.i…

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) is a syndrome of deleterious health and performance outcomes experienced by male and female athletes exposed to low energy availability - which is - inadequate energy intake in relation to exercise energy expenditure leading to REDs. It’s very common in cyclists and in this episode I explain what REDs and …

"REDS: Nobody told me about it, I didn't know that losing your period was a problem.. the team asked if I had my period and I said no. That's when they raised a red flag and said that is something you should address"Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) is incredibly common amongst both male and female cyclists, resulting in multiple negative …

What do bike fitting, Race Across AMerica (RAAM) and Cyclists Fighting Cancer have in common?If you are uncomfortable on the bike, or are getting injured or pain from your position then a good bike fit can make the world of difference. Which is how I was first introduced to Rich Salisbury for a bike fit at Pedal Precision based at the Manchester Ve…

Have you ever thought about how many food rules and thoughts influence your nutrition, what you do and don't eat? For example, were you told as a kid that you couldn't leave the table until you had finished eating? I know I was! As adults we have been programmed by so many different rules about what we should and shouldn't eat and often don't recog…

Have you ever wanted to get support with your nutrition but ruled yourself out because you aren't a pro athlete? Well today I am here to put the facts straight and dispel that myth! While I do support lots of professional and Olympic athletes, I also help many amateur athletes and people participating in sport for their own enjoyment learn how to f…

Are you trying to lose weight as a cyclist to improve your power to weight ratio and frustrating by the rate of progress? Our Ask a sports dietitian question of the month comes from Jamie who asks: "I am struggling to work out why I'm not making any progress with my weight loss. For some reason this morning I weighed myself and I'd put on over a kg…

Have you ever caught yourself saying you'll try to do better when it comes to your nutrition and eating habits? I’ll try to do better next time. I’ll try to remember to eat more of this and less than that? I'll try not to eat xyz?There is more going on than just numbers when it comes to our nutrition choices - which is why my cycling nutrition fram…