He’s back! World renowned dietitian and exercise physiologist Bob Seebohar joins us again to delve deeper into the growing research surrounding his two concepts of metabolic efficiency training (MET) and nutrition periodization.
If you listened to Bob’s last interview with us, you know that together these concepts increase the body's ability to use fat as fuel during exercise and thus optimize both body composition and performance - a hard balance to strike for most distance runners.
If you missed that episode and like what you hear today, be sure to go back and give it a listen here for some better context.
Bob is a registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, USA Triathlon Level III Elite Coach. He also traveled to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games as a sport dietitian for the US Olympic Team and the personal sport dietitian/exercise physiologist for the Olympic Triathlon Team.
This time Bob’s back to answer YOUR questions and, in so doing, discuss everything from MET’s relationship with paleo and plant-based diets all the way to how you can go about determining your own metabolic efficiency.
4:08 What do you do?
6:10 Can you remind us again about your concepts of Nutrition Periodization and Metabolic Efficiency Training?
10:21 Can you describe intuitive eating and how you help athletes attain that in combination with Metabolic Efficiency Training?
14:00 Can you describe what the Crossover Concept is?
23:41 How does the Metabolic Efficiency Test work?
28:20 Listener question from Yusef: Will I keep burning 60% fat at HR 150 bpm, at hour 28 of a 100miler?
39:55 Listener question from Diana: As someone who eats a ton of almond and peanut butter. Is this a carb, a fat or a protein?
48:14 Listener question from Chelsea: How does being vegan affect my metabolic efficiency and are there any tips for how can I improve this without giving up my lifestyle?
54:04 How do the Paleo Diet and High Fat / Low Carb diets fit in with Metabolic Efficiency Training?
57:13 Is it correct to assume you should increase carbs when in the thick of marathon training?
58:45 Listener question from Darlene: Is the Metabolic Efficiency lifestyle suitable for people with type 1 diabetes who use insulin pumps?
1:02:05 You offer personal consultations - what all do these entail and how can people work with you?
1:04:45 Where can listeners get a Metabolic Efficiency Test done?
“Nutrition periodization is basically aligning your daily nutrition to support your physical training needs.”
“Metabolic efficiency is basically how efficient your body is at using its stores of carbohydrate and fat. Those are the two main stores of energy we have in our body, and you can actually train that.”
“The point where the body crosses from higher to lower fat burning and lower to higher carbohydrate burning - where those two macronutrients cross - is the ‘crossover point’, and in research, they found that to be between 63-65% of max intensity.”
“Metabolic efficiency is a great lifestyle nutrition program no matter what distance you’re training for.”
“It will be more difficult - not impossible, certainly - but it will be more difficult to balance blood sugar following a pure vegan diet than it will when you enter animal proteins, and it’s just because you’re having more carbohydrate than protein.”
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Book: Nutrition Periodization for Athletes: Taking Traditional Sports Nutrition to the Next Level
Bob's Author page on Amazon.com