Fueling Performance Around The Clock

Speaker 1

Welcome to today’s session on feeling performance around the clock. My name is Leah Hayden. I’m a corporate well-being specialist here at Seagull Health and a registered nutritionist. So today we’re going to be looking at a couple of different areas when it comes to considering how you should feel around different times in the day and factors to consider.

The most important one I want to emphasize here is the power of awareness and being really, really clear on what it is that you need on your own individual level. Oftentimes we’ll look for a 2D plan or a 2D protocol that might not necessarily be relevant to our own given needs in that moment in time. So really, really tuning in and being intuitive about what we need on an individual level.

Looking at circadian rhythm, the impact of dysregulated blood glucose on well-being and performance, the basics of performance nutrition, coronal nutrition, and modern day work schedule nutrition and fitness obstacles with some common solutions that we can put in place to help navigate these.

So when it comes to the power of awareness, I guess it’s really beneficial to think of a time maybe where you’ve really consciously noticed that change in your own physiological state.

Maybe you walked into a church or a spiritual area, if you are spiritual, and you notice your shoulders just dropping and you’re relaxing, or maybe stepping outside and just being really aware of your environment and how it calms you down. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, then maybe you’re stepping up to present, like I am now, or you’re heading out to do a race.

And you’ve noticed that you’re more primed on your toes and your eyes are sparkling and you’re ready to go. And how, again, that drives different internal changes within our body.

Same thing applies when it comes to coronal nutrition, which I will dig into later on in the day, but how different stimuluses in our environment may drive for different changes internally and how we can make conscious behavioral choices to help navigate them.

So looking at modern day work schedules, and I guess the opportunities and challenges that they pose, we’ve got flexible hours, we’ve got hybrid work and nine to five desk jobs, active jobs and shift work. And you might have a blend of a couple of these.

Again, being intuitive and being aware as to maybe how your state changes when you go from being in one type of role to another on a day-to-day basis. So we know that in the workplace, around 60% of our food is eaten during these working hours. So we’re eating in an environment that might be posing a certain stimuluses and that changes our internal state and being aware of them too.

So we’ll dig into this as the talk goes on as well. For the pair of awareness, again, our body is capable of performing incredible, incredible mental and physical functions. But unless we make the right lifestyle choices, I guess, it’s impossible for us to reach our full potential, but on a physical and mental level.

Speaker 1

As conditions around us change, it’s important not to feel, I guess, a victim of our circumstances, but rather to influence our behaviors and our choices and be empowered by, I guess, the opportunities that they present with 95% of all of our behaviors being driven subconsciously and by the habitual, I guess, autopilot of our brain, that what’s it that slow or that fast thinking brain and looking at avoiding feelings of failure and creating healthy habits to help support your constant behavioral modification and practical iterations here.

With that said, 3.8 million cellular creations are happening at every given second. So to think that there’s a perfect plan or a perfect way of eating in alignment with your schedule just is not true. It just does not exist.

We are creatures of change and we should lean into that and be really, really aware in and around those changes and make conscious behavioral choices to help support those changes, I guess, create an amelioration or a friendship between the two.

So when we look at the many different factors that can influence our eating identity, mindset, and choices, things like our physiological factors or being able to get our belief values rules, hunger cues, our fullness cues, and we’re also looking at cultural factors, all these different things influence where we are at that given moment in time and making our nutritional choices.

So poor performance of behavioral change strategies is in part due to those inadequate, I guess, an inadequate understanding of key psychological determinants of dietary intake. So it’s really important to be aware of all these other factors that might influence your own nutritional choices.

So tune in into that power of awareness, bring that with you as we go through the talk today and be really, really mindful as to, okay, what information is relevant to me here and now, and maybe not so much.

Okay, and then if you do find that anything is a trigger or that means to influence your kind of, I guess, awareness, and that might push you in a direction of reach by for a little bit about extra help, support, or education. So when we look at circadian rhythms, I guess there are physical, mental, and behavioral changes that occur over a 24-hour cycle.

And prototype, on the other hand, which we’ll dig into, reflects individual variability in the phase of entrainment. So when we look at circadian rhythms, we have four different types of circadian rhythms that we know of. There could be many more. But at the moment, what we know is circadian rhythms are the ones that occur within 24 hours, like thermoregulation.

Ultradian rhythms, they occur frequently over 24 hours, like our pulse, our heart rate, blinking. Diurnal rhythms, the sleep-wake cycle, syncing with day and night, and then the rhythm that occurs within 24 hours. And then we’ve got infradian rhythms. So a cycle that’s much longer than 24 hours, like the menstrual cycle.

So thinking about these rhythms, and then how we’ve got different, I guess, clocks within our system that help to regulate these.

Speaker 1

So where the central clock exists is in our brain. It’s called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And then we also have all these other little clocks, peripheral clocks, that exist in our organs. So different stimuluses, like light and arousal, temperature and feeding, tell our clocks what time our body should be producing certain hormones that are regulating our neurotransmitter production.

A dis-synchronization, so a misalignment between our behaviors and these internal clocks, are the ones that tend to lead to these kind of metabolic consequences and disruption in our overall health and wellbeing. So the more familiar we can get with our own internal clocks and how they regulate and work, the more we’re able to drive forth in behaviors to support them.

There are several different types of questionnaires that we can look into as we go through to examine what type of a chronotype you are, which will be informed as well by your internal clocks. So looking at the impact of dysregulated blood glucose on wellbeing and performance.

And again, going back to that slide, we see that when there is a dis-synchronization, this can really, really impact on our overall blood glucose regulation. So we need glucose in our system to give us energy. It’s our brain’s preferred energy fuel source. So we can’t possibly focus and concentrate at our optimal if we don’t have that glucose available to our brain.

And when we have dysregulated blood glucose, we’re not providing our brain with the proper energy that it needs to perform at its optimal. So we’ve got different symptoms of dysregulated blood glucose, and it can exist together. Again, hyperglycemia or hyperglycemia, they exist on different ends of the spectrum.

So hyperglycemia being that elevated rise in blood sugar levels, and the hypoglycemia where it dips below our base, okay? So it’s natural to get a nap in a flow in our blood glucose, but to be getting spikes and drops, which tend to occur if we are getting several periods of hypoglycemia, we will get, again, this null in our energy and this null in our overall wellbeing.

And they occur about a physical and a mental and emotional level.

So from a physical level, hypoglycemia, you can see there are things like shakiness, fatigue, sweating, awakening at night, which really disrupts our overall ability to maintain information, retain information on our memory, also senses of weakness, or then on that mental and emotional level, which occurs as a byproduct of this is excessive worry, inner tension, scattered thoughts, poor concentration.

And then when we talk about hyperglycemia, increased thirst and a dry mouth, needing to go to the bathroom frequently, tiredness, blurred vision, or the mental and emotional level, poor concentration, feeling unwell, irritable, fatigue, headaches, anger, or feeling sluggish.

Speaker 1

So we’re in an environment where we’re maybe trying to work in a team and we’re getting symptoms of hypoglycemia because of our dysregulated blood glucose, because of our habits and behaviors that are maybe to synchronize with our internal clocks, you’ll notice more maybe things like conflict occurring or poor concentration, or feeling a little bit more apathetic and sluggish when it comes to our work.

So dietary changes help, I guess, balance our overall curves on the graph and find a more even curve, less peaks and troughs, or things like managing our glycemic load. So that is the amount of carbohydrates within a food product that causes an influx in our blood glucose.

So we talk about glycemic load, including a little bit of protein into your diet or with your meal can help slow the release of that glucose into your system. Adding high-fiber foods does the exact same thing. It slows down that digestion of blood glucose, including healthful fats, eating slowly and mindfully.

Again, adding a little bit of lemon juice can slow the conversion of sugar to starch, which again has a nice and more steady release of glucose into the system. And vinegar can do the exact same thing. So when it comes to glycemic index, again, that’s the carbohydrates within a food product that gets converted to glucose or into sugar quite quickly.

When we think about glucose load or glycemic load, we’re thinking about the amount of carbohydrates timed by the rate at which that glucose gets released into your system. When we think about the release of glucose into our system, our body is much more able to tolerate carbohydrates in the early window of the day, in the early part of the day. We’re a lot more insulin sensitive.

So our body’s much better able to kind of take off that glucose and bring it into our cells for energy, as opposed to later in the evening time, where we might need to pump out more of this hormone insulin to bring that into your cells. And insulin as an actual hormone can lead to things like excessive, I guess, it’s an anabolic hormone, so it can lead to excessive weight.

But as well, producing too much insulin can then again lead to hypoglycemia. So thinking about that and taking it with a grain of salt, carbohydrates better able to tolerate them in the morning time.

A desynchronization in the clocks means that our guests were not as insulin sensitive and we’re not as able to, I guess, take that glucose into our cells and use them for energy because of this desynchronization and this metabolic health effect of, I guess, behaviors that misalign with our internal clocks.

The basics of performance nutrition exist on that being, I guess, thinking about overall wellbeing, performance and recovery. When we look at the healthy plate guideline, this brings in things like lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, again, porting our carbohydrate relevant to our needs at that moment in time.

So if it’s in the morning time and even acting day, carbohydrates, again, better tolerated. If you’re doing an evening workout, again, that will negate the negative metabolic, I guess, effects of a desynchronization in our clocks.

Speaker 1

So having a little bit of carbohydrates to help recover because exercise as a stimulus actually increases our ability to take that carbohydrates up and use it as a fuel source.

Protein, so, so important, not just for nice, healthy muscles, but also really important for our overall neurotransmitter production, really important for our overall immune system, also really, really important for our overall blood health, antibodies and enzymes.

So protein exists within our diet and serves many different roles and not just that associated with bodybuilders and people going to the gym. Thinking about it as well, a diverse array of color, again, lots of different vitamins and minerals coming into your diet, which helped bring you a bit of balance. And then also thinking about your hydration, which is so, so important.

As much as a 2% decrease in our overall body hydration levels can really start to impact on our overall performance. So not to negate, or not to neglect how important water is in our diet and how important it is like carrying those water soluble vitamins around our diet, around our body for overall energy production. Again, we’ve got these, I guess, fluxes in our overall productivity cycles.

So we’ve got rest zones and we’ve got our productive zones. Again, responding to that on a hormonal level, again, different types of hormones are released like adrenaline and epinephrine and that can help to really make us focus in those productive zones.

Whereas when we relax and rest, our GABA and our other neurotransmitters like that help us to relax down that little bit and I guess metabolize our food a little bit better.

So if we’re to aching this onto, or liking it onto what it’s like at an athletic level, when we are in these states of, I guess, high stress, high focus, high productivity, you’re running a race and you’re trying to beat your opposition. I guess use that as an analogy for when it comes to your work.

Our body is fueling or is pushing blood out towards, you know, I guess our working muscles, you know, towards our brain and to help us really focus and think and be reactive. It’s less likely to be centralizing that blood flow into the gut. So you might notice that your digestion is somewhat slowed down when you’re in a state of heightened stress. If you’re presenting, that’s another example.

So thinking about things that don’t demand extreme digestion. that are released into the bloodstream nice and slowly. Again, adding fiber, some healthy fats, lots of slow-releasing proteins that help to slow down the release of that carbohydrates into our bloodstream can help to stabilize our glucose levels and prevent a crash after our productive zone.

So in that rest zone, we’re not getting that state of hypoglycemia.

Speaker 2

OK.

Speaker 1

Performance of nutrition really exists within the spectrum of three T’s. So that is the total amount of food that we eat, the type of food that we eat, and the timing of our food. And the three main pillars of a healthy dietary pattern complement these through nutritional balance, managing our blood glucose, and digestive health and our gut microbiome.

When we think about the total amount of our food, again, relevant to that period of time of the day, which I’ll discuss as we go into chronic nutrition and the signs to date, where it points to the timing and the type and the total amount of food that we eat. The type, again, being relevant to that moment in the day that you’re eating, and then the timing.

So we look at what helps and hinders performance, helping regular meals, awareness of nutrient needs, the smart timing of caffeine, okay, individualized portion control, snacking in line with our energy needs, nutrient variety, hydration, effective planning, and the moderate use of convenience foods.

When we come to hindering things like skipping meals, again, dysregulated blood glucose, lack of nutrient balance, the mistiming of our caffeine, poor portion control, grazing or snacking throughout the day, lack of variety, dehydration, poor planning, and an overlying some convenience foods.

So things like skipping meals, mistiming of our caffeine, poor portion control, you know, and I guess being reactive and grazing and snacking, tells our internal plaques, they don’t really know what’s going on.

They don’t know when to be releasing these hormones and your transmitters, because they’re a little bit uncertain as to, you know, where you’re feeding and fasting windows are growing throughout that day. So bringing this all together into the topic of chrononutrition.

Chrononutrition, again, is that where we have those behaviors, like I say, you know, the entrainment of these, of our clocks in line with our behaviors, right, throughout the day, either the waking or the sleeping cycle. In the morning time, we’ve loads of different types of chronotypes that exist. We’ve got morning early risers, night elves that exist within the circadian profile.

We have two ends of the spectrum.

Speaker 2

that too. So we’ve got early early rises, we’ve got early rises, we’ve got our 9Ls and we’ve got our

Speaker 1

relate my nails, but it’s much more nuanced and we can shift this somewhat between plus and minus two hours on either end of the spectrum.

One of the most intuitive ways of kind of establishing what your chronotype or circadian profile is, is actually just thinking about if I didn’t have to get up for work, if I didn’t have any obligations, when would I naturally wake up and when I naturally go to sleep?

There is two questionnaires that are very validated and that one of them is a Munich chronotype questionnaire and then we’ve also got the morningness, eveningness questionnaire, very creative.

When we look at chronotype we see at different stages throughout the day, we have different changes in our you know I guess physiological state, things like entering into our deepest sleep at 2am and we’ve got our lowest body temperature, sharpest blood pressure at 6.45am. Again these are all in line with what your chronotype naturally is, what your circadian profile naturally is.

Males tend to be about 30 minutes later than females, so females I talked about that 30 minutes earlier and then females tend to kind of get up that little bit 30 minutes earlier as well. Chrononutrient then again is an emerging field building on the relationship between temporal eating patterns, circadian rhythms and metabolic health.

Looking at when we eat a meal, balance of social clock time has health implications. It may be beneficial to avoid eating at biological night, biasing more calories towards earlier in the day, better than later in the day and then it’s superior for metabolic health and potentially body composition as a result of that.

A restricted eating window is beneficial for health and our body composition and then we should match the feeding window with biological day, weightfulness and activity. So really trying to keep a routine in place, kind of keep a rhythm in place, what you’re eating and fasting windows. Different things can really impact on our I guess our chrononutrition and the eating patterns that we engage with.

Things like work schedules, time constraints, timing of break between our shifts, family commitments, prioritizing our behaviors such as sleep over meals. They all influence our eating patterns and behaviors but also the metabolic consequences of these behaviors. So the principles of chrononutrition when we look at shift workers as a group.

Things to consider are our eating window or our eating period, distribution of our energy, macro sequencing, snacking and cognitive performance. So our eating period we should be looking at to keep into eating, drinking to a six to twelve hour period. So that being considered anything I guess greater than five calories and stop consumption at least three hours before bed.

Okay keeping it as a routine as regular as possible and select time according to what best suits but prioritize shifting to an earlier window. Again none of this being prescriptive but rather taking a piece trying it out and seeing how that applies for you and what benefits that come with this too.

Speaker 1

This is all based off the research that’s being done to date and again this area has been it is new in its research and new in its science but it is something that’s getting greater traction. Sachin Panday is a great researcher in this area as well to have a look into.

Distribution of energy okay so those with poorer cardiometabolic health should aim to consume greater than 50 percent of their energy intake in the first half of their calorific period.

So having a bigger brekkie on a smaller dinner and so the big breakfast study was one of these studies that really looked at this and looked at I guess you know having a bigger brekkie and a smaller evening meal or then flipping it in a different study group and looking at a bigger evening meal and the smaller brekkie but it came out of that study to show that having that bigger breakfast led to a greater level of dieting throughout the rest of the day so less likely to be snacking and grazing as the day goes on.

It’s less relevant this distribution of energy to those who exercise in the second half of the day as I mentioned but aim to spread your protein intake throughout the eating period but one to two pound size of protein portions at each meal. So those who are exercising in the evening time you have an increase in something called glute IV and that really helps with taking glucose into your cells.

So it is naturally by product of exercising so maybe less relevant to consider this smaller meal in the evening time if it doesn’t suit that window for you. So if you’re somebody who does shift work and like to train before you go out try and consider having that larger meal after you exercise before you enter into your shift work. Think about our macro sequencing.

Those that struggle with energy dips, porcelain, cravings, hunger, or caffeine dependency, which can be quite indicative of poor glycemic control, should aim to consume carbohydrate-rich meals last in the meal. So carbohydrate-rich foods last in your meal.

So as I mentioned about protein and fiber slowing down the rate of digestion, if we’re to consume the carbohydrates first in the meal, we’re likely we’re gonna be quite sensitive to the spiking glucose that we’re gonna get from that if we struggle with all of these little niggly areas like energy dips and cravings and depending on caffeine.

Whereas if we include that fiber and that protein and eat that first in the meal, a little bit hard when it’s a mixed meal, but if you have that choice to do so, even having a bowl of soup, before you go and have your big plate of prawn pasta or whatever it does be, or having a little bowl of yogurt with fresh berries before you have your bowl of porridge in the morning can really help kind of slow down the rate of that digestion.

So for example, like I say, consuming protein-rich chicken and high-fiber veg prior to consuming the potatoes in the meal, and supporting that slow release of glucose. When it comes to snacking, trying to, I guess, consider the fact that some people just benefit that little bit more from snacking for increasing their alertness and fighting fatigue.

Speaker 1

If this is you, aim to consume relatively small snacks throughout the night and centralize them in and around protein, lower in carbohydrates, but leaning more towards vegetables and berries as your source of carbohydrates here. Again, our body is less able to tolerate carbohydrate intake throughout that nighttime period.

So that dim light period where we’re getting an increase naturally in melatonin, but then it’s that desynchronization that occurs if we’re having big meals throughout the night. So we’re better able to serve, I guess, taking up protein and lower glycemic index, higher fiber foods during the night in smaller portions because the rate of digestive enzymes is somewhat reduced throughout the night.

From a cognitive performance point of view, caffeine can be particularly helpful here. So aim to support cognitive performance like alertness and reaction time. Aim in for between one to four milligrams per kilogram of body weight, favoring the upper end if short on sleep and repeatedly dosing this two hours and going through an extended period of wakefulness.

For reference to this, we’re looking at things like and a single espresso being between 47 and 75 milligrams of caffeine. So you’re getting that one milligram if you’re 60 kg, you’re getting that one milligram in an espresso.

Whereas if we’re having that big, large Americano dependent on where you’re getting it from, it can be between anything from 94 to 220 milligrams depending on the number of shots used. But really do aim to consume caffeine at least seven hours before bed.

So if you are doing an evening shift or you’re doing a nighttime shift, aim to consume that in the first half or the first part of your shift can really help you ease into and can support that more likely that you’re gonna ease into that sleep when you come off your shift as well.

So it will have somewhat of an effect, but if you need it for cognitive performance, it’s important to be mindful of the portions that you’re taking in here too. Crown and nutrition exists then for all other groups. So again, your flexi workers, hybrid workers, active jobs, and the emergency jobs and things like that.

Looking at time restricted eating, distribution of our eating and our macro sequencing again. So from the time restricted eating point of view, it has an influence on our cardio metabolic health. So time restricted eating is a period in which calorie-containing items are consumed within a period of 12 hours or less.

So it tends to be a really well-researched area, but it leads more regular meal timing. Again, training our internal peripheral clocks to really kind of find a synchronicity and kind of a rhythm here as well. It seems to be a safe strategy that is likely to reduce energy intake, which will be especially beneficial for people who have unavoidably sedentary lifestyles.

Fixing that time of your worker, like of your working caloric period within regular eating areas supports metabolic health. And this may be especially beneficial in workers who are subject to unpredictable changes in their zycobbers, such as their light drag cycles.

Speaker 1

So again, your zycobbers are those external stimuli that we talk about. So that light exposure and things like that. Let me talk about distribution of eating then.

Skipping breakfast is one way to implement time-restricted eating, but due to its negative effects on blood sugar, control of this form of time-restricted eating is conducive to promoting information in the body, poor energy throughout the day, and poor cardiometabolic health.

So an optimal way of engaging in this time-restricted eating will be to have a dinner earlier in the day and reduce the size of your evening meal and front-loading your energy intake.

Earlier time-restricted eating enhances your dietary composition by reducing intakes of food and drinks, commonly consumed in the evening, such as processed snacks and alcohol, which I refer back to that big breakfast study and that element of increased satiety from having that bigger brekkie.

From a macro-sequencing point of view, consider sequencing your macronutrient intake in each given meal occasion. Again, consuming carbohydrates last, and then consuming your protein and fiber-rich foods first.

So nothing different here from shift workers, but important to be aware of, especially if you are somebody, if you are somebody on the other hand of the scale that struggles with eating enough, if you have quite an active job.

Again, maybe here, consuming your carbohydrates first and consuming your protein and your fiber last can help with, I guess, taking on that nutrition easier before getting too full.

But again, the benefits that come with including protein and fiber at the initial part of the meal helps to balance out our overall blood glucose variations and enhances our overall energy levels and appetite regulation. So to wrap up with common obstacles that occur and to shine a light on it in a positive way rather than focusing on the negative.

A lack of activity can be quite a common, I guess, experience from working at home. We can get caught in a rush of maybe not taking time away from the screen and being a little bit more sedentary.

On that eight hour working day, we might think that going to the gym for 40 minutes is enough to offset this, or going to the gym for an hour, but it really does take an extra 40 minutes a day to offset the negative effects of sedentary behavior.

Having a walk and break, putting on a headset and making phone calls on an afternoon walk, maybe going out looking for your lunch, not necessarily in the fields, but going down the street and having a look in some healthy restaurants again or sourcing or making up your own lunch, bringing a lunchbox in with you that you can maybe go out to the shop if you’ve forgotten to bring your own or leaving it at your desk so that you always have it there, ready to, I guess, implement a strategy.

Again, a nice fiber rich meal, maybe a nice big tossed salad, sliced brown bread and a chicken tossed salad there. Or the commute, again, could you build a simulated commute into your day if you work from home?

Speaker 1

So maybe getting out for a half an hour walk in the morning time and a half an hour walk in the evening time or buying a standing desk or a walking treadmill and maybe walking for the first half an hour if you’re working day can help to simulate that act of commute to work.

Underfuelling during the day, so reducing volume at dinner time can help to create that appetite first thing in the morning, which will help to regulate your overall satiety, that feeling of sediation or satiety, satisfaction from your overall eating experiences towards the second half of the day.

So if you feel like you are somebody who comes in and raids the presses in the evening time, making sure not to skip brekkie, reducing the volume at dinner and having a big front loading your calories down and having a bigger brekkie or aiming for high protein and fiber meals. Combination stabilizes your blood glucose levels and supports better sleep quality.

Being a creature of habit, so increasing variety, we’re all guilty of it. So rotating four to five carbs and protein sources throughout the week and accessorizing with your healthy fats. So planning ahead, thinking about what meals you might have during the week and trying to use different carbohydrate and protein sources in them just to increase the amount of variety.

So trying not to have chicken every single day of the week or pulses every single day of the week, but rather trying to, I guess, mix it up with maybe fish and your chicken, turkey, eggs and pulses and different sources of protein and so on and so forth. Painting the rainbow, including as much color as you possibly can into each meal through fruit and veg. And then one by new recipe a week.

So bonus points, if it can be prepped in advance for lunch and dinner for the week ahead. Again, commonly trying to cut out those extra occasions of snacking, grazing, or being all out, as we say, not having anything in the fridge or in the cupboards. Constant snacking, so this false belief of busyness.

Are you really too busy or are you eating in a reactive state to actually, you know, are you, I guess, being responding to your environment stimulus and then maybe just snacking at the desk but not being really present and aware, you know, neglecting that’s a fat-phase digestive response where we’re present, taking in the sights and smells of our food that increases the nutrients absorbed and makes us feel a little bit more satisfied.

And how does that then impact on our performance at a later point when we might be trying to be as productive as possible, neglecting it, snacking it, and then our productivity falling off as we talk about hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia. Lack of appetite, so blood sugar roller coasters, again, from snacking and busyness can create a lack of appetite. And then eating at regular times.

So trying to get rid of snacks, eat at regular times, you’re circadian rhythm, again, we’ll thank you for it.

Speaker 1

So I hope that helped to shed a little bit of light on how valuable it can be to be aware of your circumstances and some tools and tips and strategies that you can put in place to help complement your environment and get a little bit more in tune with your own needs in that moment in time.