Hey, gang! It’s Maria here with episode 34 of Goalie Training Pro TV. This is going to be a little fireside chat. A little fireside chat about nutrition. It’s going to be a short episode today.
Follow along with the full video on YouTube here >> https://youtu.be/XUHLS3_9ox0
Basically, I wanted to shoot this short episode because… I love it when you guys ask me questions or share your ideas and your thoughts with me.
Yesterday, I sent out an email. You probably got it. If you didn’t, check your email. I always send out these kind of, “Hey, here’s what you missed,” because I have a couple of email newsletters that I subscribe to. I only subscribe to a couple that I read consistently, and two of them do kind of a, “Hey, here’s what you missed,” which is so cool because I don’t get every single one or some days, I’m just so busy, I have to actually do my job, I don’t have time to read that. So I try to do a similar thing.
I just kind of put it together and put in the links, but I started off by going back to the article I did, which really was a share of an article from Precision Nutrition about how to get eating more vegetables, and how to like eating more vegetables.
That kind of got me thinking, because it’s sort of a journey that I’ve been on for the last year or so. Not that I’m vegan. I don’t really plan on going vegan, but I am eating a lot more plant-based meals. We probably eat at least four of our big meals a week, like suppers, are vegan, just because.
I was thinking how your taste changes, because yeah like I used to eat a hamburger – you know, probably 20 years ago I would eat McDonald’s, and I actually love pizza. Pizza’s probably my favourite food, but when you stop eating those kinds of foods, especially those highly processed foods, then you start eating vegetables, it’s kind of like… not the best.
But now, we eat so many vegetables, and I’ve learned some recipes with them. I was just saying, like, Paul and I for dinner, we had just a bowl with like quinoa, some, basmati rice, some hummus, some red sweet peppers, some sauerkraut, some cucumbers, some like sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, snow peas.
You know, and like when I was sitting down to eat it, I was like, “Oh, yum, yum!” These vegetables look so good. There wasn’t a sauce or anything on there, it was just some like curry powder and a little salt and pepper and a fresh lime squeezed on top but that was it.
It’s neat because I wouldn’t have thought, even a year ago, you know, I ate vegetables because it’s like, well, yeah, you’re supposed to eat vegetables and they’re good for you. You know, not that I disliked them, but it wasn’t like the highlight of my meal.
Now, it’s like so exciting.
Then, just one of you is like, oh, “That looks like a good meal, low on protein.” Then I asked them, did you actually calculate the macros, or do you just think it’s low in protein because there’s no meat in there?
They were super awesome, because, like I was genuinely asking, because hey, I’m interested. What’s the perception here of why this is low in protein?
I actually quickly did a calculation of the macros, and it was about 13 grams of protein in that bowl. Then they were good enough and kind enough to write back, and say, “Yeah, because I think probably the only protein was from the hummus.”
They were saying, too, like, not that I think meat is the be all and end all, but, yeah, it just looked low, but they didn’t sort of calculate it or whatever. It was just kind of a quick perception and just a little comment or a thought, which I really, really appreciated.
Then that’s what got me here, is that… and again, I’m not trying to say you should be vegan or anything like that, but just to make you aware that plants do have protein in them, and actually just even coincidentally, I watched the documentary, ‘What the Health?’ last night.
I know there are two sides of every story, and you know, like somebody makes a documentary and they want to make this point very clear, and I know there’s a counterpoint to it as well, but there were some things in there that were pretty eye-opening to me.
Another movie that I thought actually was very good was Food, Inc. Just to get you thinking about, like, hey, where does our food come from and what are the sources of our food, but they made a great point that the biggest mammals like gorillas, like, what you eat for meat, cows, pigs, they’re eating plants.
A gorilla is probably one of the most powerful mammals on the planet, and it is totally vegan, and they get all the protein that they need.
Then the other things is, I was telling Sarah what we were going to talk about today, and somebody commented it didn’t have enough protein, and she’s like, “Well, what about what you ate the whole rest of the day?”
That was a good point, too.
It’s that, it’s all within context and I think we probably over prioritize protein. That’s plenty of protein for someone my size, plus after a workout, if I have a shake, and now, like I have switched to vegan protein, because I think it sits in my tummy better, but that’s 15 to 20 grams of protein there.
For breakfast, I kind of eat the same thing almost every day, not exclusively, but I have a whole grain toast with almond butter and then pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, so there’s going to be some degree of protein there.
And I think in that documentary last night they said people need like about 50 grams of protein a day, so that’s sort of the whole point. It’s like, you can get protein from other sources that are not meat based, and just practice eating different foods and really see what makes you feel better.
I don’t know if you guys remember, some of you who have been with me for a long time probably remember, I think it would be three summers ago now, I had real trouble with getting shaky and my heart would pound and I’d get dizzy just in the middle of the day, like five times a day. Like, “Oh, I might be having a little mini heart attack… Oh, no, it’s good.”
I did go to a doctor, like my family doctor, who was a new family doctor who didn’t really know me, but their answer was, “Well, we could put you on anti-anxiety medication.” Which it was like, “Well, I don’t really think that’s sort of the issue.” I was raised in a family of doctors. My grandad was a doctor, my uncle’s a doctor, my dad’s a doctor, my brother’s a pharmacist. It was a very science proof based family.
Just through that experience, like, I’m just going to try eating different foods, see what responds better. I did that spit, DNA test. I know, you remember, we did an episode on it, but where it analyzed my DNA to see which foods I was sensitive to, and that highlighted a lot of things. One is that I’m sensitive to caffeine and I like coffee, so that’s a problem.
You know, just find what works for your body, but I think, too, I think I digest better, I think my stomach feels better when I eat a little less dairy and a little less meat, but you got to find what works for you, but the point of this episode is that your protein, what you eat for protein, gets its protein from plants, so don’t be shy to load up on vegetables. You can still get what you need out of that, you don’t need to eat like a brontosaurus burger for dinner.
That’s it. That’s all I got for you. This is Maria from GoalieTrainingPro.com.
Cheers.