Beans are a pretty common plant based protein food choice. They are very nutritious BUT when it comes to protein they actually contain almost three times as much carbohydrate as they do protein.

As long as your plant based or vegan diet is high in protein, it can be just as effective for muscle gain and recovery as a mixed diet. The key factor is that you need to eat enough plant protein overall spread out regularly throughout each meal to achieve at least 1.6g.kg.

Over the past month I have used Supersapiens continuous glucose monitor to learn what happens to my blood glucose levels so I can better advise my athletes using it. While running a busy sports nutrition clinic, I train an average 14h of cycling, 300km a week. Here’s what I learned and the nutrition tips I recommend for anyone starting to use Supersapiens.

Many people who believe they have issues with gluten or wheat products self-diagnose and start a gluten free diet without having being first tested for coeliac disease. Before you cut gluten out of your life, if you believe gluten is a problem for you, go get tested properly for coeliac disease.

Want to improve your health and boost your gut microbiome? Eat more plants! People who eat over 30 plants a week have greater gut microbiome diversity than those who only eat 10 a week. Stuck for ideas on what plants to eat? Here’s over 30 fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts and seeds to get you started!

Periodically tracking your food intake can be a useful way to identify areas where there is room for improvement in your daily habitual diet. Cronometer and MyFitnessPal are two of the most popular apps to track your food intake. In this blog post I review what I like and dislike about them both!

While most people know they should cut back on their salt intake, understanding what to look for can cause some confusion. Is a food label high or low in salt and how does sodium convert to salt?

If your motivation to train and improve your fitness or nutrition has been waning, here’s a few of my top tips to help you achieve your goals this year.

Whether the nutrition label happens to be something you regularly look at (or generally ignore) there’s bound to be at least one time when you look at all those numbers or nutrition claims and think what the heck does that mean? This list is to help you through that moment and understand those food nutrition labels.

Are you underestimating your portion sizes? Most people do. In my experience as an advanced sports dietitian, the average person underestimates what they eat each day by 500-1000kcal! Take the piece of bread I ate for breakfast yesterday...

Taking on an Ironman triathlon with a 3.8Km swim, 180-Km bike and 42.2Km run is no mean feat.

With little individually wrapped chocolates it's easy to eat them mindlessly not paying attention to how quickly they add up over time. It’s far better to incorporate a piece or two or one individual chocolate on daily basis as part of your every day nutrition plan, rather than to eat the whole block in one day on top of your normal food intake.

In recent years I've seen a huge rise in the number of people choosing to adopt plant based diets. A common concern for people transitioning into a plant based lifestyle is how to ensure you get enough protein from plants. This post shares some of the best plant based sources of protein when following a plant based, vegetarian or vegan diet.

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, but not impossible. With some careful planning it is possible for vegetarians to use plant based foods to achieve their iron needs.

This post provides nutrition advice for vegan athletes to ensure optimal balance, health and performance gains can be achieved.

Where do we begin reviewing the challenges and growth that 2020 has brought?! Here's 4 key life lessons I've learnt this year.

The average person is estimated to eat around 6,000 calories on Christmas day. Eating or drinking an extra 500 calories per day in the run up to Christmas means that some people find themselves with a few unwanted kilos by the time New Year’s Day arrives.

What does a mars bar and protein bar have in common? Both are small volume weighing around 50g a serve and on average provide 200-250kcal.

Many endurance athletes feel like they aren't doing enough training and try to constantly squeeze in another session to gain that extra training benefit. There's a fine balance between overreaching and overtraining. One pushes you and gets you stronger and fitter, the other can leave your performance in shreds resulting in injury and time off training. Here's my experience of what happened when I was intentionally overtrained as part of a research study.

How hungry and full are you before, during and after meals? Often I see peoples delaying eating to the point that their hunger levels drop to a ZERO. Leaving them so hungry they'll eat anything and everything and end up at a TEN where they are painfully full and feeling sick.