How do you establish a healthy diet that allows you to fuel for performance, enjoy food, and maintain a healthy weight?
In this interview, we chat with registered dietician and 15:19 5k runner Emily Brown about how she approaches fueling in her own training as well as how she advises clients on how to establish and maintain a healthy diet. In addition to being a registered dietician and an elite runner, Emily is pursuing her Master’s degree in Public Health to help better bridge the gap between sports nutrition and general health.
Specifically, Emily is going to teach you:
- How to create a well-rounded diet that allows you to fuel for performance while still incorporating the foods you like.
- How to stay consistent with your diet and fueling for long-term success.
- The guidelines for losing weight while training, why you might actually gain weight when training, and how to ensure your running performance doesn’t suffer in the process.
- The optimal fueling windows before and after workouts and how to ensure you’re getting the calories and nutrition you need to fuel your mileage and training intensity.
- Which supplements might be beneficial for runners and which ones might be more a waste of money.
If you’ve been struggling with how to fuel your training, looking to lose weight, or just have general questions about running nutrition, this is a great interview to listen to.
Watch this week’s show now
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Links mentioned in this interview:
Dr. Schorr’s take on Iron Deficiency and Supplementation in Runners
How to balance weight loss without sacrificing running performance
Why You Might Not Lose Weight While Running
Nutrition consultation for runners
Our Mission
Read the Transcript
Jeff: Hi, Emily, welcome to the show. We’re really pleased to have you on Runners Connect today to talk about nutrition as well as your own running and definitely help our audience learn a little bit more about how they can make better nutrition decisions for themselves. So thanks for taking the time on your day to share with us today.
Emily: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be working for Runners Connect and getting out there talking to your population.
Jeff: Awesome, great.
Emily: It should be fun.
Jeff: Exactly. So to get started for those of our audience who were listening who don’t know who you are, give us a little bit of a background in terms of like your running history, some of your accomplishments, maybe how you got into the sport, those types of things.
Emily: Okay. Basically, I ran for the UMN Gopher’s University of Minnesota, got recruited to run for them from my high school in Wisconsin so I kind of made the leap across the boundary here in Minnesota for good 10 years now. I went from being All-American in college to getting recruited by a local team, Team USA Minnesota, a group of elite distance runners kind of an Olympic training program of sorts funded by USATF kind of one of those distance training groups that you see throughout the country from. So of course, you know what the Hansons and all the groups so I decided to just stay here and run with them and that’s kind of opened up new opportunities in terms of running and also getting my nutrition practice out there, which has been really cool.
So that’s what I studied in college was just dietetics basically, but I started off in pharmacy, switching in that and then through that realized that I never really learned chemistry and your basic sciences well enough to stick with those routes so I have to switch to focus to food and how food plays a role in sport and physiology and all that kind of cool stuff and that’s what’s stuck.
Jeff: Okay, so you started that kind of in your — well, started in kind of more your college undergrad kind of the interest in it and then kind of continued to pursue it.
Emily: Yeah, so it’s the one that I feel most comfortable with, you kind of get to use all the different realms of health sciences. You have a lot of pharmacy and it still the basic physiology of running and exercise and then just the internal health stuff. Food is really important not just to athletes, but to the population in general and it causes a lot of diseases, but it can also help prevent and cure a lot of diseases. So I think that’s the fun part — nutrition is it applies to everybody and it also plays a really functional role in sport and optimum performance.
Jeff: So after you finished your undergrad, you continued in school, correct? You went to get your masters or you’re still getting your masters?
Emily: Yeah, I’m still there right now. I finished classes about three years ago. I’ve just been working then my masters’ project since then. It’s really a basic write-up that I haven’t finished doing. Life kind of gets in a way and just got to make that last step to finalize it, but — so that will be for a masters and public health.
Jeff: Okay, I’ll share something funny with you I’m sure you’ll appreciate. So I am literally my result’s section away from getting my masters. I pretty much all I have to do is writing my result’s section and it’s been about a year. So just for result’s section, just more kind of busy so —
Emily: No, that’s where I’m at too, result’s section.
Jeff: Yeah, so I’m sure you can appreciate.
Emily: Yeah, (cross talking 00:03:45).
Jeff: But yeah, so tell me a little bit about, you said it’s a masters in public health, how does that kind of incorporate with nutrition that you kind of went over, kind of — I guess what people considers sports nutrition. How does that carry over in what you do?
Emily: It doesn’t carry over exactly to sports nutrition. I think the reason I chose public health over a masters of science initially was that I had spent so much time in the masters of Science program already. I took a few graduate classes as an undergraduate and kind of felt if I was going to stay at the same school, I needed to get exposed to maybe a different part of nutrition.
And I chose public health particularly because I noticed that nutrition in our schools is starting to play a key role into where our population go as adults. And just seen how big of a problem [inaudible 00:04:31] see is and the health consequences that come with that. We have diabetes and high blood pressure, heart disease and all those things that are really affecting America in our culture.
I kind of figured, you know what I got sports nutrition, well, that’s a specialized population, we can come back to that, but just kind of getting more well-rounded and how can– what I do help the American population and people more in general. And I think maybe a lot of people that will visit these websites are new runners and people that are looking to get healthy starting with exercise. So that’s I think the two realms can kind of come together there and that was probably the impetus for me going around towards public health is just to see how I can involve what I do in sports with the general population and I think they mix together really well.
Jeff: Yeah, no, I agree, I mean just obviously working with a ton of athletes, most people think of runners especially if they haven’t started running yet, I call these fitness freaks and just crazy fast and good and everything, but the majority of runners that we work with are pretty kind of started running a little bit later in life and usually did it because they had some type of health problem that they needed to fix. So I think that’s a great way to come out at in two different ways being able to look at the public health side as well as the sports side. Where yes, they are training for a marathon so they need to get that sport nutrition right, but they also need to control their diabetes and their blood sugar and those types of things.
Emily: Yeah, and I think the two work really well together. It’s really fun to see somebody that just started off running not only see the health benefits that they’d gained through that, but then also get a new perspective on eating and see how that can change their life, too. A lot of people that we might call recreational runners or [inaudible 00:06:22] are actually a lot healthier than a lot of the elite athletes that I ran into.
Jeff: Now, that’s for sure.
Emily: Yeah.
Jeff: I read a blog post just the other day about — well, one of the things I tried to do when I was training for the marathon was I was always worried about running with a full stomach and getting cramps and stuff like that. So I have an affinity for doughnuts and I would eat two doughnuts and like a glass of milk before my second runs just to get used to like something in my stomach. And I certainly could have chosen the better food products than doughnuts to be eating to sit in my stomach, but yeah, I definitely sometimes not, but not the healthiest, but that happens.
Emily: Yeah, I’ll probably mention on I think people could be somewhat [inaudible 00:07:03] that we’re not viewed in on my kitchen right now, but if we were, we might not be too thrilled. I think it’s interesting, but I think also, one of the hardest things to do is you talk to doctors and nurses too and you see them out smoking knowing that smoking is a bad thing. It’s been proven in science that it’s not very good for your health, but it’s so hard to counsel yourself with what you have. If I were to turn my diet around, I’d be going to somebody else in my field and I’m asking them for their help.
Jeff: Yeah, now, I get the same thing as a running coach, people ask me, “Did you coach yourself?” I’m like, “No way,” because I tell people things and I’m very good about being patient and kind of relax the training, but like when it comes to myself, I’ll also train myself every time. But when it comes to somebody else, I’ll just have that perspective so I know what you’re coming from. But let’s talk about your running background a little bit. What are some of your PRs now and I know you kind of focus more on shorter events since kind of like 5Ks steeplechase, but talk about some of your accomplishments.
Emily: Well, so I’m on a progression up right now, not towards the marathon necessarily, but you’re right, I came from steeplechase 5K when I was just out of college and set PRs in just about everything I ran. My first year out of college, I get a 437 mile, a 946 or 945 steeplechase, which was an Olympic A standard that year in 2008. And then I went out to do a 1519 5K later that year then ended up getting a stress fracture in my back and running the 5K at the trials, but not moving on to the next round or anything like that.
And then from there, I moved towards 8K cross country, a couple of years after that, I did my first 10K. I don’t even remember what my 10K PRs. I think it’s 33 flat for 10K and then just recently, I ran the Half Marathon and I did a 1:12:44 this year at Grandma’s Half in Duluth.
Jeff: Nice [inaudible 00:09:34].
Emily: Yeah.
Jeff: And in cross country, you had some success, I think it was in 2009, 2010?
Emily: Yeah, 2009 I think it was out in Maryland is when I was the U.S. champion there.
Jeff: Very cool.
Emily: And then the year before that, I placed third then 18th at world across that year.
Jeff: Wow! Eighteenth in the world, that’s not too bad.
Emily: Yeah, that wasn’t too bad. That was kind of fun. So yeah, that’s kind of where my running’s at right now, kind of — I guess I should also mention a couple years back, I was diagnosed with the exercise asthma over something of that sort that we haven’t really figured out to date so it’s been difficult to do those higher intense runs like the steeplechase or the 5K. So I’ve been kind of catering my training more towards the longer races that I can withstand a lower intensity, but for a longer duration of time. So the 10 milers and Half Marathons kind of fit that goal for me lately.
Jeff: Okay. Actually, interesting, but this is kind of off the cut, but talk a little bit about the exercise to this asthma because I coach a few runners who may have that or at least exhibiting symptoms of that. So I think it may be something that other audience, listeners here are interested in. You don’t have to go too much into that, but what are some of the symptoms and what could people look out for from your experience? I know you’re not necessarily a specialist, but —
Emily: Yeah, just from my experience when I first started noticing that it was — after I had been recovering from a respiratory infection that I decided to race through and train through. And I think that made some kind of adaptations in my lungs where they were starting to react negatively to exercise and different weather elements and everything like that. So I remember just being in 5K races later that year and kind of having black out and not being able to breathe just kind of the lungs closing in and a lot of wheezing and things like that– symptoms that I couldn’t really describe specifically. I just knew that they are happening.
And so from that, I went and got all the asthma testing done and everything and it came out as nothing because shocker, a runner has really good lungs to begin with. My breathing test came out as normal. I had to go to a different doctor that said, “Well, that’s not normal as an elite runner though. It’s not for everyday person, but they’re definitely depressed from where they should be.”
So I got on a number of medications and different inhalers and stuff and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t. So it’s just kind of a — more of a playing around my training in a way that it wouldn’t affect my lungs too bad where it couldn’t come back the next day or the next week and do another workout.
So that’s just kind of been the progression that’s been since then. I don’t really take any medications for it anymore. Maybe just a rescue inhaler before hard workouts and things like that, but trying to make the training more adaptable to the condition that might not improve or go away.
Jeff: That makes sense. I’m sure that’s helpful and actually, it’s a great point. We’ll probably have an expert on and maybe have you back on some time to talk a little bit more about your experiences with it.
Emily: Yeah, I hope it gets better.
Jeff: Definitely. So let’s get into a little bit of the nutrition stuff. I guess I want to start with something that you kind of already brought briefly kind of your own nutrition in two different ways. And one is I saw an interesting interview with you in Running Times after you — I think it was after the — your 18th place finished at the World Cross Country Championships in which you said from the article, we’ve quote, “When I go out to dinner with people, I’m kind of the worst case scenario because I’m both professional runner and a nutritionist so I have to deal with people sitting there. I feel like they’re critiquing what I’m eating and they’re uncomfortable eating in front of me.” So, how do you approach your own nutrition and how is your knowledge of nutrition kind of change the way you approach your own feeling?
Emily: The funny thing is if I go out to dinner, I don’t have a whole lot of supplementary income. So if I’m out to dinner, I’m not going to paid $12 for a salad, like I’m going to get the cheeseburger with fries and a beer because that’s when I’m out. I’m already out and that’s kind of what I’m in the mood for and so it just so happens that I’m out with people that don’t see me everyday and they’re like, “Oh, you’re an elite runner and you’re a dietician and this is what you’re choosing to eat?” And it’s like, “Well, yes in this context, that’s what I’m choosing to eat.”
But in general, I think over time, I’ve developed a pretty healthy approach to nutrition and one of the very pretty things I was ever taught is that everything is okay in moderation. And usually, people are going to apply that too, well, that just means the bad foods like the snacks and the burgers and pizza and all. All that kind of stuff, but you have to moderate what you would consider to be healthy choices to you because you can’t sit there and just eat lettuce and vegetables all day and not eat other stuff. So you have to really use a sense of moderation with everything that you’re putting into your diet.
So that was kind of my approach to it is it’s — yes, I’m having a cheeseburger and fries tonight, but that’s because my workout is done, I centered my good eating around my workouts. And then for the rest of the day I say, “I just kind of filling the gaps.” So it’s like, “Well, what am I missing in my diet so far?” and it might be I haven’t had any red meat today so I’m going to have a burger. It might be I haven’t had any vegetables yet, so I’m going to have a pretty big serving of vegetables and that’s how I approach my nutrition as I say, “My workout is the most important part of the day so I’m going to center really good sounds sportsmanship principles around that workout.” And then once that’s complete, then it’s just kind of filling in the gaps to meet my daily needs with the other stuff.
Jeff: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense actually and to be honest, that’s how I approach my nutrition when I was training was there were certain specific times of day or aspects where I would really kind of focus on it, but then outside those windows, I was a little bit more relaxed. And part of that for me and I’m probably the same as you is when you’re running a lot, you have to take in a lot of fuel. And so at some point, it just becomes impossible to eat like just carrots and lettuce and healthy foods all the time because you’re taking in so many calories.
We had Camille Herron on last week on last week who is one of the trials marathoner and she was saying, she probably eats close to 4,000 calories a day because she’s running 120, 130 miles a week and when you’re running that much, you can’t put all the fuel back in with just vegetables. So I think that’s a really great approach.
And second, do you feel like that more relaxed approach to nutrition benefits you from not stressing out too much about it and getting worked up? Because I know for me, that was a big part of it and as an elite athlete, your performances are so important, doest that help you kind of keep less stress about it and stuff like that?
Emily: Yeah, nutrition is a very important tool for training and you can’t neglect that, but at the same time, you don’t want to waste too much mental energy thinking about it and the same goes for what you’re training. So if you show up on the start line for a 5K, you can’t be thinking about, “Oh, I wish I would have done one more mile repeat, like I wish I could do that now and get that in there.” Because you can’t, the trainings are already done and the same as true for your nutrition, you can’t get to the start of a race line and be frightened about what you wish you would have eaten or not ate. You just can’t. You have to trust that you did the right things and everything is going to be okay.
And I think it gets stems back to when I was in high school and I was a captain for the cross country team and I have a teammate come up to me crying. And I was just like, “We’re about to start race. What are you crying about?” “I had milk on my cereal this morning and it’s going to make me sick.” “What is going to make you sick if you think it’s going to make you sick, but if you think that it’s going to make you strong and give you energy, then it’s going to make you strong and give you energy.”
So you really have to think about how much mental energy am I willing to waste thinking about eating the right or wrong things or how can I flip that around to say, “You know what, you did a good job for yourself. You’re fueled. You’re ready to go.” And it doesn’t matter which way you fueled yourself, energy is energy on. It comes in many different forms, but the bottom-line is when it’s in our body, it’s the energy that it’s going to be. It’s not different depending on any kind of food we put in. So just kind of making the best of where we got our energy from and entrusting that it’s going to be okay.
Jeff: From the clients that you work with, when you do nutrition consulting, is that kind of the approach that you take with them? And I’m just curious if it’s different coming from somebody who may already be unhealthy eating situation from a health standpoint or just the fact that maybe they’re already eating, someone healthy, how do you approach working with somebody who is in already in a bad weight?
Emily: Yeah. The big thing is you don’t want to make too many major changes at once. You don’t want to completely overhaul somebody’s diet because there’s no way they’re going to stick with it and then you can’t take somebody who eats cheeseburgers and pizza and put them on salads only. So what I try to do is when I get food records from somebody, I look at consistency about which foods they seem to really like and do as best as I can to keep those in there because really, all foods work in a sport nutrition diet. It’s just a matter of how you’re fitting them in around the workouts and then the amount of those foods that show up in your daily intake.
So for one example, I had a client that I saw a few times a week. She would have these cookies and she’s have them out because she was out driving or whatever and they were easy, they were convenient and I found a way to keep those cookies in the diet plan because there are comfortable staple in there. They may not be the best thing. There are sugar and fat and not all great things, but they still are energy so I still find a way to make those work in the diet and then adding other healthy stuff that is going to have more of an influence than just this one pack of good cookies is going to have.
So by keeping those things that are comfortable and make you feel like this diet isn’t so hard, like I can still have my cookies, I think that’s an easier transition into a healthier lifestyle and then you just kind of work with the other stuff too so also you need to limit sodium a little bit. You can work within the food sorority eating to do that either by choosing lower sodium or just reducing the portions and things like that.
And that makes my job easier too because I’m not just trying to come up with these foods of nowhere that I don’t know if you eat them or not and throwing those in your menu, but working with what you have and helping you find a way that you can make those work.
Jeff: Yeah, now I think that’s a great point. One of the — there’s a book that’s called the 4-Hour Body. It’s by a guy named Tim Ferriss who wrote a more famous book called the 4-Hour Workweek. One of the things that he talks about and then I agree with this, having a cheat day and I guess to people different approach kind of relaxing about their nutrition different ways and that’s how I’ve always looked at it.
It’s that one or two days a week, I kind of just relax about nutrition and I find it much easier to stay on a diet. I don’t necessarily diet, but kind of stay on a healthy eating pattern when I have those one or two days. I’m just like, “It’s okay, eat whatever you want,” and it sounds like that’s kind of how you approach things too where you want to make sure that people stay on a healthy diet consistently and not just go three weeks of like really clean healthy eating, nothing but vegetables and salads and clean stuff and then just stop completely.
Emily: Yeah.
Jeff: I’m assuming that’s part of the reason as well?
Emily: Yeah, and that’s kind of the paramount of sports nutritionist. It’s very much in parallel with physical training or you can’t just have one week where you’re really good and then slack off the rest of the month because it’s like cumulative effect. And you can’t all of a sudden decide you want to worry about your sports nutrition the night before a race because nothing is going to make up for the months of training that you didn’t pay attention to it.
So I kind of think of the two things in [inaudible 00:22:27] is, “Well, if I practice healthy eating everyday the same way I practice my running everyday, then, when I get to that day before the race, I don’t have to stress too much about it because there’s nothing I can do to change it and everything has already kind of been done.”
And so I’m a big fan of the cheat day, too. I took my cheat day in Saturdays after the long run and what I tell my clients too is, “If that’s your cheat day, you make sure that you do the right things before, during and after your run to be a healthy runner. You want to fill before get used to the fluids and the fluids that you’re going to be taking in during your long run and then make sure you recover and then the rest of the day is your day to take care of what you want to take care of. If you want to go out and have some wings and beer and things like that, that fits in there.” And I think it’s important too to make sure you take care of your job in terms of fueling for sport and then being a normal person after.
Jeff: Right. It sounds a great — that’s a great point. So kind of moving on shifting gears just a little bit, let’s talk running and weight lost. I know a big reason that a lot of people get started with running or at least even if they’re experienced runners, they might want to lose weight to help kind of boost their performance. Let’s talk a little bit about — I know you’re written a couple articles about this, but I guess there are a couple different angles. Why necessarily that running might not actually cause you to lose weight and in some sense, as you may actually gain weight? And then kind of a follow-up question here like, how can runners tell where a good weight for them on the scale is like when dropping some weight might be a benefit or where it might be deteriorate — that negative calorie intake might be the detriment to their performance? So let’s start with why they might not actually lose weight and what they should be looking for.
Emily: Sure. So we kind of talked about this with the marathon training too as you think you’ll [inaudible 00:24:22] adding a lot of miles and exercising more and the weight is not coming off. So let’s think about the good reasons that could happen. One good reason can be that you’ve never worked out before or you were sedentary for quite a while and now you’re starting this exercise routine and your body is going to adapt to that by building muscle.
So what we’re doing when we’re running, we’re breaking down muscle and rebuilding it and so that’s one of the first adaptations that’s going to happen is, yes, you’re running and you’re burning calories, but you’re also building muscle. One pound of muscle takes up a lot less room than one pound of fat. So even though we might be dropping fat, we’re gaining muscles so the weight is going to be about the same.
The other thing is fluid intake to support workouts. We’re probably bringing in a lot more fluid and at the same time, we’re building muscle glycogen. So the type of– in the marathon article was with muscle glycogen storage, we have water storage. And so when you’re hydrating accurately and putting on muscle or filling up your muscle glycogen storage, you can expect to gain weight just because the glycogen carries water with it and I think people are shocked to find out how much water actually weighs.
One of those small one-pint bottles of water actually weighs a pound. If you drink two pints of water, which isn’t really that hard, that’s four cups of water. You could theoretically gain two pounds within one minute of drinking water. So I tell people to think of it, it’s kind of like a hose. A hose without water weighs less than it does when you have the water running through it even though the size of the hose hasn’t changed at all. There’s no need to freak out about that kind of weight gain or failure to lose weight because it just shifts in fluid and gains in muscle, which can be good things.
Jeff: Yeah, that makes sense.
Emily: Then there are the reasons why you might not be gaining weight because of how you are reacting in terms of the exercise. So I know if I start in marathon program, I would say, “Oh man, I can eat anything because I’m burning all these calories.” And so the promise, the calories we take in are more than the calories that we’re putting on and we don’t realize it just because we think that we should eat, eat, eat and so, there’s 3,500 calories to a pound is about what it is. So if you think about if in two weeks, you’ve taken in 3,500 calories more than you put out, you could gain a pound in two weeks just from over consuming what you need to be for your energy needs. Also, exercise makes you hungrier so just naturally, you’ll be eating more.
So those are kind of the main reasons for weight gain or failure to lose weight. So I think the more important thing is to look at overall body changes in terms of, “Are my pants fitting tighter or are they fitting looser? Do my muscles look more toned? And also, how am I feeling overall?” If your joints stop aching and you’re feeling more energetic, then those are all good adaptations and the number is on the scales. They don’t really mean that much right.
When people weigh, I told them to weigh once a week. That’s an issue too is I know when people get excited about running to lose weight, they want to be weighing every hour or everyday and that’s just kind of — it’s going to give you a false sense of what’s actually happening because weight fluctuates so much. It could fluctuate eight pounds within a week, but between that week, if you only weighed once, you might never see how those eight pounds came on or off or anything like that.
Jeff: Now, that makes sense especially if you’re looking at it and getting very disappointed or very excited either way and disappointed being the worse where you get so upset that you either just say, “Screw it,” you don’t run that day because you’re upset or eat whatever. You’re just like, “Oh, this isn’t working.” So yeah, I can see that being a problem.
One of the good things that you brought up too and I think that I see a lot is kind of — I think you wrote about this too like sneaky calories where I see a lot of running groups like no meat and then they’ll go to Starbucks afterwards and that’s great. Because you’re kind of continuing the long run fun whatever, but you have a mochaccino, I don’t go to Starbucks, but like a mochaccino or whatever they call them and it’s like — those things are like 1,500 calories sometimes and that’s an easy — I think people are always surprised.
And again, you wrote about this and moving to this article for anybody that’s just listening, if you want to visit the site, we’ll have a link to this article that Emily wrote. But I think people overestimate the numbers of calories that they’ll burn while they’re running and that’s not to say that they shouldn’t be healing themselves, but again, you drink a thousand calorie Starbucks type of drink after you run, unless you are running really far, you’ll probably barely burn that — those amounts of calories.
Emily: Yeah, and that’s why I say too is to focus your really sound sport nutrition principles around your workouts. So if you adequately before that run, during the run and then after the run, I don’t like to think of that post-run time as party time. That’s still part of your training and that’s the time when you need to be sound with your nutrition choices. So have your snack planned out before you even go for that run so that you know this is what I’m going to need after my run and this is what I should have.
And then once you’ve satisfied your energy needs that way, the chances are that you’re not going to have those cravings for sweets or something high in calories or something that you see as a treat because your body is going to be satisfied with the right fuel that you gave it and you can kind of go about a normal day after that. I know what gets exciting too. You see how I just ran 17 miles like this is great, the rest of it is going to be awesome. I’m going to eat anything I want, but that’s why I think it’s important to have a plan going into that.
One of the things that happened to me too was I get done with that long run and I don’t have my snack ready. I come back to the couch, I’m there for two hours and then I wake up just ravenous and that’s when the day they goes out because it will be, “What can I eat really, really fast?” And it’s usually something like, “Oh, there’s some snack bars in the freezer or I can pop in this frozen pizza,” and by the time I get done with that, I realize I ate way more than I needed to. I feel really sick and I didn’t really give my muscles what they were asking for immediately after the run.
So you’re having that post-run plan in place before you even go out is a really good thing and it will save you from those empty calories that that might put you over your limits.
Jeff: Yeah, it makes sense. So what can people look to be or what should people be trying to eat post-run? What should they be looking at in terms of both — maybe looking at the number side of it? How many grams of protein, carbohydrates kind of thing and then what kind of foods do you recommend?
Emily: One of my go-to is peanut butter and jelly on white bread. When I say white bread, it doesn’t really matter. I just like the taste of white bread and I think that post-exercise is one good time to have those kind of simple sugars because your muscles are just wanting to put the glycogen right back in that you’ve burn through. So within the first 15 to 30 minutes or even up to the first hour is an optimal time to start refueling and so you think the faster that you can get your blood sugar up, the quicker your muscles are going to be able to take that sugar in.
And so I see that as a good time to kind of have sweets or refined sugars or whatever, but still in a sense where it’s not like I’m just going to eat a bag of jelly beans and that will be good. So we’re still trying to focus on some sound nutrition there. So I do peanut butter and jelly on white bread and so I get a really good dose of carbs there. I forget how many grams of carbs. That was maybe like around 80 and then the peanut butter adds about eight grams of protein to that.
And so what science has said is they recommend a four to one ratio of carbohydrates to protein. It’s not necessarily proven yet that the protein has anything to do with helping muscle glycogen, but certainly, they’re to help with muscle repair. Glycogen isn’t the only thing that’s gotten broken down during your workout, how you’ve broken down your muscles too and they’re going to be hungry for some repair. So having a four to one ratio of carbohydrate to protein is a good way to go about it.
Also, probably a lot of people for this two chocolate milk is another good avenue for that just because it’s got more carbs through the sugar and then it’s still got the protein. So the numbers kind of depend on your body weight and also how many calories you burn during that run. So I don’t know those specifically. They’re somewhere around here, but even for my own nutrition, I don’t really go off of numbers too much. It’s kind of like, “What can I get in right away,” and then continuing to eat within the next hour or two.
So it’s kind of like an immediate snack whatever your body can tolerate. A lot of people aren’t very hungry after a long run. So in that sense, it’s kind of what’s easiest and sometimes, that’s just going to be a sports drink, too. So kind of whatever is easiest for you to eat at that time and then within the next hour or two, kind of having more well balanced meal with more carbohydrates and more protein.
Jeff: So an immediate like within that 15 to 30-minute window post-run, we’re really looking at kind of two different avenues. We have replenishing muscle glycogen and we have repairing muscle tissue or instigating muscle growth. And so we want to essentially assume simple sugars to kind of — to replenish that glycogen and then bring in the protein to kind of help repair that — start repairing that muscle tissue right away so that’s why we do the protein and the carbohydrate or glycogen at the same time.
Emily: Protein delays gastric emptying as well. So it kind of slow down the digestion of that meal and like sugar sit around a little bit longer so like your muscles still has time to pick them up.
Jeff: Okay, so that’s where they kind of work in conjunction there.
Emily: Yeah, and then of course, especially depending on the conditions we’re working on and we definitely want to be thinking about replacing our fluids and electrolytes, too. Hopefully, we did a good job of doing that throughout the run, but I know I haven’t done a marathon, but I know how hard it is to try to take a couple water and drink out of it when you’re out there hammering away. So if you’re like me, you’re definitely going to need to replace your fluids and electrolytes and a sports drink is a good way to do that.
I mentioned the chocolate milk. Chocolate milk is not going to have all the electrolytes you need. You might want to be thinking of something higher in sodium to good time to have high sodium fluids too and then just fluid in general. What you can do with regular water and then foods where you can do it through a sports drink.
Jeff: Okay, it makes a lot of sense. So yeah, now that we’ve kind of gone over a little bit of the post-run nutrition kind of stuff, let’s talk a little bit about going back to the original question about weight. How do you recommend people look at their own weight when they are trying to assess whether losing a few pounds will help them run faster or whether that’s going to be a detriment to their performance?
Emily: I guess I say just take a look at, at the people who are running and in a world where you can see like Chris Solinsky on the same level as trying to think of a really tiny runner, but —
Jeff: [Inaudible 00:37:11].
Emily: Yeah, [inaudible 00:37:12] pretty tiny, so you have two guys with very similar 10K times and that has make you look at and you say, “You know what, body weight or body size is not the biggest factor that that plays a role and how I’m able to perform as a runner.” And so I’m a firm believer in the fact that your body has a set weight that it wants to be at and that we should let our bodies determine what that’s going to be.
And that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to pay attention to it because I think especially when you’re starting the exercise program and you’re thinking healthy and losing weight and dieting and all that, you do have to pay attention to make sure that you’re still eating enough. You do have to support your exercise and also just your everyday growth, what it takes to keep you living even without doing anything.
So I think that you can kind of know if you’re dieting too much or if you’re not eating enough food and that’s when you’re starting to experience the general fatigue that’s more than just being tired from running. It’s kind of that everyday fatigue where it’s hard to get out of bed, it’s hard to go to work. It’s hard to concentrate. Those are kind of tell tale signs that your body is lacking in either energy or vitamins and minerals or combination of both.
Jeff: Okay, so for runners that are trying to lose weight, what’s the core deficit that you recommend? For people that don’t know what that is like, how many calories do you recommend they cut from their daily or weekly nutritional intake to try to lose that weight?
Emily: I recommend no more than a pound a week, which would be 500 calories a day to get to 3,500 calories in that seven days and that can be done through a combination of both working out and eating less. It doesn’t have to come from just one or the other. So you find out how many calories you need just to support your daily activities and then you can burn 250 calories through working out so that could be a three-miler run and then you can also eat 250 calories less to get to your 500 for that day.
It really depends on what’s the easier way for you to look at it. So another way you can go about is saying, “I need these many calories just to support my daily activities, plus this many to support my run. So I’m going to try to stay at 500 calories under that in terms of how much food I eat.”
So just kind of different ways to look at it.
Jeff: Yeah. So for people that are interested in that, well, at the bottom of this interview, again, if you head to runnersconnect.net and looked at our interviews, we’ll throw up a calculator for people. It’s pretty simple. It’s not very individual, but it does — what it will do is take your basal metabolism and then add that to generally what you’ll burn per mile that you run. It kind of give you a total calories for the day that way you can see pretty easily what that — your daily core burning so you can calculate if you want to lose 500 calories per day, what that number would be for you. So we’ll throw that up at the bottom to people that are looking.
Emily: I’ll say this, too. I wish that numbers were perfect [inaudible 00:40:50] was a calorie and you burn exactly how many it said you are going to burn and all that. These numbers are just predictions. They’re just estimates and they’re the best tools we have, the best successful tools we have sort of actually being able to use a direct calorimetry and calculate how many calories are actually burning that fast in exercise and all that. But they’re really good equations for just getting that idea of how much you need and even in the foods you eat the calories aren’t perfect. In fact, the calorie labels aren’t perfect.
When one egg Mcmuffins, it’s going to have 350 calories and then one might have 400 calories. Nothing is perfect about these numbers, but if you take on with that perspective knowing that this is an estimate and I just want to be somewhere within this range, you’re going to be good. So don’t fright too much about every exact little calorie or number. Just try to stay within the zone.
Jeff: Okay. So for runners that you begin work and your clients that you begin working with, what are some of the biggest like what are the most — some of the most common mistakes that you see runners and just people in general making with their nutritional priorities?
Emily: My notes gone in this somewhere — yeah, very interestingly, one of the biggest things I see — this could just be a factor of coming under reporting of food intakes and forgetting things and stuff like that. But I see carbohydrate intakes that are really low compared to what recommendations would say would be optimal for an endurance athlete. It’s like taking part in a training program. And to counteract that, I see protein intakes that are generally pretty high. So I think that’s kind of happening in our culture right now is we’ve been really high on protein over the past decade or so. And because our protein intake are so high, it affects our ability to eat enough carbohydrate, not because we’re ignoring carbohydrate necessarily, but just because we get so filled up on protein that we don’t have enough space to eat enough carbohydrate.
Jeff: Okay, that does make sense. You’re just probably full from protein (cross talking 00:43:13).
Emily: It’s just maybe not enough carbohydrate that would be useful to use for endurance exercise.
Jeff: Okay. Do you have the specific number in terms of what the carbohydrate intake for an endurance athlete would be?
Emily: So I go off of the sports nutrition recommendations from the American Dietetic Association and their recommendation is five to seven grams per kilogram for just general training needs, which I would see probably applies to you if you’re starting a new exercise program or if you’re early in your training season and just doing your base miles. So I have that number written down to my — so for example, for somebody who’s 125 pounds, that going to be about 280 to 400 grams of carbohydrate a day and that’s for general training needs. And a lot of the clients I have, I don’t see anywhere near those numbers. I see like 150, 250, so really kind of low on the carbohydrate scale. So 300 grams of carbohydrate is going to be about 1,200 calories. So if you consume with 2,000 calorie diet, I think that’s somewhere around like 65% or something.
Jeff: Okay, I’ll trust your math on that.
Emily: And that’s the funny thing too is we don’t really use percentages anymore. That’s how it used to be given to us is we should have 55% to 65% carbohydrate, but it’s really the absolute totals of carbohydrate that make the most sense because if you eat a thousand calories today and 65% of those calories are from carbohydrate, well, that’s really not enough carbohydrate to support your training needs and not enough calories in general.
So five to seven grams of carbohydrate for just basic training like less than 50 miles a week. And then once you get into the more intense training programs and you’re doing the high mileage for marathon or something like that, it’s going to be somewhere of around seven to 10 grams per kilogram, which can really get to high amounts. Almost 600 grams a day and those numbers will be kind of hard to reach for some people.
So one of the things to keep in mind too is these numbers are for kind of a generic person. I have here a runner, you want to be shooting more towards the lower end of those ranges and then if you’re a smaller runner, kind of more towards the middle upper ends of those ranges.
Jeff: Okay. So how do you recommend because I know I work with these few athletes who are training pretty hard and they struggle to get in those amount of carbohydrates and it’s something that they always say like, “Oh, I know I need to eat more. I know my core can take it down, but I’m just not hungry.” How do you suggest to people that they work — kind of work around that issue?
Emily: So like I said, one of the things I do is I structure my carbohydrate around my training. So going really high carbohydrate before the workout, trying to consume sports drink or if people use gels or even actual foods during the run and then post-run, getting really high carbohydrate. And again, just from those three meals centered around the workout, you could get upwards of 200 to 300 grams of carbohydrate in just from centering it around your workout.
I don’t want to push core strength too much because I don’t want people to rely strictly on that, but when your carbohydrate needs are high and your work, you know what, that’s when the sports beverages can become really useful. You don’t want to be drinking them all throughout the day. It’s just way too many sugars, but if you center those around your workouts that then you can get a good dose of carbohydrate in that way.
And then just work on concentrating your carbohydrates into your foods , so for example like dried fruits are really small concentrated source of carbohydrates so making the trail mix with a handful of raisins or dried cranberries and stuff like that. Anything that’s a small amount of food, but packs a lot of carbohydrate and it’s going to be nice. And then dairy products and fruits are another good way to getting carbohydrate as well as vitamins and minerals as opposed to doing like jellybeans and ice cream sandwiches and things like that that offer the same amount of carbohydrates, but not necessarily the same vitamins and minerals that we can get.
So that — seeing how many birds you can kill with one stone type of thing is like I eat a banana, you get good vitamins and minerals and a lot of carbohydrate as well making those exchanges so that your volume of food is decreased in terms of how much more you need to eat still.
Jeff: Along of those same lines, one thing that I’ve kind of recommend and I want to see if you agree is try to do more liquid calories. One thing that I would try to do a lot is like really power packed shakes where I would put lots of fruits and yogurt and pretty much all healthy things into a shake and then blend it all up. And that for me was a great way to get a lot of extra calories because again, it was a lot of fruits and things like that, which are simple carbohydrates, but it was just in a fluid or more viscous form so it’s a lot easier to take down and not feel like I was full.
Emily: Yeah, before this interview, I actually had made my fruits smoothie the other day and usually, I’m too lazy to do it, but then I realize it doesn’t really take a whole lot of time. So what I put in there is I put in a handful of spinach, some orange juice, a container — like a small container of yogurt and then a cupful of berries and I mix that all up and it takes me about five minutes to drink. And I sit there and think about, “How long it would take me to eat each component of that food, eat the spinach salad and go through a whole cup of berries and yogurt and juice.”
It makes a lot of sense to just kind of condense it down and especially for somebody who’s busy, out on the road or is just trying to refuel really quickly after their workout, that’s a perfect way to do it. It’s not a big component of smoothies for sure and any kind of liquid and then if it’s something that you’re not making yourself, if you’re buying a processed one, I just encourage you to try to look at any additives that might be in it, extra sugars that they’re putting in there. When you make it yourself, you have good control over what’s going in there, but sometimes, in processing, they have to pack things in a lot of sugars or other kinds of preservatives that you could stay away from if you made it yourself.
Jeff: Okay, that makes sense, a good recommendation. So is that kind of the biggest mistake and going back to the original question all the way back, is that the kind of the biggest mistake you see with a lot of the people that you consult with or is there something — is there another thing that you typically see?
Emily: Another thing is through just — in overall lack of variety and I’m guilty of this, too. I think a lot of runners are we kind of get into food ruts.
Jeff: Yeah, I do the same thing.
Emily: And so, if it’s not broke, why fix it? But, a variety is really a key to a good diet because we’re going to get — if we get stuck in food ruts, we might be missing out on some key vitamins and minerals that pretty soon we’re going to start to get deficient in. You don’t have to change things up everyday, but just kind of throughout the week doing different things. I mean, it could be as simple as, “One day, I make a sandwich on wheat bread and the next day, I use like a whole grain tortilla,” or something just kind of changing up small components of your usual diet.
And one way I like to do that too is if I buy a bunch of fruit at the supermarket, it just kind of sits there and I forget to eat it, but I’ll get two or three different kinds of fruit at once, like one kiwi, one apple, one banana. And when those area gone, I’ll go back and try different kinds of other fruits instead of having like eight apples sitting into my fridge because I’ll just eat apple, apple, apple, apple and I get tired of it.
So just kind of changing up your stimulus that ways, trying a different kind of fruit a few days a week and things like that and getting those kinds of varieties in there is a good way to make sure. Because nutrition isn’t just a one day thing, like we said before, it adds up over the days and the weeks so you don’t have to worry about, “Okay, this day I need to do this and this day I need to do that.” Just think about in the week in general, “How can I vary my nutrition a little bit so that I make sure I’m getting a little bit of everything.”
Jeff: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And actually that will row into our next segment and this is something new that we’re doing for this interview is we actually opened up our Facebook and Twitter accounts and asked people questions that they wanted to ask Emily any questions that they’ve had and some of them we’ve already asked and answered. I know Jamie asked about carbohydrate intake and then we did a great job of covering that. We also had a question about what type of food to eat during or I should say before and after runs and Emily has covered that pretty well.
But along in the same lines of what Emily just asked, Adam asked us, “What types of vitamins and supplements does Emily recommend and does she find that they’re kind of worth it?” And I’ve always wondered that, too. It’s a multivitamin supplement or any supplements that are on the market, are they worth the money? What do you recommend?
Emily: I guess I’ll just start by saying I’m not a huge fan of supplements only because I know for myself I would start to see them as a shortcut. So the amount of supplements that are out there right now kind of reminds me of watching Saturday morning TV with infomercials and seeing just all these wide array of products. One of them being the Ab Belt, which I never actually bought, but seemed awesome. Just put this on for five minutes and you get a six-pack.
Jeff: That means you’re pretty [inaudible 00:53:41] if it worked.
Emily: That would be awesome. (Cross talking 00:53:45) about supplements almost in the same light sometimes is they’re great that we kind of figured out how we can get vitamins and minerals into a full form and use them as health enhancements to our diet, but I feel that they might start taking the place of hard work. So for instance, the Ab Belt, they say you can wear them and get six-pack abs or you could go exercise and be healthy and get six-pack abs that way.
So that’s kind of how I’ve had a negative view on supplements is just I know that for myself I would start to think of those as the easy way out. You know what, I don’t like broccoli all that much so instead, I’m just going to take a multivitamin and I don’t have to eat any fruits and vegetables and because this multivitamins that it gives me 100% of everything. So I would rather make a commitment to having a balanced diet and trying it that way versus seeing supplements as a way to say, “Well, I don’t need to worry about that then.”
Also, I’m uncomfortable with supplements. Well, not so much the vitamins and minerals, but more specifically supplements that or how did this muscle gaining or fat burning and things like that that when you start to see the words like propriety blend or secret recipe and stuff like that. That’s when I start to get concerned because supplements aren’t regulated in the same way that over-the-counter drugs and medications are. And so, a lot of times, they’re not going to get — taking off the market or even investigated until something starts going wrong with them.
I just write a fact sheet today about the role of investigating supplement use in Olympic athletes because there’s been a lot of athletes that have tested positive for stimulants and steroids and hormones and things that — you can believe them or not believe them. A lot of them or everyone is going to say that they didn’t do it, but a lot of these people maybe they are just trying to take a multivitamin and it had a steroid in it because it’s manufactured in the same plant that does steroid powders or whatever. So for me who might be tested any day, it’s not worth that to me to risk that — let that be in somebody else’s control what get into my body and so there’s a few times though when supplements might be a good thing.
So some of the key ones that runners usually take will be calcium, iron, vitamin D and fish oil supplements are now the big one. So [inaudible 00:56:32] by cyanide, I don’t know it to individual person, we kind of get that at that before everybody has got their own individual health history and I can’t know any of that. So supplements are something that really should be discussed with your doctor or if you’re on a medication, discuss it with your pharmacist because there can be a lot of interactions that happen and you think that, “Well, vitamin are — minerals is generally benign,” but even the foods that we eat can interact with our medications and things like that. So it’s something that you want to talk with your doctor real quick about and just make sure that’s there’s not going to be any kind of interactions like that.
So iron is a popular one especially with female athletes. Our needs are a little bit higher for iron and iron deficiency can really be detrimental to performance and a lot of times, you don’t know you’re iron deficient until it’s too late then you’re out for months trying to re-supplement that iron. So if you find it difficult to get iron through food sources like red meats or dark poultry meat and those kinds of sources and you think iron is going to be a problem with something, do definitely talk to the doctor about and see does an iron supplement fit into my healthy diet? Am I able to do that?
Jeff: Yeah, just real quick on that, well, first, we have a pretty sense of article in iron that we’ll link to at the bottom of this interview, but one thing that I always recommend to athletes is during times that — and I’m sure you’ve done this, is during times when they’re feeling good and things are healthy and they’re not training quite as much or maybe they’re coming off a break and just getting back into things is — and if they’re worrying about iron especially the females to get their iron levels checked, in that way, they can establish a baseline.
Because everybody is going to have a different natural iron level and some people have just naturally high and some people are going to be naturally low. And so if you can establish a baseline for yourself, you have a much better chance of determining whether you may be high or especially well, you’re maybe low if you have a baseline of like when you’re normally healthy and feeling good and not excessively training and then you have a nice thing to compare it with.
So something that I recommend is next time you go to doctor, ask for an iron test. They’re usually pretty simple and they’re not expensive and so usually, most doctors will do them especially if you tell them that you’re a runner and you’re training for a marathon or something. I definitely recommend that just to get a baseline where you’re at. So that’s a great point from your side.
Emily: Yeah, and I agree with that, too. I think it’s really important to have a healthy baseline because iron is one of those minerals where there’s kind of an arbitrary range set for what is normal. Know that some of my college teammates had a normal of 12 in one day. I got tested and I was at 99. It doesn’t mean that I am super full of hemoglobin and oxygen carrying capacity or anything like that– 99 is my normal. So if I come up with 12, I know I’m in trouble. This is the person at 12 is feeling really good because that’s their normal. You’re right, finding what that is would be a really good thing to determine whether or not you have some issues going on.
And then the next supplements that I thought about today since our sun is going down earlier, water is getting colder, I live up here in the north in Minnesota and so we start to think about vitamin D. Vitamin D, we can make it ourselves when we’re exposed to sun. For people who are fair skin, they only need about 15 minutes of sun exposure a day. People with darker skin more or like 30 minutes a day and that’s without sunscreen. That would be enough to help us meet our vitamin D needs.
But now that the sun is going down earlier, we’re not spending as much time outside, our vitamin D levels might start to drop because we’re not getting that sun exposure. Sometimes we don’t do a great job at getting vitamin D through food sources either. So vitamin D might be another one of those things to think about supplementing again after talking to your doctor, your pharmacist, but it’s another popular supplement and a lot of times, you’ll find it with calcium, vitamin D and calcium work together to strengthen bone.
And so calcium is another popular supplement for runners and my word of caution with that is — as with all vitamins and minerals, there’s an upper tolerable limit that we don’t want to exceed. And with calcium, it’s a little bit lower than I even expected it to be. Its 2,500 milligrams a day and recommendations can be anywhere from a thousand to 1,300 milligrams a day just depending on your gender and your age. So usually, somewhere within that range are doing good.
And that adds up pretty quickly through dairy products and even some vegetables and if you look to even orange juice and fruit juices are fortified with calcium, a lot of grain products are fortified with calcium. So we do get calcium from a lot of sources. It’s not just milk. And I think one common thing too will a lot of my clients as — they don’t tolerate lactose very well. It’s pretty common, lactose being the sugar and milk.
My first recommendation is to try the lactose-free products. I actually do that myself. I have lactose-free milk just so I can really taste the same a very good milk and it does. So I think that’s a great product then you can get a lot of things lactose-free. And so, calcium supplements aren’t exactly necessary even if you are not a huge dairy fan because you might do an okay job with actually doing that. If you do take a calcium supplement, I recommend no more than a thousand milligrams a day leaving that apart into 500 milligrams twice a day and that will give you the best absorption then. And then you don’t really want to go over that problem.
Some of the symptoms of having too much calcium, one of the huge ones is constipation. So nobody really wants that. So you don’t want to overdo the calcium and end up with that as a side effect and also, you don’t want to promote kidney stone formation. Nobody wants those either and I’m not — but I heard that they’re not very [inaudible 01:03:13].
And then I guess the big one is the multivitamin then. In general, a multivitamin is going to be pretty safe. If you are going to take — when you want to look for one that only has 100% of everything like nothing super boosted like 500% or anything like that. And what you’re probably going to see is that it’s mostly going to come out in the urine. Your urine might be a different tinge of yellow or kind of like a green or something like that. That’s just the vitamins and minerals coming out because you didn’t need them.
So a lot of people will call them multivitamin in insurance policy, which is fine. It’s fine to call it that way. You can take it or leave it, but the one thing I just don’t like to see is taking a vitamin, a multivitamin in place of saying, “Okay, no, I don’t need to eat.” So (cross talking 01:04:01) your diet.
Jeff: Yeah, that makes sense.
Emily: Yeah, I think that’s for those.
Jeff: Cool! Well, I think that’s covered all the questions that we’ve had. At least they are submitted to us for now. So just for people that are listening whether — definitely, friend us on Facebook or I guess like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter because I think we’ll continue to do this for our next couple of interviews is ask some specific questions that you may have so we can get a better — make sure that the guest they are answering questions that you actually have and kind of going from there.
But just I guess to close up, Emily, talk a little bit about the nutrition consulting that you do as part of Runners Connect, how does that exactly work? What type of clients do you typically work with?
Emily: I work with just about anybody. My favorite clients are people that are really pumped up about running and just looking to see improvements not only in their performance, but also their health. Like I said earlier, I got into public health because I think that nutrition is really important in our society in general and I find that the healthier people are, the happier people are. And happy people are fun to be around.
So what people can expect from me with nutrition counseling is to work with what you’re already doing. I don’t want any huge changes in your life unless there are huge changes you want to make, but I like to keep it simple, convenient and accessible without costing a ton of money or making some huge changes or anything like that. Another thing I find is a lot of people have families and their families don’t want to go through drastic changes with the foods they’re eating —
Jeff: Right, little kids, they don’t want to be on diet.
Emily: (Cross talking 01:05:51) in the household and find a way to really optimize nutrition centered around your workouts to give you the best feeling, solutions, for your workouts and to help you get race ready and have good PRs hopefully.
Jeff: Okay, great. So for people that are interested, we’ll throw up a link again at the bottom of this interview, but if you’re interested in getting a consultation with Emily, you can visit runnersconnect.net\running-nutrition and that will give you all the info about Emily, about what she does, her background as well as the pricing and stuff like that. And if you have any questions, definitely feel free to email us. You can post a comment at the bottom of this interview. We’ll definitely get to you or if you have a question about whether Emily can work with you, if you’re somebody that she can work with, definitely let us know and she’ll get back to you about whether she thinks that you’d be a good fit.
So Emily thanks very much for taking the time. I know this one is a little bit long, but I appreciate you taking the time out your day to answer nutrition questions and hopefully, we’ll have you back on some time to answer some more and keep giving us awesome advices. This was a really great interview, I appreciate it.
Emily: Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s good to see you.
Jeff: No problem. Thanks.
Emily: Take care.
Jeff: Thanks.
