Chief Endurance Officer

[00:00:00]

Greg McDonough: Well, welcome to the show. I am super excited about our guest today. He is a performance nutritionist, and entrepreneur. He's got over 20 years of experience working with elite athletes and performance professional sports teams. He's the co-founder of the world's first training based nutrition app to simplify the complex world of sports nutrition and help more athletes and individuals live healthier lives and perform their best.

He is the co-founder and chief nutrition. Officer at Fuel, and please welcome Scott Tyndall. Scott, welcome to the

Scott Tindal: Greg, thanks for having me. Uh, quite the intro. I appreciate it.

Greg McDonough: Yeah, it's, uh, you've earned it my friend. [00:01:00] Um, but as you know, I love talking about the endurance mindset. And so, Scott, I'd, I'd love to know how your endurance mindset has impacted your life unexpectedly.

Scott Tindal: Yeah. Um, I remember when you asked this question, I had to think about it, and I was, I guess I didn't get into endurance sports until probably closer to, well, I guess it's coming up 10 years now. But I, I feel like a relative newbie. But, uh, I think what it allows me to do and what the endurance mindset does is allow me to control the controllables.

My time, my energy, and probably my pain. Um, and I know you, it's a funny one 'cause I was talking to my partner about this and she, I was like, oh, I think this is how I'm gonna answer the question. And, uh, I think there is an element of sort of administering pain on myself that I can control because, um, my, and where I'm going with this is, uh, I have two children and one [00:02:00] on the way.

Uh, my eldest boy. Thank you.

Uh, my eldest boy was born, uh, on the 12th of the 11th 21, which is, as anyone will recognize, is a palindrome. Um, and he was very normal up until six months. Uh, but we started to know that something wasn't quite right. And, uh, we sought a lot of opinions. A lot of people sort of passed it off and said, no, everything's completely fine.

He's just a little slow with his development and whatnot. Um, but we pushed and pushed and then our pediatrician ended up doing a lot of genetic testing. And, uh, the long, the short is he came back with, uh, a very rare genetic disease, uh, which is called S SCN two A. Uh, and his particular, uh, genetic mutation was actually the first of its kind ever recorded in the medical literature.

So. Um, it's a bit of a weird one. It, uh, it affects what's called the sodium channel or a sodium channel protein in the brain. And it affects, uh, [00:03:00] like it provides a lot of neurological conditions and that ranges from severe epilepsy where some of these children have sort of, so to seizures every sort of two to five seconds.

And now we usually die very early on. Uh, or they can have sort of very high, moderate, high level autism with intellectual disability, and that's more jack side. So they sort of have this spectrum, I guess, in terms of left or right, loss of function, gain of function. And um, yeah, I guess the, the endurance mindset has allowed me sort of just to, it, it allows me to focus sort of at some periods of time on myself.

Greg McDonough: Um, Scott, thank you for sharing that. You know, my older brother, uh, was born with a mental handicap. Um. It probably took my family. He's, yeah, my older brother probably took six to nine months in order for my family just to recognize it. And I think if the story is correct, it was, my grandmother just noticed that he wasn't [00:04:00] developing like the crawling or the rolling over and all these things that you expect. But to your point, it was very quickly, I'll give it time, give it time, give it time. And it was my mother that kind of put the foot down and said, look, there's something where we gotta get into deeper. And they found. right solution and he's a this wonderful human being now. But to your point about endurance and endurance mindset, like as a parent, I'm a parent of two children as well, and it's like you're home almost hopeless, right?

You're hopeless in that moment when you just saw, when you figure out that your child's on a different path, and probably the majority of the people that he or she's gonna interact with.

Scott Tindal: Completely. Um, yeah, it, it, it's an interesting sort of state to put yourself in because I think you don't ever. Uh, you don't ever think your children will ever, ever have anything wrong with them. Um, and yeah, it's just a humbling moment, I think. Like, you, you love your child no matter what. [00:05:00] It's, I think just a realization of what life is going to be like for them and for yourself and for your, your entire family.

So. It definitely, it's, uh, you know, it'll be the longest run or longest bike ride or longest swim I've ever done, uh, in, in terms of that analogy because it's, it's just gonna be lifelong. Like there is no cure for Jack, unless, you know. What we're currently doing is we've set up a charity and the goal is, you know, the cure for these types of conditions is genetic, is gene therapy.

Um, you know, you talk about CRISPR and gene editing and things, and, and that is the reality and the technology is coming along so rapidly that there is hope. Um, there's a big foundation. I mean, there's only 700 kids in the world diagnosed with s CN two A, um, so it's an extremely rare condition. Um, but they, there is a very good foundation in America that does support this.

And, you know, there's, I think there's three [00:06:00] families in Australia. With, um, we've met two of them. Um, so it is pretty, it sort of, you know, boggles the mind, I guess, in that sense. But, you know, there's, there's definitely hope, uh, in terms of what you, you know, you do. And I guess that's what the endurance mindset is.

It's always, you know, faith in the process and, uh, belief that if you're doing what is right, then the outcome usually looks after itself.

Greg McDonough: A hundred percent. Um, it's gotta be a curious the business perspective and your entrepreneurial journey. How has Jack's condition sort of impacted your personality, how you deal with your team, how you grow a business? Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Scott Tindal: I'd like to say it's given me more patience. Um, maybe not all the time. I think it, it's one of those things like. There, there's often times where you get frustrated and you, you're like, yeah, I can't believe this is happening, and I'll [00:07:00] vent and things like that. And then it's like, you know, my partner's very levelheaded and, and she'll say like, you know, in the scheme of things, like think about it, like, is it, does it really matter?

And I think that's probably the lesson that I've learned. And yeah, you can become extremely frustrated over very small things and I'm still guilty of that. However, I think the, the reality is, is when you, you take a step back and you look at the big picture, you're like, well, like if that, if that's the thing I'm really worried about, then I don't have many problems.

And so like in terms of work, like, and I think it's in like. You know, everyone has their issues and I think that's important as well. It's not like I'm like, oh, I'm the only one with issues. Like, I have a friend who broke his neck, like sitting on a, he fell off for BA stool and broke his neck and got one of my other best friends.

He, uh, he's got a child with a severe disability, you know, high level epilepsy and uh, sort of cerebral palsy type symptoms. Yeah, [00:08:00] everyone's got their story, so it's not like poor me. But I think it's also important for those people who think they are going through a tough time as well. Maybe, maybe their children are giving them a headache 'cause they are talking too much or something like that.

And I'm like, you know, Jack's nonverbal, he'll never speak. And it's like I would give anything for him to say Dad. So.

Greg McDonough: man, you're choking me up there. Where do I go from here? Uh, so I, let's explore, uh, fuel in. And when did the idea come? I've tons of questions about the app and the technology and, and business and growth and that type of thing, but I'd love to go back to the day that you kind of discover that this was a need or, or kind of like when did this. Passion, this purpose kind of come to you that, that this is a product that needs to be out there in the market.

Scott Tindal: Yeah, I guess, uh, as you alluded to, I, I [00:09:00] started as a physio and then sort of did masters in sports exercise medicine, and I was working in a high level sporting sort of, uh, environments with teams. And then I became very interested in nutrition as a part of that master's, and then did postgraduate studies.

And I think the reality was is that every nutrition sort of expert that I came across, it was all PDFs. It was all very static. You know, it was a lot of good theory, a lot of, a lot of the great practitioners that have either taught me or I've worked with everyone, you know, again, like everyone knows what they should be doing, pretty much like, you know, if you wanna lose weight, you've gotta eat less calories than, uh, you know, you've gotta, you've gotta expend more calories than what you're consuming and so on.

So everyone knows what they're doing and you can get given all this great information, but it's the execution. And that, and that's what it really comes down to is like, can you actually deliver a program that is practical and [00:10:00] simple for the athlete to follow? And so I think from there, you know, rather than a static PDF, which was built on sort of theoretical framework, what I started doing was looking at athletes training peaks plans.

And, um, I was looking at them and then just effectively replicating that but with colors, so with the colors that we use at fuel in so red being lower amounts of carbs, yellow being moderate, and green being higher. And so I would just put these colors into it was a, a female athlete called Sarah Pian piano at the time, a professional triathlete who worked with Matt Dixon as her coach.

And, uh, you know, she would have a Google sheet that I would update on a, a weekly basis and that would take me sort of a few hours to do. And then, you know, she was talking about it and then some other athletes jumped on board and you know, I was thinking, oh, okay, if I get 30 athletes, I can probably. You know, making a, you know, a fist of this, I can probably have a decent income, but it just wasn't [00:11:00] scalable in that sense.

Like it was taking hours to do these programs. And so then, you know, it came from there. I mean, there was definitely a need. There was, you know, I think what you call product market fit from a a small perspective. I met a another triathlete. He's not a very good triathlete by his account. Uh, but he, his name is Jonathan Lee, and I was put in touch with him by Matt Dixon, San Francisco and uh, you know, we hit it off.

He was like, I think we can do something with this. And uh, you know, it sort of went from there. He sort of got me to dump on a, on a Google page or a Google document, sort of all the rules and everything like that. And then they started coding it. And that was sort of the beginning of the end, I guess, in that sense.

Greg McDonough: I, I love the app and what I, I. Truly appreciate that's different than others that I've used is the sinking to, like, when I enter my weight, it changes the plan. When I [00:12:00] hit my targets on my training peaks from my coach, it updates my plan. like, your imagination must go in many different directions as an entrepreneur.

Like where does the development stop? Or where do you do, you end up going down sort of like crazy little rat chases and, and thinking like, oh, this would be useful. And then you somewhat develop it and it turns out that it's not, wasn't very useful. Um, I'd love to hear some of those stories of kind of that entrepreneurial curiosity. We thought of X and it really was the dumb idea sort of

Scott Tindal: We've We've

been, uh, it is a good question actually. 'cause, you know, like. From a practitioner standpoint, I will be like, oh, we need this, we need that. You know, like you'll go down the route of, okay, we need to integrate immediately with wearables, because I think that's really important.

But you have to take a step back and say, well, and, and I'm getting much better at this, is like, well, what are we gonna do with that information? Because, yeah, look, at the end of the day there are a lot of open APIs and we can do a lot of integrations and a lot of [00:13:00] athletes will say, like when we do a, a question, a a questionnaire or survey and we ask them what features would you like?

You know, connections to wearables always comes out. So everyone thinks they need it, but it's like, okay, now you've got the data, what are you gonna do with it? And that's really, I think, the premise of what we're doing with fuel then, is everything that we present to you is hopefully practical. And usable, and we'll actually make an impact to you.

So I believe we can do, uh, a lot with the data, say from like an AA ring or Garmin sleep or a whoop band, but we don't need all that information. We need select bits of information. And then really the key is how does it integrate or how does it relate to, or correlate or cause, you know, is there any causation between that and nutrition?

And so that then takes on a much bigger project where you're now looking at these LLMs, you're using AI to actually look at all these [00:14:00] millions of data points and then start to build the connection. So yeah, doing one thing, the the easy bit is pulling in the information. It's what you do with the information that then needs to be thought about.

So then you pull back. And you don't actually end up doing that. So I mean, we've, we've been, you know, we've, we've always, I'm sure you've read the Lean Startup, uh, I think any, pretty much every entrepreneur has and you know, that, uh, you know, build, build, measure, test, learn sort of model, probably got that wrong.

But, um, uh, you know, along that way we, we've been very good with the leanness and the way we approach it. So we'll build something in that MVP state. Get users to try it, test it. Okay, that's really good, or that's really bad. And we'll push on. Generally speaking, you know, our gut feeling, and I hate to use that word, the pun, but, um, it's been pretty good.

We, we haven't introduced features where people have been like, oh, this sucks and we've removed it. I don't think we've act. Uh, the only thing we've [00:15:00] removed, which wasn't really a, a decision that where we wanted to remove it, it was just because we rebuilt the app and the company that was. Building the app with us.

They, I don't know, they didn't put it in there. They forgot about it. Effectively, it was the subjective, what we call subjective wellbeing questions. So it was five questions we used to ask athletes every day, um, how they're feeling, their energy, their mood, um, sleep quality and sickness, which for me as a practitioner is super important to see the reality Then.

You know, from a business perspective in terms of acquisition and revenue, it probably doesn't make that much difference. And so now you've got this balance where I want it brought back in, but then prioritization of other features. So what we're working on at the moment is what we call AI Meal Builder, where literally, you know, based on your preferences, the meal, [00:16:00] the time of day, it will now give you three options specific to your macronutrients.

Which is really cool. So you can say coach recommendations. So what we recommend, or you can go what's in my fridge? You can literally say, look in your fridge and go, okay, I've got a can of tuna, some salad, tomatoes, and I don't know, some tomato sauce. And it will give you three options based roughly on those ingredients, which is really cool.

Or you can tap the other button, which is, I'm eating out, where are you? And so you might say, oh, I'm at Chipotle. And then it will give you three options based on your macros, based on your carb color for where you are. And you know, when you sort of, when I say it like that, you're like, well, yeah, I'd work on that feature rather than, rather than, you know, five subjective questions.

However, those five subjective questions, if we use that information really well, again, with AI to say, and you [00:17:00] say. Actually I'm, your energy is trending down over time. You know, you've gone from a five, five out of five to a four to a three to a two, and that's happened. And we look at your training volume and your intensity, and we say, oh, okay, well, he's on a loss program because you're trying to lose weight.

Actually, you know what? We're gonna give him 300 extra calories on this day because his energy's been dropping. His sleep quality has dropped, and he's actually reporting that he's feeling a bit sick. Okay, now you are using those subjective questions to actually provide a practical impact for that athlete just by giving them an extra 300 calories.

And so now you've got like a really static feature that could become very dynamic, which could have a massive impact on an athlete. And that's how my brain works with all of this. And obviously with a very small team, it's like it comes back to prioritization, know?

Greg McDonough: Yeah, I don't, absolutely.

Scott Tindal: gonna work on?

Greg McDonough: Is, [00:18:00] is the AI meal builder out yet, or is that

Scott Tindal: It's Tim. It's Tim Peter. We're actually, I'm about to open it up to the Facebook group to say who wants to start to trial it, so it'll be, I think we'll open it up to like 20 users at the start and then 50 and then we'll just go from there. So we'll get you on, mate. Don't worry.

Greg McDonough: Nice. I'll keep an eye out for it. And you, and you brought up the Facebook community, um, that's another feature that's unique to you and to fuel in. Can you talk to us a little bit, educate the audience of like, what's the benefit of the community versus just. Bitching about your nutrition online somewhere.

Scott Tindal: Yeah, there's a lot of bitching. Um, it, look, I think it's important. I think nutrition is so personal that even, and this is a thing, this is, I think the biggest difficulty with any of these nutrition apps that are coming out is that. They will serve a purpose for a vast majority, but also a vast majority.

Unless you nail it and keep it super simple and [00:19:00] practical and that they can implement it into their life, they'll just drop off like every other sort of app. And so I think the human element of what we've really tried to integrate into fueling is important. Now you can be on, you know, autopilot, which is just go for it without communication.

Or you can have the copilot where. You know, you can chat with a coach every day if you want. And I mean, I always think like if, if you were, if you were someone who actually wanted to get the most and learn a lot about nutrition, then the copilot program's a no brainer. I mean, annually, if you pay on an annual basis for what, $34 a month, you have access to coaches who have worked with world champions, Olympians like.

And you can ask whatever question. I mean, you go, I mean, how much does it charge? How much do you get charged? If you go and have a, a one hour consultation with a dietician or a nutritionist,

Greg McDonough: That's right.

Scott Tindal: like, I mean, you think about it that way. It's 200 bucks, two 50 for [00:20:00] one hour, and from that you'll get a PDF. And, and that's the irony is like, you know, people will go, oh, it's too expensive, or something like that.

And you're like, literally for the price of one hour, you get a whole year. Every day you can ask any question. I think that's pretty good value.

Greg McDonough: Yeah, it's a huge value.

Scott Tindal: so, but back to the, back, to the Facebook, um, group. Yeah, look, I think it's, I, I would like to see it be used better rather than just, Hey, tell me why this isn't working, or, you know, I've got a question about my program.

I. I would like it to be more, and this is probably on us as coaches, is like share, um, research papers which are of interest or share the podcast episodes and people comment on that or ask questions around, Hey, I heard you talking about this in the podcast. Can you explain this more? And create conversations around that.

I think unfortunately in the, the era of where we are as human beings in society is that [00:21:00] everyone's a keyboard warrior and it's very quick to complain, and then you, you know, you, you go through an explanation and they're like, oh. Oh, okay. I get it. I didn't realize that. And it's like, that's all right.

Just like calm, calm your farm, and uh, just, you know, just relax a little bit. And, and that's the other thing is, and coming back to, yeah, what has Jack taught me? It's just relax. I mean, it's nutrition. We're not, we're not doing brain surgery. Like guys, you're talking, I mean, you've probably read some of the, and people are like, oh, I scanned the barcode and it was out by two grams of protein and three grams of carbs.

And you're like. So what? Like that doesn't matter. It does not matter. People like nutrition is about what you do consistently. It is what you do consistently. Well, now it doesn't matter if you have a one day where you have a pizza. Okay? If you do a pizza every day, it's probably gonna have a pretty [00:22:00] negative impact.

But if you have a pizza every now and then, it doesn't matter. Yeah, you might go over your macros one day, but. There's so much error, and I mean this in the nice, there's so much error even within tracking and we all acknowledge that. But if you can educate yourself on the trends and what you are eating on a daily basis, you will see results over time, even if there is some measurement error there.

And that's, I think that's what's lost on a lot of, I think the type of person who complains a lot is the person who probably jumps between programs a lot. And doesn't actually stick to anything consistently. And if you dove into it, that same individual probably changes coaches quite regularly, or doesn't stick to the training program or argues and says, oh, I don't wanna do that training.

Why should I do that training? No, I need to do this training. It's like, well, you know the answer to everything you, you should, you should just coach yourself. And that that's.

Greg McDonough: Well, and to your point Scott, [00:23:00] it's um, it's the habits, right? It's the consistency, it's the habits, it's the. You know, you're in the middle of a 10 mile run and you're at mile six and you're near your car and you're just like, you know what? Maybe I'll just call it short today and, and my shoes off and go home.

Scott Tindal: And that's, that's the endurance mindset. It's like you, you have to start to get into the why and, and the, the why. I always talk about the why with nutrition. We used to, when it was very small, you know, when we had. You know, when I was working just with 30 people and I'd talk to them every day and all that.

Yeah. I'd always start with ask yourself why you want to do this and why is nutrition important? And it's, it's not to lose five pounds of fat or have a six pack or run a good marathon like that. Why? When you get through and it's called a click, A click through exercise, you ask why, and they say, well, you know, I wanna be healthy.

And you're like, why do you wanna be healthy? And it's like, well, yeah, I want to. Live for a little bit longer. And it's like, why do you wanna live longer? And it's like, well, 'cause I wanna be around my [00:24:00] family. It's like, well, why do you wanna be around your family? And they're like, uh, I don't know. And you're like, well, why do you wanna be around your family?

And they're like, oh, 'cause I love them. And you're like, bingo. There's your reason why, because you love your family. You wanna be with them. So stop eating the burger every day. Start making your own lunch, your own dinner. Start doing the training that you're being, that you. Keep telling yourself you need to do, start going to bed at 8 30, 9 o'clock and waking up after seven or eight hours, sleep rather than five.

Stop drinking every night. Like, it's all the things that you've gotta sit back on and go, why do I want to do this? And, and that deep seated, why? Honestly, for most people, whenever I do it, and I've brought many men and women to tears by just doing that click through exercise, that five or six questions.

It always comes back to their family, it comes back to their kids. It comes back to [00:25:00] their husband or wife 'cause they love them. And that's a really powerful why. And when times are tough and you're like, oh, I don't feel like doing it. Just come back to the why. And you're like, oh, I can actually do this.

It's not that bad.

Greg McDonough: Scott you mentioned, and you got me thinking, asking myself the, those five why's now, but I, I'll get off that track for in a minute. But, um, you mentioned sleep. And it's something that I haven't thought much about as it relates to nutrition the quality of sleep you have. Could you educate us a little bit on how nutrition impacts your sleep of performance?

Scott Tindal: Yeah, sleep's. Sleep's fascinating. So I think what is commonly accepted is that. Uh, sleep or poor sleep, either poor quality or poor duration of sleep, probably more duration as much as anything is gonna negatively impact nutrition. [00:26:00] So when you have poor sleep or limited sleep, your brain will seek out like a hedonistic sort of behavior.

So it will search for foods that make it feel good, make you feel good. So what is that? It's gonna be fatty, salty, sugary foods. And so that's what's gonna happen. So you know it if you have a bad night's sleep, especially if you've had a few drinks the night before, you've been out late, what happens the next day?

You search out the burger, the pizza, you know, maybe a can of coke, something like that. And that's what can happen with repeated poor quality sleep and poor duration sleep. So that's what a lot of people focus on. What a lot of people don't focus on is that bidirectional relationship. So actually having good nutrition can, or poor nutrition the other way can then impact sleep.

So it can also impact duration of sleep and sleep quality. So if you are eating pizzas and burgers and poor quality nutritionally, you know, it's lacking that nutritional or density [00:27:00] in terms of micronutrition density, um, and maybe it's too much of a caloric density, then that can reduce sleep quality and reduce sleep duration.

On the flip. We know that high consumption of fruits and vegetables has a positive correlation to improve sleep quality and sleep duration, and that's really cool that okay. You know, you're always told to eat a lot of fruits and veg, and that's probably like you're told, oh, well, it gives you lots of micronutrition, but you're never told, oh, actually, that can have a really positive impact on your sleep and the timing of those, even things like protein.

So your protein. In consumption with, uh, carbohydrates. So carbohydrates in the evening can actually improve your sleep quality, whereas a lot of people will go, well, don't eat carbs in the evening. It's gonna make you fat, which is again, absolute rubbish because it just comes down to energy needs. So thinking about the quality of your food.[00:28:00]

And what you actually eat on a daily basis and maybe even around meal timing in the evening could have a positive impact on your sleep. Alcohol, really easy thing in terms of alcohol is nutrition. It sits in the food and beverage category. You drink one drink in the evening, it will have a negative impact on your sleep.

A hundred percent. And anyone who's worn a ora ring or a whoop band, they'll show you. It'll show you straight away if you have more, especially if you have more than one drink. And especially wine. I mean, it, it just plays havoc with your resting heart rate, your HRV and your body temperature. And so it's, it's, for me, it's very clear.

Nutrition has that two-way direction. Um, there's more and more research being done now on nutrition's impact on sleep as opposed to just sleep's. Impact on nutrition.

Greg McDonough: That's fascinating. That's really helpful and I appreciate that, those insights. Scott.[00:29:00]

Scott Tindal: Another insight I've.

Greg McDonough: that I've been picking up from your Instagram feeds is so I try, I do long distance triathlon, um, and for year, for 10 years now. And at the beginning. I, I basically focus on nutrition on race day, right?

What am I gonna take in, what am I gonna burn out? And it's all sort of at the beginning, like gel oriented and, and et cetera, and had a bunch of GI issues like we all do. And we've gotten past that. But what I've been learning more recently, and this was sort of just by happenstance, is what I, what and when time of day I eat the day before a raise.

It a huge impact on the morning and the ultimate performance. And then what I've been learning from your Instagram posts, it's not just the day before, it's like almost the week leading into race. And I'd love for you to another educational moment for our audience, like talk to us about the importance of the right nutrition leading [00:30:00] into, let's say 140.6 mile race.

Scott Tindal: Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, you touched on the start. I think the biggest mistake a lot of athletes make is just focusing on race day. As well. They're like, oh, okay, this is what I'm gonna eat. But they forget about practicing that in the buildup throughout all their training weeks. And it's like what you eat in training, especially in those race pace sessions, is ultimately gonna be your race fuel.

And I think that's a big focus on what we do with fuel in. And it's always that aha moment with athletes as well. They're like, oh my God, I didn't realize that what I eat and drink in training is actually going to be my race fuel. Again, you come back to, I come back to the PDF. Like people often ask us, oh, can you write me a race fueling plan?

And I'm like, yeah, I could do that, but it's a complete waste of time because it's theoretical. I could tell you, oh yes, you need to eat 90 grams of carbs per hour and you need to drink between one and 1.5 liters of [00:31:00] fluid on the bike and on the run. I want you to try and target 60 grams an hour. It's like, that's just numbers.

It's bullshit numbers to be honest. Like people, you need to understand what your carb capacity is. So we call it carb capacity. What is it? The amount of carbs you need per hour to have you pushing the watts that you need to do feel great coming off the bike with plenty of energy. Your legs not shot in terms of hydration, understanding your fluid requirements based on your sweat rate.

Versus what you can actually intake to allow you to come off the bike in probably a less than 1% dehydrated state, so that when you come to the run, you also know how much can you take in from a practical standpoint, like what gels do you like? Like I could tell you, Hey, Greg, use Morton or use precision hydration and have three of these gels per hour.

And you're like, you do it on race day, and you're like, I don't like these. They [00:32:00] make me feel sick and it's like, you haven't practiced that, so you've gotta practice it. And I think it's a, again, it's when people get into fuel in and they start to see, it starts to click and they're like, oh, I get it. Low intensity session.

I can just have some sandwiches and some bars and eat some real food. I can have some trail mix as long as I get the calories in pretty good, have some gels with it, maybe some drink. Great. Then it's the higher intensity sessions. You're like, no, this is go to, this is go time. Now I'm practicing my race nutrition.

They start to see that and then they start eating around it, which ultimately is where you are getting to is like on race week. Have you practiced that potentially in the buildup as well? Have you practiced like a carbohydrate load? A carbohydrate load? I mean, I know from talking to you, the experience of carbohydrate load when you first do it is like, oh wow.

I mean, people look at fuel. Then we had this, you might've seen in Facebook. One of the athletes was saying, you know, I [00:33:00] had a time trial. It was only 20 minutes and you carb loaded me. And I was like, no, we gave you higher carb days. IE around five grams of carbs per per kilogram. That's not carb loading.

Carb loading is double that amount. And it's like

Greg McDonough: Hmm.

Scott Tindal: this misconception of what is carb loading and what's higher carb. Carb loading look as an absolute minimum. Eight eight grams per kilo of body weight of carbs. And I mean, how, if you don't mind me asking, how much do you weigh in kilo? In

Greg McDonough: one 70, um, I don't know when Kayla

Scott Tindal: One One 70. So that's probably about 70 odd kilos.

You know, if you're, if you're up in, around that 10 grams per kilo, yeah, you're up around 700 grams of carbs, and that's not 700 grams of weight. 700 grams of carbs. And if you think about that, it's probably getting up into around 15, as Jan said, I mean, he, he was talking about it. He's like, you know, that's like 15 to nearly 20 cups of boiled [00:34:00] rice, like the equivalent.

It is a lot of food to eat and you need to practice that. You need to start practicing your race day breakfast so that you get to race day and you're like, I know what I'm eating. I mean, how many times do you hear athletes and they're like, I don't know what I'm gonna eat on race day morning. And I'm like, what do you mean?

Greg McDonough: or you're scrounging

Scott Tindal: That is something?

Greg McDonough: for the peanut butter sandwich that you should have

thought

Scott Tindal: Yeah.

Greg McDonough: days

Scott Tindal: At three in the morning you're like going, oh, what should I eat? I'm about to do 12 hours of exercise. What should I eat? It's like, no, no, no. That is not a thought that you should have. It should just be autopilot. Like if you're eating overnight oats or if you're eating boiled rice, white rice with, you know, some milk and maple syrup, you know exactly what you're doing.

You know exactly how much you're eating in order to give you that amount of carbohydrates to get you off to the best possible start.

Greg McDonough: That's awesome. Scott, I could [00:35:00] pepper you with questions for hours and hours and hours. How can an audience member get in touch with you?

Scott Tindal: Uh, look, the easiest way is just, uh, probably connect through our website. So check out fuel in.com. Uh, we're also on Instagram, get fuel in and then if they wanna reach out, they can send an email to coach@fuelin.com. Um, and that's probably the three easiest ways to get in contact with us.

Greg McDonough: That's awesome. Thank you for your time today. Audience members, if you got some value out of our show, please share it with your community. Please like and subscribe. Um, let's get more fuel in into people's hands. It, it's a remarkable app. Um, I am a user for sure, um, but I do need a shift from the autopilot to the co-pilot so they can keep peppering questions over the app.

But anyways, Scott, it's been great having you on the show. Keep up the innovation, keep up the dreaming best to you and your family and your upcoming child. Uh, I'll be thinking of you for sure, and good luck in Sydney in a few weeks.

Scott Tindal: mate. [00:36:00] I really appreciate you having me on the show.