E 31 | Craig Moore: Building Trust and Tackling Food Insecurities

Welcome to the team behind the team podcast. I am your host, Donnie Maib. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team-based model approach to ethic, performance, strength, and conditioning, sports medicine, sports science, mental health, and wellness and sports nutrition.

Hello, and welcome back to the team behind the team podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Mabe and man, this month, we got a big time guests that, uh, can’t wait to hear from. But before that we got coach Joe Cross that the co-host is in the house. Coach, Joe, what is the deal today, baby coach? What’s going on? It’s it’s Texas is getting hot again.

Um, I’m from the north, so I’m probably going to melt a little bit, but I’m getting used to it. This is my fourth year in taxes. So. I think I’m finally getting used to the heat. Hey, that’s good stuff. Uh, yeah, it’s getting a little warmer out there and also real quick, coach Joe works with our track and field team.

They just came off a phenomenal indoor season. Congrats. Do you coach and Clint, he’s not here today, obviously, but first time ever history of the program, men’s track and field indoor national champs, congrats women got runner up big time, Joe, how are you feeling off that? That’s great. Uh, I mean, Clint, Clint’s the lead for a track and field and I mean, he’s done a great job ever since the, you know, him and I sat down and talked about coach flows, you know, direction and everything.

And, uh, man, I mean the team really. Obviously taken to it, you know, the, the success is right there. So, um, it’s been fun. It’s been fun for sure. Congrats, man. That’s that’s exciting times for here at the 44 track and field. So keep it moving. Uh, with that, let’s get, let’s introduce our guests today. Our special guest is Craig Moore, who is the dietician, the main dine lead dietician for football, Texas football here on the 40 acres.

Coach Craig, welcome to the show, man. Thank you. Thank you for making time. I know you’re busy. Uh, you guys are in the middle of spring ball, right? You guys, uh, I think you’re a second weekend. Yeah. So we start up spring ball last week. So we’re entering our second week of spring ball, uh, practice number four tomorrow, bright and early.

I love it. I love it. So thank you for making time today. We’re just excited this topic. Again, those that follow the show, we get into different lanes of the performance team with sports science, sports, med health, uh, behavioral health, strength, conditioning, and of course, uh, sports, nutrition, or a dietitian, as we’re talking about today, what an important topic.

I know there’s going to be a lot of things we get into. That’s going to help a lot of people today. So, uh, Craig, thanks for making the show. Joe, why don’t you go ahead and kick us off and get us into some questions. Yeah. So as we get started here, uh, craggy tech, take a moment and talk about, you know, the role you play within the university of Texas performance team.

And you know, what would a typical, typical day-to-day look like in your. Yeah, absolutely. So my role at UT is really, I oversee the nutrition program for Texas football. So anything, food related, anything supplement related, uh, I really manage that. Uh, I provide nutrition education to our guys. Really helped them understand how nutrition impacts their recovery, their energy levels, injury, risk I’ll meet with athletes one-on-one and really help.

Uh, achieve their goals, forgot areas for improvement, and then manage anything related to practice from pre fueling during practice fuel and post practice recovery. Um, and then in terms of what a typical day looks like, there’s no typical day in college athletics. Uh, I think anyone who, who is, who has worked in college athletics can say that.

Um, but you know, right now in spring ball, my day, you know, might start at 5:00 AM. We’ve got breakfast. Uh, I’ll be checking in with the guys, making sure they’re eating what we want them to pre-practice, uh, making sure everything set, ready to go for practice. We’ll head out to practice, make sure guys are fueling hydrating out.

They’re getting electrolyte supplements, have them get what they need after practice. And then the rest of the day may be spent in meetings with coaches, maybe meeting with our strength staff, our athletic training staff, uh, might be having one-on-one consults with the guys, really checking in with them.

Could potentially be going to a grocery store with a guy and helping him, him get his apartment ready to go. Or I might just be moving around a pallet of Gatorade shakes with some interns and making sure we’re we’re stocked and everything we need. Yeah. That’s awesome. I mean, I know like, like I mentioned, it’s getting a little warmer out and I mean, you checking hydration has gotta be, uh, you know, daily, if not multi, you know, daily thing.

I don’t know if that makes any sense multiple times a day. You’d probably check in like things like what, like urine and things like that to make sure they’re hydrated. Yeah. So right now a spring ball will actually hydration tests in three times a week. We’ll do that on our practice days, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and we’ll practice.

We’ll hydration them before practice. And then based on where they’re at, we have. Different interventions that we’ll use, um, to make sure that they’re actually good to go heading into practice and that they’re safe. Yeah. Yeah. When I was in the Marines, they, um, they had P charts up above urinals and stuff like that.

So anytime, you know, you’re in the field or you’re about to go out, you know, new training areas, different elevations, things like that. You’re always kind of checking and, um, you know, sometimes, you know, the drier environments you’re holding her, so like, oh boy, am I gonna have to chug a couple canteens tonight or something like that to get my body.

Right. But I mean, I feel like that’s just such a constant thing with, for, you know, for you guys and making sure they’re safe. Yeah. I think especially with, so we had early enrollees get here in January and a big part of their education when they get here is actually helping them understand what is hydrated and how much fluid do I really need?

Because if you look at a collegiate football player, depending on their size, these guys can lose anywhere from 1.5 up to almost three liters, an hour of sweat. And so if you think about that, That’s an immense amount of fluid and it, it’s almost a full-time job for them to really make sure that they’re actually replenishing fluid on a daily basis and getting adequate electrolytes in so that they’re not as the week progressed is getting more and more depleted.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t mean to get too off topic there, but I mean, it’s, you know, it seems like a lot of work, you know, and why, you know, why did you get into sports nutrition? You know, w what do you enjoy most about doing this? Yeah, that’s a really good question. When I was in undergrad at the university of Missouri, I kind of went back and forth of do I want to be a physical therapist?

Do I want to be a dietician? Um, I was in some exercise physiology courses, and for those that are no sports, nutrition, sports, nutrition is really exercise physiology. And so, um, I really enjoyed that. And when I was in school at the university of Missouri during that time, there weren’t actually a ton of sports, dieticians, full-time sports, dieticians around the country.

I was really fortunate in that Mizzou had one of the first full-time. Collegiate sports dieticians. Her name was Janet height Meyer, and she’s at university of Georgia now. And I was really fortunate in the sense that I got to intern with her and see what she did. And I was hooked. I loved it. I loved everything about sports nutrition.

Um, loved the science, loved the environment, getting to work with athletes on a daily basis. Um, and it was when I decided, Hey, this is what I want to do in the career path. I want to go down. Yeah. I had a question. Just listened to your kind of intro there. You’ve been at Texas. This is your third. Correct.

You were at Utah for four years prior to that, and then it Missouri for, you said, I think five as an intern in undergrad. Yeah. So my question on football, I mean, I’ve been at UT long enough and I’ve worked with football before. It’s a different monster here, so to speak. Right. I think everybody would agree with that.

What kind of talk about maybe some of your stops along the way you feel like that maybe prepared you for this current role you’re in to handle some of those challenges and pressures? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, my journey, I feel like I’ve been just incredibly fortunate, a lot of being in the right place at the right time.

So, um, when I graduated from the university Missouri, that was in 2015 and I was really, you know, again, fortunate to be offered a position as a sports nutrition fellow at the university of Utah. And it wasn’t like how it is today when there’s just job posting all the time, you know, that. Um, they’re pretty limited.

And so I moved out to Utah. I didn’t know anyone. Um, and I was really lucky in the sense that I mentioned, you know, Janet. Hi, Marin Mizzou was one of the first sports dieticians in the country. Well, at Utah Beth Wolf, Graham was also one of the first sports dieticians in the country and she was an amazing mentor for me.

And while I was there, I got to work with basketball men’s and women’s tennis, baseball. And then after a year and a half there, I just was given the opportunity to work with a university of SaaS football team as their first football dietician and a first ever first ever football and the dietician. And so that’s big time.

Um, it was. It was truly a blessing and, you know, coach Kyle, Winningham the head coach there gave me the opportunity to work with their team and trusted me with it. And I learned so much and you know, he’s a coach that has really high expectations. And, um, I think working with him and his staff really helps me understand the expectations of collegiate football.

You know, if a, if a guy. Comes in and he’s put on 25 pounds, especially at a school where development is so important like Utah. Um, I had to have a really solid plan in place to, to make that happen and, and work really closely with the athletes, the strength, conditioning staff, and, and just understanding the expectations there.

Um, and then after being in that role for a few years, the opportunity to come to university of Texas popped up in 2019. And I got here right before fall camp. Uh, and then a fire, oh gosh, I, my wife wasn’t here yet. She didn’t come out for another, like two and a half months. I’d tell her it was good because I, there wasn’t much time at home during that period.

It was really trying to get everything ready for season. Um, and it’s like you mentioned, you know, university of Texas, there’s just this added pressure now to expectation because of the rich history of the university of Texas and, you know, the, the expectations of our fans and the players and, and, and donors.

And so, um, it’s been. I think being at Utah really prepared me for it, uh, because of the expectations of that coaching staff and learning so much from them. And yeah, it’s just been a roller coaster and a fun time at Texas. Yeah. You know, what I love about your role is that, you know, I don’t work directly football anymore, but I mean, I definitely work with other nutritionists, but the work you guys do behind the scenes is immense and it has a huge impact on the field.

It may not always contribute to a win or loss per se. Right? There’s so much that goes into that. But the work and the services you provide for these athletes today is just tremendous. And I mean, I remember, uh, coach Joe, when I was playing ball, my nutritionist was we, I’m not joking. We literally would go in the dining hall.

It was dining hall at Georgia when I played at Georgia and we’ve had everything. Fried chicken to like, you know, our, our Gatorade or we didn’t even have gated was Powerade back then. It was all concentrated. It was nasty. Sorry, Powerade, if anybody’s listening, but it just wasn’t that good, but I mean the level of service and food and counseling, these guys and athletes, these gals get, today’s just it’s world-class so hats off to you, man.

So I know it’s tough. It’s tough. You’ve got to win here. You got to, I appreciate it. Yeah, I’ll take, uh, the next question here. So as a sports dietician, um, again, I kind of talked about this just now, but I believe you can have, like, in my opinion, one of the biggest impacts all over an athlete’s entire career.

I mean, I’ve literally seen, uh, different individuals on Amy staff, uh, take an athlete and just flip their career upside down and make it so powerful and amazing. Um, can you briefly talk about how you integrate and work with the roles of the other performance team? Uh, strength, conditioning, sports may have behavioral health.

How does that look like? Day-to-day week to week, semester kind of, uh, basis. Yeah, I think that in order for you to be a successful member of the performance team, there has to be a level of communication between all members of the staff and the team. And, you know, if we think of strength conditioning, we think of athletic performance, you know, especially with football, we’re charged with helping our guys develop when they get here, right?

And for each guy that’s going to be different. And maybe that they need to put on 20 pounds and maybe that they need to lose 20 pounds. It may be that really, we just need to improve their body composition. And I have to understand what the goals of coach Becton our head strength conditioning coach are for each phase of training and what the training they’re going through is because that’s actually going to impact the nutrition recommendations that I give.

And I have to be in constant communication with him because he may have a better understanding of how an athlete’s body needs to transform. And I take that and I apply nutrition to. If I think about athletic training and sports medicine, you know, nutrition plays such a critical role in recovery from injuries or recovery from concussions.

And I have to, if an athlete gets hurt, really understand, and really communicate with our athletic training staff and understand, Hey, he’s having surgery. Is there a bone component to this? Is it a soft tissue component? Exactly. What’s being done? How long is he potentially immobilized for in a sling?

Because all of those things require different nutrition interventions. And I have to make sure that I understand what they’re trying to accomplish from athletic training and rehabilitation, and then make sure they know the things that I’m applying so that they can also, since they’re the ones, seeing the athletes the most during that rehab process from a severe injury, able to make sure that athlete is really applying the things that we want them to, to help support their rehab.

And, yeah. Yeah. So I got to dig a little deeper on that topic there, cause that’s intriguing to me. Talk about this for a second. Like, what’s the, uh, if you don’t fuel correctly during an, uh, an injury or a surgery per se, soft tissue, or maybe it’s, uh, even bone, like you said, if you don’t fuel them with the right kind of strategies, what’s at risk.

Yeah. So one thing that I really try to help the guys understand, and really they probably get annoyed with it, but what you eat is literally what your body is made up of. I don’t think people think about that very often, but literally what you eat is what your body is made up of. And if we think of an injury, like a soft tissue injury, say an ACL tear, right.

They may be non-weightbearing immobilized for a few weeks. And we can see profound muscle loss in an immobilized limb where they’re not using that leg in a short period of time. And the more muscle and athlete loses in that immobilized limb, the harder the rehab process is going to be potentially the longer it’s going to take.

So one of our immediate concerns is how do we preserve lean body mass in that leg to support the rehabilitation process? And so there are a few things we do. We, we may provide a high dose fish oil supplementation because there’s research to suggest that that can actually help mitigate some of those lean body mass losses.

We’ll counsel the athlete on, Hey, you have no appetite right now, but it’s actually really important that we’re eating regularly throughout the day. And we’re getting a fairly significant amount of protein in to help preserve that muscle as well. And then another big factor is oftentimes when an athlete gets injured, they think, oh, I need to like drop my calories.

I shouldn’t be eating nearly as much, but the calorie needs for healing are actually fairly significant. And if you look at crutching, the energy expenditure from crutching is way higher than walking. And so the athlete may actually not want to decrease their caloric intake very much at all. It’s a, it’s a fine balance of how do I maintain their body weight, minimize muscle losses.

Um, that’s in the immediacy and as they begin their rehab process, we may use certain supplements that could potentially benefit what we’re trying to accomplish in, in rehab, such as college and pre-training or pre rehab. And then also helping the athlete understand rehabilitation is really training.

We’re trying to promote function and, and, and potentially muscle growth depending on the phase of rehab. So helping the athletes switch their mindset around rehab of like rehab is really your training and we need to fuel for it and recover from it the same way we would from a strength training. It’s interesting that point you made about, uh, you know, not cutting calories when you get injured because your body requires energy to, to heal itself.

And, you know, a while back before I ever got involved in athletics or anything, uh, I broke two ribs and, you know, it kind of started doing a little research on my own. Like, you know, what should I eat? Or, you know, should I cut back and like everything all over. And I mean, I’m not advocating for using Google for everything.

Cause you know, not a resource is a good source, but, but I mean, everything I was getting was saying like the, I do not start cutting calories. Like your body needs that fruit. Obviously you have to eat good food and everything too. But, um, I just thought that was interesting. How, how much energy your body expends, you know, healing, broken bones and things like that.

Yeah. It’s, it’s significant. Um, It’s not something I think people often think about is the energy required to actually heal from an injury can be very substantial. Yeah. Just kind of another topic of that. Just curious, I’ve read a little bit about this, but just like inflammation and healing, like dietary needs and depending on what you put in your body that can probably what ramp up inflammation.

Right. They will probably delay the healing process as well. What have you seen with, you know, poor diets and inflammation? Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really good question. And especially in the context of injury, you have to be, um, really careful because the inflammation that occurs after an injury is actually an important part of the recovery process of the healing.

Like there has to be inflammation, so we don’t necessarily want to damp it down too much, but at the same time, we want to be aware of, are we taking in too many potentially pro-inflammatory foods during a phase. We don’t want inflammation to get out of control, um, or we’ve gotten past that initial phase of healing.

We’re really, we want to kind of start getting that inflammation under control. Do we start to eat more foods that can potentially help reduce that inflammation like polyphenol, rich foods, fruits, more vegetables. Um, is there a role of tart cherry juice? Uh, especially in the immediacy after injury? We would say no, because we want that inflammation to take its natural course to promote that healing.

That’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, it’s looking at their total diet and there’s actually some evidence to suggest that a high saturated fat intake, um, can potentially actually slow or negatively impact the healing of, of ligament and tendon injuries. And so that’s another piece that we kind of have to look at is, okay.

What types of fats are you getting in your diet? Is it primarily mono and saturated polyunsaturated, or are you getting a lot of saturated fats and could that potentially actually be delaying or impairing the healing of like an ACL graft you had? No, I’ve even seen, like, I don’t have it on me right now, but I’ve seen like even ACL reconstructions of just different dietary needs and maybe even supplementation to kind of help that graph take a little quicker.

And so it’s also solid. So that’s, that’s an interesting topic though, right there for sure. Um, kind of a little change of gears. What are some of your biggest challenges you’ve experienced over the years with getting your athletes to buy into, you know, eating healthier and just fueling their bodies and be questioned to that?

What are some of the strategies that work the best that you have seen? Yeah, especially at UT. Uh, it can be challenging because, you know, with UT football, our expectation is we’re going to bring in the best of the best. And you have these guys that come in and they’ve been the best of the best their entire life.

And now all of a sudden I’m saying, Hey, you need to eat a certain way. And Hey, you’ve got to do these little things, because this is going to help you actually be better, create an image, create an edge. And they’re like, I got by 18 years, that’s doing any of this man. Like, what are you talking about? I’m a dominating.

I I’ve been dominating. Right. Um, and so it’s helping them understand, and this is actually one of the first talks I ever do with all of our freshmen as you’re coming in now. And the level of competition that you’re going against is just as good as you are. You’re not the biggest, fastest, strongest anymore.

Like every little thing that we do is ultimately what adds up and will allow us to win championships, which is our goal here at UT is we want to win championships. And so it’s giving them that lens. And then for me, the thing that has helped the most really is I show up every single day and I give the same messaging and I focus on building a relationship with the athlete because if I don’t have a genuine relationship with them and they don’t know that I’m coming from a good place and that I care about them and I have their best interest in mind, they’re not going to listen to what I have to say.

And through doing that, it’s so amazing because then you have these guys that are juniors, seniors, fifth year guys, who it almost becomes a cultural thing on the team of the young guys come in and they say, All these other guys ask me questions and checking in with me and doing everything I recommend for them.

And they’re like, okay, well, if the older guys are doing this, this is probably what I should be doing. Like the boat I want to, I want to take that guy’s job. And he’s doing all these things. So like, I need to do it. And so it almost becomes this cultural thing on the team of like, this is our expectation.

This is, this is what’s normal for us. We do all the little things. Right. And it’s been, so it’s been so fun to really watch that transformation since I’ve gotten here is that buy-in increasing each and every year, but it all, it all boils down to, you have to have a relationship with the athlete because if you don’t, you can be the smartest person in the world.

Like they’re not going to listen to you. Yeah. That’s cool. I’ve seen just over the years, witness you, like you’re just in there with them and you’ve built that trust and rapport and credibility, you know, those guys leaned on you. So I know that’s, that’s a big part. You’ve invested so much. I have a funny story on this a little bit.

This is years ago. I’m kind of dating myself here a little bit, but, uh, Guinness is way before any kind of team behind the team. My first year coaching at Colorado, Craig was working in strength, conditioning, working with football. We had a tidy in by the name of norm Barnett. He was going to be, I think a fourth or fifth year senior would not lose the weight.

They’re threatening to move him to tackle that didn’t work. You know, he was getting so big. He, he was, he was kind of a role-player, wasn’t like a starter, but we needed him and this guy would not drop the weight. We talked to him about the importance of eating right. And run him a little extra. Just it wasn’t coming off.

Guess what got him to finally get that weight down, coach, uh, uh, bill McCartney met with him and told him if you’re not this weight by I can’t, when we were pulling. In the fall and the fall, you’re off the team. Guess who got in shape? It’s crazy. Playing time has leveraged, you know, and I mean, I know you see it today, guys.

I’m sure in football, they’ll not take care of their diet, maybe most of their career, but then NFL time comes around. Now, all of a sudden, miraculously, we got it all. We’ve dropped the little extra weight we needed. We cleaned up our diet and we’re running fast. Anyway. It’s just funny to see the different motivations in these athletes today.

So what have you seen this worked well? Yeah, I think you have to it’s, like you said, you have to understand what motivates them. You’ll have some guys come in and they’ll be incredibly motivated. They want to do every single thing. Right. And then other guys, it, it takes until the junior year or senior year.

And then they’re like, oh, like I need to Kalani, I gotta get this right. Or it may be a significant injury. Um, and it’s that process of paying more attention to their nutrition, recovering from that injury that really. Change their mindset around it and the approach they take. Um, I still, I still go back to, you know, it really has to be building a relationship and then also making it a point of emphasis.

Um, I’m really fo fo fortunate in that a coach coach back then, he gives me five minutes before every workouts talk to the team, uh, about a nutrition topic. And so I build out a curriculum for each phase of training and have a different topic that I talk to them about each and every week. And they see that and they see coach backed and giving me time out of the workout to, to talk about this.

And so it’s just ingrained, like this is important, this is important. And I think it really has to be. From the top down that emphasis that, yeah. This is an important part of your performance as an athlete DNA. Yeah. I think, you know, one of my favorite quotes on, I keep hearing you talk, but the quote is by Andy Stanley, he would always talk about how vision leaks and like, to your point on nutrition, if you want to make an impact, it’s gotta be something, you know, that they’re hearing and seeing consistently.

So it becomes part of their thought process. So that’s good. Anyway, so, I mean, you talked about buying and coach, you kind of mentioned, like those guys are a little bit hard to convince. I mean, and it sounds like you have a good situation right now, a coach back then, and he’s given you a time, but I mean, you know, say someone else starting at ground zero, um, coming in, I mean, what would your advice be to them to, to build those relationships?

I mean, I think, you know, even during the conditioning is important for us to build relationships, but you know, where do you start from a nutrition standpoint? Yeah. I mean, I think if I’m a. Brand new dietician. I’ve just gotten hired and I’m coming into a collegiate football program. Don’t try changing everything all at once.

Just stand back, observe, listen, meet with your head coach, meet with your position. Coaches, build relationships with them. Build a relationship with your athletic trainer, with your head, strength, conditioning, coach your sports scientist, and listen to them. Understand what they think is important because they’re your stakeholders.

They’re the ones that are going to look out for you and invest in you and having their support is what will ultimately allow you to be successful. And they’re going to have a background of these are the things we really struggle with. And then from there you slowly start to implement what you think is required and you, you ask for what you think is needed.

So if you think you need to talk to the team every day for three minutes before the lift. You have relationship with your head shrink condition. Coach asked for that. If you think that you need to hydration test the team, um, on game day, well, you’re going to need the head coaches support to do that. So when you’re coming into a new role, it really starts with building relationship with the staff, building relationships with the players and not just coming in and be like, well, this is what I’ve done before.

Like, this is what the person I was mentored by did. So I’m gonna do all these things, understand the situation you’re walking into. It takes some time to observe and really figure out, okay, what are the biggest challenges here? What are the things I can implement? They’re going to have the biggest impact for this team.

Yeah. And then, you know, and building off that by, and, you know, Coach off your story. You know, some athletes, you know, they struggle to put weight on, they struggle, you know, the, to take it off, you know, what, what counsel would you give someone? Well, I guess we’ll start with adding weight. Like, you know, what would you tell?

And we could stick with football and make it easy, you know? W what would you, would you tell this guy if he needs to put weight on, and then, you know, obviously if he, if he needs to take weight off. Yeah. It it’s super individual. And that’s one of the things that is tough with nutritionist. I can’t be like, do these two things and you will gain 20 pounds.

Right. But you have to start by doing a thorough assessment of the athlete, look at their dietary patterns and start to identify what holes are occurring. And from my experience, working with college football athletes, what I see a lot is they’ll try to just stuff themselves at like three meals. They’ll try to just make themselves uncomfortably full, or they may not eat much at breakfast and lunch.

And then just like force feed food at dinner to the point that like, I felt like I was going to puke. And if you’re only in three times a day, if you’re a college football player who may need 6,000 calories to actually gain weight, you’re not doing that in three times a day. And potentially that’s not optimal for putting on lean body mass either.

And so it’s helping them understand, Hey, maybe it’s better for us to actually cut back at the meals and let’s start to eat more frequently throughout the day. Let’s identify you’re going six hours between breakfast and lunch. Well, we could have something three hours in, or you’re going eight hours from lunch to dinner while we move dinner earlier at a snack in between lunch and dinner, and then add something after dinner.

So that’s one of the biggest things I identify with with my college football guys, especially coming out of high school, they may have only ate once or twice a day. So it’s getting them comfortable with the idea of eating often. And that’s one of the biggest things. It can have a huge impact on an athlete that’s trying to gain weight is rather than just trying to stuff your face and make yourself uncomfortable.

At two or three meals, like let’s break down your day and identify all your opportunities to eat and spread it out. And your appetite will actually be better. It’ll be easier to eat more and you’re not gonna be so miserable. Can you could easily with that, just to your point, you could easily over fuel those meals, right?

It still be deficit, caloric needs for that daily, you know, however much they’re moving, working out and could actually ended up dropping lean mass high a little bit. Yeah, exactly. And a big part of it is we look at trying to get a bolus of, of protein in, right. We look at about 0.4 grams per kilogram body weight.

Right. And we want to get that a minimum really of four times a day. And if we’re only in three times a day, well, we’re not accomplishing that. And we also want to look at, are we eating before our workouts? Are we taking recovery after workouts? If we’re practicing, are we taking carbohydrates in during a workout?

There’s all sorts of holes where an athlete may be missing. And there may be athletes where they’re doing every single thing. Right. And they just have a super high metabolism and we may have to look at, okay, what are some liquid calorie options? Can we add more fats than meal from things like avocado?

Um, can we add salad, dressing to a salad it’s really individual and you have to identify where is the individual athlete, so more calorie dance, right? Yeah. So I deal with that more than my, my teams is the super high metabolism where I’ve literally had, you know, girls I’ve worked with during their, especially during the season where you don’t, you don’t get as many times to be in the way.

And they’re going to class or traveling, they’re practicing, they’re competing and we’ve had to add, you know, change their diet a little bit and add a little bit more shorter lifting sessions throughout the week just to get that, that lean mass up, especially toward the end in post-season. So, yeah. So yeah, it can be a cha I mean, it can sneak away from you quick if you don’t keep an eye on it.

Yeah, absolutely. Can. All right. Good stuff. Um, so your thesis, this is, this is, I’m really interested to hear your, your topic here, your thesis on your master’s was on food insecurity. Can you just go into that a little bit, talk about it and how do you recognize it in an athlete and then how do you address it?

Yeah, so I was, uh, I was really fortunate in that I was able to do my master’s thesis on, uh, food insecurity among division one collegiate football players during the COVID-19 pandemic. So when we sent them home for three months and, uh, when we think of collegiate athletes, we think, oh, well, they’re getting fed all the time.

They’re getting really taken care of very well. And I think sometimes we don’t necessarily think about what their home life is like. And so just for a little backdrop of what food security is, what food insecurity is. So food security is in order for food security to be. Considered for a household. Um, all members at all times must have access to enough food for an active, healthy life foods have to be readily available and obtained in a socially acceptable manner and be considered safe to consume.

So that’s, that’s the definition of what food security is. And then for food insecurity, there’s two levels. There’s low food security and very low food security, but basically food insecurity is defined as the limited ability to acquire adequate and safe foods for at least one household member due to a lack of resources.

And then very low food insecurity is characterized by the disruption of eating patterns and a reduction of food intake by one or more household members, because they could not afford enough food. So essentially it boils down to there’s not enough food available for every member of the household.

There’s not enough funds potentially to obtain food and. Food insecurity, disproportionately impacts minorities in the United States, and it’s associated with a ton of negative health outcomes, higher rates of mental disorders, suicidal ideation, iron deficiency, potentially obesity is associated with diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia.

So it’s really important. And then beyond that, it’s also associated with just a poor diet, less nutrient rich foods, like fruits, vegetables, and dairy. So when we think about it, right, it impacts minorities disproportionately. And when you look at a collegiate football team, the majority of the athletes are, are minorities.

We have a lot of black student athletes. We have Polynesian student athletes, we have Latinex student athletes. Um, so I looked at food insecurity among our athletes when they went home. A lot of our guys come from low socioeconomic status backgrounds. So what we saw happening during COVID was our guys got sent home, family members may have lost their jobs.

And all of a sudden, you know, they didn’t have that support system that was university of Texas, where we provide them with food. There are a lot of different rules put in place by different conferences on what you were allowed and weren’t allowed to do for your student athletes during that time. And so I had a lot of conversations during that, that period of, of guys really struggling and trying to help them identify how do we make sure that you’re getting enough in let’s look at your budget, let’s identify budget friendly foods.

Um, and it was just a challenge that I had never really anticipated or thought about until it happens. Um, The, the rate of unemployment in the U S went from something like 3% up to almost 14% from March to June of 2020, it was insane. And so this was something that not just collegiate student athletes were struggling with, but people all over America were struggling with.

And so the big takeaway from my thesis was we have to screen for this. When, when student athletes get to a university, we have to be screening for food insecurity because we don’t know what their home life is like and what their, their background is like. And so that the tool that I would suggest for that and what I used for my thesis, it’s called the us household food security survey module.

There’s different versions of it, but probably the six item it’s the shortest one is the one that I would use in a collegiate setting to screen for food insecurity. With that. If you identify that you really need to pour into that athlete and check in with them when they’re going home for extended break periods, because we assume they’re good when they’re here with us, but they may be going home for a month at a time, two months at a time, depending on the sport.

And so we have to have a check-in and have to be working with those athletes on identifying resources in their community when they go home. And if you’re at a school that may not have the resources like UT where, you know, we feed our athletes, they have unlimited snacks available to them. You may be out of school.

They get one meal a day from you. This could be a major issue. And it’s, it’s working with your campus community. Identifying what resources are available for students. Is there a, uh, um, a food bank for the university, um, is your student athlete potentially eligible for food stamps? Um, because this goes beyond just collegiate student athletes.

This is college students in general. Um, but it it’s a major, major issue. Um, I definitely don’t have all the answers on it, but I think my big takeaway and what I really would say is a call for action. It was like, we have to screen for it as a part of athlete’s pre-participation questionnaire, six questions, and you know, us identifying that could have a huge impact.

No, that’s so that’s so, man, that’s crazy though. What you just said during the pandemic. I mean, I’ve, over my years of working with athletes, I’ve seen up close and personal that, you know, as long as their own camp. There’s food provided for them, but I’ve seen over the years, athletes having to send money and support back to their family because they just can’t afford to take care of the family.

So they’re carrying that burden, you know, financially, while they’re in school here trying to play in a sport, you know, and putting money back into their family to help them survive too. So yeah, it’s not, you know, everything, I would say all that glitters isn’t gold, right. Just because you’re at a big school and it seems like we got all this money and resources.

There still are kids on different teams here. They’re just, they come from impoverished backgrounds and just, they need help too. And so that’s good stuff. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Reading, reading that thesis. I mean, I thought those really interesting stuff looking at kind of your tables. So, I mean, if I’m getting.

I mean, some of the stuff you guys observed over DEXA was that the lean muscle mass kind of went down and the fat mass went up a little bit. Did you, did you see, um, possibly, maybe the inverse where like maybe some, your skill guys who were a bit leaner might’ve, might’ve dropped a lot of fat mass to the point where it was like, you know, they’re sitting around fat percent body fat or anything like that.

No, that that was one of the interesting thing. So as a part of my thesis, we also looked at, at DEXA, we had just so happened to have done body composition assessment the week before they left for when school shut down. And so we had that data of right before they left and we test them when we got back.

So we were able to see what happened during that COVID break. Um, You know, one of the things, when you go back through the literature, especially with food insecurity is you actually see higher rates of obesity and potentially fat mass because of how it impacts diet quality. And that was one of the things that I wonder myself as am I going to see a lot of athletes just losing a ton of weight, both fat and lean mass.

And what we really saw was we saw, uh, a loss of lean mass and a pretty significant gain of fat mass during that time period. Um, and that’s high risk, that’s higher risk for sure. For injury. Yeah. And one of the things that I discussed in my thesis was we look at, I believe it was the 2011 NFL lockout.

After that lockout, we saw, I want to say a three or four fold increase in Achilles ruptures. When these athletes were coming back into a camp like setting, um, after not having their normal off season training, that would have been team organized. And so that was one of my big concerns is, you know, are we going to see a higher rate of injury upon returning.

That’s one thing I don’t necessarily have an answer to, but that COVID break certainly placed our athletes at a higher risk of injury because they didn’t go through that typical spring off season that they would have where we’re really focused on let’s improve lean body mass, let’s improve strength, let’s reduce fat mass.

Let’s improve your, your overall, uh, physicality. Yeah, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I mean, our associate college in with a lot of healthier foods and being more secure diet. So, I mean, could you credit that to, to, you know, like a deficiency in college and it could lead to a lot of the Achilles injuries and something like that?

Not necessarily, unless you’re eating, you know, college and we don’t necessarily get that in the diet too much, unless you’re eating, you know, more bony broth type foods or it’s more of a supplement, but if we’re eating high quality protein, we tend to get the amino acids at college and is, is made up of in our diet.

And so, um, I don’t know necessarily that that would play a role, but just the overall dietary pattern, you know, how is that potentially playing a role in that injury risk? And then also not having that organized training from our strength, conditioning staff, not having rehabilitation exercise regularly available from athletic training staff, not being monitored on their fatigue levels by our sports science staff.

There were all these resources that we normally pour into the athletes to really make sure they’re well taken care of that just snap in an instant basically went away. Yeah. For, for a significantly long period of time. So three months you said, right? Yeah, it was nearly three months on our side, on the Olympic side.

It was even longer. So yeah, I feel your pain. That’s a, that’s a, that’s a very interesting, uh, thesis and thank you for sharing. Let’s change gears a little bit. Let’s talk supplementation. Okay. I know. I think, uh, you know, over the years, this has always been a hot topic, um, especially among your more revenue type sports where they’re looking for that age.

So talk about just any kind of supplementation strategies that maybe work well products again, not nobody he’s not sponsored by any products on here, but just some foundational things that would, would make a big impact. So we’ll talk about that for a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing to start off with and really understand what supplements is.

We got to do our homework on the supplements that our athletes are taking. And so we don’t utilize or allow our athletes to take any supplement. That’s not, third-party tested, um, something like informed choice for sport or NSF sport submits absolutely have to be third-party tested. And so what that means is this, these organizations are essentially batch testing the submits to make sure it contains what it says.

It contains the amount that it lists out. And that is really important because depending on the study, you look at up to 40% of supplements that are screened, uh, contained band or harmful substances. So first and foremost have to absolutely look at that. Um, in terms of supplements that I think are really critical, um, always start with, with, with nutrition and the diet, make sure that’s in place.

Cause if it’s not having, having a supplements, like trying to it’s like the cherry on top of the cake, right? The cakes, the whole diet. Cherry on top. So start with the diet. Um, but big, big things, right? We’ll look at vitamin D and iron, among our athletes. Um, working with male athletes. I don’t see as much of an issue with iron, but depending on the population you’re working with, especially my female athletes or endurance athletes, you may see major issues with iron, and that’s just so critical because it’s plays such an important role in hemoglobin energy production brain function.

So if an athlete doesn’t have adequate iron, we have protocols in place to get that, um, where it needs to be vitamin D you know, vitamin D deficiency may be associated with higher rates of soft tissue injuries. So we do shore that up among our athletes as well with collegiate football players. I’m really big on.

Because there is some evidence to suggest that in the event of a concussion or some, some brain injury that, that may actually reduce the severity and help with the recovery from, and maybe reduce the long-term detriments associated with that. So really big on fish oil from a brain health standpoint, um, pre during, and post-workout carbohydrates, you know, it’s, it’s not sexy.

It’s not like creatine or official oil or vitamin D or any of those things, but making sure you’re having some sort of carbohydrate, pre-workout some sort of carbohydrate during workout and some sort of carbohydrate post-workout can have a huge impact on an athlete’s performance, you know, taking carbohydrate.

Intro workout or during practice really can translate to, um, greater cognitive function. It can translate to better endurance. It can translate to them being able to push themselves harder for longer. Um, so getting something in. At practice, we use applesauce with the guys, but if you’re working with like an endurance athlete, they might be taking a carb electrolyte drink that has something like maltodextrin mixed in.

Right. Um, I am a huge fan of creatine. Um, but with our athletes, we’re not actually allowed to provide that to them. Um, it’s considered impermissible, which means the athlete can take it, but we cannot provide it creates the inmate, potentially have brain health benefits similar to fish oil. Um, it’s definitely been shown time and time again, if you have an athlete take creatine across the training cycle, they will have greater improvements in lean body mass, great improvements in strength and greater reductions in fat mass than if they weren’t to take it.

Um, and then there’s also some research that it may help with joint. So a super big fan of creatine. Um, and then potentially depending on the athlete, depending on situation, caffeine may be beneficial. Um, I never recommend caffeine unless an athlete asks me about it and say, Hey, is it okay if I have coffee before my workout?

Um, but then also going back to where people like to get their caffeine from pre-workouts, pre-workouts tend to be tainted, um, with banned substances at a higher rate than a lot of other supplements. So it’s really important to, to look inside and make sure what you’re taking is third-party tested. Um, you made me think you were just mentioning this fueling strategies like pre post during he made me think about the famous, um, Jim gymnastic women’s gymnastics, coach Bella Corolla.

I mean, he was light years ahead. He would have his girls drink, I think, different protein or milk, uh, supplements during their long practices, which kept them strong and lean mass on and obviously performing well. So, I mean, I think that’s the thing today. It just, I keep hearing from you and I’ve seen in our athletes that you gotta, you’ve got to fuel your body.

Not just like, don’t think breakfast. Dinner, you’ve got to do these other strategies depending on each individual. And back to your supplementation. I saw, I saw it up close this past summer Craig, one of our volleyball girls had a, she had an iron deficiency. I had no idea about it. And in our trainer got her tested and sure enough, it popped up and they started supplementing that a little bit.

And then, because she was struggling so bad in a lot of our conditioning sessions, but by the second week it was completely gone just by addressing a deficiency there. So it makes a difference. But again, you got to, to your point, you got to know where are they deficient and then make sure the supplementation you’re using is third third-party.

I’m glad you said third-party tested because I have seen up close even friends take supplements that they bought at GNC. That was it tested. And I think this was years ago before it was banned. Was it had a what’s the supplementation. It would mess with heart. I forget what it was. Too much in, and it didn’t, it had more than what it said into her heart.

Got the race in and it was a, it was a weight loss supplement it, man. She almost went to the hospital. So you gotta be it’s serious. You gotta be careful, so good stuff. And there’s, you know, along those, those lines, something that I have to say is like, don’t take something like vitamin D or iron, unless you haven’t had your levels assessed, especially for a male.

Um, don’t take iron, unless you’ve actually had your levels assessed because toxic, it can be toxic. It can be hepatotoxic. So that means damaging to your liver. Right. Um, so, you know, don’t just take iron because we brought it up on this podcast and like, oh yeah, I need to take that. And only take it under a health referrals, guidance.

And if you’ve had it assessed and have that support. Yeah. And, and to that point, um, you know, every athlete’s different, obviously they, you know, some kids have food allergies and things like that. I mean, when it, when it comes to like shakes or whatever, I mean, You know, how, how do you kind of investigate that?

I know some people would do a little blood testing and things like that. Like what, what’s your view on that? On, on food allergy testing? Yeah. Food allergy testing or blood testing, just to maybe get ahead of it, you know, and see what, what would go better with an athlete versus another? Yeah, I think, you know, oftentimes we’ll have athletes come in and they have some diagnosed allergies and that’s something that, you know, as a sports dietician, we have to keep track of.

And so we’ve had athletes with milk, protein allergies, and as much as weighs a great protein for after workouts, we in that situation would use something like a pea protein blend. Um, so that’s something we have to be aware of for athletes is if they do have any food allergies and something that we have to keep track of on the road and in the dining hall.

And that’s why it’s so important that we have all our allergens labeled. And then you mentioned, um, uh, creatine and, uh, uh, fish oil can be good for the brain. Would that be from like a mental health standpoint too, or. I don’t know that I can, I can say that it would have a benefit from a mental health standpoint.

I’m sure there’s research out there on that. I’m just not familiar with it. Um, it’s more from the standpoint of when you look at the pathophysiology of what happens with a concussion, right? Essentially when you have a concussion, it creates this massive energy deficit in the brain. You go into this state where you’re burning through all the fuel stores of the brain, and then you use them all up and you enter this state where there’s no fuel for the brain, right?

That’s like the simplest way to kind of explain it. And fish oil, you know, DHA is one of the fats and fish oil. That’s the main. And the cell membrane of the brain, right. And influences, uh, some of the molecules that are produced when a concussion happens. So it almost helps reduce the inflammation that occurs in the brain, African Cashin and then creates the increasing is really important for actually transporting energy throughout the brain and helping almost keep energy going in the brain to help reduce some of that energy deficit that occurs.

Gotcha. Well, that’s really interesting. I never, I never heard that before. That’s awesome. Um, so w you know, with that, thanks for the advice I’m gonna head to GNC right after this, and, uh, go stock up. But, uh, um, you know, what have you learned over the years with, with managing sport coaches? You know, that’s something we’ve talked about a lot is just every sport coach is different.

They have different expectations, you know, um, you know, over time, how have you been able to manage their expectations and fulfill their needs is, you know, what they want, you know, In your career. Yeah, I think, you know, if you go back to, we talked about a little bit earlier, it’s building a relationship with your sports coach and understanding what’s important to you.

Like what is important to you that my role accomplishes at university of Utah, they were developmental program. They brought in guys that were under recruited and it was really important. I might have two years to get a guy who was recruited as an offensive lineman who weighed 220 pounds, get him up to 310 pounds.

And it was really important that, that, that, that is a true, true case study that truly happens. Um, and it’s, Hey, I just want to see continual progress for this guy. His long-term goal is this, but we’re going to increase that goal away for him readily and helping educate the coach too, on like this as a safe rate of weight gain or safe rate of weight loss, and, you know, giving your coach that information of like, Hey, this is what you want me to accomplish.

This is how I’m going to do it. Being very transparent of like. This is what’s realistic for us to get done and understanding what are their expectations, what is important to them, but also at the same time, knowing that ultimately your job is to look out for the health and safety of the athlete. And so being honest with the coach, when you’re like, Hey, I don’t think that’s healthy.

I don’t think that is safe. I don’t think that’s actually gonna accomplish what you want it to accomplish. You want this offensive lineman to lose 30 pounds in the next month. That’s not healthy and that’s not safe. And it’s also just going to result in him, not performing nearly as well as you want to.

So let’s talk about what’s realistic here. Yeah. A lot of what you do, you have to educate coaches, right? You almost have to not only educate them with Salamone, like your approach and philosophy of how to get them to where basically meet them at that expectation, would you say, yeah, it’s, it’s really, you know, here’s how I’m going to get it done.

This is what you want me to get done. Here’s how I’m going to do it. But then when there are times when that red flag goes off in your head of like, I don’t think that’s actually an accomplished what you wanted to accomplish telling the coach that cause they don’t want someone just to be a yes, man, for them.

They want someone that will say like your goal with this athlete is this. If we take that approach, I think it’s actually going to hurt them and lead to worse performance on the field, which isn’t what anyone wants. Cause you got to get their buy in and support to, to help you push that kid along. It’s just huge.

Yeah. At tactical approaches basically saying no. Yeah, it’s not, it’s not going to work. Right, right. You know, and then, you know, game day scenarios. So leading up to game day, you know, how do you approach fueling athletes for big game? You know, obviously in football, um, there’s a huge bill up. I remember in high school, we’d have massive team dinners that were not, uh, very nutritious at all.

Um, and I’m sure collegiate teams still do the same thing, big, big team dinner and everything before a game. You know, how do you go about preparing that? Yeah, I, we do a lot of education surrounding, okay. 48 hours out 48 hours out is when we really have to start to dial everything in. Let’s make sure that sleep is dialed in.

Let’s make sure hydration is dialed in. Let’s make sure fueling is dialed in because as much as you want these guys to be dialed in all the time, they’re college students. We have to be realistic and reasonable with them. It’s like, let’s get our thing dialed in within the 48 hours leading into game day.

And what we really want to focus on leading into game day is carbohydrates. Um, and as we get closer and closer to the actual game, what we want to start to limit is anything that could potentially upset their stomach and things that we think about is high fat foods, high fiber foods, um, or even at pregame meal, excess protein, all those things can lead to stomach discomfort.

And so the night before the game, it’s a big culture thing and Donnie will remember this. It’s a big culture thing at UT. We have pasta or we have pasta bar. And when I first, when I first got here, it wasn’t pasta. It was, uh, it was like, Alfredo soup gut bombs. Yeah. And so that was a massive point of education for me with the team is like, Hey, let’s change our approach surrounding this meal and understand what it’s trying to do for us.

Pasta is an amazing meal the night before a game, but it’s not an amazing meal the night before a game when we’re going to play at 11:00 AM. If we’ve got Alfredo sausage, pepperoni, and all these heavy meats in there that are going to sit really heavy on their stomach, cause them to have diarrhea in the morning and then cause them not to want to eat pregame meal and eat anything going into the.

So there was a huge education that had to happen surrounding that, of how we actually approached pasta bar. Um, on game day pregame meal, sometimes the guy’s nerves are so high that they don’t want to actually eat anything whatsoever. It’s like they’re in college. And so I have, I have a few tricks up my sleeve, like shakes that I make that add a carb supplement to, um, a special drink that we call secret stuff, a little, a little throwback to a bugs bunny.

And uh, oh gosh, what was the. Uh, space jam space jam, and his secret stuff at halftime. So we do a little education around that with them, and it has a significant of carbohydrates. If a guy is not able to eat anything, we’ll, we’ll get it in that way. But we really focus on easy to digest carbohydrates, like white rice, white pasta, white bread limit, any fatty sauces.

Let me eliminate any extra fiber from things like nuts, seeds, beans. Um, and then we go pretty light on the protein at pregame meal as well. Cause that could contribute to, to stomach upset as well, especially with all the nerves going on. Good stuff. Um, love it. Supplementation. That’s always a fun topic. Uh, so everybody makes sure you took notes on that.

If you’re a big supplementation person, uh, going to change gears a little bit, uh, as we get, we’re kind of getting close to the end of the show today. It’s been great. Um, if you could look into the crystal ball, your crystal ball, the future. For sports, nutrition or diet dietetics for four sports. Do you foresee any current trends, innovations coming our way?

What do you, what do you see? Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. And what I’m excited for. Is I’m excited to see increased research specifically on female athletes, because a lot of the research that we have for sports nutrition was performed on males. And we’ve just kind of assumed that everything we see in males is 100% applicable to females.

And we just don’t know that because females do have pretty unique physiologies compared to males. And so, um, two really great researchers that are doing a lot of work in this area, Dr. Keirsey, Elliot sail, and Dr. Abby Smith, Ryan, um, and their research groups. I’m really excited to just see, um, replication of a lot of the research that’s been done and seeing if there’s any differences between male and female and what are, what are we missing for our female athletes right now?

Um, because their nutrition needs will even vary across our menstrual cycle. And so that’s one area I’m just super excited to try and learn more about and, uh, keep up to date. Yeah, no, I can definitely. That is exciting. Just all the years I worked with different, uh, male and female. I definitely have different dietary needs, eating habits, again, the pin on, uh, you know, what their body’s doing.

You gotta change it up for sure. So it can be definitely challenging. So, man, we covered a lot. I mean, it was. A lot of awesome stuff in, you know, for any of our listeners who want to look into more of this and really get down to the nitty gritty, like what were some good resources they could look at?

Because I feel like with nutrition, there’s a lot of stuff out there that isn’t necessarily the greatest advice. So, I mean, what would be some big ones from you? Yeah. So definitely, you know, not take talking Instagram, that’s not where you necessarily want to get your nutrition info. Right. Right. Um, if you’re someone who is like really want to dive deep in this, um, and to sports nutrition, there’s two pretty good online diploma programs.

There’s the international Olympic committee, the IOC, his diploma in sports nutrition. Um, there’s the Institute of performance nutrition’s diploma in sports nutrition as well. I think both, those are two programs. Um, If you’re just looking to learn more about it and level up, and I’m a big believer in textbooks and reading through textbooks.

So you understand the science behind things, um, sports, nutrition by asker, you can, drip is a really good textbook, uh, clinical sports nutrition by Lewis. Burke is also a really good textbook. And then if you’re just really busy, but want to kind of learn more and try and keep up on stuff. There’s two good sports, nutrition based podcasts.

There’s the, we do science podcasts and also Sigma nutrition podcasts. And they’ll go pretty deep on the nutrition science. Awesome. All right. Just a couple of fun questions. Um, favorite place to eat Austin. I went to red Ash recently. Oh, well, I’ve never, what is this coach? Oh, so I guess I, the reservations are like months out.

So my wife and I Saturday night, like walk up at five 30. Think we’re going to get a seat. Nope. Hey, we can seat you at eight 30. Okay. If we wanted Ash red Ash, we walked around for three hours just downtown and went and hung out. Some places came back, sat down, got our food. It is the best Italian food I have ever had.

So good. Take your wife, Joan, have to make milk. I’ve been there three times three and there three times my wife’s a planner. So we did the whole month out reservation thing, but it’s also all sizes. You’re not skid steers, generous, generous an entire head of cauliflower for an appetizer of cauliflower.

Very jealous. Only a dietician gets excited about cauliflower, but yeah, primarily just the Italian food. And it’s amazing. Yeah. I got another question we’re almost done though. You may not be able to hit this one, but this one I’m gonna catch you off guard. Maybe not that I’m a huge fan of it. Pre-workout energy drink.

You got one it’s safe. Go-to recommendation. Anything, Joe, I know you got one. I am, I get in trouble for this one. I feel like Don is trying to turn to hook me right now. I’m curious would be for my own personal, so this is not for my athletes. It’s for me. Yeah. Um, so red bull is actually a third-party tested, so, and they’re a sponsor of CPSC.

So the collegiate professional sports side tag association. Um, so red bull is a good option, but I also, you know, big fan of just, just coffee. Um, if you like coffee. Yeah. And with that too, kind of a cool announcement. Um, we’re sad to see you go, Craig will be leaving us here soon and taking a job with red bull.

So that’s going to be exciting to follow you as a shameless plug. That was a shameless plug, but it would be, it would have been the same, same answer if I live. So, uh, I got to back them up on that one coach, like when I was, uh, when I was in the Marines. Actually I was in college. So just before I was going to the Marines, we’d still took PMTs.

There was an article out and I’m like, what you could take before a PFT. And he recommended those, you know, those power gels. You do like a red bull and a power gel in between each event and other power gel and water ran the best PFT ever ran. All right. I’m going to try a little mental, but what is it called?

Red bull. What was it? What’d you call it again? It’s just red bull. It’s third-party tested the little can. Oh, shoot. I’ll I’ll try one, man, if you put your stamp on it. Um, but that’s all I got for today. Anything else? Coach, coach Greg. We’re good. Eight. If people wanna follow up, connect with you, I’ve asked more questions.

Best way to find you connect with you. What’s the best way. Yeah, I think probably the best thing would, you know, shoot me an email. A personal email is it’s really hard. It’s Craig Moore nutrition@gmail.com. Uh, shoot me whatever questions you may have. And you can put that in the show notes to Jill. Craig.

Thank you so much for just making time to sit down. I know I learned a lot today. That was huge for me. Just to hear you. Definitely. Uh, I knew you knew your stuff, but the man, you broke it down for us, but I love the passion and energy. You can tell you love what you do. And man, thank you for what you’ve done for the university of Texas football program and for these athletes here.

So we appreciate you so pleasure. Thank you. All right, Joe, you got anything for the, for the audience before we head out? No, I’ll say yeah, I think thanks for coming on. It’s just really refreshing to hear like good nutritional knowledge. Cause like we mentioned just a second ago, like the Tik TOK, Instagram stuff is just not always very reliable.

So I think it’s, it’s just, uh, it’s good to hear, you know, it’s good to hear the good. Awesome. Well guys, thanks again, coach Donny Mae, coach Joe and Craig Moore football team, Texas, headed to red bull California. So Hey, that’s it from the team behind the team this month. Appreciate you guys listening. Y’all have a great month and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Hook them. Welcome. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the team behind the teen podcast for future episodes, go to iTunes, Spotify, Google podcast, or Stitcher. We definitely want to keep having great guests on the show and great content. So if you have a moment, please go to iTunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re doing.

I’m Donnie Mae. And thanks so much for tuning in.