Kate Save on Food as a Performance Tool

dietician and a clinical exercise physiologist and the founder of B fit food. Kate save doesn't just look at nutrition through the lens of weight loss. She looks at it through metabolic flexibility, cognitive output, and physical longevity, which is like the master stroke, right? From building a million-doll business that shook up Shark Tank to advocating for health leadership in the corporate space, Kate is on a mission to treat food as our most powerful daily performance tool.

Whether you're crushing brain fog, optimizing your recovery, or building a resilient engine for life, this episode is your blueprint. Kate save, welcome to a wakeup call.

Okay. Early morning cardio or a heavy evening lift? Heavy evening lift. Really? Doesn't that impact your sleep? Okay. Counting macros or trusting the food matrix? The food matrix. Keto or carb cycling? Uh, carb cycling. What does carb cycling mean?

They're both fad. I don't like either of them. Cold plunge or infrared sauna? Cold plunge. Oh, even for females? Yes, I did listen to the other episode. I like both. All right, we'll dig into it. Choose both. No, we got to one or the other. Whey isolate or whole food protein? Whole food protein.

Psyllium husks or real vegetables? Real vegetables. Intermittent fasting or four meals a day? Intermittent fasting. You're shrinking. You don't want to choose. Snap frozen or fresh meal prep?

Fresh meal prep. Oh, hang on. Readyate? Ready? Oh, snap frozen. There you go. GLP1's for fat loss or pure muscle power. GLP1's for fat loss or pure muscle or just muscle. Building muscle building muscle.

Yeah. Always. Okay. Now, this is a controversial take on this or that. Carnivore diet or vegan if you had to pick one. M vegan. Ampic for the last 5 kilos or ampic for life?

The last 5 kilos. Stevia and artificial sweeteners or real sugar? They're separate. Stevia and artificial are different. I would pick stevia.

Okay. Yeah, that's a good that's a fair call. All right. Artificial sweeteners or sugar? Sugar. Yeah. Always. Right. We I heard this term. Oh, no. I'm not allowed to go quick. Have you ever heard of the fridge siggy? No, you're breaking the rules. Can I go back and change my answer?

I'm picking keto because what people think is keto, I would agree with, but they don't know what keto really is. Okay, so we're going back to keto. Me. Um, seed oils. Are they completely over overblown? They are overblown. I like olive oil. No. Yeah, we love olive oil, too.

Canola oil. Canola oil. No. No. Sunflower oil? No. There you go. They're all ultrarocessed. They're chemically extracted. Yeah. Does the mind drive the body or does the body drive the mind?

Seatic healing is the body driving the mind. But yeah, I'll go with the body drives the mind. Interesting. What would you go with? I'd go with the body drives the mind. Yeah. And you have 70% more messages coming up than going down. That's from your gut.

And the gut's the center of it's our second brain. Yeah. All right. It's probably bigger than most. Has more neural connections than the brain up here. So you are right. Yes. Almond milk or soy milk? Soy milk is a complete protein.

But it still gave you shivers just then, didn't it? Depends which one people buy. Ah, there you go. Good answer. Aura or Whoop. I don't own a Whoop. I love my Aura. Yeah, we're Aura girls, too. Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. I'm so excited about this conversation because all of the things that Tess just mentioned I endure. So yeah, I just I'm just going to sit and listen most of the day, which

is unusual for me. The listeners are going to go (expletive) that I doubt that very much.

there's there's an explanation behind it, but uh my first probably the biggest wakeup call was when I woke up on my 20th birthday after emergency surgery for a condition that they told me I would not live past 30 for. And as I turned on the TV, I'd been unconscious for 2 to three days on every painkiller known to man. I'd had my stomach cut from here to here. I had an electric bed

to sit me up and down. You had your stomach cut from rib side, left side to the right side. I have a It's like a smiley face, but it's upside down. I won't call it a frown. Yeah. And um Yeah. What was the condition? Uh it's called a collidocal cyst. It's a rare congenital condition. They're supposed to find it at birth or even prenatally in the womb. And I was sick

for 19 years. And when they wanted to remove it on my 20th birthday, I said they need to wait 2 weeks. and he said it's emergency surgery and I said well haven't died yet. So and I now as a mother of two um I think my poor parents when I told them I'm not having the surgery I had a swimsuit modeling competition and I only did it cuz my friend was judging and I knew you know

it was going to go well and I knew what they were going to do in my tummy. I'm like, I'll never wear bikinis again. And um I am 43 now, so I I you know, very naive thing to say, not the right thing, but that's that's how a 19-year-old thinks. And um yeah, the second thing was my birthday party. I'd booked out a little Italian restaurant that I used to work at. And I knew they had no other revenue on that night. And I had 50 guests coming and a little ukulele band that mom and dad had organized. And I said, I'm not canceling the party.

Because when I asked the doctor, "What are the chances of this, you know, going right?" and he goes, "Oh, 90%." And I was like, "Always in the top 10%, I think." So, I'm not going to um I won't take that risk. And yeah. Did you treat that party as almost like a farewell tour in a way?

I sure did. I was supposed to go to hospital that night cuz I got really sick and I That was just the gluten. Maybe. Yes. So, who knows? The butin. Yeah. And actually I did have gallbladder disease that they didn't know as well. So that was in there. So it would have been all the um the noki campola in all of the olive oil with the

sundried tomatoes and the lactose in the cheese all the gluten in the past. Unless you're in Italy that would put anyone in the emergency. I'm let me out. Lactose intolerant gluten that will put you in an emergency.

Yeah. Yeah. So you did have that moment at that party where you just thought my life is going to change.

And it got pitch black dark. I couldn't see where I was going. I was tripping over my feet, tripping over everything actually. And I didn't know where I was running to. But a couple of hours later, I was exhausted and I couldn't see a thing. And I I found a um a service station. I reverse charged called my parents cuz I didn't have a phone. And I said, "You need to pick me up." And I'd run 13 km along the sand. And that in

hindsight was obviously, "Yeah, what were you running from?" the surgery was I had to be ready at 5:00 a.m. the next morning and I didn't think it at the time, but I look back at that and and it's funny when I woke up 3 days later, I knew my stomach was cut and I was in pain and drainage tubes and all of that, but I'm like, my whole body's in so much pain. I didn't actually acknowledge that was

from the running. I thought I couldn't walk because I had some other damage to my body. Yeah, you did. It's called DOMS. doms. I woke up right in the middle of the doms. So, yeah, that real wakeup call was turning on the television 8:00 at night and the 12th of October 2003, it's my

birthday. There's no one in the hospital ward. I'm in a shared or sorry um none of my friends or family. I'm in a shared um room with four people and men and women shared rooms, which is really odd, I thought, too. I've got a lady who's getting diarrhea in front of my bed cuz I'm next to the toilet. I've got a lady who's coughing all night with pneumonia and then another man in the bed opposite

me. And when I turn on the TV, it's the barley bombs going off. Oh wow. And that was the moment that I went, I'm all alone. I never want to feel like this. And I think we had that real fear of the terrorist attack coming to Australia uh at that point too. And I'm thinking I can't even walk. I' I can't even sit up. I've got an electric bed.

I'm stuck in the hospital. The windows don't open. How am I going to get out of here? Um, and that was so scary being alone. So, what did that teach you about being alone? Like, obviously you're an incredibly resilient woman and we you'll feel that straight away, but what did that make of your life? Nothing could ever be that bad. Yeah.

Um, that's the lowest moment. Yeah. And then I did a repeat 20 years. Oh, child birth. Oh, I don't want to say people hate me, but I found it really easy. I had no drugs. There's a beautiful goal at the end of that. Whereas, it was mental prep. It was I literally told myself that, well, cows have baby cows and horses have baby horses. That's awkward. Like, this should just come to get a watermelon out of a pinhole.

Yeah. But the body is born like we are so incredible in the way that we're born to do that. But to get through something that you there's no there's an unknown. and you don't know where you're going. What's the recovery? So, what did that do to your life in terms cuz now you're like incredibly educated. You've got two like

very clinical degrees behind you. Was it in that bed that you thought I'm going to make something of this? And like what was your wakeup call out of it? I had already started the journey. I was already studying nutrition, dietetics, um exercise science. I'd done my personal training. I was working seven casual jobs. And I think I wanted to help other people that knew they were sick and there was something wrong with them to find out what it was cuz it took them 18 years of me being sick.

By the time I was eight, um they told my parents it was in my head. There was nothing wrong with me. So my parents stopped sending me for tests and they knew I was sick because when you can't stand up, you throw up for 3 days. Like you know you're sick. Um but they just said, "Well, apparently you'll grow out of this." and I didn't grow out of it.

And then 20 years later, you come down again.

hospital since she'd given birth to the kids. She had had, and I I really forget this, she had had a um uh stage 2 um bow cancer thing that had been removed literally just prior to this, but her cause of death was not cancer, not hard heart, not stroke. They said there was no known cause of death after the

autopsy, and it took 2 or 3 months for the coroner's reports. And um yeah, which was really interesting. And I think I forget about the cancer because uh she'd been bloated for about 6 months and the kid said every time grandma comes over cuz she used to babysit um a lot um grandma farts and they were really unhappy about it. And so I had to

call her and I said, "Mom, can you not do that at home? It's really annoying the kids." And she's like, "Oh, it's all this bloating." And I'd sent her to emergency three times because the bloating on a small person was severe. And she was one of those people that just went, "Oh, that's tomorrow's problem." And she kept coming home from emergency. And I said, "Do not come home

from emergency. They did scans. They just kept telling her she was constipated, she was getting old, and that she just had to learn to deal with this stuff now." And I think my own lesson, and I couldn't fix it in mom. And in the end I said to her, "Mom, I bet it's cancer. You need to go to the doctor and if I go because I was going overseas the next day um going to Africa

and um if I go overseas and I get a call because you haven't done it." She's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Sure enough, they sent her home from emergency then the next day she collapsed on the floor at home with dad and just an emergency surgery for her because it blocked everything in her system. Bow cancer.

Yeah. But I think the biggest issue was that when you look well and you present well, you don't get seen. Um I learned hard lesson of this two nights ago taking dad into emergency and you know pretty severe bleeding from men's parts and things like that and because he he just told them I have no pain. I look good you know I feel good.

He's 83. We were waiting. It was a 9-hour wait at Frankston emergency. We got to 5 hours. It was midnight. I had to be on a plane at 3:45 a.m. or go to the airport. And dad wanted to check out and he signed himself out. I was going to stay and just make it work.

Um, but that's a lesson. If you are sick and you know your body, you need to investigate it and you don't stop investigating it.

little bit of bloating or it's just a a fart or just a bit of chest pain or just a bit of blood." Just a bit of blood. Nothing severe. And then because we've busy people and we've got things to run and people to see and do and all of that, we neglect that wake up call. People to do. People to do. Well, maybe. Yeah. Why not?

So, Kate, that's it. There's so many um avenues that I could go down with this because I feel like the hardest part is when you can't help the person that you love the most when you're when you've got all of that information and knowledge and you really want to lead them down that path and they can't. What would be your advice to someone to guide taking a loved one through the process?

It's like cuz you've set your life up now to help people with bowel issues, with food issues, and you've gone out and gotten all of these degrees and now you're actually making big changes in this world. What would be your advice to someone who's who's trying to help someone through that?

they're similar apart from two areas that uh men don't have that women have extremely strongly. And one of these areas is uh an example of how it works. You open up the door. There's someone standing there and this face this what do you say? If you're a man, you go come in. and how's your day been? If you're a woman, you're like, "Oh my god, what's wrong?" The we have an intuitive

sense when we see someone to feel what they're feeling. If we're in touch, you know, with ourselves and if we're in good mental health, I I think if you've got a million one things going on, maybe you don't always see it. But more often than not, if we're in someone's energy, we can feel what's happening before we see it. And that it's different. The brains of men and women are different for that sense as well. And the men have

a much larger brain for protection and that fight or flight. And that goes back to primal days. Yeah. Yeah. So it's getting listen to the woman. Listen to the woman and listen to your friends and other people because the things you regret are the things that you feel that you couldn't verbalize that you didn't say that you didn't do anything about. But our gut feeling is always right. And we talked about this early on that the the gut has more

neural connections and sends more messages to the brain than it does the other way. So what we feel just because it may not be logical our forebrain can't rationalize it doesn't mean it's not real. Um that that would be my my main and we've had so many of those examples where I wish I just listen. Yeah. And you think about in a in your own life, the amount of times that you've made those mistakes because you didn't listen or something happened

and you didn't trust your instinct in responding to that or someone did something to you and you didn't and you felt uncomfortable but you didn't back yourself to stand up and do something about it or or defend yourself and then you walk I walk away from those examples and just go why did I shy away from that? Why didn't I trust my gut? Why did I why was I scared in that moment? Why didn't I back myself in that moment? And

I know everyone listening would probably agree that the biggest mistakes we make in life are the ones where we don't trust our instincts. And I think that's the wonderful thing about being a woman. Our intuition is so loud and so powerful. And our brain is wired for it. Our brain is wired for it. But sometimes our thoughts override it.

moments and then whenever something bad happens in my life I'm like nobody died it's okay like you put it back into perspective um one of my cuz the emotional feeling is the same it's the same the trigger is exactly the same so if I haven't had to deal with some of the trauma that you've dealt with where you

found your mother dead on the floor and and noticing the the traumatic response in your body. So if for people that haven't had to deal with that, how do you help people find perspective? Because it can't be it can't always just be I remember actually when we're doing the Sydney to Hobart, for example, and we had horrendous weather. We had 50 knot winds and 5 m swells. And I remember one of our crew

boss saying, "Well, no one's shooting at us." Well, I haven't been in one of those environments. I don't wish to be in one of those environments, but this is (expletive) like I'm almost dying here. Yeah. Yeah. How do you help people stay in perspect keep maintain perspective in those examples?

I had a a very good girlfriend of mine um is a doctor been high school very best friends and I tell this story a little bit because she has tough days every single day. She's an intensive care doctor. So I would speak to her 365 days of the year. Um and it's hard, really hard. And um anyway, she was

having a really tough day and um we spoke late at night and it was all just getting too much. And she was in the supermarket and I know her routine so well. I said, "Oh, you're going to go feed the homeless man outside." She's like, "Yeah, I bought him donuts." I was like, "You're going to kill him with the donuts, but hey, he'll be grateful anyway." Um back to the homeless man. And I go, "Well, just a moment there.

Why don't you offer him tonight your house keys, your car keys, and your job? And then tell him how your life sucks and how you're having a really bad day. Oh, and tell him it comes with a family. You've got some kids and um and a mortgage and all. Yeah. Okay.

And she laughed. And then that example like it just resonated with both of us because um that man sitting there like having a nice car, a nice home, a family, having a credit card where you can buy food that you want to eat that someone didn't choose for you. All of those things like just snap straight

back into perspective. So lucky. Loves her job. Just things are hard. Life's hard.

is fundamental to longevity to performance to connection to trusting your gut because if your gut's in twists and knots because you're not taking care of it you can't listen to it cuz it's got other stuff going on to be honest. So what I did do in preparation for this discussion and I wanted to use your brain um you've just signed on to AIA as

one of as their ambassador to help prevention in the food space. Yeah. Metabolic health. Metabolic health. Yeah. And I was so curious about what people were searching right now cuz that really tells us like perspective on where people's minds are because there's this definite tension that I feel at the moment between looking great and feeling good and eating foods about longevity

and energy and performance but then there's the aesthetic side which is you know restriction diets inter intermittent fasting whatever it is GLP ones whatever you're going to to look a certain way rather than feel good. So, I use that and and and we've pulled out some of the top Googled or AIDed trends at the moment and we're going to use this as we're in the classroom with Kate.

Okay, how does that sound? Great. As long as I get more than one word answer, you definitely do.

So, what is going on, I guess, for when people reach this 40s? I mean, you had it when you reached what? Like, so I experienced the body fat in 2001. So, I would have been in my mid to late 40s. Yeah. It seems like we just 48.

Hit 40 and then bang, all of these things changed. I got closer to 50 before it hit my high performer. Yeah. Well, mine was menopause related as well and I was intermittent fasting and a a variety of other things going on.

Yeah. So, the first thing that I think about when I think of visceral fat is that you're putting fat in organs where or an area where it doesn't naturally want to go or belong. So why isn't it putting it in the right areas of the body? So the reason behind that would be if you are having excess energy, excess food, particularly excess carbohydrate and processed foods that quickly go

through the system. If your uh muscle glycogen stores where you put carbohydrate are full and if your liver carbohydrate stores are full, then you need to protect your body by taking the the glucose or carbohydrate out of the bloodstream once it's broken down. and stuff it into fat cells. Now, um once uh depending on what type of fat cells you have, what hormones are going on in your

body, um you can have fat, which is little fat cells that you fill up and you make little fat cells. That isn't as dangerous as getting fat cells that actually grow and have hypertrophy because when they become really big, they actually uh become disjointed from the circulation. then they become an inflammatory tissue that starts secretreting hormones that actually creates this environment of more fat

because fat precipitates more fat. So if we're going on this journey and perhaps our insulin levels are creeping up because um we've had a little bit too much carbohydrate or excess energy that we're not burning off. And that would be if we don't have enough muscle. Muscle is the sink for glucose. So muscle will pull glucose out of the bloodstream. If you don't have enough muscle, then you can't have as much food because you've

got nowhere to put it. Then you start tucking it into fat stores. A healthy body system would try and put that in safe areas under the skin. So subcutaneous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's when our hormone estrogen levels are good, it will go to the hips and bottom and thighs. But when

our estrogen levels decline, um, it's more likely to go to the abdominal area.

onsets around 10 to 20 years before you would even know because your blood sugar levels don't change for 10 to 20 years, your you eat something, your sugars go up, but your insulin has to go up higher to bring them back down. Insulin is a fat storage hormone. So if you're snacking all day or eating 10 small little meals, you go glucose spike, insulin starts coming down, but you eat again. So this fat storage hormone is

constantly elevated. So it doesn't matter what you eat, you will store it as body fat if you don't have enough muscle and if you're not moving enough because it needs to be taken out of the bloodstream to stop damage to the body. And once the the liver glycogen and the muscle glycogen's full, it has to pack it into fat cells. And if the system's

not in a healthy way, it will it will send it all to the abdominal area. And hormones and different foods are more likely to stimulate more insulin. This where we talk about high GI foods, low GI foods. But GI is not really as important as glycemic load. So glycemic load is the GI of a food multiplied by

the number of grams of carbohydrate in that food. So an example would be watermelon. People say, "I've heard watermelon's bad for me. I never eat it." Why? Well, it's high GI. Well, how much would you have? Oh, I wouldn't touch it. Wouldn't have a slice. I'm like, one slice of carbohy one slice of watermelon has a very small amount of carbohydrate. Even though the GI is high, the load is small.

get a big insulin release or take it. Whereas people have low GI foods like your carbohydrate, uh rich pastas, rices, those sorts of things, breads and their GI might be low. They may be buying low GI everything, but you multiply it by the number of grams of

carbohydrate and you've got huge glycemic load. So, you've got this insulin that is just increasing and increasing. And if you're not doing the exercise and you you don't have enough muscle to pull it out of the bloodstream, you will store it as body fat. So, we become more carbohydrate intolerant if as we age, if we're not really active or have good muscle mass.

We have a quick favor to ask. If this podcast has been landing for you, please hit subscribe and leave us a rating or review. It helps us grow the show and keep bringing these conversations. So I was 48. I was super active, surfing every day. I wasn't going to the gym because I didn't have the vitality to go to the gym. So perhaps I had become a little bit uh just used to the the exercise and my body surfing every day.

Every day. Yeah. Um but I was still storing fat and I was intermittent fasting. Cortisol. There we go. So cortisol. Yeah. Stress and stress will trigger the insulin response. Yeah. So, so it's not just diet. No, but it's it's all just insulin.

everything in between. And I just feel like you choose your own adventure, but always like take get the bloods done, work with a professional, and if you're not going to get the answer you need, go see someone else until you find something that's working for you. So, I went to the doctor and I said, I just turned 40. I've got no energy. I'm starting to notice that even though I'm doing all the right things, my body is storing fat more and I can't get out of this funk. Um, I think I'm permenopause and like I'm just not myself really.

And they went through all of the things we could test. And I said, and I knew that you wanted me to get fasting insulin. I said, "What about fasting insulin?" And they were like, "Well, we could do this." Why wouldn't they? I don't know. It's not covered by Medicare. There we go. So, I got mine done. I got them yesterday and I was so excited to put it into AI to see what it said and it gave me a 10 out of 10 on everything.

So, I've sent them to you. Yes. I've had a good look and they're amazing. Amazing. Two things that I could see though. Yeah. Um, your triglyceride levels were very low, which is incredible. What is a triglycerolide?

It's the fat in the blood and it's uh how you transport the fat around the blood. And because I knew you were fatigued, I would say you have less energy on board. It's your pattern looks like a weight loss pattern if I looked at it. Now, if you're not trying to lose weight and you have very low triglycerides, I don't have enough energy. I think I've been trying to lose weight since I was 12 or 13.

Okay. Do you know? I don't feel like there's ever a time where I haven't been in constant monitoring of weight mode. Would you think so? What? What age? It hit you a bit later. Surf out of interest.

Oh, out of interest. Yeah. Look, I went on the pill when I was 19. That's when my body changed. Up until that point, I didn't even know what body image meant because I was just a a stick figure. Yeah, there was not an ounce of bloody fat on me. Whereas I'm like a like voluuptuous woman, but I do Yeah, I do remember

12 or 13 Victoria's Secret models. So, I just feel like I've just always been in constant weight gain, weight loss, weight management. So, it was interesting to see that even my bloods have shown that.

It sounds like we're positioning you as the highest performer in the room. So, if you're the highest performer, Sounds like it. There we go. I haven't told you my full day. Um, so for the average normal person, it is perfect. If you want to be right at the top, you could improve your insulin

sensitivity. So, under one is the best insulin sensitivity you can have, and you're about 1.4 from memory. So, it's close. It's well in the healthy range. So 1 to two is the healthy range. How do we bring our insulin sensitivity down?

So you want to build more muscle and I've heard on other episodes you get scared of building muscle. I do. Yeah. You need to build more muscle. I was nearly going to bring my inbody machine in today. I've got it in the car. Have you ever done body composition testing? Do you know my back today? Oh, there you go. What was yours?

Uh as in a my body fat. Body fat versus muscle mass. I can't remember. I know my body fat was 25%. Great. I've been working with a personal trainer for with Shannon Pontton actually for 18 months and that's made a significant difference to my lean muscle

because what I noticed um coming through going through menopause was a a significant decrease in my muscle mass. Like I've always had pretty strong legs. Um, I remember actually always comparing my legs to other surfers going, why do my legs why are my legs so much bigger than everybody's legs? And I thought

that was a bad thing. Um, and then I realized that it actually helped me surf better, obviously, and longer and surf bigger waves. So, I much prefer having stronger legs and having more muscle. So, I've been able to rebuild that muscle and takes away a lot of the visceral fat just by replacing it with muscle.

And you've replaced it with love. I have replaced it with like you know that it's so crazy like when I hear you say that like oh I was worried about my legs being big. I'm like but you're a surfery you need big legs. Well you don't need big legs. I'm not a cyclist. No but you know strong legs.

Strong legs. And then but I wanted to be thin. Yes. And then I think about even my interaction with my personal trainer. Well my trainer this morning. I was like how do you build bum muscles without quads? He's like what? Why don't you

want quads? like you want to be able to pick up your baby. And it's funny how we're in this like shrinking um cycle. How can someone who is struggling right now go and work with? So they go to the doctor, they get those two tests. Who is the best person for them to call and work with? Many GPS, if you say you want to be tested for insulin resistance, they they will do that test and they can talk you through the results. But the treatment

and management of that improvement is probably a dietician or an exercise physiologist. Um, we know that it's at least 80% diet exercise. You have to do the strength training. I think there's no one listening now that hasn't heard this before that if you don't have enough muscle, you're not going to have you're not going to be where you want to want to be, particularly as you age. And

the protein, that's where it really is important. And you would have found when you were saying your muscle mass changed as we get older our ability to convert protein into muscle um decreases as well. So our leucine is our rate limiting factor which is an amino acid in complete protein. So your dairies and meats and those sorts of things. It can be lacking in uh vegan or vegetarian products but you can combine foods for

that. But if you don't know that and you're having sources of protein that maybe aren't complete or don't have leucine or not enough protein and there's a trigger for how much protein per meal to stimulate that muscle synthesis. So if you're not having enough protein at each meal, but you're grazing, you may not get that stimulus for converting that protein into muscle in the body.

like to refer to per kilo of lean body weight because both of you have very high lean body weight. So you should be thinking you you are you've got a lot of muscle. You need to keep um replenishing that muscle because it will turn over as you use it.

Yeah, that's the big call out. So, I think I've said this before, but having protein, increasing my levels of protein has changed my life. Absolutely. In so many ways, it's increased my energy, my ability to focus, my ability to train and surf, enjoy life, sleep better, um, be satiated more, so I snack less, I eat less sugar.

Did you find a difference in the protein powders? Like, yes. Well, I I look for protein powders that I like. Yeah. And look, I used to have a strict aversion to whey protein. Yes. Because I'm lactose intolerant. And I've and I always suggested don't do whey protein because it creates calcium deposits and all these other things that

um science really was starting to show, but really I don't know whether I was just make making it up just to support my own argument. But um I'm open to finding proteins that when I drink it, it's how my body responds to it and just giving it enough time to recognize whether it's good for it or not, whether my body's rejecting it. So, but the I I feel like what you said, Tess, is that everything has

become all about protein, right? We're protein maxing at the moment. What is the best form of protein? Is it animal protein? Is it plant protein? Is it whey protein? Like, what's the best form of protein? Or is it a mix? Is it a combo?

in 3 weeks both lost all of them lost on average 4.5 kilos. So, weight loss was the same. But the difference between losing weight with supplements versus with whole food was the body actually recognizes the tags on whole food as protein better and assimilates it better into muscle. Because if you think of food in nature, it is very different to

something that's chemically extracted from food, which is probably missing the food tag, so to speak. And in nature, if we look at wild animals, they're not running around obese or nutrient deficient, and they don't have meal plans. Nobody's writing up what to take and when to eat it. So, they can rely on nature to actually regulate their appetite, regulate their growth,

regulate their vitamin and mineral intake. So, this study for me, it was the first study in the world that was really comparing a supplement-based diet with a whole food diet. It was a low calorie diet, but the the outcomes were really significant in the gut microbiome. So, when you had a whole food diet, you get a boost in 45 beneficial gut bacteria. When you have the supplement diet, you actually had a decline in gut bacteria, which is

really, we know that's not good. Well, that goes back to our earlier point about gut bacteria being really good for you to trust your intuition, to produce energy, serotonin, like so many things in the gut are required. and we're we're running at a pretty rapid pace in life. So, is there was there a a study done with a combination of supplement and whole food?

Yeah, that is definitely where I'm going with this that you should get all of the protein that you need or as much as you can from whole foods because you'll be more satiated. So, what they showed is it stabilize leptin. Leptin's the hunger hormone. Um, if you have the shakes, leptin's unstable, so you'll get more hungry. If you have the food, you'll be more satisfied. So, as much protein from food as you can. If you don't get enough, then take a protein supplement.

We know protein supplements work, but this study showed supplement only, synthetic, everything versus whole food. So, whole food first, supplement next. And the best versions of whole food protein are meat, chicken, fish, dairy, legumes. My husband was like, "Can we not eat chicken tonight, please? Can we not have salmon?" I know. Um, so we I really want to

one who's outside in the sunshine eating food without the distractions and they've got a whole food plate. How do we encourage people to take that break from a high performance perspective? So if what can you see in the data that shows what a rested meal with high protein does for someone and from their energy, cognitive performance like like being sustained throughout the

day, what does it give them? Yeah. So big picture again, zoom out. Think about the blue zone studies. None of them have supplements. None of them are indoors all day. The only thing that leads to better cognitive function, no chronic health disease, better stress management, longevity is whole food, sunshine, and movement. So, can I say something on that? That is I love blue

zones, but they're not running businesses with big mortgages with kids to feed and business like, you know, they they don't have that level of stress. So, how do we blue zone corporates? You make larger larger dinners and take leftovers. So people tell me, "What's a good snack?" And I go, "What did you eat for dinner last night?" Chicken and veg, steak and veg, salmon and whatever.

That's a good snack. A good snack is not something you find in the supermarket unless it's around the edges. So yeah, that's right. And you can have them in your meals as well. So people go, "Oh, you know, dinner meals are boring. We'll put all the fun stuff in, but all the the whole food." So, if you need to snack because you're not eating enough at your meals, then have whole foods.

But we shouldn't really need to snack as well. If you eat good food, you are not hungry. Like, if you sat down to um I got Uber Eats last night in the hotel room cuz I'd had 3 hours sleep. Bad. Um but I got some sort of salad thing. It cost me a bomb because I put on double the proteins and then I added egg and then I got olive oil on the side. um

kind of and then I got falafles, you know, I got all the things. Um double server the chicken, but I'm happy to invest in my health. I won't tell you how much it cost cuz it nearly killed me. Um I went downstairs to see if it was cheaper to eat in the restaurant and then I decided no, it wouldn't be enough protein cuz they had a crap menu.

front of their health then they need to rep prioritize. Do you believe that like when you talk to doctors and you ask them or how much nutrition training they had they'll say it was like one subject in one semester in a 10-year degree. Why do we why don't we have more emphasis on food is medicine? If we are talking about GPS, think of every single drug

they need to understand and they are changing every week. Like GPS are bombarded with information. So information that another health professional can provide. A good GP outsources everything. Outsources everything because they know the specialist in each of these areas.

Like a general practitioner's role is to know who is the best person to refer to and to actually look at that diagnosis and make sure that they're referred to the best people in their field cuz science is always changing too. It is. Yeah. So why isn't like food is medicine has started to get a lot of traction? Why don't we place more emphasis on it at

schools, at work? Like what is the barrier to people actually fueling themselves and making those Uber Eats decisions? It needs to start from the bottom up. You need to be educating in schools. It it can't stop start from the top down because if people haven't prioritized it or learned about it early on, then everything else is going to get in the way. So, it should be infiltrated, I say, in the workplace.

So, we talk about HR being the, you know, it's really important and mental health conditions. Look at the study of the smiles trial which was professor fel jacker who either uh people in her study either had counseling or or um saw a dietitian and they changed their diet. So their rates of remission of major depression anxiety in the counseling was 7%. When they changed their diet it was

five times it was 32% remission of major depression anxiety. So if people want to fix mental health in the workplace bring good food in. Stop eating fried food. Don't put the vending machines in the the building like a break. Yeah. So, how can we improve the the menu at service stations?

Apparently, they do it in Japan. I haven't been there and I don't know, but yeah. Can you tell us how they do it? Cuz I'm so curious. Well, you can actually just buy whole food in a service station. And I think I think that the people that need it the most are the ones that have least access to it. And so, how do we simplify it? How can we make it more accessible? your be fit meals at service stations.

Not yet. Great idea. That's where we need to help. That's what we need to do. Japan have it like they actually teach kids about what's in their food, like how it benefits them. So they they're doing I love the Japanese philosophy there.

Of course. And this is the bit that's brought to you by AIA. So it's our do it for life toolkit. So here we go. Food. What's something people can do every day in their diet to give them more energy, clarity, and focus? Eat more vegetables. Vegetables. Vegetables. Really? Yeah. What kind of vegetables? Green. Any No. know every single color.

Every single color that is they have the biggest the most tags on them. You can't make a vegetable. You can't. There's way too many beneficial things in there that we don't even understand what they do. We know they (expletive) cancer cells. We know they help with dementia. That that is the number one thing we are lacking in Australia is enough vegetables. Crazy thing.

Something like 90% of us don't eat enough fruit and vegetables. That's so easy. Get a veggie box or fruit and veggie box delivered to the office. Yeah. Make you eat it. What's one thing we should be doing to protect our muscle strength and metabolism as we age? Whole food protein first, which is eggs.

Supplement protein next. Eggs, lean meats, chicken, fish, chicken, fish, dairy, raw nuts. Uh yeah. Well, all your plant-based proteins are great if they're in the context of a whole food diet because you'll be mixing them with the amino

acids that they're missing if they're not complete protein. and focus on weight training in the gym. Yes. Three times a week, 30 minutes. What's one thing we can do at work around our nutrition to simplify eating healthy in the short amount of times we can to have a break? Pack leftovers the night before, put them in the fridge, take them to work to eat.

Love it. All right, health check. What's one really important health check that people should ask their GPS for? Ask for a homer index to have a look at your insulin resistance. It will highlight your chances of getting diabetes in the

Starting with insulin resistance is a really looking at insulin resistance. Sorry. So fasting glucose, fasting insulin, because you'll see how your body can process the energy that you put in. Does it get stuck somewhere? Does it get forced where it shouldn't go?

What are the other signs of insulin resistance apart from weight gain? That would be your first signs, but the second thing is it does lead to type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes. So you'd see high blood sugar levels. And if you've got that, maybe you're going to the toilet during the night. Um it definitely you'll get the brain fog and like a concentration but you'll also um have changes in mood and behavior.

You'll have big ups and downs during the day. Yeah. But menopause can lead to insulin resistance too because of the change in hormones and where the fat's directed. And that's why it's the first place to start rather than going down the perry and menopause.

And it's completely reversible and preventable and it will stop you once you get type 2 diabetes. They say you've actually already got heart disease. So whether it's been identified or not, it's built up. You've got um declining beta cell function in your pancreas to produce insulin. It's at about 50% by the time your sugar levels start to go up. You don't even have diabetes yet.

Yet your pancreas has stopped functioning. So that's a sign of metabolic health. And then that has already those high blood sugar levels are damaging the blood vessels leading to atheroscllerosis. It's not my favorite word, but that is the start of the the the cognitive decline comes from the damage to the blood vessels, whether it's in the brain, it's in the heart, it's in the limbs, you start having um problems with your feet.

What percentage of Australians have got insulin resistance that are going into diabetes? Where are we at? A third of the population have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Third of the population, but twothirds of the population are overweight or obese.

Is that right? So, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a much larger percentage because you can't stay overweight or obese. And we're talking about body composition. We're not talking about BMI here. If you have very high body fat levels, very low muscle mass, then there is a very good chance if you are overweight, then you might have insulin resistance.

early. And like I feel like it's this is one of those wakeup calls when you hear that twothirds of the population are going through those sorts of um medical issues. It's quite frightening really. Yeah. Um, so they're avoidable. They're avoidable and it is just repprioritizing that what is life without without

health. And we've all probably been sick before and there is nothing worse. Imagine waking up sick every day though. You retire, you have all the money in the bank. You have a holiday house and a big house and a lovely car, but you can't get there because you are so tired and so sick and you wake up the same way every single day. our health, we have it for life or we don't have it.

So, if we don't invest in it like we do our careers, then it will be gone when we need it and we want to rejoice in what we've built. Yeah, it's amazing. It starts at the fridge. Hey, Kate, how can people learn more from you? Cuz you have a wealth of knowledge. Um, I was lucky enough to try some of your Bit food before uh last week and it was so easy just to heat them up in the microwave and put some veggies with

them. So, how do more people get a hold of your wonderful information and food? Uh, BitFit Food Australia, uh, our Instagram, um, bfitfood.com.au. I, uh, have a personal Instagram, personal LinkedIn, Kate Save. And I'm very open to being challenged because

the science is changing every day. Um, I think the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know and there's so much more to learn. So, yeah. And we've set up a code for your listeners as well. Awesome. Yeah. So, if you want to try the B Fit food range, what's the code? Wake up 35. Ah, 35% off.

$35 off. So, it depends how much you spend. Yeah. Of $100. Yeah. Um, so a Wake Up 35. And I highly recommend you try these foods. They get delivered to your door and you It takes the questioning out of it cuz food prep. Kate's done all of it for us.

And they aren't frozen. And the reason for that is it does you preserve the natural environment of the food, the DNA, the bacteria, and the nutrient levels as opposed to chilled meals that could be 10 to 30 days old by the time you're eating them, which means nutrient levels drop down, bacteria, the wrong bacteria that ages it goes up. So I I just like to let people know that snap frozen is better.

Is okay. All right. So, if this episode resonated with anyone with you and a loved one going through it, how would you recommend sharing it with them? Because weight is a very very interesting topic. It's a delicate conversation. Energy and what's your energy like? How can we get you better energy? So, if you've got high insulin resistance, you'll have very low energy because all

of the glucose that's supposed to be energy in your bloodstream is being snatched out before you get to use it and tucked into fat cells. So, you'll have low energy. That's actually a really good point. How's your energy going? My energy is good. I've just extended myself a lot today. I walked to the gym.

I did an hour in the gym. 20 minutes in the sauna, an hour and 10 minutes in the surf. Yeah, your glucose is fine. Your insulin resistance is all good. All right, Dean Dream Team, thank you so much for tuning in today. Please share this episode with a loved one. Ask them about their energy and let them know that Kate Save is here to help them. and we look forward to seeing what you're doing with AIA in the prevention space cuz yeah, it's obviously with two/3s of the population going through this right

now, we really do need your help. We need Kate to save us. Yeah. See you next week, Dream Team. Toodles. Have you been listening to this episode and thought, "Mike drop. Maybe I'm ready to get coached or have some therapy, but you don't want to go all the way down and get a therapist." Welcome to the Awake Collective where we do monthly coaching to help people feel

accountable, supported, and they keep on doing the work that you hear in this podcast. It is life transformative. Right, LB? It's a community of support and like-minded people who are willing to keep investing in themselves because what we do is we help people help themselves. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, then the Awake Collective is for you. So, come and join us at awakeacademy.com.au

AU and join us for monthly coaching, a community that supports you and tools that you can use in your life to thrive. Let's go. See you there. Before we close, we just want to gently remind you that Awake Academy is not a licensed mental health service. And this podcast is not a substitute for personalized mental health advice, assessment, diagnosis, or treatment.

What we share here is general in nature and is designed to offer reflection, insight, and practical tools for everyday life. Therapy can be life-changing, and we deeply encourage you to speak to your GP about your mental health and well-being options.