Jonathan Steedman (00:01.005)

Hey food groupies, talking about nutrition for injuries today because that is a conversation that I have with a of people. A lot of people, you know, asking me questions about it on socials and all of that sort of stuff. It's probably going to be the most anti-climatic podcast I've ever recorded. May not even make the five minute mark, which is a bummer, but like that's the reality. I wish that nutrition could do more for injuries. there's some important stuff. There's a couple of key things for you to be paying attention to, outside of that,

 

Unfortunately, it's much more about rehabilitation, doing the stuff and letting your body do its thing. So just as a caveat to that, by the way, I'm specifically talking about, I guess, like musculoskeletal ischaries. So ischaries, musculoskeletal injuries, I was going to say issues and injuries, bone, breaking a bone, tearing a muscle, tearing a tendon, ligament, that sort of stuff. Like not fun stuff, but.

 

those sorts of injuries is specifically what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about recovery from surgery or having your gallbladder removed and other things like that. is specifically, again, like I said, a common thing of, I've torn my calf muscle, I can't do my normal stuff. I wanna get back to full capacity as quickly as possible, what do I do? So we're gonna talk about that. The two biggest things that I'll be paying attention to.

 

your protein intake and your calorie intake. And I know that's all I friggin talk about, so I'm sorry, but it is still very relevant for nutrition for injuries. Now, in terms of your calorie intake, what you wanna be doing, and calorie, just mean, in terms of your food intake, you wanna be getting adequate amounts of food. You wanna be at what we would call maintenance calories, okay? So you're not gaining weight, you're not losing weight, you're giving your body enough of what it needs. And this is important, right, because

 

you don't want to be in a deficit because you a deficit where you're giving your body less than it needs it forces it to work a little bit harder and so your body's already working a little bit harder recovering it's rebuilding a muscle or a bone or a tendon or something and so we don't want to make that job even more difficult by like under underpaying it essentially right so don't be in a deficit but also don't you don't really need to be in a surplus i've also had people go like how much more should i be eating to help speed up my recovery and like there's

 

Jonathan Steedman (02:25.399)

there's not really any point doing that. What you're probably more likely to do is gain unwanted, I don't know, maybe it's not unwanted, but you're gonna gain body fat. And if that's not one of your goals, then don't eat more when you're injured. So you wanna be eating at maintenance. Very important to recognize that you may need to recalculate your maintenance because what was your maintenance before you were injured may not be your maintenance now that you are injured because that injury may have impacted your activity levels. That calf tear I gave as an example before.

 

is probably gonna be reducing your steps, okay? It might be reducing your runs or your gym work as well. So your overall calorie expenditure throughout the week might be lower, in which case you may still need to lower your food. So I know I said don't go into a deficit, but that doesn't mean don't lower your food. You may need to lower it to some degree to adjust to your new movement habits while you're recovering. I hope that's all made sense. So that's the first thing, eat an adequate amount of calories.

 

just spend a little bit of time figuring out what that is because it might look a little bit different now that you're injured. The next thing is protein. Absolutely, know, protein is the building blocks. It's important for recovery. We've probably heard all of this, but it's also not a more is better situation. I mean, it virtually never is, but eating more protein is not going to speed up recovery. You just want to make sure you're continuing to get an optimal amount of protein. Hopefully you are already doing that before you were injured.

 

Now, maybe if you weren't, now's an extra good time to focus on that. But theoretically, if you were eating enough protein before, continue to eat that same amount of protein and you will be maximizing your recovery, particularly if you are pairing that with an adequate amount of calories. The next two things are much more, they will have an impact, but they're not gonna change your life or anything like that. The first would be color.

 

in your diet. So by that I largely mean fruits and veggies and like plant stuff because that's going to give you good vitamins and good minerals and also good antioxidants. All of these things help, you know, the regular processes in your body, but they also have a mild anti-inflammatory effect. I don't want you to get too carried away with the word anti-inflammatory, but in this situation where your body is working hard to, you know, repair, they may support that a little bit. So not a bad idea to continue to focus on getting in fruits and veggies.

 

Jonathan Steedman (04:46.892)

and grains and nuts, seeds, legumes, those sorts of things in a reasonably nice variation where you can. That's gonna be really important as well. Look, the last one is probably more related to bone injuries, but also relevant for all injuries. Just vitamin D is something that comes up a lot. Now that doesn't mean go take a bunch of vitamin D. Really what it means is don't be deficient. If you aren't sure, you could always get a blood test. If you have had a blood test and you're not deficient,

 

Adding more vitamin D into the system ain't gonna do anything. It's more just a, if you are deficient in vitamin D, that may hamper your injury recovery just a little. So worth paying a bit of attention to that. Outside of that, there's a little bit of evidence around creatine potentially helping. I mean, at the moment, creatine apparently can do everything. And I love creatine, don't get me wrong, but I think it's maybe, we're getting a little bit carried away. So if you are currently,

 

supplementing with creatine and you get injured, don't stop, but don't start taking creatine in the hope that it's gonna magically fix your injury. That's it. That is nutrition for injuries. Like I said, pretty boring, pretty anticlimactic, but there are a couple of key points in there that if you wanna maximize your recovery window, I would be, or recovery speed rather, I would be paying attention to those. Otherwise, do what your doctor says, do what your physio or your exercise physiologist says, be sensible, and hopefully you can get back.

 

to full strength ASAP. right, chat to you next time.