Eating like a Champion with Nutritionist Jill Castle

[00:00:00] John Boruk: Hello again and welcome into another episode of Raising a Champion. I'm John Boruk. It's the podcast that focuses in on the 15 billion industry of youth sports and how we can do it a little bit better for everybody involved. If this is your first time listening to us, a reminder, you can listen to us on Spotify, Amazon Apple Podcast, you name it.

If by doing so you can also subscribe to us and. Leave a review while you're at it, and those reviews and your subscriptions will certainly help us climb up the charts. And and from there, it's good for everybody involved. My guest this week, and this is a really, a podcast, an episode that I have been anticipating and waiting for quite a while is a registered dietician and childhood nutrition.

She's had four athletes of her own, and in 2015 she wrote the book “Eat A Champion”, which focuses on performance nutrition for athletes ages eight to 18 and where better to talk about eating like a champion than on a podcast called Raising a Champion. Jill [00:01:00] Castle, welcome to the show. How are you, Jill?

[00:01:02] Jill Castle: I'm great. Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:04] John Boruk: Absolutely, and it's, look we as parents look at food and diet from the time that our kids are essentially nine months old and trying to put the right type of baby food. That's where we're. It all starts, but in, in looking at some of the excerpts in your book and some of the things that you say one of 'em is nutrition is the most overlooked weapon in the arsenal that parents can use as they encourage their kids to play youth sports.

So why is that? Why is it that nutrition is overlooked? Because, when we take a look at youth sports, we certainly don't hesitate to put money into travel. We certainly don't hesitate putting money into all the fees that are associated with any sort of high level training, but yet when it comes to food, somehow it gets overlooked.  

[00:01:51] Jill Castle: I would love to interview parents and get their feedback on why they overlook it, but they do overlook it [00:02:00] as a source of energy and something they can capitalize on in helping their children perform well. But not only that, to get stronger. To function in the classroom, to balance maintaining a sports schedule with a school schedule and a friend's schedule.

So yeah, it does get overlooked. And I think part of the reason is we are very busy and if you have an athletic child in the family that crunches your time. No doubt. As you mentioned, I had four, four of my, I do have four of my own children. They're all. Now, but they all played sports. Some of them, very competitive in their sports, and it overtook our after school hours, it overtook our weekends.

And it was hard even for me as a dietician who works in the profession to make sure that, my family was getting nutritious meals. three times a day, plus nutritious snacks that were [00:03:00] going to not only cover their growth and development, but cover their energy needs and nutrient needs related to sport.

When I say that in the book, I really mean, it's something parents with a little bit more focus and attention on it. Can really help their child potentially perform better? 

[00:03:18] John Boruk: So I want to get into a number of scenarios where we talk about their nutritional needs and when is it a good time to implement more carbohydrates, more proteins, some of the food choices and all that.

Before we get into all of that, talk about a little bit about yourself, how you became a registered dietician child and a nutrition expert. What led you down that direction and what was the motivation behind writing a book that's specific to athletes?  

[00:03:43] Jill Castle: Yeah, those are great questions.

I did the whole college undergraduate thing, thought I was going to be a doctor and could not get past organic chemistry. So my dad said nutrition is the wave of the. So take a look at that. And [00:04:00] I took a General Nutrition 101 class and really enjoyed it. And I was not looking back after that.

So I graduated with a nutrition degree. I did my dietetic internship in Boston, and I had to do a two-week rotation with a pediatric training. Experience, if you will. And I fell in love with kids because kids have the same, chronic conditions and health diseases that adults do, but they're a little more challenging because they're growing and so they're, I really liked the challenge and I loved the population of children.

I went on to have four of my own children and when I went back to work. I went back as a private practitioner when I lived in Nashville and many of the clients I were seeing were child athletes and my own children were playing sports and there was literally nothing out there. Four parents of children who were pursuing sports.

And so that's [00:05:00] why I wrote the book. I did it for myself, I did it for other parents. I saw a gap in the literature where there wasn't tons of research at the time. There certainly wasn't a resource for parents that hit all the highlights that are really specific to children, particularly their growth and development.

And so I decided that I would write it and it came on the heels of my first book, “Fearless Feeding”, and I was a Mojo of writing, and I had lots of clients that I could draw on stories and use as examples, and that's how it all came about. 

[00:05:37] John Boruk: All right, so let's start at an early age, even probably before your kid starts to play sports just recreationally for fun.

It, to me, it seems like the best way to get your child on the right track is at that early age, at the age of two or three, when they haven't Yeah, they may not like. But you almost need to condition them at such an early age because if it's something that [00:06:00] if they've developed poor eating habits in those early years, 2, 3, 4, it's really tough to get them back on track at 5, 6, 7. Correct? 

[00:06:09] Jill Castle: Yes. It is more challenging for sure. 

[00:06:13] John Boruk: So let's take it from those early years. What advice do you go moving forward in. How much? And I'll just give you an example. I wouldn't say I do it a lot of things the right way, but I did start implementing fruit and vegetable for breakfast and when they come home for dinner, now when they go to school it's a little bit different cuz they got snacks and all the stuff that they're eating if they're buying their lunch.

But I made them choose, a couple of fruits and a couple of vegetables. So it was sample this, sample that, tell me what you like. How would you go about it for some of the young athletes or, and the young kids as they're starting to develop that palette and develop those dietary needs?  

[00:06:52] Jill Castle: Yeah, so I think, when your children are younger and you're in that toddler phase where they're not babies anymore, they're older [00:07:00] than two, but they're not quite going to school yet. That's really primetime for setting sort of eating habits. And when I say eating habits, for me that means predictable routines around food in the home.

For a family that might mean breakfast, lunch, and dinner, happening at regular times every day. Like you're in a rhythm, you're in a routine. And the child is very much able to predict when food is happening. Routines around meals, routines around snacks are really the first place to start.

For any family out there who doesn't feel like they have routines. It's literally just putting a timeframe on breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even perhaps, writing out a schedule. If you have a school-aged child, so they see what times meals and snacks are happening, then you want to look at meals and look at snacks as a puzzle.

The puzzle being, what are the ingredients to complete the [00:08:00] puzzle. So for a meal, we're really talking about four to five of the food groups that many of us know. And you mentioned fruits and vegetables. Those are two food groups. Whole grains is another food group. Protein foods is another dairy food just yet another.

And then you. Non main food groups like fats and oils and sweets and treats, and they get balanced into the whole puzzle as well. But the main five food groups, I often tell families for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You try, you want to try to get as many of those. In the meal as you can. So for breakfast, for example, you might not get vegetables in breakfast, but some families are able to do that with an omelet but you wanna try to get perhaps a whole grain, a source of protein maybe some a glass of milk and a piece of fruit in breakfast. You wanna try to make it as rounded and representative of most of the food groups as you can. So that'll, [00:09:00] do you wanna do that at breakfast, lunch, and dinner 

[00:09:02] John Boruk: So that, that old pie chart that I used to see where it highlighted, it showed your, here's your dairy, it still applies today.

[00:09:10] Jill Castle: It does. Okay. It does. And let me, I wanna just say something about that because they've changed, it was a pie chart then it was a pyramid, now it's a plate. But the whole idea of categorizing food by nutrients is what is what they're trying to convey. And that is when we group foods that are rich in calcium, vitamin D, vitamin A.

Those tend to be the dairy foods. When we're looking at foods that are rich in protein and iron and zinc, for example, those tend to be those protein foods like meats and eggs chicken, beef, fish beans. And so when we think about food groups, They're really categorized by their nutrient density or the nutrients that they have to offer.

And so when you think about the puzzle [00:10:00] and you think about all the different food groups that you want to get on the plate, what that does is it really hits most of the nutrients that a child needs in a given day when you approach it that way. 

[00:10:14] John Boruk: So let's say you have a child and he's got an early morning game, eight o'clock, nine o'clock in, in the morning, and you know that you're gonna have to get him outta bed early.

What's the approach that a parent should take? Do we get them up at 6:30? Is it, how important is it to get a well-balanced breakfast that early in the morning, and then what type of food? I like to, I like to get my son some good, eggs is, if he's willing to do that, especially scrambled eggs, but, strawberries as a fruit, maybe, some waffles. Yeah. Syrup. Tell in terms of getting him that the energy, cuz that's really where it starts. That's you're putting the fuel in the tank to get the day started.   

[00:10:52] Jill Castle: That's correct. And it does depend on the child. And some children, I know there are families out there are gonna be [00:11:00] saying my child won't eat first thing in the morning. So that you always have these little nuances, but the idea is exactly what you said. You're putting gas in the tank, so the tank's gonna, the engine's gonna rev up and there needs to be some fuel there.

And so breakfast as early as you can related to when your child is going to be running around. So we usually say at least an hour to two hours before, you know you're really running on the field and that sort of dissuades that child from getting an upset stomach. In terms of what it is, I think for me, when I think about what you would offer in terms of the most effective foods you wanna source a carbohydrate, a long-acting carbohydrate, which translates to being a whole grain versus like a donut, which is a simple carbohydrate or a fast acting carbohydrate. So you want a whole grain or fruit. These [00:12:00] longer acting carbohydrates that are gonna stick with your child for a while, and you want a source of protein. So that could be milk, which has both long acting carbohydrate and protein in it, or yogurt, for example.

It could be scrambled eggs as you mentioned. One of the things I used to feed my kids was an egg. On an English muffin with a slice of cheese. So it was easy to, for me to make, and it was easy for me to wrap up in tin foil and have them eat in the car on the way to game or a practice or what have you.

And I would always throw in a banana or strawberries or some kind of fruit. 

[00:12:39] John Boruk: Now, I think you cited this in your book, but according to a 2011 review study from the University of Minnesota sports playing children six to 12 and teens, 13 to 18, eat some of the worst diet on the planet. And they also consume more fast food, sugar sweetened beverages, calories.

I think because you're so involved in sports, we think that Gatorade is a [00:13:00] great hydration drink. The problem though, and I'm sure you know this all too well, having four athletes, four kids who've played sports, when you go out on the road, and you engage in these tournaments and you've got, you're playing two games in a given day and maybe four or five in a weekend.

It's so easy to just order the pizza, go to the fast food restaurant. Stock up that way. And, outside of maybe eating a good breakfast at the hotel, then the diet just really goes to hell, throughout the course of a weekend, especially when you're on the road. So how can you help alleviate that because, It when, when you look at some of these schedules and some of the way that these tournaments break down, it's really difficult to get them the proper nutrients and getting 'em the right type of food that they need.

To be able to be well fueled throughout the course of a three day tournament.   

[00:13:53] Jill Castle: Yeah, it is not easy. I will agree with you on that. A couple of strategies [00:14:00] that I've seen work for my own kids and I've watched other parents do. Is, packing your own cooler. So you have some things in the hotel, instant oatmeal packets, for example.

We used to go, when we would arrive, my, my son was a rower. My daughter was a volleyball player. My other daughter was a swimmer. We would go and we would hit the grocery store and stack, stock up our little refrigerator in the hotel room. So we had snacks that we could. And we had quick breakfast if we needed to.

We also would, it always seemed like there was a group of mom or other parents that were willing to order something good for the whole team at night. It might be a pasta meal, it might be pizza one night, but there was always salads and fresh fruit accompanying that those items. So those are other ways.

It's like talking with other parents about, how to nourish and feed these kids at tournaments [00:15:00] because the culture, the food culture the concession stand, the food environment that a lot of these weekend tournaments and games are not conducive to good, healthy eating, and they're not conducive to fueling the athlete for performance and.

That's a cultural change that probably needs to happen. It, 10 years ago it was a problem. I imagine it still is today, although I would hope that it would have gotten a little bit better. But, athletes are they're like a Indy 500 car. They operate at a higher level and they need the energy and the fuel that provides that energy to be premium fuel.

[00:15:44] John Boruk: Yeah. And you mentioned when we're talking about these tournaments you really need to boost calories because you're burning a lot of calories. And so it's to get the double cheeseburger because that may have 900 to a thousand calories that come with it, but that's not the type of calories that [00:16:00] you need.

So I'm that's really the area where I'm perplexed as a parent is I want to get good high caloric intake in into my athlete. My high performance playing athlete here. I wanna get those calories in there so he's got the nutrients, but I wanna do it the right way. So where, what kind can we provide that, that high caloric intake, but yet there's still nutritious in value. 

[00:16:25] Jill Castle: Yeah. I wanna actually back up a little bit on a, on something that you said that I think is a little, a bit of I wanna debunk it a little bit because, children who are. Exercising and training. They're the ones who are actually burning the calories and you burn more ca calories during the week when you're actually training for these weekend events.

And depending on the sport. It could be that you're burning more calories during competition, but often times that's not the case. Often times a [00:17:00] child isn't playing the whole game. They might be going in for spurts of activities, but they are not like in a two hour training practice whereby they really are burning lots of calories.

So an example of this would be, my daughter who was a swimmer and would have a 5:00 AM. , hour and a half practice, and then go to school and after school, go back to the pool for a two hour training practice. She was burning a ton of calories on her training days, but then when she would have a meet, she would have three events that she swam in, 200 butterfly a 500 freestyle and maybe a relay. 

So she was having spurts of energy expenditure, but she was not burning lots of calories. And so that can sometimes, I just wanna put that out there. Yeah. Because sometimes parents can, an adult can think that these kids are burning so many calories, but they're not, they're really actually burning the calories during the week when they're training.

And that's where it's easier to be on [00:18:00] top of their diet cuz you have your hands on them all week. You've got three meals, you're feeding them. You've got the three or two or three snacks that you're doing during the day in between meals. 

[00:18:09] John Boruk: Okay. And that's a great point. You're right. Swim meets hockey because, my son plays hockey and hockey, you're going in shifts, you're going in spurts. It's anaerobic activity. So it's boom it's quick bursts. Quick bursts off, take a break. But going back to that original question, how can I, we get the, I and maybe in this is we're, let's shift it towards the training aspect, right?

They get a breakfast lunch, then they train throughout the week. If you have three practice practices, how can we get the high calories in there in that week, but yet do it where the food is nutritious. 

[00:18:44] Jill Castle: Yeah. So I think, you're gonna rely on two different things. You're gonna rely on the frequency of eating during the day when training.

So three meals and you're probably two to three snacks. And the spacing between eating sessions is generally around [00:19:00] three hours. So breakfast morning snack, if your child can have access to. Lunch, afternoon, snack dinner, go to bed before bed snack. And this really works well for those kids who are serious athletes who are training frequently during the week and want to stay on top of their calorie.

Their caloric intake. So that's one approach, making sure that they are getting something to eat every three hours throughout the day. The second act is making sure that you are including higher calorie foods like nut butters, for example higher calorie fruits like banana or mango. Some of the bars that, that can be a good source of calories and protein as well as nutrient.

Pastas with. Maybe not just red sauce, but maybe tossed in a little bit of olive oil just to pad some extra calories in. I caution though the listeners to just start adding calories to everything [00:20:00] because there's also this element of overfeeding. We can get overzealous with overfeeding kids who are active as well.

And so there's this sweet spot and how do we figure out what the right balance is and what is the sweet spot? We really wanna encourage our athletes and our children in general to pay attention to their appetite, to listen to their bodies. Am I hungry? Am I still hungry after a meal? Or am I feeling full?

Am I starting to feel like my stomach is filling up and I'm not hungry? I'm actually satisfied and I'm ready to pause and wait till the next time. It's time to eat that. Also, I wanted to, I also wanna just mention that, snacks are a real opportunity to build in a lot of nutrition and a lot of athletes will just eat orange fishy crackers for their snack, or they, they just grab a handful of crackers or a handful of chips. Snacks should really be just as nutritious as meals, except for what the difference is you are [00:21:00] only planning for two or three food groups versus five food groups. And so when you think about whole milk yogurt, granola and maybe sliced strawberries.

That's a fabulous calorie nutrient dense snack for an athlete. 

[00:21:18] John Boruk: So I'll throw out some examples. You can steer me one way or the other if it's good. So say celery sticks with ranch dressing apple slices with no, no, that's not the direction to go, huh? 

[00:21:29] Jill Castle: No.

No, it's two. That's two light and calories. No, I would say crackers with peanut butter. 

[00:21:38] John Boruk: Okay. They'll do crackers with peanut butter, but hey I haven't met a kid, too many kids who they don't like peanut butter. So that's that's a good one. We're, yeah. Yeah. We're, 

[00:21:47] Jill Castle: we'll, half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

[00:21:49] John Boruk: Jill Castle wrote the book, eat Like A Champion. Is it different for athlete? As we say in this eight to 18 year old range as opposed to [00:22:00] adult athletes, in other words is the diet structured a little differently? 

[00:22:05] Jill Castle: I don't think that the diet is structured differently. I think the big difference is you've got the growth component between ages eight and 18 and adults aren't growing anymore, so their calorie needs don't fluctuate that much.

They might fluctuate a little bit based on the activities that they're doing, but for children, a child who's eight is not gonna need as many calories as a child who is 13, for example, and the 13 year old is not gonna need as many calories as the 17 year old teenage boy. So growth really does change the nutrient requirements, and that's the main difference 

[00:22:45] John Boruk: In your book. And I think we, we've picked out a couple of things, but do you get into to sports specific for instance the diet for a cross country runner or a football player would be different than a diet for a baseball player [00:23:00] or you mentioned your daughter who's a swimmer.

My son who's a hockey player is, do you get into to diets that may be specific to certain sports because of the type of activity in the physicality, and as I said, aerobic as opposed to anaerobic exercise. . 

[00:23:14] Jill Castle: . Yes. Yeah. In the book, there's a section that really maps out the calorie burn for different sports.

And I included that because, like you said, some parents might think that baseball player is spending a lot of calories, but baseball players don't burn a lot of calories, not compared to a swimmer or a runner or a rower a soccer player. So there are differences in calorie burn. Does that change the composition or the food choices? Not really. It only changes the number of calories you're consuming. 

[00:23:51] John Boruk: Gotcha. Now one thing that my that my kids have picked up on that they think that is good are these protein bars. These energy bars. And [00:24:00] you see 'em all over the place. Now. You can, pretty much if you're going through the checkout line, they're right there at one of the stands.

What is your take on protein bars, energy bars help, hurt, and do you have to really look at the label to determine what exactly is in these and what are you putting in your body? 

[00:24:16] Jill Castle: Yeah, I think they're context specific. I think they can be really helpful when you're on the run and say you are at a weekend event and you don't have a whole lot of time between games and you need something that's going to pack, going to be digested fairly quickly and not be too heavy. When a child has to get back out there on the field and participate again. I, my hesitancy with bars, energy bars, protein bars and that sort of thing really revolves around, kids abusing them or using them all the time instead of real food.

I'm a real food girl and I. . I also [00:25:00] recognize that kids are learning about all different kinds of foods during their childhood and should have lots of different experiences with food. And so I always hesitate around, relying too heavily on those. And I can tell you, I've had clients in the past whose kids were eating eight or nine granola bars a day, that's an abuse of the granola bar . Having them happen occasionally or part of the day, but not overdone is perfectly fine. It's just when kids start to rely on them, only want to have them are eating a lot of them during the day. It starts to take them away from the other food experiences.

 [00:25:44] John Boruk: I think there's another misperception and that foods with sugar, sometimes they, these kids want to get a sugar high that's gonna gimme energy and they want to consume sugar. And I think smart informed parents or people who have done a [00:26:00] little bit of research realize there's your good sugar and there's your bad sugar.

And that, that's a big phrase even for kids who don't even play sports, is being on that sugar high. Sometimes though it's really elevated and emphasized when you do have a kid and you wanna make sure that they are alert how cautious should we be when it comes to putting a lot of these sugar induced foods drinks into your, to our kids' bodies?

[00:26:25] Jill Castle: Yeah. I always like to talk about the donut versus the scrambled egg, and think about how you feel after you eat scrambled eggs and toast versus how you feel after you eat a donut. The donut is quite tasty. It's delicious, but an hour later, you're hungry again. Whereas eggs and toast will last for a little bit longer.

And the reason there's a difference, the main reason there's a difference between the two is the sugar content. And so sugar is a fast acting carb. It raises the blood sugar quickly [00:27:00] and can make you feel energized, make you feel more alert, but if there's nothing else with that sugar, there's no protein, there's no carbohydrate.

What happens is that blood sugar quickly falls falls off that pinnacle and can cause a crash where the child is bonking, not feeling good, irritable, annoyed not behaving well. And so sugar can play a role in the young athlete's diet. It can be especially helpful if you have back-to-back tournaments.

Here's an example. My son's a rower. He was performing a race and this hardly ever happens, but it did happen where he had to get out of the boat and jump right into another boat and race. So he had no recovery time. He had no chance to eat anything. He had gel, he had little sugar packet gels.

In his pocket to help get his blood sugar back up so he could go right back [00:28:00] out and row again. That's where sugar can ha can help. You see it in runners who will go out and run long distances and they will use goop packs, just keep their blood sugar up because you can't sit and eat food and maintain your blood sugar.

So there is a role for sugar. But really the carbohydrate that most children who our athletes need is that. Slow acting carbohydrate things like a bagel, things like pasta or rice or bread English muffins, crackers granola bars would fall into that. Cereals these are slower to digest and they raise the blood sugar in a more slow manner and keep the blood sugar up for a longer period of time so you can really avoid.

Those blood sugar crashes. 

[00:28:53] John Boruk: All right. That's a good one. And you brought up cereal and cereal's a good one because. You go, you inspect the [00:29:00] shelves at your grocery store or you're on the road at a hotel, and what limited options they have. But I'm really hard pressed to find what is a good cereal that's not loading my, loadinchild up with these artificial sweeteners, flavors, sugars, because they are, you look at the sugar content, this the amount of grams in some of these cereals is off the charts. And so I, I do I scanned the, I scanned the cereal section at the grocery store and I'm lost. I'm puzzled as to what type of cereal I should buy. 

[00:29:32] Jill Castle: Yeah. So I love cereal for kids and especially for athletes. And I can tell you it was an afterschool staple snack. A bowl of cereal with milk was often what my kids ate before they went to practice.

And it's because, A source of fiber. They're that slow acting carbohydrate. Mix it with milk. You get a lot of nutrients from milk and cereal to avoid the sugar. There's several low sugar cereals out there. Cheerios is a [00:30:00] low sugar cereal. Kix is a low sugar cereals. Rice checks, wheat checks. They're the plane.

Cereals that don't have a lot of sugar in them. Generally we say less than nine grams per serving is perfectly fine. So that's my stance on sugar. Yeah, on cereals with sugar, and even if you can't get your child to eat one of those low sugar cereals, you can always mix it with a cereal that has a higher amount of sugar in it. So you're cutting it half and. 

[00:30:33] John Boruk: Yeah, it's, and that, that's good. And I like that benchmark of nine grams of sugar. And that, because now I can go, I can look on the label, on the side of the box and determine, where they fall in the, in that mix. Hydration. And I think you have a section in your book about hydration.

Where, what direction should we go? Water obviously is always, or sometimes, and my kid too, this is one thing that has become a concern over the last couple years, [00:31:00] is that he's been experiencing these headaches, and I tend to think that it's because he doesn't drink enough water. Sometimes after a game I'll grab his bottle and he's barely touched it.

And to me it seems like he needs to drink, be more hydrated, have more fluids inside of, so the importance of water, especially from the angle that I just mentioned, that it can lead to some kids having headaches. 

[00:31:27] Jill Castle: Yeah, it can for sure. And yeah, hydration is really important. And the funny thing about hydration is that, they always say if you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated.

And kids studies show that kids are not as sensitive to thirst as adults are, meaning that they don't really recognize. As intuitively as an adult does. So kids really do need adults in their lives, coaches, parents, other, leaders, [00:32:00] teachers to remind them that they need to drink because it's a habit they need to build.

They're not intuitively inclined to drink and recognize thirst. So it's more about building the habit around hydration. And yes, of course water is very hydrating. Electrolyte waters are great in hot, steamy, humid weather because there's a lot of electrolyte loss through the skin in that kind of climate.

Milk, other plant-based beverages as a substitute for milk are great at hydration. Soups and juicy fruits and all kinds, there's all kinds of ways to stay hydrated and, for most kids, they're, if they're having fruit in their diet and they've got veg, lettuce is hydrating. So it's not just on water. There's lots of different ways to build hydration into a child's or an athlete's eating plan. But it is something you do wanna pay attention to. 

 [00:32:56] John Boruk: And of course, a lot of kids like to hydrate through [00:33:00] Some of these energy drinks could be Powerade, it could be Gatorade, but I look at this and one thing that I do notice about some of these drinks is that they are very high in sodium, which seems to counterbalance what you're trying to do.

You, you want to get liquids in there and sodium absorbs some of that. So what's the right balance when you want to implement or give them one of these, these sports type drinks, but at the same time not overdoing it. 

[00:33:25] Jill Castle: Usually what we say is if there's over an hour of activity outside or inside, but over the timeframe, over one hour of activity that the equivalent of eight to 12 ounces of a sports drink would be appropriate, and the reason why there's sodium and chloride in these drinks are too, they're there to replace the sodium and chloride that's lost in sweat through the skin. 

[00:33:52] John Boruk: Gotcha. Very interesting documentary that I saw a few years back on Netflix called The Game Changers. I don't know if you're familiar with this, [00:34:00] but it was talking about the diets and the dietary plans of elite athletes and what they're doing now, and the direction was more toward plant-based diets, plant-based type foods. And you see it now more and over, at your supermarket, grocery, wherever you go to shop, is the plant-based foods and getting away from meats. , where do you stand with all of that, because me personally I still like to eat meat.

I think it's a tremendous amount of protein. I think you do have to watch in terms how that meat is being processed in terms of is it injected with steroids? , what's being fed in that meat being plant-based, the the beef, whether it's plant-based or how they're being fed.

But have you gravitated more towards this plant-based diet or is it something that really doesn't pertain to kids at an early age? 

[00:34:50] Jill Castle: I think it's, I think it's more of a family decision in terms of an eating pattern than it is a decision to be made as an athlete [00:35:00] or as a growing athlete.

That being said, plant-based eating is really, if you look at the scientific literature, it's really vegan veganism. No, no meat whatsoever, no animal products. But most families, men I don't wanna say most, I won't say many families are if they're going down the plant-based eating pathway, They're adding more plants to the diet.

They're trying really hard to make sure there's more fruits and VA and vegetables available. They're trying to incorporate more beans and seeds and nuts. And those efforts are wonderful. They're great. I think that. We don't want to rely on one area of the diet all the time. I think a balance of all of those different plant-based and animal-based foods work really well for children.

What I would say for going vegan or being strictly plant-based, there are [00:36:00] nutrients that can become deficient in a child's diet if that diet, if the plant-based diet isn't well planned out, and those nutrients tend to be things like iron and zinc and B12 and choline and. Omega, possibly omega-3 fatty acids, calcium and vitamin D depending on how strictly plant-based you are.

And as children are growing, those are the types of nutrients, especially as athletes that are at risk potentially, especially in teenagers. So I'm thinking iron right now and when you're an. You're you lose iron through your skin, through sweat. You break down muscle tissue, you can lose iron that way.

If you're a female and you're menstruating, you're losing iron. And so iron becomes like this more important nutrient, particularly as athletes get into the teen years. And so if families or if an athletes [00:37:00] want to follow that plant, Eating pattern that can be perfectly nutritious, healthy, and fine, but I'm always cautious, and suggest that families who have kids that want to do that, seek out some professional guidance in that area just to make sure everybody's on board with what it means to go plant-based. Because I've worked with many teenagers in the past who are like, I'm gonna be vegetarian. I'm gonna be plant-based.

But no, I don't like meat, I don't like beans. I'm not eating nuts and seeds. I don't wanna do any of the things that make the plant-based eating a healthy diet. Yep. And then the other thing I will say is the substitutes, the plant-based burgers or things of that nature. They do have quite a bit of processing to them and quite a bit of salt as well.

And so that's the other sort of concern I always look at. I just always wanna make sure that families know that, they're, there's quite a bit of [00:38:00] processing and if you're concerned about sustainability, you need to be thinking you would want to be thinking about that as well.

[00:38:05] John Boruk: But you're all in favor of grilling chicken, grilling steak all those types of red meats that, that come with. You mentioned iron, you mentioned, protein is, this is all good. , I know as many people maybe straying towards vegan, it's still good to get this type of food in your child's system.  

[00:38:27] Jill Castle: Oh yeah. If you look at bioavailability, which is a term that means how available are the nutrient. In a food to a human being's body meats are highly bioavailable for protein, iron, zinc, b12. So what that means is a small amount of meat offers a big bang in terms of protein in those other nutrients.

They're highly absorbed, regularly available. The body can use them. In plant-based foods, sometimes those nutrients, [00:39:00] particularly iron and zinc, they can get bound up in what are called phytates within the food and are harder for the body to absorb. So the body needs more help. They need vitamins, it needs vitamin C from tomatoes or citrus fruits to really fully absorb those.

Yeah, but either way it's achievable. It's just really, it comes down to preference and the knowledge that it takes to make sure you're covering everything your child needs. 

[00:39:27] John Boruk: You, you have several examples in your book of athletes and how they got to maybe a certain point, and then their performance plateaued.

But then they made some tweaks, some changes in the diet, and that was really the deciding factor. So if you have, a little bit of time, tell me some of those examples, some of the athletes that you've come across where diet really put this kid, that athlete over the top in their performance.  

[00:39:53] Jill Castle: Yeah. I remember one tennis player who came to me. when [00:40:00] he was a teenager and he wasn't, had not grown since he was 14. He never really had his growth spurt. He was about five, three or four, if I remember correctly. And, in working with him it became pretty clear to me that his diet was impairing his growth.

And, after I worked with him for some time, he had eating patterns, like not eating all day. Or just having lunch at school and then going, and he was an elite tennis player going and, practicing for three or four hours and not having anything to eat. Then coming home and being bogged down by homework, and then just ordering a pizza late at night.

And that's what he would eat. So he would have, the school lunch and a pizza at night and you could look on his growth chart and see that, he should have been closer to. five 11 and he was hanging out at 5’4”, 5’5”. He just never had his growth spurt. And once we really worked through, [00:41:00] making sure he was getting adequate calories and adequate protein and nutrition, he was able to gain back some of that height, but he never made it to his full.

So that's just a, that's just one story in, lots of different, situations I've encountered where nutrition makes a difference. It makes a difference in growth, and it makes a difference in energy level. It makes a difference in focus. Again, when kids go out on the training field or go to a game and they've not had nutrition for several hours, it's hard for them to make good decisions on the field.

It's hard for them to pay attention and to be sharp. And so it's not just, how quickly do the muscles react and respond, and how fast am I? It's also how calculated, how you respond, how you're thinking about the game, how you're strategizing, all of that ties back to having proper nutrition at the proper time throughout the day to not [00:42:00] only help children perform well, but also grow to their potential.

[00:42:04] John Boruk: Wow. That's, and that's such a great point because, you take a look at where we have evolved in our society as far as it pertains to our children whether it's on the athletic field school, and you mentioned focusing because I see more and more there's more ADD, ADHD diagnosises.

And of course the easy remedy is to medicate. When I hear that, sometimes they say, sometimes the easiest thing is two things. It's so simple. , are they eating right and are they getting enough sleep? And then you can probably throw in a third thing. Is, are they spending less time away from mobile devices and some of these electronic devices? Do those three things and you can probably solve your problems when it comes to the mentality and the focus of your child. 

[00:42:50] Jill Castle: Yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot today in our world that distracts our kids and keeps them not doing the things that are [00:43:00] going to help perform anywhere really.

[00:43:04] John Boruk: Yeah. Whether it's classroom or on the playing field, it's interesting you cite a number of statistics in your book and one of the things that you said is under nutrition knowledge, today's parents are under prepared for nutrition and the job of feeding their kids than ever before. Fewer than 25% of parents know that what foods to feed their kids.I find that number staggering. Why is that? . , 

[00:43:26] Jill Castle: I think it's, we don't spend a lot of time in our culture preparing parents to be parents and to prepare them to be feeders of children. We all grew up with our own parents and our own, food routines and foods that we were introduced to and ways of our own eating habits.

When we become parents, we bring those to the table. That's all we got unless we've had, some amazing, education and nutrition, or we've had a personal interest in nutrition and have taken the time to learn about it. Yeah. And then we get busy. We have kids, we've gotta feed 'em, [00:44:00] but we've got jobs and we are, we're busy and there's no time to learn.

And so I think a lot of parents come to the table a little bit overwhelmed when it comes to feeding their kids. They wanna do it right, they want. To do, they want to have balanced meals and nutritious meals, but they also want their kids to enjoy eating. They don't wanna create problems with food.

And so it becomes this like pressure cooker for a lot of parents and rather than intuitively knowing what to do and what to feed their kids they may look for outside information, but frankly, a lot of parents are just too busy and they do what they give their children what they. Or they give their children what they can afford or what they have time to make.

And I think, not preparing parents has led to statistics such as that. And it's too bad. It's a disservice to parents. We could really do so much better as a nation, I think. 

[00:44:59] John Boruk: Yeah. And if you want to [00:45:00] throw in another element to all of that, whenever you sit down and you watch television and.

Some of the food and stuff that's being promoted isn't exactly the healthiest. I can think of Tony the Tiger, whatever the case may be, of the commercials that led to food. And you take a look at what food that is you can get your hands on. In our country, a lot of the same stuff is banned in other countries because, the ingredients and some of the if look, they always said, look, if you can't pronounce it, you can't say it. You probably shouldn't be eating it either. And I feel like that here in the United States, we allow a lot, we have a much more broader acceptance of what food that we're willing to tolerate than maybe some of these other countries where their dietary restrictions are a little bit more strict than what we have here. 

[00:45:50] Jill Castle: Yeah. And I think I know it's true that food marketing, there's a lot of research on food marketing to children, and it does change their eating habits. It changes their food [00:46:00] preferences. It puts a lot of pressure on parents to keep the peace in the. And by what these, commercials and advert advertisements are suggesting.

And now that we have social media, TV used to be the number one mode of reaching children with food marketing. Now it's social media. And our kids spend a lot of time on social media and they're getting exposed to all of these different foods and messages about foods, and so it just makes it really hard for parents.

To tackle nutrition in a balanced way that's not, making anybody feel bad, but also modeling and providing children with the foods that really do sustain their growth and development and support them as athletes. 

[00:46:51] John Boruk: Yep. We're with Jill Castle. She wrote Eat Like a Champion. She's got four athletes of her own that she has had to feed over the years.

So tell me a little bit in terms. [00:47:00] People buy the book, what they're gonna get it? The will, they get a whole plan, they'll get the recipes. They can chart their kids progress dos and don'ts, all of that. I have a feeling that they're gonna be much more educated once they get their hands on this book.

[00:47:12] Jill Castle: I would say if you go out and buy the book, which I hope you do, just know that it's written for an adult, not. Your child? I do on my website, the Nourish Child have a course for the teenage athlete to get the basics. So I do have an option for young athletes, but the book itself is written for the adult and for the coach.

So it's a little more high level. It's, there are equations and things you can calculate to, to figure out how much protein your child needs or to estimate the calories, that sort of thing. It does have a little nerdy science edge to it because I do want parents to have accurate evidence-based information.

Not just, what’s [00:48:00] the latest craze is. So that's what you'll get? Yeah. If you got, if you grab that book. 

[00:48:04] John Boruk: All right. In the website again, gimme the website name, 

[00:48:07] Jill Castle: It's called the nourished child.com, the Nourish Child, and lots of articles. I have a podcast to myself. 

[00:48:14] John Boruk: Yeah. In the podcast, nourish child.com is the Nourish Child.

So listen to that same name but if you wanna Raise a Champion, eating it like a champion is, I think the number one start to where it all starts, where it all begins. , no matter how early you want to get 'em on the ice, no matter how early you want to get 'em on a baseball field getting them to eat right is a good place.

And what I loved about this particular episode is it doesn't matter what sport they play, boy, girl, what their age is. Everybody can practice good nutrition. Absolutely. All right, Jill Castle, thank you so much for joining us. And I know there's people are gonna have a lot of questions. I may direct them to your website.

So thank you so much and we'll do it again. 

[00:48:52] Jill Castle: Oh, wonderful, John. Thanks for having me.  

[00:48:54] John Boruk: Yeah, absolutely. All right. We end our show like we always do with our phrase of the week. And this [00:49:00] week, discipline over time leads to results over time. Not today, not immediately, not when you want over time. Be patient, be persistent.

Show up every day. Be driven by purpose, not ego. Be in it for the impact and not the glory. All right, that's gonna do it. Thanks to all of you for listening. A reminder again, you can go to Google, Amazon, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe to us, leave a review. Greatly appreciate it as always, and that'll help us move up the.