Episode 56: Nutrition Tips for Outdoor Junkies with Leah Forristall

Season 4

Jun 8

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Episode Description

In this episode of The Up-Beet Dietitians podcast, Emily and Hannah are joined by Leah Forristall. Leah discusses what outdoor performance events are and why it’s important to fuel for these experiences, even if you’re not a competitive athlete. She dives into how nutrition for pre-workout, intra-workout, and post-workout might look differently. Leah also provides great examples of all these different types of meals and emphasizes how to make it individualized to you. Lastly, tune in to listen to Leah’s unpopular food opinion on the optimal “vehicle” for a breakfast sandwich!

Leah Forristall, RD, LDN is a private practice sports dietitian located in Massachusetts, specializing in outdoor sports and sustainable weight loss. She completed her nutrition degree at Framingham State University, where she is now serving as the campus dietitian. In her free time, you can find Leah out hiking or making fun TikTok videos debunking nutrition myths!
Be sure to follow Leah @dietitianleah_ !

Participant #1:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Up-beet Dietitians Podcast. Today we are joined by another exciting guest, Leah Forristell. Leah is a private practice for dietician located in Massachusetts and she specializes in outdoor sports and sustainable weight loss. She completed her nutrition degree at Framingham State University where she is now serving as the campus dietitian. And in her free time you can find Leah out hiking of course, as she is the hiking dietitian or making fun TikTok videos debunking nutrition myths. So hope you guys enjoy this episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Up-beet Dietitians Podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are joined by a very special guest. We are joined by Leah Forrestall. Leah, welcome to the podcast. Hi, how are you? We're so happy to have you here. So with Leah today we're going to go into sports nutrition and specifically we're going to go over like outdoor and performance events. So kind of a new twist today we've had a few other sports RDS on, but no one's talked about this kind of stuff yet. So we're excited. Before we get into the juicy stuff, Leah, walk us through kind of like a day in the life, what you do for work, education, hobbies, all that good background stuff, of course. So I am technically a University dietitian. By day I work at a small local University here in Massachusetts and then by night I am a private practice dietitian. And that's when I see those sports nutrition clients. Kind of a mix of them, but that's pretty much to it in terms of a day of my life. It's not nothing too particular outside of work, obviously. I love hiking. You guys probably already know that typical day by day stuff. I make TikTok videos in my free time. In the winter I like to snowboard, but now typically it's a normal day for me. Is waking up, go to the gym, get ready for work, go to work number one, come home, see clients, work number two, and then spend some time with my boyfriend, hang out for a bit, get tourists, done things of that nature, but nothing too exciting. We can relate to that hardcore. It can't be, Emily. It's just like the double life, day job, night job, go to sleep, repeat very much. Yes. Okay. Well, let's get into the good stuff. So to kind of kick us off, I kind of said outdoor performance events are like the topic of the day. But what does that mean? What are some examples of outdoor and performance events? Yeah. So outdoor sports nutrition, it can be exactly kind of what you think it would be we have those typical things that kind of would overlap with a typical sports dietician because basically anything that could be done outside kind of falls into that round. So yes, things like running and marathons can obviously kind of fall into that. But I kind of like to think of it as a step more into a complexity where it's very niche, very individualized and specialized, and we have those different things that kind of fall into it. So yes, we have running, but then you can kind of take it a step further. We have ultramarathons, which is another whole ball game where you're kind of focusing on things like elevation that might not be in that mix. You could do rock climbing, skiing, snow boring, obviously, for me, again, I'm a hiker, so that is a huge one for me. And working with hikers and things that you might not think are important, but later on end up becoming really important. And even with hiking, yes, you can go on a nice six or seven mile hike. But then what happens when you get those hikers that are going on those 1824 miles hikes in one day? How does your nutrition kind of play into that? What about those hikers that are now backpacking? Maybe it's a weekend backpack trip a week. Maybe it's an Appalachian Trail brew hiker where they're out there for six months. Obviously, nutrition is going to be huge when it comes to that and kind of looking at those different things that fall into that, that's so cool. I also love hiking, but I've never been one to go past backpacking and stuff like that. But it's such a crucial part of I feel like a lot of people don't really think about that. They think of hiking like, oh, I'm going to go for a couple hours a hill or a mountain, but they don't really think about kind of like packing the snacks and you don't have access to a refrigerator. I guess maybe you could bring cooler. I don't really know how that is. Maybe if you're like setting up camp, but that's really cool. It's also not like you're able to work with so many people with that specific niche because there are so many aspects of sports nutrition, performance, nutrition, and also just outdoor so many outdoor activities. And why not? A lot of people, too. They don't think of it right away until they kind of see this sort of thing and they go, okay, maybe this is actually something that I could benefit from. And again, especially when we talk about hiking and things of that nature, yes, we have that performance aspect of it. And you see this with anything from pretty much any of the outdoor sports. How does nutrition actually do you know, how can this go and translate into a new PR? Is this going to help me hike an extra few miles? Is it going to kind of get me out of that bonking because that's another whole thing. But then it also has that safety aspect to it, too, which people tend to forget a little bit about. And this obviously falls you hear a lot about it in terms of hydration. Can you pack enough water? Do you have a water source? How do you go about preventing dehydration on the trail? Because that can ultimately worst case scenario leads to death. But you see the same thing with food as well. If you don't pack enough and you underestimate it, what happens when you are 8 miles in but you still got 8 miles left and you're stuck out there? What if you don't have food? Are you going to actually be able to make it right now you're putting yourself in danger from bonking out or whatever it is. So there's a lot of different things that kind of fall into it that people quite literally just don't think about until they're either kind of in that situation or maybe they see someone like myself on social media talking about it and they kind of put those two and two together and actually start to implement those sort of things. Yeah, that's such a cool niche. Like I said, I know lots of sports are using it's usually like College or maybe like professional athletes and that kind of thing. But you don't think about like not that it's all recreational, but a lot of times it's recreational, like hiking and marathons and that kind of stuff. It's just so neat to have that specific niche. Yeah. I work with obviously athletes at the school, too, but it's two completely separate things, if I like to think of it. I recently had I worked with the baseball team at my University, and we kind of talked about all those things that you would fully expect from that. But this is totally separate from that. And like I said, there are so many different little things involved, especially once you start getting into those longer duration periods. Sidebar I live in Indiana, where it's just flat like no mountains anywhere. Hiker. So what is bonking? I heard you say that a couple of times. Yeah. So when you think of bonking, I've heard this term even in other like endurance sports and stuff like that. But if you were to picture yourself, you try to fuel, you go and then all of a sudden you hit that wall where you're done. That is kind of the best way to describe it. So this usually happens from under fueling and not being able to keep up with it. And sometimes this can happen on a single day hike. For some people, maybe this is someone who is out there through hiking and they just didn't prepare appropriately. And the underfueled and typically under fueling in this kind of setting, too is not intentional. Most people don't go into it being like, I'm going to see how little I can eat while I'm going out there. They think they have enough and then they completely undermine the situation and they underestimated totally the amount that they might actually need because it's a lot I even going back to kind of like the baseball team I was telling you about. A lot of those students and this is just students are out there with a few hours of baseball practice, maybe a lift session here and there a lot of those students in order to maintain their weight, even are eating like 4000 calories a day, which is a lot. I am someone who doesn't have to do that thankfully, but I know that going into that it's not easy to consume that amount. If you take something that you're out there on the trailer for 10 hours and think about how much in those 10 hours you're pretty much moving. You'll have like rests here and there to actually sit down and eat something, but most of the time you're on the go. So even 4000 calories in that situation you still need way more than that. And when you think of movement and being in the process of it, you also have that barrier of low appetite which happens a lot more frequently than you would think as well. So it's kind of putting two different challenges together which can then go and lead into something a lot more serious or the very least something that isn't going to benefit them to the way that they would want it to be. Yeah. I can see how underfueling would happen all the time because we live in a world where like 1200 calories is like the magic number and that's nowhere near what you need if you are spending all day on the trails and it can seem pretty wild to think like I can eat 4000 calories and that's going to be my body wants to use. So I could see how underfueling would just happen all the time. Pretty unintentionally. Yes. And another thing too is a barrier there as well, especially going back to the hiking. You have to carry that food too and this is the issue. You see this a lot of hydration where people are like I don't want to carry more than a leader on me because it adds weight and weight makes it a lot more difficult the further and you know, further you're going and it's something that a lot of people don't want to deal with. Maybe they'll go and find some people will carry that water filtration system or maybe a lot of New Hampshire, we have huts you can go and they'll have water there in the summer and you can kind of plan your route to resale if needed. But it's the same thing with food, especially now we're like lightweight hiking and ultralight hiking is kind of becoming more popular. People don't want to carry that weight. So now there's that balance of okay, do I try to go as light as possible and fingers crossed and I bring it up with me, or can I actually go and be like, all right, well, where can I get the most calories in in the lightest weight possible? But it's a balance. There a lot of times for some people it just takes trial and error as well. But all small banks to think about that. People tend to forget about that's actually a really good segue, I would say into say I feel like already delving into the next topic. Well, I already answered the importance of nutrition. Like, we know we got to eat enough before and after. So I say we get into what the heck to actually eat. So let's start with before, like before you do an event and I don't know how you want to split it up. Leah, if you want to do certain events, it just in general. But kind of walk us through some different preworkout nutrition recommendations for these types of activities. Of course, the pre workout. I always kind of say this is probably the most individualized that you're going to get because how people handle food for what they're doing is very much dependent on what their body is used to, what their body can handle. You see this a lot with people who you guys have probably experienced this yourself or heard of people when they go kind of like the same thing. I don't like to eat breakfast because I feel sick about eating something in the morning. You get this a lot when people work out, too. I don't like to eat a lot beforehand because if I do, I feel weighed down. I feel I get stomach cramps or maybe at least bathroom issues later on that they don't want to deal with. So this is something you see a lot of. And this is where one kind of practicing comes into play. I always say the same way you would train for something, you got to train your fueling as well because you've got to get used to it. But there's no right or wrong. I always say kind of, you know, if you can get something in three to 4 hours beforehand, that's ideal in most cases, especially with these longer distance thing. Someone who's hiking, they might be up at 05:00 A.m. And starting. So for them, they're not going to go and have something three to 4 hours beforehand. If you could, just getting in a basic meal is going to be sufficient. Getting it the night before if you can. But kind of focusing in then on that right before that, 30 to 60 minutes. Typically, I tell people some sort of simple carb is always the best thing. And this kind of translate into any sports nutrition recommendation. I would say in terms of outdoor sports, the intra-workout is probably the most complicated. And where we kind of dive in a little bit more whereas that pre workout, it's very similar to the rest of it, where, okay, let's take into consideration what you're doing. Obviously, if somebody is snowboarding, that might be a little different than someone who's about to go run a marathon. And there are the intricacies of, okay, what is that intro workout going to look like? How often am I going to be able to feel? How frequently am I going to be able to stop? All those things are also going to play into it. But for pre workout, it's simple. It's a simple car. So this could be anything from I love applesauce. That's a big one for me because it's something that's really easy. And I know I go this into even the intro workout where you can buy them in little pouches and it's really easy to kind of take it on the go. You don't have to stop. It's something that's accessible, whereas you could also do things like fruit is an easy one for people who have, I would say more stomach issues. Having some sort of liquid carb is going to be beneficial. So maybe this is a sports drink, maybe this is juice or something like that. But most people don't need to over complicate that pre workout for people who are going to be going and burning a lot of calories. So again, those hikers, those marathon runners, that's when I kind of suggest trying to get in a little bit more if possible. So maybe you go with a piece of toast with some banana slices on it. If you can try to get a little bit of peanut butter on there, that's going to help. However, that again, is going to come back to you individually, how you handle a little bit of fat in that meal. How did you practice it again? So all those things play into it. You made such a good point about the intra-workout snack. I completely forget that's the thing sometimes. But I feel like you gave a really good example of where, yes, it comes down to a lot of individualized and that's why it's important to work with either test it out yourself. But dietitians are also really nice resources, especially sports. Dietitians are really great resources for that as well. We actually don't have a section on this plan for you, but I would love if you talk about kind of the structure for like inner mural or intro workout eating occurrences, kind of I guess like the importance of those and then maybe examples. Yeah, of course, we're going to use Hyping, for example, probably go back to that a lot, because that's something again, that's super relevant to me. But last June I hiked Katarin, which is the very end of the Appalachian Trail. That hike for us took about 10 hours. If I had only focused on the pre workout and the post workout aspect of it, that would have been 10 hours of me. Not eating. So not only is that just one not great performance or, you know, energy levels, my safety, any of that. But even just thinking of the grand scheme of keeping those calories up, that means I would have had to at some point later on in the day made up for all of those calories burned, which I don't want to do, probably can't do. And it's something that if you focus it and you plan on it for, like I said, your day and kind of incorporating it into the middle of things, it will make things easier. So I always say with this, when we talk about that internal workout and consuming calories in the middle of your workout, obviously this is going to be more important for those people who have long workouts. So if you are working out less than an hour for whatever it is, maybe you're only going rock climbing for an hour. You don't really have to worry too much about that. It's once you start getting beyond that. So that one to three hour range, typically we would recommend about 30 to 60 grams of carbs per hour, which even that's a lot. But once you get higher than that, it becomes even more so that 3 hours or so, plus every hour would be about 60 to 90 grams of carbs. So if you're thinking about that, that is a lot. So that's really when we kind of come into thinking about, okay, what are some really high carb sources that we can consume easily? Sports drinks, those fruit gels, really what it comes down to is sugar. And this is something that's again, kind of hard for a lot of people to grasp because they think of it like, okay, well, I was supposed to be cutting back on sugar. How do I do this? And that's when they're usually surprised when I say we don't, we're going to incorporate it. This is the perfect time. If you want those Sour Patch Kids, throw them in your hiking pack because there's no better time for you to consume them. Your body is actually utilizing it. It is everything you could dream of. It more like incorporate it. Let's try to remove that mental block where you feel like, for instance, what diet culture is going to tell you about how you shouldn't be consuming certain things and reframing that thought process of being like, okay, well, how are these things actually going to benefit me and what I'm doing? But a lot of carbs, basically, if you're middle of your workout for me, you should be consuming some other things in there as well. So fat, obviously, you're going to get a lot of calories. And so if you can get some of that in, it's going to be easier on you first. People who are hiking, this usually isn't too much of a problem because you can sit down, you can take breaks. People who are racing, this isn't something they're probably going to do. So it's just one of those things you can balance out. Same thing with protein, you can incorporate some sort of protein source. So whether that's something like beef jerky on the trail or bringing a sandwich, it's easy enough, trail mix, stuff like that. But incorporating it in finding that time, like I said, it totally depends on what that sport is, because like I said, if you're someone who's running, you're not going to get those brakes. And really, it's going to be a lot of those, again, those gels and things that you've seen people doing it where they like, they're running and they like, take it and they throw it to whoever or whatever. And I would just like, love to. This is unethical. But watch someone do a marathon, like on the keto diet, the amount of gluconeogenesis going on there would just be mind boggling. And I'm sure people have done it. But I think that really comes back to that point of there's a difference between can you do it? And is it optimal? Right? People are like, yeah, guess what? You can like, I could go and hike and not consume. I could eat nothing and still go and do it. It's just going to be miserable. I'm not going to be performing my best. Like I said, in that kind of situation where you kind of can't bail, obviously there's a safety risk, but not everything has that safety risk. I would bet money on the fact that somebody there are definitely keto runners out there. Not because I can guarantee that there are and they probably find ways to make it work. But if you wanted to use for that person that you could find ways to make it work with those carbs, they'd probably be surprised that if they put that same energy and effort into it probably would be doing better, they would probably be hitting better race time, speed would probably increase so and so on. Yes, you're so right about how it seems like it's a lot of carbs. If you're used to that diet culture mindset of as little as possible. It can seem like a lot if you're someone who does detect of events and needs actually a ton. Yeah. And the other thing, too, is even when we're talking about under fueling, under fueling leads to obviously a whole lot of complications. But if we're going to talk about speed, I don't remember off the top of my head. But for dehydration, for instance, X amount of dehydration in your body leads to speed loss. So all these different kind of go into it and the people don't think about it. However, that nutrition, that fueling plan that you have is going to translate into all these different areas that people probably don't even think of. I believe it. I totally believe it. Well, let's get the last part of workout nutrition out of the way here. So tell us about post workout, what kind of goes on there? So post workout, I always say, number one, just calories, get anything, what you have lost kind of trying to figure it out. You have two different aspects to this. You have obviously hydration, and then you have actual food hydration-wise, something that is easier in my opinion, as long as people are focusing in on it, taking some sort of electrolyte, consuming food that may even have those electrolytes in there. However, the fluids are usually easier, especially right off the bat where they might not be super hungry. So I always say even something like liquid ID is a good option, but something that has sodium, potassium, those are going to be like your two big ones. And I would say more sodium than there is potassium because you sweat out sodium in the largest amount. And then again, kind of going back to that sugar top, people have to forget that glucose plays a role in your hydration as well. Glucose helps get that hydration status into your body. Quicker is the easiest way to kind of explain that. Plus, for these people who are trying to replenish their glucose stores carbs easy sugar. So the sports drinks are an easy one or something of that nature. And then protein is something else we're going to want to focus in on. So I always say if you can get in like 20 to 40 grams sometime within about an hour after whatever that workout is, that's going to be at least a kickstart to your recovery process. But you really kind of have to start focusing in on those meals too, sometime within that at least three to 4 hours after and not really neglecting that because again, sometimes people they're done, they're tired, they don't want to worry about it. But actually it's something that they kind of need to, and especially if you're doing any sort of like overnight thing, again, kind of going in and planning that post workout as well. So that post workout, you still got to get out tomorrow, whatever it is. So it's still pertinent in that way. But obviously, again, you have kind of new barriers in that aspect. For instance, someone who's backpacking your food is probably dehydrated. How are you kind of going about getting those nutrients that you need? Well, while you're in that kind of position, I always say too, especially with the backpackers and the dehydrated food, it adds in a few other different complications, again, that people don't think about. Vitamin C, for instance, if you have dehydrated food, vitamin C is destroyed in heat dehydration. So that's going to be a nutrient of concern for anybody who's long distance backpacking. Those people that are out there hiking the Appalachian or the Pacific Crest Trail, same thing with like sulfur dioxide, it destroys diamond. These are different things that we're going to have to focus in on. Those dehydrated meals that most people probably don't think of beyond like, okay, carbs and protein. But where do those micronutrients come in when you're dehydrating your food? And people, again, who are going out there and actually doing these long distance hikes, they're probably not bringing a lot of fresh food. They're trying to save weight. Most of their meals are going to come from those dehydrated sources. All of this plays into it. But like I said, the pre and post workout are probably the least complicated out of the two because it kind of falls into similar ranges as you would find with any sort of sports nutrition. That is something I didn't even really think about with dehydrated foods because I feel like we think like refrigerated foods and then shell stable foods and we just take those out there and they'll be fine. But the heat plays a huge part in that. And I myself didn't think about this until just now until you're talking about it. But that is so crazy to think about kind of from a micronutrient standpoint, how there could be like you could be depleted in nutrients within the food that you think you're normally getting them. Since you're out there for hours on end, those nutrients aren't really necessarily readily available for you. Yeah. And that's not even taking into consideration to, you know, the differences in what might happen to your body when you're at elevation or in a colder climate, because both those situations right off the bat, your carb needs are going up. And we already talked about how high they are. That's like another whole challenge on top of it. But especially with the dehydrated food kind of situation, people just don't think about it. And it's one of those things that obviously it is very important. And again, you think of it this way, like, okay, well, this food would typically have behind vitamin C, but now I'm dehydrating it, and people don't realize what is happening to that vitamin C if they are dehydrating it themselves. If you go and buy like a store bought Pines, obviously you're going to see the nutrition label there. You can kind of plan for that. And sometimes things like that might have it added back to it or whatever, but it just depends. But it's something that this is why we talk about and this is why we have these conversations, because now people are at least aware that that's something they need to be focusing on, that they probably didn't think about before. But I don't know if I'm on a day hike, I'm probably bringing things that are not shelf stable. And it's like it's one day I've never gone to sick. I don't know if that's a recommendation I make to people or not, but it's something that I do at least, but especially with a longer duration, one that's when you really kind of have to worry about it. Fat spoils really quickly. You don't add fat to your dehydrated meals for that reason, because they'll go rampant. However, I will definitely bring cheese on a day hike, without a doubt, without fail, every time. So it's just one of those things that goes back to being very individualized. Like, are you just hiking today? Just once in a while? If so, cool. You're dehydrated. Whatever is going to be fine. Are you someone who is competitively doing this? That and the other where you're doing this all the time? Maybe, like, the recognitions will be different. So that's why sports RDS exist. And food preference, too. I mean, people think going back to that appetite thing, if you bring something you are not going to want to eat, you are especially not going to want to eat it when you are exhausted and have no appetite. And this is something we actually kind of see a lot, especially with hikers, because I'm going to use the term like granola, where you have those granola girls and they're very earthy and they're kind of more cautious about maybe what they're eating in terms of the environment and things like that. So they're eating a lot of foods that maybe are healthy but maybe not the best on a trail. Maybe they're just not as dense as they could be and things like that. And maybe that's just not something that's that appetizing. Honestly, I'm a dietitian. I like a lot of healthy foods. But for instance, I don't really like nuts. I've never really liked nuts. Obviously, that's something I would recommend people take. But if you're someone like me and I went and I just brought trail mix, thinking it's calorie dense, I got some protein, some fat. Like, it's going to be great. You can throw in some chocolate chips, get some sugar in. I'm probably not going to touch it. And I'm especially not going to touch it when I'm a few miles in and just don't want anything because your hunger cues really aren't fully always there. Like, sometimes I will go hiking, you'll eventually have that hunger might kick up, but there are plenty of times where you'll go hours and you burn a ton of calories, but you just have zero appetite. You're not hungry. It's not there. And you kind of have to actually time out your eating plan because otherwise you're just going to keep going. And then again, going back to that bonking, that's when that's going to happen, because you didn't realize. Or maybe you realize and you just kind of like, okay, I'm fine for now. I'm not hungry. I can push it off later. And then all of a sudden you hit that wall. That's a good point. The preference part, like, everyone's so different. Well, you would like to ask our guest after we kind of go through the bulk of the chat to kind of provide any final thoughts you might have that didn't already talk about and then kind of give like a nice summary of all of this with a little bow on top, if you could kind of deliver it in a few little sentences. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously we talked about a lot, but I think really what this mostly comes down to is one, if you are somebody who even has kind of like a hobby, it doesn't mean that you don't need to be in a competition to kind of reap the benefits of having some sort of nutrition consultations or working with a dietician, whatever it is, and kind of focusing in on these little aspects. When we talk about sport, I think people immediately think that competitiveness, but we can translate that into a lot of think about competition with yourself. And like I said, maybe you're trying to beat your own time or maybe you just want to get out there and physically feel your best. That can still warrant having these sessions with a dietitian. So kind of being able to differentiate between those two things and realizing that it's okay to see somebody if you have even just a sport as a hobby, that's totally valid. And then I guess the second thing is really just remembering how important these things can be, again, not even just for the sake of that personal record time and all of those different things. But for again, with these kind of outdoor sports where you have a little bit more risk involved, the actual safety aspect of that, because that's something to you don't get to redo, you don't get to fix those mistakes again. Like, if you're in that situation, it can end up so bad, so quickly. And that prevention is always going to be better than kind of trying to figure it out later on and hoping for the best. Yeah. Like I said, anyone even recreationally, because it kind of applies, I think, big time where I really see it the most is like people who like weight lift recreationally and they get personal trainers and dietitians to kind of make sure they're just feeling their bodies right, doing the workouts properly from the personal trainer side of things. You don't have to be this competitive basketball player to benefit from getting some education, some counseling, whatever it might be. So I guess a really good point to bring up. Yeah. And I think too, especially when people talk about sports nutrition and athletes, like they think of it like you have to be what they're considering an athlete. But, you know, an athlete isn't just somebody who's out there on a competitive team. You yourself can just be an athlete. And that still counts. Exactly that. I like how you ended that. Cool. So, Leah, we always like ending our episodes with a bonus question. And this is kind of like a little bit we always like to do something fun to get away from a more serious topic. And it can sometimes be a debate, but it's more than just us sharing our opinions. So we always like to have our guests first. So have our guests start first. I skipped a word there, but when it comes to breakfast sandwiches, what is your preferred source of the vehicle? For the vehicle, the options are bagel, English muffin or biscuit. Tell us what you choose and kind of why. So I feel like I should preface this by saying that I have very strong food opinions and they're never the popular ones. This goes with anything like, I think frozen pizzas are better than the type you get from a pizza shop. So I don't know, we'll take what you want with that information. We go through this at work a lot that I have very unpopular food opinions. So my unpopular food opinion here is that I actually don't love breakfast like breakfast foods, I should say. People seem to be blown away by that. I'm like I could care less about eggs and pancakes and bacon and all that fun stuff. I do eat those foods every now and then, including breakfast sandwiches. So with that being said, strongly would be the English muffin, which I think, again, surprises people. My thought process here, the English muffin has a good ratio. The bagel to me is too bready unless you put a lot of Leica inside stuff. And I also think bagels are kind of boring on their own. So maybe if you're choosing like an onion bagel with your breakfast sandwich or like a jalapeno bagel, something different, my opinion might change a little bit. And I can't actually say I've never had a biscuit breakfast sandwich. So I feel like I can't genuinely give my opinion on that. That's not as common in New England. That might be. So I don't know. There's definitely probably places I could find a breakfast sandwich on a biscuit, but most places you would go for breakfast sandwich. I feel like the options are either an English muffin or a bagel around here at least. Interesting. I love a breakfast sandwich. I like breakfast in general, so I'm blown away by people who say they don't just die for breakfast. Usually people are. I did say that it was an unpopular opinion. You did. You preface that very well, Emily. Okay. I would love to hear your thoughts. My answer is going to be bagel, and it's because I love how much bread there is. There are two different kinds of people. I love a lot of bread person. I also just feel like I like the feel of it better. I feel like I could put more in it, whereas I get really annoyed when stuff falls off my sandwiches. So I feel like an English muffin. I feel like that's understandable. I get that. But I would definitely agree where it would have to be a special type of bagel. I don't think I could do just like if I was doing a plain bagel, I'd probably just do like cream cheese and that's it. It has to be like an onion or everything bagel or something like that. I'm sure it also tends to not like the brand of bagel, but yeah. Are you going somewhere where they just made bagels? Because I'm sure that tastes way better than if you just went and bought like a store brand bagel or whatever it is. That's true, right? I feel like there's a lot of different things that play into here, but I do think overall I'm more of an English muffin person. But even just like, again, if I was taking scrambled eggs and I needed a bread source with it, I would choose, like in English muffin with just like a little bit of butter on it versus a bagel nine out of ten times. Yeah. All right, Hannah, I want to hear what your thoughts are. I don't think any of us will say the same thing. No. Our religious listeners know that my answer is always different. Like, I can't ever pick something. I'm not a very strongly opinionated food person because I love everything and I like variety. So I would eat all three of these, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, bagel, English muffin biscuit. I like to have variety more so than like one thing I kind of stick with for a long time. So that said, my answer is idk. I don't have a hard answer. I will say I think bagel is not my first choice because of the bread in the like you said, Leah. I think it's just not a good ratio unless you do go hard with the insides. I love it dry. I don't know. I know. I'm the same way. You have like, sandwiches. I don't love sandwiches. And it's that brand inside ratio. Exactly. 100% how I feel about the sandwich. Exactly. I have to say this is very weird. This is going to make my answer not make sense. I don't like sandwiches because of how much bread there is. But I think I just love bagels. I think that's one of bagels. I would eat anything with a bagel. Yeah. Bagels versus like sliced sandwich bread are two very different things. So I feel like I get that. I don't think it's as scary as you think it is. We should do, like, the best. Just like bread as one of our questions for a future episode. Emily, what's the best bread? Yes. I don't know. Make a question. I will say you still have to give us an answer. I know. Okay. So biscuits are really great. But if they're too dry, which can happen a lot, that ruins the whole sandwich. So I think just for safety of, like, it always being good, I'm going to go with English muffin because an English muffin breakfast sandwich is like always good no matter what. I totally agree with you, Leon. This one. Yeah. That's a correct answer. Yeah, that's the right one. Emily, you're outnumbered. You're out of here. I'll take this loss. You said you take all the bagels halfway. That's true. She gets you all. Yes. This is kind of your time to let our listeners know where they can find you. Kind of plug any of your stuff. Yeah. Give them a lowdown. I'm pretty easy to find as far as I'm aware of. I'm the only hiking dietitian. So TikTok, Instagram, my handle is all the same. It's just at dietitianleah_. My website is also www.leahforristal.com. If you literally went to Google and you Typed in Leah Forristall, I am. What comes up because I don't think there's a ton. It's very niche. So that's where you can find me if anyone come say Hi. I always love chatting with people, so always open to that. But thank you for having me. Of course. Yeah. We will share the links down below, but I think that's such a good niche. I just love that. Yeah. Something I don't feel is super overdone, but there's still a need for it. It's a need I don't think people fully realize all the time. So it's unique in that way. Definitely. Yeah. And from like a business standpoint, it's so good to niche down like that. So that's so cool to me. Yeah. Well, I still I don't know, I feel like I have a niche, but then I still feel like it's sometimes broad and I still get a lot of people who come to me for weight loss. And if you guys obviously have been following me, you guys have kind of heard my standpoint on that already as well. So niche is hard. They don't talk about that when you're like creating. No. The worst part, I will hand down that in taxes. Yes. Emily and I always talk about tax season. Yes. Well, thank you again so much for being honest. It's going to be a really good episode. I keep saying this, but it's like such a cool niche we don't ever talk about. This will be definitely one of a kind episode to share with our listeners. Again, we'll share all those links down below, but otherwise, we will see you guys all next week. Thank you. Yes. All right, everyone, have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next week. Bye bye