Ever wondered how elite athletes manage to balance grueling workouts with precise nutritional needs? Mackenzie, a dietitian and former CrossFit Games competitor, joins us to unravel this complex dance of diet and exercise. She walks us through her own evolution, from high-octane CrossFit games athlete to performing fitness to sustain longevity. It's a candid look at Mackenzie's shift from the extreme calorie counts of competition to her current practice of intuitive eating, aiming for long-term health and vitality. The conversation takes a deep dive into the mindset and practical adjustments needed when moving away from the spotlight of competitive sports to a lifestyle focused on overall wellness.

We dissect how the unique blend of accountability and mentorship can dramatically shape someone's journey to a balanced life especially in nurtition. With Mackenzie's dual expertise lighting the way, we delve into how the right nutritional strategy isn't just about food; it's about crafting a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that sticks. We also touch on the importance of nutrition not only for those looking to perform better, lose weight, and gain muscle, but also how nutrition can impact recovery and rehab after surgeries and injuries.

To work with McKenzie Flinchum, RD, CPT for all your nutrition needs, check out the following link or email at mckenzie.myobrain@gmail.com

myobrain.com/mckenzie

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Transcript

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 0:01

All right, good morning everyone. This is Hercules Performance and Physical Therapy. I'm Dr Alec Spano. Today we have Mackenzie on. She's going to talk about everything, nutriiton. Give me a little bit about yourself and your history here.

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 0:14

So I grew up doing sports. I was a gymnast for 15 years. I did karate growing up and then I started just getting interested in nutrition as I got a little bit older, kind of fueling my body properly for training, went to school for dietetics and nutrition, became an RD in about 2015. And then I just started taking on clients one-on-one on my own. I really love working in the health and fitness space, so I do work with a lot of athletes or just general healthy population people trying to look better, feel better. They're already doing some kind of training usually, and then myself I also still train and I do kind of my own fitness workouts. But I also competed in CrossFit for like five, six years. So I've just kind of always been in the health and fitness space and adding the nutrition component for my work has been amazing because it just fits right in Sure.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 1:10

Tell us a little bit about your CrossFit career because it was kind of a big part of your life as of recent, high-level athlete. How did you find blending the world of dietitian, where it's a little bit more medical base, and then taking this cool CrossFit fitness background? How has that influenced each other? Where have you kind of gone with nutrition?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 1:29

So, yeah, with nutrition, with CrossFit, there's such a demand for high calories and adequate energy and all that. So it's very different from where I was in my clinical field, like doing my nutrition internship. I did a lot of clinical basals in the hospital, so it was more of like nutrition needs for people who are sick, you know stuff like that versus nutrition needs for athletes. So as an athlete, I started to learn how much fuel I actually needed and, you know, really I would track my food and try to get X amount of calories and just make sure I was getting proper nutrition, proper calories, proper protein, all that. My CrossFit career started in 2016, I believe, and I just dropped into the gym one day and I was like I think I want to give this a try. I absolutely loved it. I loved training that way, I loved the high intensity and I just kind of got sucked right into it. I ended up competing the next year at Regionals. The next year I was one spot shy of qualifying for the CrossFit Games and then the year after that, in 2019, I qualified for the CrossFit Games and so I spent probably three, four years being super competitive. My last competition year was 2021. I did virtual competition and I missed the games. That year I competed in semifinals and then the last couple of years I just have been training for fun.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 2:58

Yeah, what does training look like for you now, like for fun? What does that mean for you?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 3:02

I'm still in this kind of transition phase right now where I'm trying to figure out Like how to train just for fun and for balance and everything I'm I'm working on just feeling good and enjoying my workouts and having my body feel good, but at the same time it's really hard to not have a very specific goal to train for. So not having like this Competition like in the future where I'm pushing for that, that's difficult for me because my whole life I've competed, even though I don't really love competing. I get nervous and there's just a lot of pressure I put on myself. It's still hard to not have that like competition like in the future to train for. So I'm just working on finding good balance with everything. I'm still like to do CrossFit workouts, I throw in my own like bodybuilding style workouts. So I'm just training for aesthetics and for strength and then, you know, I'm just throwing down for fun every once in a while. Some friends Sure.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 4:02

So that's a nice segue into you. You have these different parts of your life and kind of nutrition needs. How has your nutrition Been different since? Again, you're doing this for performance and now it's kind of this long-haul longevity health approach how, how do those two look different and might be able to apply it to other people?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 4:21

Yeah, so when I was training for CrossFit, as I mentioned I, the calorie needs were so high and I was just trying to get calories in. However I could my meals were huge. I had to force calories in. I had to make sure that I was, you know, getting taking some sort of like protein and carbs supplement with me to the gym. I was very consistent with taking my creatine, I was consistent with supplements. And now Sometimes I can honestly get a little bit lazy with it. Like if I wake up and I'm like not super hungry, I'm like I'll just Skip breakfast like no big deal, even though it is helpful to get protein and calories earlier in the day if I want to fuel properly and not end up being like low blood sugar, super hungry by the time. Like lunch rolls around but I'm not as strict with it and calorie needs have definitely diminished. There was a transition time right after competing and then not training as much, where my body had to adapt to that like maybe I was Still really hungry but I didn't need as much fuel. And now my body's, you know, definitely adapted. I'm not as hungry, I don't. I can tell that I don't need 3000 plus calories a day, like I'm good at 2000 to 2500 and that's fine. So a little bit more intuitive eating, you know, comes into play and Definitely a little bit more Lieny it now that I was when I was, you know, training and I had to get the fuel in.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 5:43

Do you find that's where a lot of people need to be when they're more in the health and wellness because you know we both have worked with people who are more of that type a want everything very strict. Have you found that actually, if they kind of let go the reins a little bit with the nutrition, it helps?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 5:58

I have. It definitely depends on the person, but my approach is more of balance and like a healthy lifestyle and longevity. So I do have some clients that come to me and they're they're so strict and they're they they feel like they need to track in order to stay on track and it actually it can actually kind of be a negative for them because they feel like there is no balance, like it's an all or nothing thing, when in reality, if you have a little bit more flexibility with it, you feel like you can stick to that long term. So an example is during the holidays, all my clients I'm like do not track on Christmas, take the whole weekend off logging your food. Like just eat whatever you want, you're not gonna blow your diet. You're tracking itself as an estimation, like even the four calories per gram of protein. Like that's not an exact number and the numbers on the food label are not exact, so the whole thing is an estimation anyway. So having a little bit more balance and flexibility with yourself, learning to be intuitive too, is super important. If you're not listening to your body and you're eating calories because the number and on your portal that we put the targets and that says a certain calories. If you're focusing so much on that and not listening to your body, then you can kind of have a little bit of a disconnect there, absolutely.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 7:19

Yeah, it is kind of interesting to hear about how it really does and it's almost like a cyclical thing where, depending where you are in life and sport and how long you've done stuff, it kind of is a moving target right. And that's where having someone like you who's had experience throughout the range is really nice, because you can give some feedback on like, hey, maybe this is the time to pull back, this is the time to be stricter, or whatnot?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 7:40

Absolutely yeah, there's definitely a time and place for it. And when people come to me with specific goals like weight loss goal, aesthetic goal they wanna lose body fat, gain muscle I always encourage to be strict. In the beginning I was super strict with myself with tracking for a few years and I learned more about food composition in those few years of tracking my own food than I did my whole life or from reading nutrition books et cetera. So I think that's a super good approach for anybody just to learn about nutrition. But it's not a long-term thing. Once you know about food composition, you can kind of estimate calories. You kind of have an understanding of is this a good protein source for this meal? How much should my portion size look like? Then you can kind of give yourself a little bit more slack and flexibility with it and you don't have to be weighing everything to the exact gram anymore.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 8:29

Absolutely. I mean it's kind of like college. You go and learn a bunch really quickly and then you can kind of then wean off and naturally spin it into your own thing. Yeah, exactly, Mckenzie, I wanna do kind of a rapid fire question session here so we get a few common questions answered from you. As far as someone who's post-surgical let's call it an ACL or shoulder repair, whatever it might be do you have any specific nutrition advice for them?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 8:57

So typically post-surgery, as your body's in healing mode any type of healing mode you're gonna have an increase in calories and protein You're gonna need more. It might kind of balance out if you're less active, so you have to like take into consideration that as well. But in general proteins are gonna be higher for tissue repair and cell regrowth and all that, and then calorie needs as your body's healing as well. So just trying to get adequate calories, adequate protein super important for post-surgery, yeah.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 9:29

I mean there's a lot of healing going on in your body. It's like you break down your muscles in the gym right and you have to kind of refuel. This is a big breakdown of a lot of things. It needs a lot of umph to improve right so that's awesome. Do you recommend anything like obviously maybe starting pre-surgery would be a good idea, just so you have kind of a baseline there and you can see the changes? Do you have any advice for pre-surgery?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 9:55

I definitely think learning about food composition, doing some tracking. Again, tracking is not a long-term thing I recommend, but it helps people learn about food composition. There's so many times I've asked people do you even know what a macronutrient is? So a carb, fat, protein and they don't even know that. So if you don't have the education, the knowledge, it's going to be hard to make sure you're getting enough of the correct kind of calories and fuel. So just tracking before or making sure you're on a good schedule as far as like, am I getting good protein source

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 10:36

Absolutely Find your baseline and then kind of know what food? omposition is. What is this in general?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 10:43

Right. Learn how to get the correct amount of protein grams and what are some good protein sources.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 10:50

Love it. As far as recovery, let's call it I'm a fitness athlete, I'm a baseball player or I'm just someone that likes to hit the gym hard. What would you say are kind of the benefits of working with a nutrition coach, adding that in as far as recovery and being able to perform or live better?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 11:08

Definitely so. If you're going to be an athlete and you need the adequate fuel for recovery. Tracking your food, making sure you're accountable, is huge. If you're under eating, that's going to create a lot of extra stress on the body. So, for athletes, getting enough calories is super, super important, and I've oftentimes found, even with myself personally, that when I'm training a lot, appetite diminishes and that can be the first sign to overtraining, in fact. So, working with someone to maintain that accountability make sure that you're getting the fuel you need, making sure you're getting enough protein, getting enough micronutrients, are you getting enough fluids and electrolytes too that's a big one, I see as well, not just water itself, but are you getting enough sodium into your diet to make sure that you're rehydrating properly? So it's more about the accountability and then, of course, knowing also what a good calorie range is and it's not going to be a one size fits all either it's really important to have someone who can guide you and adjust calories appropriately. So if you're not performing well, then what can we look at to make some adjustments? Should we give you more calories? Or maybe we need to do the opposite and lower some things, or maybe give more calories on training days. So look at what your hunger levels are, what your recovery is, how your sleep is. So a lot of factors there, a lot of different ways we can adjust, but there's nutrition with athletes and with the recovery piece is huge.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 12:43

Yeah, absolutely. I mean it should be a primary focus, not just the training you create, the stimulus and training you got to recover from it, and nutrition is number one in that category. And something to tell my people all the time, like, if you're not recovering, using nutrition as a primary weapon, that in sleep you got your two biggest hitters right there, 100%. Yep, M, if I have people that want to work with you, right, they have nutritional questions, they have nutritional needs, athletes, active adults who just want that. What are the best places to find you or connect with you?

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 13:14

Yep, so they can search for me online. The company I work with is called MyBrain and they can work directly with me as a virtual coach. That way, it's as personal as we can get being virtual, because I do video check and reviews. It's full-time support, but that's where people can find me. The company I work with is called MyOBrain and it's myself and another dietitian who started that. We take a very similar approach and, again, it's very, very individualized. It's not like here's a meal plan. Good luck for the next six weeks. It's constant support, yep.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 13:55

And that's where the magic happens with the coaching right.

Mckenzie, RD, CPT: 13:57

Exactly, it's all about the accountability and the relationship there. It's not just following something Because you could go online and find something to follow, but it's the having somebody there to coach you Absolutely, and that's the whole reason that it's successful a lot of times.

Dr Alec Spano, PT, DPT, CSCS: 14:13

Awesome, M. Well, thanks for coming on and answering some awesome questions. I'll tag you and have links to her websites and all that so you can go find her in the show notes below. All right guys, have a great rest of your day. Thank you, all right, thanks.