Athletes in Motion

Athletes in Motion Podcast - EP 030 Emily Cole

November 22, 2022 Tom Regal and Kenny Bailey Season 2 Episode 30
Athletes in Motion
Athletes in Motion Podcast - EP 030 Emily Cole
Show Notes Transcript

Just as Emily Cole was preparing for her state high school cross country meet, she fell into a coma instead.  Emily suffered a condition as a result of too little salt which shut down her body.  

Now a Duke All American athlete, Emily joins us to talk about her new book that covers her journey back to wellness and how traditional tropes about nutrition could actually be harmful.  

https://theplayersplate.com
@emilycole

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Narrator:

Welcome to the athletes in motion podcast from race to recovery. With your hosts, Tom Regal, and Kenny Bailey.

Tom Regal:

Hey, Kenny, how you doing today?

Kenny Bailey<br>:

I'm doing fantastic, Tom, how are you?

Tom Regal:

I'm fantastic as well. Thanks. I'd like to welcome Emily Cole to the show today. We're really excited to have Emily on. Welcome, Emily. She's a student athlete, an All American track and field athlete at Duke University. She also has a podcast and a book that's out along with a whole bunch of other things. So welcome to the show.

Emily Cole:

Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you for having me. Kenny. I'm so excited to be here. Helping

Tom Regal:

you get started. What's the what's the, what's the process with your athletics?

Emily Cole:

Yep. So I actually, I'm a senior this year at Duke on the track and cross country teams. And I actually took a gap semester my sophomore year, that's when I was able to start writing my book. So I am a little bit behind on academics. And I have a whole nother year of eligibility, which is exciting. So I'm kind of a senior kind of not. But what's cool is I got into running super late. So I actually did volleyball and basketball up until my senior year of high school. So I still feel like I'm kind of just getting started running and really still falling in love with it and love day in and day out process. I did volleyball basketball up until that senior year. And then whenever I started focusing on running at the same time, I started eating healthier. And it was just crazy the difference that I felt in my health and my performance and my whole life changing. And so that's what really inspired me to fall in love with sports, nutrition and the science behind it. Because I grew up eating whatever I wanted all the time and fast food sugary cereals like there was there was no control on anything, just kind of whatever, whatever I wanted it which was great. And I definitely developed a healthy relationship around eating whenever I was hungry, but maybe not exactly the right things that I needed. That's why I'm so fascinated by it whenever I did start paying little more attention to that. And now I've been able to write a book about it to kind of educate the next generation about sports nutrition, because I can dig into that a little bit later. But I basically got super fascinated by it super into sports nutrition and eating healthy, and then took it a little bit too far and was a little too focused on making sure everything I was eating was healthy and drinking too much water with not enough electrolytes in it. So I got super low in sodium and ended up going into a two day coma from that. And after that, since it's so counterintuitive to society's idea of healthy, you know, I was too low and salt and too much water. I really just felt like creating this guy that taught both the fundamentals is divorced nutrition, and how to find balance along that journey was super important to helping protect the next generation of athletes. And I agree with your definition of athletes, and then everyone fits underneath that. It's not if you just play an organized sport.

Tom Regal:

Yeah. So great. It

Kenny Bailey<br>:

was a great podcast. Thanks, Emily.

Tom Regal:

Yeah, we'll get you started on the nutrition side of it. What was that trigger in high school? He said, all of a sudden, I want to I want to eat better. I mean, because we're at that age. I mean, most of us get into nutrition later on in life when our bodies start to change. And we're like chasing after our youth. You're young at this point, you're making some decisions. I mean, I just ate more hamburgers. I just ate more garbage type food, what was that trigger that said, hey, you know what I want to I want to be better I want to, I want to eat better.

Emily Cole:

It's funny, it wasn't anything super normal, I'd say I had to kind of read the different factors that ended up coming into play. And then after I just kind of listened to those. So first, I was just kind of scrolling on the app store and I found an app that kind of taught you how to track your macros. And I just kind of dabbled with that for a little bit and was fascinated by how much it taught me about what carbohydrates, fats and protein word how to build a balanced meal and making sure I was eating enough and helping me feel energized for practice the next day. And then also I was I actually was dating a guy at the time whose family is super into cooking healthy and nutrition. And so going over to their house and having home cooked dinners and seeing how they valued nutrition and health inspired me to get into it as well.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

Nice. So what is fascinating just think because that at that age, right back to Tom's point, people are just sort of going out, you know, hitting the pizza joint doing whatever they need to do. Did you feel a sense of abnormality for bag for lack of a better term, like you're doing something that's like, I know you had a boyfriend. So you probably had a support system there. But when your friends were looking at the way you're eating, you're like, wow, that's weird. Why can't you just, you know, why can't you just be with us? Or did you balance it a little bit more? Where you try not to lean in too hard? Or how committed to you were? And were your friends sort of supportive? Or were they just sort of like, okay, she's just been weird. Was there a struggle there?

Emily Cole:

That's a great question. And I would say I definitely was more isolated from my friends. Because I was living such a different lifestyle at the time, I was always kind of taught to be more comfortable with that growing up, because I had two older sisters who are eight and nine years older than me, and were always spewing wisdom on to my young brain. And they really helped me feel comfortable with not being on the in crowd and doing exactly the same thing as what everyone else was doing. Because in five years, that would pay off exponentially. And I also have been talking about this a lot recently, but I actually read The Four Hour Workweek in high school, which is counterintuitive, because I wasn't working. But it really, really taught me great skills and values about how important every hour of every day is, and how if you're willing to go against the curve, and not do the same thing as everyone else, those hours that you build up and save, doing, you know, committing to something that really builds you towards your bigger goals can really add up to something big in the long run, even if it might seem annoying at the time, or like you're not with everyone at the time, you know, and five years later, like, Whoa, how did you do that? And it's like, well, all those different hangouts I didn't go to or all those different meals that I had healthy. And it's like, that's the kind of commitment that it takes to be able to get to those bigger goals later on.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

Is it? Is that part of the reason why you were kind of because you switched over from basketball and volleyball, correct? Is that we said, Yeah, exact, very, very team oriented sports, especially in high school, and you're probably on the varsity, right? And you're doing great. And those are very, you know, those things are very tightly knitted. You all kind of go as a pack, right? And then you split off and started running, was it something? It's just fascinating to go from those sports that you're really good at to just a non sequitur, if you will? Right runnings, usually the punishment of those other sports, what was that decision point on why why running became sort of the thing.

Emily Cole:

So I had always been pretty, you know, decently talented at running, and it wasn't super, super great. But I was able to kind of just hop in after not training all of you know, the summer because I was doing volleyball or whatever, and still be able to make Varsity still be able to compete well in the meats. And since I had been splitting myself so much across to other sports, my coach was, he believed so much in me, and he just really was on me, since you know, eighth grade, he was like, you could be an incredible cross country runner, if you would just commit and dive in. And I was like, I hate cross country, there's no way I will do that. And I actually ended up quitting cross country, my sophomore year of high school. But then that senior year, the summer before, whenever I did start eating healthier, and I wasn't doing volleyball and basketball anymore, I actually started feeling great while running. And like really enjoying every single practice. And every single workout, I was like, I looked forward to the workouts and being able to push myself and get better. And it was like I had this whole new idea and mentality around the sport and around running. And it was just so fascinating that that that big of a mind shift could happen in such a short amount of time for me. And so that was another you know, big reason why I was just fascinated by how quickly my mind shift had changed. It had changed and, and how, what I changed, you know, what I was doing and how I was eating the science behind why that made such a big difference in my life.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

When So, what I find fascinating, so let's talk about this coma kind of thing that occurred. What's fascinating is that kind of condition usually happens with endurance athletes do the course of a long and Tom knows this right as an endurance athlete, right? If you start drinking water, your your your stomach is sort of irritated during big nasty events. These are like Ironman distance, big, ultra marathons. That's generally when people have this issue because they don't aren't taking food in they're not in all that sort of stuff. You're just kind of slowly, I don't say slowly develop. But it's rather unusual to kind of get that way with with that type of of condition. Walk us through sort of how that to your point. I mean, you were probably shocked right when that that occurred, obviously, but how do you was it just I'm fascinated by this. Was it just to clean eating? I mean, was it because most of America has a sodium problem and you know, yeah, they should be cut down on sodium, but most Americans not running like you're doing so how did it how did that kind of come out?

Emily Cole:

Yeah, so it definitely developed slowly over a couple of months. I was eating get very clean, I was cooking on my own food. And I, like I said didn't know what electrolytes were, I didn't know that was something that was important to put in my drinks at all. And so I essentially had zero sodium in my diet. And I'm also just particularly prone to being low in sodium, because I'm a very salty sweater. So you know, for everyone who's listening who doesn't know, like, you are just genetically predisposition to be somewhere along the scale of not as healthy to a very salty sweater. And that changes your needs of sodium whenever you're replenishing before and after your workouts, especially as you know, higher endurance athletes, I'm running 60 miles a week. Now my needs have definitely gone up because of that. But I was essentially doing none of that. And so over those two months, kind of built up, it was, it was so weird, because I was feeling like, I was definitely feeling more depressed. I like couldn't really focus in class, my brain wasn't really working the way I needed it to or like, I couldn't really, whenever I was in class, it was like, all I could think about was like, you know, getting to the next meal. And then once I ate, I was like, my brain could think clearly. And I had no clue what's happening. But I was like, I've been working so hard all summer to get to the Cross State cross country meet, I had never come close to qualifying before. And now I was like, supposed to be one of the top 10 in the state. And I was like putting all this weight on it. Like it's the biggest deal in the world. And the weekend before that meet, I started feeling sick. You know, we drove up to Austin. And we thought it was just carsickness or like the place we had stopped for lunch. And I actually was throwing up. And that exacerbated the problem a lot i that obviously dropped my sodium levels way more significantly than they were before. We're just how I got into such a dangerous position. So quickly over that weekend. And essentially, it was the night before the meet. And I was you know, we had ordered pasta into the hotel. Poor my poor team, I felt so bad, they don't have all stayed in the hotel and ordered it because I was feeling so sick. I was like y'all go like it's fine. Don't know, Emily, we're gonna we're gonna hang out with you. So that was really, really cool, just feel supported by them. But I couldn't eat the past I tried to get by. And I was like, I feel terrible. So I just went to bed. And my parents had gone out to meet some friends for dinner. And so they asked my coach to come and check on me like an hour later. And so he came in with my roommate. And like, I looked like I was asleep. And I went to bed super early at the time so that he could just let me go to sleep. But he came over and shook my shoulder. And whenever he did that, I actually looked like I had a seizure. I started convulsing. So that's when he called the ambulance. And the paramedics came and got me brought me to the hospital. And it was so crazy. He was if he hadn't come in to check on me and like shake my shoulder, I probably wouldn't have made it through the night. So that's just you know, really surreal, and speaks to the importance of checking in on the people around you,

Tom Regal:

too. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

So this so here you are, you're waking up from a coma? Basically. You How did you how did you find out about it? And then once you found out about it, that's a huge leap to go from sort of like, look what happened to me just I decided to write a book about it. Was that part of that Four Hour Work? Work Week kind of mentality you had or what what was this? What was the shock of sort of waking up. And once you find out what was going on, let's start with that one first, maybe

Emily Cole:

slightly, I mean, it was extremely shocking, I didn't really know what to think. And the reason why it took me two days to wake up from the coma is because you have to raise your sodium levels extremely slowly for a fear of your brain swelling too quickly. So my brain definitely still swell a little bit. And so for the next week and a half, I wasn't really, you know, able to focus nearly as clearly and which wasn't really myself. And that was obviously super scary to my parents, they didn't really know, you know, if I would ever come back to normal. And so it was really that shock after waking up from that feeling like both myself and everyone around me felt like I was doing everything perfectly to anyone looking from the outside in. I was doing everything perfectly. And so that was the kind of big shocker that inspired me to write the book was that whenever you're at this young age, and you're trying to learn things on your own, it can be super easy to get lost in the weeds and kind of lose the big picture when you're being so focused on doing things as like society might deem to be healthy.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

So when you decided to go after the book, what was the did you have sort of a you know, there's a major theme in mind but what what was the key messages you want to make sure to get out of this sort of this book besides it?

Emily Cole:

Ya know, the key messaging was definitely trying to, I mean, it's super hard but trying to teach younger athletes how to find this balance for themselves and not get too wrapped up in trying to have everything exactly perfectly, and somehow figuring out how to teach those fundamentals to where they could Use nutrition to help them reach their super big athletic goals without letting it consume them. And without letting it take away from their life. That was a big piece of it was making sure that it was adding to your life rather than taking away from it

Tom Regal:

to finding finding a balance in all of that trying to go the right direction, but not going all the way over the direction. So what are the what are the what's the top tips that your high school athlete? Starting out? Yes,

Emily Cole:

so I have the book broken up into two sections. And the first half is all education. And the second half is all teaching about balance. So I actually interviewed a bunch of elite athletes and registered dieticians and asked them what they wish they had known at the beginning of their career or their what they wish other athletes knew starting out. And, you know, I got to interview such incredible people like April Ross, Olympic gold medalist Jesse Thomas, two time Ironman champ, Marshall, because ASCII, he is a part of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, and they just obviously won the World Series last year. And I was able to really, you know, get to learn from their stories, these core sports nutrition concepts that made a really big impact in their lives and their careers. And I gave each person their own chapter. So that way, I could tell their story, and have one core sports nutrition concept come from their story. And then I have a recipe at the end of the chapter teaching you how to put into practice what you just learned. So this way, I kind of was teaching these concepts throughout the book by telling stories without just like spewing facts and spewing knowledge that wouldn't be as absorbed as easily. And you know, a couple of examples, Marshall, because ask each chapter is all about sleep and different nutritional methods and, and things you can do to make sure that you're maximizing both the quality and quantity of your sleep. And, you know, that's super down for every athlete, for me, it was not eating enough carbohydrates throughout the day, I wasn't able to fall asleep, that quickly, and I wasn't able to have high quality sleep, because I wasn't meeting these needs for myself. And for him, he was having super late baseball games, and he wasn't able to fall asleep after that. That's not anything to do with, you know, him being a bad, you know, having bad self control. That's just how the nature of the sport is. And he was all amped up for his games. And so his tips were more about finding supplements and different methods that he could do after his games to calm down his body in his mind and be able to fall asleep. And, you know, one of those things was supplementing magnesium. And that's a particular writing people talk about melatonin all the time. But magnesium is also super important to being able to help you get this higher quality sleep. So there are a couple of cool little tidbits and just little snippets like that in each chapter that teach you how to maximize different aspects of your nutrition.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

Yeah, the we actually one of our previous podcasts, actually, we brought on one of the asleep experts or was working with the MLB on exactly that, and how important sleep is. So one of the challenges that we have you know, we we spend a lot of time with student athletes trying to try to get them to understand recovery is a critical portion of there needs to be a critical portion of their of their week. Back to back to sort of what your high school life was about the idea of eating pizza or doing whatever that you personally were able to go, Hey, this is actually making me feel better. The funny thing about teenagers, sometimes they don't like to listen or that, you know, it's the good news is I think you're closer to their age. So they're probably going to pay attention to you rather than, you know, somebody like me, like, you know, back in my day when we were that kind of thing. But do you what's the reception? Do you? Are you finding the reception to be good? Or better as as it feels to me that students are getting smarter as things are progressing along? Are you seeing that as well? are you how are you able to kind of get those guys to say, look, you're not invincible? You're everything's not perfect. Right. I know, your your social media portrays that, but you know, pay attention to those things. How are you kind of breaking through that that challenge?

Emily Cole:

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of athletes are now starting to realize this at a younger age, because they're older role models like me and other professional athletes coming out to talk about the importance of what you're putting in your body. And, you know, there are a lot of little athletes that have really big dreams, and that is helping them be more inspired to follow more, you know, regimented ideas like this. But I guess for those that might not be as motivated. I think that being able to learn it through the stories of other athletes that are the most successful at their sport, is what really is helping it to be more absorbable and really be more relatable for them to be inspired by it and be like, Oh, wait, this actually might apply to me too.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

Yeah. And the more we talk about the more we have podcasts like this and the more we're able to bring it up it becomes a normal Of course of the conversation that it's not this kind of weird anomaly. There's another kind of societal issue with food, right? Kind of two things about food, right? We're always told that fat fat is bad, salt is bad things are bad, right? Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And for student athletes to hear that, again, with societal kind of doing that, but food is such an intrinsic part of our society. Right? Our we gather around food we celebrate with food, right? We have Thanksgiving coming up, which is entirely centered around food and dallascowboys. Go. So do you was that? Is that something that that is acknowledged in the book? Is that something that you? I think that to me has always been a difficult thing as a person that's been in healthcare for 20 years is to try to, to understand that you can't just say, Well, you just don't do this. To your point, you're with your friends, your friends are like, What are you doing? Like you're ordering this? You know, we're trying to do this? Are you trying to go to a specific restaurant that is absolute garbage? Right. So Waffle House is probably not the best place to be grabbing stuff to do? Have you you've experienced that yourself? Is that something that that? How do you see that being tackled sort of that the ability to be able to still be that social person that that society says it's okay for you to do that? And I know that you personally were able to do that. Do you see that as a challenge as well? Or how do you see that as being tackled?

Emily Cole:

Yeah, absolutely. I actually talked about this in the book, I talked about dealing with that kind of struggle being pulled between two different ways of, you know, I Okay, so specifically, I have a chapter, right interview, Alan Lim. And he is he's worked on the Tour de France. And he has written three different cookbooks. He's the founder of Scratch labs, he's obviously very well known and respected in the sports, nutrition world and sports world in general. And the focus of his chapter is actually nothing to do with hydration or nutrition, but everything about the importance of eating with others, and how important that is to your mental health, and especially on team sports, being able to compete with each other and for each other out on the court, because eating together is one of the most human things we can do and one of the most bony experiences that we can have. So, you know, in this chapter I talk about Okay, so what do you do when your team is going out to eat a water burger, and you want to be able to still hang out with them. And it's obviously, a balance. I mean, that's a core tenet throughout the whole book, and finding out when the timing is that it works well for you to eat with them. Even if you want to bring your own food and still go to the place with them, that works too. But just being able to think about the timing, and do whatever is going to make you feel the best at the end of the day. You know, if you feel like you've got enough time before your next competition, you've been feeling yourself super well for like the whole past week and cooking your meals, you've gotten a lot of nutrients, and you really want to be able to enjoy this meal with your teammates, do it, you know that the emotional and societal and psychological benefit that you'll get from that is so much more than you would get from staying at home and cooking another perfectly macro balanced meal, you know. So that's the whole important part is making sure that the 80% of the time you are are meeting your needs and doing exactly what you have been taught is great for recovery and helping maximize your performance. But then the other 20% of the time, you know, you can utilize this huge piece of your life, which is eating to also help contribute to your mental health and the psychological aspect of competing as an athlete as well.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

It's a fan, I'm glad to hear that you've got that in the book, I think it's fantastic, because I think a lot of the focus has been on sort of the science of it and not the emotion of it. And if you don't include the emotion of it, the idea of it's a gathering that it's that it's people coming together that it's so inextricably tied with sort of our societal way that we interact that if you try to separate those two, I think that's where that's where some of these books fail, right? And that, you

Tom Regal:

know, we should it's on clean eating. And then we focus on you know, our mental health on the other side, and you just go well actually, they kind of work together. And again, we're all unique. We're we're hoping you can put one over here and put the other one over here and then talk about like in silos, it doesn't happen.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

That's fantastic. So you're a senior, what you know, you're a published author, you're a podcaster now, welcome to The Club. was about what are you? What are you wanting to do when you get out of that? That Dookie uniform? What is the what is the future for Emily?

Emily Cole:

That's a great question. I'm still kind of working on you know what exactly I want to be doing work wise but I obviously have built up a bigger presence on social media and with my running I would love to be able to continue running post college for a little bit. So Gotta have a little bit of time to be able to focus on on running and my social media for at least a little bit. That'd be great. What? A lot of different ways what to say. So you're running. So for cross country, Everyone raises a 6k. And then for the track, I focus on the 1500 and steeplechase. So steeplechase is actually the race that I was able to have my big season in last year and be able to run in the US champs. So that was really nice. Thank you so much.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

Good to see Emma sort of ribeye and so yeah, I raced her. Yeah. Does anybody raise her? Or does she just sort of run and everybody else tries to catch her? It almost feels like at times, sometimes she's a few girls up there with her. She's for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Right. I think you guys are absolutely giving them a run for the money. That's fantastic. So Oprah hasn't called yet on the book? Not not she has it? No.

Tom Regal:

Oh, talked to it. Next week. We're working on that one.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

So in your podcasts, what is your primary focus of your podcast? We lost

Emily Cole:

you. So my podcast actually about? can hear me.

Tom Regal:

Hello, yep, we had a little delay.

Emily Cole:

So my podcast is actually about name, image and likeness. So obviously, I'm a student athlete. And in the last year, all of the laws around athletes being able to monetize their name, image and likeness have changed. And that has, you know, put a huge change in all of our lives. And being an athlete. In the midst of it, I started this podcast with Christie dosh, she's the founder of the business of college sports, she writes for Forbes about name, image and likeness, and has really created a name for herself in the media space. And so we kind of can provide two very different perspectives on this. And we bring in the top athletes really making the most with their name, image and likeness and, and ask them about their journeys and different lessons and recommendations they have for the next generation. So that's been really cool to get to learn from them and share their experiences in the show.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

Because that, you know, it's interesting, we had a previous podcast, we were talking about the NFL and sort of the pressure that it was for, I think we had a nutritionist on that we were talking about that, working with college sports, do you you know, with your theme of your book, trying to eat clean and try to do clean, but there's probably pressure from an NFL licensing standpoint, you probably have supplement companies that are that are wanting you to sponsor them, you know, or to pay you to be able to advertise for them. Do you with an NFL? Is there a? Do you feel like there needs to be an education on student athletes and non athletes to say, hey, you know, when you attach your name to something, first, you know, know what you're doing? I know, we've, you know, in full disclosure, Tom and I get a few podcast, you know, requests, or Yeah, requests for, you know, shows or whatever on stuff, we just simply don't We don't believe in so it's not going to be on there. Help it help us understand that. Is that something that you guys are trying to work with on making sure from a nutrition again, from kind of that nutrition standpoint, on it's a lot of money, I get it, but at the same time, if you if it's not a not legal for, you know, for the NCAA and be, you know, not good or, or, you know, sketchy at best temptations,

Tom Regal:

kind of Yeah, how

Kenny Bailey<br>:

do you guys teach that temptation? Yeah.

Emily Cole:

Yeah, no, I mean, that's kind of the point of the podcast, kind of getting to hear it from all these athletes who've gone through it and made those calls where they said no to different brands that didn't align with their values and all of the importance of figuring out what your values are and figuring out what you want your brand to be and learning how to make those decisions. That's kind of the point in the lessons that we're trying to teach for the show. Me personally, I've had to do that a ton just because with my brand thing aligned with nutrition, I'll have more food companies reach out to me, but obviously there are so many that have you know, weight loss and exactly cut on their stuff or like this is not the goal. That's not the idea.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

All right. So we're not gonna see a pre workout by by Emily anytime soon. loaded up with so my son still wants to do the pre workout called liver damage and I told him it's probably I know it would sell unfortunately because a bunch of teenage kids are kind of idiots when it comes to that so So that's very cool. So what do you got coming up what's going on besides the sides you basking in in glory have a fantastic I'm really excited about your book, by the way. So and you're running what do you got what you got going on?

Emily Cole:

So I just finished my cross country season. We did great. We finished our regionals and our region is really hard. Last year, we finished 11th And this year we finished fifth so that was a big improvement. Thank you and I had actually been struggling with not being I was doing a lot of things and not being so it's funny you like even with as much time and thought that I put into nutrition I I was doing too many things and wasn't nailing down my hydration as well as I should have been. And it really was hitting a wall towards the end of my races, and realized after you know, one of my races, that that's what the issue was. And I was like, Oh my gosh, Emily, you know, this, like, You're the queen of knowing to put salt in your water to like, anyways, so the end of the day, we're all human, we all make mistakes. And so I got that fixed for my last race and was able to have a great race and been shot this season strong, which is awesome. And obviously now super excited to be getting into track season, we have, you know, the holiday break, and then indoor season starts right after that, and then outdoor track will be starting around March ish. So really excited for both of those. And, you know, I didn't really I haven't really gotten to have a super fun indoor season yet. So I'm very excited about this year coming up.

Tom Regal:

Very good. Yeah, I think getting more people to understand that there's like, you've added a lot of stresses, you've got the books you've got, you've got everything else kind of going on. body doesn't know the difference between training stress and life stress. Exactly, exactly. You're constantly having to adjust for your nutrition and your nutrients and things that you're taking in. So it's one of those things that you'll, you'll always be chasing. And then it's actually get older and your body changes and your metabolism changes, and you're just chasing it again, it should be a fun journey to enjoy eating with bunch of other people. And just finding the right foods that work for you at that time. I mean, that's, that's always good.

Emily Cole:

Actually, I love I love that you brought that point up, because that's actually what my whole conclusion is about. So in the conclusion, I talked about how like, my journey has evolved throughout writing the book, and how halfway through I learned that I had celiac disease. And so all the work that I had done to starting to eat more carbs, it was like, I was doing the right thing. But it wasn't exactly what my body needed, and so still wasn't helping me out. And that was a huge piece that I found out that helped change my career and helped me be able to have the great track season that I did, and how, you know, you can see through that, that all of our stories are, you know, forever evolving. And the biggest lesson that you can take from the book and going into your life trying to optimize your sports nutrition is keeping an open mind and knowing that your needs are going to change continuously for the rest of your life. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey<br>:

Well, also, you're asking questions, and you're not you're not okay with the answer on some of that stuff. Yeah. And that's, that's critically important is you? Hey, it's, you know, I'm supposed to be doing the carb thing, it's not working, find out you have celiac disease, right, you continue to ask the question, right. So being always being curious about making sure am I doing the right things, I mean, even, you know, old farts like us, I mean, we're still trying to figure out, you know, you know, I blog all the time, because I don't get enough fluids in because I'm not, I'm not figuring out how to get those fluids to get past my stomach. And I'm sloshing around. And I mean, it's a lifelong, you know, it's a lifelong adventure, to Tom's point, and the body changes and things change in weather changes, and, you know, stress changes and everything else. So,

Tom Regal:

it's fantastic. I'm just glad you're embracing it and bringing it out to the next generations. I mean, that's that's stuff we need to keep talking about more. It's, it's all it's all really good. So thank you means a lot. So what's the name of the book to Regan the name of the book

Emily Cole:

is called the player's plate and so I kind of tie in that idea of you know, the saying of not putting too much on your plate. It's not just about what's physically on your plate but also in your plate of life as well and learning how to balance all of the societal and psychological aspects of feeling as well.

Tom Regal:

Nice nice and and I liked that you have Jesse Thomas in there because I'm a big fan of his actually picky bars and bad asador myself picky bars since the day they came out. Love the love the incredible attrition. Yeah, the the work that him and Laura have done and, and their other partners fantastic. So, exactly. Thank you, we can follow you on Tik Tok and Instagram when Instagram

Emily Cole:

Yep, so Instagram, my username is just Emily Cole. And you can find the book at the players play.com can also get it on Amazon. The hardback should be out, you know, in the next day or so too. So that's super exciting. Get the paperback hardback or the ebook version. And eventually I will be releasing an audiobook as well.

Tom Regal:

Oh, sweet. Okay, cool. And the holidays are coming up. At least this should come out before Christmas. We'll be posting this up probably in the next week or two. So you can run out and it's the perfect holiday gift for all your loved ones to get them going in the right direction and eating all of that. So

Emily Cole:

super, love it. Thank you so much.

Tom Regal:

Thanks for being on. Yeah, anything else we need to know getting any other questions? No, I

Kenny Bailey<br>:

think that's it. We really appreciate your time today. Well,

Tom Regal:

yeah, we appreciate everybody for listening. Thank you very much. All your comments, thumbs up five stars, any of the reviews, helps us all helps the algorithms and gets us out to a wider audience. So we appreciate all your feedback on that and Mr. Egan, thank you so much. Good luck with the coming season and and everything else and thank you so much for being on.

Emily Cole:

Of course. Thank you, Tom McKenney. It's been an absolute pleasure to be on the show