s5e16 Your Diet Might Not Suck...But the Advice You’ve Heard Might! with Zoë Rom & Kylee Van Horn | The Running Explained Podcast

In this episode of The Running Explained Podcast, Coach Elisabeth sits down with Kylie and Zoë, co-hosts of the podcast Your Diet Sucks, to unpack the complex and often harmful intersection of diet culture and endurance sports. The conversation dives deep into how ideas like “clean eating,” fasted training, and race weight continue to influence athletes, often disguised as "performance optimization." Zoë and Kylie discuss how social media, identity, and misinformation contribute to widespread confusion around nutrition, especially for runners and endurance athletes. They emphasize the need for critical thinking and media literacy in navigating an industry that frequently prioritizes trends over science.

Together, they also shed light on the emotional and social drivers behind our food choices, from community and self-worth to control and identity. The episode touches on the historical roots of disordered eating in sport, the lack of research on women’s health (particularly during menopause), and the dangers of applying one-size-fits-all dietary advice. The episode encourages athletes to shift their focus from aesthetics and fads to sustainable performance and holistic well-being.

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What You’ll Learn:

• Why diet culture still thrives in endurance sports, often disguised as “optimization”

• How social media and novelty bias fuel misinformation about nutrition

• The emotional and cultural roots of restrictive eating and food rules

• The impact of under-fueling on performance, recovery, and long-term health

• Why carbohydrates are essential (not optional!) for endurance athletes

• How to spot diet myths and make evidence-based, individualized nutrition choices

Sound Bites:

• “People are looking for community and ways to signal about their athletic identity, their health identity, signal about their socioeconomic status, and increasingly, people are turning to diets and exercise to do that.” 

• “Women have been socialized to bond over disliking our bodies. We view that as like the quickest way to sort of like build companionship and community because it's just been so normalized, and we've internalized this idea that like our default position to start from should just be hating our bodies.”  

• “The media environment has gotten significantly harder to navigate because now the way that we interact with media, particularly social media, is just designed to game our human psychology at every turn.”

• “I know we like to think that we eat in a vacuum, right? But every time we make a meal, we go to the grocery store, we eat a snack, we engaging with different aspects of our identity. We're signaling something about our political values, our environmental values.” 

• “I want to equip people with critical thinking skills and empower them to make their own decisions. And in order to do that, I think we have to be aware of where our culture's beliefs and ideas end and where our own begin because like diet culture is the water that we're swimming in.” 

• "Look at this long history of the deranged things that athletes have been doing to make themselves feel better about their bodies for competition. We're part of a pretty long and proud lineage of humans making poor choices around body weight."

• "I'm just a girl standing in front of the entire exercise physiology industrial complex asking you, for the love of Christ, you please study women."

Chapters:

• 00:00 - Introduction and Reintroductions

• 08:39 - The Birth of 'Your Diet Sucks' Podcast

• 19:26 - Cultural Influences on Diet and Nutrition

• 28:29 - Exploring the Science Behind Diet Choices

• 29:23 - The History of Weight Loss in Sports

• 31:46 - Common Misconceptions in Nutrition

• 35:11 - Navigating Menopause and Body Changes

• 39:40 - The Impact of Novelty Bias in Nutrition

• 42:58 - High Carb Trends in Endurance Sports

• 49:12 - The Dangers of Following Trends

• 54:33 - The Evolution of Diet Culture

• 57:26 - The Need for Research on Women’s Health

Connect with Zoë & Kylee:

• Your Diet Sucks Podcast on Spotify and Apple

• Zoë's Website: https://www.zoerom.com

• Kylee's Website: https://flynutrition.org

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About Your Host

Elisabeth Scott is a running coach, educator, and the founder of Running Explained, where she helps runners train smarter, run stronger, and enjoy the process. After getting sober at 29, she laced up her running shoes with the goal of finishing a 5K—and never looked back. Since then, she’s gone on to complete multiple races, including marathons with a Boston Qualifying time, all while deepening her expertise in endurance training.

With a science-based approach, Coach Elisabeth is passionate about making complex running concepts accessible and actionable for runners of all levels. Her coaching philosophy centers on building a strong aerobic base, improving running efficiency, and developing a whole-human approach to training that prioritizes consistency, injury prevention, and sustainable progress.

Through Running Explained, Elisabeth offers training plans, online courses, and 1:1 coaching designed to help runners achieve their goals while avoiding the common pitfalls of overtraining, under-fueling, and burnout. Whether you’re training for your first half marathon or chasing a new PR, her guidance will help you train smarter, race stronger, and love the journey.

📲 Learn more at ⁠RunningExplained.com⁠

📢 Follow on Instagram: ⁠@runningexplained

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