The Foundations of Nutrition Application with Kira Sutherland

It is so confusing as a consumer, to know which nutrition protocol is right for you. The market is oversaturated with different diets and protocols and with the rise of social media, it is saturated with all types of practitioners and influences. How do you know what to do?

Well, I think as a consumer, you have to get smarter and filter out the BS. I have had clients come to me telling me the most outrageous things they have been advised to do, from doctors, from dieticians, from health coaches, you name it. The qualification does not make the practitioner great. It is the application of the practice.

There are, I believe, some fundamentals that need to be the absolute baseline for getting a result with nutrition and today’s episode is all about that. I hope at the end of this, you can be more discerning about what you do and who you work with and if you’re a practitioner go that extra mile for your clients.

Kira Sutherland is a Naturopath and Sports Nutritionist with more than 25 years in clinical practice. Her focus in performance nutrition led her to be the first Naturopath in Australia to undertake the International Olympic Committees diploma in sports nutrition. She is also the 2019 winner of the BioCeuticals Integrative Medicine Award for Excellence in practice (Nutrition/Dietetics). And she is someone I look up to for a few reasons. She harps on about the basics to both her students and patients, she’s a stickler for food logs and measuring physiology and performance and she is amazing in what she does for female athletes as “women are not small men”.

Kira divides her time between clinical practice, lecturing at the undergraduate level, and mentoring practitioners of complementary medicine in the application of holistic sports nutrition. I hope you enjoy this episode with Kira Sutherland.

In this episode we discuss:

• How is nutrition research done and what are its limitations
• How do you look at research and translate it
• How much study is done on women
• Who is research done on
• Research in practice in the clinic
• Genetic predisposition for body types
• The importance of lifestyle factors
• Treating the whole person
• What is an athlete and when does sports nutrition apply
• Popular diets like Keto, IF
• The importance of food diaries
• Helping our kids be in tune with their bodies
• When in the day are we best to eat?
• The foundation of nutrition is mitochondria
• Anti-aging is about creating more mitochondria
• Timing eating with training
• The myths of carbohydrates
• The myths of caloric deficits
• Basal Metabolic Rate
• Losing weight healthily
• Losing weight for competition for athletes and not compromising performance
• Metabolic slow down that happens with chronic low a,b,c diets
• Why one size fits all doesn’t work
• Safe calorie restriction for weight loss
• Statins and mitochondrial damage
• Genetics and Epigenetics
• Different body types and what sports suit them

Kira practices clinically in Sydney, lectures in undergraduate studies, mentors nutritionists and also is a keynote speaker. You can find her on instagram @uberhealth and on her website: