Hydration – Tom Hollis Health

Carbohydrates, Events, Hydration, Micronutrients, Running, Sport

Race week booster

August 7, 2021 No Comments

Good nutrition goes hand in hand with good training, and should start long before race week. However, a smart fuelling strategy in race week (not least race day) can be transformative to performance, and it is understandably an area that many clients want to focus on. With this in mind, and with race season fast approaching, I’m offering a new race week only service, for those of you that are short on time but want to know how to give your body what it needs to boost your performance on the big day. I’d love to help as many of you […]

Clinical dietetics, Diets, Hydration, Nutrition in the media, Research, Running, Sport

Why do sports nutrition qualifications matter?

April 5, 2021 No Comments

Even before completing my qualifications to become a Registered Dietitian back in 2013, I was pretty sure that at some point I would work in sports nutrition. Given that I spend the majority of my spare time playing, watching or thinking about sport, it always seemed like the most obvious of connections between expertise and interests. However, it remained nothing more than a vague notion for many years. I did do a fair bit of research and shadowing of some prestigious sports nutrition experts early on, but then left it to one side; I knew that I really wanted to […]

Events, Hydration, London, Running, Sport

Marathon blues

April 17, 2018 No Comments

I’ve got the marathon blues. Last year’s final few weeks of long training runs were so punishing that I’d made up my mind long before race day that I’d be taking the following year off. More importantly, I then stubbornly stuck to that decision despite the euphoria that followed. So, I won’t be running London on Sunday, and it will mark my first year in six without a marathon. With my usual home town half in Bath also cancelled this year due to that (first) ridiculous week of spring snow, the only organised runs I’ve been doing are Park Runs. […]

Breakfast, Carbohydrates, Events, Hydration, London, Running, Sport

London Marathon 2017

April 24, 2017 No Comments

Reflecting on my time in South America, I mentioned that the unhealthy diet and scorching heat would probably end any hopes of beating my marathon PB this year. Despite my best efforts of catching up on return to the UK, this proved to be the case, although I was still chuffed to come in at 2h 53m, just a couple of minutes over last year’s time. Most people are familiar with the phrase ‘carb-loading’, and I always take this pursuit almost as seriously as the training itself, particularly in the days leading up to the race. Food basically becomes just fuel during […]

Alcohol, Brain, Carbohydrates, Clinical dietetics, Events, Hydration, Micronutrients, Nutrition in the media

Blue Monday

January 20, 2015 No Comments

Once upon a time, ‘Blue Monday’ was just a legendary 80s dance track (the highest selling 12 inch single of all time, no less). These days, however, it has come to mean the point in January that apparently marks the most depressing day of the year. Originally coined by Sky Travel as part of a PR campaign, the ‘formula’ for Blue Monday factors in debt, weather, time since Christmas, motivation levels (or lack of) and failing new year’s resolutions, with the perfect storm deemed to be the Monday of the last full week in January. However, clearly it is just […]

Carbohydrates, Hydration, Micronutrients, Nutrition in the media, Public Health, Sugar

Should we ban fruit juice from our five a day?

November 25, 2014 No Comments

My older brother sent me this article recently – it’s a revisiting of the old fruit juice / sugar debate. As I say, this is hardly a new area of disagreement, but is interesting nonetheless, and fits in nicely with some of my recent posts on sugar and the five a day message. I couldn’t help but notice one of the comments underneath the article, stating: ‘This disjointed approach to healthy eating is counterproductive. We are hit by isolated messages that say eat this, don’t eat that – and then every organisation wants to get their opportunity to gain some media attention […]

Fibre, Hydration, Micronutrients, Public Health

The limitations of ‘five a day’

September 2, 2014 No Comments

‘Five a day’ has to be among the most widely recognised public health messages of the last decade or so, particularly within the field of nutrition. So, one could assume that the campaign, first launched in the UK in 2002 (in response to World Health Organization recommendations to consume ‘‘a minimum of 400g of fruit and vegetables per day (excluding potatoes and other starchy tubers)’’) has been a huge success. For the most part, I agree, purely on the basis that most people are aware – just in case they weren’t before – that they should be eating more fruit […]