Friday Interview: Jayme Otto

Friday, September 19, 2008

Today, The Reluctant Eater interviews Jayme Otto, a recovering meat-and-potatoes eater raised in the Midwest. Currently residing in Boulder, she works as a Database Analyst by day and freelance writer by night. She studied Ayurvedic Nutrition for two years at the Rocky Mountain Institute of Yoga and Ayurveda and captains a womens bike racing team.


TRE: Jayme, tell us a little bit about your current eating habits and your relationship to food?

JO: I've basically subscribed to the "if you can't grow it, pick it, or kill it, don't eat it" philosophy. So that means I eat pretty simply - fruits, veggies, rice, whole grains, beans, fish, nuts. I choose organic whenever possible. And I stay away from heavily processed, manufactured foods. I do make exception for natural sports-enhancement foods like Clif Bars and natural whey protein powder. While these things are processed, they contain natural, organic ingredients, with no preservatives or colorants.

 

Which sort of leads into your second question about my relationship to food. As a competitive athlete, I view food first and foremost as fuel. I've experienced firsthand what it feels like to bonk in a race due to insufficient caloric intake. It's ugly. This makes things pretty cut and dry about food, and negates a lot of the emotional drivel and guilt surrounding eating that plagues our nation. I eat 5 meals per day starting with breakfast. Lunch and dinner are full-sized meals, the rest are smaller. If I don't eat enough, I can't compete at the level I do. But it's not just about quantity, it's also about quality. It's sort of like taking a high performance sports car to the gas station - you're going to use the highest quality fuel, right? 

TRE: It's interesting that you view food primarily as a fuel, yet still eat healthily. The "old me" viewed food as a fuel, which led me to eat a lot of processed food, and not being a high performance athlete, I didn't really notice the difference. Since I had never known what it is like to eat only "real food", how could I know what I was missing? Then again, like a lot of people, I do put the cheap gas in my car because I can't tell the difference in performance from one tank to another. As a captain of a race team, how much are you involved in making sure your team is eating right?

JO: Interesting. When I started viewing food as fuel, I got a lot pickier about what I put into my system. I had much higher expectations for that food, you know? Expecting a breakfast to carry you through a four-hour road race, puts alot of pressure on that meal. It's got to be solid. You need slow-burning carbohydrates and easily digestible fats and proteins, for example. Something like coffee and donuts would have spiked my glycogen nicely for the car ride to the race, but by the time I hit the race course, I would have already dipped into a food coma of sorts. That's no way to start a race.

 

As captain, my responsibilities focus mainly on race strategy. But I never miss an opportunity to talk food with the team. I go so far as to host team breakfast at my place prior to the race. I instituted this last year when my #1 rider showed up for a race after a breakfast of chocolate cake. She was young, and managed to race well that day, but that's not a trend she can keep up for long, especially as she ages. Stress is cumulative. You keep heaping it on with training, lifestyle, poor diet, etc, and eventually something has to give. So I think proper diet can be used as a competitive advantage in sports.

TRE: Have you always paid attention to what you eat, or has it been something you grew into as you became older, wiser, and more competitive?

JO: Nope. I grew up in the Midwest on a pretty strict diet of whole milk, roast beef, mashed potatoes, and green beans from a can. Once I moved to Boulder, after college, I started reading about diet and nutrition as part of learning how to cook for myself. That was 10 years ago. I was lucky because Boulder had a Vitamin Cottage, two Wild Oats, and a Whole Foods, all of which were chock full of handouts and brochures on nutrition. I also got a hold of a book called Digestive Wellness, by Elizabeth Lipski that really helped solidify the concepts I was reading about in the natural grocers' brochures.

 

One of the first benefits I recognized from my improved diet was that I stopped getting sick. I was frequently sick growing up. In grade school it was strep throat, about three times per year. In high school, it was mono, at least once per year. I also had chronic sinus infections. All of that went away when I changed my diet. I also noticed that I no longer had to sleep for 9-10 hours per night. 7-8 became just fine. And finally, my mood and energy levels stayed more even-keel. I used to be one of those people who went from really hyper to completely crashed out. I'd feel great right after I ate, and then awful 60 minutes later. It was like this awful glycemic roller-coaster.

TRE: I was recently a remote village in the Peruvian Andes, and someone asked: "What do they do when someone gets sick?" It was clear from our guide's response - they don't really get sick. Sickness has become such a part of our culture that people don't always understand its direct relation to our lifestyle choices, especially food. Do you ever try to educate friends of yours who might not realize the effects of their choices?

JO: Absolutely. I studied Ayurveda for two years, an 5,000-year old eastern medicine tradition that believes all disease begins in the gut. The moment your digestion is compromised, your immune system is compromised.

 

I think the germ theory of disease did much to advance our modern-day understanding of illness. But I also think it made people take an external view of health - they started looking at sickness as something that happened to them because they picked up a germ from somewhere or someone. In a way, people began to feel helpless.

 

What people don't seem to realize is that health begins from the inside out. We are exposed to bacteria and viruses every day. A healthy immune system is able to absorb and destroy them. A compromised immune system will not, and we'll get sick. What's the first way our immune system gets compromised? Through a compromised digestive system. When we eat poor-quality foods, or foods that are difficult to digest (like processed foods and junk foods), we are not assimilating the nutrients our bodies need to function at optimal levels. We don't fight off germs as well, we don't handle stress as well, etc.

 

The direct relationship of poor diet and disease is irrefutable. Our culture, for whatever reason, has been slow to understand that. I suspect the focus on big money pharmaceuticals to mask symptoms, instead of treating the root cause is to blame.

TRE: Describe your fantasy meal.

JO: Umm, define fantasy. 

TRE: Oh, oops! Well then, in the interest of keeping this rated PG: If you could have any meal, what would it be?

JO: Ryan [her husband] and I made up our own fish taco recipe, that's my all-time favorite. I sometimes eats it twice a week.

 

It's simple: Tilapia from Whole Foods pan-simmered in orgainc olive oil with cilantro and lime. We use a special rub on the fish that I can't divulge! We use sprouted corn tortillas lightly fried in olive oil to make them more malleable. Then it's a buffet of fresh orgainc veggies from the Boulder Farmer's Market: spinach, tomatoes, red bell peppers. We include an organic pepper jack cheese and a sliced avocado.

 

It just seems to have the right blend of protein, fat, and carbs. I always feel great after eating it. So great that it's become my pre-race meal the night before every race.

TRE: Mmmmm, tasty. I may have to try those sometime. Do you ever break down and eat something you know will make you feel lousy afterwards?

JO: No. I honestly have no appetite for things that aren't "real food." The thought of a ding-dong or a tv dinner or a meal from a B-grade restaurant full of sugar and margarine and other synthetics is about as appealing as eating cardboard with cotton in it.

With that said, put an artisan pizza in front of me, topped in something exotic like prosciutto, pine nuts, and fresh basil and I may just eat the whole thing, regardless of how I feel afterward!

TRE: Thanks for sharing Jayme, any last words of advice for our readers?

JO: I'd like to suggest that people take responsibility for how they eat. Don't leave it up to marketing, television commercials, or how your parents raised you to make the decision as to what you put into your body. There is plenty of easily accessible information out there on what is healthy and what's not.

 

As a final comment, eating healthy is fun and empowering. There's a perception out there that eating well means deprivation. I've never felt that way. Quite the opposite actually - eating well has opened up an entire new world of foods I never knew existed. I honestly don't miss the McDonald's burgers. I prefer a free-range buffalo burger with organic blue cheese crumbles, roasted red peppers, and organic spinach from the garden, all set in a sprouted whole grain bun. Yum!

(Thanks Jayme! If you or anyone you know would like to be interviewed for The Reluctant Eater, please contact me at: ryan@thereluctanteater.com)

Jayme Otto is a freelance writer who has been recently published in Velo News, and Rocky Mountain Sports. For more information, or to contact her, visit her website: www.jaymeotto.com