RENOWNED NUTRITIONIST LYNN Clay has spent the past 12 years working in the sports and fitness industry.
As well as writing for magazines such as Running Fitness and Cycling Weekly, she ran her own nutritional consultancy company, Fitness IQ, for four years before returning to Maxinutrition after it was taken over by GlaxoSmithKline in 2011.
Currently Head of Expert Science at GSK, Clay visited Dublin last week to help Jamie Heaslip and Maxinutrition launch their new online shop for Irish customers at BEAR restaurant.
We caught up with her for a chat about healthier eating and how supplements can assist in improving your diet.
Hi Lynn, can you tell us how the area of supplements has developed since you started working in the industry?
Everybody’s lives have changed, the supplements have changed, people’s knowledge has changed.
It’s not something that everyone immediately grasps, but supplements are there to compliment a balanced diet. I think as we get busier and our lives become more demanding we have more need for easy solutions that are more balanced for us.
There are lots of conveniently-packaged foods out there that aren’t necessarily the best option. The area of sports nutrition has widened because it has something to offer the growing number of people who have more demanding lives.
I’ve seen it evolve from elite sports people in the early years when it was really a body-building brand to mainstream male gym goers and then women so it has just broadened and broadened. It does offer a solution but what we want to make sure is that people aren’t looking at it as a magic pill.
People need to balance their diet and this will help them to do it by giving them a precise amount of nutrients. It takes the guess work out of it and the hassle of preparing things but you must appreciate that you need to eat well too.
And for someone just starting in the gym or taking up a new sport or activity, what would be the best way to go about finding the supplements suitable for them?
In an ideal world, you go back to diet. On our website, there are lots of diet options and advice on how to balance your diet. The key is trying to balance your diet so you are eating smaller meals quite often throughout the day compared to the traditional three meal-a-day diet. That will improve your energy levels and make you much more likely to go to the gym. It’s also better in terms of the protein doses you are getting across the day.
The idea is to look at your diet and see if you getting the right amount of nutrients. Then you can pick out where the gaps are and look for the relevant products to fill them. It is very different for each individual and is one of the reasons why it is a difficult area to understand. The start point for you might be very different for someone else. Someone who is eating two meals a day has a long journey to go on compared to someone who is getting regular intakes. Your lifestyle might dictate what time of the day is right for you.
For most consumers, it is about us helping them to grow and maintain muscle — those small regular meals and the protein support will help that.
