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Ismael Galancho

(Málaga, November 11, 1984) is a specialist in nutritional planning, a professor at various universities, a

clinical sports dietitian

for a long list of influential and elite figures, a physical trainer, researcher and disseminator, member of the Spanish Society for the Study of Obesity (SEEDO) and author of

Quema tu dieta.

Lose fat and improve your performance with rigor and science

(Ed. Grijalbo).

The professional soccer player Luis Suárez and Antonella Rocuzzo,

fashion and

fitness

influencer

, coincide in pointing out their continuous learning from the nutritionist.

"My goals were to have

a healthy diet

and not lose muscle mass, and I got exactly what I wanted," admits the Uruguayan.

While Leo Messi's wife, after five years dealing with him, asserts in her testimony that she, despite pursuing aesthetic goals, has improved his relationship with food: "I recommend it one hundred percent."

The dietitian and researcher from Malaga Ismael Galancho.Frederique Hornbostel

Galancho also brings

Enzo Fernández

(Chelsea player and the best player of the new Argentine champion along with Messi), Jesús Gámez (former Atlético de Madrid), Carles Gil (best player in the US league), Diego Varela (Celta player ) and numerous athletes, in addition to other types of profiles such as the

presenter Jorge Fernández

.

Although the athlete himself thinks that the diet is only

losing fat and gaining muscle

, he admits, "nothing could be further from the truth."

At those levels, you live optimizing the menu, he explains: "You have to do a lot of studies and adjustments to make fine-tuning because the difference between a gold and a bronze can be in one centimeter or one second.

Food is your invisible training

. "

It is essential to prevent fatigue, injuries, make your metabolism work well...

Off the podium you don't have to get so complicated, but you do have to have clear notions.

That is why he calls his

approach flexible

and helps to demystify beliefs or trust in miracles.

"There is no one diet that fits everyone and everything."

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Does your concern about eating and training come from the cradle? Since I was little I have done athletics.

I was part of the lower categories of Málaga soccer, but due to a back problem I went to the gym and started working there.

I studied the Diploma in Physical Education and Teaching and I already entered the world of courses, continuous training, until I decided to get into Nutrition and today I am more of a dietitian than a trainer.

It is true that combining both fields, that of food and sports, offers you a very specific interaction.

It makes it possible for you to treat the patient globally. To what extent are abs done in the kitchen? I wrote that sentence on Twitter in 2012. To this day, we can affirm that it is true but we are not going to deny that, in addition to lose fat, you have to train.

If not, they don't come out.

His book is a plea to take the diets to the stake.

However, the majority of the population lives on a lifelong regimen that always fails.

Pineapple, keto, paleo, the

realfooding

...If they don't work in most cases, why do we still trust Dr. Google's immediate miracles? It's what I call the pilgrims of nutritionists.

There are people who go from diet to diet chronically.

The connotation is always rigidity, restriction, having a hard time, being hungry... It's a short-term approach, in which one goes on a diet for their brother-in-law's wedding or loses X kilos for the summer.

It is not possible to maintain it in the long term.

They are diets that make us lose muscle mass, in addition, and that is the worst thing we can do, because the rebound effect arrives.

If you have lost eight kilos, you recover them and even gain two more.

Cycles of ups and downs make us increasingly resistant to losing weight.

We are getting worse.

The scientific evidence is that rigidity fails.

The diet should be a habit of life.

Talk about flexibility.

Who can eat chicken and broccoli for a lifetime?

Not even bodybuilders do.

Instead of spending periods of time suffering and worsening our health, it is preferable to alternate a diet where healthy food reigns, obviously, but we allow ourselves space for other types of dishes.

The first thing I ask my patients is their favorite dish, and I include it even if it's fried eggs.

You can follow the best diet in the world, but without adherence, it's worthless. Buying a pizza in the supermarket or making it at home, right? Going from ultra-processed to cooking it at home makes it less necessary to skip the diet or that it is maintained over time.

A cheese that is not too greasy, real crushed tomato, flour that is not refined... It is very common for people to say: "On Monday I will go on a diet."

And arrives,

they cut out everything, eat green, with stress and anxiety from work.

A hard day and I have to have broccoli for dinner.

Friday arrives and your brain asks you to loosen your inhibitions.

That leads to binge eating and frustration.

Junk food is the easiest and fastest way to get dopamine.

Afterwards, you feel worse.

Does being permissive have anything to do with the cheat meal or 'cheat meal'? No, because it is based on eating well all week and having Saturday off.

In your day to day there may also be room for foods or meals that you like even though, a priori, they are not considered

Does being permissive have anything to do with the cheat meal or 'cheat meal'? No, because it is based on eating well all week and having Saturday off.

In your day to day there may also be room for foods or meals that you like even though, a priori, they are not considered

Does being permissive have anything to do with the cheat meal or 'cheat meal'? No, because it is based on eating well all week and having Saturday off.

In your day to day there may also be room for foods or meals that you like even though, a priori, they are not considered

healthy

.

If life gives you a salmorejo, then eat it for breakfast.

We will adjust on the other hand and I assure you that you lose weight without the anxious and prevailing physiological need to eat the ultra-processed.

Is there no other way to lose fat than a caloric deficit, that is, spending more than you eat? To get an idea, it is estimated that about 500 kcal a day, which is about 3,500 a week, is a kilo of fat, although this is not math.

But it is very easy to put those 3,500 kcal that you saved with broccoli with some tapas, wine or beer, the nuts that they put with it, dessert... Like this every week and you don't lose weight.

You have to control yourself but with flexibility.

The problem is not eating pizza on a specific day, but a family one every Saturday because it is my day off. Although there is more and more information,

in the shopping carts it is evident that something is wrong.

Many teachers warn of the snacks and snacks of the recesses that they see for the children.

For many, trinkets, industrial pastries and cookies are a constant.

What is the solution?

We must begin to control children's advertising with food.

It cannot be that products harmful to children are advertised on television and in the media with false labels or

claims

misleading [claims].

The Government should work more on it.

From the family itself, one of the problems is that the parents themselves do not differentiate the foods that are good from those that are not, because marketing also works with them.

It is very common for us to give sugar to children, even babies.

The taste thresholds in processed foods are very high, hyper palatable.

For example, the sodium glutamate in French fries.

Our brain releases a lot of dopamine and it's like caffeine and alcohol, which has less and less effect on your life and you need to increase the dose.

We accustom children to that intensity because we alter their perception of taste. Is that why we hear so much: 'My son can't tolerate vegetables'? I don't have children but I do have many nephews.

When the red pepper tastes very sweet to them,

your taste threshold is fine.

Otherwise, it has been altered.

It is essential that the child's environment participate actively in feeding.

Not everything works, but I also do not agree with giving absolutely nothing to the child and applying the restriction. These days we are seeing a very strong campaign in favor of cow's milk on the marquees.

To what extent is the vegetable drink convenient, a clear trend in the market? It is not an exclusive decision.

There are vegetable drinks with excessive added sugars but, in general, they can be combined with goat or cow milk without problem.

It is a food that in the 80s was idealized, because before it was the source of calcium and we had to drink three glasses a day, and now it is demonized.

Actually, there is no particularly wonderful or harmful food.

Nor is it essential.

Calcium can be obtained from other sources, but dairy products are a good protein base and it has been seen that they can prevent muscle sarcopenia, some improve our microbiota because they contain probiotics... In sports, for example, they are an excellent recuperator .

In fact, in studies, milk fares better than isotonic drinks.

I use it a lot, because it is 90% water, high quality protein, sugar in the form of lactose that is good for muscle recovery even when chocolated with pure cocoa.

With obesity, I would not recommend it, because it has saturated fat, but that is called nutritionism.

Milk is much more than fat, because it has other compounds and they are neutralized, like when you take an apple, which will never have the same impact as a spoonful of white sugar.

In Spain there are more and more 'start ups'

of vegan food that does not seem, a priori, very healthy.

Here you also enter into an ethical and environmental debate but, as a dietitian, do you consider veganism healthy? I focus on health and I do not have the training to assess whether the impact on the atmosphere or the CO2 emitted from farms is so detrimental, let alone judge a patient.

If an animal advocate comes to me, we go with a vegan diet and I think that empathy with society is meritorious.

But at the health level, which is what concerns me, the industry takes advantage of the vegan trend.

I'm glad vegans are being given new options and you're even doing me a favor to balance their diets because they allow more possibilities, but many options are vegan crap. Is the same with the 'gluten free' fad?

?There is an erroneous belief that gluten is bad without having developed an intolerance or being a celiac.

And the industry takes advantage of that.

It is very good to give them options but the label

gluten free

is not a healthy label.

I have seen ' gluten free

chicken' in my neighborhood grill

, when chicken never contains gluten.

It's tremendous.

It leads to alarmism and people thinking that a gluten-free diet is better.

And it is only for people with gluten problems.

Many

gluten free products

, like the vegan crap we're talking about, are full of trans fats, vegetable oils... But it's not the people's fault for this, it's the industry. Who stops the industry?

How do you stop the 'lobby'? Due to economic interests and the misinformation of society, today we no longer know who to believe.

Unfortunately, there are many studies paid for or subsidized by the industry that are published as is in the media, and do not be offended.

But conflicts of interest are public.

"Says a study" does not work by itself.

You have to see who is behind the study, if there is a prospective trial, if there is correlation or causality between the variables... If a study says that sugary soft drinks are great and it is financed by one of them, that this happens, take it with tweezers.

The countertide of the '

clickbait'...I am the first to understand that chia seeds sell more than the usual tomato.

Does not have

glam

, but it's a superfood.

It has polyphenols and antioxidants.

but it's not so

cool

.

We put the seeds at the top of the pyramid and forget about the base: food and exercise.

The best diet is the one that suits you, not one with a name.

Playing sports, managing stress, getting a good night's sleep or sunbathing are part of this equation. Fasting has had a bad press due to its possible detrimental effect on people with eating disorders.

On the opposite side, those who work for it recommend it as if it were the discovery of the century.

To what extent should all this mythology be taken into account regarding compartmentalizing the day into five or three meals, at certain specific times, with or without breakfast as the most important meal...?

You can eat as many times as you want and breakfast is neither good nor bad.

We know that the benefits in health and fat loss are determined because a fast makes you eat less indirectly.

By eating fewer calories, you lose weight and that makes you improve your cardiovascular parameters: glucose, cholesterol... No more, no less.

I had a patient who could skip breakfast and he did great.

For others, not having breakfast makes them suffer.

It is not so important when you eat, but how much and what.

In patients with insulin resistance, it has been seen to be slightly better than caloric restriction.

But, ultimately, 95% of the benefits are focused on making you eat less and that leads to weight and fat loss.

I would not recommend it in cases of eating disorders because it could justify anorexia.

And in people with stress and anxiety either because fasting increases cortisol levels.

In athletes there has to be a professional because it can have benefits but if the training does not fit well it can cause dizziness and injury.

It is one more tool. From the demonization of fats and everything 'light' we have come to blame carbohydrates for all our ills.

Why do we go for certain food groups? We mistakenly look for a culprit and feel better.

We are specialists in blaming a multifactorial problem, such as being overweight, on a single trigger.

Palm oil.

The sugar.

The fats.

It is a compendium of everything.

It has been shown that ultra-processed foods are major contributors to obesity because they are high in fat, sodium, sugar, have palm oil,

they are hyper caloric by density with few nutrients... They have everything.

A bowl of lettuce is low in calories, now take a bite of a donut.

Explain why you criticize the saying "less plate and more shoe" in the book. We are a sedentary society and it is true that the reason that makes us gain weight is to eat more than we spend.

That is an indisputable physiological factor.

But the message that you have to move more and shut up is simplistic.

You have to look at more factors, such as ultra-processed foods, stress and anxiety, genetics, mental health, purchasing power, because a McDonald's menu costs three euros and a salmon fillet costs seven... Technology and style of current life also influence why.

take a bite of a donut.

Explain why you criticize the saying "less plate and more shoe" in the book. We are a sedentary society and it is true that the reason that makes us gain weight is to eat more than we spend.

That is an indisputable physiological factor.

But the message that you have to move more and shut up is simplistic.

You have to look at more factors, such as ultra-processed foods, stress and anxiety, genetics, mental health, purchasing power, because a McDonald's menu costs three euros and a salmon fillet costs seven... Technology and style of current life also influence why.

take a bite of a donut.

Explain why you criticize the saying "less plate and more shoe" in the book. We are a sedentary society and it is true that the reason that makes us gain weight is to eat more than we spend.

That is an indisputable physiological factor.

But the message that you have to move more and shut up is simplistic.

You have to look at more factors, such as ultra-processed foods, stress and anxiety, genetics, mental health, purchasing power, because a McDonald's menu costs three euros and a salmon fillet costs seven... Technology and style of current life also influence why.

That is an indisputable physiological factor.

But the message that you have to move more and shut up is simplistic.

You have to look at more factors, such as ultra-processed foods, stress and anxiety, genetics, mental health, purchasing power, because a McDonald's menu costs three euros and a salmon fillet costs seven... Technology and style of current life also influence why.

That is an indisputable physiological factor.

But the message that you have to move more and shut up is simplistic.

You have to look at more factors, such as ultra-processed foods, stress and anxiety, genetics, mental health, purchasing power, because a McDonald's menu costs three euros and a salmon fillet costs seven... Technology and style of current life also influence why.

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