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741 turns · 1 hr 23 minIf you're worrying more about calories, and skin folds, and weight on a scale, that's a distraction taking you away from performance. You're depriving yourself of the nutritional value and the energy that you actually need to do the job well.
What do you think the most overrated hack that people are using for nutrition and longevity is?
Just attaching themselves to a, a food religion. There's only one way of doing things, and I'm gonna follow it. Some of my colleagues poo-poo the placebo effect, and so sometimes they say, "Oh, supplements, all they're doing is placebo." And I'm thinking, well, placebo's really important. If you believe, and you're confident, and you're satisfied, that's really important. Now, what you wanna do is attach that feeling of confidence to the right scientific blend. My favorite food is chocolate. I could not give up chocolate. When people understand that the enjoyment factor is high on my priority list with food, then they think, "Well, this actually is sounding much better than I thought." They've given people a pill, and they said, "This is just the small dose of caffeine, and then the next one, you're gonna get the large dose." And people will perform much better in that belief.
Wait, the people who got the highest pretend dose of caffeine performed better?
Absolutely, and this is the fascinating part about the human brain. [upbeat music]
Hello, Louise.
Lovely to see you, Chris.
It's so good to have you here. Louise, people won't know this, but we've done a fair amount of work together with some pretty cool athletes, especially recently. Um, but why don't we, before we get into that, why don't we start with how you got here, right? I mean, you spent 30 years at the Australian Institute of Sport. That's quite the run for one place. I can imagine that, you know, 30-plus years ago, sports dietetics was in no way where it is now, right? Like, it wasn't really a well-worn path.
Well-
But now it seems-
Yeah
... fundamental to everything that we do now.
Well, it didn't exist. You know, when I, when I studied, when I went to university, I was going to do medicine, and then at the very last moment thought, "I'm not convinced I wanna be a doctor, and I don't wanna take the place of somebody who is."
Yeah.
And so I started just a science degree and gravitated to the nutrition lectures or the nutrition courses, and it was only then that I found out that you could make a career out of that. And it wasn't until I was actually studying to be a dietician at the end of the nutrition degree that the penny dropped for me that my love of sport and nutrition connected. But there wasn't a career path. There wa-... I mean, if you said to somebody you're a sports dietician, they would've asked what that meant.
Yeah.
And, you know, my, um, my accidental move into that career is made possible because of the generosity of, of s- some athletes who also believed in it. I mean, my, my first job in sports nutrition was, um, the result of writing to the best football player, Australian rules football player, in the team that I follow, and I wrote to him. Now, my team is notorious. In 150 years of Australian Football League, they've won the premiership once.
Episode notes
She oversees nutrition for Olympic swimmers, pro footballers, and some of the all-time greats in both Cycling and Tennis. Her biggest lesson? Rigid diet rules cause more harm than good.
Dr. Louise Burke spent three decades as Head of Nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport, overseeing the diets of Olympic gold medalists across swimming, track and field, and professional football. Her work has shaped how elite athletes fuel for performance — yet her most urgent message has nothing to do with macros.
On this episode of The LIVING Room Podcast, host Chris Wharton sits down with Dr. Burke to dismantle the diet myths dominating social media, explore why rigid nutrition rules backfire for both athletes and everyday people, and uncover why the Australian Institute of Sport reversed its strict no-supplements policy. She also breaks down the placebo effect's real power in performance, the danger of prioritizing physique over function, and why your relationship with food matters more than your meal plan.
Louise Burke, PhD, is a sports dietitian with 40 years of experience counseling Australia's elite athletes, including support for the Australian Olympic Team across six Summer Games. Chair in Sports Nutrition at the Mary MacKillop Institute of Health Research at Australian Catholic University, she has published over 400 papers and was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.