Dietitians Day 2022 - #ProudtoBe an APD
Being able to see the positive impact on the health and performance of the people you work with, be it recreational exercisers or Olympic athletes. Often it's not the high performers that just need that last % to achieve success, but the ones who have really struggled with fatigue, with illness or body image difficulties. Seeing them improve their relationship with their food, their training and their bodies and then go on to achieve their goals is definitely the most satisfying. They're often the ones that you work the closest and the longest with and are the most grateful for your input and support. You don't always hear a lot back from them over the long term, but you still get a lot of satisfaction seeing them go on to achieve great things.
What or who inspired you to become a dietitian?
A love of sport and a fascination with the link between science, health and physical performance. This came through my own competitive career (in sailing at the time), interactions with coaches, physios, and then one day a dietitian I saw present at a careers in sports medicine day. I'd had an interest in nutrition but until then I had always wanted to be a physio. I ended up getting into dietetics and not physio at uni, and we had Karen Inge (then working at the Victorian Institute of Sport) come and speak to us one day in our final year, which just confirmed I was on the right path.
What, or who motivates you to keep making a difference?
The thought that my best work is still in front of me, both as a researcher being able to answer important questions for other sports dietitians, and as a practitioner working to make a difference with individual athletes. I'm closing in on 20 years in the profession, but I feel like I'm still learning and getting better at what I do. Also the clients I work with; it's easier to get disheartened as a private practitioner with the grind of of running your own business, but I still come out of a client consult feeling energised by the interaction and the difference I can make with them.
I've been researching in the area of sodium requirements for athletes for the past 6 years now. It's an area that has so many gaps in our understanding, and questions still to be answered. And when there's a gap in knowledge in an area of interest to athletes, something will inevitably come along and fill that gap - be it commercially incentivised messages, or the personal opinions and anecdotes from athletes and coaches. There's definitely more work to be done on the research side to answer these questions, but even more work to ensure that those scientifically-led answers can displace everything else that's filled that knowledge gap in the meantime. On that note, I also started a podcast in 2020 with a colleague Steph Gaskell, to provide endurance athletes with science-based but practical answers to their most common nutrition questions. We're currently working towards how we can expand our reach and develop more practical solutions to help these athletes at scale, beyond the typical one-to-one nature of private practice dietetics.
Dr Alan McCubbin is an Accredited Practicing Dietitian and Accredited Sports Dietitian, and in 2021 was awarded Fellowship of Sports Dietitians Australia for his combined research and education contributions to the profession. Alan completed his PhD at Monash, focussing on the dietary sodium intake practices of endurance athletes, and the likely implications for health and performance during exercise. Since then he has continued work in defining the sodium requirements of endurance and ultra-endurance athletes before, during and after exercise.
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