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The Be Battle Ready podcast is where everyday athletes, adventurers, and seekers of strength come to forge resilience - in body, mind, and spirit.
Hosted by coach Simon Ward, each episode explores the true pillars of endurance: purposeful training, nourishing nutrition, restorative sleep, a resilient mindset, and the art of recovery. It’s designed especially for those in their 40s, 50s and beyond who refuse to rust - men and women who know that age is no excuse to stop sharpening the blade.
Whether you’re preparing for your next Ironman, rebuilding after setback, or simply training for the demands of life itself, this show will help you stay Battle Ready: strong, adaptable, and unbreakable.
Expect conversations with world-class coaches, scientists, and everyday warriors - those who walk the path of longevity and high performance - sharing wisdom, tactics, and stories from the front line of endurance.
👉 Subscribe now and step inside the ranks of the Battle Ready Society - where strength is forged, and rust never wins.
Episodes
Wednesday Nov 05, 2025
Wednesday Nov 05, 2025
In this first episode of our three-part fasting series, Simon Ward welcomes Dr. Jules Strauss to explore the evolutionary science behind fasting and what actually happens in our bodies when we restrict food intake. While fasting has become a popular topic on social media, Jules brings her decade of research in exercise metabolism to separate the science from the hype.
Together, they unpack how our hunter-gatherer ancestors evolved to handle periods without food, the hour-by-hour changes that occur during fasting, and why our relationship with hunger is far more complex than we might think.
Key Points Discussed:
- Our evolutionary relationship with fasting:
Humans evolved with intermittent access to food, developing metabolic flexibility to switch between glucose and fat burning during feast and famine cycles. - The fasting timeline - what happens hour by hour:
From overnight fasting (insulin drops, fat burning begins) to extended fasting (liver glycogen depletion, ketone production) and the physiological stress responses that occur. - Understanding hunger signals:
How appetite hormones like ghrelin and satiety signals work, why hunger often disappears during fasting, and the difference between true hunger and habitual eating patterns. - The real benefits backed by science:
Improvements in insulin sensitivity, glucose control, and body composition - but with the important caveat that most studies are done on metabolically unhealthy populations, not athletes. - Fasting as physiological stress:
Why fasting increases cortisol and adrenaline, and how this compounds with training stress in athletes.
Key Quotation:
"We all typically will fast overnight, and you know, depending on bedtime and waking time, the duration of that overnight fast that we all have will be slightly variable... but ultimately, that overnight fast will mean that we lean slightly more towards fat metabolism." Dr. Jules Strauss
Connect with Dr. Jules Strauss:
- Website: totalendurancenutrition.com
- Instagram: @drjulesstrauss_nutritionist
If you are training for endurance sport and tempted by fasting please check out this research first:
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Email: Simon@thetriathloncoach.com
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