Supporting Champions

Sue Backhouse, Professor of psychology and nutrition at Leeds Beckett University is this week's guest. Sue is an expert in the complexity around two huge areas – eating and cheating. Everyone’s a nutritionist these days, everyone’s a psychologist and everyone has an opinion on the issue of doping. Three emotive, convoluted and noisy areas for Sue to tackle. What Sue’s research does is something quite unique, particularly so compared with a lot of reductionist studies that pare back all confounding variables to a level of control almost sterility. Of course, you need that level of meticulous control for some research but often important areas get neglected by researchers because they’re too messy. Equally what Sue is able to do is see through the clatter, the jumble and offer illuminating yet grounded findings and advice. We explore the hows and whys of influencing athletes to adopt certain dietary practices and how underpinning motivation and behaviour are essential for change. Then we get into a rich discu