He's sick of talking about the Russian drug cheats who denied him gold medal glory.

So instead of getting bogged down in the dark days of athletics, Tallent has turned to food to fuel his bid for Olympic revenge to help ease the pain of competing against corrupt organisations and cheating athletes.

It might seem bizarre given his competitors turned to doping to find a winning advantage.

But the AIS hopes unlocking the secrets to high carbohydrate, high fat-no carb and periodised – a combination of high and low carbohydrates – diets will give Tallent the edge in Rio next year.

"[The drug cheats] are a little bit of a distraction when it keeps coming up, but I've tried to move on and focus on this year," Tallent said.

"You can't dwell on things that have happened in the past. The Rio Olympics is probably my one chance left to really perform and hopefully get the gold on the day.

"And a time where I don't have to worry about drug cheats beating me. So I'm just doing everything I can at the AIS to get all of those edges, get smarter and improve everything I do."

Tallent was part of a four-week nutrition study at the AIS last month and will return next month for another stint as the institute's sports scientists find the best diet for a gold medal pursuit.

Tallent was shovelling in his high-carb meals when news broke last month of Russia's widespread drug cheating and the IAAF's role in corruption and cover-ups.

The man who beat Tallent in the 50-kilometre event at the London Olympics, convicted drug cheat Sergey Kirdyapkin, was a central figure in the drama. Tallent has worked with a sports psychologist at the AIS to help him deal with the ups and downs of the saga and his plans to block it out for the next 12 months.

The 31-year-old is expected to be awarded a retrospective gold medal. The IAAF launched an appeal this week to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to strip Kirdyapkin of his London gold medal and annul the results of four other walkers from 2009 to 2012.

But Tallent's head has been buried in an intense training camp in Canberra where he was giving daily blood samples, had his glucose levels tested, was strapped to a VO2 max machine and had bodily samples sent to universities for examination.

It was part of a race-walking nutrition camp with 11 athletes from five countries working with a team of seven chefs and dieticians and six people in the laboratories to find the right mix.

They were split into three dietary groups with AIS head nutritionist Louise Burke and Meg Ross devising menus and training programs to test the effects of different foods.

Tallent fell into the high-carb category, with four others becoming the "four fat mice" on high-fat programs with minimal carbohydrates. The remaining walkers were on a periodised diet.

The goal was to try to get athletes to adapt them to burn fat as exercise fuel rather than traditional carbohydrates.

Burke and Ross have monitored every movement, every meal and every step of the athletes to document their results.

"We were seeing what the fuel metabolic capabilities were across both carbohydrate and fat by taking each session separately and asking what the session is trying to do," Burke said.

"We see a combination as the way forward, it's sort of a more sophisticated way to approach than either going all carbs or all fats. That's the message we'd like out.

"The real guidelines are around a periodised approach. It's as much of an art as it is a science and it's much harder to put in a nutshell."

Tallent has been working with the AIS science department throughout his career, which has delivered two silver and one bronze Olympic medals.

He is still waiting to hear when he will be given a retrospective gold medal for his efforts in London.

But he has long suspected Kirdyapkin and Russian athletes were cheating. At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Tallent worked with AIS staff to use an ice vest before races in intense heat.

When he looked across at his Russian opponents, they were warming up in tracksuits while Tallent was trying to lower his core body temperature.

When he arrives in Rio, the food hall could be his biggest weapon as he searches for every advantage to preparation and performance.

"It's been really fascinating with the diets and trying to learn which method is best, hopefully I can build on that for Rio," Tallent said.

"All the little edges gives you the one or two percenters. The AIS in Canberra is the perfect place for it and the nutrition advice here is world class.

"I worked with Louise before London about getting in the maximum mount of carbs in before a race and then what fuel I was using during races. We came up with a strategy and practised that and it was by far the best 50km race I've ever had."

More than 20 race walkers from around the world will be in Canberra next month to test the diets even further.

Tallent will switch from high carbs to a periodised version to see how his body reacts with less fuel.

"If that goes well I'll incorporate that into my training blocks and hopefully that gives me a few extra adaptations. After key sessions you might not have carbs for 12 hours," Tallent said.

"You get more fatigued and then you see if you get better adaptation at it."

Athletes were put through a series of races and individual sessions to test their reactions.

They had every meal prepared by chefs, measured out to precise weight and amount to ensure their fuel was being measured correctly.

After starting on a treadmill in the gym, they would hit the paths around the AIS and then return halfway through a 25-kilometre session to be weighed, have their glucose tested and add more fuel.

When they finished they would have blood and saliva taken before more tests hours later.

"We worked with experts in nutrition and exercise so you can put them together because not everyone gets the same benefit from the same thing," Burke said.

"It can be tailored to individual sports. To have unique training scenarios as well as answering a research question at the same time is a cool way of doing it.

"There was a great block of testing and we could look at performance, by we also looked at body composition, lipids, change in calcium and iron markers as well as the immune system and sleep.

"Athletes want to get out and push themselves as hard as they can cleanly and contribute to new knowledge. Some of the things we'll find out will apply to a range of sports, but they'll also apply to health issues.

"It's nice to have gold medals. But there are other priorities in the world with nutrition."

Tallent knows a retrospective gold medal carries the same reward as winning it on the day.

But he wants to stand on top of the podium in Rio to continue a superb race-walking career.

"The athletes have been put through a lot, but it's all for the good of science. We'll all learn something out of this," Tallent said.

"The AIS wants to be a world leader in sports science, medicine and nutrition. But that's about doing it the right way. The clean way."