Ben Greenfield breaks down pre- and post-workout nutrition: carbs and electrolytes before, protein and fats after. He pushes back on the idea that antioxidants kill muscle gains, pointing out the studies used mega-doses of synthetic vitamins, not the amounts in food like berries and nuts.
And I'm going to pile in a whole handful of these. But Ben, don't. Antioxidants after a workout blunt the hormetic effects of exercise. My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm a biohacker, celebrity trainer, nutritionist, New York Times best selling author and world renowned speaker. I'm on a constant quest to uncover powerful and practical health hacks to awaken, unlock and unleash the full potential of the human body, mind and spirit.
Now I'm a fasted workout guy, but it's important to understand that in most cases, if you like to work out hard like I do and you're going to wake up in the morning and work out fasted, the carbohydrates that you have in the evening, the night before are important to take into consideration. I actually eat a lot of carbohydrates with dinner. I eat those carbs with dinner because that's how I sock away muscle glycogen for the next morning's workout so I can work out fastest. The There are a few key nutrients that are game changers when it comes to pre workout that I personally use to fuel a workout and still keep myself in a somewhat fasted state. The first thing that I implement are electrolytes. Okay, so pretty straightforward. Now what's interesting is especially if you're low carb or keto, your electrolyte needs go up. And if you're feeling flat during say a morning fasted workout, then in many cases it can be salts just as much as it can be things like carbohydrates or amino acids. So amino acids. This allows me to maintain high blood levels of amino acids without having to eat steak, chicken, poultry, pork or eggs before I go workout. The third component I didn't start using until probably about four years ago when they became affordable, accessible and began to not taste like the foul dung of Satan. Ketones. Cool thing about ketones is they can be a preferred fuel for the liver, the heart, the brain, the diaphragm, et cetera. During exercise and most importantly for me, my blood sugar levels will sometimes dip down into like the fish 50s. So what I find is because ketones are an alternate source of fuel in addition to glucose, I can take the ketones and basically even if I'm hypoglycemic after workout, I still feel fantastic because I got the ketones on board. The last final fourth component of any good pre workout blend is anything that will increase blood flow, right? So natural sources of that would be beets or beet juice, watermelon or watermelon juice, etc. There are supplements like arginine, citrulline, beet extract, nitric oxide precursors. One of the things that I use and I actually, full disclosure, I developed this particular compound for a company called Vitaboom. So for me these days it's everything that I just showed you. Just a couple of the Vitaboom pre workouts thrown in there and I'll go out and have a fantastic, fantastic, soul crushing visit to the gym.
Post workout nutrition, pretty straightforward. We're talking protein, we're talking fatty acids and we're talking carbohydrates. However, a lot of people are under the impression, I would say based on the latest research, a false impression, that you shouldn't have antioxidants after workout. Now while I show you what I'm going to be doing in my smoothie this morning, I'll explain why that might be a little bit fluffy. Next up, I've got my bag of fresh strawberries, blueberries and huckleberries and I'm going to pile in a whole handful of these. But Ben, don't. Antioxidants after a workout blunt the hormetic effects of exercise. That claim is based off of studies on high dose synthetic vitamin C and vitamin E. The idea here is that when you work out, your body gets a little bit inflamed.
We're gonna pause there for just a second, you guys. I'm gonna grab a thing of coconut water, I'm gonna come back in, I'm gonna stand right here and act like I didn. Research that shows that to be the case uses very high doses of synthetic vitamin C and vitamin E. We're talking about vitamin C well in excess of 6,000 milligrams or 6 grams combined with megadoses, megadoses of vitamin E. Now the idea here is that when you workout, it creates a little bit of inflammation in your body when you're inflamed. One of the ways that your body gets fitter faster is it combats that inflammation on its own. That's how you get all harder to kill. The body mounts an anti inflammatory response to that exercise and part of that anti inflammatory response involves repairing muscle fibers. A great way to repair muscle fibers is put a little protein in your smoothie. Muscles are inflamed, they're beat up and you take a bunch of synthetic vitamin C and vitamin E. Your body because it has all the synthetic vitamin C and vitamin E around, therefore it doesn't have to mount its own inflammatory or anti inflammatory response. Therefore you don't build as much mitochondria, you don't get as many new muscle cells created, etc. Then we're gonna blend this bad boy up and I'll show you what I put on top of it.
I like crunchy stuff, so for this I'm gonna go with some cacao nibs, a little bit extra carbs, a little bit extra fiber, little bit extra energy. Chock full of antioxidants, but not enough to kill your gains, bro. Coconut flakes also a great source of texture. They're not super nutrient dense, but remember what I said about fats. There's what I'm getting some of my fats from that coconut meat. And then finally I'll go with macadamia nuts, cashews, pistachios, Brazil nuts. You may have. One of my favorite nuts are barucca nuts. Even though that pinkish blue hue definitely indicates that there are berry based antioxidants in my smoothie, just remember it's a myth that having a few natural antioxidants after workout is going to blunt your gains. And it's also a myth that any of my smoothies do not take you to absolutely flavorful culinary ambrosia like heaven. So try that recipe out and let me know what you think.
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