328: Burn Fat & Build Muscle At The Same Time, The Best Time Of Day To Drink Coffee, Is Warming Up Overrated & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, how to burn fat and build muscle at the same time. What's the best time of day to drink coffee? Is warming up overrated. Climbing stairs versus the stairmaster versus the elliptical, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Brock, Sorry I'm a little bit late for recording this morning's podcast. I was online shopping for duck fat. No, I really was. I. I realized that it's not a euphemism or something.

No, honey, I was just shopping for duck fat. I wasn' looking at it.

That's right, just duck fat. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. No, actually, I'm making this recipe, which is a lot of people may be familiar with. Like a duck. I don't even know how it's pronounced. Duck confit. Yeah, that was the argument my wife and I had yesterday whether it was confit, confit or confit. But it's duck that's been preserved in duck fat that you then cook and you get all nice and crispy, the wings and the legs, and been having a heck of a time finding a nice, organically raised whole duck here locally. For some reason, Spokane has a dearth of ducks, so I ordered this morning from the U.S. wellness Meats website. So I'll be making duck confit as part of. It's actually something I'm doing, A, because I like to eat tasty food, and B, for the video that we're doing for the inner circle, so all of our. All of our members are going to learn how to make tasty, tasty duck comfrey. So, yeah, that's. That's awesome.

That's like your. Your double win there. You're making a video and you get a delicious meal out of it.

How are you feeling?

I'm fine. No, I'm not going to lie. I'm super hungover today.

Like, why is that? Well, you. You briefly mentioned that to me before we started recording, and I told you to wait for the episode and tell me why. So why that you are.

Well, we're my, my partner and I are moving from Toronto to Vancouver very soon and last night was her going away party. A bunch of people she works with through her going away party. And it started off very nice with some like some espresso chicken sandwiches and some nice local IPAs. And then it escalated really quickly. Well, there was like 20 people there, so it wasn't so romantic. But. But yeah, then it escalated quickly after the tequila shots. Yeah, it's always nothing, nothing good happens after the tequila shots.

So this podcast is brought to you by Tequila IPA and Duck Fat.

News Flashes.

While you're enjoying your IPAs and duck fat, Ben has been tweeting it up like crazy over@twitter.com BenGreenfield and we're gonna dive into those now.

That's right. And I've got a few little interesting things that I came across this week. And the first is about the best time to consume caffeine. Now, of course, for me, the best time to consume caffeine is my piping hot cup of coffee in the morning. A, because I'm a creature of habit and I love the taste of coffee, and B, because I have a glorious dump about 20 minutes after.

If you didn't say that, I was going to say that that's a cup of coffee.

Exactly. There's nothing like a cup of coffee to get things moving. As a matter of fact, that it's, it's my 1, 2 combo these days is a, you wake up, you do a little bit of lemon juice and water and then you have your, your cup of coffee and then you allow the dump to commence.

Does the lemon juice actually help or is that just what you like?

Well, I like lemon juice as an alkalinizing substance to start off the day, but it does have what's called a peristaltic effect on the digestive tract as well. So yeah, very similar to coffee. So I like that 1, 2 combo. Anyways, though. The article that I will link to over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 328 is an article that appeared on Subversity about the best time to consume caffeine before a workout. And it turns out that I won't go into the entire article, but the main takeaway for me in going through it is that it depends on the source of your caffeine. So different forms of caffeine, from coffee to caffeinated chewing gum, which I guess is all the rage these days, to cola to caffeine capsules or pills, if you just decide to take the shortcut and completely forego the tasty cup of coffee. Whatever your poison is, it turns out that there are specific timing scenarios that work better depending on what form of caffeine that you've chosen. Cool. So take chewing gum for example. In the studies that they've done on caffeinated chewing gum. The best time to take that if you want to get the ergogenic effects of caffeine in terms of like it's glycogen sparing and fatty acid and increased epinephrine and adrenaline and decreased rating of perceived exertion and all these cool things caffeine can do for you when you're working out. You take caffeinated chewing gum about 20 minutes before your workout. That's the timing for the gum.

Okay.

And I really personally cannot say that I have a gum brand of choice. I guess most of my experience with caffeinated chewing gum has been seeing it on the counter at 7:11 as something marketed to truckers. I have yet to experiment much with caffeinated chewing gum myself.

Me neither. And I don't anticipate either of us are going to rush out and try it either.

Not until they make it taste like a cup of really good coffee.

Ooh, that's a million dollar idea right there.

Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely. Starbucks, if you're listening in coffee, cola, energy drinks, any beverage or liquid that has caffeine in it, the magic timing window is 35 minutes. 35 minutes prior to a workout is when it's going to do you the best good if you're going to have coffee before workout.

So not 36, not 34, not 34. Is it really like, did they specify that it had to be like this is the exact moment or didn't they give a certain range?

Well, whenever, whenever you're looking at a study, obviously you've what, what you're looking at is an average. So yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure there are outliers because as many folks who have done DNA testing, for example, know some people have genetic SNPs associated with FAST caffeine metabolizing, some with slow caffeine metabolizing. But we're talking about the average person, not the weirdo. Gotcha. And then finally, if you rely on capsules or pills for your caffeine, if you're one of those people, because they capsules and pills in general, you know, they bypass the stomach in many cases and have like a time release factor associated with them, they generally do take a longer period of time. Unless you as I am prone to do with some capsules, break them open and dissolve them sublingually. If you rely on capsules or pills you're talking about 60 minutes prior. So there you have it. Gum 20 minutes before coffee or cola or an energy drink 35 minutes before capsules or pills 60 minutes before. And if you want all the nitty gritty details then follow the link that we'll put in the show. Notes. If you want to delve into to the propeller hat side of things.

Delve away folks.

Delve away. So a very interesting PDF that I came across that doesn't have a lot to do with coffee but has to do with something I also do quite a bit of and that is airline travel. And the title of this particular article is called A Darker side of Hypermobility. The article is actually quite long. It goes into the fact that we almost have this infatuation with travel now because we live in this hyper mobile age of high speed trains and airlines and the ability to travel great distances. And this is a relatively new phenomenon in human evolution or however you want to describe it in that we have the speed and power of transportation that allows us to get around the globe and potentially leave behind many of the aspects of like community and neighborhood and local interactions that we've been used to for so many thousands of years. And it goes into the consequences, not just the biological and physiological consequences of hypermobility, but also the social consequences and the emotional consequences of being able to just leave and fly around the world and perhaps not be as rooted locally. So some of the physiological consequences that it goes into when it comes to hypermobility are for example, frequent jet travel. There were a few things in here I wasn't aware of. Frequent jet travel can switch off genes that are linked to the immune system. And it's been shown in clinical research that there's a direct correlation between frequent jet travel and the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. Long term chronic jet lag, such as you might find among like pilots or airline cabin crew or frequent travelers is also associated with cognitive deficits including memory impairment. Six days of flying, six days of travel here and there. And I'm not sure exactly how they conducted this study, but it deleteriously affected mood judgment and the ability to concentrate. And of course there are other health effects that we're probably all aware of. Everything from risk of deep vein thrombosis to exposure to germs inside the petri dish that is an airplane, to dry eyes and dehydrated skin and all the other issues that can occur. But frankly, as we've talked about before on podcasts and as I've written about before on blog posts, if you break out the blue light and the in ear light and the glutathione and the activated charcoal and lots of really good water and grounding and cold thermogenesis, there's all sorts of things that you can do to combat many of these biological effects of jet lag. Now let's say that you do that and so you're good to go. You're at least kind of like, you know, combating a lot of the physiological effects, the deleterious physiological effects of jet lag. What I thought was quite interesting was the psychological, emotional and social consequences that they go into. For example, one of the things that they talk about is how people who frequently travel tend to volunteer less and be less charitable and potentially participate less regularly in local cultural activities and organizations, team sports and community work because they're able to. And the reason this article appealed to me, appealed to me so much is because I travel a lot, right? Like I'm on the road, on an airplane traveling 12 to 15 days out of the month. And I thought, you know, that really is true. You know, since I, since my job has progressed more from being like the local personal trainer to like, you know, a guy who's traveling around the world, speaking at fitness and health events, et cetera, my ties to the local community seem to have decreased a little bit. They also go into the fact that there's a higher rate of familial breakup and a lower amount of domestic responsibilities fulfilled in people who are engaged in hypermobility. And I certainly am on board and understand that as well. It's a lot harder when you're traveling so much, not only to combat, again, a lot of these physiological consequences and a lot of the consequences of not being connected to your family or to, to your community, but also to your family. I thought it was an interesting article. I think it's one that anybody out there, I know, a lot of our listeners do travel a lot. I think it's something that you should read and that you should be aware of. And if anything, for me, it's given me even more pause about deciding when I'm invited to speak somewhere or when I have a quote unquote opportunity to go travel somewhere, see some cool place, you know, is it really worth it versus staying in my local community and being present there and being present for my family?

So, yeah, it's interesting. I actually, I Totally follow the, like, not being as engaged with your partner and your family and stuff like that, but I do. It's probably just a matter of semantics, but I see that not being engaged with your. Your local neighborhood, it's not so much that you're not engaged with your local neighborhood, it's that your neighborhood is expanded.

Yes, exactly.

So I, I don't see that as a necessarily bad thing. It's just like your, your neighborhood or your life is. Is larger than, than it once was.

Yeah, it is true to a certain extent. You could say the same thing about, like Facebook. Right? Yeah. But at the same time, you know, as the, the abstract of the article finishes with it says, the paper concludes that whilst aspects of glamorization in regards to mobility are omnipresent in our lives. Man, that's a lot.

I like that. That was a good, good sentence.

There exists an ominous silence with regard to its darker side. So there you have it. I just thought it was interesting how a lot of the things that I've always kind of thought about in the back of my mind when it comes to frequent airline travel, they actually managed to put into a scientific paper. Cool.

So, yeah, there definitely is a glamor.

It.

There's no doubt about that. I traveled a lot for my. For my job for years and people are always like, oh, you're so lucky. And like, actually not really. You don't see a lot when you're traveling for work. It's not like you're kicking back by the pool all the time. You're often getting off the plane, rushing to a meeting or something else, and being locked in a basement somewhere with too much air conditioning and then back on a plane.

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, our apologies to anyone who tuned into today's podcast to learn how to look good naked because we just instead made you depressed about ever getting on an airplane. Airplane. No. Traveling sucks. So we shall move on.

Yes.

The last thing I wanted to mention for today's news flashes was a great article about HRV and how a high HRV isn't always good and a low HRV isn't always bad.

An hrv, that's the new truck by Toyota, right?

Exactly.

I thought we should probably explain it. Not everybody will know what that is.

Heart rate variability with all wheel drive. All wheel drive Heart rate variability obviously becoming an increasingly popular method of self quantification in competitive athletes and recreational athletes among people who are engaged in biohacking and anti aging and longevity because it allows you to see the strength of your nervous system. And in many cases we've kind of been led to believe that the way that you interpret HRV is a high HRV is good and a low HRV is bad. And that is not necessarily the case. And this article goes into why that is so. For example, if your heart rate variability is constantly high and never seems to fluctuate at all, that can actually be indicative of aerobic overtraining. And there are some, for example, like Ironman triathletes and marathoners and people who constantly have an extremely high heart rate variability. But it turns out that that high heart rate variability is accompanied by a decreased strength of the parasympathetic nervous system. And unless you actually look at not just your HRV score, but also that parasympathetic nervous system score, you might think your high HRV is a good thing. When in fact, as this article goes into much more detail on, in terms of like numbers and what to look for and everything. It's not. Another thing that you'll tend to see often is that lower, like moderate amounts of aerobic training can increase HRV as well. But when you're not doing that type of training, like the low to moderate amount of aerobic training, and you're just doing like CrossFit wads and high intensity interval training and that type of training, like the WADS and the high intensity interval training and all that, that actually does a pretty good job at doing things like increasing your mitochondrial density and increasing your VO2 max and giving you a lot of these aerobic adaptations similar to what like going out for a long run would give you. But when you go about trying to increase your cardiovascular fitness using more of like the high intensity interval training approach, the minimal effective dose approach, you do tend to have a lower hrv. But again, that is a case where it's not necessarily because you are over trained, it's simply because you aren't doing as much aerobic type of activity. And that form of a low HRV is again, not necessarily a bad thing. And this article goes into the reasons why. Anyways, it's a fantastic analysis of why. If you're just looking at heart rate variability, but you're not also looking at sympathetic nervous system score and parasympathetic nervous system score, then you're not getting the full picture. And then finally they go into the fact that sometimes you want your HRV low and sometimes you want it low, because sometimes you do want to do what's called overreaching. And when you overreach, which is a Common strategy used by professional athletes, for example, preparing for a competition. And then you taper. You do what's called super compensation. You actually wind up fitter. And so you want to have some weeks of the year where your HRV is low and you follow that with a deload week or a taper week. And then you bounce back even stronger with phenomenal cosmic powers. I just had to.

I knew that was coming phrase into.

The phenomenal cosmic power. Anyways, reference to the old Aladdin cartoon.

Big fans of Disney around here apparently.

That's right, that's right. Anyways though, go read the article. It's fantastic. And. And yes, I. I cannot finish talking about this article without the. The shameless plug. Yes, the Greenfield Nature Beat HRV app does indeed allow you to look at your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system score and not just your hrv. So if you're not using the Greenfield Nature Beat app either, A, you have an Android, not an iPhone. Ah, what the hell, we're working on that. Or B, you just suck. So there you have it.

Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben, got a question for you about the StairMaster, since on your recent recording you talked about the elliptical being bad for people long term. I use a stationary stair StairMaster, the old kind where the pedals don't go back and forth or anything like that. And I've been using it for 20 years, so just wondering. Wondering how bad it is. I only do about half hour a day or so. Anyway, curious if there's still problems with that as well. Thanks so much. Oh, and my name is Bill Montgomery.

I remember the old stairmasters. I remember when all the gyms all of a sudden were just jam packed with Stairmasters and you just stand there and basically like, like make your feet go up and down and up and down and up and down. There was no crazy elliptical movement or arm handles or anything. You just climbed the stairs to nowhere.

Yeah. Nothing like reminiscing about the good old days. Not, not to be confused with the stair climber, also known as the Stairway to Nowhere, also known as the Blow my brains out on the most boring cardio machine on the face of the planet.

That's the one that's like an escalator that you just sort of stand on and. And keep moving.

Exactly. And it's actually a very tough workout, to be honest. It is. Yeah. So, yeah. So climbing stairs versus the stairmaster versus the elliptical.

Actually, did you ever call like back in the. Back in the day, we used to call it the Butt Master, not the stairmaster.

Yes, the butt Master is also a term that it's known by. And then there is, of course, the all too famous move that you see people doing at the gym these days, which involves putting on your tighty, tight pants, getting on the Stair climber, not the StairMaster, and doing very, very slow stair climber while kicking out behind you in between each step up the stairs. We've seen people doing this. It's like the new awesome butt move. Yeah, I won't go down that rabbit hole, but I will briefly tell you that it doesn't actually work biomechanically. Just there are better ways to build your butt, like getting under a barbell and doing heavy squats. Anyways, though, let's start with the StairMaster. Before I get into the elliptical, they've actually done a comparison, a biomechanical comparison of climbing stairs, AKA the stair climber, or just say climbing stairs at a stadium or whatever, versus climbing on a StairMaster. And they've compared what happens using what's called angular kinematics and linear kinematics when it comes to a comparison of these two. Now, it turns out that what happens when you use a Stair Master, not a stair climber, is that the Stair Master involves only a vertical translation of your body. It does not include what stair climbing includes, which is called a horizontal and a vertical translation of the body. Now, what this means from a muscular utilization standpoint is that the ground reaction forces are going to be different with stair mastering versus stair climbing. And even though the StairMaster turns out to be a good exercise machine, if you have a high risk of injury, particularly if you have a high risk of injury for your knees, for your ankles, or for your hips, because there is less of what's called a shearing, horizontal translation or horizontal force, you burn far more calories. You utilize an enormously more. That's just enormously more. That's just grammatically crappy. An enormously more amount. I'm just going to roll a thing. You use an enormously more amount of your butt muscles when you're using the stair climber versus the stairmaster, and you get a greater range of motion in particularly the hip joint. Significantly greater range of motion in the hip joint. So it turns out that climbing stairs from a biomechanical standpoint just basically kicks the butt of doing something like the Stair Master, in which you're simply moving your feet up and down against resistance, and the only thing that's occurring really is a vertical translation.

So would you call people who Use those stair masturbators then.

Stair masturbators. So unless you are injured, right, unless you have a hip injury, a knee injury, or some kind of an ankle injury, the StairMaster is not for you. It's not going to give you the most bang for Buck plus. It's just silly and stupid. So there's that, too. Sorry, Bill, you heard it here first. However, when we look at the elliptical trainers, those are kind of like a whole different can of worms. You find a lot of people scoffing, scoffing like that. Go. Kidding me. Gosh. Gosh. At the. The elliptical trainer saying that, whatever, it's dumb or it's a fad or whatever. But there are actually some very interesting studies on elliptical trainers. There was one study at the University of Missouri, and they measured oxygen utilization, lactic acid formation, heart rate, and rating of perceived exertion on an elliptical trainer compared to a treadmill. And they found that the elliptical trainer was nearly identical to the treadmill in every respect, with the only exception being that the elliptical trainer created far less joint impact. And what that means is that compared to running, you can stay just as fit on an elliptical trainer, but you recover much faster due to lower joint impact. And it is also, of course, something that could be used if you, let's say, have an it band injury or a hip injury or an injury that is not able to handle the pounding of a treadmill. The elliptical can work for that. And not just the elliptical, but if you would like, and I actually rode one yesterday to go get a haircut, you can get one of these outdoor elliptical trainers. They actually make one called an elliptigo, and it is an elliptical trainer on wheels. And you look like a complete exercise dork. It's pretty much right up there with rollerblading these days, but it's actually quite effective as a way to get all the benefits of running without actually getting the joint impact of running. They did another study that compared muscle activity patterns of the quadriceps in the hamstring. And what they looked at was walking on the ground, walking on a treadmill, bicycling and the elliptical trainer. And the elliptical trainer produced significantly greater quadriceps utilization and greater what's called quadriceps hamstring coordination than any of those other modes of exercise, including bicycling. So that was another interesting effect when it comes to using your muscles, you know, if your goal is to just incorporate as many muscles as possible. With low impact, the elliptical beats out the bike. If you were standing there at the Gym, scratching your head, trying to decide whether to get on the bike to watch a movie or get on the elliptical trainer to watch a movie.

So why are you watching movies? What's going on here?

Just because everybody reads magazines.

Come on.

I'm just, I'm. I'm totally disinfatuated with the idea of getting on a cardio machine at the gym.

I don't. I haven't had a gym membership in. Coming up on a year, maybe even more now.

Yeah, but if you had to, the elliptical trainer is. It's looking quite promising, and I'm not even done yet. There was also a study that compared elliptical training to walking, and they found greater muscle activation during the elliptical training for the glute max and the vastus lateralis, which is your external hip muscles. So if you want to build stronger butt or hip muscles, then the elliptical trainer can do that. And interestingly, it does that without straining the hamstrings. So if you have a hamstring injury, you can also work out.

I feel like that would be dependent on what kind of angle the elliptical machine was set at.

A very, very long stride length is going to incorporate the hamstrings more. Yes, exactly. So they also found with an elliptical trainer. In another study that was interestingly done at the University of Idaho, my alma mater. Hurrah, go Vandals. They found that as the stride length increases on an elliptical trainer, because some do allow you to increase the stride length, you burn more calories without actually increasing your rating of perceived exertion. And that's kind of cool.

That is cool.

That's like free calories without even feeling like you're working harder. So there's that too. But that would, that would be if you use one of the ones that has like the long stride length or the ability to like, basically stride as long as you are striding, which. Which some of the machines at the gym will do too. They have like a, a, like a, like a smart stride where you know, the longer the steps that you take, the longer it will kind of move with you.

Yeah, it's just got a longer track, so to speak.

Exactly. And then finally, there's the fact that when you're on an elliptical training, you get the arm motion, the shoulder motion, the chest, the biceps, the triceps. You get more upper body and core utilization than you would when you are on a bicycle. So you get a little bit more of a full body workout, especially if you do as I do. And when you go get a haircut on your elliptigo. You wear a 20 pound weighted vest and an elevation training mask.

So yeah, so now you've it's like rollerblading crossed with Segway riding mixed with a Batman villain mixed with a glutton for punishment.

Yeah, I was that guy. If you happen to be in Spokane yesterday and you saw someone riding on Argon wearing a weighted vest and elevation training mask on an elliptigo on their way to get a haircut, that was.

Me or the 20 other people who were doing that at the same time.

We'll link to everything Bill in the show Notes if you care to check a good article on elliptical trainers, that outdoor Elliptigo elliptical trainer I was talking about the study on climbing stairs versus a stairmaster and ultimately my reply to you would be if you had to choose anything, the stairmaster, the Stair climber or the elliptical, the order that I would choose would be elliptical first, next the Stair Climber and then finally the stairmaster Bader.

Hey Ben and Brock, Philip here. I'm a multi sport athlete and have been doing a lot of yoga lately and my instructor puts a big emphasis on warming up muscles before deep stretches and poses to prevent injury. Going as far as to put the thermostat up to boiling lava hot in the room. I think most of us have heard the analogy of a rubber band as a muscle. Take a cold rubber band and stretch it. It will resist and possibly even tear or break. But use a warm rubber band and it is flexible and pliable. But I'm not a rubber band. My muscles are almost always at a toasty 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius for the metric listeners. So am I really warming up my muscles or is there a chemical or physiological process going on in my skeletal muscle fibers? Heck, do I even need to warm up my muscles? Thanks for creating the best podcast in the world.

I like how Philip points out that his muscles are a nice toasty 98 point toasting.

Yes, yes, exactly. Toasty is a good way to describe it. I believe mine are.

I think of mine more like cozy.

Yes, well, the fact is that your muscle temperature can change and your muscle temperature changes based on the amount of blood flow to that muscle. And when you are relaxed, when you're like sitting in your chair reading Martha Stewart's Living or reading about perhaps how to make duck Confit, you're producing a relatively low 15 to 20% of blood flow to your skeletal muscles. So that means most of the small blood vessels, little capillaries within those muscles are closed. And in most studies, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes of movement for the blood flow to those same skeletal muscles to increase and for those capillaries to open. And when that happens, that blood flow jumps from 15 to 20% just during the warmup, up to 70 to 75%. And when that blood flow occurs, the muscles, which, contrary to popular belief, are not always at that set, 98.6 degrees, they increase in muscle temperature. And when that happens, biochemically, the hemoglobin in your blood basically dissociate from oxygen more readily. So it's just a basic temperature chemical equation. Hemoglobin releases oxygen more readily at a higher temperature. So more blood going to the muscles, along with more oxygen available to those muscles because the temperature of those muscles has increased, of course, translates to better performance, as you would expect. You get a faster muscle contraction, you get a faster muscle relaxation. After that contraction, you get an improvement in nerve transmission speed, and you get an improvement in mitochondrial activity to a certain point.

That is, once you reach a certain temperature, you actually get a diminishing return.

Well, once you reach a certain temperature, you are, by definition, producing higher amounts of lactic acid. You're getting more hydrogen ions dissociated from that process, and you're increasing the acidity in the muscle, which eventually causes what's called central fatigue, or the central governor of your brain begins to shut down that muscle from contracting to limit the amount of acidity present. But that has less to do with temperature than it has to do with ph. Really? Yeah. And ultimately the idea here is that you do want to warm up. And they've also found that in addition to increasing the speed and the contraction, the relaxation of muscles because they're warmer, there are a lot of other things that the warmup does. For example, you get a lower amount of what's called viscous resistance within warmed muscles. And that essentially is very, very similar, if you want to think about it, to having muscles that are better oiled. So you get better economy at movement.

The synovial fluid becoming more squishy.

Exactly. The synovial fluid dumps into the joints more readily and becomes more runny at higher temperatures, just like an A leg. So, yeah, you get better oxygen utilization. Again, like I mentioned, because the hemoglobin releases oxygen more readily at higher muscle temperatures, you get the facilitated nerve transmission that I mentioned, meaning that you get. What that means is that the warmer muscle is the greater the number of motor units that can be recruited by nerves. And so you're able to just grab more muscle fibers. And then the other thing that can happen as your total body temperature increases is the stroke volume of your heart increases and you get a faster filling and releasing of blood by the left and the right ventricles of your heart. So, yeah, I mean, the warmup is definitely not overrated. Now, a few other interesting things that were found in terms of the warmup in some studies are. In one study, they looked at electrocardiographic activity. So the potential for things like paraventricular contractions or abnormal or skipped heartbeats in.

The heart or anything that would show.

Like an abnormal ECG tracing, you know, the, the little, you know, the blip, blip, blip that you tend to see in the. Yeah, the. You know, the one from the movies that goes flat at a certain point, right. Oh my God. Grandpa's dawn in the soap opera. He's gone. No, no, he's here.

It's back.

Anyways, they found that a warm up basically increased the stabilization of ECG activity in 22 men. So there was that and then a few other things that they found with warmups. They are enhanced if you include dynamic stretching, arm swings, leg swings, et cetera. In an ideal warmup, you get the muscles warm and then you follow that up with swings like arm swings, leg swings, squats, side to side, steps, all those things that would normally be included in a dynamic warmup. And that's been shown to enhance the efficacy of the warmup even more. So you should definitely do not just a warmup, but also dynamic stretching. So in terms of the length of the warm up, like I mentioned, research shows that it is 10 to 15 minutes to get that increased temperature and viscosity and everything else. So trying to think if there's anything else that I want to tell you about the warm up. I mean, ultimately, no. I mean, it's absolutely not. How's this? It's not non efficacious. It's definitely. My grammar is on fire today.

Maybe you're the hungover one.

That's right. But yes, you do need to warm up. I highly recommend it. I generally when I'm warming up, I will do everything from jumping jacks to skipping, lunging, side lunging, arm swings, leg swings. And for me, it's usually somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes that I'm doing all of that before I actually start the, the official workout. And theoretically, you could probably speed up that process. Speaking of things like saunas, et cetera, you could do something like a sauna or a hot tub or something to increase the muscle temperature more quickly. But if you don't happen to have an infrared sauna and hot tub to dip into prior to hopping on your StairMaster for your butt exercise, you could just basically warm the freaking up. So there you have it.

Well, there you go, Philip, you are not a rubber band, but you should still do your warm ups.

And I avoided turning this episode explicit. Did you notice that by instead of using the freaking F, I did. You know, you didn't drop.

That was nice.

Yeah, it's that. Okay, good work. Let's move on.

Hi, Ben and Brock. I have a question regarding muscle gain and fat loss. Is it true that to gain one pound of muscle, say, over a week, I have to consume an additional 3,400 calories, and then I have to burn that 3,400 calories in resistance training, say, like I said, over a week? If this is true, and that's what I've read, can I avoid consuming the additional 3,400 calories and lose a pound of fat but gain one pound of muscle, or would I lose two pounds of fat and gain one pound of muscle? Thanks. Love the podcast.

This question makes my head hurt a little bit. Yeah, it's sort of like one of those, like, if a. If two trains leave Chicago traveling at the same speed kind of questions.

Oh, that's easy. The answer is Minneapolis.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah, there you go. You never have to cross your eyes on that one again. A lot of people do think it's impossible to build muscle and lose fat. Fat simultaneously. And then some people will say, oh, yes, you can build muscle and lose fat simultaneously just fine. Frankly, both of those camps are wrong in a way. And not to make your head hurt even more, but I'll explain why. So gaining muscle while losing fat, the actual term for that, if you want to impress people at your next cocktail party, is called body recomposition. Body recomposition. It's like the holy grail. Gain muscle, lose fat, burn fat, gain muscle. However you want to define it, if you can achieve both of those things simultaneously, then that's what most people want. So we have to start with an understanding of the basic physiology here. And there's a reason why a lot of people think building muscle and losing fat at the same time is impossible. And it has to do with something called protein synthesis. So what this means is that as you're standing around every day, your muscles are going through maintenance work, so they're taking damaged and degraded cells and they're eliminating them and new Cells are created to take their place. And the term given for that is protein synthesis. It's also known as protein biosynthesis. And in normal circumstances, normal dietary circumstances, muscle tissue is pretty stable. And that cycle of cellular degradation and cellular regeneration is pretty balanced. So you generally aren't going to lose or gain muscle at any significant rate. Your lean mass is just going to remain pretty level on a day to day basis. But when you train your muscles, when you're doing weight training, you damage the cells in the muscle fibers and that, that increases the rate of protein synthesis to repair those damaged cells. So when that happens, your body doesn't want to just repair the damage. It wants to somehow make you less resistant to further damage in the future. And to do that. Did I say less resistant? Yeah, more resistant.

That would be a terrible evolutionary trait.

I'm glad you're listening carefully and not just doing your hair. How did you know? I just know what you do.

Your hair looks fantastic.

So what your muscles do to make you more resistant to further damage is they add cells to the muscle fibers. So that's also known as hypertrophy. It tends to make muscle fibers bigger, it tends to make them stronger. And so what you tend to think of as muscle growth is basically a rate of protein synthesis in which the protein synthesis rate exceeds the protein breakdown rate. So if you take any given 24 hour period, if your body synthesizes more muscle proteins, then it breaks down, then you will gain muscle. And if you have a lower rate of protein synthesis than protein breakdown, then you lose muscle. And if both are equal, then it stays the same.

That makes sense.

Basically, if your goal is to gain muscle, you have to have a higher rate of protein synthesis than degradation. If you have a higher rate of protein synthesis than degradation, you will gain muscle. So when we look at the other side of the equation, losing fat, as most people realize, you have to give your body less energy than it burns over time to lose fat. That and yes, there are all those books out there, like good calories, bad calories. There is, of course, the whole argument that, yeah, a snack pack of 100 calories of Oreos is different than 100 calories of spinach and goji berries. But ultimately, when you step back and you look at things from a big picture, from an 8020 standpoint, and we look at what is long term, truly effective for effective or fat loss. For fat loss. Fat loss. At a certain, a certain point, you have to calorie deficit. If you aren't at a calorie deficit you aren't going to lose fat, period. It's just not going to happen. So, yes, there are other factors that need to be present, like an absence of inflammation and proper hormonal balance and all these other things that are affected by the quality and the nutrient density of the food. But ultimately, what it comes down to is at some point, you know, a calorie deficit needs to be present. So there are a couple of things that happen, however, when you are at a calorie deficit. Number one, you get reduced levels of anabolic hormones. When you're eating fewer calories than you're burning, you get reduced level of anabolic hormones, growth hormones. You also get impaired protein synthesis. So a calorie deficit causes changes in your hormone profile that makes you more catabolic, which is a state where muscle breakdown would be higher and it lowers protein synthesis. So that is why it is so hard to build muscle while you're in a calorie deficit, because you decrease that rate of protein synthesis. So you're fighting an uphill battle. However, the interesting thing is that you can actually be responsive to resistance training even when you're at a calorie deficit. And there's something about resistance training training, specifically weight training, that's been shown in studies, even in people who are at a calorie deficit, to maintain or even increase the rate of protein synthesis, even in the state of calorie restriction. So, for example, there was one study that was done in which they took folks and they split them into two different groups. One group had a daily calorie deficit of 300 calories, okay, 300 calories lower than what they were actually taking in. And another group had a daily calorie deficit of 750 calories. Incidentally, both groups were getting adequate protein. It's just that one group had a deficit of 300 calories. One group had a deficit of 750 calories. Now, the group that had the 300 calorie deficit, they lost a little bit of fat and they lost a little bit of muscle. And the group who had the 750 calorie deficit also lost very, very little bit of muscle, but they lost a huge amount of fat. And so these mild calorie deficits, it turns out, did not really work quite as well as, like, a larger calorie deficit in the presence of resistance training and adequate protein. Okay, so let's tie all this together. What this comes down to is that if your goal is to burn fat and build muscle at the same time, a, you need to be in a calorie deficit. And it looks like that calorie deficit should fall somewhere between 500 1,000 calories more than what you're actually eating. Okay? So if you find out that your total body's daily needs are 3,000 calories per day to sustain everything that you're doing, you would undercut that and you would eat somewhere between 2000 and 2500 calories per day. And you would combine that with the one thing that seems to somehow cause your body, even in the state of calorie deficits, to increase, increase protein synthesis or to at least maintain protein synthesis. And that is resistance training. That's weight training. Okay? So the other very, very important thing is that you not be at a protein deficiency. And if you want to not be at a protein deficiency and you want to easily do this without risking not being at a calorie deficit, you would include things like amino acid capsules or amino acid powders, which are low, or no calorie sources of protein that can enhance or maintain the rate of protein synthesis without dumping extra calories into your body. Now, I know that this seems to defy the laws of thermodynamics, that you would somehow be able to have a maintained rate of protein synthesis in the absence of adequate calories or in what would seem to be a category metabolic state. But the fact is that there are multiple studies out there that show that the combination of adequate protein resistance training and a calorie deficit allows you to indeed burn fat and build muscle simultaneously. So the last thing, the last recommendation that I would have for you so that you don't risk thyroid issues or, or like this starvation mode, long term potential downregulation of your metabolism while doing something like resistance training with a calorie deficit. I would have at least one week or one day per week, or potentially, depending on your level of physical activity, one meal per day. That's more of a refeed, either a carbohydrate refeed or a calorie refeed. So, so let's say, let's use the calorie refeed. That's going to be the simplest example of how to do this. From Monday through Saturday, you would eat, let's say, 2,500 calories. If you know that you actually need 3,000 calories, you would get adequate protein, meaning you would never want to, if you want a number, you would never want to undercut protein by more than zero point. You, you need to get at least 0.55 grams of protein per pound of Body weight. Okay. That's the minimum amount of protein that you need to maintain muscle. 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And then on a Sunday, you would eat 3,500 calories. Right. An ad libitum calorie day to ensure that you don't downregulate your metabolism. Because within about four weeks of consistent calorie deficits combined with physical activity, you'll tend to see a downregulation of thyroid hormones. So that's, that's why you want to ensure that you. That you work in those refeeds.

So does that make sense?

It does. It was a. It. I think I may need to go back and listen to that twice, but I believe I got it. I hope Brian got it as well.

Fantastic. All right, Brian, we'll send in a photo of you completely ripped, standing on stage in a Speedo, covered in gold flakes, flexing with a giant bodybuilding trophy that you just won. And we'll post it on the Facebook page or something. Okay, moving on.

Hey, Ben, my name is Rusty. I'm from Leesburg, Virginia.

I have a question.

I recently did Ironman Lake Placid and I'm a pretty established marathon runner, just got into triathlon. In the last few years, I have finished a 70.3 and it was pretty successful. But the Lake Placid full Ironman, I had a little trouble halfway through the run. I had a really good swim, really good bike and the. I took on as much nutrition as I possibly could on the bike. And halfway through the run I started violently vomiting uncontrollably and became very lightheaded and continued to do so where it enabled me to finish the race, which is a first for me and have been trying to analyze why this happened. And if you have any insight on or on this situation or any advice for the next one, I would really appreciate anything you have to offer. Thank you for listening.

Puking during Placid. That's what we should call the name of this episode. The Great Placid Puke. Yeah, I mean, have you ever vomited during a race?

I know you've had some serious pant pooping issues, but have you thrown it?

I've crapped my pants a few times during a race. Like during a race in Thailand when I had poisoning or food poisoning or whatever that was. Yeah, I had some, some, some pretty, pretty serious crappage going on. I have, I've thrown up a little bit during races before. Like during some Ironman races where Specifically in Hawaii during the open Water swim. The salty, churning, open water swim in Hawaii. Not because of nutrition mistakes, but just because you're, you're freaking, like, battling in the water for an hour and you come out and you've got a bunch of, of salt water that you swallowed and your body just kind of gets rid of it and you're just like, yeah, you're puking up the ocean, so.

Puking up the ocean.

Puking up the ocean.

There are a few recommendations that I can give anybody out there who is doing something like a long endurance event and runs into the point where it's, you know, it's kind of like that, oh, crap, something's messed up with my stomach moment. I would give. Let me give you five recommendations. The first is a little bit sciency. Since we just talked about burning fat and building muscle, we might as well stay on that bandwagon and that cerebral process of numbers and oxidation rates. Thinking. That's right. So let's keep thinking.

All right, so number one, Number one.

Is understand oxidation rates. Okay? So when we look at oxidation and gastric emptying rates of exogenous calories taken in during exercise, what research has shown is that when we look at carbohydrate oxidation rates of exogenous carbohydrates, meaning how many you can actually absorb and utilize, the values are about 1 gram per minute. When you're taking in just one form of carbohydrate, like glucose or maltodextrin or fructose or something like that, they jump up to about 1.75 grams per minute. When you are combining carbohydrates, which is why many of these sports drinks and sports gels and things out there, they'll combine like maltodextrin and fructose or some kind of lactose source with a maltodextrin source or some kind of double carbohydrates. Because once you start to utilize multiple carbohydrate transporters in your gut, you're able to absorb more fuel without the risk of gastric distress. Now, what this comes out to for you on a practical level is that when you are exercising in a prolonged endurance event, and by prolonged, what research usually considers prolonged is two plus hours. So when you're competing in endurance events of two plus hours, it looks like you can actually take on about 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour from multiple sources. Right? Like, it needs to be in most cases, like a blend of, like maltodextrin and fructose. That is, considering that there are four calories per gram of carbohydrates, about 360 calories per hour max. Okay? So if you are stuffing your face on say like a bike during an Ironman triathlon, you simply cannot take from a carbohydrate standpoint More than 360 calories per hour period. Okay? Now that is not expressed relative to body mass. And there is a reason for that. Body mass or body size being a small woman or a large man or whatever, that appears to play no major role in your ability to oxidize external sources of calories. So there's no excuse that says that, oh, I'm a Clydesdale ironman triathlete at 200 plus pounds, therefore I need to eat twice as much as that dainty little girl riding the bike beside me.

Well, you may need to eat more, but you can't.

You can't. Yes, exactly, exactly. And it turns out that contrary to what seems logical, it's actually pretty much the same from body size to body size. So I realize that there are probably some people screaming through the radio waves and saying, what about those of us who are fat adapted? What about those of us who are doing the low carb thing? Well, the idea behind being fat adapted or following a low carb diet so that you can somehow spare glycogen, right, and not have to tap into or not have to rely on as many sources of exogenous carbohydrates is that you're mostly tapping into your body's own fat stores, right? Your own fatty acids. And so that's one thing, is that you're relying upon that as an extra source of calories. And so that's going to allow you to go for longer periods of time without bonking cooking. But the other consideration here is that you can biohack these recommendations that you not exceed 360 calories per hour and you can put things into your body that bypass that digestive process. The two main ones are a, something that I talked about just a little bit ago when I was responding to the question about burning fat and building muscle, and that is amino acids that are pre digested. So either branch chain amino acids or essential amino acids. So you could take the 360 calories of carbohydrates per hour and you can add in another 10 grams of amino acids per hour and have that be another source of energy that is not going to disrupt gut function and not going to overload your gut because it doesn't really put much strain on your digestive system. It's just absorbed and it's already ready to be burnt or utilized as a fuel. The other is a form of fat called medium chain triglycerides. Medium chain triglycerides also bypass for the most part that digestive process and allow you to insane amounts. You don't want to exceed about 80 calories per hour of a medium chain triglyceride course. But theoretically you could bump up your total intake from 360 calories per hour to 440 calories per hour by adding in medium chain triglycerides. And that's about where you'd top off is 440 calories per hour. 360 of that from carbs, 80 of that from medium chain triglycerides plus an extra 10 grams of protein and that would be the maximum that you want to take on. You exceed that, you are probably going to get digestive distress. And so you want want to take into account numbers when you are, as Rusty said, taking on as much nutrition as you can on the bike. You can't just take on as much nutrition as you can. Like if you are eating two energy bars per hour. If those energy bars like the bonk breakers that they hand out on an Ironman triathlon course, Those bars are 250 calories, right? So all of a sudden you're at 500 calories and yeah, gastric distress within a couple of hours is going to set in if you're doing that. So, so understand the number of calories you can actually take on. Okay. A few other things. A recent study came out and showed that ginger, no surprises here, can decrease gastric distress during exercise in the heat. Okay, so how can you actually implement this effectively? Well, a lot of sports compounds I know, Hammer Nutrition I think is one company that's now utilizing ginger Alex extracts and some of their gels and things like that. You can also use like these little ginger chews that you can get at the, at the like you know, CVS or Walgreens or you know, wherever they'll sell like these ginger chews. You can even just boil ginger root and that very easily goes into a Ziploc or wraps up in aluminum foil. And once you boil it, it's pretty soft, pretty, pretty easy to chew on. And that's something that I'll do quite often if I get any type of gastric distress or snow at my house that I always have ginger root on my couc, not only because it's a fantastic anti inflammatory but also because if anything happens with your gut, it Settles you down pretty quickly. And they've shown that to be the case even during exercise. So ginger is one. Another one that works very, very well is peppermint. And I've found that even though of course there's peppermint chewing gum and peppermint.

Essential oils and all sorts of ways.

To get peppermint, peppermint into your stomach to reduce the effects of gastric distress during exercise.

Peppermint Tums work quite well.

They actually have the company Tums, they make a peppermint flavored tums and that has a peppermint oil extract in it. And that does a very, very good job at shutting down gastric distress during exercise. In a pinch, they also are chock.

Full of calcium, so that would be helpful for muscle cramps.

Camping, right? Exactly. So you can, you can carry those in like a Ziploc bag or you can put them in like a film canister and put those in like a, like a jersey pocket. And that's an easy way to carry Tums and also ruin some film. Yes. So where are you getting these film.

Canisters from these days?

Yeah, exactly. You can also use the like, a lot of like effervescent electrolytes, like tablets will come in these tubes and you can empty those out and put them in a bag and fill that up with peppermint Tums instead. Another thing that can help out quite a bit, especially if you're in a race that happens to have something like. And again, I don't endorse the consumption of soda and high fructose syrup containing beverages often, but if there is anything carbonated on the course, carbonation helps you to burp up a lot of the stomach bubbles, the gas, the bloating, et cetera. And having access to a carbonated source of water. Water would be preferable. So you're not dumping necessarily all the fructose and everything into your body. But during an Ironman, when I go race Ironman Hawaii, for example, you get to a certain point during that race where you're so freaking hot and so freaking beat up. Usually it happens about mile 13 of the marathon where about all you can handle is the climb coke that they're handing out at the aid stations. And for me it's not just the fact that it's like caffeine and sugar all at once. It's the carbonation. It kind of helps you burp up and reduce some of the bloating and the gas that builds up over a long day. So something carbonated can help out quite a bit as well. And then finally if you vomited, if you have puked during a race, and normally in a situation like that that you would want to get on an iv, you would want to actually replenish fluids as quickly as possible because otherwise like that, dehydration is going to catch up to you really fast. And you may be a DNFer, but there is something I've been experimenting with recently. I'm trying to get these folks on a podcast to talk with them more about it and the way that it works. But it's basically, it's water. It's. It's a shot of structured water with electrolytes in it that is a very, very fast way to rehydrate your body. We interviewed a guy named Dr. Gerald Pollock on the show a couple of years ago who is a researcher at University of Washington and he researches water and he specifically found that there is a form of water called structured water. And it's not H2O, it's H believe it's H3O2. And this exclusion zone water actually finds its way into a cell far more readily than non structured water. And I actually, at my house, I have a structured water unit. So all the water in my house comes out of the well, passes through an iron filter and a manganese filter and then it's structured, it goes through an inline water structure unit unit. And then the water that I drink is structured in that H3O2 format. But when I'm out running in an Ironman, I don't have my nice little water tap and my fancy water filter carrying, you know, towing on a trailer, on my bicycle.

Actually, I, I shuddered to think where the water came from. And when we were doing Ironman in Thailand, yeah, they just had big buckets of water they were dipping these cups into and like, oh God, exactly. Should I be drinking this?

Sponsored by your local sewage municipality. Anyways, this stuff, they've taken this same water that Dr. Pollock researched at University of Washington and they put in this little shot. It's called Oral iv. Oral iv. And they're like these tiny little shots that you can take with you. And again, I'm still researching this stuff. I've been experimenting with it a little bit. I'm hoping to get one of the physicians who designed this stuff on the show. But that would be another option if you have puked and you have vomited and you're like, oh crap, now I gotta get rehydrated or else I won't finish. That would be a potential remedy for You. So that's what's called oral iv. Those are some of my. Those are my top five, though. So understand the total amount of oxidation and gastric emptying rates and the fact that you're at that 360 calorie per hour or 440 tops. Carry some gingerbread. Sure. Or peppermint. Or both. Experiment with what works for you. Get your hands on a carbonated beverage and then look into this oral IV stuff. I will put links to some of this stuff in the show notes. If you just need a list@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 328 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com 328 and hopefully that helps you out, Rusty. And in the meantime. Oh, last thing, bring a napkin to 1. Wipe the puke off the corners of your mouth so you look nice when you cross the finish line for the photos.

Hi, Ben and Bark. This is Michiel from the Netherlands. I'm 5 foot 10. I'm 198 pounds. I've been doing a lot of interval training lately. I quit smoking. I eat organic as much as possible. Pretty fair face. But I still don't have a girlfriend. Can you guys help me out here?

Well, I mean, like, I'm. I'm not a good guy to go to for advice on how to get a girlfriend because I've kind of forgotten how.

How long have you been married now?

I've been married for 13 years.

Oh, so you beat me. My partner and I have been together for 12 years.

Yeah, no, I don't know how to get a girlfriend. I would say maybe back in my.

Day, we used to take them to the box social.

I would get rollerblades and tight pants and take your shirt off and go rollerblading through the city and just see what kind of women chase you. That's just my go to. And I'm only saying that because I don't know if you have an elliptigo. But yeah, that's the direction that I would go. You know, I have. I have a friend who's kind of a ninja at this type of thing. His name is Jordan Harbinger, and he has a podcast called Art of charm. It's@artofcharm.com I decided to because I'm so out of the ability to get a girlfriend. It's just. It's not something I do a lot, being married, getting a girlfriend, so. So I turned to him for advice, and this is what Jordan had to say.

Hey, Mihuel. Ben Greenfield doesn't know anything about women. He's married, so he came to me. I'm supposed to be an expert on this, but, you know, we'll see. Here's what actually happened according to what I'm hearing. I'm reading between the lines of what you said. So you've done a lot of good stuff. Props to you. You quit smoking, you're into the fitness thing. You, you said you have a fair face, which I think is really funny. And, and it's totally fine. But here's where the mistake is in your thinking. First of all, I want to give you adequate props for working on yourself, doing a lot to move forward and doing a lot to clean up your physicality. That's supremely important. But there's one fatal flaw in the rationale here. You're making the mistake of being human. I know it's really tough. We humans, we think that other people think like us and we can't really identify with people that don't. So the way that men think, we look at things like youth and fertility when we're selecting a health mental mate. So you're looking at looks, body type, health, indicators of nurturing habits and things like that. So the problem arises when you think that women think those same things and look at those same channels and those same factors. When it comes to mate selection for men, they do, but they are weighed so much less. So you could become a supermodel or just a model, maybe with a six pack and a great tan and great hair and a perfect face, Brad Pitt like face, but you will still lose out the girls that you're looking for, the women, the girlfriends that you're looking for, to a guy who has confidence, has other areas of his life together. So I want to say this, you're doing the right thing, you're on the right track. But don't turn the physicality, attractiveness, health thing up to 11 and ignore the other aspects of personality, charisma and magnetism that are really going to be a bigger indicator and a bigger help to you in finding a girlfriend. You know, working on your personality and all those things, those are much more important. Not that the physicality and the health stuff isn't, but it's one channel that's weighed significantly less in mate selection than us men. Weigh it. When it comes to women, if a girl works on her body and becomes really pretty, she can have rocks in her head and guys will be tripping over each other to get to her. With women and men, it's usually 99% of the time, just not the same case. So you're doing everything right. You just need to focus on other areas to succeed as well. I hope that makes sense. Obviously, this is what we teach at the Art of Charm. I'm not asking you to buy anything, but since you're listening to Ben Greenfield's podcast already, check out the Art of charm. Start at theartofcharm.com toolbox with the toolbox. That'll give you a lot of tools to work with when it comes to charisma and personal magnetism. And again, it's free. So enjoy and keep us all posted on your progress.

Wow, that's quite comprehensive. That was great. I don't really know if I have anything else to add to that. I guess the last thing is if you take this advice to heart and you wind up with two or three or six girlfriends, write us a quick thank you note or leave us or Jordan's podcast review in itunes and preferably upload photos of your mini girlfriends. I don't know if you can do that on an itunes review, but you can try either way. Yeah, either way. And I really don't think the accent is going to hurt you either, Mikael. No, it's the accent. Pretty hot training. You're not smoking, you're eating organic, and you have a pretty fair face. So there you go. Hopefully you will now have a girlfriend. And we can now say that the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast will get you a girlfriend. You will burn fat, you will build muscle, and you will get girlfriends. And that being said, we had someone leave us a very, very long review this week.

Oh goodness.

And Brock, I will volunteer to read this one if you would like. I can take this.

I think that might be best. Given my current mental state, it might take me an hour to read this paragraph.

I can do it. I took my cbd, I took my alpha brain, I went for a swim this morning. I researched duck fat. I can handle this. So here's the deal. I'm going to leave this review that was left by Illumin Loti. It was a good review. It's entertaining. I encourage you to stick around for it. And if you leave a review and you hear your review read on the show by me, or usually by Brock when he's not drunk, you can write. Write to Geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com and when you write to GeergreenfieldfitnessSystems.com just include your T shirt size and we will send you a T shirt, a Ben Greenfield fitness water bottle, and a Ben Greenfield fitness beanie. So, that being said, we have a five star review over on iTunes and the five star review is titled Can't Help But Love Him. Can't Help but Love. Here is what they have to say. Oh, I know. For years, every time the podcast female announcer came on, we thought we had accidentally been patched through to the world's cheesiest phone sex line. And now, finally, after enough harassment, the guys at last made a change. But alas, it only got worse as Tiffany's replacement has to be the worst James Earl. Yeah, her name was Kelly, not Tiffany. But I like Tiffany. It's a good trailer trash name. But alas, it got only worse as Tiffany's replacement has to be the worst James Earl Jones impressionist to ever grace a Pahrump, Nevada casino lounge. And sure, we're turning over our bodies and our brain's health to a man who doesn't know how to pronounce segue or neurotropics. Parentheses. Ben, it's pronounced nootropics, not neurotropics. Hey, sure, it stings when I leave a recorded question after playing it on the air. They make fun of my name for two minutes before answering my simple query in parentheses. My name is Randy, which means horny in Britain and apparently certain parts of the backwoods of Canada. I'm looking at you, Brock, but you know what? When it comes to health and fitness, nowhere will you hear more comprehensive, clear, powerful and life changing advice anywhere on the planet. No, just redeemed himself, Randy. If you listen to him, Ben Greenfield will transform the way you exercise, take supplements, eat, sleep, and yes, even poop. That's true. Yeah, we did that. This podcast is one stop shopping for everything you need to live a more vibrant, healthy and self actualized life. I don't know what self actualized means.

I think it's some woo woo crap.

Yeah, so Ben and Brock, make fun of my name all you want. Hire ex strippers and ventriloquists to do your lead ins and wraparounds. Let us figure what Segway is supposed to mean, because as they say, if it works, don't fit in it, don't fix it. And boys, it works.

I think I was. Let us figure out what Sedgwe means.

Whatever. I think it was a great review. It was.

That was. I laughed out loud several times.

Honestly, we've covered girlfriends, dumps, James Earl Jones, trailer trash names, being Randy, and of course burning fat and building muscle at the same time, as well as puking. I think we should call it a day, I think.

Well, I think we should call it a day after we play the chapter of Beyond Training audiobook.

Oh yeah, that'll come soon. But in the meantime, we done good. Check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com328 for the show notes for today's show. Stay tuned for this weekend show with the great Wim Hof the Iceman. It's epic. Stay tuned for that. Have a healthy week.

I'm gonna go take some Tylenol.

Heal up.

Welcome to Beyond Training Chapter 25 Closing Thoughts and additional Resources Whether due to our innate pursuit of perfection, our constant quest to achieve the next milestone, or our lofty aspirations to ascend our own personal Mount Everest, it's incredibly easy to develop a passion for extreme exercise and sports that keeps drawing us into training session after training session, wad after wad, race after race, month after month, year after year. And that's part of the thrill of competition, the chance to satisfy our thirst for battle, for conquest, for adventure, and for the thrill of the chase. But at some point, every athlete and exercise enthusiast has a come to Jesus moment when we realize that the sport we love can be capable of harming our bodies. When that moment happens, you have two choices. You can keep doing what you're doing until you completely explode in a burst of inflammatory flame and injury, or you can move on to the next chapter in your life. Some very good endurance athletes like Mark Sisson, author of marksdailyapple.com and a respected wealth of knowledge on health and fitness and nutrition, simply moved on to the next chapter and went from a life as a pro triathlete to foregoing endurance sports altogether. Other countless individuals, many named in the opening chapter of this book, have continued to push and punish forward until forced to quit at the mercy of heart attacks, hip replacements, or pure biological burnout. But what if there was another choice? A third choice Choice. The choice to actually defy the status quo, commonly accepted orthodox methods of training. The choice to stop throwing ourselves like an egg at a wall until we finally crack. The choice to pursue the ultimate combination of health and performance and longevity while continuing to participate in the sport and the exercise that we love. While the existence of that third choice was my goal in writing and recording this entire book. To show you how to intelligently make the right choice. To show you that you don't have to throw up your hands in despair at the newspaper headlines that tell you that extreme exercise and endurance sports and marathoning are bad for your heart. Or the blog posts that tell you.

That CrossFit and triathlon will destroy your.

Body to show you that if you do things the right way, you can keep competing in the sport that you love without completely destroying your body. Now take a deep breath before you keep listening. Notice that I said without completely destroying your body. Deep down inside. I don't think that any of us would argue that a daily battle with the hot pavement, the muggy gym, a joint crushing barbell or thrashing waves is truly healthy or ancestral. I don't think any of us would argue that puking into a garbage can, bleary eyed at 5am in a CrossFit box is really the way that our ancestors might have lived.

Or running from a bear for 12.

Hours during an Ironman triathlon is truly healthy. But discomfort, aging, illness, injury and death.

Are part of who we are.

Life includes significant doses of sickness, sore joints, injury, suffering and pain. Our short existence on this planet is a package deal that includes both good times and bad times, and we must embrace that reality in its entirety. You must accept the fact that you're.

Not always going to feel good and.

You'Re not ever going to be perfectly healthy if you toss your hat into the ring of something like, say, an Ironman triathlon. However, while your goal should not be to fool yourself into thinking that you can somehow neurotically biohack and pill pop your way to immortality, you can at least take small steps to mitigate the damage you're doing to your body.

Body.

You can start by using this book. You can review the 10 rules for becoming an ancestral athlete in the previous chapter and implement those rules to find.

A sane balance between achieving lofty physical.

Performance goals, being healthy, enjoying life, and accepting the reality that you'll never completely insulate yourself from the damage. After all, life is short. You can play hard.

You can use your body. Body.

But you need to play smart too.

Your heart, muscles, joints, skin, mind and grandkids.

Well, thank you. So I also want to thank you.

For joining me on this journey of.

Discovery in this book, and for taking the deep dive into finding out what your body is truly capable of when you care for it properly. All while pursuing goals that the average individual might consider to be insane and slightly masochistic. Remember, you and I share a secret.

Secret. It's not the insanity or the masochism.

That draws us into this act of buffeting our bodies daily. It's the adventure, the escape, the chance to be a superhero, even if it's just for a fleeting day. And that's what keeps us coming back, workout after workout, race after race, month after month, and year after year. Let's just do it the right way, shall we? Let's Think Beyond Training Training now finally, in closing, I do have even more resources for you for this short chapter over at BeyondTrainingBook.com chapter 25 and when.

You go there, you'll be able to.

Access triathlon and marathon training plans that.

Are based on both the high intensity.

Interval style training as well as the polarized training that you discovered. In the chapters of this book. You'll find detox and adrenal reboot plans. You'll find a beyond training meal plan and many more little bonuses and insider tips. Now I'll also put a link to a day in the lifestyle video that I shot of myself as well as many other bonuses, scientific resources, etc.

For this book.

And finally, if you want to learn how to coach others and train others using the time type of concepts that you learned about in the past 450 plus pages, you can go to superhumancoach.com and at superhumancoach.com you will find my Mentorship and Mastermind program for personal trainers, nutritionists, physicians and other healthcare professionals and exercise professionals who want to learn my methods. And links to all of that are available over@BeyondTrainingBook.com.

Thanks for listening.

And now go Beyond Training.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

SA.