All Day Energy - A Book I Should Probably Hate, But Don't

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast.

We provide you with free exercise, nutrition.

Weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or.

You'Re just trying to shed a few.

Pounds, get ready for non run of.

The mill, cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I have on the call with me today a friend of mine. His name is Yuri Elkaim and he's actually kind of a little bit of an outlier and what you might call a renegade in the whole nutrition and health community. He's actually been referred to, and I've seen this on his Amazon bio page, as the health whisperer for being able to get to the heart of what matters and produce really good health and fitness results in folks who have kind of tried everything without getting very good results at all. Now, Yuri is not just a holistic nutritionist and a fitness expert, but he's one of those guys who has kind of been there and walked the walk too, because he's a former professional soccer player. And also for seven seasons, he was the strength and conditioning and the nutrition coach for the nationally ranked men's soccer program at the University of Toronto. So he's not just out there writing about nutrition and about how to get a better body and have more energy, but he's also himself kind of been through this and put a lot of time in the trenches. And that's something that's very important to me when I bring you guys guests, is that these are folks who are not just sitting around at home in their underwear writing on their computer.

Right, Yuri? Sometimes I do that only when it's warm inside.

So the reason that Yuri is on the call today is because he's been doing a lot of research, he's been doing a lot of writing, and I happen to have gotten my hands on about 11 chapters of a brand new book that he's produced in which he talks about how he went from soccer to bed to having no hair on his head, which he's going to talk to us about today. And also why we're tired, what sneaky foods kind of work their way into our diets that rob us of energy, the daily habits that can make us sluggish, and the things that we do that kind of our energy drains, and then how to get off of these and how to find energizing sources of diet, of exercise, of basically ways of living that burn fat that don't crush your body and that give you energy all day long. So we're gonna delve into this and talk a little bit. This brand new book that Yuri has produced. And by the way, if as you're listening, you want to go check out the book, I'll put up a page for you over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Energy and @BenGreenfieldFitness.com Energy, I'll include all of the resources that Yuri and I talk about today. So, Uri, thanks for coming on the call, ma'. Am.

It's a pleasure to be here with you, Ben. Thanks for having me.

So let's jump in right here. You were a professional soccer player, and then in the intro to your book, you talk about how you went from soccer to bed to no hair on your head, which is a very catchy rhyme. But I imagine there's a little bit more to it than that. Can you kind of delve into what exactly is behind that phrase?

Yeah. So that phrase basically depicts 20 some odd years of my life. So growing up, my whole goal is to play soccer professionally. That was my dream. So I dedicated probably 15,000 plus hours to training and playing. And in my early 20s, I was able to do that, which was awesome. But it kind of overshadowed the reality that I was fit, but I wasn't healthy. So growing up, I had really bad eczema and asthma, that it got a little bit better as I got older. But even I remember even playing in some of my professional games, I would have my puffer by the post just in case. And so that was, you know, that was more of like kind of like a baby having his blankie, you know, just for reassurance. But when I was 17, I actually started losing my hair and my dad's Moroccan. So for everyone listening, that hopefully you can get an image of how much body hair I may have had at the time before this. So I remember that's like.

That's like one step below like Yeti or Chewbacca, right?

Pretty much, yeah. So I had like, really bushy eyebrows, hair all over, not wasn't out of control, but just, you know, obviously more than I have now. So I remember coming home from soccer practice one night, I was taking a shower, you know, washing my hair, and I look at my hands and I've got hair in my hands. And I'm like, that's not normal. I've never seen this before. Next morning, I wake up, I've got hair on my pillow, like substantial amounts. And within about six weeks I had lost all the hair in my head, eyebrows, eyelashes, everything. And so I was like, okay, what is going on here? And this is like my senior year of high school. So now I'm walking down the halls of school and people are looking at me like I've got cancer or something. So it was a really awkward time. And the medical community really didn't make things better because they had no solutions that were non toxic. You know, they wanted to inject cortisone into my head, lather my body up with cortisone to kind of keep my eczema at bay. And I was like, that's, that's not going to happen. So it took about eight years. 17, lost my hair, finished high school, went to study kinesiology at the University of Toronto, did that, finished that, played pro soccer. I retired when I was in my mid 24th year. So when I was 24, I finished, came back to Toronto and through a series of events stumbled upon a holistic nutrition school in Toronto. And I was like, maybe I should check this out.

At that point, were you doing this interest in nutrition purely because of your hair or did you even have a, had you created a link yet between your diet and what was going on with your hair?

No, it took about eight years for that link to kind of solidify. So playing soccer, I was eating tons of pasta and breads and grains because this is what I was told athletes eat, which is a complete bunch of nonsense, as you know. But I was actually, I was training clients. I was actually, I started personal training in my second year of university. So when I came back from France, I started picking up my clients again and I thought, oh, this would be great for them because, you know, it's obviously nice to understand, you know, diet and nutrition. So I took the course mainly for them. But on like the first day I started, you know, I was kind of being exposed to this information. I was like, wow, this is actually really eye opening because, you know, I've been four years at one of the top universities in the world, never been exposed to this stuff. And one day I'm just like, you know, my mouth had, my jaw had completely dropped from, from what I was learning. So I asked one of the professors after my first day who was a naturopathic doctor, and I asked her, I was like, you know, I have alopecia, which is this autoimmune condition which, you know, my hair loss and eczema and asthma and all this other stuff. Like, do you think that it could be related to my diet. And without even thinking, she's like, absolutely, we see it every single day. And I was like, wow, that's all right.

Where were you eight years ago?

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. So that was kind of the, kind of the hope that I needed to be like, okay, I can actually turn this thing around. And so that was my kind of introduction to healthy eating and cleaning up my body. And within about eight weeks, basically overcame my asthma, got rid of all my eczema, all the digestive issues I had when I was younger were just like gone. And pretty much most of my hair regrew. And as you know, obviously I saw you a couple weeks ago. I don't have any hair right now. And it's just autoimmune conditions tend to come and go sometimes. So I'm just in a phase now where about two and a half years ago it started falling out again. So it doesn't really matter to me. The most important thing for me, though, during that whole process was the energy that I started to feel again. Because when I was younger, I was sleeping 10 to 12 hours a night and still feeling tired throughout the day. I was falling asleep in class a lot of times, having to take naps after school. I would often sleep in and miss my morning classes because I didn't want to get out of bed. So being able to transform that to jumping out of bed on seven and a half hours of sleep was a huge, like a huge thing for me. I didn't, I didn't even care about the hair. I mean, for me, it was more about the energy.

Yeah, yeah. It's. It's so crazy how it's almost like the hair is kind of like the canary in the mine, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

It can indicate other things going on that are stripping you of energy. And I know that that's kind of like what you start off in in your book is answering that question of why we're so tired. And you know what I'm curious about? It's kind of a twofold question, but. Or it might be a one fold question. I don't know. The foods that you eliminated to help out with your autoimmune condition and your hair, do those relate to the same type of foods that make people tired during the day, like brain fog and feeling blah when you get out of bed and having to have that cup of coffee and that type of thing?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing that I realized is that how you heal anything is how you heal everything for the most part. And I've been Doing this really kind of specializing in energy for 14 years. And I've noticed that if people are tired, usually there's something going on internally that is requiring more energy to heal or rectify that problem. So our body has, let's say, call it a finite amount of vitality or energy. And if our body is constantly fighting inflammation or infections or is repairing from intense exercise, then we don't have that amount of energy to put towards things like locomotion or movement. So to make this a little more understandable for women who are pregnant, they typically don't have the energy that they would otherwise. And that's because they're growing another human being inside them. So their body is requiring a lot of energy to heal and kind of grow. If you're sick, you don't feel like doing much. You just want to lay in bed. And that's because your body is requiring most of that energy to heal and get better. So we have to understand that usually when people have low energy, there's something else going on inside. And when you start removing foods that irritate the body. So for me, I grew up on a lot of processed foods, a lot of grains, a lot of dairy, very few vegetables and fruit. And I didn't realize what that was doing to me. But the reality is that it was just destroying my gut, which was now just kind of spewing all sorts of undigested foods into my bloodstream. My immune system was reacting to all that. And now my immune system was constantly working to fight all that off. That's one of the reasons why I had very little energy. Typical foods that. The problem too, is that the very foods that drain our energy are also. At least a few of them are also the foods we turn to to have more energy. So I'll give you an example. Caffeine and sugar. So caffeine is the problem with caffeine is that it's a stimulant. And the reason we're so tired for the most part, is that most of us are. Well, let me back up for a second. The reason we're so tired is because our biology has not evolved since we first inhabited this earth. And that basically means that when we're stressed, we go through this fight or flight response. And that's okay if we're in an acute, dangerous situation where we have to run away from something or fight something, and that's the way our ancestors kind of hunted and survived. But today, when we open up our email, it's like, boom. Stress response. When we get A message from our boss saying we need something done by tomorrow. Boom. Stress response. When our kids are screaming, stress response. And it's go, go, go nonstop. So this constant stimulation on our adrenal glands, which are mainly these two little walnut size little glands that sit on top of our kidneys that are responsible for dealing with stress. And so they very easily become overworked. So when you add in stressors or stimulants like caffeine, like sugar, you make that whole thing even worse. And so they, over time, this constant stimulation can wear down the adrenal function. In addition to that, they also wreak havoc on blood sugar levels. Because what stimulants do, like caffeine, like sugar, is that they will prime your adrenals to pump out adrenaline and cortisol, which will break down energy reserves in your body for immediate energy in the blood. So immediate kind of blood sugar with that is that it spikes your blood sugar, and then you get this surge of insulin to take that sugar out of the blood, and then you crash. So then you feel crummy, then you seek that next cup of coffee or that chocolate bar or something sweet to kind of bring you back to life, and it becomes a bit of a vicious cycle. So that's typically how things kind of evolve with a lot of people. And unfortunately, they're not really conscious of what's happening. So. Yeah, so those are two of the biggies.

Now, let me ask you this, because our podcast listeners are pretty healthy, and honestly, most of them kind of know that, like, caffeine and sugar probably aren't that hot for you and are ultimately going to kind of leave you drained if you overdo them? Do you think that there are actual health foods out there, like things that people are eating that they think are healthy, that are hidden energy drains or that are things that could cause autoimmune problems? Did you find things in your diet that kind of shocked you in terms of foods or supplements or drinks that we might at first glance think are healthy, but that could in fact be an energy drain?

Yeah, and I think it really depends on what people think as healthy. What do they qualify as healthy? Some people think whole wheat bread is healthy, but for me, I categorize all bread in the same pile of garbage. So whether it's white bread or brown bread or 12 grain, I bread is bread because it contains very easily digestible wheat, which causes issues with blood sugar, but also because it's high in gluten. And gluten is very problematic for attacking the lining of our Gut, which can lead to things like leaky gut and allergies and autoimmune diseases. So that's one thing. But I don't know if there's. The thing is, everyone responds very uniquely to the same foods. So if both you and I have broccoli, we might respond differently based on our kind of metabolic makeup. But I think what happens more pervasively is almost, and I talk about this in the book, is this kind of dirty daily habit, which we all have, which we all do, which is eating and digestion. And you could be having the healthiest foods, whichever they might be avocados, or you could be having really healthy smoothies. But if your stomach is not able to produce enough hydrochloric acid to break that stuff down, or you don't have enough enzymes that are being secreted into your small intestines to digest and kind of assimilate all that stuff, you're going to feel a little bit more tired because digestion is probably the most energy, intense process in the body. And obviously you're a triathlete, and I don't know if you've experienced this, but I remember I'm trying to think back to the most intense soccer games I've ever played in my life. And sure, you know, they kind of. They kind of wear you down, but I think a big Thanksgiving dinner is like, it takes the cake. Like, I've never fallen asleep after a soccer game, like, on the field, but I've fallen asleep at the table or on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner.

Yeah. And it's one of those things where, with athletes, this is something I see in people, you know, like the people listening to this podcast who are eating healthy diets, but who are just eating enormous amounts of food, period. And I know that you talk about this in your book. This concept of exhausted enzyme pathways, this is something like. I've personally been tested for pancreatic enzyme production, and it's been shown to be insufficient partly just because I've dumped so many dang calories into my body over years of, like, Ironman triathlon training and lifting and everything else, you know, bodybuilding and, like, my body really has rarely gotten a break since I've been, like, 12 years old. You talk about this in the book. And this whole enzyme exhaustion. Can you go into that just a little bit about how that actually happens?

Yeah, it's an interesting sequence of events, because the body. The more you. I mean, the more I learn about this stuff, the more I realize I don't really know anything. And I think nutrition is just one of those things. But the more I learn, the more I kind of get into this stuff, the more I realize that it comes down to fundamentals and really basic principles within the body. Any pathway or hormone, for instance, that is overly called upon will eventually exhaust. So it's essentially a wear and tear type of model. So, for instance, if you constantly eat bananas every single day, you will wear down the enzyme pathways necessary to digest those bananas properly. And so that's why when people start going into elimination diets and different ways of healing their body, variety and rotation are really important. Because you could have the healthiest food, you could have kale every single day. It's a great food. But you're probably better off by rotating kale with Swiss chard, some spinach, some broccoli. So you're rotating your foods so that you're not constantly exposing those foods to the same enzymes that are required to digest those foods day in and day out. You have to give your body a breather, like with exercise. You know, why is it that most pro athletes can't go past 35, just they physically cannot do it anymore because their body just can't keep up.

And so what about people who are like, eating this? So, like, I have a smoothie every day for breakfast. Do you think that with something like that, because it's a daily staple, I should be using digestive enzymes with that, or do you think I should just kind of include some phase of my year where I kind of work myself off that and give my body a break from those specific foods or food combinations?

I would say. I mean, smoothies are awesome because they lessen the burden on the digestive system because the blender kind of does a lot of the chewing for you. Nonetheless, it's still a good idea to rotate some of these things.

And I also started taking enzymes, by the way, since I found out that I had some of these enzyme pathways you talk about in your book that I had tested. Since I found out that they were kind of exhausted, I just started using digestive enzymes a little bit more too, which seems to have helped a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, I think digestive enzymes are probably a necessary add on for most people, just because I don't think I've ever worked with anybody who has. Maybe my aunt. Actually, she's one of the very few people who actually gets energized after a big meal. And I'm like, what? But most people, you know, this is just very sluggish. You know, if you feel bloated gassy, tired. Those are all symptoms. If you feel any of that stuff after a meal within about half an hour to an hour, those are, you know, generally good indications that something in your digestive system is not working properly. And you and I were just at a conference a couple weeks ago, and I feel for those people who speak on stage after lunch because you can see the people in the audience just kind of dozing off, and it's so predictable.

Yeah. Now, you go into a ton of stuff in your book, and the part on enzymes is fantastic. And I encourage people who don't understand this whole enzyme thing to go read the book if you want to wrap your head around enzymes and enzyme exhaustion a little bit more and how that can affect your energy levels during the day. But another thing that you talk about, Yuri, is this renal load and, like the alkaline acid component and what's called potential renal acid load. Can you go into that? I don't think that's something that we've talked about on the podcast before. This, pral.

Yeah, this is something I really. I'm really passionate about because I find that, like, the. The foundation of energy is oxygen. If your cells get oxygen, they're able to produce ATP, which is the basic battery of your body. So if your cells do not get oxygen, then they start going anaerobic, which means they start using more sugar as their means of energy production. And that's a whole other thing, which can lead down to some issues. But if you understand that oxygen is required in your cells to produce energy, then you ask, okay, well, how does oxyge. Oxygen gets there? Through the blood. And your blood carries oxygen through its red blood cells, which are like taxi cabs that carry oxygen. The problem, though, is that these red blood cells can stick together. They become kind of sluggish, and as if they're driving in traffic, if your blood becomes acidic. So this is where pral, or potential renal acid load, comes in. Because it's funny, because I remember reading this article on WebMD or something, and this dietitian said there's no scientific proof that the alkaline diet is any better than anything else. I was like, so basically what you're saying is that there's no benefits eating more vegetables and fruit because that's essentially what an alkaline diet is. And that's what alkalinity. That's where alkalinity comes from.

Yeah, and I've seen those arguments, too, how people will say that what you eat can't affect your net body acidity. Or alkalinity. When you delve in and you look at things like chloride and CO2 and like in your book, you talk about urine like it's just not true. Like you actually do see that the potential renal acid load of your diet has a pretty distinct effect on your. On your ph values.

Yeah. And the thing is that there's studies that show that it can be very quickly changed within about four hours and probably even sooner in a lot of cases. So it's a real simple equation. Potential renal acid load looks at any food once it's metabolized, gives off a certain amount of protein and phosphorus, which are the kind of acidic components, minus the magnesium, potassium and calcium, which are the alkaline components. So if we look at things that are the most acidic, dairy tends to be at the top of the list there. Gives off a huge amount of protein, a huge amount of phosphorus, and lesser amounts of those alkaline minerals. And people talk about cow's milk as being a great source of calcium, and it is. But the problem is that the amount of phosphorus that it includes is far greater than what we should be exposed to. And the reason that's important is because phosphorus actually inhibits calcium absorption in the stomach. So you don't actually absorb a lot of the calcium from your cow's milk. So that's just kind of an aside. So what we want to look at are foods that have a. A more alkaline prowl. So if we look at vegetables, vegetables have very little protein, very little phosphorus, but high potassium, magnesium and calcium. It's not about saying you have to give up meat or you have to give up dairy. I don't think most people should be having dairy anyways. But if you want to have good quality meats, by all means do that in moderation. But also look at balancing that out in greater proportion with a lot of green vegetables, with a lot of rainbow colored vegetables. So you can offset that acid coming in from those foods. The same with grains. A lot of grains are not as acidic as animal products, but they're just past that neutral point where they're slightly acidic. So you have to really balance things out. And the same with fruit. Right. So don't go crazy on the sweet fruit like bananas and mangoes and pineapples. Focus on berries. I think you could probably have a dump truck of berries. Just dump berries in your front lawn and you can eat that for the rest of your life and you'd be fine. I wouldn't say the same thing about watermelon and bananas. So there are certain fruits that you definitely want to focus on.

Yeah, well, my kids go in the backyard right now because we have this huge raspberry bush and I think they actually do do about a dump truckload of berries every day. And they are one of the more nutrient dense fruits that you can eat for sure. You have this chart on, I think it's page eight. No, it's page 60 of your book where you go into some of the acid and alkaline based foods and it's pretty shocking. Like some foods that, that are pretty acidic that you wouldn't expect to be that acidic, like sunflower seeds. And like you talked about low fat cheddar cheese. I mean, it's kind of crazy once you start to delve into that PH value. So that potential renal acid load is really interesting. Another thing that you talk about in the book is the concept of protein. And specifically you get into, and I know that you've worked with both a vegan and a meat based diet, but you get into the idea of quality based proteins and what you call in the book is clean proteins. But a lot of people are aware that beef is a good source of protein and chicken and lamb and even some nuts like almonds or walnuts. What are some of the ones that you talk about in the book in terms of sources of protein that kind of fly under the radar? What are some of the things that you include in the diet that you present in the book and also in your own diet that you would say are good sources of protein that a lot of active people just like don't use or don't have as staples in their diet?

Yeah, for sure. And so here's the thing about protein. So there's the amount of protein in a food and then there's the body's ability to actually use that protein. So my issue, and by all means I'm not promoting, basically my stance is about eating more plant based foods, but you don't have to be vegan to do that. My issue with when you understand what happens to protein when you heat it, it starts to make a little more sense. When you have an egg and you put it in a frying pan, what ends up happening is that it solidifies, it coagulates. And what that does to the protein molecule is it actually renders it a little bit less digestible or usable in the human body. So even though beef and a lot of meats have good sources of protein, the reality is that we're actually cooking them to make them a little bit safer or more tasty to actually consume. But what that ends up doing is compromising the quality of the protein that we're now consuming. So our body has to work a lot harder to break that down. It has to use a lot of our own water to be involved in the digestive process, and it becomes a little more laborious. So I really try to get people to think about vegetarian protein sources because some of them are fantastic. And not to say that, you know, having the occasional steak or whatever is not a good thing because, you know, I love a nice filet every now and then. But I think, you know, when you look at things like hemp seeds, which have about 31 grams of protein per 100 gram serving, so basically, yeah, see.

That'S something that you don't hear people talk. Like, where do people even get hemp seeds? Like, is that something you just order or can you find those at grocery stores these days?

Yeah, honestly, pretty much all grocery stores will carry hemp seeds. Most grocery stores have a health aisle, so they'll definitely be in the health aisle. Health instructions.

And by the way, folks, you don't get high off hemp seeds, right?

No, not at all. Not at all. Hemp seeds. So they have. I would say if you look at, I'm going to give like a kind of a realistic measurement here. So if I make a smoothie, I'll typically add in about 3 tablespoons of hemp seeds and that will provide about 15 grams of protein. So to give perspective on that, I weigh 165 pounds, and based on what most people need, they're looking at 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. You might need a little bit more because you're such a crazy athlete, but for me, I would require about, let's call it 70 grams of protein. So in one smoothie, I can take three tablespoons of hemp seeds and I've got 15 grams just from the hemp seeds. Now if I put in some almond milk or some almonds now, I've added maybe another 15 to 20 grams of protein. So in one smoothie, I could have close to 35 or 40 grams of protein without even touching meat. So that's why I really try to present this information in a scientifically backed manner to let people know that things like hemp seeds or sprouted lentils are terrific sources of protein. Almonds, chia seeds, walnuts. People think about eggs as a hydrate.

Do you sprout lentils yourself or can.

You buy them sprouted I've actually never come across them sprouted, but it's really easy to make them from scratch. You basically just put them in water in a sprouting jar, or you can actually just leave them in a jar covered in water and then just put a little cheesecloth at the top and invert it. It takes about two days or so to sprout. But the beautiful thing about lentils when they're sprouted is that they taste so delicious because they're more water rich. They kind of come alive and there's this beautiful, refreshing, crunchy, watery. It's just such a great, a great little food that you can add into salads. It's just so awesome. People think about eggs as a great protein food. The reality is that eggs only have about 6 grams of protein per egg. You know, it's funny because bread, one slice of white bread has about 5 grams of protein. So it's funny how we consider certain things as high protein foods and others not. What makes white bread not a high protein food when it almost has the same amount of protein as an egg. And in comparison to things like walnuts, they have about a third of the amount of protein. So it's a very interesting conversation.

Yeah, you've got some great protein sources in the book. And it's crazy how like you could skip out on the whey proteins. Let's say you want to like whatever your kidneys are under a lot of stress. You tested for high albumin. You want to maybe eliminate some potential immune triggers which a lot of these animal based or even whey proteins and things like that can do. You could in your morning smoothie put sprouted lentils, spirulina and hemp seeds. Three things that most people don't even know about until now. And you could have a fantastic source of protein in your smoothie.

Absolutely.

Nice. I like it. Okay, so there's a ton of things that you talk about in your book, but one thing I wanted to make sure that we get to is this seven day Energy Reset. Just because we talked about enzyme exhaustion and we talked about the need to sometimes give your body a break. And you know, I don't really want to force you to give away the farm or anything like this, but can you give us some tips or give us kind of the basic bird's eye overview of what a seven day Energy Reset would look like?

Yeah. So the seven day Energy Reset is a seven day plan that is mainly food based. So obviously you can go through the book and adopt any of the other protocols that I talk about. But the seven day energy reset in and of itself is simply by adding these specific recipes and foods for the next seven days, you can literally double your energy. Obviously it's tough to quantify that. But the reason we say double your energy is because we surveyed a lot of our clients about a year ago and we asked them, because we've used this protocol for several years now, we asked them, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much has your energy improved after following the seven day plan? And it just worked out to be about kind of a doubling of energy based on the numerical numbers they gave us. So the whole idea with this is to incorporate the foods that we talk about in the book, while eliminating the ones that we talk about as being problematic. So obviously things like bread and sugar and caffeine, obviously those are kind of a no, no. But we really focus on nutrient dense foods that throughout the week provide a huge amount of nutrition and satiation. So you don't actually need as many calories because you're getting a ton of nutrients. So the other thing is that throughout the week, I'm a big proponent of kind of allowing some days to be higher calories, some other days lower calories, which is kind of, I think, a more natural state for human physiology. We're not meant, we're not designed to be eating five or six meals a day. I don't think our paleolithic ancestors ever had access to a fridge or Starbucks. So some days they had more, some days they had less, some days they had none. And the seven day energy reset basically allows the body to have certain days where there's maybe a lighter day, but still three meals throughout the day with optional snacks. Maybe the next day has slightly higher calorie load. And it's all within the parameters of the all day energy diets kind of food spectrum, which is really about getting a lot of good quality veggies in, some clean meats, and really removing a lot of the other junk out there. And what I really strive to do is show people, because when people think about, oh my God, I can only eat vegetables or meat or whatever, it doesn't sound that appetizing. But my goal, what I've spent a lot of time on the last couple years, is showing people how they can actually eat like this every single day of their lives and enjoy delicious recipes that energize them and take less than like 10 minutes to make.

Yeah, that's kind of like what you were known for initially when I first met you was like, you were the guy who taught people how to detox instead of using supplements, using real food. And it seems like when I look over, like your seven day energy reset, for example, a typical day, it's like you got your blue chia smoothie, you have some vegan sushi, a romaine juice, something called morning millet, and that's one day. And some of these foods that kind of fit into that alkaline profile that we talked about, that are some of the clean proteins that we talked about that aren't energy drains or require a ton of enzyme exhaustion. So it's pretty cool. I mean, you could just print out this chart on page 106 and slap it to your refrigerator and have kind of a reboot. So it's really cool stuff. Plus it looks pretty tasty. I honestly have not tried most of the recipes in here because I just got my hands on your book recently, but there's definitely some that are going to wind up on the Greenfield dinner table sometime in the near future.

Your name is fitting, so it's perfect, right?

Yes, exactly. Now, you've also speaking of recipes, you have a cookbook that comes along with this book too, is that right?

Yeah, it's kind of an unannounced bonus. So we just give it as a free gift for anyone who gets the book from the website. And you're one of the contributors to the community cookbook, and the community cookbook is 67 recipes.

And by the way, just in case people think it's a total vegetarian cookbook, one of the recipes that I contributed for that cookbook is bone marrow and our favorite bone marrow recipe. So it's not all vegetables?

No, not at all. It's actually, there's actually quite a few meat based dishes. There's a lot of salmon, a lot of chicken, a little bit of sausage, good quality meats here and there. But I mean, I just shot all the videos for these recipes and they're unbelievable. The taste and how quick they are to make is ridiculous. So it's a nice free gift that we're giving everyone who gets the book.

Cool. Okay, so the book comes out. What's the day?

Launches in stores September 23rd.

Okay, cool. So I'll put a link with the book, the cookbook bonus. And I know Yuri's going to have a lot of other really cool bonuses that go along along with this book. It's kind of like a atypical book launch in that you don't just buy the book at your bookstore necessarily. You can get a ton of other bonuses along with it. If you go to the URL that I'm going to set up for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com energy so well worth the read. Totally understandable. You don't have to be rocket science to delve into this stuff. And yeah, everything's there for you, from millet to hemp seeds to tons of smoothies and everything else. So Yuri, nice job on this book, man.

Thank you very much, buddy.

So it's called the All Day Energy Diet. Check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com energy and until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield signing out along with Yuri.

OK, see you later.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge.

Fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

It.