Episode #101: Can You Mix Powerlifting and Endurance Sports?

In this podcast episode, do endurance exercise and powerlifting mix what caloric deficit is actually healthy? Static contraction exercise what are superfoods? Bonking while cycling Alternatives to heartburn medications Relaxing before a triathlon how to use hamstrings More when you run Exercising on a raw diet Exercising in the heat Is guacamole healthy? Accuracy of body fat measurement devices Treating torn muscles can women train like men? Eating healthy when your family doesn't Natural eczema treatments how to breathe while swimming Multivitamin absorption Is cooking with aluminum dangerous? Does beta alanine work? And what is H2O overdrive. 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. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Coming off of episode 100 and moving on to the next hundred episodes with episode 101 where we'll be answering tons of questions from listeners and also conducting an interview with a guy named Dr. Jerry Moylan who has a host of both endurance and weightlifting titles and awards to his name. And he's going to tell us how to combine training for endurance and doing things like running and bicycling and and still do heavy weightlifting, powerlifting, explosive sports, things of that nature. He and I are both going to talk about how to actually mix those two elements. We will have some special announcements today. We'll move on to that Q and A and then we'll finish up with that interview with Dr. Jerry. So let's go ahead and jump right into episode number 101 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Special Announcements.

First of all, a huge thanks to those of you who donated to the podcast. To help keep this thing rolling along. I'm sending everybody who donated this week a free BenGreenfieldFitness.com t shirt along with a few other goodies thrown in. And if you want to donate to the show, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, scroll down and there's a little button there where you can donate and you can also now conveniently donate with your phone. I'll put a link on there which will allow you to donate with your phone as well. But it's super easy. It helps support. Even a dollar or five dollars always helps. Keep this Show Rolling along Now, other special topics. I wanted to talk a little bit about the Body Transformation Club because somebody asked me what they would actually learn about as a member. And I just want to give you an example of the things that we went over in June inside the Body Transformation Club via both the postcards that I send out to all the members as well as the videos right there on a secret protected section of BenGreenfieldFitness.com so we covered how to make your own hummus and that was a video. Another video was a variation of an abdominal exercise. Two must have spices that you need to have in your kitchen. A technique to significantly increase the force you can produce during exercise, how to make a natural energy drink, what to do when you don't have access to a pull up bar or pull down machine, and how to eat healthy for cheap. And all of that stuff is via both video and text, via postcards that I send to people and access to a secret page that they have. So that's what the Body Transformation Club is all about. Just to give you a sample of what went over in June. And if you want to be a part of the Body Transformation club, it costs seven bucks. I know that from first hand experience. There are people charging close to $100 for something very similar on a monthly basis and the Body Transformation Club is seven bucks a month to do so. Just a simple fun way to stay accountable, stay fit and stay healthy. So check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes of podcast number 101. If you're listening to this podcast on the day it's released, then tonight is Chef Todd's free video webcast. So if you signed up for that video webcast on how to use fresh ingredients to create fast meals in five simple steps, then make sure that you attend. You'll also have access to a post webcast recording to listen to as well. But he's going to have a few things there live that you're definitely going to want to take advantage of. Speaking of live, I mentioned the past couple podcasts that the Marathon Dominator is live and that I have a free 30 minute. It's actually almost a 40 minute video on training techniques for marathon and how to actually put together a four day a week marathon training routine. You can find the information on that@marathondominator.com the topic for this week over at my other podcast, the Get Fit Guys Quick and Dirty Tips was how to make a home gym. So if you want to learn how to make a home gym, go Listen to the get fit guy and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Well, and then finally there is about another week left here to where you write. If you write me@Ben greenfieldfitness.com I can still squeeze you into the trip to Thailand that I'm organizing for any triathletes who want to travel to Thailand with me and do a couple of triathlons there in beautiful Phuket, Thailand. Beautiful tourist friendly Phuket, Thailand. So we have a ton of questions to go over today. You can access any of the links from the special announcements in the show notes to episode number 101 and we're going to have a brief message then move on to the listener Q and A. Get the Inside Edge from Ben Greenfield.

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If you have a question for the podcast, just email BenGreenfieldFitness.com call 877-209-9439 or if you're international, you can Skype me for free. And my Skype username is Pacific Fit. We also had a couple of questions come in via Twitter this week and I'll be sending a T shirt to the best question that came through via Twitter. And an easy way to ask me a question via Twitter is to just follow me on Twitter and then send a message. The best way to send a message is actually just write your question and then at the beginning or the end of your question just write BenGreenfield. Use a little sign right BenGreenfield and I will get it. To send me a direct message on Twitter I need to be following you. Sometimes it's hard for me to go follow everybody who's following me. And so if you really want to get a hold of me, use that. BenGreenfieldSign but we definitely had a Twitter question. Win a free T shirt this week and I'm going to extend that for this next week. The best question that comes in via Twitter or will get one of those free T shirts. So the first question this week comes from listener Dave and Dave says I am 50 years old trying to lose 2 pounds per week and train for a bicycling century ride this September. I keep a food and activity log, and I am eating a caloric deficit of 1,000 calories a day. So, for example, if I burn 1,000 calories with my activities, I eat 2,000 calories. Since I've gone to under 1,000 calories, I've lost between 1.8 and 2.3 pounds each week for four weeks. And I felt fine. Do you see any problems with this? Well, the idea is that if you get into a caloric deficit that is too great, you can begin feeling very fatigued, very tired, unable to actually achieve a high enough intensity in your workouts to become fat, fit and do a little bit of damage to your body, because it's hard for your body to constantly be having to tap into not only fat, but also lean muscle tissue and organs for energy. And that's why you need to be careful with a caloric deficit. Now, I've done a lot of resting metabolic rate testing on people, and what that is, it's a machine that you get hooked up to that figures out how many calories your body is burning during the day. And my recommendations based on that test is that females not under fuel by more than 500 calories and males not under fuel by more than 1,000 calories. Now, in your case, Dave, you're saying that you're eating 2,000 calories if you burn 1,000 calories with your activities. But the only thing that's not taking into account is the fact that you typically will burn several hundred calories per day, or I'm sorry, several thousand calories per day just living, just walking around in your activities of daily living. So if you're burning 1,000 calories a day with exercise, and then you're probably burning at least another 2000 with your resting metabolic rate, and then you're eating 2000 calories, well, it means you're burning 3000, eating 2000. 1000 calorie deficit. Again, not too bad. So what I would say is I wouldn't go any lower than what you're currently at. If you're a female listening into this, don't try to underfuel by 1000 calories. Go closer to 500. And the reason for that is because females tend to have lower metabolic rates because they're typically smaller individuals. Under fueling by 1000 calories leaves them with very few calories coming in. We talk about some females need to eat 500 to 800 calories a day, which is just too low and can send your body into a state of what's called ketosis, which essentially means that you're forming potentially toxic ketone bodies from all of the protein and the fat that you're burning through and that can eventually do some damage to your organs. So just be careful, Dave, I wouldn't go a lot lower than 1000, but especially if you feel great, if you have good energy, then that's fine. I know some guys with high metabolisms who would just waste away if they were under fueling by 1000 calories per day. But again, your body is a lot of times a very trustworthy measurement and reliable tool for you to listen to. And then a follow up part to your question, you say, I am lifting weights and using Pete Sisko's static contraction method. I was wondering what you thought. And for those of you who want to know what the static contraction method is, basically it's a form of weightlifting where you hold typically a heavier weight than you would normally work with in a fixed position with your muscles fully contracted for an extended period of time. So usually you're only doing one or two reps and you're holding the weight for about 15 to 25 seconds. And the idea with static stretching, Dave, is it does train your central nervous system to be able to generate a greater amount of force and it can allow you to lift heavier weights and be stronger. On the flip side, because you're not moving a muscle through a range of motion, you're not tearing as many muscle fibers as you would normally. And so you aren't going to build muscle quite as easily. You also aren't going to work a full range of muscle fibers which can actually harm you from an athletic standpoint. And then you'll also burn fewer calories because there's less of a cardiovascular stimulus when you're doing that style of weightlifting. So if your goal is to get strong static contraction training, like taking a bunch of weight, putting it on a bench press bar, and just holding that bench press bar with your arms slightly Bent forward for 20 seconds is going to help you out quite a bit. But you could get better results with doing a form of weightlifting in which you're actually moving your muscles through a full range of motion. So I would say that the static contraction method would be something you could supplement a weightlifting program in. But it shouldn't be the only type of lifting that you do. I have used that before, for example, to increase the bench press. Back when I was weightlifting, I'd use a static contraction set after I'd finished all my bench pressing sets to make myself a stronger bench presser. But again, that wasn't the only style of training I was using. So, listener Miguel asks, here in Portugal, the superfoods market is growing quickly. I would like to know what your opinion is about superfoods like spirulina, maca, goji berries, cocoa. The marketers are always trying to say that it is good for your stomach and for your brain. If you agree with these foods, how can I introduce them into my diet? Well, superfoods are kind of a catch all term now, Miguel. And you know, blueberries used to be considered a superfood. And interestingly, they're a very affordable and readily accessible superfood that contain tons of the type of compounds that a lot of other less easy to find superfoods contain. But the idea is that a superfood typically contains a very, very dense amount of nutrients for as many calories as are actually in it, and usually contains a very high amount of antioxidants as well. Now, I consume superfoods on a daily basis. There are a few of the supplements that I take. For example, I take the Enterprime supplement, which has superfoods like spirulina in it. I take the Solar Synergy supplement, which has like the goji berry and some of the high antioxidant fruit blends in it. But I also make sure that I eat a balanced balance diet of fruit and vegetables and I don't live on the superfoods or rely on those for the sole means of my nutrition and mineral and vitamin intake. Now, I can tell you from personal experience that I feel great when I am consuming superfoods and I get sick more quickly when I'm not consuming them. The issue, and we'll get into this a little bit later in the podcast, is making sure that you're not overpaying for superfoods that might be of subpar qualities, subpar quality, and also that you're not using the high antioxidant containing superfoods all the time. Because while antioxidants are good for you and can help to combat a lot of the free radical damage that occurs in your body from exercise and pollution and just the activities of daily living, taking in too many antioxidants actually has this diminishing return where your body almost is too protected. And it's similar to what would happen if you put a baby in a bubble and protected them from every single immune system stimulant that could ever come their way. They'd have very weak immune systems. Well, in the same way, if you're always combating free radicals with high amounts of daily antioxidant intake, taking tons of superfoods every day. Research has shown that you can actually fight against the anti aging effect that superfoods are supposed to have, because your body is never getting exposed or never getting allowed to fight off some of the stresses of free radicals, because all these superfoods are doing it for you. And so that can tend to come back and bite you. So using the superfoods are definitely something I'd recommend just from personal experience. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence out there on them decreasing the net acidity in your body, increasing of course, the antioxidant activity, helping out the immune system a little bit. But I would definitely go after real foods like blueberry and spinach and the things you can get your hands on easily. And then if you have some money left over, go after your superfoods. And like I said, the two that I take are Solar Synergy and Ener Prime. Solar Synergy is made by Mount Capra. Ener prime is made by Impacts. So the next question is from listener Bob. And Bob says, why do I bonk after only two hours of riding my bike? I ride at a reasonable pace, only 17-20 mph. Not a crazy high heart rate, maybe 130 and I'm not really winded. I consume two bottles of fuel. After two hours. I am really slow and entirely unable to use my big chainring. So it looks like Bob is consuming fuel during his ride and it looks like he's doing two bottles of Hammer Heed and two scoops each. So it comes out to about 200 calories an hour. Well, for a two hour ride, most people can get by on 200 calories an hour. Assuming that the carbohydrate stores are adequate and the body storage carbohydrate is full going into the ride. So if you're consuming those Bob, and you're still bonking or hitting a wall, then it might be that your carbohydrate intake or your calorie intake is too low, your nutrition plan and you'd want to actually increase that a little bit to make sure that you're not going into a ride starved. The other issue is if you're starting your ride in the morning having not eaten anything, it can also be a little bit a carbohydrate depleting while you're asleep. And you can go into your ride with fewer carbohydrates on board than if you had done your ride in the afternoon after you've had Breakfast and lunch. And then the other issue is maybe you're not bonking, maybe you're dehydrated, you haven't consumed enough water, Maybe there's some other medical issues going on, such as an inability to adequately deliver oxygen to your tissues. So there can be some other issues going on that I think about. But make sure that you're actually fueling yourself well on your daily nutrition intake and continue to eat while you're on the bike. And then what I would do is if you are, if you're really wanting to make sure that you cover your bases, then go get a physical and do some blood screens. You could also look at some of your oxygen carrying parameters. You could look at some of your internal performance factors. Bioletics. Dr. Richard Cohen over at Bioletics is a great guy to hook up with to get some things tested, like your ferritin levels, iron levels, testosterone, cortisol, some of the things that go beyond carbohydrate levels. So good question. Listener Sean asks, I have a quick question from your E Health Handbook on page 94. You mentioned medicines that cause weight gain and refer to Nexium. I have been a long time Nexium and Prilosec user for gastroesophageal reflux disorder. Do you have any more reference on the effect of Nexium and weight gain or potentially better alternatives? Well, the issue with, with something like a drug like Nexium is that the way that that works is by blocking or inhibiting the proton pumps in your stomach, so you're not able to produce as much stomach acid. Well, the issue with that is that if you significantly reduce the amount of acid in your stomach, then it inhibits your ability to properly digest food. So then your food isn't getting broken down properly. Vitamin and mineral absorption is diminished. The metabolism can be affected. And essentially when you reduce the acid in your stomach, you're eliminating one of your primary defense mechanisms for foodborne infections and so you increase your risk of food poisoning as well. And the big issue with Nexium and Prilosec is that they're basically band aids. They're not considering what's actually going on that can cause the gastroesophageal problems. So for example, if you have a deficiency in digestive enzymes, that can be an issue. If you have like H. Pylori or, or some type of fungal and bacterial growth in your gastrointestinal tract that can also affect your digestion. If the foods that you are eating are the type that can cause heartburn or you're not drinking enough water with your food. That can also cause some issues. So what are the things that you can do or some of the things that you can do? The first would be make sure that you drink a lot of water with your food. Just good, clean, pure water. So I'm not talking about Pepsi or Coke or tea, just water. So if you take in about 2 liters or so of pure water per day, that can help out quite a bit. Next thing is to build up the levels of the good bacteria in your stomach. I would recommend that you be taking a probiotic. I don't want you to consider this medical advice. I'm not treating your condition. I'm just giving you advice on some of the things that I would do if I had the gastroesophageal issues. And I have had digestive issues before, and I have completely, completely controlled them through some of the methods that I'm sharing and about to share with you. So probiotics can help tremendously. The next thing that can help out quite a bit are digestive enzymes. Four of the most popular ones would be Trypsin, chymotrypsin, papain, and bromelain. One of the supplements that I take on a daily basis is called recoveries, not only because it helps fight against muscle inflammation and helps me to recover after my workouts, but also because it has digestive enzymes in it which help me to break down the things that I'm eating. The next thing that I would consider is a way to control any type of fungus or pylori that might be present in your digestive tract. Garlic is a great way to do that. For example, you can take a garlic clove, you can douse it in olive oil. After you've kind of chopped just a little bit of the top off, throw it in the oven for about 20 to 30 minutes wrapped in that aluminum foil. Make sure you drench it in olive oil first and then take it out, salt it, and eat it. And that's. That's a great way to help with gut issues in terms of fungus and bacteria. You can do that on a daily basis. Make sure you have a really good brand of mint gum around or some strong Altoids if you have a loved one, even though the garlic will be coming out your pores anyway, so it could be a moot point. Oil of oregano is also really effective. You can take a concentrated oil of oregano and. And put a few drops of that in a glass of water and drink that down. You can Also, take a diluted oil of oregano and put it directly underneath your tongue and take it that way. For more information on oregano, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for oregano or just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com oregano so those are some of the things I would definitely be doing, from the probiotics to the digestive enzymes to the garlic and the oregano. And, and that will help you out quite a bit. In addition to making sure that of course, you're avoiding things like hot foods, peppers, any of the foods that traditionally seem to trigger that for you. And interestingly, some of the foods that traditionally cause food allergies can also be an issue. So if you find that you're getting this after you take in wheat or dairy or soy or eggs, those are some of the common things that you may want to eliminate from your diet and see if that helps you out with your gastrointestinal issues. So we're gonna move on to a Twitter question from Kim Landrum on Twitter. And Kim says, when the training is done and it's time to put up or shut up, how do you prep the day before a big race? I can't calm down and sleep well. Kim, I've talked on this show before about the importance of visualization. Now, One of the CDs that I use, Twist Achieve a deep state of relaxation, is called the I Am Lecture series. It's the same one that the Navy Seals use. And you could google that and do a search for it, but that helps out quite a bit in terms of training your body to get into a deep state of relaxation. Some of the things that I'll also do are entertainment based. You know, I'll go to a movie theater or get a video, I'll do some social networking on Facebook, talk with friends. But basically doing things that take your mind off the race. You know, stay away from the race expo, stay away from the race course, stay away from the things that are going to keep your mind worrying about the race and focus on the things that either put you into a deep state of relaxation or entertain you. I can tell you the day before a triathlon, I wake up, get my training out of the way, and the rest of the day I'm reading magazines, watching tv, maybe going to an air conditioned movie and just not thinking, thinking at all about the race. That helps out quite a bit. I would definitely be working some visualization and relaxation into your routine as well. Another really good source on mental tactics would be an article that I have coming out in Triathlete Magazine here in a few weeks. Check the August issue of Triathlete Magazine and that will give you some information more on mental tactics for for getting ready for a big race. Now another Twitter question from User wants to run again and they say after 25 years of doing the marathon shuffle, how do I change my running gait to use my hammies and my glutes more? Well, that's a great question. It's very insightful because when you use your hammies and your glutes, you tend to be able to produce a little bit more force, pop off the ground a little bit more easily, and you tend to have a greater distance travel travel per stride while you're running. The issue is getting those things to fire versus just using your hip flexors and quads, which a lot of runners do. And of course the number one principle is that if they're there, you'll use them. So all runners should be doing either a resistance training program that involves kickouts and sidekicks, squats, lunges, leg presses, exercises that utilize those portions of the body, or they should be utilizing steep hills in their program. Steep hill sprints and steep hill climbs as well as stairs can help tremendously with building those muscles. So either doing the resistance training or the hill training, or preferably doing both, can help out quite a bit. Some of my favorite exercises for working the hammies and the glutes are kick outs, fire hydrants, reverse lunges, deep squats can help out quite a bit. And we'll actually talk a lot about exercises too with Dr. Jerry Moylan during today's interview. But using or working those muscles and then running with those muscles during the same periods of time in your training program that you're working those muscles can help out quite a bit because you kind of get that mind muscle connection. As a matter of fact, running when those muscles are just a little bit sore from a workout, believe it or not, can make you think about them more and target them a little bit more. The other technique that I've used to actually work on my running form is I'll go on a run, but about every 10 minutes or so I'll stop and drop down into a crawl position and do some fire hydrants to get my glute medius firing and working and then get up and keep running. And I use that based on a recommendation from another coach that I was talking with. And it actually really makes you think about using your butt more while you're running. It's an interesting technique that might get you some funny looks when you're in a crawl position by the side of the road. But you know, if you wait until a time during your run when you're going through a park or you're doing loops and running by your garage, it can definitely be something that you can work into your program. So User want to run Again for asking the best question via Twitter this week I'm going to send you a free BenGreenfieldFitness.com t shirt. You just need to use Twitter or use email to send me your mailing address and I'll get that in the mail to you. So listener Jesse is the next question, and Jesse says, I've been vegan for the past 15 years, but I've been interested in transitioning to a raw vegan diet and I'm unsure if this will be wise with my activity level. I work out five, six days a week and have increased my running mileage to about 35 miles per week. I saw that you have a new diet plan on your website specifically for vegans, but before I purchase it, I wanted to see if it has a lot of raw components in it or if it can be easily modified to incorporate more. Well, first of all, as far as transitioning into a raw vegan diet from a vegan diet, there's not going to be a lot of differences in terms of the way that you're going to feel. The raw vegan diet, some of the foods that you consume will have more of the intact digestive enzymes. Some of the foods you'll find will be tougher to digest, but because they may not be quite as cooked as they were when you were doing your vegan diet. And so you may want to consider, for example, taking some of the digestive enzymes that I just got done talking about in my response to that other question, taking some of the recoveries that could help you out quite a bit. Now, the nice part about that particular supplement is it also has branched chain amino acids in it. And if you combine that with some whole amino acids, for example, Bio letics make some whole amino acids, then you can make sure that you're getting some of the amino acids and the proteins that are a bit easier to neglect when you're on a raw vegan diet. Now, the vegan diet that's on my website over@pacificfit.net if you click on training plans, you'll end up on a page that shows all the different plans that I write that are there to get and download on your computer. That particular plan is a vegan plan. It's also a completely rare raw vegan plan, so there's no actual cooking that's involved with it. And so to answer your question, yes, that is raw. So there's not a lot of changes that would need to be made. Someone on your activity level can definitely do a raw diet, but I would make sure that you include proteins. And actually as a part of that program, I make a recommendation that people get their hands on some recoveries and some branched chain amino acids and some whole amino acids to supplement that raw vegan diet. So the next question is from listener Chuck. Chuck says, this weekend I did a 66 mile ride followed by a 10 mile run in the blazing heat. The run was miserable. My usual pace is 7 minute miles, but this run ended up being an 8 minute mile pace. I didn't have any water or gels on the run. The whole time all I could think about is having something to drink. I stopped about three times during the run and had to wait a couple minutes before starting again. Can I blame this all on the heat and dehydration or could there be more at play? This is a pretty easy question to answer if you ran a 10 mile run in the blazing heat. Without a doubt. Not only were you getting carbohydrate depleted and low blood sugar because you had nothing out there with you, but you also were definitely dehydrating your body and the carryover effect from that will definitely go into the workout the next day. Day mess with your body for the next couple of days if you get severely dehydrated and so you can do quite a bit of damage to your body. That's why after, if I do a run, after I go on a bike ride, if I'm training for a triathlon, then what I do is the run. I run as loops around my house so I can run into my kitchen or run into my garage and grab some water and a gel every two to three miles to keep me going because otherwise it just turns out into a junk training session. So definitely enable yourself to have water and fuel out there and available because the effects of dehydration can not just hit you the rest of that day, but they can go on and mess up a lot of the rest of your training week. The next question is from listener Laird and Laird says, I've been addicted to this new lunch lately. Pre cooked chicken strips, thawed quinoa, guacamole, salsa, bit of ranch dressing. I heat up the chicken, add all the ingredients reheat a little bit more. All of this done in the microwave and I'm done. It's fast and easy. I'm addicted to the flavor. But wondered what your thoughts were on the overall nutrition. Well, there's definitely evidence out there that you might not be doing yourself a favor by radiating your food in the microwave. Laird, I would definitely consider if you have access to an oven where you can bake or broil that food and those pre cooked chicken strips, that would be a little bit better for you than dehydrating and radiating them with microwave rays. So I do have a microwave. I'll use it occasionally to heat up a cup of coffee or some water. But I would not recommend that you use your microwave on a regular basis. I use mine about once every 24 to 48 hours. Now, the guacamole and salsa that you talked about, if it's homemade, that's one issue. It's if it's store bought guacamole, you got to be cautious. I mean, even a company like Kraft, their guacamole doesn't have avocados in it. They make this fake guacamole and use all hydrogenated oils to simulate guacamole. And then they just add a bunch of synthetic chemicals and colorings to finish up the experience. And you're convinced that you're eating guacamole. I guarantee if you tried some of it and weren't being told that it was being called guacamole, you'd probably think it tasted like green chemicals. So you need to be really careful with guacamole. And, you know, if you look at, say, a guacamole that actually does have avocados in it, the ingredient list starts off with skim milk. And this would be, for example, here's a store bought version, Dean's guacamole. D. I printed off the label here, and I have it. Skim milk, soybean oil, tomatoes, water, hydrogenated vegetable oil, eggs, avocado pulp as the seventh ingredient. Avocado should be the first ingredient in guacamole, folks. If it's not, then something's going wrong. Move through a bunch of gum and cornstarch and then down to the bottom of the list where we have calcium chloride, citric acid, dextrose, and artificial color, namely Fd and C blue number 1, Fdc red number 40, Fdc yellow number 5, and Fdc yellow 6. Now, I'm not sure why guacamole needs oil added because avocados already have all their own Fat and oil. I'm not sure why milk would be the first ingredient in guacamole. I'm really not sure why they need all that hydrogenated vegetable oil. It's probably because avocado appears in. It's actually not seventh place, it's eighth place. Avocado appears eighth on that ingredient list. And then they add a bunch of preservatives, colors, chemicals. You really need to be careful. Take some guacamole, dice up some tomatoes, some cilantro, a little bit of lime juice, some peppers, mash all that together, put a little salt and pepper in. You've got guacamole in your kitchen. It's super easy to make guacamole. No excuse for not making that yourself. So definitely be careful when you're using these store bought ingredients. If I were to modify this list that you gave me, the quinoa is pretty good. I'd use some fresh avocados or some homemade guacamole. If the salsa is real and doesn't have a bunch of added corn syrup and a bunch of added preservatives and that's fine. Otherwise, just grab a fresh tomato and dice that up. Add a little paprika and chili powder if you want, and then the little bit of ranch dressing that you're using, probably not a big deal. I mean, there are some things that make ranch, you know, not the best choice, especially when you're consuming it in high amounts, drowning a salad in it, but a little bit here and there isn't a big deal. So ultimately, make a few modifications. Try not to cook it in the microwave, try to use fresh ingredients, and you're on the right track. So the nice part about that recipe is it's very low on the glycemic index, so you're not getting a lot of blood sugar. Play with that meal. So the next question is from listener Ryan. And Ryan says, I've had my body fat measured via the impedance method standing on a scale at the gym. I've also done a handheld device at home, and I've used tape measurements and calculators on the Internet. Needless to say, I get wide variations on body fat percentage. Are one of these methods more accurate than the other? Well, there's a whole bunch of different ways to measure body fat. You can do the skin pinching method, you can do body circumference. You can get dunked in a tank. You can do the electrical and pull impedance, which you did. You can do one called the Dexa, which is the same way that you take bone density, it's a dual X ray absorbiometry scan. A whole bunch of different ways. That DEXA test is definitely one of the more accurate ways to test. Of course, the flip side of that is you expose your body to radiation every time you do it. So it's definitely not something you'd want to do on a regular basis. I personally, with all my clients, use either circumference methods. For my clients who are around the world who need to measure it themselves, I'll use skin fold methods with some of the clients that I work with locally using skin fold calipers, which can actually be really accurate. The issue with the bioelectrical impedance scales that you stand on or the handheld devices is that for those measurements to be accurate, you need to be in an optimal state of dehydration, meaning you're or of hydration, meaning you're not dehydrated. And you need to do it in the same state of dehydration or the same state of hydration every time that you do that test. So you'd want to do it, for example, in the morning, 7am after you've had a glass of water, and never do at any time other than that. And the measurements will be somewhat accurate. But the bigger you are, the less accurate those can be. So just be real, real careful with those. If I were measuring my body fat all the time, I would be using a three pinch skin fold method where you use some calipers, you pinch the skin in a few different sites, you feed that into an equation and you get a pretty accurate body fat number. Especially once you've done it quite a few times and you get used to the type of measurement that's involved, you'll get very good at it and that can be very accurate. And you can get skin fold calipers for a very good deal. For example on Amazon.com so next question is from listener Steve and Steve said you were mentioned by a friend as a possible help for a lingering problem I have with a torn rectus femoris. I would appreciate any thoughts or info on possible recovery steps. I tore it five years ago and cannot get it to heal. Well, Steve, I'm not a doctor or sports medicine physician. If I were in your shoes, I would be addressing the fact that there could be some hypoxic scar tissue there, some immobile scar tissue, meaning that there's a low amount of blood vessels feeding that area that's torn. And because scar tissue is formed over that area, it's a little less mobile than it should be. So the way that you can get that done is you can do some soft tissue work on a regular basis, either yourself or done by a medical massage therapist to try and break up some of that scar tissue and increase mobilization and range of motion in the area in. In the torn area. The other thing that you can do is you can increase capillarization to the area. You can use like a topical magnesium supplement that you put across that to actually get it warmed up and displace some of the calcium that can tend to adhere in a torn muscle area. So I'll be doing that along with the medical massage, warming it up well before you do any type of activities. And then a few other things that can work quite well are art or active release therapy. I would look for an art practitioner in your area. I would also look at primal reflex release technique. You can do a search for primal reflex Release technique@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I interviewed a practitioner. I've had it done before, and it can work in some cases with painful or immobile muscles that are that way because of an injury. It basically is based on the correct concept that you tend to be in this constant state of spasm and you have to let your mind actually kind of let go and relax that muscle area and then it begins to increase its range of motion because you're not cramping or spasming in that area anymore. So I'd look into all those methods. I'm not saying one single method is going to work, but if you try some of those things I just mentioned, you should be able to see some success and some progress. Listener Juan says, I've been somewhat fit and gone to the gym for years now, and my wife asked me to help her shed off some unwanted pounds. But I'm not sure if she can train like a man does or can she? Women can train like men. You know, it's. It's kind of a little bit foggy area. What, you know, what's man style training? What's woman style training? But the basic idea is that a woman has to have a lot of testosterone on board or be adding hormones to her body artificially in order to actually start to get a body like a man. A woman can pretty much lift almost exactly like a man in terms of weight training or cardiovascular training, experience all the same type of beneficial lean muscle and toning effects, and not have to risk bulking up. There's very few women who I know who lift heavy and bulk up Occasionally I'll come across someone who isn't taking extra hormones, isn't taking testosterone, and still appears to be a little bit bulky from the weightlifting. And typically that's fixed with a slight adjustment of the program to increase reps, decrease weight, and they do just fine. So ultimately, let's say you were going through a program like my Shape 21 program. I wrote that program for males or females. Both could do the same version of that program. Both would see similar amounts of success in terms of fat loss, attainment of a lean body, that type of thing. So your wife can definitely train in the same way that you do. So listener David says, I want to include as much of your holistic fueling eating plan as I can. However, I live with my wife and two teenage daughters and I need to figure out how to incorporate, incorporate your plan into a more family centered meal plan. Well, it can be tough when your spouse or your family is not wanting to eat healthy in the same way that you do. So some of the things that you can do is first of all, no matter whether or not there's a salad present at the meal, you need to make sure that you have a salad, lots of greens. Follow the salad recipes that are there in the holistic fueling meal plan, and no matter what they cook, have a salad around. So if you want to grab a little bit of what they have, you can actually include greens with that. Top it off, top off the greens with, you know, the casserole or whatever it is that they're eating, and you can actually get a little bit of a taste, feel like you're participating in their meal, but not get a lot of the deleterious effects. When hamburgers are served, you would want to modify the hamburger preparation by using kale or spinach or lettuce and wrapping your hamburger in greens rather than using a bun. Because part of that holistic fueling meal plan is there's really very, very small amounts of gluten that are involved. Same goes for corn. If you didn't want to use a lot of butter, you can sprinkle just a little bit of cheese on there. Lemon pepper is also a really good way to go along with a bit of olive oil for pizza. If your family likes to have pizza, there's not a ton of pizza in the holistic fueling meal plan. So one of the things you can do is grab one slice of pizza and just cover that with a salad with a bunch of mixed greens and then eat the salad or eat the pizza through the salad. That Helps out quite a bit. If you want to cook any of the stir fry type of recipes in that holistic meal plan, then you can get your family whole wheat wraps, some extra teriyaki sauce, some extra white rice, or yakisoba noodles, and they can get all the carbs and the sauces and everything like that. And you can still eat healthy by just having, having the meat and the vegetable portion of that stir fry. You can do like a Mexican night, like a taco burrito night, and everybody else can have their tacos wrapped up in whole wheat or flour tortillas or crunchy tortillas, and you can eat a taco salad instead on a bed of lettuce or a bed of spinach. Seasoned chicken breast, that's another great recipe. You can cook chicken breasts, you can cook them the same way that they're included in the holistic meal plan. But get a couple cans of cream of mushroom soup, and that makes it nice and rich and tasty for your family if they don't want to eat the healthy version. Same thing with spaghetti and tomato sauce. You can do more of a little bit of spaghetti served on top of a salad, and your spouse or your family can do a lot more than noodles and the sauce. Black bean pita sandwiches are actually a really good thing to do. Basically, you can stir together yogurt and black, black beans, some Mexican flavorings like onion and cilantro and garlic, lime juice, cumin, a little bit of salt, and you can mash that all together, serve it with some pitas, and with your spouse or your family, they can actually eat those wrapped up into whole wheat wraps. And they actually taste pretty good. They almost taste like junk food, but they're not. So tons of little twists that you can make on the recipes to make it easier for your family, but ultimately what it comes down to is that it's my opinion that your family should be eating healthy, too. And so if you educate them and teach them about all of the benefits they're going to get in terms of their strength, their performance, their energy, their fat loss, the way they look, the way they feel, if they incorporate all the elements of that holistic fueling meal plan, then getting them on board by educating them and empowering them with knowledge is going to be a lot better way to go. And then you follow that question up and you said, by the way, you have a meal plan available for purchase on trainingpeaks.com how well does that line up with your holistic fueling plan? And the answer is that I have two plans available over at trainingpeaks.com and those are accessible through my website, through my training website at Pacific Fit. Or you can just email me and I'll point you in the right direction. But one of those plans lines up almost identically with the holistic fueling meal plan straight from my book. The other one is a lot more vegan, kind of raw vegan based that I talked about a little bit earlier. And then I guess you have a third part of your question. You say, what is the best combination of supplements to take regularly that will still be affordable? Well, I understand that supplements can be expensive and taking a lot of them can be expensive, but there's a few supplements that I think everybody should be taking, no matter what. One of those would be omega 3 fatty acids, whether via fish oil or flax oil form. There's a few different options available, but I would definitely be taking some type of omega 3 fatty acid. I would definitely be taking vitamin D and taking a lot of it. I would definitely be including a multivitamin greens supplement type of blend. That would be crucial. And then if you get the vitamin D, the multivitamin with the green supplement, a little bit of omega 3 fatty acid. The only other thing that I would really consider taking would be magnesium. Again, relatively inexpensive, easy choice to make, easy to use. A lot of people tend to be deficient in it. So I would include that as well as an electrolyte source. And that would be kind of a foundational plan for you would be the vitamin D, the magnesium, a greens multivitamin supplement and some some fish oil or flaxseed oil or some type of Omega 3 supplement. You can get more information on supplements over at that website at Pacific Fit. So listen, Repeat says, I have a question regarding nutrition and weight gain. I'm currently recovering from hypothyroidism and hypogonadism. My hormonal levels are where they should be, but my weight is considerably lower. I'm still struggling to put on weight. I know the bottom line is that calories in must be greater than calories out. But what ratio of carbs, fat and protein should I be looking for if I want to increase weight with as much muscle and as many strength gains as possible? I'm a distance runner, so most of my workouts are based around my runs or cross training. That amounts to about 60 minutes of aerobic exercise per day. First of all, I would recommend that of course you eat a lot of food. Typically for people to put on weight and put on muscle, they Got to eat, eat and live in the weight room. That's really the best way to put on a ton of muscle. Most of the guys I'm training right now for lean muscle are consuming in the range of 4,000 to 6,000 calories per day, usually working out for an hour and a half to two hours per day. And a lot of that is resistance training based. Now, if you're training to be a distance runner, then you would probably be on a slightly higher carbohydrate intake than what I have them on, but generally in the range of about 50 to 60% carbohydrate, 20 to 25% fat, 20 to 25% protein would be the actual ratios that you'd be looking for. So about a 2 to 1 to 1 carbohydrate to fat to protein ratio. The trick though for you is going to be to eat a lot. And what you may need to do is periodize your program so that during the days in which you are doing longer runs, more exercise, exercise, you're really shoving down a lot of food. And you also have certain periods during the year where your goals are weight gain, where you even reduce your physical activity just a little bit and increase the amount of calories that you take in. But that carb fat protein ratio of 2 to 1 to 1 works pretty well. There's a lot of little things that you can include in your diet too to help you put on weight. Creatine helps out quite a bit. Whole amino acid source will help out quite a bit. And meal replacement powders or meal replacement drinks like the Living Fuel Super Greens is one example of basically a quick and easy way to get in tons of calories. But ultimately you need to be eating a lot in about that 2 to 1 to 1 carb to fat to protein ratio. Now, listener Harold asks, do you have any information on overcoming eczema? Both my children have a lot of eczema and my wife gets eczema as well. And there's a few things that can help it out quite a bit because we've had to deal with it a lot of times. Eczema can be related to an allergic reaction or a low amount of good bacteria in the stomach. And so taking a probiotic can help out quite a bit. Getting some good bacteria into your gut via kefir, via yogurt and via probiotic capsules can help out quite a bit. There are some herbal extracts out there, like topical herbal creams and gels. Some of the ingredients, two of the most popular ingredients are Chamomile and licorice. And those can help out quite a bit when applied topically to an eczema, as can that diluted form of oil of oregano that I mentioned earlier. The other thing that I would look into is an oil like a evening primrose oil, borage oil. Both of those contain gamma linoleic acid, which can help out quite a bit with eczema as well. And then I would also look at the foods that you're taking in and consider cleaning up the gluten, the dairy, the soy, the eggs, some of the potential allergy triggers that you could be getting, but usually kind of a multi pronged approach to the eczema can help out quite a bit. And, and those are some of the things, some of the things I just mentioned are some of the things that we've done in my household to help out with that. And it's been pretty successful. So. Next question is from listener Patrick. And Patrick says, I just did an LT test for the bike and got an odd result. And for those of you who don't know what an LT test is, it's a test to measure the amount of lactate that you produce. And you do that by going out and exercising at your maximum sustainable pace and then tracking your heart rate as you go. Now, Patrick says, on the same course, I had the same speed, but my LT heart rate is down 9 beats. Is it all just now clicking for me or do you think it may be my new watch? Well, here's the deal, Patrick. Your LT heart rate should go up. What I mean by that is your lactate threshold heart rate. Well, let me rephrase that. Your lactate threshold heart rate as a percentage, percentage of your max heart rate should go up. So if your maximum sustainable pace that you can hold occurs at a heart rate of 150, and your maximum heart rate when you do that test is 190, and then you test later on, ultimately with a maximum heart rate again of 190. You'd want your LT to be 155 or 160 or some heart rate. That's a higher percentage of your maximum heart rate. Now, in your case, your LT heart rate went down. And unless your maximum heart rate also went down, that's technically not a good thing that your lactate threshold heart rate went down because it means that your body is unable to tolerate large amounts of lactic acid at the same intensity. Now, a lot of times that can be because you are carbohydrate depleted. It can be because you are over trained. It can be due to heat dehydration. There's lots of things that can play with that LT heart rate. But one of the things that you may want to look into is if your maximum heart rate has changed at all. So if your maximum heart rate has come down significantly, then you're just fine. Now the other issue is that I have had some issues before with those Garmin heart rate monitors and not getting good heart rate results from them. You can get a heart rate monitor conducting gel that you can put between the strap on that heart rate monitor and your chest and you can get far more accurate results from that versus just wetting the electrodes on that heart rate monitor with water or saliva. So ultimately, what should be happening to your heart rate is it should be getting higher as a percentage of your max heart rate. Your lactate threshold heart rate should be getting higher as a percentage of your max heart rate. Listener Mark says my job has me travel quite a bit. Since I travel a lot, sometimes I find myself taking the 5 hour energy drinks since there are only a few ounces and don't seem to have too many bad things in them. Would you see them as harmful as some of the others, such as Red Bull? A short answer is no. They're not as harmful as Red Bull because they don't contain a lot of the acids that the sodas contain. They don't contain a lot of the sugar that the regular Red Bull contains. My only issue with the five Hour Energy drinks is that they still do contain quite a bit of caffeine. A lot of what you get out of those is a mega dose of B12, but they also have sucralose in them, which I'm not a huge fan of because it can destroy the good bacteria in your gut. Ultimately, if you had to choose between a five Hour Energy drink and a Red Bull, take the five Hour Energy Drink drink. I've said this before on the show. The energy supplement that I use is called Delta E. It's a little pink packet. You empty it into glass of water or under your tongue. It's powder. So there really doesn't have to be anything in terms of like artificial sweeteners in it. And that works really well. Kind of get the same feeling from that as I do from five Hour Energy, which I've also taken. But the Delta E is a little bit more healthy. So Listener Mark says, also, when in the car, what suggestions do you have to maintain my metabolism short of stopping every few hours to do jumping jacks, it Is true that whenever I'm traveling in a car, for every hour that I drive, I try to do 100 jumping jacks to keep my body from kind of getting stale, keep my metabolism up. But if you're unable to get out of your car, there's not a lot that you can do. I mean, you can do shoulder shrugs, but butt squeezes, stomach squeezes and tummy tucks and toe raises, some head circles. But most of the things are kind of the same type of easy, gentle stretches and movements that you do. Say if you were stuck in the window aisle on an airplane or in the window seat of an airplane. So ultimately, you do have to stop your car, get out of your car, do push ups, squats, jumping jacks, those type of things if you really want the full benefit. Unless you have a pretty huge car that you're able to move around in, and then you would need somebody else at the wheel anyways. So either way, you're probably going to have to stop at some point, Mark, and just move around outside your car and make that sacrifice and just do it, even if you just pull over by the side of the highway. Listener Shane asks, I have a question for you. I'm in my third year competing as a triathlete. I end up getting gut pain that happens about 1.5 hours into a race and lasts through the end. I have tried many different fueling options to cure this, but nothing seems to work. I think I have narrowed it down to excessive gas buildup. I have noticed it only appears after swimming and the suggested source has to do with incorrect breathing in the water. I consider myself a strong breather and breathe on both sides. Any insight as to what I might be doing wrong? Wrong? Well, the correct form of breathing, rather than hyperventilating by blowing out all the air from your lungs as soon as your face goes into the water, is to instead, while you're swimming, let out all the air right before you come up for a breath. And a lot of times that results in a lot less hyperventilation and a little less air intake that occurs, a little less burping gas problems. So I used to breathe by blowing out the whole time underneath the water. And I used to have kind of the burpees. After I'd finished swimming, I switched up the style of breathing that I do to let out all the air right before I come up for a breath. And that helps out quite a bit. The other thing you can do, and this was a trick that a coach gave me once, was to drink carbonated water or sparkling water before the swim portion of the race. And that's supposed to help out quite, quite a bit with the burping and the gassy feeling during the race as well. So I would try the sparkling water, club soda, carbonated water type of approach as well as adjusting your breathing pattern a little bit and that should help out. I'm going to assume that you're finishing your pre race meal at least two hours before that swim starts, so you don't have a lot of food in your stomach upsetting your GI tract as well. Now listener Emily says you recently had a podcast with show notes listing the interaction between several vitamins and minerals I take a women's multivitamin every morning which is labeled with iron and calcium formulated for easy absorption. I don't know if the easy absorption refers to its vitamins in general or the calcium and iron, but I doubt the company has found a way to circumvent the normal absorption of calcium and iron. I know calcium inhibits the absorption of iron, so am I even getting any benefit of taking this multivitamin? If so, what nutrients am I actually absorbing? Also, the vitamin contains vitamin C. Since vitamin C promotes iron absorption, does this counteract the effect that calcium has on the iron and allow for more iron absorption? Well, the way that they're probably increasing the absorption is via chelation. And chelation means that you basically chelate or tie the calcium or the iron to, for example, an amino acid or some type of other organic compound and actually increase its absorption by doing that. So it's definitely something that you can do in a multivitamin. Best case scenario, if you were taking like a calcium supplement, you would want to take it at a different time as your iron supplement. And that's why multivitamins, which have that shotgun approach, can be a little bit tricky. Ultimately you're doing yourself more favors by taking it than you are doing harm to your body. But yeah, you might be missing out on a little bit of the calcium and the iron absorption. The fact that it only contains 250mg of calcium anyways means that that's not going to be your primary calcium intake during the day. And lean dairy sources dark leafy greens, nuts, things of that nature should be your primary calcium source the rest of the day anyways. So the fact that it's not your primary calcium source makes that not that big of a deal that you're consuming that particular multivitamin. If you want a better multivitamin, there are a few out there. There's A company called Millennium Sports that puts out one called MVP365. That's a really good multi. I've used it before. Really like it. Another one is Hammer Nutrition. They put out one called insurance. I'm blanking on the term, but it includes the words insurance, Hammer Nutrition, body insurance. I know a writer's going to write in now and remind me what the name of that particular multivitamin from Hammer Nutrition is. But that's pretty good as well. The Nature's Made is not the best multivitamin you can get, but the way that they formulate that for easy absorption is likely through chelation, a process called chelation, so they can increase the absorption of that A listener Josh has another supplement question. He says, I take a complete amino acid supplement and I'm trying out beta alanine to see if it could potentially aid me in cycling events. I've been mixing these in coffee or tea as I've heard that caffeine helps amino acids to work more effectively and at a faster rate when combined. Is this true or am I doing this completely wrong? And when is the best time to take this amino acid supplement after or to help my body recover easy? Answer that second question. Get that amino acid supplement in after your workout as quickly as possible, within 20 minutes if you can, so that your body is primed to actually quickly uptake those amino acids and if you can combine them with carbohydrates. Because while carbohydrates will increase the amino acids absorption, there's absolutely no evidence that I've seen that suggests that caffeine will assist with amino acid absorption. Now that being said, there is evidence to show that caffeine can increase carbohydrate absorption. And since carbohydrate absorption increases amino acid and protein absorption, it could be that when you take your amino acids source with carbohydrate and with caffeine, you might get a little bit of added absorption because that carbohydrate is getting its uptake a little bit more quickly. So ultimately take it right after your workout. If you're taking the amino acids with just caffeine, not really going to see any increase in absorption. But if you add carbohydrate in there as well, that's where you're going to help yourself out quite a bit. Now listener Kara says, I read about the dangers of using aluminum pots and pans to cook with. I've been roasting all my vegetables using Reynolds nonstick aluminum foil for over a year now. Is that harmful for me? I really like the ease of the foil, since it makes for a faster cleanup. But I don't want to be killing myself while I'm ingesting tons of veggies. Well, it's a great question, and the issue that I have with this is that you find aluminum everywhere. It's all over dirt and plants and water and food. It's in our drinking water and our drinking systems. And the suggestion is that if you get aluminum into your system, you can get earlier onset of some neural type of issues like Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's, Parkinson's disease. And the aluminum leakage into your foods from cookware is one of the ways to actually increase the amount of aluminum that you're intaking. However, that amount that would come from cookware is a pretty small fraction of what you'd actually get from your normal eating and drinking and breathing of all the metals that are kind of naturally on our planet anyways. So a lot of the cookware in the market today is made from aluminum. But the idea is that if you aren't cooking, cooking in your aluminum cookware with really highly acidic or very salty foods, you're probably just fine. I also wouldn't leave, like tomato sauce or citrus fruits in contact with that cookware for a long period of time, because then you're going to be looking at getting a lot more aluminum in it. Now, as far as the aluminum foil is concerned, the chemical reaction is pretty much identical from aluminum foil to aluminum cookware. So either way you look at it, you want to be careful with some of the salty, acidic, citrusy foods. But I wouldn't worry about it too much for your basic cooking methods. That being said, grab a couple of stainless steel pieces of cookware and have those around to use. And then as far as roasting your vegetables go, you can try other methods of vegetable cooking. You can do some sauteing, some boiling, baking. There's lots of different ways to cook vegetables in addition to roasting in aluminum foil, but as long as they're not super acidic, salty, citrusy type of vegetables, I wouldn't get too concerned about it. And one of the things that you may want to do is ask Chef Todd. And I've got a link to Chef Todd in the show notes. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for Chef Todd, you can find a pretty easy way to get a hold of him. But he would be a guy that I definitely ask as well. Listener Hila asks. I've been riding lately with pretty Strong guys. I know they're faster than me on the ride, and she's referring to bicycling. But I wonder if you have any tips or tricks how I can keep up with them. I'm usually fine at first, but I get tired at some points and can't hold their pace because my legs are burning. If they open up even the slightest gap, I lose them. One of the things that you can do is make sure that you really have a high cadence. The higher your cadence, the more you're going to be able to adapt to a lot of the changes in pace and changes in speed that are going to occur when you're riding in a group. If you're mashing the gears, you'll be a lot less responsive to be able to make sure that a gap doesn't open up between you and the other people that you're riding with. So maintain as high a cadence as possible, preferably 90 or higher. Close to 1100 is even better for group riding. And then also pay very, very close attention. Riding with a group is a little bit stressful because you do have to make sure that you're really staying close to the wheel of the rider in front of you or even opening up or closing a gap by overlapping your wheel with their wheel. When you combine that with a high cadence and a high focus on making sure that you're staying well within range of the riders that are in front of front of you, that can help out a lot. And also make sure that you talk to those riders before you take off and let them know, hey, listen, you know, if you hear me shouting and see me drop off the back, can you guys just slightly slow down or have one person drop off the back and kind of help bring me back up to the lead group? And most of the time, people will be pretty reasonable with helping you out quite a bit. And in the second part of your question, you say, I was wondering what you thought about the product. Amazing Grass Superfood. I think they are the most popular greens supplement out there. Well, interestingly, the same person that asked the question about aluminum foil asked me about another greens product called Lifetime Life's Basic Greens Protein. Folks, greens supplements are all over out there. I get a question almost every week about greens supplement, and my answer is always the same. You have to make sure that they're using quality ingredients. I've taken many different types of green supplements. The only type of green supplement that I've ever taken and felt or not felt but not gotten sick when I've Taken meaning that I've gone for two years before on one form of green supplement and never gotten sick, whereas none of the others have done this for me. The one form that I take is enaprime. And like I mentioned last week, had a big issue last week when essentially the Enterprime, or the company that produces Enterprime, ran out of Spirulina, couldn't get the high quality spiral in that they were using, refused to use any other form of spirulina. And so there were backorders for about a month. A lot of people who ordered Enterprime were sitting there tapping their fingers, waiting for it. I was among them. And yeah, it can be a little bit of an issue when you're working with a company that uses high quality ingredients and refuses to back down off of using anything other than a high quality ingredient. But ultimately it ends up being worth it to stick with a company like that. So all of these green supplements are going to have the same ingredients. They have spirulina, barley juice, wheatgrass, chlorella, alfalfa, beetroot, broccoli extract. It's just a question of the quality quality of the ingredients that they're getting. And if it's dirt cheap, marked down wholesale. I'm not saying that that's an instant sign that it's a low quality ingredient, but that can definitely be a suggestion that they might be skimping on their ingredients. So ultimately, because there's so many different types of green supplements out there and they all have similar ingredients, the question I have for you is what is the source of their ingredients? And there's really two companies that I know of that I've talked with both the owners and I know that they're good, ethical people that don't skip on ingredients. And one is that Impax Enterprime that I talked about. The other is the Living Fuel supplements. And you can check both those out over at Pacific Fit, get links to interviews I've done with the owners. And I do a lot of research on supplements before I actually make them available or recommend them to the athletes that I coach or the people who write in and ask questions. And PacificFit.net is the place where you can find all those. Now, the last question is from listener David. And David says, I listen to the Endurance Planet podcast and there is a frequent product plug for a sports drink called H2O Overdrive, which claims intercellular hydration and has a lot of ingredients that span the entire length of the bottle. I am curious on your opinion on the claims being made about this product as well as the benefits and or negatives of the ingredients within. So I went and looked at this H2O overdrive and the ingredients that are in it. And first of all, it starts off with, of course, sugar being one of the ingredients, but it's not much sugar. It's only three grams. And it looks like it's from maltodextrin. So even though sugar is the first ingredient on the label, you know that's not a ton of sugar, three grams of sugar. Now, moving on, it has a vitamin profile. So they've added things like vitamin B, complex, vitamin D. 60 international units of vitamin D. Considering that I take on a daily basis, 6,000 international units, it's not much vitamin D. They have some electrolytes in there, some amino acids in there. They don't really list high how many of them. So it's tough for me to make a judgment on that. 100 milligrams of caffeine. So basically you're getting the equivalent of a cup of coffee and sometimes a little bit more than that in one serving of that. And looks like they have some other vitamins in there, vitamin A, vitamin E, minerals and electrolyte. So they probably added some magnesium, calcium, potassium, things like that in there. Then going on down the list, sucralose, artificial sweetener, sodium chloride, rice, oligodextrin, and FDC yellow number five. So basically, this is like an energy drink, like a diet energy drink that they've added some electrolytes and minerals and vitamins to. Will it hydrate you better than regular water because it has electrolytes in it? It's probably will. Does it do some magic intercellular hydration? No, no differently than if you took water in a salt pill. And as far as some of the vitamins, I have seen much better vitamin profiles than this in a common multivitamin. And so you'd be better off, in my opinion, taking water, taking some electrolytes and amino acids and consuming a multivitamin rather than dumping sucralose and artificial chemicals, colors and sweeteners down your throat with this H2O overdrive supplement. That's my opinion on it. I'm just telling you exactly what I think. I would never touch it if it was my body, but that's just me. So I believe that answers all the questions. This week there was actually somebody, as I was reading through the questions, somebody asked a question about beta alanine. It was Josh. Josh mentioned the beta alanine that he was taking. And I get a lot of questions from people about beta beta alanine. And all beta alanine is, is it's something that increases the amount of a chemical called carnosine in your body. And carnosine buffers acid. So when lactic acid builds up as you're exercising, it can buffer it and help you to work out at higher levels of exertion without forming quite as much acid or being able to buffer that acid more quickly. There's been lots of studies done on beta alanine, and even though the jury's kind of still out in terms of there being conclusive studies on it, it's a pretty promising compound because it's done very well in several trials. The problem is that most of the positive trials were funded by the beta alanine industry or by supplement companies who make beta alanine. And so until there's a lot of good research that comes out, that's neutral research. I'm not completely convinced that the beta alanine is something that would be the best thing to spend your money on. Now, if you have some money to burn and you want to try it out, experiment with it in a workout, maybe get a bottle of it, you could try the beta alanine. But ultimately it's questionable whether or not it actually works in terms of the research that's behind it. However, considering it's fairly affordable, it's not super expensive expensive, it could be something that might work for you. I just use caution because all of the research that's positive for beta alanine was funded by companies who make beta alanine. So that being said, we're going to move on to the listener, not the listener. Q and A. Getting loopy from answering all your guys questions. The Featured topic with Dr. Jerry Moylan. Listen in or because this is an epically long podcast, take a break and listen in later.

Featured Topic.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield And I have Dr. Jerry Moylan on the other line. And Dr. Jerry lives in California now. He's a chiropractic physician down there with Moreland Chiropractic. And which city are you in, Dr. Jerry?

San Diego, California.

San Diego in San Diego, California. Kind of a triathlon mecca down there too. And he's actually himself a three time Ironman finisher. And that is not where his list of athletic accolades stop because he is a record holder in powerlifting with personal best 700 pound squat, 400 pound bench press and 630 pound deadlift. He was the 2005 San Diego Senior Games Male Athlete of the Year. He's A decathlete, he has done a bunch of kettlebell competition too. He was a 2007 Masters Kettlebell World champion. His list of accomplishments in powerlifting, kettlebelling in endurance sports and in cycling as well as track. Cycling goes on and on. He was a fourth place finisher at the California California Track Bike Championships 500 meter race. So huge combination of powerlifting and endurance sports which we're going to talk about today. But thank you for coming on the interview.

Dr. Jerry.

Oh, you're welcome, Ben. This is very exciting.

Well, I know a lot of people who are listening to the call probably know what Ironman triathlon is, that 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run. But for those people who don't really know what powerlifting is, can you explain what exactly goes into being a powerlifter and competing as a powerlifter?

Powerlifting is a basic strength, movement, movement, basically a squat, the bench and a deadlift. You could get three lifts of each one, and your highest lift for that day counts towards your total. So you say you could say you squat 500, you bench 200, and you deadlift 500. You get a 1200 pound total. But they're pretty much the strength moves. And strength is the basis for power explosive moves, which is the basis for injury prevention and any athletic endeavor. So like I said, squat, there's technique involved in all of this, which makes it a lot easier and more efficient. But again, like I said, the strength portion of it, which most athletes can use, whether you want to compete in it, may be another story. But if you want to use the strength moves themselves, the squat bench and the deadlift, they're very advantageous to use in any kind of sport, endurance sport, or an athletic sport or decathlete or track guy or whatever, they're all very beneficial. You would just have to change the routine that you would do. The sets, the rep scheme and the set scheme and how often you would use them.

Most people who compete in endurance sports kind of have the feeling that lifting weights that heavy or at that length level, you know, power lifting, heavy weightlifting, would perhaps be detrimental to their endurance training or to their cycling or to their marathoning. Now for you, how do you jive something like power belling or we'll talk about kettlebells later on, but power, powerlifting, kettlebelling, any of those type of things. How do you actually work those into an endurance sports program? Or do you just do them completely separately?

No, I do them. I do them all the time, all year. Round. But as you mentioned, there's a certain percentage at certain times of year I will be more focused on one sport than the other. I also compete in CrossFit. CrossFit is a combination. I've done the regional and sectional CrossFit competitions this year and those are weightlifting with endurance sports, but a little different. But they are using simultaneously working both systems. So what I'll do is last year I competed in six different sports all last year and the world championships. I went to three different world championships in four days. So you can do them. I did the pentathlon, Olympic lifting and bodybuilding all in four days. So you can combine them, but it's a little more of a really have to be real. I'll use the word scientific. Not scientific, but real precise in your training because as we know you're using different energy systems. With Ironman triathlons you're using mostly oxygen based system, whereas palatin you're using all ATP PC system.

Right.

So, so you can combine those. But as you train more for one, you are switching your cell type to more endurance for the triathlete and your cell train, train your cell type to be more developed for fast twitch with the powerlifting and the Olympic lifting.

Gotcha. So if we were to kind of get down and dirty here and go into what your training, you know, whether you want to, you want to lay it out as your TR training year or your periods of different training as you go through a year to be able to accomplish explosive sports along with endurance sports. What does a typical training year look like for you?

Okay. Yeah, that's okay. What I would do. And also one thing we always talk about is when we do compete, training a lot is the rest. I will go into that first because people think we have to train every day, all day long to accomplish this and you really don't. The rest periods are real crucial so you get a proper amount of rest so you can train hard. The key is to ability to handle load. Anything we do, we want to have the ability to handle load. The more load we can handle, the faster and stronger and leaner we can be. So in order to handle load we have to be of course injury free and also get our rest days in there so our bodies can adapt to the stress imposed upon the system. So my training regime, I pretty much, I'm a four day a week guide and I have my off day Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sundays. And lots of times I'll do two to three workouts a day. Some will be working different systems Sometimes there'll be a five minute workout or the VO2 system. Let me know if I'm getting too specific. But the VO2 system is generally a 10 to 15 minute routine working your cardiovascular system at VO2 max. You only get one or two of those a week. And that's the key of knowing how much of a different system you can use. And then you don't have to train it anymore.

So with VO2, you're talking about doing 10 to 15 minute long, very intense workouts to hit your maximum oxygen uptake or your VO2 doctor.

Exactly, exactly. See? So once you work that system, your body, you don't have to work that system anymore. Maybe once a week, maybe twice, you could squeeze it, but the system is gone, it's trashed. And then it takes time to recover. While it's recovering, then you can do the other workouts then. That's the key. So now with that, I can throw a lactate threshold workout in maybe three or four days later. I could definitely hit my power lifting and my Olympic lifting in the evening. I'll do my endurance stuff. I'm sorry, my VO2 lactate threshold more in the morning and my weight lifting explosive stuff in the evening. So that way while one system is resting my cardiovascular, I can work the explosive system in the evening. Gotcha then. That's also based on sets of reps and what time of the year. So right now I did finish two CrossFit competitions and the bodybuilding now I'm tracking. I have a decathlon next week, so I've been training for that. So I backed off the CrossFit and certain exercises in that area, kept the VO2 workup that I got from CrossFit and got more specific with my javelin, disc, pole vaulting, types of technical things, because my conditioning for decathlon is doing will be good.

You broke up for a second. You still there? I'm sure that we'll get him back on.

Am I lost here?

There you go. You're back on.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I say, and you can use this for a triathlon student because even with triathletes or any endurance sports, you only have one to two major peaking times a year, period. You cannot maintain a high peak all year round. It's physiologically impossible. So that's where you have to pick your major races throughout the year. As my. I got to CrossFit earlier in the year and then I'll have some track and field coming up and then they'll later in the year be world championships, mostly in the weightlifting area later in the year.

This is really good information for people who feel like they have to commit to one sport year round. Like if they sign up for an Ironman triathlon or they want to do marathoning, that that's all they can focus on. But what you found is that by combining different workouts into different times of the day and different times of the year, you can accomplish accomplish these multiple training goals throughout the year.

Yes, exactly. Because if you look at what most endurance athletes do, they are doing more weight training now and your weight training athletes are doing more aerobic work to increase their ability to handle more load and be less injured. So what I just take it to is a little higher, they're going to get the most out of themselves in a triathlete. So you don't have to think that you're going to keep getting better all every month, every week, every month throughout the year. Your body can only handle so much and it will only grow so much at a time. So in the meantime, you can be doing lots of other things with your body, creating a constant stimulus for growth in all areas and becoming a more complex person.

Interesting. Now I'm sure that we're going to get some people who complain that they've seen research that if you do weightlifting and endurance training simultaneously that you might in effect reduce the results that you can get from endurance training. Now what would you say to that argument?

Well, that's true, but if I was to be a true marathoner again, as I said, true marathoner, he's got say 12 months, he's only going to be able to peak at max capabilities once or twice a year to reach his peak for competition. The body will not keep getting better and better every week to week to week. And then so knowing that I can only peak once or twice a year, that marathon I run in the year, okay, so he can get the power, let's get his strength up, get his plus flexibility and stability, all these other factors also. But the research would show, because what happens if you do try to do heavy power lifting with your max endurance, you will get sub optimal effects in both. So like in a CrossFit, I cannot expect to be totally as strong as possible. You have my top endurance because you're creating different cell types and that is the correct assumption. So what you do though, when you're getting closer to your top marathon season, your triathlon season, you back off on the power lifts and keep a base. All you've done is keep a base strength going into it.

How far Before a triathlon, should people start to back off weightlifting or powerlifting?

Well, the heavy, if you're really going to do heavy power lifting, it's probably going to be maybe three months or so. Maybe. But you can still power lift. But you would increase the reps and set scheme. Now it's true. Tapering for like you have a major marathon, you'd back off maybe only two weeks before your weightlifting because your idea is again to keep up a good load till the end, so then you drop the big load. Your body has all the time and energy to taper and peak for a contest.

Interesting.

So you can keep your weightlifting up almost of the year long, except for the final week or so. But the major heavier one, singles, the negative is overloads. You'd probably want to decrease probably a couple months earlier because that's too much of a stress on the system.

Yeah. From a weightlifting, powerlifting, explosive sports standpoint, typically what I do is a lot more weightlifting and basketball type of training in the winter and then as I get into early spring because, because I'm training for triathlon, I'll usually decrease the weights that I'm lifting, lift them a little bit more explosively and try and reduce my propensity to put on muscle with kind of the medium weight, medium rep, 10 to 12 rep type of scenario. And then I'll hold that into the summer. And then typically about halfway through the summer, I will start doing a little bit more weightlifting kind of in the middle. I train peak for triathlon early in the year and then later in the year. So I put on a little bit more muscle in the summer and then kind of strip that again in the late summer and move on to more of the triathlon competition again. So for people listening in, it really is true that you can do weightlifting, you can do powerlifting, you can do explosive sports, you can do endurance sports at the same time. You just have to know what you're doing, right, Dr. Jerry?

Exactly right. Because there are many complex systems in the cardiovascular system and the different ranges of motion, the different body parts and upper body, lower body, how much you use in those. Like I said, if you want to weightlift heavy one day, can you expect to have a good bicycling day the next day? Probably not. So depending, you have to know what system you are using, muscular wise, biomechanical wise, physiological wise, because otherwise you will not get good success at all. Very difficult.

Yeah, exactly. And that's another thing that you can do that brings up a good point is if you had to lift weights and you really wanted to do something like powerlifting. You could do like your bench pressing and overhead pressing one day and still have the oomph that you needed to go on a bike ride the next day. That would be another strategy.

Exactly. Yes, exactly right. And that's what we want to have. You want to have the top strength while you're able to have explosive power and endurance to perform better at your sport.

A lot of cycling teams are using powerlifting now as a way to enhance their cycling. Do you feel that there's a good crossover there between things like deadlifts or explosive lifts and cycling in particular?

Yes, actually, I'll go back to pretty much any sport because, again, strength is a base for explosiveness, and explosiveness is going to allow you to move faster, which is going to be good for any sport. It's just a matter of when to put it in there. But for cycling would definitely be very advantageous because there's more of the high power outputs that you can garner from the strength. And I call them the Olympic lifting and powerlifting.

The interesting thing is, if you watch the Olympics, powerlifters are often slight people. They're not the same as bodybuilders.

I know a lot of people have.

That picture of the huge, puffy bodybuilder look, and you would think that would hold back a cyclist or a triathlete. But in effect, power lifters have a.

Very, very high power to weight ratio.

They're often slight people who can lift huge amounts of weight.

Yes, yes. See, because the top athletes tend to be more athletic in most sports. Top athletes tend to be more athletic. They could be very flexible and be strong at the same time. And even your top NFL players, some of those are very picky people, yet they can dunk basketballs, they can do backflips. You can look at your MMA fighters, ultimate fighting people. They're very athletic, and they look lean, strong and athletic and strong at the same time. And they have great cardiovascular conditioning.

Yeah, his name escapes me, but a recent ultra marathoner trained essentially with CrossFit all week long. He'd throw in one long run at the end of the week and threw down. I think it was a 50k or 100k ultra. I did just fine.

Exactly, because it happens. See, when you do one sport, you could spend hours and hours. If you only do one sport, most of the time is time doing that one sport. If you only do one sport, it's unnecessary activity. By running all those miles and miles and miles, all you're doing is breaking down the body. Like I said earlier, if you want to work on the ability for the body to handle load, you make it strong with cross strengthening, stability, flexibility so your body can handle load. And on those load days, on your sport days, you want to be setting personal records. See, the key is to get better and faster all the time, not just do your sport. So when you have your major workouts day, whether it be running, you want to have goals for that day to get better. So that's why you want to be coming fresh and ability to handle that load for that day so you can get better. Like your friend did the CrossFit and then did his running. So his running was probably going to be very good because he's going to be more fresh so he can have very quality runs and make personal records. You got to cross train and get his body ready to handle that running load on one or two days. That would be a key to look for when you're cross training.

And I, I love that idea because goal oriented training, meaning you're going after a certain lift percentage of your 1 RM or you're going after a certain speed for your 500 meter row or for your track workout. That's always more intrinsically motivated than just exercising to look good. I mean studies have found that it always gets you into the gym or onto the track better if you're focusing on performance oriented goals than aesthetic oriented goals.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's a great point. Yes.

So talk to me a little bit about kettlebelling. For those people who aren't really familiar with kettlebells. What's the idea behind those and how can they be used in a training program like the one we've discussed?

Kettlebells, it's a great sport because you have the ability to handle a weight. There are various sizes and weights for multiple reps with what you call it smoothness, with a smooth technique, almost like an Olympic lifting technique. It's a athletic event, but you can do it for five or 10 minutes. So you can really work your cardiovascular system. So that's why it's all technologies, technique. A lot of these things unfortunately require technical ability to do them efficiently. So that's why there's people like you out there, Ben, to help these people get their technique down.

What about like the, like using just a dumbbell instead of a kettlebell? What's the difference?

Well, the dumbbell doesn't, you can't be fluid, doesn't have the. It's bulkier, it can't move around. The kettlebell move around in a circular motion. It has more fluidity and its motion. So you can do repetitive actions on with less problem. With a dumbbell, it's more unstable. You can do the repetition on a repetitive basis is fluid and with less stability.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So as far as kettlebell training goes, what would a typical kettlebell workout look like in terms of actual exercises somebody would do?

Okay, again, that's all good to what we're trying to achieve. See the sport and the sport of kettlebell, it's pretty much two 10 minute repeats. So it's pretty much a VO2 lactate threshold workout. So you can do up to 10 minute repeats, or you can break them into three 3 minute repeats, 4 by 3 minute repeats, two 7 minute repeats, or you can do a longer set of 20 minutes straight. So it depends what you're looking for. CrossFit tends to use them in shorter, more explosive, say, minute to two minute repeats. So it depends what system you're trying to achieve, what you're trying to work.

For and what would be the exercises that you do.

I tend to stay with more the competitive motions, I guess in all sports since I like to compete. That's my thing. I look for, for the competition requirements and they require a snatch and a jerking motion. So snatch would be from the floor and one movement, one arm, one movement over your head. It would be similar to a snatch in an Olympic clipping motion, but with one arm. Now, in CrossFit, they use a two handed technique for the most part with the kettlebells, and it's two arm motion from the ground to over your head. Now, the other one in the kettlebell competition is the jerk. You take the two kettlebells with two arms, hoist two kettlebells to your waist, and from your waist, you jerk them overhead repeatedly for 10. How many reps can you jerk in 10 minutes otherwise? And then kettlebell itself, there's probably 50 different exercises you could do. You could make up exercises, you could do squats, you could do lunges, you could do bench presses, all sorts of. You can do all exercises with the kettlebells for the most part.

Okay, gotcha. Well, what I'll do for people is I'll put a link to more kettlebell resources in the show notes to this podcast so you can kind of see what a kettlebell looks like and where you can find a kettlebell. Now, as far as kind of taking a little bit of a 180 here, Dr. Jerry, and talking a bit about the Other component of fitness, which is nutrition. From a nutrition standpoint, what does your diet look like? Do you change it throughout the training year in terms of skewing it towards for example, higher protein when you're doing more of the explosive stuff or what.

Exactly do you do?

Okay, again, this is getting a very complex field. I've been doing nutrition for over 35 years. I was a vegetarian back when I was 20 years old. I've been to macrobiotic camps. So I've altered it throughout the years. Now I'm into the blood and hormone testing, functional medicine, which is phenomenal because what you could do with your test.

My athlete's doing that now as well.

Yeah. Isn't it great to get the blood test? You can test your hormones, you can see where deficient at. So again, making your body. Again back to my basic premise before ability to handle load. If my body's nutritionally sound, chemically and hormonally sound, I can handle more load and I can play more, I can compete better. Premise is we want to be healthy. The healthier we are, the better we're going to play our sports or be active.

Right.

So nutrition wise, I do tend to stay with an anti inflammatory catabolic nutrition, which is pretty much a vegetable based program. I do fish once in a while and I haven't had meat in over 35 years. I'm not into dairy. People have their opinions and models, but this is my model and what I've been. This is all science based stuff and it helped me get at my age to do what I have to do.

I want to get into the nitty gritty of that a little bit. You just said catabolic diet. Now catabolic technically is referring to breakdown of the body. Although you found value in a catabolic diet how?

Oh no, an anti catabolic diet.

Oh, anti catabolic.

Okay, gotcha.

We look for an anti inflammatory alkaline anabolic nutrition is what we're talking about.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes. And that would be more of a vegetable based nuts, seeds, legume based nutrition. But I also use a lot of supplements because what happens under the load, you cannot. The idea is you don't want to overload the GI tract with so much food. So you want to get so many antioxidants and so many vitamins and minerals. They tell you eat this and you get 2 grams of C and 25,000 grams of IU of A. See, to eat all that food, you overload your digestive system. So again which causes problems because every time you eat food you cause a free radical. And also it's just too hard on your body to eat all the food. That's where high dense, nutrient valued medical foods come into play. And vitamins because they can support you nutritionally while you don't have to worry about eating as much food. So it's just a high end, efficient nutrition.

What type of testing do you do when you look at someone's nutrition profile?

Oh, we do, we have a basic panel we'll start with. It's about a 70 marker panel. I have a bunch of them sitting here. You, basic cholesterol profile, you get your thyroid, you get all your electrolytes, your white blood cells, your iron, your red blood cells, your hemoglobin, A1C. You get a urinalysis, liver enzymes, and that's pretty much, I think there's about 70 markers on that baby. It's a good base to see what's happening. And then again, it also depends what people are trying to achieve, what time. And we also do the hormone testing, your adrenal profile. And for certain people who do the testosterone and your estrogen, because men have male andropause and women have the menopause, even the female cycling hormones are real critical for them to be stabilized. And especially when they're going for major races, we want everything to be at top level. So a lot of times we'll get their adrenals test and blood tests earlier in the year to see where they're at, fortify them, work on those and make sure they stay there. And then we'll go back in before they compete in a major season, make sure those levels are high levels so they go into the competition season or meet with strong blood levels, strong hormone levels.

Gotcha. And you do kind of change things up throughout the training year for yourself in terms of your nutrition intake.

Yes, I will. Again, I tend to try to work lower my body, I stay lower. I tend to stay low on the carbohydrate side because I tend to be myself personally carbohydrate intolerant. I'll gain weight easier if I have too many carbs, which is a common problem with a lot of people trying to keep the weight down for these sports. Carbohydrates are an easy way to get stored as fat for any kind of carbohydrate intolerance person, Especially for the women, they tend to have more trouble with that and more hormonal imbalances. So we watchi tend to watch my carbs More I'll stay with the protein supplements and whey protein is a good source for me and I use metagenics products on that and some apex nutrition and Natural calm of course Under Natural Vitality has some great products for magnesium and their natural vitality vitamins they support because magnesium, calcium and potassium sodium are great electrolytes. I also tend to be a heavy sweater so I'm always more cautious about my electrolyte intake. But as far as gaining weight and losing weight, I tend to stay around 150 pounds because my weight classes are 140 again. So for endurance stuff though, a year and a half ago I competed at 143 because I had to keep getting the weight class. So sometimes the weight class I had to attaincertain. Weight classes I watch I have to get down more in weight so I have to really dump my carbs and increase my protein and go eating every hour, hour and a half not to upset my adrenals too much because if you go without food you're going to cause metabolic interference and more adrenal problems and slow your metabolism down.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

So I doactually so I don't vary my nutrition as much. It's tweaked a little bit here and there. But I do try to stay pretty tight to a vegetable based nutrition with supplementation and I'll alter it a little bit more protein during the heavier weight training season. But since I'm heavy training all the time, even endurance training is heavy breakdown. So you do need a lot of protein even during your endurance sports.

Interesting. Well, I think the takeaway message for people here is that not only can you achieve success by not training the same way day in, day out, you know, month in month out throughout the entire year, but you can also achieve success by really staying on top of your nutrition profile, knowing not only you know where your hormones are and you know what your mineral levels are, but also changing up your nutrition based on the type of training that you're doing. So I think it's really cool what you were doing, Dr. Jerry, in terms of kind of living the sport life to its fullest and doing all these different events. I, I think that a lot of people may not understand or may have been led to believe that you're either an endurance athlete or you're a power explosive athlete, but you've been able to find success in both, which I think is going to inspire a lot of people. Anything else, Any other resources that you would like to give the audience.

As far as where to look for information.

Anything else that you, I mean, do you have websites that you go to, book books that you read, anything else that you'd recommend people use?

Yeah, let's see. Yeah, you know, there's so much available out there nowadays, it's amazing. I mean, let's see. IKFF is great. Kettlebell. IKFF with Steve Cotter, Valery Fedorenko's Kettlebell association is very good. There's numerous powerlifting sites out there which are good. Again, non specific triathlon stuff. There's out there endurance sports. But read more. Understand the physiology for yourself. The heart rate monitoring is crucial for not to overtrain and also training harder on your hard days and take it easy on your easy days. I'll make one little quicker thought here because people who overtrain all the time, they're under training all the time because they can't reach their VO2 max and lactate thruster because they're always tired, yet they're overtraining because they're training all the time. So they're getting not the best benefits nearly as they should because they're always trained in one system all the time. But anything about lactate threshold training, understanding physiobiology and biochemistry is best. That's all I can tell you. I don't have because there's so much out there.

I would say if people are listening in and they really want to learn more about that, I think one of the best publishers in the US at least that I found is Human Kinetics. In terms of a lot of their.

Stuff that they put out as far.

As physiological training of athletes, tracking of biochemical markers in, you know, both people who want to get healthy as well as athletes, they've got some good stuff.

Yeah, that's a good suggestion. That's very good.

All right, well, thank you for coming on the call, Dr. Jerry.

Thank you, man, this is great. You're wonderful, Ben.

We'll put a link to Dr. Jerry's website over@drjerry.com in the show notes so you can go read more about him. Especially if you live in the San Diego area, he'd probably be a great guy for you to hook up with. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Jerry signing out from.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com alright, thank you very much. Well folks, an hour and 45 minutes later we are going to wrap up this podcast. If you heard anything that you are interested in from Jerry's website to any of the things we talked about in the listener Q and A to any of the special announcements from the trip in Thailand to the Body Transformation Club. Then go to the Show Notes for episode number 101, and you do that by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and clicking on episode 101. If you're not part of the VIP Text Club on your cell phone yet, get into that. And also make sure that you leave the podcast ranking in itunes and subscribe to the free BenGreenfieldFitness.com newsletter over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com so until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out. Have a healthy week and I'll catch up with you next week.