Episode #102: Training and Nutrition for Runners

In this podcast episode Training and Nutrition for Runners Benefits of training while calorie depleted, exercising with a low back injury can you rebuild cartilage? How to choose your amino acids and proteins, stomach sloshing while running, runner's knee and how to take a rest day.

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 podcast. Now I have a question for you. Actually, it's more of a request for you. I want to know who you want to see featured on the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. I recently had a listener recommend that I get Michael Pollan, a nutritionist and author, on the show. I'm working on getting him on the show, but this podcast is big enough now and ranked high enough in itunes to where I can get most people that you would like me to get on the show. But I just need to know who you want to hear from. If you could sit down with someone, have them into your living room and talk to them, whether they be an author, a nutritionist, a coach, a personal trainer, a physician, who would it be? Because I have the leverage to be able to get those people on this show. But I want to know who you want to hear from. So the way that you can tell me who you would like to hear on the show is to email ben greenfieldfitness.com or to go to the Show Notes where I put all the goodies from each show. And on those show notes leave a comment and tell me who you'd like to see on the podcast. The advantage of doing it via leaving a comment is you get to engage in discussion with other people who may or may not agree with your desire to have a certain individual on a show. Because obviously health, fitness nutrition can get a little political and opinionated at times and it'll be interesting to hear who people want to see on the show, what people's opinions are of those individuals, and ultimately make the podcast even better and more tailored to what you want to see on it. So what are you waiting for? Go over there and leave a comment or shoot me an email and tell me who you want to see on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Finally, like I mentioned last week, a new way to communicate with me and Get Ahold of Me is via Twitter. And to contact me via Twitter, just go to twitter.com BenGreenfield Hit the follow button and then shoot me a message or write a post and include the word BenGreenfield the little sign and then Bengreenfield in your post or your question or your feedback and I will get it. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's special announcements and then the listener Q and A and an interview on training and nutrition for runners.

Special Announcements.

All right, triathletes, tune in. You've heard me talk about the triathlon trip to Thailand that I'm organizing this coming winter, but there's been a new event that has been added to January and February for the winter. I'm going to be throwing down the triathlon training camp down in Austin, Texas once again this winter. So if you're a triathlete and you're listening in, go to the Show Notes because all the details for that camp have been posted. It's officially going to happen January 31st through February 7th, 2011. Now is the time to start planning and get that into your schedule. So go to the Show Notes to check that out. In addition to that, under the Special Announcements tab, in the Show Notes, I tell you what we talked about in the Body Transformation Club this week. And if you want to get into the Body Transformation Club, there's a little button you can click there where you can go find out more about how to have me send you postcards each week with training and nutrition tips. The Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirts are still going out on a weekly basis. Anybody who donates more than 15 bucks to the show are automatically will get a T shirt sent to you. That's free shipping. I don't charge anything. I just put it in the mail.

Send it to you.

Usually include a bunch of goodies as well. So those are all the special announcements for this week, that triathlon training camp, the Body Transformation Club and the Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirts. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

So if you have a question you can email Ben greenfieldfitness.com youm can call and leave it via audio to 877-209-9439 and that's toll free or you can Skype to Pacific Fit. You can also, like I mentioned earlier, ask your question via Twitter. And once again this week I will be sending a T shirt to the top question of the Week asked via Twitter. So the first question comes from listener Graham. And Graham says, I understand the benefits and logic of training low racing high in relation to carbs. Recently I went too far with that and bonked. My question is, is there any training benefit of bonking and if there is any notable recovery issues? Well, the issue that Graham is referring to is the fact that there has been research that training with low levels of storage carbohydrate in your muscles can actually help you become more fit. So basically there's been studies done in the past few years where individuals would train twice a day, but in between those training sessions they wouldn't eat very much carbohydrate at all. So they didn't replenish their energy stores for that second training session of the day. So that second training session of the day was done in what's called a glycogen depleted state or a carbohydrate depleted state. And what happened was the athletes who trained in the carbohydrate depleted state actually showed better training adaptations in their muscles. What the researchers did is they took muscle biopsies where they take a little clip out of a muscle and study it under a microscope. And they found that some of the enzymes in those muscles, and particularly the enzymes involved in fat metabolism, actually increased compared to the individuals who trained when they had a bunch of carbohydrate on board or they were in what's called a glycogen loaded state. So the actual training program that they used during this glycogen depletion training study was pretty short. It was only a few weeks. And the the issue is whether or not a training like that for a long period of time would actually result in significant performance improvements and B, how hard can you actually push yourself when your blood sugar levels are low and your calorie depleted? So the way that I personally do it is I'll typically include at least once every couple of weeks in my training plan a session where I don't eat as much as I normally would during a normal training session. So for example, I will have my pre workout meal two or three hours prior to a workout. I'll go out and do the workout, but I will do it before a long workout. So this would be before say for example, a two hour bike ride. And I would really only go out on that two hour bike ride with one gel and do it in a pretty glycogen depleted state. The other option that you can do is a two a day where you do one training session and you don't eat that much between that training session and the next training session, and again, can beat up the body pretty easily doing that over and over again. But every once in a while, there is evidence to suggest that it could help you out quite a bit. So what Graham says is what happens if you go too far and you bonk. And what Graham means is when you bonk, a typical bonk, when you're out training and you run out of fuel is you have all of the signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia. So you get fatigued, you get dizzy, you begin to get confused, you can't think very well, usually can't produce much of a muscle force at all. When it happens to people and they're riding their bikes, they usually have to either slow to a crawl or begin walking their bike. When it happens to people on a run, they usually have to start walking, sometimes even just sit down on a park bench or on the ground and call someone for a ride. I mean, it's pretty serious. It's literally no fuel on board and even a very, very uncomfortable feeling when any exercise is attempted. So you'd think that someone would be able to just keep pushing through and oxidize, primarily fat. But in a true bonk, you're going even past that stage. There's been no research that I've seen that have investigated whether somebody who takes themselves to that level repeatedly will actually increase their fitness. I can tell you that when you get yourself very, very carbohydrate depleted like that, it takes a longer time to refill those carbohydrate stores, you obviously turn your training session into kind of a junk training session. And in terms of recovery implications for the next day's training sessions, if you have 24 hours between a bonk and the next day's training session, you'll be fine. But if you're planning on working out more later on in the day, or you bonk in the late afternoon or evening and you have a morning training session planned, you're not doing yourself any favors. So you can use this strategy of depleting your calories on a rare basis every couple weeks, possibly every week in your training. But you want to be really careful with it and not take it to the extreme. So the next question is from a Twitter listener. And this listener says, my brother in law is a cancer survivor with some back and spine damage because of low back treatments. What are some good exercises for him? Well, I'll put a link to this in the show notes for you, but I have an upcoming episode over at my other podcast, the Get Fit Guy, over at the Quick and Dirty Tips Network. And that podcast is primarily based around what to do if you get a low back injury and you need to exercise. And many of the same type of concepts discussed in that article in that episode would apply to your brother in law. Some of the top suggestions that I give in that episode include aqua jogging, swimming and water aerobics. Anything in the water really is very non impact on the back. The one caution that you need to take is if you swim freestyle, it's very easy to hyperextend your back and a lot of times a breaststroke or a backstroke can be easier on the back than freestyle swimming. If you use weight machines, those can give you a lot more controlled environment than free weights. But the issue with weight machines is you need to suck your belly button in, keep your core tight and really create a stomach vacuum so that you're not slouching in your low back and creating compressive forces on the low back. Bodyweight exercises like knee push ups or squats if they're pain free, can help out quite a bit. Recumbent bicycle and if it's pain free, the elliptical trainer are also good modes of exercise. So there's several options there. More importantly, what to avoid would be impact based exercises like running or hopping or skipping or plyometrics as well as anything that involves a lot of flexing and extending of the spine. A lot of people are under the impression that if they get their abdominals strong by doing crunches, then they're going to prevent protect their low back or be able to heal a low back injury more quickly. But think of crunching the same way as you'd think of say like bending a credit card. If you have a credit card in your wallet or in your back pocket and you take the credit card out and you bend it repeatedly, you'll eventually start to see that little white crease form and after a while the actual plastic in the credit card will fail and it will break. Think of flexing and extending your back in the same way. You have a finite number of flexions and extensions, extensions that you can perform before your low back begins to become over fatigued and overworked. So you need to be really careful doing lots of crunches and low back extensions and exercises like that that are going to put stress on your low back. But ultimately what I would say for your brother in law is really look at water based activities as one of the primary sources of aerobics. And then after that non weight bearing activities like elliptical or bicycling and then controlled weight bearing activities like the weightlifting machines at the gym. And because you were the top question that I received on Twitter this week, I'm going to say your twitter handle, it's fflovessg1 have no clue what that stands for, but if you message me on Twitter or send me an email, let me know your postal address and I will throw a T shirt and some other goodies in the mail for you. So great question. The next question is from listener Chuck and Chuck says, my dad is one of the healthiest people I've ever met. But at 56 years old he was competitively playing roller hockey. He got hit severely tore his rotator cuff and ended up having to have surgery on it. While he has made a great recovery, the shoulder still hurts him. The doctor has told him there is basically no cartilage left in the shoulder and eventually down the road he may need a shoulder replacement. Do you know if there is either a way through diet or exercise to rebuild healthy cartilage in a joint? Well, Chuck, you can rebuild cartilage to a limited extent. Basically anything from osteoarthritis to injuries to overuse can cause breakdown of your joint cartilage. And cartilage typically doesn't have really good blood flow. It takes a lot longer time to heal. You take something like a knee meniscus that has very little blood flow. That's why meniscal tears almost always need to be repaired. But basically the idea is that it really depends on the amount of damage that's been done. If the doctor is right and there's literally no cartilage left in your dad's shoulder, then it is likely that if he wants to continue with shoulder intensive based exercises and sports that he may have to look into a shoulder replacement or a resurfacing glucosamine. Chondroitin is of course kind of the gold standard supplementation protocol to use when you have a cartilage issue. This isn't medical advice. I'm not saying it's going to heal your dad, but I would recommend that he look into a glucosamine chondroitin supplement. The one that I typically recommend is the one called Capraflex. It's by a company called Mount Capra and that one is the only one that I've actually had clients write to me or call me and tell me that they actually felt it compared to other glucosamine chondroitin supplements which they didn't really feel relieved their symptoms at all. So you can try a glucosamine chondroitin supplement. It's not necessarily going to rebuild the cartilage if the damage is extensive, but it can help manage the pain a little bit. And if the damage happens to be perhaps not as extensive as the physician says, then it may be possible to rebuild some of that cartilage. The other thing that I'd look into is another supplement called Osteodenx and you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and Google it. I did an interview with a physician about Osteodenx and the active ingredient in that lactoferrin, has some promising implications for bone and soft tissue injuries. So I look into that as well. And Chuck has a follow up question about creatine. He says, can you go over or recommend, if you recommend at all, protocols for taking creatine, I bought some the other day because it was on sale. Each serving is 130 calories, which includes 5 grams of creatine and 30 grams of carbs, 29 of which come from sugar. The product suggests a five day loading phase due to the high sugar content. If I were to take this at all, should I only use it immediately after a workout and do I need to do a loading phase finally? Will taking it really even help me that much? Well, the idea behind creatine is there's tons of studies that do affirm that it increases power and strength. And even as little as five days of supplementation can increase your creatine phosphate levels, your body's natural creatine phosphate levels, by 10 and up to 40%. So creatine phosphate is used in the part of your body that generates energy up to about 15 seconds. So it's kind of like the power sprint based energy. However, there have been studies that have shown that with creatine loading, you can actually get a glycogen sparing effect, meaning your body burns through carbohydrate a little more slowly. And the suggestion is that you're using a little bit more creatine with each contraction. And so even short term creatine supplementation has been shown to increase your maximum power and your strength by 4, 5 to 15% and increase sprint speed also by 5 to 15%. Now, the issue with a lot of people is it can cause weight gain, it can cause water retention, and it can cause cramping. And that's why most of the triathletes or endurance athletes that I coach, I do not recommend that they do a full loading protocol and A full loading protocol means that for about four days and up to a week, you take 20 grams a day of creatine and then you taper that down to 5 grams a day and as low as 2.5 grams a day. And that ends up in most cases causing some deleterious effects. I recommend that you half that or quarter that and load with seven days prior to a race or an event. If you're planning on using creatine. And I've tried that in a sprint triathlon with and without, and always felt more powerful in a sprint triathlon when I've taken that creatine just for a week at about 5 to 10 grams a day leading up to the race and not really doing a full on loading protocol, even though the loading protocol for strength and power athletes who don't have to worry about cramping issues or weight issues ends up being superior. So typical creatine loading for gold standard recommendation for non endurance athletes would be you load with that 20 grams for around four to seven days. If you want to do even more exact in terms of your loading, rather than loading with 20 grams, you're supposed to load with about 3,000 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. And so if you figure out that you're 70kg, then you would basically multiply that by 0.3 and that would be the number of grams that you take in per day. And then after that you move into just 2 to 5 grams per day. And the idea is that to really amplify creatine stores, you're supposed to cycle. So you load for a week and then you take 5 grams a day for three weeks, and then you don't load for another three weeks and then you go, or don't take any for three weeks, then you go back into that maintenance phase or reload. And the idea is that after about two to four weeks of creatine supplementation, and then stopping creatine supplementation, your body will kind of revert back to its original levels of natural levels of creatine stores. Now the interesting thing with the sugar concept, Chuck, is that the idea is that the insulin spike that occurs when you consume sugar along with creatine is supposed to help you absorb and retain more creatine. But there's been some newer research that shows that when you cut the sugar in half and replace that with protein, you get the same boosting effect. So my recommendation would be that you ultimately don't get a creatine powder that has a bunch of sugar added, but you instead get a creatine capsule that's just creatine and nothing else, no other funky calorie based compounds. And then you just consume that with a regular meal like quinoa and chicken or a piece of pizza or whatever else happens to be your meal for that day. And ideally it should be consumed with your pre workout meal and not post workout. You want to have that creatine in pre workout. So the stuff that I personally use is called CRE O2 CREO2. It's from a company called Millennium Sports. If you're one of the athletes I coach, then you know about that company. You get a 50% discount on all their stuff. But that's the one that I recommend using and it's in that capsule form. And I would definitely not use something that has as much sugar as what you just explained. Chuck so the next question comes from listener Brad and Brad says I frequently hear you recommend two different versions of amino acid supplementation. The whole chain amino acid powder from Bio Letics or the recoveries Branched chain amino acids featured on pacificfit.net I'm a 25 year old crossfitter with the goal of increasing my fitness through CrossFit. I'm hoping the inclusion of amino acids to my supplementation regimen will increase musculature repair in response to my frequent episodes of strength soreness. Which amino acid supplement should I use and what would be the protocol for taking the supplement that you recommend? Well you are correct Brad. There's two different forms of amino acids that I use and I personally recommend. One is Recoveries. And recoveries is not all the amino acids. You know you'd have to take like a whey protein or eat a piece of steak or have an egg to get all your amino acids. But Recoveries has just what are called the branch chain amino acids. And the advantage of the branched chain amino acids is that they tend to bypass metabolism in the liver and become available at the muscular level very quickly. And the branched chain amino acids are leucine, isoleucine and valine. I don't believe I'm forgetting any there, but Recoveries also has glutamine in it which is another amino acid that is very advantageous for recovery. It also has proteolytic enzymes in it which are anti inflammatory and also help the body to break down proteins into their amino acid components for more speedy repair and recovery of muscle tissue. So the idea is that the recoveries with the branched chain amino acids, the proteolytic enzymes and the glutamine is basically like a capsule that you can take and after a workout. And my protocol, and the recommended protocol on those is to take four of them after a training session during the day and then take six to eight of them after a race or after a hard workout. I will also take six to eight of them on a day in which I'm very sore. And they're actually a little bit better in terms of their anti inflammatory effect if you take them on an empty stomach. Now you compare those to something like the bioletics amino acid and the biolytics amino acids has more amino acids in it. The idea is that your body has eight essential amino acids that it essentially can't make and needs to get from the diet and the bio letics. Amino acids are those amino acids, those essential amino acids. And so you're basically getting more amino acids than you get with the recoveries. So you do not get from the biolytics amino acids, the glutamine or the proteolytic enzymes. So when you put the two together essentially from the bioletics you're getting the essential amino acids and it's about 10 grams of those in a serving. And then from the recoveries you're getting the branched chain amino acids which actually happen to overlap. Some of those are essential amino acids amidst acids along with glutamine and proteolytic enzymes. So you put the two together and that's kind of an ideal scenario. The way that I would do something like this is there is some evidence that maintaining high daily levels of amino acids will actually help stave off muscle degradation and help to improve or not improve soreness, but decrease soreness. And so what I'll do is I'll typically split the serving of bioletics amino acids into two different servings during the day. So I'll take two different five gram servings, one in the morning and one in the mid afternoon or evening and then I'll take the recoveries after my workout. So three different times during the day I'm spiking my amino acids and assisting with body repair, staving off protein degradation. So yes, you will get all those essential amino acids through something like whey protein or, or steak. But the idea is that the bioavailability is a little bit lower and the absorption basically takes a little bit longer. A couple of good resources for you would be to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com do a search for Dr. Cohen and Bioletics and we had an interview on branched chain amino acids. I also interviewed Dr. Minkoff, who has a branch chain, or not a branch chain amino acids, an essential amino acids capsule called a master amino pattern. And if you go to BenGreenfulFitness.com and do a search for steak in a pill, you can find more information and interview with Dr. Minkoff where he explains why this stuff works and what's in it. So hopefully that clears up the discussion and gives you some ideas about how you would use those and what the difference between them is. And then I have a question from listener Ryan. And Ryan's question is somewhat long, but essentially as we get towards the end, what he says is that he is getting a ton of stomach sloshing during his racing. He's decreased what he's drank, he's decreased what he's eating, and he still gets the stomach sloshing. He finishes by saying, my stomach normally does not digest food easily, and it has been like this for a long time. I just don't know what else to do. I obviously need to drink during my races, but even when I drink a small amount, I still have sloshing. Well, Ryan, there are a few different factors that can cause the stomach sloshing. Here are some of the things that I've worked with with my athletes. One is, because the sloshing a lot of times occurs as soon as you get off the bike and start to run.

You.

You actually begin to taper the number of calories and the amount of fluid that you take in about 15 to 20 minutes during a triathlon before you get off your bike. So you're pretty much kind of fueling and hydrating minimally in the last 15 to 20 minutes of the bike ride. So that some of that gastric emptying occurs before you get out on the run. And gastric emptying of liquids is going to take about 15 to 20 minutes. So that's one thing that you can do. If you try that and you're still getting some of the sloshing, then you need to assess your bike intake to make sure that you're not taking in more than 30 ounces of water per hour during a bike ride and during cooler weather bike rides, preferably closer to about 24 to 28 ounces of water or the equivalent of one water bottle. And you can also make sure that during the run, you're only taking in about 10 to 15 ounces of water per hour during something like a half Ironman event, and during an Ironman event, closer to about 14 to 18 ounces of water per hour. So you're not taking in as much water during the run as you do on the bike. As far as fuel goes, if your stomach is empty, it is going to get like this gassy feeling. You're going to get basically that feeling of stomach sloshing. And so it is important that you actually keep adequate calories coming on board. And that would be in the range of, for most guys, 300 to 350 calories per hour on the bike, about 200 to 250 calories per hour on the run. And make sure that you also maintain the proper osmolarity of the fluids that you're the osmolality of the fluids you're consuming by consuming electrolytes as well and not consuming too many of them. So make sure that all the fluids that you're consuming aren't just, you know, say like Gatorade. Because for Gatorade to give you the amount of salt that you actually need, you have to drink so much of it that gastric emptying is going to take a lot longer time to occur and you end up over hydrating. Finally, you say, my stomach normally does not digest food easily. I would look into anything that could be causing some digestive irritation or Ryan, look into your gluten, look into your dairy, your whey, your soy. One of the companies that I use for food allergy testing for my athletes is called Unikey Unikey Health Systems. Best one to go with through them. And you can email me if you want some information about it, but it would be their mail in stool sample. I know some of you are giggling out there as you think about taking a pool and putting it in an envelope and mailing it off to some company out in Idaho. But it actually is pretty comprehensive. My one complaint with that company is they do try and upsell you. They try and sell you a ton of different supplements after looking at your poo. But the idea is that it is a very good way to find out everything from parasites to yeasts to food allergies. And it's fairly comprehensive. So I would definitely look into that. And that's Ann Louise Gittleman's company, Unikeith Health Systems. So good question. Next question is from listener Brad. And Brad says, Ben, will your bulletproof knee program be likely to alleviate the classic symptoms of runner's knee? I experience it seems the program is emphasizing it band symptoms. Would you please provide a comprehensive explanation of runner's knee as well? Brad, you are correct. I designed bulletproof knee to primarily be for runners, cyclists, triathletes, and athletes in general who are experiencing it. Band friction syndrome, or pain on the upper or the outside of the knee. Even though it's a lot different injury than runner's knee, many of the protocols in that program would definitely help with overall knee health, but that program is specifically designed for it. Band friction syndrome. Now, the runner's knee that you refer to is also called patellofemoral syndrome. I've had that before when I used to play a lot of volleyball. I got that. And the idea typically is that you get a little bit of worn cartilage in the knee joint and so you get some reduced shock absorption, a little less cushioning. And if you combine that with tight hamstring muscles or tight calf muscles, those can put some backward pressure on the knee. You throw in a weak quadriceps muscle, so the patellar doesn't. Your patellar or your kneecap doesn't track properly, and you end up getting a lot of cartilage damage when that missed tracking kneecap irritates a lot of the cartilage inside the femoral groove or the area inside your, your femur that the kneecap is supposed to track in. So tight hamstrings, tight calves, weak quads, lots of jumping and impact without a lot of proper recovery, and you kind of set yourself up perfectly for runner's knee. And usually you feel tenderness. Kind of, kind of like if you could reach inside your kneecap, back behind the patella, that's generally where you'd feel it. Sometimes it can manifest itself a little bit towards the inside of the knee, but it's a huge problem with runners. Some of the things you can do are definitely to engage in a very intensive hamstring and calf stretching program where you're doing either partner assisted stretches or self stretches. I would definitely recommend you use something called PNF stretching, which is where you would, for example, lie on your back on the ground, stretch your hamstring by pulling your straight leg up and then contract, retract down against your hand for about six seconds, and then relax the hamstrings. And they should stretch a little bit deeper. You can do that with a partner or you can do it yourself. Doing calf stretching from as many angles as possible will also be important. Doing foam rolling on the hamstrings and the calves can also help to increase flexibility in those muscles. The other thing that you can do conversely, is to strengthen the quadriceps. Some quadriceps strengthening exercises that have worked really well for the athletes I've helped with runner's knee are standing straight leg kicks where you take a cable or an elastic band, you fix it around the area just above your ankle and you kick straight forward with a straight leg, trying to keep your leg almost locked out. So your quadriceps is supporting your knee in the same way that it would during running gait. And if you go to my website where I have a bunch of free exercise videos, that's pacificfit.net go over to the resources section and click on exercises and and I've got the cable straight leg kicks on there. You could be doing cable straight leg kicks every day. The other thing that can really help is to do uphill walking or hill walking either on a treadmill or outdoors to help improve the strength in the quadriceps. I know that the leg extension machine in the gym is supposed to be a quadriceps exercise, but in most individuals that aggravates runner's knee rather than actually helping runner's knee. So do that stuff and then make sure that you're not running or engaging in impact based activities on consecutive days. When I had runner's knee it took me about four months to realize what I needed to do. And at that point I started strengthening my quadriceps, stretching my hamstrings and I just ran once a week until I was pain free and I've never had to deal with it since. So hopefully that helps you out. It's going to take a little bit of management. The bulletproof knee can help you a little bit. There are definitely some nutrition protocols in there that will help you and some core and hip strengthening exercises, some cross training exercises definitely for it. Band friction syndrome. It's going to help. Not specifically designed for runner's knee, but it could help a little bit with that. And in the meantime I'm working on developing a program similar to the bulletproof knee for your shoulders. And so I will have that available soon for you as well for any of you who have shoulder issues. Question from listener Bob. Bob says I'm currently using a recovery drink of Heed. And for those who don't know what Heed is, it's basically like electrolytes and sugar and whey protein powder. I use about 300 to 350 calories and I use your recommendation of drinking 2 calories per pound of body weight. What do you recommend for a recovery drink? And and how important is the type of protein powder used? Do you differentiate between isolate and concentrate? Well, let's address the first part of your question. What I recommend for a recovery drink. I Personally, as much as possible, try to eat real food for my recovery meal. So a typical post workout scenario for me is I walk in the door from a run, I take that recovery recoveries I talked about earlier with a glass of water. Sometimes I throw a noon tablet in there for a few extra electrolytes. And then sometimes I'll have a piece of fruit with that like a banana or an apple or an orange. And then about 20 minutes or a half hour later, I'll sit down and have myself a meal after I've showered and stretched out. And the meal will typically be real food like quinoa and chicken or a salad with some almonds, poppy seed dressing and some fruit on it. But the idea is that if you are going to drink your calories, you just want to be a little bit careful that you get the ratios correct. You're doing pretty well with that heat and whey protein powder. There's a few supplements out there that actually give you the carbohydrates and protein in the proper ratio, which is a 3 to 1 or a 4 to 1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. Recover ease is one exam or I'm sorry, recover ITE is one example. Recoverite is made by hammer Nutrition Endurox. R4 is another one. And basically we're talking about compounds that are just sugar and protein mixed up in the proper ratios. You can make your own recovery drink by taking a couple of bananas, a scoop of ice and a couple of scoops of whey protein powder or soy protein powder or rice or hemp or whatever. You tend to talk and using something like that. The other thing that you could do is you could use for example, the Bio Letics amino acids that I talked about earlier and put that in there for some added amino acids and quicker absorption. A lot of different options in terms of recovery drinks after some real, real hard workouts. I'll also include antioxidants like I'll include the solar synergy in there. That's a high antioxidant beverage. You could also use like four frozen blueberries or thawed blueberries and blend those in with your recovery drink as well. I actually had a great recovery drink the other day. I just took frozen blueberries, water, added the Bioletics amino acid powder and just basically ate that out of a cup with a spoon. And it was actually pretty flavorful. The type of protein powder in terms of the isolate versus the concentrate, basically what it comes down to is you've got three different types of whey protein. You've got a whey protein concentrate which generally has a little bit higher levels of lactose in it. And so if you're lactose intolerant, you need to be careful with that. It is typically a little bit more affordable. The isolates, the whey protein isolate, they process that to remove the fat and the lactose. But you also lose some of what are called your bioactive compounds which, which help your body to absorb that protein a little bit better. So you could get a little bit better absorption with the concentrate, but you could also get higher fat, higher cholesterol and more lactose. I'm not really worried about the fat and the cholesterol, but for those of you who are lactose intolerant, that can be an issue. If you're using a whey protein concentrate, you're getting stomach upset, you might be able to fix that by switching to an isolate. And then finally there's a new, more expensive form of whey protein called a hydrosylate. And what that means is that it's probably predigested. They partially, they do what's called hydrolyzing the proteins, which means they break them up with water and so they're more easily absorbed, but they do tend to cost more. The interesting thing is there's really only one non industry funded research study on the market that shows that the whey protein hydrosylate is any better than the whey protein isolate. I tend to recommend the Mount Capra double bonded whey protein and that would be classified as a whey protein isolate. They also add casein protein to it and casein basically results in a little bit slower, longer absorption of the amino acids in the protein. So a lot of different options out there. What I would recommend is that for your recovery drink after your very hard workout, to make sure your recovery drink has antioxidants, it has electrolytes, it has a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. After your easier workouts, you can get away with some recoveries. Capsules, piece of fruit and then just a regular meal afterwards. So I typically will save my full on recovery drinks for after a real, real key hard workout. And that's when I'll use either premixed formula or I'll use an actual recipe where I'll mix the whey protein with the fruit and just do that in a blender with some ice. I neglected to mention one other brand of recovery supplement which I'm probably going to get in big trouble for now because they're one of my Sponsors Goo Recovery Brew Goo Recovery Brew is actually the one that I have in my cupboard right now. I mentioned the Recoverite and the Endurox R4 and this would fall into that category of being kind of a preformulated recovery beverage. But that's also really good and quite tasty one. They have a watermelon flavor that's pretty good. So we have one more question and it is from listener Ron. Ron says, I signed up for my first triathlon and have been reading about training. Most sources suggest taking off one day per week. I found this to be challenging. On the day off, can you still work out if it's not a run, bike or swim? Would an easy bike ride with my wife or a yoga class be okay for that day off? Well, Ron, a couple of things. First of all, it depends on the training volume. If you're just doing like a six or seven hour training week for a sprint triathlon, a lot of people are successful with not ever having a day off, just having a day that includes an easier technique based switch, technique based ride, soft surface run, but essentially still includes elements of triathlon training. If you've got a real hard or high volume training program, you definitely benefit from an easy day. But the easy day, even in the hardest of programs, should never involve just sitting on the couch, light walking some time, splashing and playing in the water. Basically getting the blood flow flowing helps to remove a lot of the inflammation from the week's workouts and speed up your recovery. On my recovery days I play a tennis match and for me it's a mental break, but it's a little bit of a physical break too. A tennis match does not take as much out of me as a typical hour and a half training day of bike and run intervals. So it really depends on your training program. But ultimately, yes, a light workout on a recovery day is going to be much better than a day that is completely off. In my personal program, I take a day that's completely off, like literally nothing at all. About once every two to three weeks where it's just a day where it's absolutely nothing. And even those days still include walking around and stretching and activities of daily living. So great question. Now we're going to move on to the training and nutrition interview with me. And the idea behind this interview is it was released over at the marathon training academy, a couple of people from over there interviewed me and it was a really good interview I thought. And so I wanted to give it to you guys over here, let you listen in. So enjoy.

Featured topic.

All right, well, we're going to get going today on the podcast. We're here with Ben Greenfield and I'm so glad that he came on. Let us interview him. He's recognized as one of the top fitness, triathlon, nutrition and metabolism experts in the nation. Ben coaches and trains individuals for weight loss, lean muscle gain, holistic wellness and sports performance in Spokane, Washington, in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. He also runs the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, the Internet's top school for learning the sport of triathlon and how to be a better triathlete. He was voted in 2008 as the personal trainer of the year by the National Strength and Conditioning association, an internationally recognized and respected agency. Ben's also a public speaker on fitness and nutrition and training and he's the host of one of the top ranked fitness podcasts in itunes, the Get Fitness Fit guy with the Quick and Dirty Tips Network. Real good podcast. And Ben's also on the board of directors for Tri Fusion Triathlete Team and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Spokane Health and Fitness Advisory Committee. As a triathlete coach and competitor, he competes at Ironman and Half Ironman World Championships, holding a ranking as of USAT's top ranked age grouper triathletes and competes in 15 to 20 triathlons each year, both nationally and internationally. Ben, do you have any time to breathe?

I don't know. It sounded like you didn't have much time to breathe during the bio. I should take you with me places. You could introduce me. That was quite comprehensive.

Oh, man. I tell you, tell our audience what all is involved in the Ironman Triathlon. I think that's pretty awesome.

Well, a marathon of course is involved, but you're a little bit smoked by the time you get there. You swim 2.4 miles and bike 112 miles and then you run your marathon. And if you are trying to make the time cut off, you need to do all that in 17 hours. And my goal is always to get it done in 10 or less. So that's what the Ironman Triathlon is.

I always thought that it would be easier to do the run like in second and then have the bike ride for the last thing. But I suppose they're not in it to make it easy for anyone and.

Then have lots of people drown during the swim as their calves are cramping.

No, I thought first and then run.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that could work. It would still be uncomfortable. I mean, I personally would rather bike 112 miles knowing that I have to run a marathon than run a marathon knowing that when I finish I need to bike 112 miles.

I guess you had the experience doing it. I just thought it would be nice to sit after a marathon, you know?

Yeah, it would, but. Yeah, I don't know. For some reason I find it easier to run after I bike than I do to bike after I run.

I can't imagine how sore you are after one of those things.

Well, the swimming and biking are non weight bearing, so that's mostly just glycogen depleting and it leaves you tired, but not necessarily sore. Anybody who's gone out and done a century bike ride knows that probably the sorest part of your body is anywhere that you forgot to put shammy cream because of the shaping. But when you're running, I mean, it always leaves you sore. But really, if you were to go out and swim 2.4 miles and bike 112 miles, you wouldn't be that sore. So the soreness really is about what you would get after running a marathon at a difficult race pace.

Well, it's interesting. I guess if I got my swimming up to par, then I might have to try one of those sometime.

You should just hop into your local friendly neighborhood Ironman triathlon and.

Yeah, exactly.

I think you need to start with one of those smaller ones first.

Yeah, right.

So how did you get into triathlon?

When I was in university, I was studying sports science and exercise science and ended up discovering the triathlon club as a great avenue to use myself as a guinea pig for a lot of the stuff that I was learning. And so because I was already I was swimming, I was doing a little bit of lifeguarding, playing some water polo. So I had the swimming component down. I was a really ugly swimmer, but I could swim. And I was riding my big heavy mountain bike with a backpack full of books to school every day. At that point, all I really had to do was run. And my wife now, who is my girlfriend then, actually ran for the University of Idaho. So she was a good motivation and good teacher for me to learn how to really run distance, since all I had done up to that point was sprint style training. And at that point I kind of had all the components to try out, like you just mentioned, a short triathlon, a sprint triathlon. And I loved it and I've been doing them ever since. So that was really how I got into it was as an avenue for exercise science and to kind of meet some people and get involved in a sport where I could apply some of those physiological concepts and. And it really became a passion.

Awesome. So what's your favorite event?

Eating. Does that count? Probably. Other than that, biking, because you get to play around with all sorts of cool little toys on the bike and bikes are just fun. It's like the next best thing to being able to work on a motorcycle or a race car when you have a bike that you can do all sorts of cool things with. And you know, granted swimming and running are fun, but biking, something about having kind of an extra piece of equipment that's a pretty involved and necessary piece of equipment. It makes it fun for me. I like the bike split.

Yeah, well, I was hoping you'd say running because this is marathon training. I don't know if we can continue with this conversation.

I do love to run, but I mean, you just asked me what I like better. Chocolate peanut butter pizza. I like them all.

But yeah, we do have some triathletes in our community. And of course everyone I think is going to benefit from this interview today because we're going to get into nutrition and Angie's had so many questions about that. So let me ask you what got you interested in the study of nutrition?

Well, it goes hand in hand with physiology. And so as I was studying sports science at the undergraduate level, I was exposed to quite a bit of human nutrition. And when I moved on to my master's course of study, I wanted to continue to learn that component of exercise and sports science, just because by that time I already understood that it's a big component of fitness and competition and diet is. And so I studied a lot of biochemistry and more advanced human nutrition. And after the master's degree went on and got a sports nutrition certification. And now I find that just the biochemistry and the challenges of eating properly are just as interesting to me as training properly and putting together a solid training program. So for me, the enjoyment I get out of it is the fact that I understand its enormous importance in actually bringing you to the next level or getting you to the point point where your body actually feels good and you have energy.

Yeah, I think I heard you say that the nutrition part of it is like 50% of training for a marathon. It's so important.

Any sport of attrition, any sport where glycogen depletion is an issue, which would include marathoning and triathloning, is going to be very dependent on your nutritional status. And that's not to say that a 100 meter sprinter isn't going to benefit from taking some sort of nutritional supplement or eating effectively. But when you're looking at wanting to spare carbohydrate stores and keep your body going for long periods of time, it moves to the forefront in terms of its importance. So, absolutely, I would say 50% and in some cases even more.

Right, that makes sense. So what do you see as the key components to a healthy diet for a long distance runner or an endurance athlete?

Well, as you probably guessed, carbohydrate intake can be skewed towards a slightly higher percentage in that population, really in any active population, simply because in a sedentary population, if you dump a bunch of glucose into your bloodstream, you're eventually going to become unresponsive to the hormone that gets released in response to glucose, insulin. But when you're exercising a lot, you don't do quite as much damage to your body when you're putting more fuel in the tank, when you're fueling your body with more carbohydrates, an endurance athlete can benefit from slightly increased carbohydrate intake to a certain extent. There are a lot of people that take that to a very high level and will consume 75 to 80% carbohydrate as part of their daily diet. Even if that's a healthy type of carbohydrate, even if you're eating gluten free and avoiding sugars and Cokes and things of that nature, still 75 to 80% is a big load of insulin being released. And unless you have a screaming high metabolism, then that's a pretty high carbohydrate intake. 55 to 60% is better unless you're carb loading. And as you're carb loading through race week, you'll gradually get up to about 80% carb intake, but about 55 to 60% carbs is good. And that's generally accompanied by anywhere between 20 and 30% protein and 20 and 30% fat. And those ranges are so big because I'm very big on people eating according to their metabolic types and the type of fueling that's actually correct for their bodies. So I don't want to give an exact specific range because someone who's of Icelandic descent is going to be different than someone who's of Asian descent is going to be different than somebody who is Hispanic. And so the actual metabolic types really vary. But for the most part, if you're hitting that 50 to 60% carbohydrate, 20 to 30% fat, 20 to 30% protein window, it's pretty good. And there have been studies that have looked at the fact that endurance athletes consume or burn more fat, so maybe they should eat more fat. And they've taken endurance athletes, put them in a lab, given them mostly fat as a fuel, like, put the fat up to, like, 40, 50% of the diet, with the theory being that you're going to perform just as well. But the fact is that there's a lot of GI distress that occurs with that, and there was actually no increase in performance that was observed. And so that's why, even though we're burning more fat, the higher fat doesn't really work too well. The higher protein gets to be pretty tough on the liver and the kidneys after a while. And so you're kind of left with that macronutrient ratio that's been observed in a lot of studies to be really good for athletes in general and especially endurance athletes.

Ben, when you got to the GI distress, I was distressed because I didn't know. I'm going to have to remind you and Angie, since you both have a medical background, to keep it simple for us.

Gastrointestinal.

I know. I know how she.

I'm not talking about the army.

So for us in the audience that are not as elite as you two, keep it simple for us simple guys.

Yes, sir.

Well, you read a lot of the different recommendations of percentages of carbohydrate and protein ratios, and I think a lot of people get bogged down by that because they don't understand sometimes even the basics of nutrition. And so trying to get down those percentages can be really confusing to them. Personally, I think it's the quality of the foods that you eat, also the quality of the fats, like you were talking about. What is your take on that?

Yeah, I think it's enormously important what the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are derived from. Before I comment on that, I want to be clear. I don't have a scale in my kitchen. I don't keep track of those percentages very carefully. For me, if at the end of the day, I can close my eyes and kind of put all the food that I consumed on one of those divider plates in my mind, then carbohydrates should be on about half that plate, and the protein should be on a third of it, and the fat should be on a third of it.

Right.

So basically, as far as the actual quality, yeah, it's enormously important because obviously you could go out and buy, you know, whatever the Weight Watchers Meals, the prepackaged. I'm blanking on the name of the really popular one. Nutrisystem.

Yes.

And you know any of those type of prepackaged meals, and they could put them in the percentages that are correct for your body, but you're getting tons of sodium and preservatives and chemicals and artificial sweeteners and neurotoxins and all sorts of stuff dumped into your body when you're eating those versus real food. And so the quality is enormously important. And of course, the easiest way to just dial in the quality instantly is to make sure that when you're shopping for the carbs, the proteins and fats, you're shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store or the farmer's market, if you're lucky enough to have access to one of those. But you've got all your produce and your dairy and your meat and your starches and everything that really doesn't come come in a package or a box, generally around the perimeter of the store, especially the produce, the fruit, the vegetable aisle. So that's where the quality comes in. And the quality really, truly is important. The fewer chemicals you can put into your body when you're eating, the better.

That's a great point. I like to tell people that if they don't understand what's written on the label, they probably shouldn't put it in their body.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to a certain extent, you look at a lot of of sports supplements and they'll say something like maltodextrin on them. A lot of people don't know what maltodextrin is, but I mean, it's just sugar. You burn it for energy. Something like that is fine.

Right.

But it's very rare that you're going to find a list of ingredients that are unpronounceable in a food that you're eating and have that food actually be good for you or be doing you a service or helping you out with your sports performance, in most cases, it's going to be more deleterious to your function than it is going to help you out. So that's one of the things I get a lot of the athletes that I work with because I do a lot of nutrition consulting. I mostly work from my computer helping people out via phone and email. And I get lots of questions from people about nutrition labels and adding up the calories on the nutrition labels and reading the ingredients, ingredient labels. And one of the first things I tell them is, okay, as I'm explaining this to you, one of the first things you should know is that you should not be eating many foods that have labels, period. You should not be eating many foods that you're taking out of a box anyways. The pepper that you get at the grocery store and the apple, those don't have labels or UPC codes on them or bars or anything like that. They're just food. It's really important that if you find yourself always looking at labels, then maybe you need to step back and look at your diet from a crow's eye view and kind of see how many things you're eating out of boxes and how many things you're eating. The same way that your great grandparents would have eaten 100 or 150 years ago, right?

Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, your body is going to perform so much better on the fat that an avocado contains as opposed to the fat in a bag of chips. You know, that's pretty far ends of the spectrum there.

Exactly, exactly.

So what are some cutting edge nutritional principles that you suggest?

Cutting edge? Well, we all know that gluten free is very cutting edge right now.

Right.

And I actually, you know, I'm not on that bandwagon full force. It really is good for some people, and then some people get really carried away with it. But the idea behind gluten free or paleo style eating is that essentially the use of breads and starches and the glutenated proteins that are formed while things like that are made is something relatively new in the human diet. And so from an evolution of the human body perspective, and when I say evolution, what I mean is just. Just the body's ability to adapt to certain foods. Our bodies aren't quite capable of digesting that very quickly. And so there's a lot of inhibition of absorption that goes on, a lot of undigested food fragments that end up in the bloodstream, a lot of allergic reactions, inflammation, and basically it's not a clean burning carbohydrate. And so one of the cutting edge concepts is that you, you limit the number of carbohydrates that you take in from gluten or you eliminate it altogether. Now, I fall into the former camp with myself and the athletes that I coach. Unless they have something like celiac disease or they're gluten intolerant. I tell them it's not that breads are bad necessarily, and you can't have whole grains or whole wheat, and you can't have brown rice or any of these foods, but you should experiment with Some foods that aren't grain based, you should try things like sweet potatoes and yams and carrots and parsnips and beets and these vegetable based or root based or tuber based carbohydrates that still give you food energy, carbohydrate energy, but don't contain those glutenated proteins. And you can kind of choose foods that are kind of halfway in between too. Oats have a little bit of gluten in them, but they're not quite so bad. Three grains that I really like that, you know, technically somebody who was big on the paleo diet or the non gluten diet would be completely against these, but that I use quite a bit are quinoa, amaranth and millet. And those are foods that are just the endurance athlete's best friend because they're kind of like rice. You get them, you cook them the same way as rice. You can batch cook them at the beginning of the week and use them as breakfast foods. You know, for example, when my children have breakfast, we mash it with bananas, the quinoa with bananas. You can throw a little bit of feta cheese and, and chopped up spinach and kale, some almonds and some tomatoes and turned it into an afternoon or evening salad. So there's a lot of versatility in some of those grains that go beyond like, you know, spaghetti or rice and have a little bit higher protein content as well. So when you say cutting edge nutrition concepts, especially when we started off this discussion talking about carbs, the idea of really expanding your horizons when it comes to carbs and things thinking beyond the almighty bagel is really a good thing. All my athletes who have ever PR'd in any event have done it on sweet potatoes or yams. I mean, that's just a fact and that holds true for myself as well. So the carbohydrate concept is really important in terms of one of the cutting edge nutrition concepts. It's probably utilize most frequently among myself and the athletes that I work with.

I think that's great to think outside the box a little bit. And you can only eat so much spaghetti to do your carbo loading. And I think people don't think that know that there are other options out there. So those are some great hints there.

That made me hungry. Oh, sorry, salad you were talking about.

And you know, there's a lot I didn't mention nuts and legumes. But those are also really effective for that front as well. You know, for, for marathoners and endurance athletes. I Know, a big problem for us is gas because we're always eating all these carbohydrates and we're eating more food anyways. And you're kind of that endurance athlete that already has gas or you're the one that's going to get it. So for that, if you're using the legumes and the beans and the nuts and things like that as your carbohydrate source, doing things like soaking can really help, which can help pre digest a little bit. And you mentioned the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. I shoot nutrition videos for them and do training videos. I just recently shot a video on how to make your own hummus. And a couple really simple things you can do to make garbanzo beans digest a little bit easier is you soak them overnight before you put them in the blender with all the ingredients. And then as you boil them, right before you put them in the blender, you add a little bit of seaweed. And there are enzymes in the seaweed that help to digest the stuff in the garbanzo beans that can give you gas. And so little tricks like that can help you out. And of course, beano is really good as well. You have to eat that stuff about five minutes before you eat a bean heavy meal. That's the trick. So yeah, those are other good carbohydrate sources that you just have to, you have to know the tricks of the trade when you're using those as primary fuel sources.

Yeah, that's awesome. I had a listener ask me recently if using decreased water or I mean, I guess not consuming any water or gels during an 18 mile run would make him have more endurance, if it would train his body to be able to respond better on less. What's your take on that?

You know, you always hear the human body isn't a camel. You know, if your mom didn't tell you that, your teacher did or your, your PE coach or whoever, you know, you got to drink water. Your body's not a camel, right? But you can condition your body to conserve a little bit of extra water by doing unhydrated exercise sessions in the heat. The problem is that the blood markers produced after a session like that are indicative of a high amount of inflammation and risk of over training. And the question is, do the hydration adaptations that you incur during a session like that, where you go out and do a tough training session with limited amounts of water, do those training adaptations that make you better able to exercise in the heat overshadow the fact that it beats up your body a lot more. When you're doing a dehydrated exercise session, it takes a lot longer to recover. And if you don't recover properly, you'll end up increasing your risk of overtraining or not getting as good of a few fitness response out of that training session. So you've got to be really careful. If you're getting ready for a hot weather race, then it makes sense to ensure that you're trying to expose yourself to hot, humid conditions, trying not to take in tons of water in those conditions, and choosing very carefully the training sessions that you do that for, preferably making them, not your longer training sessions or your really, really intense training sessions. And so that would be the strategy that you'd want to use if you were not going to consume any water is you just want to be careful the sessions that you do that with. For example, I mean, case in point, I'm getting ready for a race in Hawaii that I go down to in a week. And I've been doing exercise sessions in the steam room, in the sauna. I'm doing core training sessions, yoga sessions, calisthenics sessions, and they're only 20 to 30 minutes long. And they're kind of like child's play compared to an 18 mile run. But that's enough for my body. If I go in and do that without drinking much water, then that's conditioning my body and it's not doing as much damage. You're putting as much stress on my body as going out and trying an 18 mile run on 6 ounces of water.

Right. You're saying more limited sessions and probably not for the beginner who is not sure how their body's going to respond in the first place to long distance.

Yeah, this would be an advanced technique. I mean, you're looking for the extra 5 or 10% if you're doing this technique. And the same really goes for fuel. Same thing. There's been studies that have looked at people depleting themselves of carbohydrate and going out doing their sessions, both their hard sessions and their long sessions with minimal fueling. And again, there is indications at the muscular level that you actually, you can cause the muscles to respond a little bit better to that exercise session when you do it that way. But again, it's very stressful to the body as well. The blood markers that indicate stress during training go sky high when you do that. And then you get to the point where mentally, how hard are you going to be able to push yourself? How high Quality of a training session you're going to be able to have if you're starving and you're kind of in that kind of dazed, pure fat burning mode. So again, that's a session that you'd want to use really infrequently. I'll tell you, when I use that session in the athletes that I coach, I'll do it with really muscular athletes who we need to cannibalize muscle from and literally put them out there and do training sessions completely unfueled just to strip muscle off their body. I don't do it with people who are wanting to engage in fat loss because you can actually depress the metabolism a little bit, decrease the post exercise metabolic rate and decrease the number of calories burnt during that session. I use high intensity interval training for my fat loss, folks. Really the only other people who do that glycogen depletion as well are the people who need to get a little bit more mental toughness. And I need to have them go out and do a hard exercise session, push through discomfort and do so with minimal fueling. But only the people who are trying to cannibalize muscle or really get themselves the mental edge are the people who I have go out and do that. Now, I don't work with ultra marathoners. That's just not a niche that I've really done much coaching in. If I was coaching an ultra marathoner, that they would also fall into that category because they train really slow so they can move at a rate that really efficiently uses fat and they can get away again with more mobilizing their own fat stores, assuming that they have some, than putting a ton of calories on board. So that would kind of be the third category if I worked with them, who I would have do that.

Okay. Yeah, that's great.

All right, well, I'm going to ask the next question. Next question. And people have also been wondering about this. What do you eat before, during and after a long workout?

Well, I guess long is relative since we're talking to marathoners. Would long be kind of in that 90 minutes plus 2 hours plus in that range?

Yes. Yeah, that would be good.

Yeah. Before is the time when you really want to avoid proteins and fats. They take a long time to digest. They divert a lot of blood into the stomach and they essentially, by diverting a lot of blood into the stomach, deplete your extremities, your arms and your legs from the blood that they would need to deliver oxygen and to cool. So doing the whole rocky Steak and eggs, raw eggs in a blender type of thing, before a long training session would not be advised. The caveat to that would be if you're going for a super long session, I mean like a five or a six hour or ultra endurance or Ironman type of session, where you do need a little bit of proteins and fats on board, but for everything up to about two hours, just pure carbohydrate is fine. Most studies show that the glycemic index of the carbohydrates doesn't matter. And what I mean by that is you could eat really sweet carbohydrates or you could eat carbohydrates that are less sweet. So you could do your carbohydrate pre workout. It's supposed to be two hours pre workout, at least to allow for the gastric emptying to occur. You could do that with some sports drink and some fruit and an energy bar and that would be kind of the sweeter way to go. Or you could do it with sweet potatoes, A couple of sweet potatoes, a couple of yams, a big bowl of quinoa, and that would be kind of more the complex carbohydrate route. What I find is when I go with the sweet route, I tend to kind of have an energy slump before the training session. So I prefer to use the complex carbohydrate. Research doesn't back me up on that. But I do know just my own body and how I feel. I do better on the complex than the simple carbohydrates. Now, during the session, it really ranges for runners. You're usually looking at maxing out in terms of the max amount that a runner can really consume. Consume. And this would be for marathon style training, not for ultra marathon style training at about 250 calories per hour. And most of the females I work with will do pretty well at about 100 to 150. Most of the guys 150 to 200. And some of the people who are a little bit bigger can get up to around that 250 calorie mark. But basically that would be your hourly goal in terms of simple car carbohydrates. So, you know, you could take for example, a gel at the end of each hour if you're pushing a little bit harder, a gel every 40 minutes. If you're big, you're a guy, you could go with a gel every 30 minutes. But basically carbohydrate is fine during those sessions. And again, proteins and fats really wouldn't be advised for that length of an exercise session. You know, when we're looking at the really long stuff, that's where we would start to work in the carburetor or the proteins and the fats. And then after the workout, that's when you pull in the proteins and you do your post workout protein carb blend meal. Now, the magic ratio for endurance athletes is 3 to 1. Carbohydrate to protein ratio. That's not super important. You know, chocolate milk, interestingly enough, hits that ratio almost perfectly. But what I tell people is just mix protein and carbohydrate and try to do a little bit more carbohydrate than the protein. So, you know, for example, have some brown rice and have a little bit of chicken in there, or do a fruit smoothie and put a little bit of protein powder in there. But try and get that protein carbohydrate blend and try and get IT in within 20 minutes after the exercise session, no more than 60 minutes after the exercise session. And you really hit that window where your muscles are likely to pull in what you're fueling with and actually utilize it for recovery and for energy replenishment. So that's the short answer to the pre, during and post workout nutrition.

Yeah, that's great. That's very helpful. Now, many runners find themselves either gaining weight or struggling to lose weight when they're training for a marathon or as they're increasing their mileage. Why do you think this occurs and what are some suggestions for someone who wants to run a marathon and spend still lose weight?

It's kind of tough because you're trying to strip your body of energy while still having enough energy to actually do the training session. First of all, understand that there's no research to show that a bunch of aerobic training actually helps you to lose weight. There have been studies that have compared people who have dieted and lost weight and people who have done dieting plus cardio plus plus aerobic cardio. And there was no difference in the people who dieted and did aerobic cardio and the people who only dieted. And so thinking that all those aerobic training sessions are really going to help you lose weight is actually false. It's not going to work compared to just eating healthy. But assuming that you are eating healthy and you're working in at least that single long aerobic training sessions, that's kind of the foundation of a marathon training program, program, you know, your long weekend run, that type of thing. It's the incorporation of the higher intensity intervals are really going to help you. And like I mentioned, I don't have my fat loss clients actually do those sessions with minimal fueling. We do a good pre workout meal. We make sure if the session is longer than an hour, that they're actually taking fuel out there with them. And everything's high intensity intervals. So what we're doing there is the release of hormones like testosterone and growth hormone that are crucial for fat loss and really spark the body's fat burning process. And then we're also increasing the post exercise metabolic rate because when you're really huffing and puffing during an exercise session versus doing the entire exercise session at like 60 or 70%, you end up burning a lot more calories for the hours after that exercise session.

Interesting.

So the high intensity intervals are really important rather than just focusing on the aerobic training. Eating healthy outside of those sessions is also really important or eating in moderation outside of those sessions. So you engage in caloric restriction, but you don't engage in caloric restriction during or around the exercise sessions. You do it later on in the day. Like you quit eating two hours before bedtime and you cut an afternoon snack out if you're not an afternoon or early evening runner. And so you really base the majority of your fueling around your actual workout session for the day, when your body's going to be a lot more likely to use that fuel and not to store it as fat. And then the final trick that you can do, and this actually works pretty well if you're very, very careful with this trick. I'm careful to kind of lay down that calculation caveat when I share this with people. But what you can do is you can quit eating two hours before bedtime, go to sleep, get up in your fasted state when your body's burnt through its liver's carbohydrate stores while you're sleeping, and you go out and do an exercise session. I know this flies in the face of what I just said about exercising without fuel, but the trick here is that's a very easy exercise session. Okay, we're just talking about, about sparking the activity of the fat burning enzymes in the liver. So we're just going like 20 to 30 minutes, very easy, brisk walk, light jog, light bike ride, that type of thing. And incorporating that exercise session that's very light in a fasted state. And then supplementing that with the higher intensity intervals works really well. So that's kind of the key 1, 2 combo for weight loss is using the intervals and more Kind of the muscular training with those unfed, very light fat burning sessions and just not focusing everything on the aerobic training.

Right, right. Yeah. I think people just think, I've got to be out there, I've just got to run, run, run, and that's what's going to burn those calories and I'm going to lose the weight. But there's also other important elements to integrate into your workouts.

Right? Exactly. I worked a lot of these concepts into a fat loss book that I wrote called Shape21. It's kind of this 21 day, clean up your body, lose a bunch of fat type of program. In shape 21, I use a lot of those same concepts. But then I also put weightlifting in there because weightlifting really is important as well. Maintaining lean muscle so that you actually can improve the calorie burst based on.

The fact that your fiber of lean.

Muscle is always going to burn more than a droplet of fat. So if you're not lifting weights at all, that can help out a little bit too. Is making sure that you include some type of resistance training.

Good. That sounds wonderful. Now, what kind of nutritional supplements would you recommend for a long distance runner?

Oh, there's a lot of them out there. You could spend a few thousand bucks a month if you were to follow every single ad you saw in in Runner's magazine. Yeah, it's a great question. On the nutrition supplements, I can tell you what I take and what I recommend to my athletes based off the research that I've done.

Okay.

And I always put, if you go to my coaching website, which is PacificFit.net you'll see that I have a lot of the supplements that I recommend there and I break them into three categories. Fat loss, performance and recovery. So for the people who are trying to lose weight from a fat loss perspective, the type of supplements that I like to focus on are a meal replacements that are not the type of meal replacements we talked about earlier. They have the chemicals and the preservatives and things like that in them. So there's one called Living Fuel and it's basically like a greens supplement and you can use it as a meal, but it really is whole food, it's real food. It's just basically finely ground powder. And that stuff works pretty well. The other thing for fat loss that I recommend are blood sugar stabilizers. I have my athletes who are trying to lose weight use a lot of cinnamon. Another couple of things that work really well are chromium and vanadium for stabilizing insulin Levels, reducing carbohydrate cravings. And there's one supplement I have on there called thermo factor, which is really good for that, for performance. There's a lot of different supplements out there, but fish oil has a ton of research behind it. The Omega 3 fatty acid supplements for cardiovascular health, for helping your joints bounce back quicker. So fish oil is something I really recommend. Vitamin D is also extremely important. Most multivitamins have like 200, 400 milligrams of vitamin D. I test most of my athletes via lab testing. I have them do all their blood, saliva, urine testing. I hook them up with labs that have them do it for them in the comfort of their own home so they don't have to go out and do all this for themselves. But I do those on myself as well. And I tested my vitamin D levels in the middle of the summer and they were just at rock bottom. And about 75% of the population has vitamin D deficiencies. And since it's a steroid and a hormone precursor, it's kind of like the secret ch cheap performance enhancer that nobody's actually using. So I take about 4 to 6,000 international units per day of that, 10 times more the recommended dose, and feel fantastic on vitamin D. So vitamin D, in addition to some type of fish oil, is really important. Magnesium, again, tons of people are very deficient in magnesium. It's essential as an electrolyte. Essential especially if you cramp. That's another kind of secret weapon in my performance protocol that I use. I personally use a topical magnesium. I did a big interview over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about magnesium and all the different advantages that you give yourself when you use it, but that's another one. And then finally, for performance, some type of a green supplement. There's been lots of studies done on the spirulina, the chlorella, the algae, those type of greens powders or green pills that you can get. Those work really well, not only for your immune system, but also for your performance. And so some type of greens supplement is also really important to include. And then for recovery, two different things I really recommend essential amino acids along with branched chain amino acids. The one that I use is called recoveries. But some type of quickly absorbed amino acid source that you can get into your body after a workout. And amino acids also work really well when you're restricting calories, but you still want to give yourself enough carb or enough protein so you don't cannibalize lean muscle. Amino acids are basically like Getting the protein without getting the calories. And so you can, for example, have a glass of water with some amino acids in them in the afternoon and still get proper recovery for your muscles without consuming too many calories. So amino acids and then something called proteolytic enzymes, and those really assist with digestion of proteins, really help with post workout soreness. And you can find them in pineapples, papayas, things like that. You can also get them from the pancreas of various farm animals, but you can also get them in pill form or capsule form. And proteolytic enzymes are another one that I really recommend for recovery. That would be kind of the staple of a nutrition supplement program for endurance athletes, would be the fat loss stuff, if you're wanting to do that. But then definitely a fish oil, a vitamin D, a magnesium, a green supplement, an amino acid supplement, and proteolytic enzymes would be kind of the top things to take if you really want to give yourself the edge.

That sounds like some good suggestions. In fact, I want to go check my multivitamin to see how much vitamin D it contains now.

Probably like 200, usually not much.

I'm wanting to go pee in a cup.

Doctor.

Yeah.

Check my vitamin D level.

Yeah, vitamin D would be blood, actually. But you can get your mineral loss, which is really important for endurance athletes. That's a urine test. You can also do PH testing, see if you're too acidic or alkalinic with the peeing on the strips. So there you go.

Thanks, man.

No problem. Have another cup of coffee and get at it.

All right, I got the next question. What advice do you have for a person who wants to break poor nutritional dietary habits like sugar, soda, fast food, all stuff that tastes good?

Well, the most important thing, mentally, is to understand that it takes a while for your body to form a habit to make a change. And your subconscious gets very rooted in the habits that you currently have in place. You take, for example, the study that they did on, on athletes at NASA and they put goggles on them that made their whole world turn upside down. And then they looked at things like the astronauts blood pressure and their heart rate, their stress levels, and it took an average of 28 to 32 days for them to actually begin to accept that new world as a reality. And so the human body, when, when you're trying to force changes upon yourself is no different. It gets stressed out. And your subconscious, a part of your brain called your amygdala, will actually stress your body out and try and keep it in the zone. That it's comfortable in eating the foods that you're comfortable with, staying with the habits that you're very accustomed to. So unless you can start the entire process of change by actually getting, getting your subconscious into change mode, it's very difficult to make those changes. And one of the best ways to train your subconscious is to visualize. So a lot of my fat loss clients especially will do the process of visualization where what we do is we picture. Or you would picture yourself. You close your eyes, you'd find a quiet place. You just do this for 30 to 60 seconds a few times a day. See yourself with, with the body or being at the weight that you want to be at. See yourself with a refrigerator full of the foods that are on your meal plan, full of the healthy foods that you've actually decided that you're going to start eating. See your pantry with the right foods in it. See yourself at each meal, making the changes and incorporating the changes that you want to make that are going to actually help you break that habit. And then when you combine that with, with the actual knowledge of what you're supposed to be doing, it's kind of the ultimate one, two combo. But it has to start with the subconscious. Very, very rare to run into somebody who tried to just quit cold turkey without using any type of mental training and actually made it through the first 28 to 32 days without falling off the bandwagon. And so that's number one, is training the subconscious. And then as far as empowering yourself with the knowledge to actually break, break the nutrition habits and take in the right things. First of all, make sure that you understand what's going on inside your body. When you're consuming sugar and soda and fast food, make sure that you understand all the damage that it does to your body. There's tons of resources out there. One really good one to kind of scare you into change is a book called Suicide by Sugar. And I think Nancy Appleton wrote that one. But it really just shows you all of the things, things that sugar can do to your body. I interviewed her on my podcast@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and put out an article by her over there. Really, if you know what's going on inside your body, it really helps you make that change and break your habit. And then once you've taken care of those things, that's when you can start to incorporate some of the little tricks like I mentioned the cinnamon and the chromium and the vanadium to reduce, reduce the carbohydrate cravings and the appetite cravings. Making sure that you drink lots of water, chewing gum can help out a little bit. As a matter of fact, I wrote an entire book on all of the little things that you can do to actually bump up your metabolism and keep your appetite down. It's called 100 Ways to Boost your metabolism. And that's all it is. Just page after page of all these different herbs and stuff, supplements and food choices and tricks that you can do throughout the day to take care of habits like that. But that's ultimately what it comes down to.

Well, that's powerful stuff.

Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to get all Jedi mind trick on you there.

No, I liked it. That's awesome.

It really does have to start in the mind because you see the people who are somehow able to get down to the weight they want to be, but they don't see themselves as that fit and healthy person. Oftentimes they just gain the weight back once they stop whatever program they're doing, because it hasn't started in the mind. So I think you've got the key there. Definitely.

Yep.

Now, for people who may be trying to cut sugar out of their diet, I hear a lot of conflicting reports about the artificial sweeteners and the high fructose corn syrup. Do you think those substances are harmful? What's your take on that?

Yeah, they are.

I mean, if you're just starting to eat healthy, you have a lot bigger fish to fry than worrying about sucralose or high fructose corn syrup. I mean, what it really comes down to when you're first starting out is calories. You have to make sure that you're at a caloric balance. And then after you take care of the calories, then you kind of get down to the next tier where you take care of the hormonal response, meaning that you try to choose the sugars that are released a little bit slower. You try to do what I talked about and eat more of your fuel in the presence of exercise. You try not to eat two hours before bedtime. And you do a lot of these things that help get your fat loss hormones in their proper flux. And then you start to go after the smaller battles. Like the artificial sweeteners. Yeah, a lot of them. There's anecdotal evidence that they're neurotoxic. There's been research done on sucralose that it kills 50% of the good bacteria in your gut. There's all sorts of things that go on. They're associated with appetite cravings. Diet sodas are linked with obesity. And so they are a chemical. And even though there's not tons of really solid research that says that they're going to kill you, I like to kind of walk on the safe side in terms of looking at some of the anecdotal stuff that's out there and really limit the amount of sucralose and acesulfamine potassium and aspartame and those type of things that I take in. So you want to be careful with those sweeteners. I wouldn't say that if you're just getting into healthy eating that you need to be a complete zealot when it comes to looking at every single label for artificial sweeteners. Worry about the calories and the sugars first. But yeah, you would do yourself a certain service both from a metabolic and from a health and a mental standpoint by cutting artificial sweeteners out in as many places as possible. And if you want like a non caloric sweetener, use something like stevia, which is a root based sweetener. It's super sweet, but it's natural. That's a really good one. And then xylitol isn't too bad either, but xylitol can give you bloating and gas, so you want to be careful with that. And then high fructose corn syrup with that again, it's kind of this villain that's been blown out of proportion. There's not really a huge difference between high fructose corn syrup and just glucose or carbohydrates. When it comes to the person who's needing to go from 220 pounds down to 210 pounds, that's not going to make a big difference. Difference. Now when you're going after just a few pounds, a little bit of body fat, that's where the fact that fructose is metabolized a little bit differently in the body doesn't really result in the same insulin response. Can result in a little bit more fat storage than regular sugars like a glucose. That's where it comes down to eliminating that from your diet and replacing it with natural, non high fructose corn syrup sources can help you out a little bit. But even bigger than that, my issue with the high fructose corn syrup is that if you're taking it in, you are by definition eating packaged foods. I mean, there's just no natural foods out there that have HFCs in them. And so that's the bigger issue is why is this a question in the first place, why are you worrying about it? Because if you're worrying about it, then you're eating enough pests packaged foods to where you need to be worrying about it. So if you start to eat real food, you kind of just automatically take care of the whole high fructose corn syrup problem.

Yeah, that's a great point. That's good.

Yeah. Angie was elbowing me in the ribs when you talked about eating two hours before going to bed and diet sodas.

Yup, yup, there you go. Sending you on the guilt trip.

This is very convicting. No, this is great, great content and I think people are going to really enjoy this podcast. We've got one more question, and if you just want to remind everybody, we're talking to Ben Greenfield from BenGreenfieldFitness.com He's a triathlon expert, nutrition expert, and we've had some great questions and answers so far. But one more question is, Ben, you lead a very busy life with work and family. How do you take time for training and keep that a priority and keep motivated?

Well, making family a part of your sport is really important. It's pretty rare to find somebody that picked up a hobby and left their family out of it and either kept the hobby or stayed with their family. If you pick up something like marathoning and don't bring your family into it at all, then you're going to find yourself five years down the road without a family and marathoning. Or you're going to find yourself five years down the road having given up marathon because you just couldn't do it and still prioritize family. So the important thing is being very frank with your spouse and your family about what's important to you and being very clear with them when you, when you're training, when you have races about what's happening, what's on the schedule, being able to make sacrifices in your schedule for what's going on with the rest of your family and then making your family a part of it. We're big on doing race vacations where when we go do something that's fun for the whole family, it's not just like, go watch daddy race. We're planning other things around it, turning things into a mini vacation, whether it be hiking in the area or going to an amusement park or just going and taking part in things other than just the race and the pasta party and the post race awards. Getting things like jogging strollers and bicycle trailers and all the little things that help make your kids a part of your sport is really important. As well. And then for the really focused training, you know, the last six or eight weeks leading up to your big event, trying to do as much invisible training as possible, which again, takes sacrifices on your part. But that means that your training is invisible to your family. You're setting the clock for 4:45 and throwing down your training session between 5 and 7am or, you know, if you have young children, doing it during their afternoon nap like I do a lot of the time. And, you know, basically being around when your kids are around and when your family needs you and getting your training session out of the way when they're sleeping or when it makes a little bit more sense from a family perspective, that's really important. Just to make sure that your hobby is not your hobby, it's your family's hobby and you're very communicative with them about your training and, and making them a part of it as much as possible. And just one more example, when I'm leading up to a big race and I've got four weeks before the race, four weeks before I'm telling my wife, okay, I'm going to be training a little bit extra on this day and this day and this day, honey, and then this day I might not be around for dinner. And then a week away from the race, I tell her, okay, I'm tapering. I might get a little bit grumpy. Try to take care of my body now. So I, I'm going to be training a little bit less and a lot of times I'm spending more time with the family during a taper week. But basically just being very communicative with your family about what's going on with your training is really important too. So just don't go solo. If you try and make it a solo hobby, it's just not going to work.

Yeah, I think the Lone Ranger type of mentality is going to be detrimental to your own performance. Performance and like you said, your family in general. And the thing I like, you know, is scheduling your training in like you would any other appointment too. And, you know, like you said, making the family aware of that so that it's not this big shock that you're skipping dinner that night of the week or whatever.

Right? Exactly. Yep.

Well, great. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Ben, I want to thank you for coming, coming on our podcast. And can you tell the folks how they can connect with you?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I do a free newsletter and blog and all that good stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com where I do interviews kind of like this, where I'll get doctors on and athletes and coaches just interview and talk and share knowledge. So that's a really good place to go. So BenGreenfieldFitness.com would probably, probably be your best source of information if you wanted to learn a little bit more about what I do and get a little bit more knowledge in your head. So, yeah, go over there. We got a free newsletter, a free podcast, free blog, free articles. So good place to learn.

All right, great. So everybody go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and check that out. A lot of good information. Ben, thanks for coming on the call.

Well, thanks for having me, guys.

Thank you.

Well, folks, that's going to wrap up the podcast, but please remember, let me know who you want me to get on the show. I do have an upcoming interview with Dr. Roby Mitchell that will be part of next week's podcast. And we're going to be talking about alternatives to getting your metabolism up and increasing your thyroid without eating, using popular thyroid medications that are on the market today. And the other thing that I would recommend that you do, in addition to letting me know who you want me to have on the podcast, is to go to itunes and leave the show a ranking and a rating. The higher we are in itunes, the more likely it is that I can get some smash bang guests on the show for you. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week.