Episode #141: What Is A Good Pregnancy Exercise Routine?

In this what is a good pregnancy exercise routine? Supplementing with citrulline? Should you worry about high cholesterol? Is kombucha okay? Diabetes diet recommendations Liquid food diets? Does coenzyme Q10 increase your metabolism? Can you turn white fat into brown fat and acid reflux during exercise?

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Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield, and whether you're a man or a woman, you should be aware that much of what we're taught these days about pregnancy and exercise is wrong. So whether you or your wife or your mom or your daughter or anybody else is expecting a child or maybe has just had a child, this is a can't miss podcast to learn more about exercise, pregnancy and nutrition. I received lots of questions about this, so I figured it was high time that we actually got an expert in this case, Cassandra Forsythe, on to talk about this now. In addition, before we launch into this week's special announcements, I would like to give a big shout out to the people who this week donated a dollar to the podcast, or in some cases more to help keep the podcast alive. And you can do that by clicking on the big donate a dollar podcast button over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com so big thanks to Vida, Luke, Bob, William, Paul, Camille, Richard, Elise, Gidget, Peter, Ronnie, Heath, John, Leese, Kyle, Paul, Aldo, Heath, Cynthia, Mark, and Todd for their generous donations this week to help basically pay the Amazon hosting expenses to keep streaming this podcast to you. All right, let's go ahead and jump into this week's special announcements.

Special announcements.

Well, not a ton of special announcements today, just a couple quick things for you triathletes out there who still want to get into the Ironman Triathlon Camp that I'm teaching over in coeur d', Alene, Idaho in May from May 13th through 15th. There's still time to get into that, but you've only got about three days left to register. So you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, click on the Show Notes to register or or go to PacificFit.net and head over to the calendar there to register and get into that camp that's gonna include tons of swim clinics, guided bike rides, running clinics, seminars and lots of good times including a kick butt post camp party. So be sure to check that out. And then also the last two weeks we have had Casey Kreischy come on to talk about the the book that I highly recommend called Super Health the last diet you'll ever need. And again, I do have 12 autographed copies of that that I will give out to anybody who uploads a video to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page or puts a link to a video at the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page in which you tell me why you feel that book could actually help you based off of what you learned in those interviews with Casey. Alright, let's go ahead and have one quick announcement and then move on to this week's Listener Q and A. Get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free.

Listener Q and A.

Remember, if you have a question, you can call toll free to 877-209-9439 and leave your question via audio. You can use the free iPhone or Android app which you can download at BenGreenfieldFitness and just click the handy Dandy Ask Ben button right there on the app. Or you can use the Ask Ben form over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and of course if you follow Ben Greenfield on Twitter, you can do what our first listener did and ask your question via Twitter. And Chunky Bear cub, gotta love that handle. Asks via Twitter what do you think of Citroade, a citrulline amino acid supplement? Well, citrulline is pretty interesting stuff and first of all, let me say before I tell you about it that I do take citrulline. Prior to some of my tougher triathlons I load with this compound called citrulline. So basically what citrulline is is it's an amino acid. It's a non essential amino acid, which means that your liver can make it from other amino acids from your diet, but it is a precursor to something called arginine. And when citrulline is metabolized by your body, it can create arginine. And one of the things that's kicked off when that happens is nitric oxide and Nitric oxide can help to increase blood flow. It could help with some of your glucose or your oxygen uptake. It could even assist with the ability to increase your propensity to oxidize fatty acids. So that's one way that citrulline can help, is it can increase the nitric oxide production when it's converted into this other component called arginine. Citrulline, when it's converted into arginine, also helps to remove some nitrogen byproducts and ammonia buildup from exercise, which could also help reduce overall acidity in a muscle and fatigue. And citrulline is typically bound to something called malate. And malate is capable of acting as basically like a shuttle between your cell fluid and your mitochondria, which is the little pieces of machinery that make energy within your cell. And what this does is it helps your body to convert lactic acid back into usable energy more quickly. So there's a few different ways that citrulline could work or that citrulline malate could work. And interestingly, there haven't been a ton of great studies on citrulline until recently. There was a pretty good one that came out in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and this was in April of 2010, so almost a year now. And it found that citrulline actually really helped with anaerobic performance and also to relieve muscle soreness. And in this case, anaerobic performance was actually a weight training protocol, and not necessarily like running or bicycling or something like that. But it does show some good promise. And it could be one of those things, kind of like creatine, where it becomes a more popular supplement based on ongoing research that shows it to be promising. But I definitely noticed that it helps with reducing muscle burn, specifically before the swim start of some of the triathlons that I do, or during the intense swim start of some of the triathlons that I do. The particular supplement that you ask about, the citruade, the only issue with is a citrulline compound. The only issue with it is it does have some mannitol and some xylitol, which are sugar alcohols. And those can cause some stomach distress in people, also some gas and bloating during exercise. So you may want to make sure that you try it to see if your body actually agrees with it. But ultimately, it's something that I recommend trying out, especially for more intense exercise sessions. Helen has a question. And Helen says, can I ask about my friend who has a medical lab result with the following areas of concern and then she throws a bunch of values out. And first of all, I'm not a doctor. I mean, when you send me your blood lab results that, you know, it's a little bit tricky for me because I'm not a doctor and I can't go out and give you medical advice, but I can help you out a little bit and just point you in the general direction. So the first value that she throws out that her friend has was this value called mchc. And if you ever get a complete blood count, usually it's gonna have an MCHC on there and that's just a reflection of your hemoglobin concentration and specifically the amount of hemoglobin that you have relative to the number of red blood cells that you have. And in this case this individual's hemoglobin MCHC was at about 31. And the normal range for grams per deciliter, which is the values that she gave me is about 31 to 36. So you know, it's a little bit low in terms of, you know what I would personally do like if my hemoglobin were a little bit low is I would focus on consuming iron rich foods and also making sure that I specifically prioritize iron rich foods that contain adequate protein. So things like a, things like some dairy sources, typically like you know, an organic grass fed cow's milk or yogurt would be really good, some cheeses would be okay. But iron along with protein is a good, good choice along with vitamin C to facilitate the absorption of the iron. Vitamin B actually can help to increase the hemoglobin level. So taking a vitamin B complex or including A vitamin B4 fortified foods along with high consumption of fruits and vegetables. Beets interestingly has had a lot of good research lately, especially in terms of sports performance and those do stimulate hemoglobin production and can help with red blood cell production as well. So that's something that I would focus on is making sure that you're getting lots of iron rich foods, but that you're also getting a vitamin B complex, getting in some vitamin C and then taking an adequate protein. You also talk about the JAMA GTP and that's one of these liver enzymes and the JAMA GT was at 167. And basically what this is is it's a liver enzyme. It's actually a gamma glutamyl transferase. And liver enzymes when they're elevated like this is can be indicative of some type of a liver Disease or even an inflammation of the bile ducts. Sometimes psoriasis can cause this issue. High alcohol consumption can cause this issue. But interestingly, with these tests, a lot of times in athletes or very active individuals, liver enzymes can be elevated and it's not a cause of concern. We talked about this a little bit a few weeks ago. But they have to go hand in hand with some other indications that there are issues going on with the liver. So that could include like a lot of weakness, a lot of fatigue, a loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, jaundice, kind of a yellow colored skin, any type of abdominal swelling, abdominal pain, really dark urine, lots of itching. You can't just take like an elevated liver enzyme, say that there's a big issue going on with the liver. So for example, if your friend exercises a lot, that could be enough to cause us ggt. Even something as simple as consuming alcohol the night before the test, like a couple glasses of wine, could also cause this issue. So something that you want to look at with a host of other issues and not all by itself, but again, not a huge red flag by itself. Then finally, the cholesterol is at 4.6 and total cholesterol at 6.7 and that's a millimoles per liter. Those are typically, you know, the type of values we're going to see internationally, not here in the States, but you know, according to, you know, for example, like over in the UK where they have the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Department of Health, which are, which is kind of our version of our health institute over here in the US Basically that would be considered high because total cholesterol is supposed to be less than 5 and LDL cholesterol is supposed to be less than 3. And your values are above that. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that there is a high risk for a problem from a cardiovascular standpoint. The idea with this cholesterol issue is that it dates pretty far back to a guy named Ancel keys in a seven country study that this guy did back in the 50s. And what this study was was it was an epidemiological study that compared saturated fat consumption and the prevalence of heart disease in seven different countries. And there seems to be this direct correlation between saturated fat consumption and the prevalence of heart disease that led Ancel Keys and the health professionals who made dietary recommendations based on Ancel Keys studies to believe that we should be limiting saturated fat if we want to avoid heart disease. However, there were a lot of confounding variables in these studies that were done back in the 50s. So, for example, in some countries where the heart disease rate and the saturated fat consumption was high, there were a bunch of other things going on that could affect heart disease, like smoking, pollution, unclean water, different lifestyle and activity levels, more sedentary levels of activity. So basically there were a lot of confounding variables and there was also a lot of cherry picked data. So, for example, ancel Keys studied seven countries or reported on seven countries, but he studied 22 different countries in that report. And if you look at the graph from all 22 countries, there is no correlation at all between heart disease and saturated fat consumption. So only the seven countries, kind of handpicked for the study results, show this direct link between saturated fat and heart disease. And then, interestingly, the same guy, Ancel Keys, published another study in which he suggested that there was a direct link between saturated fat consumption and cholesterol levels in the blood, which there actually is. But he then took the leap that this high saturated fat diet that potentially could increase the cholesterol would cause heart disease, which again is not the issue. And his findings were really widely criticized when they came out. And even the American Heart association was not really in agreement with his idea that saturated fat and cholesterol consumption was correlated with heart disease, or that increasing the consumption of vegetable oil, which is the other thing that he suggested, would reduce heart disease. But what happened was in the early 60s, the American heart association kind of changed its view and began to recommend that we reduce saturated fat and cholesterol, that we stop eating things like natural butter or beef or egg yolks or full fat milk or any of these things, and replace them with higher carb, lower fat equivalents and also vegetables or seed based oils. And between the time that the American Heart association in the 50s kind of criticized Ancel Key's findings and the time in the 60s when they actually started to agree with what he was saying. There wasn't any big trials that were done or big studies that were done that suddenly proved what Ancel Keys was saying was right. All that really happened was there were some changes in the makeup of the American Heart Association's board, including the addition of Ancel Keys himself to the actual board. And from that point on, the American Heart association started recommending this diet that's low in total fat, that's low in saturated fat and cholesterol, and that's high in carbohydrates, and also high in grains and high in these vegetable oils. And here's the issue. If you have High cholesterol, it's a big issue from an inflammatory standpoint and a risk of cardiovascular disease standpoint if that high cholesterol or if that that high saturated fat intake diet is accompanied by other elements that can increase inflammation and increase your risk of cardiovascular disease. So a high fat diet is risky when it is accompanied by high consumption of sugar or high consumption of inflammatory producing foods like tons of seeds and nuts, and especially things that are like rancid vegetable oils or vegetable oils that have been heated to high temperatures. So when you look at it in isolation, though, just eating a higher fat diet that has things like eggs in it and real butter and grass fed beef, those aren't an issue in and of themselves. There has to be an inflammatory component combined with those in order for them to increase risk of heart disease. So I never really see a big red flag when I look at high cholesterol unless I see that that high cholesterol is accompanied by high consumption of sugar, by high consumption of vegetable oils, by lots of breads and grains and starches and sugars, that's where it becomes an issue. So ultimately, I'm hoping this gives you a little bit of insight into these values. First of all, when you're looking at blood counts, know that you can't simply take them in isolation. You have to look at the rest of the diet. You have to look at other things that are going on, including potential symptoms. So when you see something like low hemoglobin, you know, do you get short of breath during exercise? Do you get dizzy during exercise? Are you getting adequate iron in your diet? Are you eating adequate protein? Are you getting enough vitamin B, enough vitamin C? When you see things like elevated liver enzymes, maybe that's not something to worry about. Maybe you're just exercising a lot or you had a couple glasses of wine the night before the test. When you see high cholesterol, well, do you have the other factors that could make that high cholesterol an issue? So lots of things to think about when you get a look at a blood test. And hopefully that gives you a better idea about how to interpret some of this stuff. All right, we got a question from Nick who says, I've read that kombucha should not be eaten by pregnant women. And why is that? Well, kombucha is one of those things that has appeared on some lists as something that pregnant women shouldn't consume. And that's because it is an herb. And there hasn't been a lot of studies done on kombucha and pregnant women. So it's basically not a sin of commission with kombucha in that it's caused a bunch of issues with pregnant women. It's that it's basically omission. There's nothing bunch of research that shows that kombucha is necessarily supposed to be consumed by pregnant women or is good for them. But the idea is that kombucha is basically just a fermented yeast enzyme tea. And as an herbal tea, it has potential to have some detoxifying effects. And, you know, I've said before that I don't really like to throw the word detoxification around too much because especially when it comes to alternative medicine. And there's not really a definitive, agreed upon definition of what detoxification actually is. But the basic idea of detoxification is that it is a clearing of any type of toxins or harmful substances or minerals or metals that may have built up in the body. Although your liver and your kidneys are very good at naturally detoxifying your body, if you have for a long time been eating a lot of junk food, a lot of processed foods, a lot of potentially toxic materials that could cause some metabolic waste, it might be that your liver and your kidneys are actually loaded up with more toxins than would be healthy. And so the idea is that there are certain herbs or teas or compounds that can help to detoxify the body, which can basically in turn help to increase energy, improve the metabolism, etc. Now, the main reason, in addition to the fact that there hasn't been much research done on kombucha and pregnant women, that a pregnant woman might want to avoid kombucha is if she's starting to drink it during pregnancy. Because the last thing that you want to do is detox your body, get a bunch of toxins circulating around in the bloodstream or post pregnancy in the breast milk and do harm to the baby. And, you know, we're going to talk with Cassandra more about nutrition and pregnancy today, but the idea is that you shouldn't do anything really, really extreme with your diet when you're pregnant that you haven't done before. So if you've been drinking kombucha for a long time and you get pregnant, you can keep drinking kombucha. If you decide when you're pregnant that you're going to take kombucha in to detox your body and clean up your liver and get all these things floating around in your bloodstream, probably not the best idea for the baby. So it Kind of comes down to a timing issue. If it's already a staple in your diet and you're pregnant and you keep drinking it, probably not an issue. If you start into it when you are pregnant, that's where it would be. Something that may not be advisable, but ultimately in most cases, I am a fan of Kombucha. It is full of really good probiotics, really great compounds. It's it's easy to make at home. Actually, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and talk about Kombucha, I've told you before on a podcast how to make it at home. Or you can buy it for whatever it is, like 20 bucks a bottle at the grocery store. So that's the deal with Kombucha. It just kind of depends on who you are, what your history is with it in terms of whether or not you should take it during pregnancy. All right, Chuck asks. I like to listen to audiobooks while I drive, and I know you recommend some good ones. What are your picks for health and life? Balance, Prioritization, efficiency? Well, first of all, Chuck, I would recommend that you visit my personal blog where I do things like post pictures of my family and talk about stuff that would probably bore people if I talked about it on this podcast or on this blog. I will put a link to my personal blog and on the right side of that blog there are a bunch of books that I recommend. In addition, if I were to recommend one book that I would go out and read to kind of set up a foundation or maybe like some eyeglasses through which to see the way that you're prioritizing certain things in your life or the way that you're setting up your life to be more efficient, to achieve more. There's one that I would recommend called Psycho. Cybernetics. It's by Maxwell Maltz. I will put a link to it in the show. Notes to this episode, episode number 141@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Psycho Cybernetics is basically a discussion of how to really focus your subconscious and realize that your subconscious, more than your conscious mind, is responsible for a lot of the decisions that you make. And Psycho Cybernetics, which has been around since the 60s, it sold millions and millions of copies, is kind of a guide to learn how to train your subconscious to achieve the things that are high up on your goal list, whether it be just, for example, playing better golf and training your subconscious to be able to play better golf or achieving huge goals in life that are more career or family oriented. I highly recommend that you check out Psycho Cybernetics. I'll put a link to that in the show notes and also check out my blog where I suggest a lot of other books. I live about two blocks from the library. I go through typically one to two books a week and that is one of the better ones that I have recently read. Although I did just finish the book Defining Happiness or Delivering Happiness by the owner of Zappos, which is also an interesting book. All right. Steve asks. I'm an avid follower of your training and nutritional advice. My younger brother is soon to return to the UK. He is morbidly obese, has acquired type 2 diabetes while living abroad and suffers from the associated health problems. I would love to get him on the right path to good health and longevity, but frankly the diabetes issue confuses me. Could you please advise of good training and eating strategies or some good resources to refer to? Well, yes, absolutely. The issue is that if you look at say something like the American Diabetes association and I know for you internationally folks that when somebody from the UK asks this question that I'm bringing up American Diabetes association or the American Heart association recommendations, I know that's not exactly what you have internationally, but it's still a good yardstick to look at because a lot of governmental organizations are very similar in their recommendations for these type of diets. Now what the American Diabetes association has recommended traditionally for a very long time in the past is really a higher carbohydrate kind of grain containing diet. If you look at their ADA diet, they do recommend 6 to 11 servings of grains and starches per day and about anywhere from right around 180 to 300 grams of carbohydrates per day, which for most people comes out to about a 50 to 60% carbohydrate based diet. And when it comes to controlling blood sugar, when it comes to stabilizing insulin levels, that is probably causing more harm than good compared to a lower carb, higher fat, higher protein diet for a diabetic. Again, I am not a physician, but even the American Diabetes association lately is beginning to admit that a mix of carbohydrate, protein and fat may actually vary depending on the individual circumstances involved. And they recently one of their co chairs recently said that there is a growing recognition that a variety of diets, including low carbohydrate diets, could improve blood glucose. So the issue is that the American Diabetes association is beginning to realize that maybe all of the recommendations for like this whole grain Quote, unquote, healthy starch diet may not be the best thing when it comes to controlling diabetes. Blood sugar and, you know, blood lipids, blood pressure, a lot of the other things that go along with diabetes. And while they haven't straight up said that a low carbohydrate diet may be more successful in treating diabetes, I think that in the next decade it's probably going to be at the forefront of their recommendations. Now, if you did want to get to the information about why a low carb diabetes diet is probably the way to go, I would look up a guy named Dr. Richard Bernstein. This would be very good information if you know somebody who has diabetes or you yourself are concerned about diabetes. Dr. Richard Bernstein has a website at diabetes911, diabetes911.net I would check out diabetes911.net I will put a link to his books in the show notes. But he actually has a low carb diet for diabetics. It is very good. It's been around for a while and it's helped a lot of people. It's much, much better, in my opinion, at controlling blood sugar than the traditional whole grain based diet that the American Diet association recommends, which really would be for a lot of people, more like a moderate to high carbohydrate diet. And there are definitely better, higher fat, higher protein ways to go. If you really want an extreme example of a high fat, low carb diet, listen to the interview that I did with Jimmy Moore. He came on this podcast and talked about his low carb diet and he's extremely low carb. But in some cases that may be a better way to go for diabetes. So check that out.

All right.

Patrick asks. I'm getting all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out of my head. And the dental hygienist had told me some terrifying facts about my future nutritional practices. She said I should expect to eat semi solids like mashed potatoes and applesauce. She went on to say that because of the craters that will be left after surgery, I'm forbidden from hard foods for six months, including all seeds and nuts. So what are some food suggestions that you have to support 70.3 and Ironman Triathlon training, but that won't be as damaging to my dental health. Well, basically what you're looking at is kind of like a high calorie liquid diet that actually gives you enough nutrients. First of all, I would highly recommend, and I seem to be recommending this more and more these days, this living fuel super greens style stuff that you basically mix with Coconut milk. You could mix it with rice milk, almond milk, vegetable juice, water. But this stuff is basically a mix of superfoods, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, probiotics, amino acids, herbs. It's like this shotgun approach to nutrition. And it's just basically forms a paste, really, when you mix it with stuff, I mean, it can really stick to your ribs. I would recommend that you at least use this stuff for one meal a day. Would highly recommend this stuff. And also the living protein. If you wanted a slightly lower carbohydrate, kind of higher protein version of it. I will put a link to both those in the show notes. I would also recommend that you look into just some basic mashed or blended foods that would be a little bit higher in nutrients or vitamins or minerals, like mashed sweet potatoes, mashed yams. Those would be great. You could make a hummus or a guacamole. You could include almond butter. I would be including green smoothies as well. And I will put a link to a green smoothie video that my wife shot with a Vitamix, which is a blender that I would highly recommend that you add into your protocol if you're not adding a juicer to make some vegetable juicers into your protocol. Basically, if you were to start off with all those, that'd be a pretty good start. So for, like, breakfast, you could have a green smoothie. For lunch, you could do, for example, like a guacamole or a hummus. And you could essentially eat it by the spoonful if you wanted to, or if you wanted to dip something in it that was less crunchy than a carrot or celery or, you know, seeds and nuts. You could even spread that on lettuce or kale or bok choy and eat that. You could do oatmeal or quinoa, which is very soft. And you could mix almond butter or coconut milk or protein into that. You could definitely use this living fuel as like an afternoon type of snack. You could also go with, like, softer, easier to chew meats. You know, take something like a wild salmon or a fish, for example. Those tend to be pretty easy to chew. And you could have something like that with a mashed or a blended vegetable, like a blended cauliflower and broccoli. And actually, there's this really cool recipe for a sauce for pasta that would also go really well with a fish or a vegetable that my wife made in one of the Inner Circle videos. That's one of the free videos. I think it's video number one. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness inner circle or BenGreenfieldFitness.com innercircle check out this blended sauce that my wife makes for the boys that she puts on pasta, but that you could also put on like a fish or like a soft cooked vegetable, like a broccoli or cauliflower. That would be also something to look into. But I'll put a link to the living protein, to the living fuel, to that green smoothie video. I'll also put a link to that other sauce that I just talked about. I'll put all those in the show notes. You can kind of check those out. And that ought to get your creative juices flowing. No pun intended. Okay, we have a question from Layla, who says, I know Coenzyme Q10 and Ubiquinol supplements are recommended for older people for energy and antioxidant benefits. But since these molecules work in the electron transport chain in the mitochondria, will they increase metabolism? Okay, lots of big words there. But basically coenzyme Q10, which is also known as ubiquinone, is this vitamin like substance that's found in your cells, in your mitochondria, and it's part of what's called your electron transport chain. So this is one of the pieces of machinery in your mitochondria that helps you to make energy and basically does so by taking the oxygen that you breathe in and producing ATP from that by moving electrons along what's called this electron transportation chain. And depending on what state that coenzyme Q10 is in, in this electron transport chain, it's known as ubiquinone or ubiquinol. So the idea is that what the suggestion is, if you supplement with this stuff, that it could increase your metabolism because obviously it's part of your metabolic rate. That's basically metabolism is when your mitochondria is making this energy. If your mitochondria is healthy, if your cell membrane is healthy, if your cells are operating properly, then all this metabolic energy production is going to take place to an optimized extent. So it's nice to think about. But the question is, does it actually work? If you take extra coenzyme Q10, could it boost your metabolism? Well, there haven't been a ton of studies on coenzyme Q10 and weight gain. But first of all, if you kind of knock out Coenzyme Q10, if you either look at people who are, who have mitochondrial diseases or who have basically an alteration in their mitochondrial protein chemistry or a DNA mutation that causes a mitochondrial defect, we can look at what happens to their resting metabolic rate or to their oxygen utilization. And what you find is that in people who have these mitochondrial diseases, that the metabolic rate can be decreased by anywhere from 30 up to 80%. And that is a direct reflection of the inability for the mitochondria to work properly. So I realize that that doesn't mean that taking coenzyme Q10 is going to increase your metabolism, but it does mean that the inability for coenzyme Q10 to operate properly or a lack of sufficient coenzyme Q10 can significantly affect metabolism. Now, in addition, if we look at the indirect effects of coenzyme Q10 on metabolism, there have been a couple studies. First of all, as you age and as your body composition becomes more skewed towards fat gain and a drop in muscle and a gain in overweight status, there was a study back in 1996 that shows that, along with that, the coenzyme Q10 plasma levels do decline. Now, again, that's pretty indirect correlation, but it's a suggestion that dropping coenzyme Q10 levels could play a part in that drop in metabolism and gain in fat. And then it's also been shown that in obese individuals who were studied, this was actually after they had undergone surgery, but these obese individuals were studied, and they were found that their coenzyme Q10 levels and all these obesity people were very, very low. Which again, suggests that it may be possible that one of the things that contributes to obesity is a low levels of coenzyme Q10 or a low metabolic rate. Now, again, I know that we're kind of drawing some pretty shaky conclusions here, but when you step back and look at coenzyme when it comes to issues beyond weight loss, there's enough of an argument to be taking it as a daily supplement. So not only is it a very, very powerful antioxidant, but it can, and clinical studies have shown this, it can reduce your risk of heart disease. Low levels of it are associated with congestive heart failure. It can lower blood pressure for people who are on statins or have been on statins for a long period of time and are maybe trying to get off of them. Statins deplete coenzyme Q10 in the body, and taking coenzyme Q10 can correct that deficiency. It could help to manage high blood pressure in people who have diabetes. It could help to improve their heart health and their blood sugar. And studies have actually shown that to be beneficial. It could help out with heart damage caused by chemotherapy. It could improve the Recovery from heart surgery, it could lower risk of breast cancer, could help with gum disease, it can improve immune function, it could even improve fertility. There are a lot of studies that have shown Coenzyme to be beneficial for a variety of effects. So I would recommend that even if it may not be like the magic weight loss pill, that you consider taking it as a daily part of your supplement intake. I take this stuff called Race caps from a company called Hammer Nutrition, and that's the form of coenzyme Q10 that I personally use. And then Layla has a follow up question. She says, I live somewhere really cool, so I'm interested in shifting my metabolism towards heat production. Therefore, I'm wondering if there are any ways for adults to convert white fat to the more metabolically active brown fat. Okay, so white fat versus brown fat, basically white fat is one of the two types of adipose tissue found in people. And the other type of adipose tissue is the brown fat. So what white fat is, is primarily it's used to store energy. So when you think about white fat, that's that, that storage fat that you store in your butt or your waist or wherever else you happen to store fat. And you're either storing it there or else you're breaking it down into fatty acids to be used as energy. And in addition to staying there and being used as energy, it also has some insulation effects and some padding effects. But this brown adipose tissue, its primary function is not energy. When it's broken down, it doesn't produce energy, it produces heat. And it's really abundant in babies who need to stay warm and tends to eventually become white fat as we age. But the idea behind brown fat is that it really regulates body temperature. And interestingly, people who do things like engage in cold water swimming competition, they have much higher levels of these brown fat or these brown fat levels. So it appears that by constant exposure to cold training in cold conditions, the body can produce more brown fat. But that's not necessarily through the conversion of white fat into brown fat. And as a matter of fact, where brown fat comes from is it's actual muscle cells that are converted into brown fat. And there have been studies that have done on this where they essentially introduce this regulatory protein into brown fat that or they disable that protein. And what happens is the brown fats revert back to the cells that they were formed from and they basically become muscle cells when you, when you block out that protein. So right now, muscle cells are converted into brown fat. And what the question is, is can you Take this regular storage fat and convert that into brown fat. Well, they have looked into this a little bit, whether or not you could actually convert white fat into brown fat. And the idea is that there's this protein called uncoupling protein, which is the protein present in brown fat that allows it to release energy as heat rather than to release energy as energy. And if you could get white fat to actually activate this uncoupling protein, then technically, white fat would take on some of the properties of brown fat. And so rather than releasing energy into your bloodstream, or it could potentially just be converted back into fat. It would release energy as heat, and you might just heat up a little bit, which, if you could regulate your temperature, might be okay. So there is not yet a supplement or a pill or anything like that that can cause these white fat cells to actually replicate the same activity that brown fat cells are making. But the idea is that through genetic technology, you could potentially coax the precursing cells to white fat cells to produce brown fat cells instead of white fat cells. So it would essentially involve a little bit of genetic play. And I'm not entirely convinced that that is healthy or prudent at this point until it's proven to be safe. However, that's the way that it would be done is through actually activating, via genetic manipulation, a molecular switch that causes white cell precursors to be converted into brown fat instead of white fat by actually activating the activity of this uncoupling protein. So that is the messy chemistry that would be involved, and that's the way it would work. So at this point, no, there's no magic pill that would do it that I'm aware of, but it'll be pretty interesting to see once that comes out. All right, final question is from Craig, who says, whenever I drink from the Aero bottle on my bike, I get a burning sensation in the back of my throat that feels like gastroesophageal reflux disease or disorder. I know it's not the water source. It's the same one I've been putting in my bottles for a decade. So what gives? How can I stop it? Okay, so the idea behind gastroesophageal reflux is that that occurs when this esophageal sphincter, which is basically the sphincter between your esophagus and your stomach, is weak, or it relaxes inappropriately, and that allows your stomach contents to go back up into your esophagus. So in a lot of cases, you know, hernias can cause this, and ulcers can cause it. And eating too many fatty foods and coffee and alcohol and chocolate and peppermints and all sorts of things can cause this reflux disease, including a great big plate of spaghetti before you head out for a bike ride. But assuming you're not doing all that, it's likely that the issue is that when you're drinking out of your aero bottle on your bike, you're in the aero position. And when you're scrunched up in that aero position and your diaphragm is contracting heavily and your abdominal muscles are contracted and you're basically kind of compressing your core and compressing all these inspiratory and expiratory muscles, it's likely that you may be inhibiting the contraction of your esophagus or you may be inhibiting the ability of that esophageal sphincter to actually work properly. And so you're getting some of that reflux backup the same way that you would get, for example, if you tried to drink upside down. And that is the likely issue. The way that that could be fixed is that you can literally kind of take a sip from your aero straw in the arrow position, then before you swallow, sit up, get out of the arrow position, sit up on your bike so that you're vertical, straight up and down, and then swallow rather than trying to swallow while you're in the aero position. So that's what I would recommend. And I personally have had this problem before. You know, I've thrown up in my mouth. I know that's kind of gross, but I've had that happen before in races, just because it's harder to swallow when you're in that aero position. And typically it's alleviated by just sitting up and trying to do any drinking or eating in a seated position and choose hills or places where you're not going so fast to where when you sit up, there won't be an aerodynamic disadvantage to being in that sitting position. So hopefully that helps out. Craig, great questions, and at this point, let's go ahead and move on to a quick message and then this week's featured topic on a Good Pregnancy, exercise and Nutrition Routine with Cassandra Forsythe.

Did you know you can get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield no matter who you are, if you want to run a triathlon, lose a few pounds, reinvent your diet, or have Ben create a training program or nutrition plan that's customized to you, here's what you you need to do. Visit tinyurl.com helpfromben that's tinyurl.com helpfromben Ben will personally contact you within 48 hours. What are you waiting for? Visit tinyurl.com helpfromben today and get the body and results you've always wanted. FEATURED TOPIC.

Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here. And as you know, both my wife and I are into fitness, and my wife maintained a relatively good amount of fitness while she was pregnant. I get a lot of questions from you about how you or someone you know could actually maintain fitness during pregnancy or return to fitness more quickly afterwards. So I decided to get the expert on someone who's actually in the process right now of writing a pretty comprehensive book on fitness and pregnancy, but actually has published books in the past on fitness, including the New Rules of Lifting for Women, which she co authored with Lou Schueller and Alan Cosgrove, and also the Women's Health Perfect Body Diet. Cassandra Forsythe is going to be on the call today. She's a PhD. She's a registered dietitian. She has a degree, a doctorate degree in kinesiology as well as, of course, the registered dietitian certification. She's a certified strength and conditioning specialist, certified by the National Strength Conditioning Association. She's a certified sports nutritionist. She's done a lot of stuff, especially when it comes to women's health, women's nutrition and, of course, women's fitness. So, Cassandra, thank you for coming on the call today.

Thank you, Ben. And thank you for that great interview or that introduction, I should say.

And of course, yes, the interview's not over yet.

Absolutely.

And of course, just so that people know that you're not pulling stuff out of nowhere, you actually have yourself been successfully pregnant, correct?

Yes, successfully. One year ago I had my daughter, actually.

So you have a one year old daughter and I'm assuming that she's doing well? She's healthy, Absolutely.

Yep. She comes to boot camp with me and eats the bands while we're doing boot camp or, you know, tries to pick up the kettlebells. But definitely she's a very healthy, fit, very bright little girl and there's nothing wrong with her whatsoever. And I credit it to a very healthy and fit pregnancy.

All right. Well, let's talk about that. So how did you exercise during your pregnancy? What did your exercise routine look like?

Well, it's funny because right before I got pregnant, I had actually just graduated from my PhD and then graduated from my dietetic internship within a month's time period of each other. So the year Before I got pregnant was a pretty intense year. I wasn't training as hard as I would have liked to, as you could imagine. Doing a PhD and a dietetic internship at the same time didn't really leave me a lot of wiggle room or workout room I should say. So when I got pregnant, I was not happy because all I wanted to do was get back into my training routine and do what I wanted to do. And I was really concerned and worried that I wouldn't be able to do that because I was pregnant. Because after I started reading things and you know, hear what people say, you read some recommendations even from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. They're, you know, they say keep your heart rate low and you know, be careful what you do and don't do this and don't do that and it's really just a bunch of don'ts. And that really, that frustrated me so. Well, the first trimester I was really tired anyway, like for the first eight to ten week, tired and nauseous. So there really wasn't a lot of crazy workout going, working out, going on. Anyway, second trimester, I hit it full force. I hit my workouts with more intensity than I've hit them in years of being in my PhD, I was teaching fitness boot camps three times a day and doing all the classes because I would instruct and do them with the group. Then I'd work out during the day I would do a lot of walking. Now I say walking instead of running because a, I'm not a runner and I'll just admit that I'm not built to run, but running. When I first tried to start running, after I started feeling better, I immediately thought I was going to pee my pants because of the extra weight on my uterus, my bladder or my uterus being an extra weight on my bladder. So it wasn't a lot of fun. So I just, I kibosh that idea. But I, I cycled. I was mountain biking until I was about three months pregnant and I would just wear braces because I do actually have a back problem. So anyway, I worked out really hard and I'm into a lot of strongman training and heavy weightlifting. So I was doing like log clean and presses with a 12 inch log like diameter. Yeah, a big log, metal log and flipping tires, hitting tires with sledgehammers, jumping on tires, doing jump rope, doing burpees, doing jumping jacks, doing tabata, interval training with body weight and weight weight exercises. So basically I was crazy. When I was pregnant like, people are like, wow. And I actually hit it really well because I gained weight mostly in my first trimester. That just kind of made me look like I, like, over ate a bunch of Doritos or something. You know, I didn't really look pregnant pregnant, but I was even four months pregnant and still not really, you know, showing necessarily that much. Or if I was, I would hide it with baggy shirts. So I was still able to do it. But then when I started, people could actually start seeing my belly, you know, around the fifth month. You know, I did get some sideways glances when I was deadlifting, like, you know, about 185 pounds. Not too heavy, because I do have a back problem, as I said, but, you know, heavier than you would see most women lifting. And I would have guys in the gym come up to me, or even my boot campers, you know, say, wow, you know, you're kind of an inspiration for pregnancy. But guys in the gym say, yeah, I wish my wife did that when she was pregnant. Or, you know, that's great. You're working out so hard. And I felt great.

What did your doctor say about that? Did they know?

I told him what I was doing, and he actually made notes in my file, and he's like, be careful. She's really active. You know, watch her. But I was fine, like, really fine. And I felt really good. But I did. I listened to my body. Like, there was a couple dizzy spells I had, and sometimes I would push through it just a little. Not. Not excessive, but, you know, sometimes I'd be like, okay, it's all right. You know, I'm used to having low blood pressure and feeling a little dizzy when I stand up. So that wasn't a big issue. But, you know, the biggest thing is, no matter what you do, it has to be something your body is used to doing. Like, I'm used to doing that kind of stuff. I used to do it. So my body. I used to always kick my own butt in the gym. I would go and work out with the football team at the University of Connecticut, and I would do all the workouts they were doing. Maybe not with as much weight, of course, but, you know, I would always be doing crazy stuff. That's the way I like to roll. And so when I was able to do that again, even though I was pregnant, it made me feel really good about myself and just throughout the whole pregnancy. But, you know, I did get, you know, some certain comments from people and whatnot every once in a while. And my doctors would just say, be Careful. But they did give me the green light. They didn't say stop because I was healthy and really strong.

Right, and did you actually track your heart rate? Because a lot of physicians and the medical profession in general has like a certain heart rate cap for pregnant women. Did you pay attention to that?

Well, no, because actually I came across research showing that that was irrelevant, that it actually isn't necessary to keep it below a certain level. And actually, and then I started reading case studies and reports of high level Olympic athletes and just high level athletes, you know, training marathons, triathlons while they're pregnant. And there's no way that their heart rate was below 140. You know, so they, they were training that hard. And then the benefits of that was that after they had the baby, their PRs all increased, their VO2 maxes increase, their anaerobic threshold increased because they put the demands on while they had all this extra blood flow and oxygen demand from the baby, they were able to push their limits to a different level. Like almost training at altitude in a way.

Gotcha.

I mean we do that, right. The biggest thing is again, and I'm just going to stress it like you can't push beyond what your body is going to let you do. So high level Olympic athletes, their body can do that. But if you're like someone that's never really worked out before or you're just starting out, you're training, whatever that may be, if you're a, you're an endurance athlete or a strength athlete or a combo of both, you know, you have to have to go to level that, you know, your body has either been at before or can do. Because there, there are some stories I did read of, you know, pregorexia women under eating when they're pregnant or exercising so much that they actually caused a miscarriage and, or you know, death of their child. And but those are women that they've got some psychological problems and I was pretty sure I didn't have one of those. Sometimes I.

Do you, do you write workouts for clients who are pregnant?

I. Not really because I don't like to like necessarily prescribe. I have pregnant clients come to my boot camp classes, right. So I have them join in and then we modify and we can talk about modifications in a bit here. But I haven't necessarily written weight training programs because I don't have a lot of people in my circle around me here that wanted weight train on a program when you're pregnant. I don't know if it's psychological or Whatnot, but you know that your body is changing so much and you just kind of, you go at whatever you can do in a way. And also there's a lot of stress. Just being pregnant and sometimes having a program to follow for some people is stressful. So I haven't yet got there. I would like to. So for the book I'm going to be writing, it's more of interval training, types of workouts with body weight and weights and bands and kettlebells and things like that. So it's not necessarily like, you know, five sets of this or five reps. It's more on time. So the way I'm writing the book is on time because you can change the intensity by how short your rest periods are and how long your work periods are. So we're going to do it more that way. And I see that being a new future of training anyway.

Now, how do you compare protocols like that, that you're including in that book with what the current medical recommendations are for pregnancy or are there really any specific medical recommendations beyond the heart rate advice?

Well, you know, the, the recommendations for pregnancy are always very conservative. And the reason being because if a medical professional or a medical professional organization recommended that a woman go do tire flips and sledgehammer slams and burpees and she, she'd never done them before, and then the woman miscarried, she could sue. And that's the problem with most doctors anyway, is that the conservative that they, they have like the highest liability insurance and they have to be as careful as possible. So a lot of doctors will say to their clients, don't work out because they don't want to have any liability. But if you think about it, they're causing more issues than stopping them by telling a woman not to work out because she's going to gain more weight, she's going to become more fit, she's going to have a harder time losing that weight after she's had the baby. It's going to be more, she'll have more back pain. Like I, as I keep saying, I have a, a bad back. I have a spondylolisthesis. Actually, my L5 and my S1 are not connected. It was a gymnastics injury. Basically. I was a gymnast when I was a little girl and it causes me a lot of pain. Every day I have pain and some days are worse than others, but I'm used to it. I was told when I first found out about that back pain that I would not be able to have a normal pregnancy, that I would be in a wheelchair for the. For the. Probably the last three months of my pregnancy because my back couldn't take the weight. So I was scared to death to be pregnant. So when I first got pregnant, I was like, oh, my God, am I gonna have to buy a back brace? What's gonna happen? I ended up having zero to no back pain my entire pregnancy because of how fit I was. It actually was beneficial for my back. So I almost wanted to find that doctor that told me not to do anything when I was pregnant to be in a wheelchair, for God's sake. Excuse my language, I'm swearing here, but I was so upset about this. But, you know, for being a wheelchair, it's just like, how do you say that to someone? And then I ended up having probably the best pregnancy anyone could ever have. I just. It was so, you know, I gained a total of £15 from the start to finish of my pregnancy, and I was probably about 5 pounds overweight when I got pregnant, so my total weight gain was about 20. It was on the low end. I measured small. But I had, I delivered an incredibly healthy baby who had, you know, 10 out of 10 on all of her APGAR scores. She's very bright, she's very agile, she's very strong, you know, and she's got low body fat levels, you know, not under. But, you know, she's not a chubby baby whatsoever, so. And not that that's a bad thing, but she's not chubby. You know what I mean?

So it's very interesting because all the women who I've worked with who have been pregnant, my wife, they've all had very healthy babies, and I really can't think of anybody who hasn't who has actually kept themselves relatively fit during pregnancy. Now, are you aware of any studies that have compared women who exercise during pregnancy with women who don't? Or can we just kind of go off of what we observe?

Well, there's only been observational because they really couldn't do studies. They're actually, what I've heard is John Hopkins. Hopkins, yeah, it's. John Hopkins is doing research on weight training and pregnancy and endurance in pregnancy. So there's some new stuff coming out. I'm trying to get in contact with the researchers on that and I know some people at John Hopkins to find out some details, but they are, you know, they're. They have a control group of women that aren't working out, and then they've got the group of women that are working out and they're going to follow Very different various variables and report that it's probably going to take a couple years for that to come out because they're trying to get a lot of numbers. But, you know, I have read a bunch of papers that, you know, tracked, you know, Olympic athletes, et cetera, during their workouts, and they all report very healthy babies. And then the book by James Clapp exercising their pregnancy, he did the same thing. And he's not, he's not really researching anymore, but he, he observed pregnant very high level, athletic women and showed, you know, their baby's body fat levels were lower. The babies were a little bit lower in weight. They had extremely good glucose control. They had great muscle tone, they, you know, head control. They were picking their heads up earlier than other babies at 2 and 3 years. They had better memory and cognition. So there was so much, so much that is beneficial for exercise. So that's why I find it really frustrating when a doctor will tell a woman not to exercise.

And the moms look good too. If you don't mind, maybe in the show notes for this episode, I can put a couple of pictures that you have posted over on your website of you during your pregnancy, but you look very fit and vibrant. It seems like a really good way to go if you're actually in a situation where you're able to exercise.

Yeah, and it keeps the attitude positive too, because during pregnancy you've got so many worries, especially if it's your first pregnancy. You're worried about what's this kid going to turn out? Like, am I going to be a good parent? Blah, blah, blah. Like, a woman almost feels like she's going crazy when she's pregnant because there's a lot of things to think about. But if you exercise, it creates all those endorphins. It makes you feel good, like your runner's higher, your lifter's higher, whatever it may be. Why not just perpetuate that and help you be a, you know, have a great pregnancy throughout the whole time instead of, you know, some women get really depressed when they're pregnant or, you know, they go on eating binges, you know, because they're like, oh, I'm pregnant. Well, I'm eating this. I remember my sister, I called her when she was pregnant once and she's not really active, but I was like, what are you doing? And she's like, I'm eating a donut. She's like, actually, I'm eating a dozen donuts. She's like, I'm pregnant. I can do it. And I'm like, no, that's the wrong way to think.

Yeah. Now I want to get into some nuts and bolts in terms of, like, sample exercises or sample workouts. I know that you're a sports nutritionist, and we are going to touch on nutrition. Nutrition as well. But we've talked so much about kind of the general overview of exercises. What are some things that pregnant women can do? You know, you mentioned that running might not be the best idea on the planet, but what are some exercises or workouts that are good during pregnancy?

Well, I'm not saying running may not be the best idea. It just depends on your body. Like I said, I'm not really a runner. Like, I can run maybe like five miles, 10 miles. Like, you probably cap me up 10. But I just know that about my body. I've got flat feet and I've got loose joints. And when you're pregnant, your joints are even more loose. So I wasn't. And I, like I said, I almost peed my pants. Like, I had to run for the bushes. Like, probably like a quarter mile into this run I was trying to do. I was like, okay, this is enough, but do what you can do. Now, sample exercises. A lot of things that women need to focus on during their pregnancy is keeping a strong core but not doing crunches. Because crunches may perpetuate the rectus diastes, the splitting of the abdominal wall. And we all know, we're all starting to learn that crunches are probably the worst idea for your abdominal wall anyway, as per the new rules of lifting for abs, the research by Dr. Stu McGill and his ultimate back solution. So crunches are no good anyway, so why, you know, don't do them when you're pregnant. And plus, medical professionals recommend, and I don't really agree with this, and I'll tell you why, but they recommend not to be on your back when you're pregnant because of the reduced blood flow. And I will tell you this, and I'm going to tell you about this, and the girl that I have as my model, and she's my colleague who's pregnant right now, I worked out on my back all the way up until I delivered. And you got to think about it, you're delivering on your back, too sometimes. So what the heck, right? So I worked out on my back. I was bench pressing at eight, nine months. I was still doing, like, supine hip extensions. And that's one of the recommendations, exercise recommendations, because there's three things you really need to have strong when you're pregnant. Core your upper back to support the load of the baby in the front and your glutes well and your legs. So I guess there's a few things. Glutes and legs basically. So core. A lot of great core exercises for women just involve like the abdominal bracing. Things like pallof presses or anti rotational cable presses, things like side planks, front planks become really hard. First of all, your stomach is hanging out. So sometimes your stomach is like touching the ground and you have a hard time bracing kind of in that plane. But I did a lot of side planking. I had like really great obliques when I was pregnant. It was awesome. So that was nice. And then supine hip extensions which can be both for glutes and your core. I did cable chops, like a lot of or band chops, you know, just where you're horizontal plane and you're rotating towards the cable and away from the cable, using your hips, squeezing your glutes, keeping your chest up. So I did a lot of those. I had a really hard time and I think most pregnant women will agree is that anything that causes extension. So where you do a, say an ab wheel and you're extending out the abs or stretching them, you do a hanging leg raise or a roman chair. Those are almost near impossible because your abs are already stretched out and you can't force them beyond a certain point. Like I felt like my abs are going to rip in half one time when I was just got to the point where my abs or my belly was growing and I was like, no ab wheel, not happening. So things like cable squats and row. So if you're standing towards a cable machine, you got two handles in your hand, you squat down with your kind of leaning back against the weight and then when you come up you, you row. So you're squeezing in your mid and lower trap region, any type of face pulls and even bent over rows, three point rows, four point rows, two point rows, all the different things. So nice squeeze in the upper back. But then deadlifts are also great and I did a lot of them when I was pregnant. As long as women have good form. I'm not talking about stiff legged necessarily, I'm talking about like conventional full deadlift. And you got to think, you know, you got to get used to squatting. Some women actually deliver in a squatting position. So if you have nice strong legs, you can squat the baby out and you're good to go. So it helps also with pushing muscles. So squatting, deadlifts, front squatting, I should say, not back squatting because you don't need any extra weight on your lower back. With the back squat, you just focus on the front squatting position. So you also challenge your core and then side bridges, like I said, on the floor, but you can also do them on a bench. So things. And then. But if it makes you nauseous, don't do it. Like I was saying about being on my back, I could exercise on my back. And I found research by Dr. James Clapp that showed that women could exercise on their back. And this is why. I don't understand why the American College of Sports Medicine, whatnot, still has this recommendation, but it said that you have compensatory blood flow mechanisms while you're exercising. So myself and my girlfriend, who's pregnant right now, we are both exercising on our back, did when we were pregnant for the exercises we could do, especially the hip extensions.

And the reason that you're not supposed to exercise on your back. Can you explain why and explain about this compensatory blood flow mechanism?

Yeah. Well, they say that it sits, it squishes, basically, like you're at the weight of the. The baby, the uterus, the womb is squishing the vena cava, so one of your major arteries throughout your body. So it can cause syncope, like fainting, dizziness. It can cause reduced blood flow to the placenta, and they don't. But what Dr. Clapp found is that that was not the case at all, that there was no problem, that during exercise, while you're moving and your heart is beating faster, you have that extra blood going to the placenta, feeding the baby, making sure you don't pass out. So it wasn't an issue as what, you know. And I mean, he's published one paper. Maybe that's what the problem is, is that he's only published one paper. But you know how science works. Like, we make claims that, you know, eggs give us heart disease. And. And then we tell people, 30 years later, oops, we were totally wrong. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's very interesting because those are the general recommendations that you see in just about any. You know, you go through whatever Shape magazine or any website, and a lot of what you're seeing in terms of the exercise recommendations are stay off your back, keep your heart rate under 140 or 150. And you always wonder how much research there is to back that up, or if we're just kind of spitting out things that have been, you know, general accepted knowledge for a few decades, maybe haven't been looked back into yeah.

Or who are just hypothesized knowledge. Like maybe there was one woman who was having a problem on her back, but you got her. I will admit, like, I couldn't sleep on my back when I was pregnant. Like, it immediately feel like I was going to throw up if I started, if I just laid down on my back, like almost instantaneously. But exercising, like I said, it was not a problem. And you got to think, say if you're doing a bench press set or even if you're doing supine hip extension, how long are you really on your back for? It's not like sleeping where it's like eight, eight hours, hopefully. Well, actually when you're pregnant, it's like 10 hours. Women sleep a lot when they're pregnant, but, you know, it's not that long. And if you're moving, you're not always just in this. In a single plane. You know, your muscles are moving, pumping blood to your heart, your heart's pumping blood to your muscles, etc. So it's, you know, it's reciprocal. But, you know, and even the heart rate stuff, that. That's not even the same information or that's not even. There is new information showing that that's not necessary. But, you know, you just get these magazines that they're like, well, it said before. Keep saying it. And you know, it's kind of sad because there's a lot of really fit women out there that are enjoying great pregnancies at heart rates of like 160, and they're totally fine.

Yep, yep. Now, let's go ahead and shift focus a little bit here. Talk about food. How did you eat during your pregnancy, Aside from eating more?

Exactly. I had a hard time. A lot of women I talked to, a lot of women I've interviewed, I've been really kind of on a bandwagon, getting to know what other people's experience are. There's a lot of cravings that go on during pregnancy. Like a lot. Like, I'm kind of known as a low carb advocate. I did my PhD research in the low carb world. I eat a fairly low carb diet, you know, relative to what other people would eat, you know, on a constant basis. And I had a hard time doing that when I was pregnant. Like, I was a carb machine when I was pregnant. I just, I remember my first trimester. Like, I had to eat sushi rice. Like, I would drive by this place that they had sushi and, you know, I know everyone's like, oh, sushi, my Gosh, raw fish. It wasn't raw fish. It was really just the rice I wanted, right? And like, and I would get eel, which is cooked, or I would get something else that was cooked. And once in a while I did eat sushi, but I don't really, you know, whatever, I'll admit it, I ate sushi when I was pregnant, but whatever. So, but it was a rice. Like, I just know, like it was like almost every day like clockwork. I was like, I have to have this rice. And it was like this incredibly intense craving like I've never experienced in my life before. And I just, I had to eat it. And a lot of it has to do with, there's a lot of, of blood sugar issues going on when you're pregnant because of all the changes, like all that nutrients being delivered to the baby. And so you do, you create, your blood sugars are dropping and so you do need to eat regularly. So you will probably eat more carbs. But what I have now recommended, and now that I know more about the whole thing, is that always ensure to eat protein or fat with whatever carbs you do decide to eat. Like, you're probably gonna eat carbs. That's just the way it's gonna be. Probably fruit. Fruit is like a huge one for women when they're pregnant. It's that instant, like you feel good but always include some protein or fat. So say if you have like an apple or an orange, you have some peanut butter with it or some whey protein, you know, some cheese, whatever you decide to eat, just make it a high protein or high fat food to keep it really nice and balanced. That will also help control blood sugar level fluctuations. Because if you are just responding to the carb cravings and you're just eating carbs, it's going to cause more highs and lows and it's going to make it worse.

In terms of actually craving carbs, needing carbs, et cetera. From a physiological standpoint, what good is that doing for the baby?

The baby is a very big glucose demander. There is a lot of glucose going to that baby. And so you are having more glucose requirements, I should say. Now some people who have very poor glucose control before getting pregnant, like, like if you're a fit person, you probably have pretty good glucose control for the most part. If you're kind of unfit, you probably don't. But you know, if you'reif you usually eat a fairly low carb diet, you may bump up your carb intake slightly, but you're not going to like, you know, triple it or quadruple it, for example. So you will. You probably do need a little bit more unless you're completely carbon tolerant. And you may have to just keep sticking with, you know, maybe higher carb, low carb sources, like something like spaghetti squash instead of something pasta or whatever. Not like I recommend pasta. So when I was pregnant, I did not eat any artificial sweeteners. So I take a lot of whey protein and most whey proteins contain like sucralose or sulfate, potassium or whatever, whatever artificial sweeteners in there. Because then, you know, it can be low carb, right. So I found a unsweetened natural whey protein. So just a whey protein isolate had no sweetener in it at all. And that's what I used the whole time I was pregnant because I was off our artificial sweeteners and. And I used to drink like a diet Snapple or something like that once while completely only went to seltzer.

Why didn't you do artificial sweeteners?

I just feel that there is a lot of chemical toxicity to them. There's a lot of controversy in the literature. Like, you know, if they give. I've read some papers on it where they, you know, they give rats when who are pregnant, you know, artificial sweeteners. And the babies, you know, have, you know, either increased carb cravings, you know, sugar cravings, problems with blood sugar levels, could blood glucose control, et cetera. Not, not necessarily. The cancer picture wasn't as clear, but still, I just didn't feel that they were great. And I don't really feel artificial sweeteners are good for most people anyway. So when I counsel my clients on nutrition, I do my best to try to get them to get all of it out. Like, you know, if you're having like 10 Diet Cokes a day, that's, that's a problem, right? Even if you're having one Diet Coke a day. I try to get people to switch to seltzer sparkling water instead or just use sugar and own up to the fact that you're having something sweet. Because if you really compare the sweetness between an artificial sweetener and sugar, artificial sweeteners are way over the top. It's just gross. And they don't. They're not, they're not all that good. So just, you know, use real sugar. And that's what I ended up doing. If I needed something sweet, you know, it'd be. I'd add more fruit to my smoothie with my whey protein or I'd have, you know, I liked Cheerios when I was pregnant.

So in addition to carbs, which are obviously gonna do some good for the glucose for the baby, did youdid you have certain other macronutrients that you focused on? Did you supplement with certain things?

I supplemented well, first and foremost, choline. The supplement choline, it's. Some people classify it as a B vitamin. It's not really, but it's put in kind of that classification. Choline is a nutrient that's highly responsible for nervous system development in the baby. I had the lucky fortune of right before I got pregnant, I was at the American Egg Board meeting because that's where I was presenting my PhD data because that's who I was sponsored by. I studied eggs in my PhD and there was actually a choline presentation because an egg yolk contains 125mg of choline. It's the highest choline containing food out there. And they recommended that pregnant women have one to two eggs per day during the pregnancy because of the cooling requirements of the baby to prevent neural tube birth defects and increase memory, cognition, you know, spatial learning, etc. And just as important as DHA, which I did take DHA, I'll explain that in a second. And just as important as folic acid, if not more, because they did find, they have found. There's been papers published showing that women that still supplemented with folic acid still had babies with neural tube birth defects. So choline was really important. So I tookI took 250 milligrams of choline on top of taking two eggs a day. The RDA for choline is 450 milligrams. So I kind of, I went a little over top, but I didn't think that was a problem. I didn't think more of a good thing was a bad thing. In that case, I took a krill oil and a fish oil. I kind of had both in my diet, high quality to get my EPA, DHA, my omega 3 fats, and I craved. It was really crazy. I crave seafood like insanely. During the last probably four months of my pregnancy and I was eating mussels and clams and salmon and trout like crazy when I was pregnant.

So it wasn't there some nutritional recommendations against that in terms of like heavy metal consumption for a baby?

There is, and you will see pamphlets showing which fish to avoid because of the mercury and or the other toxic accumulations that are in the water. But the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids, which is called isfal, which is a membership society I'm a part of as well. They still recommend that the benefits of the nutrients in fish far outweigh the mercury contamination. And the studies, and I did read like the studies of the Japanese women that were eating the fish out of the river that was contaminated highly with mercury from the mercury plant upstream and their babies developed the major like developmental abnormalities. That was a, you know, like that's an extreme overload case and dolphins are a real big problem, et cetera. I was eating like a low mercury fish, which salmon is a low mercury fish. So we're clams, so are mussels. You want to avoid things like swordfish, canned tuna, you know, limit it. I did have one can of tuna a week. I had like a craving for tuna once a week and that. So I just had one. There's actually it was Subway tuna wraps like once a week. Crave, you know, you remember these crazy things. But gross, as gross as that was, I ate a lot of fat during the last three trimesters as well. And from what I was reading, the fat requirements do increase during the last trimester. So I was like eating like lots of flax oil, lots of nuts, lots of fattier meat. And I don't have a problem with animal fat. I don't think it's an issue. I studied it in my masters. It's not a problem. So you know, I do buy wild boar sausages and I'd always try to buy wild and free range meats and then I tried to buy low pesticide fruits and vegetables as often as possible. So I was, you know, I followed like the dirty dozen clean 15 rule, etc. And made sure I bought like local and all that. So I ate very similar to a good diet should be regularly on a normal basis, you know. But I was more careful about artificial sweeteners which now I've bought artificially sweetened whey proteins again and I just use like a quarter of them whenever I have a shake in addition to the unsweetened. So. And I maybe don't take as much krill and fish oil as I do. Oh, and vitamin D, vitamin D 2000 while I was pregnant and I'm doing 4000. I actually am just finishing breastfeeding, but I was doing 4,000 I use while I was breastfeeding.

Gotcha. Okay, so let's say that there's a pregnant woman listening in or someone who's just had their baby and maybe they didn't do everything that you just recommended from an exercise standpoint, or perhaps even from a nutritional standpoint. But they want to get fit now. They want to get back to fitness. They want to maybe get rid of some of the fat that accumulated while they were pregnant. What type of things can they do safely that are going to get them into shape at this point?

Well, there isn't necessarily a lot of safety concerns post pregnancy. Like, right away there is a little bit because, I mean, your body just basically, like, turned inside out. That's how I felt after I had the baby. I was like, oh, what happened? But the other thing is not just that. I mean, your body just kind of isn't itself. I will tell you. At three weeks postpartum, I was right back into working out as hard as I did during my pregnancy. I was more. A little more tired. But I was right back into it at three weeks postpartum. And I kind of had to, because I had to go back to teaching my boot camp. So I had to be there again. The problem, one of the things I had a problem with this post pregnancy is urinary incontinence. So the first time I was, like, doing jumping jacks with my group of people. Like, right at three weeks, I completely peed my pants in front of the class. And I didn't really realize what was happening until I looked down and I was like, huh, that was crazy. I was like, no one notices the big wet spot in my crotchal region. Right. It's pretty embarrassing.

Just sweat.

Yeah, it's sweat, totally. It's just lots more sweat now. But it was. Yeah, that's intense. There's a lot of problems with pelvic floor control after you have a baby. And now I understand why there's a big demand for panty liners in the market. Ben, you may not understand this. You might be like, la, la, la, la, la.

I don't shop for panty liners too often.

No, I didn't think so, thankfully. But it is a. It is a common problem. And I tried to learn more about it. There was this woman, Katie Bauman, who was doing this, like, pelvic floor seminar. And basically her. She said, you know, kegel exercises are absolute crap. Like, you know, don't bother with them when you're pregnant. Don't bother them with it after pregnancy because they don't really have help. Because I was looking into, like, those Kegel balls and all this stuff, and I was like, oh, my God, how do I stop this? Really? It's just strengthening back up the glutes and the Abdominal wall to pull everything back up again. And now that I'm stronger, I don't have those problems. And I didn't do, like, the kegel balls and all this kind of stuff, even though I thought I was supposed to. But really, Katie Bauman had showed us that. Her research is, you know, showed that the pel. The pelvic floor control had more to do with glute control, abdominal control, just overall body tone. I hate that word tone, but muscle strength. Sorry, I can't believe I even said that. Wow. And then the other problem is right after a woman has a baby, she has a baby to look after. That was my bigger issue. It's like, huh, I can't really go to the gym right now. Or I can't really go out and do this right now because the baby is sleeping or the baby needs this. So there's a lot of times I felt pretty cooped up in the house, and I still do right now I have, you know, especially over the winter when it was too cold, you know, it's like I wasn't gonna succumb to my baby to minus 30 weather just so I could go for a run, you know, with a baby carriage, so. Or go for a hike. I did take her snowshoeing, you know, and I bundled her up and it was really cold outside. That was awesome. But, you know, it's still pretty. You gotta remember you got this baby to take care of now, so, you know, to get back into shape, get fit quickly as well. First and foremost, have support, have someone to help you watch the baby, give you some time to yourself, because. And that's another reason why I tell women to work out hard during the pregnancy, is because after you have the baby, you don't really have the time to do it. And most daycares, if you're in the us, they don't take the baby till three months. In Canada, daycares and gyms don't take babies till they're a year old. So. And in Canada, that's why women. And it's different between the US And Canada as well. I'm Canadian. Women in Canada get a year off after they have a baby, so they have more time to, you know, themselves.

Now, if you're breastfeeding, can you actually lose fat while you're doing that, or can it being in a caloric deficit that would allow you to burn fat actually, you know, decrease the effectiveness of breastfeeding?

Well, see, like I said, I'm just finishing breastfeeding. I'm at a Year postpartum. And I'm saying finishing because I'm just kind of done. My daughter bit me so hard this last week that it was just blood coming out and I was like, that's it, I'm done. I'm sorry. But you bit me like really hard and I was in pain for like three days. I'm like, this is done. She has a lot of teeth now. So anyway, you can lose fat, yes you can, while you're breastfeeding, but your body does hang on to a lot of body fat. So there is, you know, you know, there is limitations to how lean you can get. But as you come to the end of the breastfeeding, as I am now, I'm really starting to drop fat really quickly now. So if you could kind of hold off if you want to breastfeed for a year, if you want to breastfeed for two years, you know, and just know that your body might hold on to a little more fat than possible or than normal, it will go away as soon as you're done breastfeeding. So, you know, you only get one chance to breastfeed your kids. So you don't have to really be selfish about it.

Gotcha. So as far as things that women can do in those first few months after pregnancy, a lot of it is kind of similar to what you recommended during pregnancy.

Yeah, yeah, it's do what you can do what you have time for, get back. Well, actually some of the recommended exercises is do the things you couldn't do when you were pregnant. So I started, started doing more push ups and front planks and front bridges and ab wheel after I had the baby because I wasn't able to do them beforehand. So I got those back into my routine. So those are the ones that I couldn't do. So put the ones that you had issues with. Like, I really had a hard time doing pull ups when I was pregnant because you, I mean, you weigh so much more. It's like putting a weight belt, but then your core isn't as strong as it used to be, so that's one thing. So just work back up to the strength levels you were at prior to being pregnant.

And did you, did you basically get your body back? Do you feel like you were able to regain all your fitness? Do you feel like you're more fit or stronger or where do you feel you are at this point?

Well, I had a goal. My girlfriend and I were actually pregnant at the same time. She was, she had her boy two weeks after me and we had a Goal where like by six months we want to be back at her, you know, pre baby, like, fitness levels and stuff. And as I told you, I wasn't really as fit as I should have been right before I got pregnant because I was doing a lot of work on my PhD. But I am now more fit, way more fit than I was during the last year of my PhD. So I'm back to my acceptable levels for myself. And I went and bought new clothes from Lucy fitness and stuff. And everyone was like, wow, oh my gosh, you've dropped so much weight even, just, just, even in just the last few weeks of just kind of tapering back the breastfeeding. Like, first and foremost, I don't look like I have porn star boobs anymore because that's an issue. And, and, and that is just kind of going back to, you know, women and when they have a baby, if you are breastfeeding, that was one of the kind of barriers to working out was like every time I had to go, you know, teach a class or something, I had to pump. And then sometimes I was like, shit, I forgot to pump or what? And I was like, oh, but I have to or my boobs are going to explode while I'm working out. Like, it's like literally that bad. So you kind of have to, you have to figure out this whole new routine and a whole new balance and you just, you know, work things out in a new way. And it does work out, but it's, it's more challenging. And now that I'm kind of, you know, my daughter, I switched her over to goat's milk because I don't take any cow's milk. I'm actually really cow's milk intolerant. So she's on goat's milk and she eats a lot of food. But now that she's like, good with that and I'm traveling more, you know, I feel better about, you know, her not necessarily being on breast milk. And it gives me more freedom, you know, I don't feel like, oh, I have to pump, like right before I leave. And.

Yeah, our kids switched to goat's milk about, I think it was about seven months in or so. And that, that definitely saved my wife a lot of hassle. So. So that's interesting too, that you also switched to that because it is baby goats are closer to the size of a human baby than a baby cow is, so there's some enhanced protein absorption and lots of other good things going on.

Yeah. And I just have a real problem with the cow's milk in the USA. Like, it even tastes different between Canada and the U.S. it's kind of strange. Tastes differently, and it's just so mass produced. I'm just really skeptical and because I personally have the intolerance to cow's milk and I've never, ever exposed my daughter to the cow's milk proteins. Like, never when I was pregnant and never when I was breastfeeding. I didn't want to just all sudden put that in her diet because I didn't want, you know, who knows? And she's been really good with the goat's milk. It's been nice. I've actually, I don't know if you found this with your boys or maybe you were better than I. But the goat's milk, it's a little sour. And so my daughter was kind of like, ugh. So I've added a touch of maple syrup to it and she likes that. And I almost like, am I creating a sugar monster? But if you taste breast milk, it's really sweet. So I've just kind of made it the same sweetness as breast milk. And she. She's much more happy with it.

Yeah, that's a good idea. You know. And regarding the cow's milk, we did switch our kids briefly to cow's milk, and one got pretty sick for about a week, and so we switched them back to goat's milk. But yeah, it's definitely a life better digested. So. Interesting. Your. Your book, you said it's gonna be about four months or so before that comes out.

Yeah, I mean, hey, writing a book when you have a kid. And I run a business and I write for other companies and I'm starting a new job as a registered dietitian at an insurance company. So I have like six jobs as in addition to being a mom. So this book will get done. The pictures are there, so it's. It's a work in progress, but I'm trying to get out as quickly as possible. I'm probably going to take a few weekends and just like, you know, lock myself in my office and tell my husband to go take the kids somewhere. Now that she's not breastfeeding too. That's a little. Gives me a little more freedom. So it. Yeah, probably about four months. And it's. The working title is going to be the New Rules of Lifting or the New Rules. Right, The New Rules of Exercise for Pregnancy.

Nice. Nice. I like it.

It's not just going to be lifting because it's not just lifting. So. Sorry, what were you saying?

Well, when it comes out, if you want to let me know for the listeners who are listening in right now, I'll keep you guys posted via the newsletter or via the blog@BenGreenfieldFitness.com when Cassandra's book comes out, because I know that some of you listening in will definitely want to use that as a resource. And you can also check out Cassandra's blog. And I know this is going to be tough for you to spell, so I'll put a link in the show notes as well. But it's Cassandra foresaw. And I'll be sure to put a few pictures of Cassandra in there too. She's got some good ones on her website. But I know those of you women who listened in and heard that she did a lot of heavy lifting and things like that. She's a perfect example that you really don't have to look like a freak of nature if you're a woman doing things like that. So I'll put all that stuff in the show notes. Cassandra, thank you for coming on the call today and sharing this knowledge with us.

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Well, folks, be sure to visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com to get a link to Cassandra's books. I also put pictures of her up on there and also a link to everything that we talked about in this podcast, episode number 141, including the link to my personal blog, the Psycho Cybernetics book by Maxwell Maltz, some of those low carbohydrate diabetes diet books I talked about, the Vitamix Green Smoothie video, the Super Health Living Fuel. Everything is over at the Show Notes for you to click on. And while you're there, if you can, please donate a dollar to keep this podcast going. And it's a great way to kind of offset the gigabytes and gigabytes of information that gets transferred from the thousands of downloads that we get each week. So you can do all that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and until next time, this is Ben Greenfield wishing you a healthy week. Until next time from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.