Episode #142: Top Fitness Productivity Tips From Peter Shankman AND A Massive Fitness & Nutrition Q&A Bonus!

In this podcast, fitness productivity tips from Peter Shankman. How much to eat after a big workout? How to heal the lungs after smoking? Will small people cannibalize too much muscle with fasted exercise? What happens when women exercise too much? Is a saltwater pool healthier than a chlorine pool? How to run faster after biking My top indoor cycling workouts what is a low oxalate diet? Returning to exercise after the flight, Taking blood pressure medications during exercise, a supplement called D Ribose and why I don't recommend multivitamins.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here and it has been a busy time here at the Greenfield House. My wife and I are getting ready to go down to California and race a triathlon called the Wildflower Triathlon. And I I've also had my head in the books recently. And I'll tell you what, if you don't follow me on Twitter, you should, because this week I'm going to be talking about some of the things I've discovered lately, like how to simply look at your fingers and know whether you're predisposed to do well at sports or have high levels of testosterone. How to predict how well you might do if you were to go out and do say, like a Ultra Ironman or triple Ironman event. And also how to get away with eating about 30, 30% less carbohydrate during exercise by simply adding one specific thing into your exercise diet. So very interesting stuff that I've been finding out the past few weeks. I've always got my head buried in the research and I'm always trying to bring it to you. And I find that Twitter is one very good way to give it to you in little snippets. So if you're not following twitter.com BenGreenfield Check it out. All right, well, we have a jam packed podcast today and I need to let you know there are a ton of questions in the backlog. Literally hundreds of questions a week, and there's a big backlog of questions that haven't been asked before on the podcast. So the next couple weeks I will be answering more questions than I typically do and the interviews will be a little bit shorter just for the next couple weeks so we can catch up on the massive Q and A. So we have an interview after the Q and A with a guy named Peter Shankman. And those of you who are kind of in the the reporting marketing business might know that name because Peter Schenkman is the owner of a lot of different kind of social media and PR websites and businesses. And he's probably most well known for a service called Help a Reporter out, where you receive a weekly email from reporters who are looking for you to help them out with a story. And Peter happens to be an Ironman triathlete as well. So I got him onto today's interview to talk a little bit about how he, an incredibly busy and successful person, maintains fitness. So we'll have that in today's podcast. But first, let's jump right into a few special announcements and then this week's listener Q and A.

Special announcements.

So about a thousand of you have actually received a Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirt. And it says, my personal trainer told me to eat more fat on the back of it. And then on the front of it it says Ben Greenfield Fitness. Well, I have decided that we need to make a change to that T shirt. It's been around for a couple of years and frankly, it's a real head scratcher for some people. And also I think that there could be probably a better T shirt design floating around somewhere in the genius heads of my listeners. And so what I am interested in having you do is actually submit your design for the next BenGreenfieldFitness.com T shirt. Now, I'm willing to work with you on this. If you email me ben greenfieldfitness.com I'll give you logos, I'll give you graphics, whatever you need to create a T shirt design. But I'd like to have a T shirt design contest to see who can come up with the best T shirt for the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Now, if your T shirt design wins, I will be featuring you in in a podcast, interview and blog post here@BenGreenfieldFitness.com for you to talk about why you designed the T shirt the way that you did. And we'll also be unveiling your T shirt design during that special episode. So if you want to take part in Designing the next BenGreenfieldFitness.com T shirt and you're a designer or a creative person, as long as the design doesn't involve anything like sequins or patches, I am up for checking it out. So Submit your Design to Ben greenfieldfitness.com and also simply email Ben greenfieldfitness.comand I'll reply with any graphics or anything like that that you need. So other quick announcements are that there is still time to get a free copy of the book Super Health Diet, the last diet you'll ever need. All you have to do to get a free copy of that book is is post a video of you over at the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page explaining why you should get a copy of that free book, how it's going to help you. So go over there and post a video about why you are going to benefit from reading Super Health Diet, the last diet you'll ever need. Put that video up on the Facebook page and you will be selected as long as your video makes sense for a free signed book from KC Creische, author of the Super Health Diet. So that's facebook.com bgfitness all right, one last special announcement and then we'll 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.

Because of the volume of the questions I've been getting lately, I don't even know if I should announce this, but I'll go ahead and do it. If you have a question for the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, just use the free iPhone app or Android app and click the Ask Ben button on either of those apps, which you can get for free on the right side of the page@BenGreenfieldFitness.com or you can call toll free to 877209 9439. Or of course, use the handy Dandy Ask Ben form over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and our first question this week comes from Eric, who says, yesterday I completed my first 130 mile weekend with 80 of those miles on Sunday. And Eric is referring to bicycling, not, thank goodness, running. He says, I did the best I could regarding nutrition in the saddle, but I'm still super hungry today. What would be your replenishment plan after an effort like that? Well, I have to tell you, it shocks and amazes some people when I explain to them how much they actually have to eat after a big huge training session like that in order to adequately replenish carbohydrate stores. Now, Eric was in a unique situation if you didn't catch that, where he said he rode 130 miles on the weekend, but did 80 of those miles on Sunday. So I'm assuming He also rode 30, 50 miles on Saturday. So when you are doing back to back days of heavy exercise, it becomes even more important to replenish your body's carbohydrate levels because you're likely to be exercising again within the next 24 hours. Now, usually just by normal eating, when you're hungry, you can replace all of your body storage energy within about 24 hours. But if you're exercising, say later on in the day or early in the next day before that 24 hour window, then you may want to replace your storage carbohydrate faster than that. Now, there have been a couple studies on this. For example, a researcher named Jenkins found that the maximal rate of glycogenesis, which is replacement of your storage carbohydrate from food, can occur when you ingest about 1.2 grams per kilogram. And I'll explain in a second about how much that is immediately post exercise and then do that again every 30 minutes for a three hour recovery period. Okay, so there was another review done by the same researcher and another really good researcher in the sports nutrition industry called Oscar Jukendrup, and they found that maximum glycogen synthesis rates, and again, that's, that's the storage of carbohydrate occurred at a dose range of 1 to 1.8 grams per kg, ingested every 15 to 60 minutes for up to 5 hours post exercise. And basically, if you put both these studies together and look at about the average of what would yield kind of your maximum carbohydrate restoration, it comes out to about 1.2 grams per kg body weight for about 5 hours post exercise. So a meal that contains 1.2 grams per kg of carbohydrate every hour for 5 hours post exercise. So let's take a look at what that would look like. So I personally weigh in at about 80kg, give or take a few. So if I weigh in at about 80 grams per kilogram and I'm taking in 1.2 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight, then I'm going to be taking significantly over 80 grams of carbohydrate per hour for those five hours after a big exercise session. Specifically, it comes out to about 400 calories of carbohydrate per hour for five hours post exercise. That's about 2,000 calories of carbohydrate in those five hours post exercise. And we're not including protein, we're not including fat in that. Okay, just carbohydrate. Usually if you're consuming real whole foods, which I do recommend, you're also getting protein and fat in along with that. But ultimately, the most important thing post exercise, after a big exercise session, when you're exercising again the next day, it's that carbohydrate intake. 400 calories of carbohydrate per hour for five hours post exercise. Let's put that into context. If I have basically kind of like a medium sized sweet potato or yam, that's going to come out to about 175 to 200 calories. So for example, I could have two of those per hour. Not that I do that. I'd be bored after the first couple of hours. But that's just an example. A quinoa, which is another carbohydrate that I eat quite a bit of a big serving of quinoa would give me about 250 to 300 calories. So I could have, you know, another big serving of quinoa and then throw a bunch of extra stuff in that, maybe some, you know, diced apples or diced pears, have that piece of pizza, 250, 350 calories, a couple slices, you're definitely going to be getting closer to 400 calories. That's another example. But we're not just talking about doing that once, we're talking about over and over and over again for five hours post exercise. So typically, a lot of times when I finish a big workout and I know I've got another big workout coming up soon, which a lot of times takes place on the weekends, I will have kind of a post workout quick meal, like a smoothie or a shake, and then I'll eat a real meal again an hour after that, like last night's leftovers from dinner or lunch from the day before. And then I'll make myself another big real meal an hour and a half or two after that. And typically for me, those real meals are closer to 500, 600, sometimes even a thousand calories. But ultimately, by the time those five hours are up, you should have eaten at least 2,000 calories and sometimes even more than that. And that's assuming that you're also eating during the actual session. So what this comes down to is most people do not eat enough when they finish exercising, doing a big workout, especially when they have another big workout coming up the next day. Really important for you people who are like half ironman or Ironman triathletes, if you got a big bike ride on a Saturday and a run on a Sunday, after that big bike ride on a Saturday, you got to stuff your face for a few hours. And the reason that eating just one big, huge meal doesn't really work is because your gastric emptying rate is only so fast and you can only absorb so much of that huge meal versus splitting that up into a bunch of mini meals after the session. So that is part of the answer to your question. I know that we could go on for a very long time about sample meals, but I just want to kind of get your creative juices flowing and kind of give you a general idea of how many calories you would need to be taking in after a workout. And by the way, they have found that adding in some protein can enhance the carbohydrate synthesis compared to leaving out the protein when you're doing, like, a high frequency of dosage similar to what I've just described. So including protein with those is important, usually in about a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. Okay. I'm hoping that your head isn't spinning too much after that, especially if you're trying to do all the math. But, you know, take another listen. Rewind and take another listen if you need to. It makes sense. So, 1.2 grams per kilogram each hour for the five hours after a big workout. Okay. Emily asks. I am a runner and I used to be a smoker. I recently quit, but I'm wondering if there are any supplements or health tricks that might help my lungs heal faster and keep me motivated from going back to the dreaded cigarettes. Well, first of all, there's good news about stopping smoking. Literally 20 minutes after you smoke your very last cigarette, your blood pressure and your pulse rate drop down to normal and your body temperature goes back down to normal. Eight hours after you finish your last cigarette, your carbon monoxide levels decrease and the oxygen level in your blood increases back to normal. A day after your last cigarette, you lessen your chances of having a heart attack. Two days after you start to get your enhanced sense of taste and smell back. Three days after, you'll notice that your breathing gets noticeably better and your lung capacity increases. And within about two weeks to three months after you quit, you begin to improve your circulation and your lung function goes up to about 30% versus what it was back when you were smoking. About one to nine months in, the cilia in your lungs start to regenerate. And those are the little almost like hair like cells that allow your body to clean your lungs and reduce your risk of infection. Within a year after quitting, your risk of coronary heart disease is half that of when you were smoking. Within five years after quitting, your risk of stroke goes back down to what it is in a non smoker. And within 15 years after quitting, your risk of heart disease is basically that of a non smoker. So, you know, if you're like, you know, concerned about smoking increasing your risk of heart disease, you're 30 years old, you quit. By the time you're 55, it's going to be like you never smoked. So your body is pretty good at repairing itself. But there are some things that you can do to speed that up. Believe it or not, exercise is the top thing that you can do. Because as you exercise and you cough and you breathe hard, you clear out your lungs, you clear out your airways and you really jump start the regeneration and the cleaning of the alveoli in your lungs. So what happens is that when you exercise, you're going to loosen a lot of the big chunks of basically smoke and smog that have become collected in your lungs and their solid form and you really help to restore your lungs to their pre smoking levels. One thing that you could take is retinoic acid or what's also known as vitamin A, and that actually has been shown to really help your lungs rebuild. They gave it to rats and mice with emphysema in one study and I don't know how they got the rats and mice to have emphysema. I'm guessing that they didn't smoke cigarettes, but it's possible that they gave them little rat and mice sized cigarettes and when they gave them retinoic acid or this vitamin A, the rats and the mice were able to restore the alveoli in their lungs and swap carbon dioxide for oxygen to their pre emphysema levels. And the nice part about that is that you can get your daily allowance of vitamin A from just eating a big serving of carrots, having a big sweet potato, eating a big mango. I mean, that's all it takes on a daily basis to get your levels of vitamin A in. So I would focus on exercise, I would focus on vitamin A and I would give yourself a big Pat on the back for stopping your smoking because your body immediately starts to heal itself. And as long as you're exercising and getting some vitamin A in your diet, you should be on the right track. Okay, next question is from Melanie, who says not to keep on the whole fasted morning exercise that you've talked about. But I'm wondering your opinion on a very small woman with no muscle to lose. At what point should I actually be concerned about cannibalizing muscle? I'm 5 foot 2, 105 pounds and about 17% body fat. I want to get down to 13 to 14% fat, but I don't want to lose much weight or any muscle. Should I even be doing fasted exercise? Is it okay to do my fasted 45 minute strength training? Well, the idea with the fasted exercise session that I, that I recommend, which is basically just a few days a week, waking up in the morning, not eating anything and just doing an easy exercise session, taking the dog out for a walk or riding your bicycle really easy for 30 or 45 minutes. The idea behind that is simply to jumpstart the activity of the fat burning enzymes and exercise a little bit when your blood sugar levels are not high and you're not burning primarily carbohydrate. And I've found that to be very successful in helping my clients and myself to reduce weight and body fat quickly. And what research has found primarily is that it's beneficial. Well, the study that they actually did on it was in people who were eating a very high fat, high calorie diet. They found that those people were able to control blood sugar and control weight more efficiently when they exercised for about an hour before breakfast. But ultimately what you're doing is just giving yourself a little bit of a step up in terms of weight control and the ability to teach your body how to burn fat efficiently. And you're only tapping into your body's fat stores as long as that's an easy exercise session. So if you're at 17%, you want to drop down to 13%. It doesn't matter whether you're small or big, you can get your body to tap into that extra storage fat. It's when your body fat levels drop down very low. And you know, if you're a female, you're getting down towards, you know, 11 or 12 or 13% body fat, or you're a male and you're getting around down to, you know, five or six or seven. That's when you really risk kind of running out of some of that fat. To burn and tapping into a lot of the muscle and beginning to cannibalize lean muscle tissue. For the average person who has fat to burn, it's not really something that you need to worry about. That is, if you're doing an easy exercise session. As soon as the exercise session starts to get hard and begins to involve high intensity interval training or the type of weight training that you just described in your question, that's when you begin to burn carbohydrate as a fuel and risk if you haven't eaten anything and if you truly are glycogen depleted, fasted or starved, tapping into your body's lean muscle and protein for energy. So that's why, whether you're small or you're big, if you're doing fasted exercise sessions, unless you actually want to cannibalize muscle and lose muscle, which I know some people want to do, you should not be doing hard intervals or weight training in that fasted state. Because when you start into that, it triggers your body's burning of carbohydrate and triggers a rapid depletion of carbohydrate levels if you're unfed. Once your body starts to drop low in blood glucose, low in blood sugar, low in carbohydrate levels, and you tell it to exercise hard, it's going to start to tap into your body's muscle and your own lean protein. So basically you're fine as long as you're keeping it aerobic with your fasted exercise sessions. Okay, Susan says, please help. How can I tell if I'm truly in menopause or experiencing exercise induced amenorrhea? I lost my cycle at age 42 while doing heavy volume triathlon training and following a low carbohydrate vegetarian diet. My doctor figured it was related to low body fat. Now, almost four years later, my period has not returned. I continue to train heavily and put on almost ten pounds. Even though I made no changes to my exercise or dietary regimen. My doctor says now it's menopause. Okay, so basically what Susan is saying is she exercised too much, didn't eat well, got a menorrhea, and now that she's kinda taken care of that and come back, it seems like she has menopause, having replaced the amenorrhea, and she's trying to figure out if she actually has. Well, it's pretty easy to identify menopause. If you go out and you get your hormones tested, any of you females who are kind of wondering, you can go out and you can get some blood samples. You can measure the levels of what's called follicle stimulating hormone, which is going to be abbreviated FSH on the test results. And what happens is that your FSH levels are going to go up when your ovaries stop producing enough estrogen. And that's one signal that your body is entering menopause. Once they get up above or around about 10 to 12, that indicates that your ovaries are starting to fail and you're going into menopause. And once they get to about 30 or 40 or higher, that usually indicates that your ovaries really are failing and you're going into menopause. A lot of times that has to be accompanied by a drop in your estradiol levels and that's kind of your primary estrogen. And when your ovaries begin to fail, these estrogen levels begin to drop. And that's when you get that estradiol test to basically identify whether they are lower than they should be. And so you get the high FSH, the low estrogen levels, and typically that's about 30 or below in conjunction with the high FSH levels. And that's considered menopausal as well. There are some other ovarian hormones that can get tested, like testosterone, progesterone, luteinizing hormone, that's also known as LH and dhea. And for women who are wondering if they're in menopause, DHEA can also start to start to drop very low in that condition. So I'm not a doctor, but if you have that cluster of symptoms of low testosterone, low lh, low progesterone, low dhea, low estrogens, high fsh, you probably are in menopause. But the other part of your question I think is more interesting because a lot of women do believe that they stop menstruating when they begin exercising too much. And that's simply not the case. There are a lot of very lean females out there who have low body fat percentage, who exercise very heavily. And I've coached many of them, so I know this. They have regular periods. And in my experience, the defining characteristic that makes one group of women able to exercise a whole bunch and have low body fat percentages and still have their periods and still be regular, and another group of women to exercise a bunch and lose their period and get a menorrhea, the difference is not the exercise levels, it's not necessarily the body fat levels. It, it all typically comes down to nutrition related factors. So here are my tips. If you are a female and you have amenorrhea or you're concerned about amenorrhea. First of all, most of the time when I'm looking at the females who I work with or who I talk to, and this would include my wife, who train a bunch and have low body fat percentage but have regular periods, they don't know what their weight is or they don't care about their weight. I don't know the last time my wife weighed herself. And most of the female clients who are trained to do just fine with this, they don't even have scales. Okay? So you basically let your body weigh whatever it wants to weigh. And for some females it's going to be more, for some it's going to be less. But you do not obsess about body fat or weight. Okay? The second thing is you eat adequate protein. So amenorrheic athletes, and especially vegans and vegetarians, they tend to eat a lot less protein than the non amenorrheic athletes. Even in the vegetarian athletes, it is possible to get enough protein. It's a lot harder to do. But you must, must, must include things like yogurt, fish, beans, fermented sources of soy, nuts, and especially if you're not vegan or vegetarian, lots of lean meats. You should eat at least 20% of your calories from fat, preferably up to 30%, sometimes more. And you're looking for basically all the healthy fats. So lots of salmon, olive oil, sardines, cold water, fish and fish oil, olives, avocados, coconut milk, basically all of those things are really going to help keep your hormones stabilized to a level where you will be regular with your period. And again, I'm not a huge fan of vegan and vegetarian female athletes exercising a lot. And so this is the last recommendation I make that's eating red meat every week, preferably two to three portions of it every week. That's going to be huge in influencing your ability to have fewer menstrual problems than non meat eaters. So meat has a really, really protected effect upon menses and upon keeping the period regular. So those are some of my recommendations and you know, if you have follow up comments or questions on that, you know what to do, just leave them on the show. Notes for this podcast podcast number 142 at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Todd writes in and asked. I switched gyms and have gone from a chlorine pool to a saline pool. I find my swimming times are better and swimming seems a little bit easier. Is this because of the buoyancy of saline? Well, yes, it is. A saline pool is going to have higher levels of salt in it. And, you know, it seems on the surface to make sense to switch from a chlorine pool to a saline based pool because of the levels of chlorine. I did a show on chloramines once, and the idea of how dead skin cells and all the biological compounds that mix with chlorine in a typical swimming pool creates these chloramines, which can be hugely irritating to the lungs. And one of the reasons that tons of competitive swimmers have respiratory problems. Anybody who spends less time in the water can experience tons of respiratory problems. Very, very prevalent among competitive swimmers. But a lot of people think that these saline pools don't have any chlorine in them, and that's not true. What a saline or a saltwater pool has is it's got this chlorine generator cell in it, and it converts normal chlorine ions into what's called hypochlorous acid. And hypochlorous acid is what can actually do things like kill bacteria and keep pools sanitary. So all that a saline pool does is it kind of reduces the amount of maintenance necessary in terms of adding chlorine to the pool. But there's still high levels of this hypochlorous acid in the pool. And, you know, in a regularly chlorinated pool, you can smell it a lot more, but it's still in the water in a saline pool, and it is in levels that are slightly lower. But don't think that there's not any chlorine in the saline pool because there is chlorine in it. And it's not like you're completely escaping chlorine. Now, if you have a pool that you go to at your gym and your eyes are always burning, you find that chlorine smell is very strong, usually means that they're not doing a very good job with their pool maintenance. And they're typically adding too much chlorine to the water. So you can typically tell when there's too much chlorine in the water. And that's something where you may want to approach the gym, approach the pool boy or whoever's taking care of the pool and ask about the actual chlorine levels, because the PPM or the parts per million of the chlorine is probably too high. But to answer your initial question, yes, it's going to be easier to swim in a saline pool versus a chlorine pool. Okay. Jerry says, hi, Ben. My best Half Marathon time is 95 minutes. It's pretty good. However, in a 70.3 race, I've struggled to go faster. And 70.3 is a half Ironman triathlon where you're running a half marathon after you get off a bike. Jerry says, my best time there is 115 minutes. So what's the most effective way to train to improve that half marathon time during a half Ironman? Well, there are three recommendations that I would make to you, Jerry, that will help you to run similar in a half marathon of a half Ironman as you run in a half marathon by itself. And some of these might make a little bit of sense. The first is once a week, do some type of workout where you're running after you ride the bike. This seems intuitive, but a lot of triathletes don't do it. If you look at your training calendar, you may not be doing a weekly brick or at least getting off the bike and running at least once. And this would especially be important in those final eight weeks leading up to your race. You need to be running after you get off the bike or doing a bike and run session in the same day. So getting used to the feeling of having legs that feel like bricks when you get off the bike is very important, and you simply cannot neglect that weekly brick. Research has shown that cyclists who attempt to maintain a higher cadence or higher pedaling revolution rate, then what they would naturally choose if they just kind of zoned out and pedaled at whatever cadence they wanted to run faster when they get off the bike. So if you, when you go into your zone, you're just pedaling without thinking about it. If you're pedaling at say, 75 or 80 RPM, try to bring that up by 5 to 10 RPM, especially in those last 20 minutes of the bike ride before you get off to run. So you should be pedaling at about somewhere like 85-90 RPM. And in those last few miles of the half Ironman bike, split in order to run faster off the bike. And then the last thing that I recommend is in that final week before your race, you do lots of bike run sessions, meaning that for a Sunday race on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, you might do a bike ride on each one of those days, on every one of those bike rides, get off and run for 10 to 15 minutes, really getting that body neuromuscularly trained and used to that feeling of running off the bike. And that should help out tremendously. It's still going to be faster to run a half marathon by itself than it is going to be to run a half marathon and a half ironman. But you should definitely be able to get closer than a 20 minute spread which you currently have your half marathon in. A half ironman should be able to be within about 10 minutes of a half marathon run by itself. Alright, next question is from Janet who says, I work out 30 minutes every morning, six days a week. My workouts are one minute of hard resistance cycling with a cadence of 55 or 60, with my heart rate getting up to about 180 beats, followed by recovery for one minute, where my heart rate drops down to about 150 beats. Could you give me ideas for other spinning workouts I can do? Absolutely. Okay, I am going to give you guys my top three indoor cycling workouts that I do when I hop on a bike. And you know, it's one of those deals where I get on the bike and I think, huh, I wonder what workout I'm going to do. Okay, this would be when I, when I just find myself on the bike. Got to make up a workout quickly. There are three workouts that I tend to turn to and here they are. The first is called a ladder. The way that this works is you start off with 8 minutes of easy cycling, and then you do 2 minutes of hard cycling, and then you do 7 minutes of easy cycling, 3 minutes of hard cycling, 6 minutes of easy cycling, 4 minutes of hard cycling, 5 and 5, 4 and 6, 3 and 7. Then by the last rung of that ladder, you're doing two minutes of easy cycling, eight minutes of hard cycling. So that workout is going to take you sometimes an hour or more, depending on how many rungs of the ladder you hit. That's a great workout. Typically about a 60 minute or so workout. Okay, so that's number one is the ladder. Number two, which is also very easy to remember, I call the 1, 2, 3 workout. The way that this goes is you warm up for, you know, whatever, five minutes, 10 minutes, and then you do one minute with a very high cadence but a fairly low resistance. And when I say high cadence, you're pedaling at about 100 RPM or more. And then you take a minute of recovery, and then you do two minutes at a medium resistance and a medium cadence. So you bring up your resistance, but you drop your cadence by about 10 RPM or so. So down to around 90, sometimes as low as 85. And then you take another one minute of recovery and then finally you do three minutes of with a very High resistance and a very low cadence. So you drop your cadence again, this time by 10 to 15 RPM and you do three minutes, you know, at around 65, 70 RPM. And then you take a minute of recovery and then you go back to the one minute at a high cadence and a low resistance and you simply go from the one to the two to the three, back and forth until your time's up. So you can do it for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. Confession I actually did that as a two hour workout last weekend. My bike was in the shop, I was in the indoor bike at the gym and that was my two hour cycling workout. To help me get ready for the 56 miles. I got a ride over at Wildflower. Yeah, pretty much just zoned out and watched TV and did that workout. Okay. And then the last one is a music based workout and this one's kind of fun. What I do is I use Pandora on my iPhone. You could use just a pre selected list of songs that you've downloaded to an MP3 player. This kind of harkens back to my spinning days. Not the smartest or the most structured workout on the planet. But you put the music on and you basically choose a station or a series of songs that have a good mix of hard and easy tunes, a good mix of songs that have riveting, hard driven choruses and easy verses. And you simply go hard when the music is hard and you go easy when the music is easy. It sounds stupid, but especially when you're tired and you're not very motivated to work out, sometimes something as simple as that is what it takes. So for example, I might listen to 10 songs and I go hard during the hard songs and easy during the easy songs. Or I go hard during the hard driving choruses and easy during the verses. So those are my three top cycling workouts that I do when I hop on the bike. And I just got to get a workout in quickly and don't want to think about it too much. I either do the latter or the 1, 2, 3 or the music based workout. All right, next question is from Mike. Mike says I recently passed a kidney stone. My urologist had me do a 24 hour urine test which showed high urinary calcium and oxalate. He's recommended I avoid vitamin D and decrease coffee, cola, chocolate, nuts, spinach and green leafy vegetables. I've researched other high oxalate foods and it's a lot of other very healthy foods that I love. So what do you suggest for eating Healthy while maintaining a high oxalate diet. So what an oxalate is, it's. It's a totally natural substance. You find it in plants, you find it in animals, it's made in humans, and it is an organic acid that your body makes. And your cells routinely convert things into oxalates, like in the processing of vitamin C. Vitamin C is one of the substances that your cell converts into. Into oxalates. And what happens when you're looking at something like kidney stones is oxalates can actually crystallize to form kidney stones when they are combined with calcium. So if you have high levels of calcium circulating in your bloodstream, which could actually be caused by high, high intake of vitamin D or a high, high intake of calcium supplements, and you combine that with a high amount of oxalates, which can actually come from some of these foods that Mike mentioned, you could put yourself at risk for kidney stones. If you're somebody who already has a kidney stone or has passed one recently, really, in most cases, a high oxalate diet combined with high calcium intake is not necessarily going to cause a kidney stone. But in someone who's predisposed to kidney stones, it. It could possibly be an issue. The only problem is that this formation of oxalic acid from the consumption of food only accounts for about 10 to 15% of the oxalate that's actually found in the urine of individuals who form these kidney stones. And everything else comes from normal metabolism. So by restricting oxalate intake, you know, there's not a ton of evidence to show that it's going to do you a lot of good. And, you know, there may be other issues going on. Like something as simple as a magnesium deficiency can really inhibit your ability to absorb calcium. And you may have some issues going on with the magnesium deficiency or a high, high calcium to magnesium ratio. That being said, if you really did want to eat healthy and also eat a low oxalate diet, there are still tons of low oxalate foods that you can eat. Seafood is considered a low oxalate food, so there's a good source of protein for you right there. And yogurt, if you're okay with dairy, is also a good low oxalate source of protein. Pork and poultry would also be okay. In reality, most meats are okay, so you're pretty much covered as far as protein when it comes to healthy fats. Avocados would be a low oxalate food. Most oils really are low oxalate. So you can continue with like, omega 3 oil intake and you know, continue with like macadamia nut oil, olive oil, flax oil, grapeseed oil, those type of things. As far as vegetables go, you know, those are, those are the things that you got to be careful with. Like dark leafy greens are high in oxalates, but there's tons of vegetables that aren't high in oxalates. Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower would be some examples. As far as carbohydrates go, a lot of carbohydrates would be just fine. Most sprouted bread will be fine to eat as well as any of those sprouted grains. A lot of fruits are fine. Like bananas are okay, grapefruits are okay. Grapes are pretty good, Melons are okay. So fruit based carbohydrates, a lot of those are lower in oxalates. And you can look up low oxalate foods. If you were to go do an Internet search for low oxalate foods, you could find some that will kind of help you out a little bit. And essentially even eggs are low oxalate. So there's a ton of things that you can take in that are low oxalate foods that will allow you to maintain a healthy diet. But I'm personally not convinced that a low oxalate diet is necessarily going to save you from kidney stones or be a contributing factor to kidney stones. So. Great question. The next question is from Tony, who says, I recently finished my first half marathon and my first biathlon. My partner and I are signing up for a trail marathon. We are both in good shape and are dedicated to being better. But I have genetic hypertension. I take two tablets each morning. They are Procardia and Hyzar. As I train, how should I approach supplements and what type of drug interactions do I need to be aware of? Okay, so basically these two supplements that Tony is taking, the first is Hizar, and that's basically a diuretic. It's a water pill. So it helps your body to keep from absorbing too much salt, keeps your kidneys from absorbing too much sodium as they filter your blood. And what that means is that will prevent your body from absorbing too much water, because as your body loses salt, it will shift towards losing more water as well to maintain the proper electrolyte concentration in your body. So the problem is that that could, during exercise, dehydrate you the same way that drinking caffeine or drinking a bunch of alcohol the night before exercise could dehydrate you. So you need to pay very close attention to your hydration needs during exercise. And in Most cases, thirst is a fairly good indicator of your hydration needs. And you should not let yourself get thirsty thirsty during your exercise because when you're taking something like Hizar, which is a hydrochlorothiazide, that's a diuretic, and that will actually cause you to lose extra water. So be careful with your hydration needs when you're on that particular pill. Yes, by having lower water and lower blood volume, it will help to decrease your blood pressure, but it could also increase your risk of dehydration during exercise. Now, the other one that you're taking, this Procardia, that's a vasodilator. And what that means is it's going to affect the walls of the blood vessels in your body and it keeps the blood vessels open for blood flow so your heart doesn't have to work as hard to pump blood. And the high blood pressure that you can get is often a result of the walls of your veins or the walls of your arteries constricting and limiting blood flow. And that makes your heart work harder to get blood through those narrow tubes and could cause a heart attack. And so that's the reason that you'd be put on something like procardia if you had this high blood pressure. So as a vasodilator, anything that vasodilates is basically going to cause your heart rates to have to work a little less hard for any giving or any given exercise intensity. So when this comes into play is if you've done something like an exercise test to determine what your maximum heart rate or your exercise heart rate should be, and you haven't been on your medication, when you've done that exercise test, those numbers are going to be far different. Your actual maximum heart rate that you're able to achieve will be lower when you're on something like a vasodilator, because your heart rate's stroke volume will be a little bit greater, then your heart is going to have to pump against less resistance. So understand that something like an age predicted maximum heart rate equation probably won't work for you. If you're on Procardia, you should actually go out and do an exercise test, either a treadmill based exercise test or like a lactate threshold test when you are actually on your medication. If you're doing something like using heart rate values in your training. Now, as far as supplement interaction, if you're on a pharmaceutical vasodilator, then you may want to be careful with some natural vasodilators. If you're Taking those at the same time because then your blood pressure could drop too low. So natural vasodilators would be something like, you know, we hear a lot of talk these days about beetroot juice and how cyclists are eating beetroot juice as kind of like a nitric oxide precursor to open up blood vessels before exercise. And it actually does improve performance. Interesting studies on beetroot juice, but if you're on a high blood pressure, medication might not be the best thing for you. Celery and garlic are two other supplements that you can get in pill or capsule form that are considered vasodilators that naturally cause vasodilation and may cause your blood pressure to drop too low during exercise. If you're on a prescription vasodilator, even walnuts, eating walnuts can lower your blood pressure for up to 24 hours. So something as simple as that may be something to avoid if you're on a prescription based vasodilator. And of course, as you may have suspected, my recommendation, and again, I'm not a physician, I'm just saying this is what I would do if I had high blood pressure. I would actually be taking foods that are rich in magnesium, which is another vasodilator. I would be drinking beetroot juice, I would be taking celery pills, I would be taking garlic pills. I would be taking as many natural vasodilators as I could so that I didn't have to be on a prescription based vasodilator, which can cause fluid retention and nausea and dizziness and headache and chest pain and rapid heartbeat and lots of other side effects. So that's just my two cents, but something to think about. Okay, next question is from Melanie, who says, hi, Ben, what do you know about D Ribose? Wondering if this is a good option to increase energy and what its drawbacks might be. Well, first of all, D Ribose is something that if you look on the ingredient label of not most, but a lot of sports nutrition supplements these days, like carbohydrate beverages or gels, you're going to see that D Ribose is actually already in those. And D Ribose is a sugar itself. It's a naturally occurring 5 carbon sugar. It's found in pretty much every living cell. Your body contains some of it as part of its energy giving carbohydrate, and your body synthesizes it from glucose. It can also use ribose to make glucose. So the reason that ribose is something that's kind of important for athletes or Exercising individuals is it has a really, really big role to play in the formation of ATP, which is the primary energy source for a muscle contraction. And what the a part of ATP is, is something called adenosine. And adenosine is simply a combination of ribose and something else called adenine. And when ATP releases energy, what happens is ATP is split into a few different molecules. And so you're losing large amounts of ATP while you're exercising. So what happens is to regenerate that ATP more quickly. If you have excess ribose or extra ribose on hand to help regenerate that energy molecule, you can basically, you know, theoretically go harder or go for a longer period of time during exercise, because ATP is used for both intense exercise as well as long term exercise. So that's the idea behind having it in a nutrition supplement. And you're typically going to find it either in the supplement itself. You can also get it in white powder, you can get it in a capsule form. And in most cases you're going to be taking anywhere from 2, up to as high as 10 grams, depending on how big you are and, and how much exercise you're doing. And there really is a pretty large body of research on ribose. There's hundreds of studies out there. You know, it's totally naturally occurring, it's water soluble, you can't really overdose on it, it's not toxic. If you eat a bunch of ribose the same as any other type of sugar, you're probably going to get diarrhea, there's going to be some blood sugar fluctuations. But ultimately, used intelligently during exercise is something that when mixed into a carbohydrate containing beverage, could really help with the reformation and the production of ATP. Assuming that you're working out at a level that's actually replenishing your body's natural ATP levels. So ribose, it's already in most sports supplements. So before you go out and start buying up all the ribose on the block, turn over the label of your gel or your sports beverage that you drink during exercise. And it's plenty of probably already got ribose in it. Okay, we have one last question here from Carlos. Carlos says, I am a beginning runner and I'm wondering if regular multivitamins and protein will be detrimental to my health. I hear you mention a lot of things about regular multivitamins and other regular supplements, but you never recommend them. Are they actually unhealthy for a beginner? And by regular, I mean the more popular and affordable supplements used by a greater number of people such as products made by nature made or GNC or optimum nutrition, are the supplements that you recommend specifically for athletes? My health is nowhere near athlete. Do I still need to take these special supplements or am I good taking the regular ones? I heard from another source that the difference between special and regular supplements are slim. And unless you're professionally training, the slightly higher benefit from taking special supplements is not really needed. Well, let's start off with this. No supplement can or should take priority over your regular healthy diet. So even though I do recommend supplements, I would highly encourage you to eat whole organic foods as much as possible. Avoid packaged foods, avoid processed foods, avoid junk foods, and try and limit your intake of things like artificial sweeteners and colors and flavors and preservatives. But that being said, especially if you're starting to exercise more, if you are trying to get all the nutrients that you need from food, then you need to be aware that inadequate dietary intake of vitamins and minerals is widespread and it's most likely due to our current consumption of very micronutrient, poor, refined foods. So when we have inadequate intake of these vitamins and minerals, whether we're exercising or not, what happens is your metabolism drops, you lose a lot of the mitochondrial activity in your cells. You can get DNA and genetic damage. A lot of the degenerative diseases of aging are caused through the loss of micronutrients. So no matter how good your diet is, if you don't have enough nutrients or vitamins or minerals, then it's, it's simply not going to fill in the holes. You would have to eat literally thousands and thousands and thousands of calories of the type of nutrient depleted food that we have around us in order to actually get what you would get from simply consuming like a high quality vitamin or mineral. And yes, there's a big difference between, you know, what you say is regular. What I would say, you know, is like, you know, cheap, average, you know, cut the corners in production multivitamins and a high quality multivitamin or any supplement for that matter. So, you know, there are a ton of examples I could give. So, for example, you take vitamin E. Vitamin E is in its natural form as D alpha tosopherol, and that's the natural form. But there's another form called DL alpha tosopherol, and that's a synthetic form. It's not nearly as effective in your body. It's not as well absorbed, doesn't have the same amount of antioxidant activity, but it's cheaper. So the Cheaper multivitamin formulas use that form of vitamin E. You look at vitamin D, much of the vitamin D that's in a gel or a capsule form is very poorly absorbed. You spend the extra 10 bucks a month on a spray form of vitamin D that goes into your mouth and gets absorbed sublingually under your tongue. And you get way more bang for your buck out of your vitamin D. You get a mineral supplement. If it's got regular minerals in it, they're not as well absorbed as what are called collated minerals, which are typically bonded to some other molecule. But it's a lot more expensive to make a collated mineral than a regular mineral supplement. So nutrition companies that are, that are cheaper or, you know, more mass produced, they're going to choose that. You look at fish oil. So the vast amount of fish oil that you're, that you're going to find are basically they're the ethyl ester form of fish oil. And what happens is that when you produce fish oil in the manufacturing process, there's part of it called glycerolysis. And that removes the ethanol molecule on the fish oil and puts the DHA and the EPA in the fish oil, re esterifies it into a glycerol backbone. And I know that some of you may not understand what I just said, but the basic idea is that at that point, if you want to put the fish oil back into its most usable and well absorbed form, you have to re esterify it or convert it back into its natural triglyceride form. But that adds about 30 to 40% to the end cost of the fish oil to convert it from its ethyl ester form that is formed during processing back into its triglyceride form. So most companies just don't do it. And so you buy fish oil and you get far less absorption and far less benefit from it because it's in its ethyl ester form versus its triglyceride form. You look at something like protein powder. If you heat a protein powder as you're making it, you can lose a lot of the bioavailability of the proteins. And if you use a cold processing formation to make your protein powder, you retain a lot of that bioavailability. But it's more expensive to do the cold processing. And so if you get one of these cold processed protein powders that I recommend, like the Mount Capra double bonded protein it calls costs you more than a heat processed protein and it costs you even more also because they don't use artificial sweeteners, they use a stevia based sweetener and some natural cocoa. And so, you know, you're again having to pay more for that. And, you know, it's one of those things that I could go on and on about. But the idea is that you're almost doing yourself a disservice and in some cases even damage when you're using a cheap supplement with a bunch of fillers in it versus something that is produced with pride and a great deal of care and a great deal of understanding about the biochemistry of the human body and the way that that particular supplement is going to be absorbed. It doesn't matter if you're an elite athlete or the way that you pronounce or the way that you say it, a regular individual eating a regular supplement, the idea is that you choose quality. It's kind of like grocery shopping. You know, I guess I, you know, when you walk into the grocery store and you send, let's say, an Olympic athlete in there and a regular individual and you take them over to the strawberries and you say, okay, I've got the strawberries here and these are the organic strawberries, these are regular strawberries. And the regular strawberries, they've soaked and been allowed to absorb a bunch of herbicides and pesticides and the organic strawberries have not. And what I'd like to do is for you, Olympic athlete here, I'd like you to grab those organic strawberries because you really, you know, you don't need those herbicides and pesticides. They're really going to inhibit your performance. And then you turn to the other person, you say, but you, you're going to be fine eating the strawberries with the herbicides and the pesticides in them because, you know, you don't have to go out and run for two hours a day. Comes down to a lot more than performance, folks. It's about your health too, and the amount of good that something that you eat or consume is doing you, not just the amount of performance it's going to give you. So hopefully I didn't open too big a can of worms with my response. But Carlos, I hope that answers your question. And again, if you have comments on this type of thing, be sure to leave them in the comments section for the show. Notes to this podcast podcast episode number 142. And folks, with that being said, we are going to go ahead and move on to this week's featured topic after a quick special message.

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Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield, and as you know, I occasionally have somebody come on to the podcast to talk a little bit about fitness and productivity and how busy, successful people actually stay fit and do things like triathlons and marathons. And the guy who I have on the call today has done seven Olympic distance triathlons, 13 marathons, a couple of half Ironman triathlons, one full Ironman triathlon happens to be a skydiver with over 220 jumps as well. If you care to throw that in there. And his name is Peter Shankman. Now, if you've heard of Peter before, you may actually recognize him not as a triathlete, but as an entrepreneur, an author, a speaker, a worldwide connector. He's best known probably for founding Help a Reporter out, also known as Haro, and he's founder and CEO of the Geek Factory. His PR and social media clients have included Snapple, NASA, Sprint, the US Department of Defense, Walt Disney World, Discovery Networks, Napster, Juno, the list goes on and on. So he stays very, very busy, but somehow still finds the time to maintain enough fitness to do Ironman Triathlon and a lot more than that. So Peter, thanks for coming on the call.

My pleasure. Thanks for taking the time.

So tell me, what's the fitness routine of Peter Shankman actually look like?

Oh my God. I mean it varies so much. It really a lot of it depends on where I am in the world, what city I happen to be in, what state, what country. Just today I was in Philly. I gave a speech late last night in Philly. So I took the train home early this morning and got home around 11am and 11:30 was in the gym with my trainer. So it's really varies a lot of cardio. But lately over the past few months, a lot of lifting, a lot of lifting.

Now why do you do the lifting? Are you actually preparing for a strength event? Did you do that to stay in shape for triathlon?

I'm really trying to change my body. I'm one of the Few what they call fat ass triathlons out there. Fat ass triathletes. I believe the other term is Clydesdale, but I prefer fat ass. I did an ironman triathlon around 220 pounds and it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. So this year I'm really. I have a new blog called the year to 10%. I'm really working on getting to 10% body fat this year and really trying to change my body as a whole. Not just be able to do endurance sports, but really change my body so that I actually look different. That's really my goal in 2011. So a lot of that is not just cardio, but a lot more lifting, more than I've ever done in my life.

Now, with as much travel as you do in your job, how is it that you actually put together the ability to weight train and reinvent your body while you're on the road? Do you simply work out at hotel gyms or do you travel with equipment?

No, actually, most things I travel with is a pair of sneakers and a pair of shorts. Anything can be used for weight training if I'm in a hotel room and there's no gym in my hotel. First of all, every hotel is a gym. But assuming the gym sucks, whatever, and I just need something, I take my desk chair and put my legs on it and I just do push ups or I do jumping jacks. I carry a jump rope with me wherever I go. Very, very basic stuff that I carry with me, but it's very doable. I think that the bigger thing, rather than the equipment, the bigger issue that people have is a lack of time. Everyone, oh, I caught this flight and I have to go do my speech and then catch my other flight. And so you find that people just don't have. They say they don't have the time. My answer to that is simply to get up a half an hour early. It sucks, but it works every single time. If you can get up a half an hour early, that's half an hour you can get a workout in. Life goes on.

Gotcha. So you founded the Geek Factory. I'm going to assume then that you know a little bit about technology. Do you actually incorporate technology into your fitness routine? You know, like heart rate monitors or different pieces of software, stuff like that?

Yeah, I love my heart rate monitor, things like that. Some of the big things I really use are, you know, I have a great coach and trainer who sends me all of my stuff by email, like podcasts, whatever, so I can see exactly what workouts I have to do, I use trainingpeaks, which incorporate directly into my Google calendar, things like that. So it's really about using technology in a way that works for you. And for me that's just getting my information, telling me what I have to do on the same BlackBerry device they use everything else for.

Gotcha. So in terms of productivity and some of your top tips, as somebody who's done Ironman, I'm sure you've done a lot of swimming and cycling and running. I want to ask you about some productivity tips that you might have for each of those sports. From a swim standpoint, is there anything special that comes to mind for you in terms of any productivity tips that you, that you have for folks?

Yeah. Best thing in the world for swimming is just get to the pool early. I'm at the pool by like when I'm in New York I'm at the Y by 5am and you have the Y to yourself for like almost an hour. It's spectacular. And I also have a pair of swim P3s which I like but for me it's really about getting the air, getting to the pool just as early.

As possible and avoiding going into the hot tub first. So you don't waste 10 minutes staring at the pool, right?

No, I walk everywhere. Being New York, it's easy to walk everywhere. So for me it's just like my warm up is my walk there.

Yeah, gotcha. Okay, so how about cycling? What's your top cycling productivity tip?

Last year when I was training for the Ironman I had to do a couple of hundred mile rides and I'm not the fastest cycle in the world. Nothing's more depressing for me than getting onto Route 9 and just watching all these people and they're friggin matching US Postal service uniforms blow by me on their, on their Sabellas or whatever. So what I would do, and I guess this comes from being a born and raised New Yorker again it's about getting there early. I got to Central park, when I do my 100 mile ride, I get to Central park at 3:45 in the morning and I started riding at 345 and just did 20 loops of Central Park. Everyone thought I was insane. But you know someone who has adhd, that focus of being able to count the loops keeps you grounded. And that's how I got through my 100 milers again. Everyone thought I was insane but I got through these 100 miles in like six hours. Then when I came back and did my Ironman Cosmo. There were no hills there, so it was a piece of cake.

Got it. Got it. And as someone with adhd, I'm sure that you've experienced a lot of that boredom that can come with the long, long training sessions, right?

Oh, yeah. For me, it's really about my ipod. I have great running music. I also happen to be classically trained as a singer, so I'll be the one singing in Central park for my long runs. Funny thing is that people think because I'm singing, I'm also out of breath and stuff, so I catch one out of every five words. People think they're watching a Special Olympics train. It's really kind of funny.

All right, let's move on to the run. In terms of productivity for the run, do you have a top run productivity tip?

Yeah, I have a great ipod music mix, but I also, if I'm running early in the morning, I also listen to podcasts from, like, npr, BBC, or all the stuff that I'd have to listen to during the day that I never have time to, I actually catch up on. And then what I find is that you can mark certain podcasts by holding down the center button on your ipod. So if they say interesting facts, whatever, I'll just make a digital note of it. And when I get back, I use those as little facts that I can tweet out over the course of the day to engage my audience. So it's all about finding stuff that you can use when you can use it.

Does that keep. Keep you from doing a lot of time in magazines or books or newspapers as well when you're listening to podcasts while you're out training? Oh, yeah.

I mean, the more I can listen to during that first hour in the morning, the better I do try to catch up my magazine. Just stuff when I'm on planes. I'm on a plane probably four times a week, so that gets a little old really fast. I was home on a plane yesterday. I'll get a plane tomorrow. So that gets a little old.

Right, right. And one question, quick question that I have for you. In terms of the travel and the air travel, I know many athletes don't like to travel or, I'm sorry, don't like to work out when they finish. Like a long airplane ride or a long day of travel. Is that something that's the case with you or do you find that working out actually helps you to recover from traveling?

I get a workout in as soon as I hit Europe. If I'm going to Europe or Asia, the Second I get there, I'll hit a workout. Anything in the US I really don't. But if I'm doing anything more than a four hour flight, I will drop every two hours for three sets of 20 push ups in the plane. Like just in the aisle or whatever. I'll clear, I'll tell the flight attendant I'm doing it. I'm not a terrorist. And she'll be like, okay, go ahead. And you know, you want to tell someone you're doing it because if you start down, just start jumping down and doing push ups without telling anyone, there will be an air marshal shoving a gun up your ass. But if you, you know, if you do it without, you know, just tell someone. You just do it. It keeps the blood flowing, it prevents deep veins thrombosis, and it really, really wakes you up, gives you a hit of endorphins and lets you get some work done on the plan. Nice.

You have some pretty entertaining race reports too. What's the website that you put those out on?

Those go out on shankman.com and if you just search for like shankman.com and race report, you'll find some like, yeah, the Ironman Cosmo was a fun race report. My first half Ironman, I think was one of my favorite race reports. They're a lot of fun. I did one, I did the New York City triathlon. I wrote a race report and compared it to. It was a Clydesdale category. So I compared it to how when I jumped in the water with other Clydesdales, how like when the meteor hits the earth in deep impact.

Nice. Now what's next for you? Do you, in addition to going through the process of reinventing the body, do you have like an Ironman or some other event on the schedule?

It's funny. I actually just bailed out of the New York City half. I was going to do the New York City half this coming Sunday. I just bailed out of it because I haven't had time to run because I've been lifting so much. My goal this year is I3, four races. I have the New York City triathlon again, the Nations Triathlon, D.C. then I have the Poconos triathlon. It's the first one. Poconos. That should be fun. I'm doing the inaugural and then of course the New York City Marathon in November.

Very cool. Very cool. I'm sure folks can look for you there. So, folks, it's peter shankman@shankman.com. go check out some of the stuff that he's doing. He's got some very cool businesses that he's running as well. Stays very busy. But those are some great tips for staying productive with fitness when you're also staying productive with business. So, Peter, thanks for coming on the call today.

My pleasure, man. Good to be here.

Well, folks, that about wraps it up. If you enjoy this podcast, please go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and there's a little button there on the right side of the page where you can donate a dollar to help support support the podcast. And all it does is basically allows people listen in to give a dollar a month. And it simply keeps this podcast going and allows me to cover things like the hosting fees and production fees. So in addition to that, remember, if you have an idea for the Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirt and you want to design it and get famous, just email me ben greenfieldfitness.com with your idea or your design or simply request for some of the graphics you need for the design. And that is going to wrap it up. So thanks for listening in and have a healthy week. This is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Sa.