Episode #146: 3 Secrets To Make You As Unstoppable As A Superhero With A Big Hammer

In this three secrets to make you unstoppable Naked Juice Microwaving Peanuts Bee pollen extract Colostrum supplements Are Chia seeds better than fish oil Achilles Pain from Bicycling the fat Burning Zone Training for an ultramarathon and a metallic taste in the mouth after exercise.

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 BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and if you have no clue who I am or what this podcast is all about, you may want to go check out the website where I recently did a post entitled How I went from a 210 pound bodybuilder to a 175 pound Ironman triathlete. And in that post I give you a bunch of little fitness and nutrition tips that kind of COVID quite a bit of the type of stuff that we go into on this show. Now today we have an interview with a guy named Peter K. Going to keep his last name mysterious, but he's from PeterK Fitness.com he's got some awesome tips for achieving your goals and becoming unstoppable. In particular, he's going to give us three different secrets that he uses so he has a great interview with me later on. After today's Q and A, I have a new announcement to play for you about something I'm kind of excited about and then a few very timely announcements for this week that you're going to want to tune into.

Are you ready to start burning calories like a wildfire? In Ben Greenfield's wildfire club, you get a 21 day education on Ben's top fitness and nutrition secrets for igniting your calorie burning into a raging inferno. Each day you'll get a personal email from Ben that tells you exactly what to do to melt away calories and fat as fast as possible. So with a flat stomach, tight butt and toned body is what you're looking for. Just visit BenGreenfieldFitness.comWildfire and instantly get in for $7. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com wildfire See you on the inside. Special Announcements.

All right, first of all, the most timely announcement is for you triathletes out there on Thursday, which is Technically, the day after this podcast comes out, I am teaching a triathlon lifestyle seminar for USA Triathlon. It's about how to train specifically for Ironman and generally for triathlon without neglecting your family, your friends or your career. I'm going to be giving away tons of my personal tips and that seminar you can link to in the show Notes to this episode. Episode number 146@BenGreenfieldFitness.com now another really cool opportunity for you. If you like to make food and you have a recipe that you think is just kick butt, you can upload a photo of that recipe to your page or to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page and tag it with Ben Greenfield Fitness. Once you've tagged that photo, just write a few lines about how you prepared it, what goes into it and you will be entered in to win a one hour consultation with me. One on one nutrition consultation. The best photo, the tastiest photo and best recipe is going to win that consultation. So this is@facebook.com bgfitness or you can just upload the photo to your personal Facebook page and tag it with Ben Greenfield Fitness. And if you want to learn how to tag a photo, just go ask somebody who's a ninja on Facebook. They'll show you how. It's pretty easy. Okay. Also, I want you to send me photos via email. Send me photos if you have a standing desk or a standing workstation or a treadmill desk, or any type of homemade or store bought contraption that allows you to exercise while you are working on a computer or working on a desk. I'm currently in the process of writing an article for BenGreenfieldFitness.com that is going to give away every secret you would ever need to know about how to burn more calories while you're working. And I would like to see your photos of what you have put together in terms of your standing workstation or treadmill desk. So if you have a photo, email it to Ben BenGreenfieldFitness.com so email me your photo of your standing workstation. And of course, if you email the photo, make sure that there's nothing in there that you wouldn't want appearing in public@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so you know, if you got your tax statement out on your desk, you may want to shove that off to the side before you snap the photo. Alright. Aside from that, that about wraps up our special announcements. So we're going to jump right into this week's Listener Q and.

Listener Q and a.

Great news. Once we finish today's Q and A, we will be totally caught up on questions. So if you submit a question, you can be ensured you're not going to be waiting a long time for me to answer it. And if you do want to submit a question, you can use the Ask Ben form over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can call your question in toll free to 877-209-9439. Or you could use the free iPhone app or free Android app that you can get over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and just click the Ask Ben button on that phone app. So our first question for this week comes from listener Mike, who says, I just wanted to know your opinion on Naked Juice. Now, Naked Juice is something you see all over the place. Tons of coffee shops, air stands, grocery stores, convenience stores. Everybody has this Naked Juice and it's advertised as a no sugar added fruit and vegetable based smoothie. Now, they have varying amounts of ingredients, but the underlying theme across all of them is they advertise really like how many pounds or how many servings of the fruit equivalent that they actually have packed into these little bottles. And initially, if you are easily deceived by this type of advertising, it seems really, really impressive and really, really healthy. So, for example, if we look at their berry veggie smoothie and we turn it around and we look at the ingredient label, we see that it has sweet cherry puree, purple carrot juice from concentrate, red beet juice from concentrate, sweet potato puree, strawberry puree, plum puree, sweet corn puree, apple puree, chickpea puree, lemon juice, and then a bunch of natural flavors and they inject a few vitamins into that. The actual calories advertised on the bottle are 130, until you look and you see that there's actually two servings per container. So it is technically 260 calories. And interestingly, in one single serving, there are 37 grams of carbohydrate or in the actual bottle, because nobody on the face of the planet that I know of drinks a half bottle of Naked Juice. The entire bottle has just a little over 70 grams of carbohydrate. Now, interestingly, because the primary amount of the carbohydrate is derived from fruit. This is a fructose. And for a long time, fructose was thought to be kind of a healthier choice for sugars because it doesn't cause your blood sugar to rise. It has what's called a low glycemic Index. And for something like the American Diabetic association, this would seem at first glance to be a good thing. The issue is that when you eat a non fructose based sugar like glucose that enters into your bloodstream and your pancreas releases insulin, and the insulin tends to cause that sugar to primarily get stored away as carbohydrate energy in your muscles or in your liver. Less likely to get converted into triglycerides, less likely to get converted into fat compared to fructose, which doesn't cause that same insulin response. Fructose is shuttled to the liver, it's processed in the liver, and when a bunch of fructose enters the liver all at one time, which is very, very, very much the case, when you consume one of these naked juices, the liver cannot process all of that fructose fast enough for your body to use it as any usable energy source. So it makes fats from the fructose, it converts them and it sends them off into the bloodstream as triglycerides. And so you end up getting these high levels of circulating fat and potential for a lot of fat deposition on the waistline or wherever you tend to deposit fat. And the other issue with excessive fructose consumption is it can facil insulin resistance and eventually type 2 diabetes. So naked juice, while at first glance it appears to be healthy, it is something that I would recommend you only consume in the presence of exercise or immediately post physical activity when the fructose that you consume is a little bit less likely to get converted into fat in the liver, or the triglycerides that it is converted into into are more likely to be broken down and used as energy, that's about the only time that I would recommend you eat these huge amounts of fructose. If you wake up in the morning and you plan on exercising like in the mid morning or even close to the lunch hour, this would be another example where consuming something like this as like a breakfast smoothie wouldn't be that bad. Assuming you really truly are going to be exercising and using a high amount of carbohydrate based energy later on in the day, fairly close to your breakfast. So otherwise be careful with naked juice. The next question is from Pam who says I really enjoy dry roasted in the shell unsalted peanuts. Do you know if microwaving the peanuts for a couple of minutes will eliminate the aflatoxin? And the aflatoxin that Pam is referring to is basically a mold or a fungus that can form in anything, grows underground, but in particularly Peanuts, especially peanuts that are grown in less dry or less arid climates. And so because of that, peanuts have potential for some mold and some fungus that can cause some damage to your metabolic process. Peanuts also happen to be one of the most pesticide contaminated crops. And so if you're going to use peanuts at all, not only do I recommend that you choose like an organic, pesticide free peanut, but I also recommend that you choose a peanut that's grown in dry conditions that's not going to cause as many problems with this aflatoxin based mold. A couple of brands that would kind of fall into that category would be Arrowhead Mills. And I believe there's another one called a Maranatha that makes a decent kind of dry, arid, organic peanut. But the reason that I don't highly recommend peanuts as your primary snack or nut source compared to something like say pumpkin seeds or raw almonds, is that peanuts have a very, very high omega 6 fatty acid content compared to their omega 3 fatty acid. And omega 6 is more of the pro inflammatory fatty acid, Whereas the Omega 3 is more of the anti inflammatory fatty acid. And while you do need certain amounts of omega 6s in your diet, most people get way too many of the Omega 6s, which is why peanuts are really not the best snack choice. Now, for something like peanut butter, you can lower the Omega 6 content by getting the type that you stir and literally pouring the oil off when you open the peanut butter jar and then stirring the peanut butter after you pour the oil off. And if that just makes it too dry for you, you could take an oil that's lower in omega 6 content, higher in omega 3 content, like an olive oil or a macadamia nut oil, and you could add that into the peanut butter after you've dumped out some of the peanut oil. So a little bit of management there, but that would be kind of the best case scenario if you really wanted to have peanut butter by an organic version like the Arrowhead mills. Dump off the top of the oil and put in some olive oil or some macadamia nut oil if it's getting too dry for your taste. The other kind of cool little tip I can give you for peanut butter is you can add in more protein. You can increase the protein content of your peanut butter too. And this is kind of a cool thing for vegetarians. If you take some brewer's yeast and you put a little bit of brewer's yeast into the peanut butter, that'll amp up the protein content and not affect the flavor too deleteriously. But back to your question about microwaving the peanuts, if you are going to do peanuts at all after everything that I just said, I don't recommend that you microwave them. And I'm not going to go into the reason why. Instead, I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a podcast that my wife and I did. It's inner circle podcast number one, and it's called Is Microwaving Food Bad? You can listen to that by following the link that I'm going to put right there in the show notes underneath your question. So go to podcast number 146, show notes. It'll be right there for you. And by the way, for those of you who like to read rather than listen to past podcast episodes, I now have a very handy link right when you visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com upper right hand corner, full link to all of the podcast transcriptions. We've transcribed 143 of them out of 146, so you should have access to a ton of info if you want to go back and read any of the podcasts or kind of pick and choose or like open it and do a word search for a certain topic that you're looking for. All right. Joe says, I've heard you tout the benefits of pollen extract paired with zinc for increasing testosterone levels. Throw this in here. It's really not necessarily for increasing testosterone levels as much as slowing down the breakdown of testosterone or decreasing the breakdown of testosterone to the more estrogen, like what are called aromatases. Anyways, that's why I take pollen extract. But Joe goes on to say, I went to my local health food store and I couldn't find pollen extract. I did find bee pollen. Is there appreciable difference between the extract you suggest and the bee pollen more readily available? Well, there definitely are differences between a flower pollen or a rye pollen extract, which is what I use in something called Prostolon, and a bee pollen. Bee pollen can be a lot higher in contaminants just because there are a ton of different contaminants that can be found in the pollen traps that they use to harvest the bee pollen along with things like bacteria and fungi, and they can even be contaminated with rodent feces. So there are some issues with bee pollen and they do radiate some of the bee pollen to clear away some of these contaminants, but that's not entirely effective. Bee pollen has a really hard outer layer, this hard outer husk, and that's very, very difficult for your body to break down and digest. So you don't get as many nutritional benefits from the bee pollen compared to flower pollen, which actually tends to have the husks removed more than the bee pollen. So you get better absorption from flower pollen. A lot of people are really allergic to the bee pollen and so it tends to cause this allergenic reaction and you tend to get a lot less of that with flower pollen. And bee pollen in terms of its collection process is something that's not standardized in the industry. And so scientific testing with reliability of results really isn't accessible for something like bee pollen, whereas that is something that is a little bit more standardized with flower pollen. So I'm just a bigger fan all around for flower pollen. The prostolan stuff that I take that has that flower pollen extract in it, it's not just for testosterone, it's also for just your prostate health health. I tend to ride a bicycle a lot and spend a lot of time in the saddle. So I am concerned about soft tissue inflammation and prostate health issues. So it's got zinc and copper in it, both of which can help with prostate health and also enhance your white blood cell function. So they step up the immune function a little bit. It's got lycopene in it which is very, very, shows very, very strong promise in terms of its, its risk reduction potential for prostate cancer. And it's got a lot of phytosterols in there too, which also are inflammatory reducing compounds. So that's the stuff I take. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. I'd go for flower pollen over bee pollen when you can. Very, very useful for relaxing your smooth muscle, preventing things like urinary tract infections, reducing prostate inflammation, getting zinc into the prostate, helping you clear DHT from the body, which can be another issue when it comes to maximizing testosterone levels. And so it's really supplement. I recommend I take two every morning. More than that when I'm riding my bike a lot. So great question. Nikki says today during the tour of California coverage, elliptical chainrings were brought up. Is there any benefit for me for my triathlon? Will it help to save my legs for the run? Well, elliptical chainrings are actually something I've used. I use something called Q rotor rings for about three years. And the idea is they're not round chainrings. They're kind of slightly oval shaped. At first glance they look round. If you look at them more closely, they're definitely oval shaped. And the reason that they're oval shaped is they're theoretically supposed to minimize the dead spot in your pedal stroke. So at the top and at the bottom of the pedal stroke, if you were riding with a circular chainring, then usually you wouldn't be able to produce any power at the top or the bottom of the pedal stroke. And you avoid both those weak phases when you use an oval based or elliptical based chainring. And a lot of people really swear by them. However, there have been studies that have been done on elliptical chainrings versus round chainrings, and absolutely no difference was found in performance variables when using the elliptical chainring. That being said, I really haven't seen much done in terms of having people do a long bike event like, say, you know, the equivalent of a 50 mile bike ride and then get off and run and compare the performance with elliptical chainrings versus non elliptical chainrings. So it's tough to say, but I can tell you they worked very well for me. The main reason that I don't use them anymore is because I got rid of the bike that had my elliptical chainring installed. And in the process of getting rid of that bike and picking up another bike, I got a very, very good deal on a type of crank that measures your power. And so I'm using that crank now rather than using this elliptical chainring. And I can definitely feel a little bit of a difference in my pedal stroke, but I haven't noticed that it negatively affects my running capability. There are, there are several pro cyclists so that use these elliptical chain rings. Rings. So Q Rotor Rings is the company that's probably most popular for making these elliptical chainrings. All right, Jeremy says. I heard the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast recently about Colostrum. So I ended up looking at the Colostrum and my question is, can you tell me why the product you mention is better than, say, the Swanson vitamins brand? The one that you recommend is from goats and most others seem to be from cows. Well, that's a great question. If you want to go back and listen to that Colostrum podcast. It was really interesting. It was podcast number 144 and I take Colostrum every day now for my immune function, for my gut health. I'm really, really enjoying it. It's made a big difference in the way that my gut feels, especially during exercise when I'm eating. So the reasons that I would choose the Mount Capra goat milk Colostrum that I recommend versus say, like a generic brand, a cow based colostrum. Aside from the fact that the cow based Colostrum is more expensive is that goat milk is a better match for human consumption versus cow milk, goat milk protein, goat milk, colostrum, anything from a goat, because a goat and a goat's proteins are closer biologically to those of the human, are going to be better than cow milk. And I did a whole podcast on this once called goat's milk versus cow's milk that you can go listen to. If you go to bengreefieldfitness.com, the search function that I have on the website is really good. If you type in goat's milk, you'll find that podcast almost right off the bat. It'll be one of the top hits. So the next reason that I really like to use this colostrum that I recommend is it's from this small business, tiny little family farm out in Central Washington. You get complete quality assurance. There's no hormones, no antibiotics, no dangerous chemicals. That's another reason that I like this form of colostrum. Another reason is that they really use a very gentle processing for this colostrum. And so all of the active components like the lactoferrin and the immunoglobulins and all the things that were discussed in the podcast, those haven't been tampered with by invasive processing techniques. And you can't say that for a lot of the bigger companies that are using bovine cow based colostrum, you're just not going to get the same type of quality. So that's why I would choose the Mount Capra Capra colostrum over any of the other cow based colostrums that you're going to find out there floating around the health food store. It's just like fish oil. You really kind of get what you pay for. And in this case, you still get three times as much colostrum in one of the kappa colostrum capsules. And it's far less pricey than many of the other colostrum compounds you're going to find out there. So I will make sure that I put a link to that in the show notes for you. Jeremy. Next question is from Jackie, who says, hi, Ben, I've heard chia seeds have all the essential omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. Is this true and are they in the correct ratio? Can chia seeds replace fish oil as a vegetarian option? And are they better than flaxseed? Well, I've talked about chia seeds before on this show and I do like them better. If you were just to straight up compare them to flaxseeds they do have a better omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio. They do have a higher amount of ALA or what's called alpha linoleic acid in them, which is that essential fatty acid that ends up getting transformed by the human body into the EPA and the dha, which are the two forms of fat that are highly beneficial for multiple reasons. And chia seeds also have good antioxidant activity. They got a bunch of B vitamins in them, they're pretty mineral packed and they're fairly digestible. Their outer layer is basically like a soluble fiber. It absorbs a ton of water. So when it's mixed with water or when it's mixed with say like stomach juice, the seeds form this gel that creates a barrier between carbohydrates and digestive enzymes. And so the carbohydrates are digested a lot easier. They get converted into blood glucose very, very slowly. Really good for like slow endurance activities. You can grind up chia seeds, put them in water, keep them overnight, they turn into a gel. You can put that in a flask and take out with you on like an easy run or a long, slow bike ride. You know, it still is going to take a longer time to digest. I don't recommend you use it during a fast workout or anything where you need fast, fast carbohydrates or don't want to be digesting food in your stomach. But chia seeds are definitely better than flaxseeds when it comes to their overall nutritional profile. Now unfortunately, they don't really hold a candle to fish oil. And I'm going to put kind of a little graphic that shows you why in the show notes. But what happens is when you consume flaxseed oil or ground chia seed or anything else, you get this alpha linoleic acid. And there is a process that takes place in your body. There's different enzymes like delta 6 saturase and conversion to steroidonic acid, then eicosatrinoic acid and then you get another enzyme called delta 5 desaturase. And all this stuff acts on the alpha linoleic acid and eventually turns it into EPA and DHA which act in your body as these potent kind of anti inflammatory compounds. However, when you consume fish oil, you get a ton of EPA and DHA without needing to engage in that alpha linoleic acid breakdown. And so you don't go through this long process and you get way, way more EPA, DHA than you're ever going to get from a ton of chia seed in that ALA form. So in my opinion, best case scenario is you take your fish oil that's going to be jam packed with these concentrated sources of your EPA dha and then you use chia seeds as basically like nutrition, like something that you have kind of on the side. You take them out on a run, you use them as a calorie source. The type of things that I just mentioned a little bit ago. If you are vegan, if you are not wanting to consume any animal based products, if you are concerned about purity, heavy metals and fish oil, things of that nature, then that would be the reason to just only stick with a flaxseed oil or a chia seed. But if you go for a real pure fish oil like a pharmax based fish oil, well, it's typically not an issue. So good question. And there's been a few different interviews with Richard Cohen from Bio Letics that I've done on this podcast. Great. Listen. If you go back and listen to the fatty acid interview that we did with him, if your head was just spinning with that ALA EPA DHA talk that I was giving, he does a really good job breaking it down. We spend a good 30, 45 minutes talking about it. So go back and listen to any of the interviews with Dr. Cohen. C o h e n on BenGreenfieldFitness.com Mark says, I just bought a new stationary bike trainer to aid my cross training for my marathon. I love the bike and the additional training at odd hours and bad weather is great. But the problem I'm having is with the toe clips. I believe they're causing Achilles pain that I feel when I run. The pain is real close to the heel. I switched shoes, but that didn't make a difference. I lowered the saddle, but that didn't make a difference. I've decided to remove the toe clips next. Any ideas that might help? Well, I have one recommendation to make to you Mark, and that would be that anytime you're getting calf pain, heel pain, Achilles pain, anything like that, what what you would ideally do on your bike is reduce the amount to which you are actually using the calves, or specifically reduce the amount of loading that's taking place out on your toe. Because the more loading that takes place out around your toe or the front of your foot, and the closer to the front of the foot that that loading takes place, the more torque is going to be required to be generated by the muscles on the back of the leg that are responsible for plantar flexion or for pointing of the toe. And so from A pure biomechanical standpoint, the best thing that you could do would be to have your foot centered over the pedal. Unfortunately, toe clips keep you from doing that. Now, what I do on my bike and what I actually recommend to most long distance triathletes don't need to be using a ton of calf muscles while they are bicycling, just because that's really necessary if you're sprinting a lot or changing positions a lot is I move my clothes pleats very, very far back on my bike shoe, and that allows me to pedal with more of the middle of my foot than the front of my foot and prevents over utilization of the calves. Now, if you remove the toe clips from your bike, it's going to achieve that same effect. Although what happens if you remove the toe clips is you also lose that ability to kind of pull up over the top of the stroke. So best case scenario is you simply replace the pedals on this stationary body with the type of cleats that you can clip into with bike shoes, and you position the cleats on your bike shoes about halfway down the shoe so that you're not pedaling with the front of the foot and you're pedaling more with the middle of the foot. That would be the best case scenario. And if you can't switch out the pedals on your stationary bike, then yes, removing the toe clips would also work. So I hope that helps. Question from HK Spark, who says, as I've learned, we train at the top of the fat burning zone in order to teach our bodies how to burn fat. And yes, what HK Sparky says is correct. I love that name, HK Sparky. What they say is correct, that you do want to do lots of training in your fat burning zone to get your body to be more efficient at burning fat, not for weight loss. I don't really recommend that for weight loss. I recommend it more for competitive events where you need to be burning fat efficiently for just pure weight loss. You usually get better results just doing quick, fast interval training because you end up burning calories and boosting your metabolism to a greater extent. But HK Sparky says, as I've learned, we train at the top of the fat burning zone in order to teach our bodies how to burn fat. And then he kind of breaks this into three parts. He says, number one, why bother teaching our bodies how to burn fat more efficiently when we race well into our carb burning zone? HK Sparky, I'm assuming, is talking about triathlons, marathons, things of that nature. I know a lot of people that do those type of things listening to this show. And the answer to that is when you train to teach your body how to burn fat more efficiently. At any given pace, your body burns just a slightly greater percentage of of fat, meaning that there's a carbohydrate sparing effect. And when there's a carbohydrate sparing effect, you have that much more carbohydrate that you can dip into during exercise. And so you can go that much more time before becoming exhausted. So what you're doing is when you teach your body to burn more fat or train in the fat burning zone, you're not doing that because you plan on competing in that same kind of long, slow fat burning zone. You're doing it because you're teaching your body how to skew that percentage of fat and carbohydrates that it burns at higher intensities more towards the fat side. So the second part of HK Sparky's question is he says, is it possible to train my body so that the top of my fat burning heart rate zone allows me to run at my race pace? The top of your fat burning heart rate zone, or the point at which your body is utilizing the greatest amount of fat as a percentage of the total calories that it's burning, is an intensity that for most people is the equivalent of kind of like about a. Depending on how much fat burning training you've done, anywhere from about 55 to 70% intensity. So if you are competing in some type of event where you really don't need to go faster than about 70% intensity, then yes, you can absolutely train your body to get up to close to about that 70% mark. That'd be, for example, you hear about this Bob Sibohar guy, a nutritionist who recently wrote a book called Metabolic Efficiency. That's the whole idea behind his book, because he tells you, well, do lots of training where you're teaching your body how to burn fat more efficient, efficiently. Because it's been proven in research that what happens is when you do that, you can go harder at a higher fat burning percentage. So whereas if you are untrained, rolling off your couch, you go out and you try and train in your peak fat burning zone. Maybe you could cover a mile in 14 minutes by walking or jogging or running in your peak fat burning zone. But if you're really, really in shape, you can go faster in your peak fat burning zone, and your peak fat burning zone occurs at higher intensities. So you Might be able to run, say, an eight minute mile in your peak fat burning zone. To a certain extent, training or racing or competing at your peak fat burning zone will allow you to operate at race pace, but only for anything about as slow as, say, like an Ironman triathlon. So, for example, just to give you an idea of how this practically is laid out out, I went to a lab. I did what's called an indirect calorimetry test, which is also basically just like a VO2 max test. It tracks how much carb and how much fat I'm burning at every different heart rate from me just at a complete standstill on my bicycle all the way up to me going as hard as I can on my bicycle. Now, at a certain point between completely easy and completely hard, there is a point where my total amount of fat that I'm utilizing peaks. And there is a heart rate associated with that peak, and there is a power associated with that peak. Now, if I can take that heart rate and that power and be right at that intensity during something like a century bike ride or an Ironman triathlon bike ride, that is the money zone. And for 99% of people, you will have the performance of your life if you're in that zone. Now, for the athletes that I work with who maybe don't have that type of testing available to them or who are doing more like an approximation of the fat burning zone, they're using a method to determine that fat burning zone that is a little bit different than going to a lab and putting a mask on. What they're doing is doing what's called a lactate threshold test. I take the results from that test, I plug it into an equation, and I break down their training into five zones. So in 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. And then we shoot for zone three during Ironman. And zone three correlates very, very well to that fat burning zone. So finally, HK Sparky third part of the question says, when you run your 1 hour and 30 minute half marathon in a half Ironman, are you burning predominantly fat? Assuming this question is directed directly to me because I recently just did the Wildflower Triathlon and my run time there was about a 1:30. The answer is definitively no. There is no way I am burning predominantly fat. I am in the pain cave. My muscles are burning, I am breathing hard, I am sucking air. Especially for the last 5k of that half marathon. I am trying to picture my happy place in my head because it hurts so bad. And there is no way that I'm burning Predominantly fat. Anytime that you're experiencing all those symptoms, it's a sign that you have a ton of lactic acid on board. And anytime you have a ton of lactic acid on board, that's a sign that you're burning primarily carbohydrate. I would say based off the test that I've seen of myself in a lab, I'm close to about 80 to 85% carbohydrate utilization at that pace and 15 to 20% fat. So. Good question. There's your physiology 101 for the day. I hope that helps. Paul says, I'm planning on running a 50 mile ultra marathon. My question is, what type of training would you recommend? Also with high running mileage, I assume that cross training would be minimal. Well, ultra running, when we're talking about ultra running, we're talking about running, you know, anywhere from basically a marathon mileage on up or something greater than marathon mileage on up. So, you know, 100k, 54 miles intervals, those are the type of distances that you're doing for ultra marathon. Now, there is one key session that if you didn't do anything else during the entire week that you'd want to be doing for an ultramarathon, and that would be spending lots of time on your feet running slow, running long. And most ultra marathon running plans will have you progressing from running 10 miles on the weekend, to 12 miles on the weekend, to 20 miles on the weekend. Depending on the plan that you do and the distance that you're training for, you could be getting up to 30 to 40 miles as a single run on a weekend or it could be midweek. It just kind of depends. Most people, based on their jobs, have to do their main ultra running training session on the weekend. That session, even though it's slow, will break you. You will take a while to recover from training runs of that magnitude. And for that reason, you can't run a ton while you're ultra marathon training. You can't do a ton of 2 a days and in some cases not even a ton of one a days. Kind of the bare minimum would be you do that one long run on the weekend and then you do, after you've recovered, like say Wednesday or Thursday, you do more of a pace run. So you do a tempo run, or you do some speed work, or you do some hill repeat. And in between that long run and that midweek pace run, you can do cross training. You can do swimming, elliptical trainer, cycling, things that aren't going to overuse those running muscles. But that are still going to train your lungs and your cardiovascular system for performance. Now, if you look at something like, say like Hal Higdon. Hal Higdon is a pretty famous running coach. He's been around for a long time. Not that makes you a good running coach, but he has proven himself. He's got some, some good athletes that he coaches, some good programs, his ultra marathon program, if you look at it, because he's got kind of some sample schedules on the Internet. He basically has cross training on Monday and then kind of some mid distance runs in anywhere from like the 4 to 8 mile range on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, rest day Friday, tempo or kind of speed work on Saturday and then a really, really long run on Sunday. That in my opinion is a fairly aggressive program. And I don't want to be presumptive here, but if I could rearrange that program, I would take that speed session that he's got the day before you go out and do your really long run. And I would instead put that speed session mid week and either have a really easy run the day before your long run, or even a cross training session or a rest day. So if you were to kick me out my front door right now and tell me to go train for an ultramarathon, based on the coaching that I've done with athletes and my understanding of human physiology, I would be doing speed work once a week, preferably midweek. I would be doing a long, long, slow run on the weekends and I would start at just that with cross training all the other days. After about four weeks, I'd add in a third day of running, probably like an easier recovery day, a little bit more time on the feet, and I would correlate that again midweek, like a Tuesday or Thursday and then maximum number of days running per week, if I were to be training for ultramarathon would be four days of running per week. And that fourth day I would throw in would be addressing a fitness limitation. And for me that's typically some type of strength work like out in the hills doing hill repeats or doing like a rolling hills run where you're attacking some of the hills and everything else from that swimming, elliptical trainer, cycling. So ultimately though, start everything from that one big long run, add in one mid week kind of speed work type of run and then from there fill in the holes, depending on your experience, your limitations, the amount of time that you have to train. All right, one more question before we move on to our interview with Peter K. And by the way, you guys, if you enjoy this type of advice and this podcast means something to you. Please, please, please go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com hit the donate button and all I ask for is a $1 donation. It's a monthly $1 and it helps me. Basically what that's doing is it covers my costs for all of the downloads of this podcast because I have to pay every time everybody downloads. I have to pay for that space, for that bandwidth space that occurs. And it costs of lot a costing more money as the podcast gets more popular. And that's why in the past couple months I've kind of stepped up asking for donations just because it really, really started to dig kind of deep into my own pocketbook and so that, you know, if everybody that listened donated a dollar, we'd be awesome, we'd be good to go. It would cover those expenses. All right, so question from Paul. Paul said. I have really, I have had something really strange happen to me after a rage recently after completing a 14 mile trail run. I sat down and when I stood back up and reached for my water, I got this crazy taste in my mouth that tasted like fillings and my hands started to tingle. This lasted about a minute or two. I was a bit under trained and probably a bit dehydrated. But this never happened before. Any clue? Alright, here is, here's the most likely reason for why this happened. So when you are exercising hard, what happens is in everybody, the heart becomes somewhat unable to keep up with the physical demands that you're placing on it. And this can also happen when you sit down or become prone or lay down after a long event and your heart has to play a bunch of catch up trying to pump all this blood that's pooling in your muscles. So both of those scenarios, both exercise and sitting down and or lying down after exercise, can put extra strain on your heart. And so what happens during exercise or in those situations is you get this kind of light form of heart failure or poor heart performance. And what happens is usually your heart pumps out just as much blood as it's kind of pulling or pumping in. Now if one part of that pump is not performing as well as it could, then you get fluid, blood fluid accumulating where it shouldn't be accumulating. So for example, the left ventricle is the part of your heart that's responsible for pumping all that blood out into the rest of the body. Now if the left ventricle doesn't pump all the blood out because the heart is overworked or it's got a bunch of pressure to pump against, or there's too much blood pooling in the extremities. What happens is the right ventricle of your heart can actually cause the pumping of that blood into the lungs, just a little bit of it. So you get a little bit of fluid accumulation, you get a little bit of edema in the lungs. And that edema, or that fluid accumulation includes red blood cells. So red blood cells are the units in your blood that carry hemoglobin, which is the molecule that carries oxygen. And one of the key components of hemoglobin is iron. And so you get this backflow of blood and fluid from the heart back into the lungs. You get this iron that that's in that blood flow or that fluid. And when you're breathing in and out, some of that is basically vaporized or tasted in your taste buds, because there is definitely a direct connection between your lungs and your mouth. So you're tasting iron, you're getting that kind of metallic signal sent to your brain because your tongue has receptors on it that can definitely sense iron. So what happens is that if you're well trained, your left ventricle is able to kind of step up its game and meet all of its demands. And the right ventricle doesn't have that backflow of blood. It doesn't have that ability to pump blood out into your lungs or that excess blood out into your lungs. You get the fluid cleared out. You don't get red blood cells accumulating in your lungs. And by you saying that you were under trained, a little bit of dehydration or low blood volume going along with that, this is most likely what happened. So everybody experiences this to some extent, especially when they're exercising very, very hard. But it's nothing to necessarily worry about unless it's happening to you all the time. And in that case, you may want to actually go have your heart looked at. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. But that would be my recommendation if it were me. And I were just getting this metallic taste all the time. After every session, I'd go get my heart checked out. So I hope that helps, and I hope all of these questions helped you out. We're going to have a quick, special announcement, and then we'll move on to this week's interview with Peter K. Did.

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Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and with me today is a fitness and lifestyle expert named Peter K. Peter is a world renowned speaker. He's an author, health and success coach, nutritionist, physical therapist. He's been on abc, Fox, msn, tlc, Fitness magazine. He's created a program called Five Minutes to Fitness. And in addition to his extensive educational background and experience experience on the fitness scene, he's got some interesting philosophies and theories on how you can achieve success both professionally and personally. So, Peter, thank you for coming on the call today.

My pleasure, Ben. Thank you.

You know, I was looking over some of the things that you actually talk about and I wanted to ask you some questions about some things that I thought were unique about what you have over@peterk fitness.com and the first thing that you say over there that I noticed was you say food is for energy, not emotions. What does that mean?

Well, we all know, and if we don't know, we should know this. And I'm telling you now, we eat for emotional reasons and very often we are aware of that. That's where comfort foods come in. And that's okay once in a while. And if it is once in a while, the challenge becomes when people are eating to fulfill an emotional response, they're overwhelmed, they're stressed, they're not feeling good about themselves. They've got something they've got to do and they're procrastinating and they go to the food to make themselves feel better. The reason that food makes them feel better, Ben, and you know, this is because of the chemistry that comes with it, the biochemistry. Fat, sugar and salt tastes really good for a reason. It's a survival technique because we need those calories. And it also sets up a cascade of a chemical wash in the brain that releases all of these feel good chemicals like serotonin and dopamine. And so we become addicted to them and we start eating foods to feel better. The problem is that if we eat too much fat, sugar and salt, guess what happens? We're overweight, we become unhealthy, we create, we develop these diseases in our lives that so many of us are suffering With Gotcha now.

You know, when it comes to emotional eating, if food causes this release of dopamine and serotonin and kind of has this feel good effect, if we're only eating food for energy or only eating food for fuel, isn't there kind of that chance that we just turn into robots when it comes to food?

Great question. That's not going to happen in my experience. I mean, anything is possible, Ben, but it's not going to happen because there are still going to be, there's still a pleasure and an enjoyment around food and it's more of the people you're socializing with. It's the events. You know, whether it's a birthday party, anniversary, a celebration, you could still enjoy those things. But we're just not going to obsess about the, the food that's going to be there. And we're trying not to say, well, I'm not going to eat this, I'm not going to eat that. And when you do that, all you focus on is what you're actually going to eat and it's the foods that you don't want to eat too much of. So we don't have to be robots and we don't have to take all the pleasure out of foods. We can still enjoy the texture, the aromas, the taste. Certainly what I'm saying is let's not look at food to make us feel better. Let's feel better doing other things like training our bodies and being with people that we love. And let's just use food for the energy and let's enjoy the components of food, not for making us feel better.

Gotcha. My last question about this particular topic. Do you have certain strategies, training supplements, anything along those lines that helps people who find that they are emotional eaters?

Absolutely. First and foremost, identify the emotion, identify when you're anxious, when you're stressed, when you're overwhelmed, and just take a few seconds to acknowledge it and say, hey, I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, I'm feeling really down. And figure out why you feel that way. And what that will do is it'll help you step away from the situation for a second and really determine what is going on. And it also helps you stop reacting emotionally. And one of the ways we do that is by overeating and searching for those foods. So it just gives you a moment of clarity and say, okay, you know, every time my in law calls or my boss walks into the room or this happens, I get stressed and I usually react by eating a brownie or Eating that bag of chips. And so a strategy is acknowledge the stress, acknowledge that you're feeling it, and then come up with different strategies to feel better besides eating the food, like making a phone call, talking to that person, that might be causing some of the stress.

Stress.

Having a conversation with a really close friend, a mentor, a coach. Those are strategies that will help you get past this and deal with the stress better than overeating.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. The other thing I noticed that you said, the second thing was, you say exercise is for stamina and strength, not for punishment. Now why would you say something like that?

Right? Because we all know the people that, and they're well intentioned, they're trying to do the right thing, but they kill themselves all week long. Let's say they're doing cardiovascular because most people think in order to lose weight, they've got to kill themselves on that treadmill or they got to go for the run or get on the StairMaster elliptical, whatever it is, for that hour, hour and a half, and really beat themselves up. And one of the reasons, again, so they could lose the weight or they're doing it because of the guilt of eating the brownie or the cake last night or falling off the wagon or drinking too much. And the way they're going to solve that problem is by punishing themselves on the treadmill or whatever the exercise is. And what happens is. And think about this, how powerful this is. We learn to associate exercise with pain or guilt or frustration or something bad. You know, we were bad. So we have to exercise to make ourselves better. And it just creates this negative experience. Is it any wonder why when it comes to do your next workout, to get up off the couch and get up early in the morning, you don't want to because in your brain you're thinking negative pain. So instead, Ben, what I tell my clients do, whether they're, you know, an athlete or just a regular person, everyday person, focus on what you want most in your life and then train your body to get it. Get stronger, increase your endurance, improve your self esteem. You know, when you fit into your pants in the morning and you're wearing clothes that you feel good in, you're going to feel better, you're going to have more confidence. Use exercise or training to get those things, not to beat yourself up for being bad.

Gotcha. Now, in terms of people exercising for stamina, for strength, that makes sense. What do you think about people exercising for accomplishment? Because in my experience, I've been a personal trainer and a fitness coach, I found that when people sign up to accomplish something like a 5K or a triathlon or something of that nature, they also seem to stray away from that simple exercise to burn calories approach. Have you found that to be the case with your clients?

Yeah, I agree with you 1000% about that, because there's purpose there, there's an outcome, there's an end goal, and there's accountability. So if they hire you to coach them, to train them, then they're accountable to you. And the amazing thing about us is we are more likely to do something so we don't let someone else down than doing it for ourselves. You know what I mean? So I hire you as my trainer, and I'm accountable to you. You give me a great training plan, a great eating plan, and guess what? I don't want to let you down. So I'm going to be more likely to follow through because I know at the end of the week, you're going to say, well, how'd you do with your training? And you know, what's going on? How can we make this better experience? And then ultimately, if there is an end goal, Whether it's a 5K or a triathlon, whatever it is, that's an incredible accomplishment. And doing that is frightening for a lot of us. But when we have someone like you, Ben, who's guiding us, who's saying, hey, here's how to do it. You're going to be fine. We're going to do it step by step. It's an incredible sense of empowerment. And at the end of the day, you're not just losing weight and being healthy. You've accomplished something that you could be proud of, tell your kids about or your wife or your girlfriend or whoever it is, and say, hey, I did this myself with the help of my coach, my trainers, and I feel great about this. I'm empowered.

Interesting. Now, when you're looking at somebody who has been exercising for punishment and maybe has turned themselves into kind of like a mouse on a wheel where they just go to the gym because it's almost like they're addicted to exercise. And they're exercising because they almost feel like they. They have to because of punishment or burning calories or they ate too much or whatever, how does somebody get off that wheel?

That's a great question, because you know that you probably met people like this. A lot of people do this to themselves. They're that that mouse on that wheel, and they're stuck on that treadmill, on that roller coaster, I call it. And every Monday morning They're saying, well, back to the routine. I got to beat myself up again to do this. And one way that really focuses people, it's a simple question. And I ask all my clients this. What do you love most? If it was going to come true, if you're going to walk out your front door and someone's going to give it to you, or there was going to be a person in your life or there's something you want to accomplish, what is it? And most people will figure something out and really something personal. And maybe it's being a great role model for the kid, maybe is accomplishing a marathon. Maybe it's being not dying of heart disease like their father did, God forbid. Once you get an emotional reason. Now we're using emotions to drive us to be healthier instead of really reacting to emotions and eating bad foods. So that helps. Why we say it's got to be revolution. There's got to be a mind shift shift. You've got to do something different than you're doing today. Otherwise you'll get the same results. And that's Einstein's definition of insanity. You do the same thing over and over, the same workout, you eat the same foods, you're going to get the same results. If you don't like those results, you've got to have a huge mind shift. You got to have a revolution within your brain and figure out why you're doing this and come up with better reasons.

Gotcha. The other thing that you say on your website is that our thoughts sabotage us. What do you mean by that?

Most of us, unfortunately, and I've interviewed a lot of therapists, psychotherapists, social workers, because I'm very curious about the people that they work with and why these people are going to see them. And I recommend therapy for everyone just to talk to someone who's non judgmental and non biased. I use therapists and coaches myself for my personal improvement. And when we, when we're having these thoughts, most of these thoughts, unfortunately when we're trying to get fit are, I'm too fat, it's too hard, I'm really lazy, I hate to exercise, I'll do it tomorrow. You know what, let me go crazy this weekend. I'll start on Monday. I was already bad. And some of more deep rooted issues with some clients are like, I am fat girl, I'm fat boy. That's how they see themselves. I'm the fat person in the room, or I'm the unsuccessful person. I'm the not attractive person. And the more Ben, you know this. The more that we have thoughts like that, the more we believe them, unfortunately, because we're telling them to ourselves. And I always say, I always say this to people. Would you ever tell an innocent child that they're too fat, they're too stupid, they're too lazy, they don't deserve to be healthy, they don't, they can't run a marathon, they can't accomplish that. And the answer is always no. You never tell a kid that. You just help them succeed in some way, you know, so how could we tell ourselves, how can we have those thoughts every day and not suffer from them? You know, and if you tell yourself something every day over and over, you're going to believe it. It's going to be part of who you are. And that's how I see most of my clients have sabotaged themselves over the years because they have these destructive, harmful thoughts. And it's an unfortunate thing to continue to do.

You know, I've heard that described before as training your subconscious to believe something new from what you found. You know, when you're doing something like that kind of thinking a new way to, you know, say, train your subconscious or however you want to describe it. How long does it take somebody to convince themselves, you know, inside that they really are not that person they've been telling themselves for years that they are?

Yeah, that's a great question, Ben. And in my personal experience, it takes each of us a unique amount of time. It depends on who we're working with. If we've got a great trainer or coach like you, if they're working with someone like me, who's, who has experience with it. We know the challenges that our clients come to us with. It's hard to do on your own is what I'm trying to say. It will happen sooner and faster. If you're working with someone, whether it's a trainer, a coach, a therapist, someone non biased, non judgmental to help you look in the mirror and see who is really there. And then your job as the client is to start believing it and start to taking the evidence as real. What you said about subconscious, I agree with to a hundred percent. We have to train our subconscious to have different thoughts, to have different internal dialogues. And instead of saying it's too hard, I'm too stupid, I'm too lazy, saying I can do a few minutes today I'm going to be accountable to Ben. I want to change my life. I'm going to listen to what he's telling me to do because I Trust him. It's a different dialogue and everyone's going to get there at a different time. The point is every single day just take a step forward, another step forward and you'll get there eventually.

Cool, cool. Hey, I noticed on your website, I'm over here@peterkfitness.com it looks like you're kind of running out of the water in a wetsuit. Did you do a triathlon?

Yeah, that was one of the first triathlons I did many years ago and it was a life changing experience.

Cool. Hey, we have a lot of triathletes that listen to the show. Where you, where are you going to be next? Are you doing a triathlon this year?

I'm doing a bunch of marathons and half marathons, mostly half marathons in the New York, New Jersey area. And I do a bunch of smaller triathlons with clients through my website in the tri state area. So there's a couple coming up and I definitely recommend, you know, I know you do this, then tell the clients, do a triathlon. Start really small. Those sprint distances, they're perfect. Most of us can do them. They're an incredible accomplishment and you'll learn so much about cross training and seeing what you're capable of and there's a real sense of accomplishment and they're doable. You don't have to do those, you know, Ironmans, which are really, really challenging. If you want to do it, go ahead. But start small, start simple.

Yeah, great advice. Alright, cool. So his website's Peterk Fitness. Go check it out. He's got his five minutes to Fitness program on there, some other pretty cool things and he really does a great job at motivating you and helping you to achieve. And I love what you're doing, Peter. So, Peter, thank you for coming on the call today, Ben.

My pleasure. Keep doing the great work that you're doing.

Well folks, that's going to wrap up this week's podcast. Be sure to go to Facebook, Facebook.com and upload your favorite photo recipe and include a few lines about that recipe. You can also upload it to your own Facebook page. Either way, make sure you tag it with Ben Greenfield Fitness. Also, if you are listening to this podcast and you have time, go check out the May 19th, 3:00pm PST 5:00pm EST Triathlon Lifestyle Seminar that I'm teaching. Of course, remember to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com donate to the show if you're able to, to help keep this show going and the new Wildflower Club. Wild Wildflower Wildfire Club. Check out the Wildfire Club at BenGreenfieldFitness.com wildfire and until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing.

Sam.