Episode #154: Everything You Need To Know About How A Plant Based Diet Affects Your Performance.

In this Everything you need to know about how a plant based diet affects performance Kosher protein food combining amino acid comparisons, cramping on the bike does pot help performance and pre race nerves.

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, this is Ben Greenfield and I'm coming to you having just returned from Portland where I was racing a triathlon called the Rev3 Triathlon and interestingly some of you may remember that a few weeks ago we had a gentleman on the show talking about low carbohydrate diets and I actually experimented with a low carbohydrate diet and most of my build up for that race and then switched to a carb loading protocol just a few days prior to the race and ended up doing okay. I raced about a 4 hour and 15 minute half marathon or I'm sorry, half Iron man and was happy with that. And we'll continue to experiment with these dietary protocols. But speaking of experimentation, in the interview that you're going to get to listen TO Today with Dr. Bill Meisner, we discuss a plant based diet and Dr. Meisner at the end of the interview actually proposes to use me for an experimental protocol and you'll just have to hear about what that is and whether or not I agree to do it. So listen into that interview. It's going to be really interesting. And just a few other quick things in terms of special announcements. I have started to log my personal diet for all of my clients so they now have access to my photo log. So anybody who is part of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle or anyone who I do coaching or consulting for can now stock my nutrition intake and every bite of food that I put into my mouth. I haven't figured out yet whether I like that, but it is available. If you're interested in getting access to that, you can do it again as part of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle or as part of any of the coaching or consulting programs that are available with me that you can view over@tinyurl.com helpfrombn alright, well there's not a whole lot else to go over, so one quick special announcement and we're gonna jump right into this week's Listener Q and A.

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Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben, this is Jeff calling from Tampa, Florida. I use a recovery product that has whey protein and it's great product and it's kosher dairy certified. It's not certified organic, but it's kosher dairy certified. And I'm just curious if you could speak to kind of the benefits of a kosher dairy certification. Are these cows that are free range cows? I mean, obviously it's good or they wouldn't be advertising it. I'm just curious if you could speak to that as a product differentiator as we're looking at different things in the market. Thanks a lot, Ben. Have a great day, man. See you.

All right, well, I know my name is Benjamin Greenfield, but I'm actually not Jewish and don't really eat a kosher diet. My grandfather was Jewish, my father was adopted, and yes, I do have a somewhat Jewish name. So I'm not the expert on kosher. But from what I understand, when it comes to kosher dairy, and that would include like a kosher whey protein product, what that means is when you see that kosher symbol, it means that the company that's processing the milk and skimming the cheese to make that whey is working under the supervision of a rabbi who's checking to see that no non kosher additives or non kosher processes were used in producing the protein. So that could be anything from the actual additives that go into the protein, as well as, for example, you know, like the enzymes that would be used to actually make like the cheese, because we get that whey from the coagulation of the cheese. So that's basically all that means. It doesn't necessarily mean that it is any healthier, but I think that it's kind of important in two ways. First of all, it is, of course, important for those who are following a kosher diet. The other thing that's important for the company that manufactures the protein is that anytime you put a seal like that in a protein, it does make it look that much healthier. It's like I've seen licorice in candy nowadays. It says gluten free on it, even though they wouldn't have ever said that in the past. Just because it's a buzzword now, because people think it's healthy. It's just one extra thing you can add to the pack. So probably two things going on there. But that's the deal with the kosher based whey protein. So the next question comes from listener Helen who says, I just wrote an article that you wrote about food combining. I am an ultra trail runner. I am also a certified natural hygienist, which means I know everything about food combining from my knowledge. I don't have any information on how to apply it while doing endurance sports. I have only found conventional reading on endurance nutrition where everything you eat is mixed together in competition. I never use gel energy bar or sport drink because I am vegan. All I ingest is water and fresh fruits. I still get very good results. I never even have a cramp, but after four hours into it, I can still feel a lack of energy. Do you have any interesting source of information on this subject? Well, first of all, there is an article floating around on the Internet out there that I wrote about food combining. That does not necessarily mean that I am a proponent of food combining. The whole idea behind food combining is that different types of foods require different types of digestive enzymes to break down the food. And what proponents of food combining will tell you is that carbohydrate foods require carbohydrate enzymes and protein foods require protein enzymes. And basically carbohydrate enzymes only properly function in a non acidic state environment while the protein enzymes properly function in an acidic environment. So if you eat a protein food and you pair with a carbohydrate food, it could impair digestion since the two compounds are trying to be digested in competing environments. And frankly, there's really not a lot of proof that that actually happens. People do get good results when they incorporate a food combining diet in terms of seeing an increase in energy or a decrease in gastrointestinal disturb or an improvement in the ability to lose weight. And usually that's because they're just being more careful about what they eat. It's not because they're necessarily directly benefiting from, for example, not mixing fruit with vegetables or not combining protein with starchy carbohydrates, et cetera. So that being said, I don't necessarily recommend a food combining diet. And as a matter of fact, when it comes to endurance sports in general, which is what Helen has asked specifically about, I think that you actually should combine food and specifically you should combine sugars. And the reason for that is there have been studies on sports drinks or sports products that use a mix of sugars versus sports drinks or sports product that only uses like one sugar. So, for example, if we look at glucose, which is basically what you're going to get when you break down carbohydrates or sugars that are longer chain sugars, like maltose or sucrose or lactose, glucose is mostly assimilated by transporters that are called sodium dependent transporters. You look at something like fructose, which is another sugar, and that's going to come from the breakdown of sucrose, which is a combination of glucose and fructose that's absorbed by GLUT5 transporter. So a completely different type of sugar transporter. And you've got these different sugar transporters or carbohydrate transporters in your gastrointestinal tract. And the idea behind this is if you ingest too much of the same kind of carbohydrate or the same type of sugar like say, just glucose or just fructose, you actually limit your ability to absorb as many carbohydrates as you might be able to absorb under ideal condition, because you might actually overwhelm the actual sugar transporters that are responsible for transporting that specific sugar through the digestive tract and into the bloodstream. And so they've actually done studies on this, and one of the first ones that kind of brought this to light was a study that was done down in Birmingham and that compared glucose and fructose eaten in a combined format versus glucose only consumption during exercise. And a sports beverage that had about a two to one ratio of glucose to fructose actually allowed for a significantly greater amount of muscle usage of the carbohydrate compared to an equal calorie amount of just glucose. So then they went even farther and they tested a combination of glucose, sucrose and fructose, and that was in a 2 to 1 to 1 ratio. So twice as much glucose as the sucrose and the fructose, and that actually had an even higher rate of oxidation or rate of utilization. And so whenever you're looking at like a gel or a sports drink, there's a pretty good chance that you are going to absorb it best if it is a mixed carb gel or a mixed carb sports drink, because it allows multiple sugar transporters to work. So I guess you could take that to almost say that I am a proponent of food combining during exercise and definitely not a proponent of isolating specific foods. Especially when it comes to sugars. Now the thing about many, many real whole food sources are that some of them that people eat during exercise, like say, you know, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that's going to expose you to a couple different types of sugar, something like fruit, primarily fructose, probably not going to get as much sugar absorption from that as you would from a glucose fructose sucrose blend. Or a lot of other popular sports supplements out there are a maltodextrin fructose blend. So that would be what I have to say about food combining. I actually am not a proponent of a food combining diet per se, but I think that food combining to the sense of carbohydrate combining could certainly help you during exercise.

So.

Question from listener Kara who says, what's your take on the use of humanafort to improve training, recovery and performance? Humetafort kind of flies under the radar. I actually don't even know if I'm saying it properly because it's like this Romanian word, but it's a supplement that actually has been coming out of Romania. It's extracted from embryonic chicken eggs. And the idea is that it's had a few studies that have showed that it reduces cardiovascular disease risk factors, that it may assist a little bit with lowering inflammation, possibly lowering LDL cholesterol and increasing HDL cholesterol and improving some of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome, which is basically a cluster of diseases that can include things like obesity and insulin resistance, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, bad cholesterol levels. So that's what this supplement actually is. And there have been a few studies that show that it might actually have pretty promising results when it comes to that. It is basically, like I said, just like a baby chicken extract. It's coming from an avian embryo. And most of the studies again are done in like metabolic syndrome. There was a supplement that contained humanafort that, that appeared as a bodybuilding supplement. It may still appear as a bodybuilding supplement. I know a few years ago when I was bodybuilding they had it and it was marketed as both like a sexual performance and a testosterone enhancing supplement. So it's been around for a little while. I really am not convinced that it is going to get you incredible performance results. And frankly I have not seen any, any long term safety studies done on it. So it kind of flies under the radar probably for a reason. And I'm not convinced that it's something that you could or should safely use yet just because I haven't seen enough research on It. So a question from Igor, who says, after hearing about amino acid benefits from your podcast, I'm thinking to start supplementing with them. You've been recommending the master amino pattern product, which I find a little bit expensive for me. Do you have suggestions for what to look at while shopping for cheaper amino acids? Will it do more harm than good by using the cheap amino acids? Well, basically any amino acid is just going to be a blend of different amino acids in different quantities. So like the master amino pattern stuff that I use and I recommend, it's leucine, valine, isoleucine, lysine, phenylalaniline and methionine. It's also got tryptophan in there. So there's eight different essential amino acids and they're fairly well purified. They've done some studies on them. They've shown that they do have really good utilization. And specifically compared to a protein powder that has to undergo a bit more digestion, amino acids digest in a matter of minutes. So we're talking about anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes for it to digest, for it to appear in your bloodstream and for it to be available for muscle repair and recovery, or for increasing blood levels of amino acids. So your rating of perceived exertion during exercise goes down, and possibly your propensity to dip into lean muscle as a source of energy during exercise goes down. Depending on the type of amino acid supplement that you get, it may not have all the essential amino acids in it. They may not be blended in a ratio that allows for optimum absorption. And with amino acids, in most cases, you do kind of get what you pay for. So if you're getting something that has very low utilization in terms of the amount of bioavailable amino acids that you consume, then you may be just wasting money on a product. So you may be looking at something like Master amino Pattern. I think that's like 90, 95%.

Net.

Protein utilization, whereas some less expensive amino acid formulations may not be quite that high. So ultimately, I mean, you don't need to take a ton of amino acids anyways. They've shown that as little as about 6 grams of an essential amino acid supplement, which is not very much, is enough to give you an anabolic muscle repair and recovery response assist with muscle protein synthesis. And that's really not that much compared to like, you know, taking three or four scoops of whey protein. Plus it's lower in calories, doesn't need to be digested, et cetera. So all that you're really looking at doing if you get a cheap amino acid supplement is you may end up getting a formulation that is not ideal for recovery and you may end up wasting money on it if you're really getting a low protein utilization out of it. So you know a lot of cases with supplements you do get what you pay for. So the master amino pattern is something that I personally use. I recommend Bio Letics has a good amino acid supplement as well. You know we have Bill Meisner on the show today. Hammer Nutrition makes an endurance amino acid supplement that is specifically designed for endurance sports. So there's a few different options out there. But I personally like and recommend master amino pattern. I know it's expensive but I definitely notice the difference especially in terms of soreness when I do take it before workout versus when I don't. Alright, question from Craig who says I participated in a 70 mile charity ride yesterday and had severe cramping in my inner quad and slight cramping in my upper quad area. I couldn't turn the pedals in any anything but my lowest gear without bringing the cramps back in full force. I took in a 28 ounce bottle of water per hour plus 200 calories of hammer perpetuum per hour and four to six hammer enduro lights each hour. For those of you who don't know what those are, those are basically salts and calories. So he was taking in a good amount of food. He said I was taking on so much fluid I had to relieve myself at every rest stop. Now initially here, when first reading through Craig's question, based on the fact that he was staying very adequately hydrated and consuming a decent amount of electrolytes, I suspected it was probably a bike fit issue. Usually cramping in the inner quad is due to a seat that's too far forward or too low. And sometimes it can also be due to really tight hips, specifically very tight external rotators. But Craig goes on and he says about three weeks ago I started a conditioning program at the YMCA three times a week that consists of machines and cardio including leg extensions, leg presses and leg curls. I'm doing low weight high reps. As my goal is to reduce fat, what steps do I take to overcome the problem? All right, well a few things here Craig. First of all, doing low weight high reps doesn't reduce fat in the weight room. As a matter of fact, the hormonal response, the fat burning hormonal response to a low weight high rep protocol in the weight room is not going to be as advantageous as a high weight, low rep program when it comes to fat loss. So I would certainly reconsider your approach to your conditioning program if your goal is to reduce fat. Next, in terms of muscle cramping, there's actually a lot more evidence coming to light that shows that muscle cramping is more likely an issue with muscle fatigue and less likely an issue with hydration or lack of electrolytes. And what happens is that all of your muscles contractions are based on electrical signals. And when you're getting toward like a higher intensity or a higher volume of exercise, or a higher amount of power or strength production required from the muscle, what can happen is that a muscle twitch can get to the point where it escalates into a full blown cramp where the whole muscle completely tightens. And whether due to poor conditioning or you requiring your muscles to produce a contraction that they haven't been required to produce during your training, you get this excessive excitability in the muscles. They fatigue at the high intensities and they eventually just lock up on you. And it's likely that what you were experiencing during your bike ride was not necessarily you asking the muscles to produce a force that exceeded what you were producing in the weight room, but more likely that you were recruiting those muscles to the point where they came fatigued and essentially just went into a state of spasm or excessive excitability. The only advice that I can give to you is that if you're going to go out and do an event or a race, and this is something that I'm very careful of during my higher priority, for example, triathlons, is you avoid any type of weight training that's using the muscles that you're going to use during that race. I even made the mistake once of doing an ab workout because I thought an ab workout would be safe in the week of a race. And I got abdominal cramping in both of what are called my psoas muscles, kind of on the front lower part of my abs. Both of those cramped up about halfway through the 10k of an Olympic distance triathlon because I'd done an ab workout about 72 hours prior. So understand that it can be about six to seven days for a muscle to fully recover from a weight training session. And if you're experiencing cramping during an event, think back to the last time that you lifted weights. And that can be a pretty big clue in terms of how the muscle got fatigued to the point where it would actually cramp, especially when you're hydrating and consuming electrolytes prevention properly. All right, Dan says, what are your thoughts on marijuana use and aerobic training? I don't use marijuana all the time, but enjoy it during long runs. I find that it gets me in the groove or the mindset to maintain a steady pace. Well, marijuana is basically a mind altering drug. I mean, it contains a cannaboid extract or a cannabinoid extract, and that affects the brain. It's highly fat soluble, it rapidly enters the brain and usually it peaks within about 20 to 30 minutes of actually inhaling marijuana smoke. And what can happen in terms of performance is it reduces. What's it called, your hand, eye coordination, I need to work on my mind. Mouth coordination. And it decreases your reaction time, it can reduce your coordination, reduce your concentration, it can reduce your fine motor skill activity. So like for, you know, golfing or tennis or something like that can definitely be deleterious for those sports. It reduces your maximum exercise capacity, so it can reduce your VO2 max. And it has never been shown to have any type of performance enhancing potential, although it is actually banned by the WADA and the IOC or the International Olympic Committee. The reasons that I've seen is that it may have potential to put an athlete into a state of relaxation that may eventually cause them to have ideal performance or reach an unfair performance level. But there's really not any data that shows that that could happen. And I mean, even like the World Anti Doping association, they say that in the case of marijuana, they basically, they come out and say that doesn't align with the spirit of the sport. And, you know, I think you're walking a fine line there as a committee or as an anti doping association, when you're trying to perhaps legislate morality in sport. And you're not going to get any benefits from doping, especially when it comes to fast, explosive performance efforts or fine motor skill efforts. It may relax you when you're out on a long run, but in a marathon, about all that it would do is slow you down. It does have this kind of euphoric effect. So it could reduce some of your pain tolerance for something like an ultra marathoning or a trail running type of race. So I could see how you could use it in a situation like that. But when it really comes down to it, I mean, it is classified or referred to as an ergolytic drug. So it impairs performance versus being an ergogenic or performance enhancing drug. You know, obviously we could get very political here with the discussion on pot and the morality of its use where I personally am at is I'm just fine with its use in medicinal situations and in situations where pain control or relaxation is the goal. But I, if I were a coach, would not be very happy if I found out that an athlete who I was working with was using marijuana pre competition or during competition. Because I think that ultimately the deleterious effect that it has on performance is going to outweigh any relaxation advantage that it might give you. And then finally, I'd just leave you with the thought that anytime you are inhaling smoke, you need to be careful about the possibility of reduced lung function, reducing your VO2 max, and possibly having some type of an immune system response to any type of carcinogens or toxins or additives in the smoke. So just be careful from that perspective too, all right? Chris asks In a recent half Ironman I tried to eat my normal race morning breakfast I of pancakes and really struggle to get anything down due to race stomach nerves. This has been a little bit of an issue at all races this year and a bigger issue at the races that I want to do best at. My question is twofold. Do you have any advice for coping with pre race nerves and do you have any good ideas of pre race meals that are easy to handle if I'm having trouble getting food down on race morning? Well, first of all, from a relaxation perspective of coping with pre race nerves, I actually did just finish an interview with a guy who has worked with the military. He's done a lot of sports psychiatry and sports psychology stuff. He's got a lot of really fringe stuff that we were talking about on the phone. And I'm going to be releasing that interview here sometime in the next two weeks. So I'm going to kind of stall here and put this on hold because I've talked about visualization strategies before on the show. I've talked about progressive neuromuscular relaxation strategies. You can go listen to previous podcasts or do a search@BenGreenfieldFitness.com for visualization or for relaxation and you'll find links to me talking about those. I recently had an athlete who had a little bit of trouble kind of with it with almost like a bit of a panic attack with open water swimming in a race over the past weekend. And I actually sent them an audio file of a seminar that I've listened to to kind of get myself relaxed. It's called the I Am seminar and it's one that the the Navy SEALs use. A guy who does like life coaching kind of turned it on or turned me onto it. And you know, that one works pretty well. It's called the IM seminar. It's about a 30 minute audio that you listen to and you close your eyes and it takes you through visualizing different spectrums of the colors and you basically get into this deep state of relaxation, then come back out of it and you feel really focused and concentrated. And while you are down in that deep state of relaxation, you actually have a word that you say or a color that you visualize. And then when you're getting stressed out, you say that same word or visualize that same color and it kind of brings you back into that state, state of relaxation. So I have talked about that stuff before, but definitely stay tuned for kind of a mental training special podcast episode that we're going to have here in the next couple weeks for even more on handling nerves. Pre event, pre race, pre competition. As far as pre race meals that are easy to handle, definitely foods that you don't have to chew much or that require minimal work on the part of your masticating muscles are going to be better off for you. So for example, you could go with like a carbohydrate that's very soft, a mashed sweet potato or a mashed yam I'm a big fan of. You can simply boil them and mash them with a fork, mix in a little bit of honey or a little bit of salt and have them that way. That would be very good. Another example of a food that's easy to eat and kind of like a mashed liquid form, something I've talked about on the show before would be the Living Fuel. Specifically, I like to do the product called the Living Fuel Super Greens pre race. That'd be another thing that'd be fine in giving you some dense calories that you're able to eat without chewing much that digest really well. Interestingly, the difference between simple carbohydrate consumption and complex carbohydrate consumption is not that significant when it comes to your performance a couple hours after consuming those two different types of calories. So I mean, if you really had to, you could do something like drink a bunch of juice and that would still give you a ton of carbohydrate in terms of getting extra carbohydrate on board without you again, having to digest anything or well, you'll have to digest it, but it'll ease the process of digestion. The thing you want to be careful with with that is you will get extra water content and then and some People do kind of feel that hyperglycemic followed by a hypoglycemic or a low blood sugar crash. So if you're using simple or carbohydrates like juices and sports drinks, just experiment with those in your training a couple hours before to make sure that you don't get a sugar crash from consuming them. But I would definitely go with like a mashed sweet potato, a mashed yam, like a cream of rice or a cream of wheat Cereal should be pretty good in terms of something that your stomach is able to handle as well. And you could also go with like the smoothie option, you know, ice fruit. You can even do things like blend oats or blend grains, put them all in the smoothie, drink those down. That's another option as well. So hopefully that just kind of gets your creative juices flowing. And you know, for me, every single time I race, I just do a sweet potato or a yam and sometimes I'll mix it with a little bit of that living fuel super green stuff. So hope that helps. And before we go on to our interview with Dr. Meisner, I do have a call in comment from an athlete who is using the Triathlon Dominator product from triathlon dominator.com and he recently did Ironman Coeur d' Alene and he called and here's what he said.

Hey Ben, it's Derek. I use your 36 week triathlon dominator to train for my first Ironman which was Ironman Coeur d'. Alene. I do travel frequently for work domestically and internationally and when I started I had some concerns about getting all my training in and being able to finish the race in good shape. It was not long into this plan that I knew that it was going to work and it was going to work very well. I had time to get all my work done and get all my training done at the same time. The quality of workouts were great. Not only did it cover the swim, biking and running, it covered the strength training, nutrition, race week preparation and race execution, which were just priceless. I knew going into the race how to pace myself and where I should be at as far as heart rate and whatnot. I had a good idea what I was going to, what my pace should be, but I still managed to surprise myself on race day. I finished my first ironman in under 12 hours. Truly, I can't say enough good things about this training plan. It simply works. I'm looking forward to next year's race already and I will definitely be using this training plan again and I can't wait to see what the next year will bring again. Just thanks for putting it out there and be seeing you online.

All right, well, congratulations, Derek. And if you folks want to check that out, if you're a triathlete, want to get into triathlon, beginner or intermediate, advanced, doesn't matter, check out triathlon dominator.com all right, well, we are going to go ahead and move into this week's interview with Dr. Bill Meisner on a plant based diet.

Special announcement.

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and I am here with Dr. Bill Meisner. And Dr. Meisner is a PhD, he's a nutritionist, alternative medicine practitioner, he's a top masters runner and he actually just recently had a very impressive national trail race where I believe that he won by. Was it over 25 minutes, Bill, or was that the course record that you set?

Yes, it was both. Yes.

Okay. All right, Doctor, I had a good day. How old are you?

I'm 71.

Okay. So that was the age 70 up category. Incredibly impressive. And for the past 20 months, Dr. Meisner has been on a plant based diet, which makes it all the more interesting, his results and his athleticism because he was actually in the process of converting to plant based during that that training and of course on that diet during the race. And we're going to talk about that today. Dr. Meisner does know quite a bit about these things. He has a book in which he talks about plant based diets and many other important nutrition considerations. The book is called Finding Fitness for.

Life and I will put a link.

To it in the show notes to this episode. The other for you triathletes out there, you might recognize Dr. Meisner because he's one of the kind of the head.

Researchers and advisors for Hammer Nutrition.

And so if you read the journal.

That they put out or go to their website and read some of their articles, Bill Mizner's name comes up quite a bit.

So Dr. Mizner, thank you so much for coming on the call today.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Well, so I know that you haven't always eaten a plant based diet. So what led you to make the switch?

For a number of years I ate whey protein as my principal protein and for my Omega 3s I ate salmon. And other than that, I was pretty much on a plant based diet. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of my calories came from plant foods. I was watching a public television show put on by Mike Anderson, who's the author of the Rave Diet. And he and his colleagues were talking about reversing disease and the effects that that would have in terms of cancers and autoimmune diseases and heart disease. And they actually showed a picture that was put out, was actually a picture of a heart artery, descending coronary heart artery that was taken in a study done at the Cleveland Clinic before and after going on a plant food diet. The individual was 90% clogged at the start and his diet wasn't that bad. He ate a little bit of animal food and a little bit of plant food and otherwise his diet was American Standard, would be, you know, about a grade B. But he had a heart attack while doing surgery one day. It just collapsed and they had to rush him in and put him under the scope and blow his artery back out, revive him and so forth. And so it made him very serious. And he asked one of the colleagues in the Mike Anderson tape that he asked him what he could do and he says, well, just go on a whole plant food diet. So he went on a whole plant food DIET and about 30 months later they took another picture of the same clogged artery and it was wide open and it was, it was basically plaque free. It was a healthy, normal descending coronary artery. And that rocked me that a guy on what we would call a normal healthy American diet, what most people say is okay, was actually contributing to. And he had no family history of heart disease and yet he had this buildup of plaques. This was a 43 year old doctor who was doing all the right things, but he was, you know, on his way to early grave. And so that caused me to go out and buy Dr. Colin Campbell's book on the China study. I bought Brendan Brazier's books on the Thrive diet and all Mike Anderson's books on the rave diet, which are basically all whole plant food diet. And you know, I had a lot of questions too, because as an athlete I was concerned about my protein and where am I going to get my protein if I go on only whole plant foods and so forth. But in the study of all these books, I looked up all the research references that they used for support and I could not find one mistake. I could not find also that it totally concluded that the whole plant food diet was the diet. But nevertheless, I couldn't find any mistakes. So I thought, well, I guess the next thing for me to do rather than wait for 20 years of science is to try it out. And so that's when I started it. And I noticed within about three months that my instead of my, my times were not going slower, they were actually going faster. I lost some weight, fat weight by the way, and I'm pretty lean anyway, but my fat weight, fat percentage went way down and my times went down also. So I thought, well, this is pretty good. This seems to work. It's very gradual, but it works.

Gotcha.

And yeah, go ahead.

Oh, were you finished?

Yes.

Oh, okay.

Well, cool.

I've got some follow up questions based on that. You talked about how the typical American diet compared to this plant based diet basically caused the plaque formation and put someone at an increased risk for heart disease. But would you necessarily use that as kind of an argument in favor of a plant based diet over a healthier kind of non westernized.

Less American or.

Less typical American diets? Like, say like the Paleo diet or a diet that would not have a lot of the processed foods or high.

Carbohydrate content of a typical American diet?

In other words, does the fact that it reverses a cardio pathology have an effect on a person who is not one, who is suffering from that same cardio pathology? Would a normal person, can you compare a normal person to a person that's a patient? And the answer is no, you can't.

Well, that's not exactly what I'm asking as much as can you compare this typical American diet that would be considered healthy, which we kind of all, you know, we're starting to find out a lot more about how it really isn't all that healthy. But could you necessarily say that this particular study affirms that the plant based.

Diet is the way to go versus.

Just affirming that a plant based diet.

Is healthier than the typical American diet?

Well, I think from a scientist point of view, you're looking for all kinds of absolutes and of course you don't have. Looking at the effects of the plant food diet, they seem to live longer, they seem to have lower body mass index, lower fat mass, they are a leaner group of people. And even the people on bodybuilding and weightlifting, strength type sports do pretty well on it. They have to manipulate some of the amounts in order to get the protein, in order to get some of the B vitamins and so forth for their sport. But basically they can keep up their bulk, they can keep up their strength and they can compete on a whole plant food diet as a strength athlete or as a sprinter in a sprint sport. And of course the endurance athletes, there's a whole contingent of Kenyans and Ethiopians that dominate the middle distance track events worldwide. They are just preeminent. And they're largely people who eat whole plant food diets with a small amount of animal source calories that their cultures feed maybe once or twice a week. So they get maybe 90% whole plant foods and 10% animal source calories in their diets. And I'm not saying diet necessarily makes the runner. There's some, there's a genetic component and there's the altitude they live at, plus their body mass index. The way those people are built lends itself well to the running sport. But largely when we look at cultures who eat whole plant foods, we see better health, better longevity, and in many instances, I won't say all, in many instances they are better athletically than people who consume large amounts of animal source calories. The American diet is by nature fairly high in its percentage of animal source calories. When you mix in the amount of cheeses and dairy and various sorts of mixes that the grocery store gives you to enhance the taste of food. The oils and so forth are very high in the animal source calories.

Now, you mentioned the China study, which I read, and that study obviously was very favorable towards a plant based diet. But there were also several compelling refutations of that book and I don't know if you were familiar with those. Particularly the possibility of the unfounded link between the fact that casing protein causing cancer kind of implicating all the other animal proteins and then the other issue being kind of not accounting for a lot of other disease causing variables that.

You find in a lot of these.

Higher cholesterol areas that were studied in China in addition to the meat that they were consuming. So I mean, when you see stuff like that, I mean, does it give you pause with a plant based diet or what's your response to something like that?

I look at some of my criticisms of the critics of that. A lot of the criticisms I've read are done by people who are not even in the nutrition science area. They might be nutrition oriented or they might have an RD degree and their basis for their background education is not so much science as it is in the various culinary arts and various food sciences, but not as what I would call real nutrition sciences.

I guess I would be most convinced though by analysis of that book that were done more by kind of like statisticians.

Yeah, statistics is a very critical field. And having been a member of the Sports Science Network and been in many arguments with statisticians over the years, I don't like to go there because I see the statisticians arguing among themselves over things that most of us just like. It's very nitpicky and so forth. It's not big enough to throw out the information. But I see them arguing over things that aren't to do with the science. They don't interpret the science itself that was reported.

If all the listeners haven't kind of dropped off the face of the map. Now, as we talk about the China Study, just in case those of you who have no clue what Dr. Mizer and I are talking about, it's a book called the China Study that was done on plant based versus animal based diets in China. And for those of you who want to learn more about the book and kind of the debate around the book, I'll put a link to the book in the show notes. I do recommend that you read it and you check it out. I'll also put a link to some of the common refutations that you find out there about the book so that you can educate yourself more. Just so, just so Dr. Meisner and I don't end up just having a conversation the whole time about the China Study.

So, well, look at the, look at the credentials of the critics and if they're asking a question based on the data that's reported, if they have a critical question, even if it's negative, are they asking it from a nutrition perspective, a statistical perspective, or are they asking the question based on their background? Many people with a background that can be slighted toward what is approved in terms of the American diet today. And I'm going to say a critical thing of people who are RDs. Some of the RDs are very open to the plant food lifestyle, while some RDs go right back to the their basic learning that they got in preparing to take their registered dietitian certification test. So a lot of them, they're going to pivot out of the way they were taught more than what the data actually says. So I'm questioning a lot of the critical comments I've heard about Colin Campbell and the data that he used as you have to look at where the person is coming from who's criticizing Campbell.

Yeah, I think that's wise advice. Well, let's talk about what you eat. What does a typical day of eating look like for you, Dr. Mizner?

Well, I typically eat a breakfast of oatmeal and ground flax. I use a little psyllium in it occasionally to raise the fiber content. That would be a breakfast. And then throughout the day I would wait until after my workout and then I would Go to a more hardcore whole plant food menu that would consist of spinach and broccoli and brussels sprouts, carrots, maybe even cabbage. Brussels sprouts I said for carbohydrates I like to use sweet potatoes and apples and oranges and cherries and cantaloupe and bananas. So basically those are the foods I eat that I would call whole plant foods. My top favorites are kale and black beans and asparagus are my favorites. So I eat those fairly regularly.

So like you would have your oatmeal with your ground flax and your psyllium for breakfast and then post workout you'd have just kind of this big. Do you like juice, all these different vegetables and carbohydrate sources you talked about?

I don't, I, I want the fiber, so that's why I stay away from juicing. I have juiced before and I don't get the fiber content that I want. I don't like to. If I'm running, if I'm doing a high quality workout, either speed work or if I'm doing a long distance trail work, I don't like the high fiber content in the gut. So I may take a couple of days before a sprint or a long distance quality workout and minimize the fiber intake. Under those circumstances I could see juicing just simply to take a little bit of the fiber weight load off the gut. But all in all, I'd say probably five, six days a week. I eat a very high fiber diet. They, they recommend you get over 30 grams a day and I probably get at least 65 or more grams a day.

What do you do, you know, if you eat all these vegetables and like, you know, sweet potato and maybe some fruit post workout, are you getting all the protein that you need from those vegetable sources or.

Yeah.

How are you, how are you relying on for, or what are you relying on for? Like amino acids?

That's where I'm getting it from.

How many plants do you actually eat, like in terms of volume?

In terms of volume, I probably get somewhere between 200 and 300 grams worth of whole plant foods a day. And I'm talking what most people would say are fruit and vegetables only. And I use that for my post workout. And I'm probably getting what's called orac value from my foods alone up in the hundreds of thousands of units. That means that the foods I'm eating are very potent in terms of reducing free radical buildup from exercise. So the post workout, one of the things I've said for a Long time that really helps people is rapid recovery. And as you know, during a hard workout, anything over an hour, you're building up free radicals when you exercise, it's the free radicals that do a lot of the damage as well as the lactates that build up in the muscles. And you can't just massage them out. You can't just take a hot bath and relax and have them come out. You can't just take an aspirin and hope that the inflammatory process of the post workout would go away that way. But rather treating it with a high antioxidant content from your food is the way I've enhanced my recovery. And that, that I would say gives me a quality workout the next day, the very next day I go out, I'm way more recovered when I've eaten a large amount, 200 to 300 grams of whole plant foods from the hard workout the day before. So you get a buildup of faster recovery. Better workouts in between equals better performance on race day.

Now what would you have for something like dinner?

That's what I have for dinner. That large bowl of vegetables and fruits. My dinner will last from say, oh, it takes me probably three hours to eat my evening meal and if I start say at three or four o' clock in the afternoon, by seven I'm done eating.

Wow.

And I have a big bowl. Like I say, it weighs upwards. It can weigh as much as 300 grams and it's just full, it's just packed full of these. I eat them real slow, I chew them up real good. And if I'm going to have bread, I'll have a whole grain bread, you know, with bananas and oranges and apples. And I eat as much as I want until I'm full and then I stop.

Now in terms of like, you know, if you go out and watch vegetarian animals in the wild, like a cow, they're just kind of like that. They're eating and chewing all day long. Just from a logistical standpoint, do you find that that is something that's practical for the person who kind of rushes home from work and needs to throw down dinner real quick?

You can graze and grazing is very good, especially following a speed workout or a real high intensity long distance workout. Grazing the next few days is advisable to get that, to get your muscle glycogen levels built back up because you're looking at three days after a workout just to rebuild muscle glycogen expenditure from a hard workout. And so it takes time for the body, it gets Rid of it loses muscle glycogen faster than it replenishes it. We all know that. So I'm saying that by adding the plant foods in their whole form is better than. Adding them as a cooked or processed form. The nutrient content is way higher. The antioxidant content is way higher in a raw, unprocessed plant food. That's what I'm suggesting is one of the mechanisms by which a plant food increases an individual's performance. We tried this out with a couple of athletes in the local area. One now is leading the Washington State Cycling Championships Procat level one, and he went on this just this year and he's leading our state. Another fellow rode Ram this year, the Race Across America cycling event, and he's been on it for about a year and they were runner ups this year in his division. Another fellow back in Vermont by the name of Tim Van Orden is pretty well known for this and he's placed in the top five, top ten overall in masters racing at the national level, in every event he's been in this year practically. And this is his claim too, that the whole plant food protocol is something that is actually causing him to recover faster and therefore he can run higher quality workouts. And this interesting fellow is in his 40s and he's running with the 20 and 30 year olds. He's in the top five, top 10 in every event that he's in. And these are events at the national level. He's the only masters athlete over age 40 that is performing at this level. And sure enough, he attributes it largely to the whole plant food diet.

Now I'm curious, you know, you mentioned that you do some flaxseed with your morning oatmeal, but when you describe your diet to me, it seems like it's kind of low in fat. I've talked to some other, like vegans, well, specifically vegan athletes and they talk about doing things like drinking coconut milk or using like, you know, like protein blends of brown rice and pea and hemp protein, using almond milk. In terms of fats, are you concerned or.

I'm not. I'm concerned about my Omega 3s, as we should be because it's an anti inflammatory fat and it's a very healthy fat and we need a whole whopping, maybe 2 to 4 grams of it a day. In other words, we don't need a lot of it, but we need to get some of it. The only other essential fatty acids, omega 6. And most of us just get way too much of it. And it's an inflammatory fat, though. It is an essential fat. We need some. There's a fellow named Vogel who did some interesting experiments that we should be shouting about as athletes. Vogel took subjects and he did what is called a brachial blockage test, where he examined. He examined how fast arteries dilate when nitric oxide is the inducer of dilatation. And so he wanted to know what the food effect of macronutrients were on how an artery dilates in the arm. And so they fed people two meals. One was a typical McDonald's American Big Mac, which. With fries and so forth, which amounted to just about 50 grams of fat. And then they went after the individual ate that particular meal. And we're talking average, not they didn't overeat it, but just enough to give them 50 grams of fat in the menu. And then they went to the brachial artery and looked at what the brachial artery was doing. And the brachial artery was completely shut down. There was almost no nitric oxide available to dilate. That artery could not dilate. And it stayed in a constricted phase for four hours after that meal. Then he took a typical American breakfast, largely carbohydrate, very little fat. And he gave that meal. It would be like a bowl of oatmeal, a cereal with raisins, and maybe milk, if you wanted to put milk in there. But it was very low fat is my point. And then he looked at the same artery, and that artery was dilated to normal levels immediately after that meal. And it stayed dilated for the four hours that he took to examine it. So the point is, why would an athlete need to take. Why would they need to take fat if it wasn't an essential fat? Why would they need to eat fat since their liver takes all the macronutrients it makes all the fat the body needs, makes all the cholesterol the body needs for itself. That's the question he posed. We've looked at other studies that looked at as little as 20 grams of fat and what that did to the whole system in terms of artery vasodilation. And even 20 grams of fat has an inhibitory effect on how wide an artery can dilate and supply blood to an exercising muscle. So that's just a question. You know, I'm not. I didn't supply the answer there, but I don't see a need for much more than 2 to 4 grams of omega 3 fat and maybe 9 to 11 grams of omega 6 fat in the diet every Day.

Do you think that that's enough for neural health as well, considering that there are some studies that link Alzheimer's to low fat intake?

Yes, I do. Because I believe if the body is getting all the nutrients from a number of sources, the body itself will manufacture the fat it needs to maintain myelination and to prevent the autoimmune. A lot of the autoimmune diseases that we're talking about can be linked to, interestingly, to a baby being fed cow's milk or, or being fed an animal protein before they had the capacity to digest it properly. And again, this is. Not everybody's going to have this, but a number of the autoimmune diseases and perhaps even some of the people that have diabetic lung condition.

Dr. Miser, if I could interrupt you.

For just a second. You're getting a lot of static on that end. I'm not sure where it's coming from. There's like a. Is the phone connected properly?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay. All right, sorry, go ahead.

But I think probably a lot of these diseases that we're talking about can be connected to animal protein consumed by a baby before the baby had the potential to digest it.

Now, I'm curious if you take, and I imagine if you roll a hammer, you probably do take some nutrition supplements, but you hear a lot about every. I mean, there are so many different elements that people who eat a plant based diet could be at risk for being deficient in, like vitamin D and coenzyme Q10 and vitamin B12 and iron and vitamin A. Do you actually supplement with these types of things to make sure that you're covering your bases?

I do, I do. I don't do iron. I'm afraid of that. I think there's a lot of studies that show that if you're getting a wide variety of colored colors in your plant foods that the, the amount of iron you're getting from a whole plant food diet is way higher than what you get from animal derived sources. So I don't supplement iron and I advise others don't do it unless you have a doctor monitoring your blood levels.

But you take, you take other supplements.

I do. I'm profoundly Interested in coenzyme Q10 and B12. I take folate. I probably don't have to, but I've got, I like to balance B12 with folate because of the fact that those two methylators go together. I could, if I could be taking zinc, I'm not at current time, but zinc is something that a plant food diet Might not provide as much of it as it should for some people. I still take vitamin C. I probably don't have to. I like to balance C with, I like to use C with the coenzyme Q10. I take garlic in the odorless form simply because it's not because I don't like garlic cloves. It's. I just don't like the smell. So those are supplements that I take to enhance the plant food deficiency or to prevent it.

So you definitely think the people who are eating a plant based diet should be kind of popping pills?

I do.

Okay, gotcha. Now in terms of, you know, you mentioned bread and I know you know, from soy to grains to legumes, etc. There is some concern about digestive inflammation or phytic acids or you know, gluten based inflammation. Are you concerned about any of those things or do you like soak and sprout the grains and legumes that you eat or how do you approach that?

I don't. I have done that though. You know, the protein quality of the A sprouted anything is always better. I don't, I think you have to be careful if you're gluten sensitive or if you have a celiac disease or something like that. As long as I'm not, I try to stay away from some of the soys that have been processed. I think there's. I think soy itself is not so bad in the process form. I just think that probably people can overdo it because of their fear of not getting enough protein. And of course soy is a very good source of protein and it's a complete protein. I'm not convinced that the plant food diet by itself just eating whole plant foods. I'm not convinced that it doesn't supply better protein than the animal sourced proteins, the animal sourced supplements especially that are like whey protein and so on. I think that's way blown out of proportion in terms of its value for the idea on protein and protein quality from food goes a little bit further back than just complete proteins versus a not complete protein in terms of what you get out of the food. I think probably that all stems from the fact that we base our protein needs on what a six year old growing child needs to grow at its maximum rate. Maximum protein growth at age 6 is not the kind of growth rate you want after puberty. That fast of a protein growth rate is simply counterindicated in a number of diseases and therefore I think you can probably apply that to the athlete. Why would an athlete need to grow Protein, unless they were like doing for a bodybuilding show where they were trying, their focus was not on the performance of the muscle, but their focus was on the size of the muscle fiber. So if you want to grow muscle fiber faster, yes, animal protein is the way to go.

What about repair and recovery?

I think that's dangerous. I think that's dangerous. To get into the growth rate as a focal point for what foods you choose to eat. No one has ever showed that expanding growth rate, in other words, size of muscle fiber was that much of an element of performance. When you compare, You know, athletic performance of strength athletes, you could say it does. But when you look at actual muscle output, torque output, the watts produced on a bicycle, the same wattage reproduced in a sprinter, there's no carryover between the rate that muscle grows based on food consumption and muscle torque output. That's what I'm saying. And performance says a lot. You know, what the individual can lift or what they can, how fast they can run, what distance, how fast they can swim or ride. These are things that have to do with the muscle torque output. And I don't think that I want my muscles growing as fast as a six year old if I am concerned about my performance. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah, I do, I do. What about like the rate of muscle repair? You know, if, you know, growing a muscle like a six year old allows your muscles to repair more quickly because of higher blood levels of amino acids?

I don't think that's been shown.

So I've got a question for you because you've, you know, you're, I guess you've been on this diet for, you said about 20 months?

Yes.

Okay. Do you, or are you concerned or have you, have you, do you do tests on yourself like blood tests or saliva tests or anything like that to kind of assess the potential for any type of changes from a hormonal standpoint or, you know, kind of biological markers of performance. And we talked about iron, but things like fatty acids or amino acids.

I've done, I've done my B12. My B12 was something like 1400% above normal. My vitamin D was high normal. My cholesterol went. When I took seeds and nuts out of my whole plant food diet and I removed whey protein and fresh salmon, my cholesterol went from 232 to 151.

Are you concerned about that?

Oh, no, because 150, 150 is under. 150 is the dividing line. In normal circles of Cardiovascular disease, people under 150. Cardiovascular disease can occur only when certain other blood factors are elevated, such as crp, such as homocysteine. There's a good HDL and there's a really, really, really bad LDL that can get high in the blood. And so once these are you mitigate these out, then 150 is a target or less for persons total cholesterol.

But should we be more concerned about the size of the cholesterol particles? Because I guess it's my understanding that there's actually a nice, full, fluffy ldl cholesterol particle is actually quite healthy for delivering your body the fat nutrients.

There are. Ben, there are 10 devisors, 10 elements in blood that can trigger cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular events. So there are actually 10 of those. So when we're talking about the actual total cholesterol levels, we'd have to divide those total cholesterol levels by these 10 individual units, 10 factors that could be present. And the person, even though they had a 150 cholesterol, if they had one of these 10 items that I mentioned, such as homocysteine or CRP, if those are too high, then that person could very well be on their way to a cardiovascular event. Gotcha. Okay.

Go ahead.

I think it's probably important to note that a high level of cholesterol can happen even with a good hard workout. You can actually raise, for example, homocysteine, which is a very serious danger to heart health. You can raise it by going out and running a marathon. If you go out and run a marathon, you raise homocysteine in the neighborhood of 60% above normal. But if you go out and run that same marathon slow, you don't raise it. So the quality of your workout has a lot to do with the factors that are produced in terms of causing heart problems.

Gotcha. Okay. In terms of plant based diet implementation, if people are listening into this and they're wanting to kind of get started with eating a plant based diet, what are some of the ways that people can start into that? I mean, is it dangerous at all to just kind of quit meat cold turkey if you're having a little bit of meat each day? Or how do you recommend people ease into things? Or how did you do it?

Well, I'm pretty strict. I let the facts rule what I do. And so as I read the facts, I looked at the people that were easing into it, and I found that those people were actually tickling an addictive nature to the food, that they were teasing themselves with food they weren't really talking themselves out of the sugars and the processed fats and some of the eloquent flavors of meats barbecued and so on. And so really what they were doing, it was just kind of flirting with their health. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to see what it would really do. So I just jumped into it. And the interesting thing I found it took me about six weeks to get rid of the things that I enjoyed about eating animal sources. I love salmon, taste of salmon. I love the whey protein flavored. Whether it be energy bars or the powder or the flavored variety that whey protein can come in. And so for me I had to just. And nuts, I can eat nuts and seeds but the fat content was so high there again I was, you know, not that they're not plant foods but, but I was eating foods that, that I saw fact said I shouldn't eat that much fat in terms of getting. I would easily pass the 20 grams of fat per a handful of nuts. And so based on the Vogel principle and the other principles that I had learned, I said, well, I'm just going to stop doing that. And it was then that I had, during that six weeks time I lost about 12 pounds of weight that my wife says I shouldn't have. And my times improved and my cholesterol dropped. And so since then I've gotten real serious with people and I said, look, if you're going to go on it, then get serious about it. Make up your mind and go on if you're not going to go on it, don't flirt with eating the delicious animal source foods that are going to do nothing but cause you to return to them with a vengeance. I think there's a taste barrier that I know I had to go through it. And people I started on this diet, they've had to go through it too. And it's hard, but after about four to six weeks you begin to lose that taste. Now I can't. The thought of eating whey protein or eating a nice slab of salmon, it doesn't, it doesn't cause me to, doesn't tempt me at all. And the taste of it is not something I hunger for or I miss. But my taste now for plant foods is when I sit down with this huge bowl of vegetables tonight, it's like eating dessert. And I don't flavor it a lot. I don't put a lot of, I don't put any salad dressing on it. I just eat it raw. And the taste I have for that have Gotten. My taste sensations are so titillated by that that I look forward to that like a dessert. And so it took about six weeks for me to make that change. It may take other people longer than that, but it's something that you have to get used to. And of course, if you see results while you're going on it, if you see results and that encourages you. And it's a barrier that I know I had to go through and I've seen other people have to go through it too. And the ones that didn't, the ones that didn't make the just I'm going to do it decision, they failed and went back to it. They weren't serious enough in the first place to make the commitment to go whole plant food.

Gotcha. All right. Well, we're starting to run short on time. So we've covered a lot here and go ahead.

I've got one thing for you now.

Yes?

You do triathlons?

I do.

Have you broken that nine hour barrier yet for the Ironman?

It's not a goal, so I haven't tried. But why do you ask?

Well, I asked because I thought you might be a very good case study. I know that you may not totally subscribe to the whole plant food idea, but I thought maybe you might be someone that would be a good test for this. For six weeks.

I've done about a.

940 Ironman and it would be interesting to see the comparison. But I actually ate a raw plant based diet for about eight weeks last year for me and I was using primarily Brendan Brazier's book Thrive to dictate.

A lot of my nutritional decisions.

But call me vain or whatnot, but I like my six pack and my chest and my big shoulders and my rate of muscle loss went through the roof and I started to look really skinny and more lean than I like to aesthetically be. So I went ahead and returned to fats and meats.

I did too. The first time I tried it was back in 95 and I was running ultramarathons on a national level then. And I go out for a 30 mile run every Saturday. And this was in a two year period when I was doing 120 to upwards of 250 miles a week. And I just died on the whole plant food idea first. And when I came back to it this past time, I of course am not doing ultramarathons per se, although I will be doing one in September. I found that I wasn't getting enough calories. I mentioned that in my email to you that I wasn't getting enough calories the first time I tried it. And this made a, this made a huge difference. And we see this in some of the African countries where kawashikor occurs and there's muscle wasting, but it's generally with the same thing that I experienced. When you're not getting enough calories, total calories, the muscle mass loss is. It becomes ridiculous. I mean, it's just not good. And so what I did this time was I raised the cow. I eat enormous amounts of whole plant foods in order to get the calories. Once I got my calories up, then the muscle mass problem was salt as well as my appetite. My cravings level for animal sourced foods went way down. So that's the only thing I would throw in there. If you ever do try it again for the sake of performance. I mean, I've got this one guy, I've got the guy that rode ram and he's a really intense guy. And I mean he's was on our national track cycling team. So muscle size, he's a good example of somebody for his sport who needed size, especially in his quads. And when he went on it, this is what he did. He just went cold turkey and he went for it. His performance is way up from what it was and he's in his 40s, so, you know, you were one that I had thought of, you know, that I thought. As I know, maybe the triathlon isn't your total goal, but.

I'll make you a deal.

How about if you buy my groceries for the year, I'll do it.

I don't think I could afford it for a week.

You probably couldn't. Either way though, if it's something that I decide to do, now that I know that the offer is out there on the table, I'll let you know if I decide I want to be the guinea pig. And perhaps we do have a lot of elite triathlete listeners that listen into the show. So if you're listening in right now and this appeals to you to try this out and kind of do a comparison as a case study, just go ahead and write it into the show. Ben greenfieldfitness.com and I'll forward you on to Dr. Meisner and connect you two.

Let me add one last thing. Okay. I use a computerized dietary analysis software, real expensive software, to analyze the content of food. And I take away all my food, all those whole plant foods. And I do this often. So I know, so that I know what's going into me. Otherwise I'D never know. You know, it just, it just be a handful of food. And based on the what the computer tells me, all my nutrients, even at the RDA level are being met by this protocol. And as well as the macronutrients, whole carbohydrates, whole proteins, amino acids and the essential fats. So it does work, you know, even when it's measured very carefully item by item. And of course, I do it by my body weight, height, weight and so forth. So it, it's supplying all the nutrients that you need.

Gotcha. Okay, well, cool. Well, we're running up on an hour of time here, so we'll go ahead and I'm sure that we've generated questions and I will certainly, if people leave comments in the show notes to this episode, I will certainly go in and try and respond to your questions. And whenever we have a guest, I always forward forward questions onto them as well if you, if the follow up questions are something that might better be addressed by Dr. Meisner. And so this podcast is certainly open to further discussion by you, the listener. And Dr. Meisner, thank you so much for coming on call today.

Dr. You're welcome, Ben. And when you get ready to do it, I'll do a dietary analysis of your foods for you.

Sounds good. All right. All right, folks. Well, until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Bill Meisner signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Well, folks, what I will do is I will put a link to all the things that Dr. Mizner and I talked about and I do know that Dr. Meisner may come on and also leave a comment on the show notes for this episode, episode number 154, because he had some extra information he wanted to send on. So go visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com and look at the show notes for episode number 154 because we'll not only have those extra comments from Bill, but I will put a link to, to the China Study, that book that we mentioned, as well as a link to a reputation from the China Study over at the Weston Price Foundation. I'll put a link to Bill's book Finding Fitness for Life in there. And I'll also put a link to everything else that we've talked about on the show, the Living Fuel Super Greens, the master Amino pattern, triathlondominator.com, all that good stuff. And remember, if you like the show, do me a few favors, go to itunes and leave it a ranking or a review. And also if you get a chance, go over to BenGroupFitness.com and sign up for the $1 monthly donations. It sounds kind of silly, but if everybody listening to the show donated $1, it would completely cover the cost for all the downloads that happen when the show comes out on a weekly basis, so it truly helps out. And that being said, that's gonna wrap it up for this Week's podcast from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a head healthy weekend.