Episode #177: How To Eat Fruit Without Getting Fat

In this how to eat fruit without getting fat. Also returning to running the thrifty gene short quads from cycling healthy beans, phytoestrogen crank lengths Is periodization dead Recovering from a two day relay, ancient wheats and grains and advice for a beginner triathlete.

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 everybody. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. This is Brock and we're back in the brand new year. And hey Ben, I want to take this opportunity to wish you a happy 2012.

How are you? I'm good, Brock. Happy New Year to you.

Thank you.

I've been getting up a little bit earlier and really dialing in everything this new year. Doing my exercise sessions now. My first official day of quote unquote, hardcore exercise to Prepare for the 2012 triathlon season.

Wait a second, I.

You are always dialed in.

What are you talking about? You're dialing it in and going hardcore.

I mean, I usually wait until the last possible minute, you know, like sometimes 7, 8pm to work out. And I actually am flipping that. I'm working out in the mornings and it's nice. I'm doing some swim sessions from the good folks over at Swim Smooth, which I've. I think I've blogged about them before over on the website. And then cycling. I'm doing really, really short, sweet in incredibly difficult efforts via the Suffer Fest cycling videos. I don't know if anybody's ever seen the Sufferfest cycling videos. The one I did yesterday was called A Very Dark Place. And all it is is it's really cool footage of pro cycling put to music that kind of matches the cadence and the intensity that you're going for. And then you just ride and there's something kind of like old school and just really, really like raw. And. And it's got this motivating feel. And I didn't describe it that well, but whenever I do a Sufferfest video, I push myself really hard. So I'm doing a couple of those a week now.

The Sufferfest stuff, I mean, it is. It sounds really scary and it's. It's not scary, but it's pretty hardcore. You can hear and you can tell by the name too.

Yeah, I'll put a link in the show. Notes, people want to get the Sufferfest videos. There's like eight, nine of them, something like that. I haven't even made it through all of them. But, yeah, I did. I did go to a very dark place yesterday.

And so are you doing this in. In response to your being named onto the Timex team?

No, that's. That's certainly motivating. There's a lot of really good folks on, on that team. Sure is. I'll put out a blog post later on about all that and what Team Timex is and why I'm on the team. But no, I'm doing this just because I do really well when I kind of have that all or nothing approach. And Monday, January 2nd rolled around and I started into the all part of all or nothing. So it's going well. Made it 48 hours through so far. And I'm logging everything, as you know, because I coach you over on the private athletes forum. So for all the people who are inner circle members of the Ben Greenfield Fitness inner circle and all the athletes I coach, I'm logging all my exercise sessions, all my diet, pretty much everything, just to kind of generate some. Some new ideas for folks who want to kind of see the meals I'm eating and what I'm doing for workouts.

He's just trying to make the rest of us feel really bad about ourselves.

Nah, just trying to set a good example. And yeah, speaking of setting a good example, I also bought toothpaste today. And I mention that because I don't use regular toothpaste. I don't use Crest or anything like that because it's full of fluoride and nasty sweeteners and fillers. I use charcoal toothpaste. That's pretty cool.

I didn't know you could buy that kind of thing.

You can. It's really cool. I use this stuff. It's sweetened with stevia and xylitol, and it's got a natural peppermint extract in it. It's got aloe vera in it. It's got like, clove root in it and an activated charcoal. So you just get your toothbrush wet and you dip it in the charcoal and your teeth are like, black while you're brushing them. But it keeps food from sticking to your teeth and your teeth are incredibly white after you finish. And considering I haven't been to the dentist in over a decade, literally, this stuff works pretty well.

I've got to try that. I drink so much coffee, I've got Some really nasty stains. That might be just the thing for me.

You should. Yep. Just remember, don't freak out when your teeth turn black. Once you rinse, that goes away. So what do you think? Should we jump into the announcements and quit bantering?

My thoughts exactly.

Special announcements.

Okay, so we've got a bunch of stuff. You've had tons of stuff going on@BenGreenfieldFitness.com what do you want to highlight for us?

A couple paradoxical posts over there. I posted about how to make healthy cocktails, the ultimate guide to making healthy cocktails on New Year's Eve. And you know, that may come in handy for folks a few months down the road, but I think just about everybody's sworn off drinking for the next little bit. But it is a good guide. I got a bunch of healthy cocktails on there. Kind of what I drink when I'm trying to spin a few dials in my brain. But also be healthy or just be social.

I'm going to keep that sort of push that, that, that aside since I didn't get to celebrate on New Year's Eve. I'm going to use that post when I'm celebrating after any races I do.

Yeah. Double marathon this weekend or half marathon. Marathon. Brock's going down to do the goofy marathon for those of you who don't know. So. And then I posted New Year's the day after New Year's. How to detox and how to do it without actually going to some expensive resort on a mountaintop. You know, just to kind of work a detox into your day to day life. And you can also check that out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you kind of want to clean your body out for the new Year, I tell you how. So that's what's going on over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and whoever was asking me about the Ben Greenfield Fitness Food Pyramid will be happy to know that I started into it hardcore after that podcast. And the food pyramid is coming along nicely and, and it will probably go out to the graphic designer by the end of this week and get turned into a pyramid. So I've been kind of getting up early in the morning before my workouts and putting about a half hour or so each morning into the Ben Greenfield Fitness Food Pyramid. So that will come along.

I never thought the day would come. You seemed very reluctant and resistant to the pyramid. I'm glad to hear that you're working on it.

I figured out a way to. I figured a way to do it and make it work. So speaking of food, Thursday, January 12th, that's next week for those of you who are listening to this podcast when it comes out on Wednesday, Eating for Endurance. I'm going to talk about endurance nutrition for pretty much any distance event. Fueling before, during, after. Gonna talk a little bit about physiology, educate you on why you're doing what you're doing. It should be a good webinar. That one's for USA Triathlon. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. I think you do have to pay a few bucks for that webinar, but it's the full on webinar Q and everything like that. And it's really geared towards endurance athletes. So it's called Eating for Endurance. And that is, that is not meant to be endurance in the sense of like hot dog eating contests, watermelon contests. I'm like eating for endurance sports, not endurance eating, just eating.

Competitions are not sports. Come on.

They are in a way. Actually, those are pretty impressive for those of you who haven't seen them.

Terrifying.

And then Saturday, this Saturday is going to be the featured topic that usually comes out during this podcast. It is pretty scary. We're going to be talking about how cell phones basically gamble with your brain. I've read the book. I'm interviewing the person who wrote the book and releasing that this Saturday. I would highly recommend you listen in. I'm just going to kind of stop right there. And I know there's people that kind of kind of scoff at this. I did until I read the book. I was a scoffer. And this is pretty scary stuff. So listen in on Saturday and you won't be sorry.

That's something. You hear so much conflicting evidence or at least conflicting reports about it. It'd be nice to have somebody who actually like looks at all the information and gives you the definitive guide or.

Ideas behind that pretty big scandal behind the whole cell phone health issue. We're going to talk about it. Last thing I wanted to mention was that we are working on some technology to actually have anybody who wants to listen in Wednesday mornings when we record this podcast, be able to listen in live, maybe even comment, add some chat, maybe ask some questions while we're going through the Q and A and wanted to give a big shout out to Ron for Ron's donation for the technology that we needed to do that.

Thanks, Ron.

And anybody else who wants to donate to the podcast, you can do so by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and clicking the donate button and keeping this thing going. So we better get going. Let's do the news flashes.

Let's do it.

News flashes.

Okay. Www.twitter.com BenGreenfield what is going on there, Ben?

Kind of a fun series of news flashes this week, Brock. I, on the day before New Year's, tweeted 10 different workouts that you could do for fun or for a really intense challenge to kind of kick off the new year or maybe do before you head off to your New Year's parties. And I thought, well, what the heck, these are great workouts. We should just put these up on the website and make them available to folks. So what I did was I tweeted 10 workouts and some of them were really, really simple. Simple but hard. Like an example of a hard one would be you do 100 pushups or 100 squats per hour from 8am until you go to bed. That's a tough routine. That means for about probably anywhere from five, it'll take you about five to eight minutes to do 100 pushups or 100 squats per hour. So by the end of the day you'd have worked out an hour and a half or two hours. So that was an example of a simple workout. And then I also put links to really, really complex workouts like a full body, what I call full body slightly insane workout in which you're doing a full on upper body circuit and then a bunch of metabolism boosting cardio and then a full on lower body circu and you've got core after each one of those blocks and you know, it's like a two, two and a half hour workout. And the reason that I'll put these in the news flashes for the show notes for this episode, episode number 177 is because they're great when you need a quick workout idea or you're not motivated to work out and you just want to kind of split your workout throughout the day. A lot of really good workouts on there. So check that out in the news flashes section.

Cool. So is this. Those workouts are actually crazier than doing 1400 squats in a day.

Yeah, there's a few crazy ones. And by the way, I have done that. I have done the. When you can't make it to the gym, you don't have access to a gym. Whatever. You're at a family reunion, maybe at a camp out in the woods, you know, whatever. You've got nothing except your own body and no chance to get away for a Full on hour long workout or whatever. You just sneak away at the end of every hour and do either 100 push ups or 100 squats and you're gonna, you're gonna feel like you've accomplished quite a bit by the end of the day. And also the following morning.

I'm not gonna sneak away next family reunion, I'm just gonna stand right in the middle of the room and do a hundred squats every hour and just not explain myself.

Make you popular.

So what else is going on?

You know what, that's it for the news flashes. We've got a bunch of really good questions, so I think we should launch right in.

Let's do it.

At first glance, triathletes appear to be a pretty fit group, at least with clothes on. But it's pretty common for triathletes to have tiny arms, a thin and weak neck, a stick like midsection, and a body that's just too skinny. But just imagine if your arms were cotton defined, your chest and shoulders were ripped, your waistline was tapered like a V, your stomach was flat and hard, and your legs were sleek and curvaceous. In other words, what if you had the ultimate triathlon body? Now you can learn how to swim, bike and run fast and look incredibly sexy doing it. Go to tririppd.com to start today. That's tririppd.com.

Listener Q and A. All right, our first question comes from Katie. And Katie says, I recently found your blog because I was researching information on Tim Ferriss's diet. The Four Hour Body. My main interest in his opinion on eating fruit. I saw you mention it a few times in different articles. You said that not eating fruit in the. You shouldn't eat fruit in the morning if you're trying to lose fat. And I'm wondering what your entire take on fruit is. Is fruit. I feel like fruit could really be a food for me, that's a tipping factor, meaning I eat it, eat it too much and completely destroy my fat loss attempts. I'd hate to completely cut it out if that leads to a lack of nutrients that are possible to gain from any other foods.

Hmm. I don't remember ever saying you shouldn't eat fruit in the morning if you're trying to lose fat, but I don't know. Let's talk about it. So Tim Ferriss, she mentioned his Four Hour Body book and yeah, he does really kind of get down on fruit and he says that you shouldn't eat it. His logic is that our European ancestors 500 years ago wouldn't have eaten fruit. And so our bodies really aren't adapted to eat fruit either. And I'll go into what some of the arguments of perhaps the more scientific folks are. But as far as Tim's arguments, let me say that the main idea behind his argument is that fructose in the fruit would be an issue, that our bodies aren't used to that, maybe, because if we come from European ancestry, I guess for anybody who's listening in who is of European ancestry, that fruit might be an issue. But there's a ton of evidence that way back in the 1400s, 1500s, medieval time, I mean, one of their most common food staples was honey, which is basically just like pure fructose. They ate apples, pears, and plums and peaches. By the 1400s, you had the Portuguese and the Spanish down in Africa exporting citrus fruits and bananas. And you find all over in medieval literature and in the records of their diets, figs and dates and raisins and pomegranates. So the argument that we shouldn't eat fruit because our, you know, our recent ancestors didn't have access to it, so our bodies might respond to it by getting fat is, to me, ridiculous. But there are more scientific arguments, I guess you could say, against fructose consumption. And probably the most famous person who has vilified fruit is Dr. Robert Lustig. And he even put out a video called the Bitter Truth about Fructose or something like that. And it got, you know, hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. And he points out some things during that video that I just think watching the video are plain wrong. So the first thing that he says is that there's been this climate obesity to epidemic proportions over the past 30 or so years, and that is true. And he also points out that things like soda consumption and the size of Coca Cola bott and possibly fructose consumption has gone up quite a bit during that same time. And he blames carbohydrates as being the issue for that. But there's some issues with his data that he uses. So the study that he cites was basically done between, like, the late 80s and the early 90s, and it was done on kids about 2 years old, up to 17 years old. So that's painting a pretty broad brush or painting with a pretty broad brush to extrapolate that out to the entire adult population. And then if you look at the actual data in terms of the way that people have eaten in the past 30 years, and there is data that's available, the USDA has what's called an economic research service that tracks the percentage of daily calories of different food groups. And you look at it in the past 30 years, you know, the consumption of meat and eggs certainly did decrease a little bit. The consumption of dairy decreased a little bit. The amount of fruit that people ate stayed about exactly the same. The amount of vegetables that people ate stayed about exactly the same. Carbohydrates from like flour and cereal and stuff like that did go up. It went up about 3%, but calories from fat went up 7%. And total energy intake went way up. It went up from an average of about 2,100 calories up to an average of about 2,700 calor. So about 600 extra calories per day. So you can't blame an increase in carbohydrate consumption for the rise in obesity. If you're looking at the rise of obesity in America, which is what Dr. Lustig is talking about in that video. So it's because we're just eating more, not because we're eating more carbohydrates, we're just eating more. So that part of his study where he talks about carbohydrates being the reason for our increase in obesity is just basically wrong if you look at the data. So the next thing that he kind of goes through in that video is that when you look at fructose, that it doesn't cause an insulin response when people eat it. And so it doesn't make your appetite satisfied or doesn't satisfy food cravings. And so fructose then leads, he says, to overeating and to obesity. But fructose, when you look at it in studies, has actually been shown to not only cause an insulin response because half of it is glucose, half of fructose is glucose, the same as basically sugar. So of course you have an insulin response when you consume fructose, but it's also been shown to have a suppressive effect on your appetite in studies. And so you can certainly say that it causes less of an insulin response, thus it could lead to overeating and obesity. But the studies show that it has a suppressive effect on your actual appetite and in terms of how much you eat after you've had a meal that has fructose in it versus after you've had a meal that has just glucose in it. Studies show no difference in terms of how much you'd eat after, say, having a fructose containing snack versus having a glucose containing snack. So that part of demonizing fructose is also wrong. And in the one human study, there was one study done in humans that found that fructose caused an increase in appetite the next day. And Lustig quotes this study. What he doesn't say is how much fructose they actually consumed in the study. And it was about 135 grams of fructose. That's 30% of your daily energy intake from fructose. And that's the equivalent of about six to seven big, big sodas, big soft drinks, like not. Not diet soda, like regular soda, which is, as you know, Brock, a lot of soda.

That's a lot of soda. That's more than I have in a year, I think.

Right. Nobody drinks that. I mean, I should say nobody. Some people do drink that much soda. But.

But they're.

Yeah, so. So Dr. Lustig is pretty much wrong about fructose causing an increase in appetite, unless we're talking about eating an insanely large amount of fructose. And then he goes on to quote about the Japanese and how healthy they are and how low their rates of heart disease are. And he says that the one thing that is responsible for that is the absence of fructose in the Japanese diet. And I don't know if you've ever been to Tokyo, Brock, or spent much time in Japan, but there's fruit all over the place over there, like oranges and apples and grapes and pears and.

Peaches and mangoes and papayas.

I mean, those are staples in the Japanese diet. And you can find studies that support that. So I'm not sure if Dr. Lustig has just never been to Japan, but they do eat fructose. And you can't quote the Japanese rate of heart disease or lower rate of heart disease as being due to low consumption of fructose, when, in fact, it's a staple in their diet.

They also eat, like, 30% more fish than North Americans do.

Yeah, exactly. There's other things they do that helps out. And then towards the end of that video, he talks about fruit consumption actually being okay because fruit has fiber in it, and the fructose is kind of like, neutralized by the fiber content. And that's true, but he says. He goes on to kind of continue to vilify fructose by saying that fruit has way more fiber in it than fructose. And that's just not true. I mean, what he says in the video is, he says wherever there's fructose in nature, there's way more fiber. If you look at a banana, it's got like, 27 grams of carbs and 3 grams of fiber. So a ton of fructose and a little bit of fiber. An Apple has got 25 grams of carbs and 4 grams of fiber. If you take, like, a serving of strawberries, it's got 24 grams of carb and 6 grams of fiber. So fruit you can't say is healthy because it's low in fructose. It's actually very high in fructose. And it's got, you know, decent amounts of fiber in it, but certainly not more fiber than fructose, as Dr. Lustig would have us to believe. So that whole video that kind of got a lot of people up in arms about fructose is simply not true. So when you actually consume fructose, I mean, you can look at what happens. I mean, if you look at the physiology of fructose, it's very, very straightforward. There's basically four different things that can happen when you eat fructose. And I don't want to get way off the deep end here in terms of science speak, but when you first consume fructose, what happens is something very, very similar to what happens when you consume glucose. Fructose gets broken down. It's a process called fructolysis, and there's a few different enzymes that break down fructose. And what it breaks it down into are a couple of compounds that can either be put into basically what's called glycolysis, which is the same way that that you use sugar to make energy, or enter into what's called the gluconeogenic pathway, which means that it's used to create glucose or to create storage carbohydrate. So that would be what happens with fructose when you're actually exercising. And fructose can be used quite efficiently during exercise. It's a reason that when you look at, like, the back of, like, a power bar gel, it's got a blend of fructose and maltodextrin. You're using glucose transporters, you're using fructose transporters. You're kind of maximizing your ability to use that fuel. And the fructose isn't making you fat or anything like that. It's getting burnt as energy via the same pathways that glucose gets burnt as energy. So the issue that a lot of other people or a lot of folks kind of get up in arms about is that fructose can also get metabolized to other things. It can get metabolized via the liver into fatty acids and triglycerides, and it's done. So fructose is metabolized into fatty acids and triglycerides a little bit more readily than something like glucose. And so technically, if you're eating a ton of fructose, you're going to get a ton of triglycerides and fatty acids, which are basically precursors to body fat in your diet and you're going to get fat. But that's not going to happen if you're consuming fructose in the presence of exercise or you're consuming fructose in moderation. It's only if you consume fructose over and above your basic calorie needs. So the interesting thing is that the same folks who vilify fructose, like, you hear a lot of, like, you know, you'll hear Paleo folks talk about how you really, really got to limit fructose to very, very low amounts. And you'll hear a lot of folks vilify fructose and then turn around and talk about all the benefits of meat and meat consumption. Well, the saturated fats in meat are broken down into the same components as what the liver is making out of fruit, triglycerides and fatty acids. And so you can't really vilify fructose without also saying that if you eat too much meat, you're going to get fat, which is also true. So what this comes down to is basically moderation in everything. I mean, not to oversimplify the issue, but yeah, yeah, if you eat too much fruit, you're going to get fat. Just like if you eat too much table sugar, you're going to get fat. And if you eat too much meat, you're going to get fat. That's the issue. So when we look at this on like an in the trenches practical level, what my recommendation would be is that whenever you're consuming any type of sugar, whether a sugar like fructose that may not cause much of an insulin release, but could get converted into fats in the liver, especially if you're not exercising or if you're consuming a carbohydrate, like a grain or a potato based carbohydrate, that you try as much as possible to time those carbohydrates before, during or after exercise and during the rest of the day, you are careful with your carbohydrate intake. Just because it burns like kindling, it's a fast burning fuel and it's not quite as necessary and not quite as good for you as proteins and fats. When you are kind of sedentary. And so, you know, I mentioned the food pyramid. This was my whole issue with creating the food pyramid is how do you create a food pyramid that allows for increased carbohydrate consumption on your heavily exercising days and lower carbohydrate consumption when you're not moving around quite as much? And, you know, I'm overcoming that issue. You're just going to have to wait until the food pyramid comes out to see it. But, you know, basically you look at your levels of activity and you inject carbohydrate wisely where it makes sense to do so. And if the carbohydrate is from fruit, that's okay. There's nothing magic about fructose that is going to make you fat. The only issue with fructose is that some of it, yeah. Can enter the liver and get converted into fatty acids and triglycerides a little bit more easily than other sugars, but you'll burn those fatty acids and triglycerides as long as you're an active, healthy individual.

So it almost sounds like in Katie's question, she said that she remembered you saying that you shouldn't eat fruit in the mornings if you're trying to lose fat. But it almost sounds like that would be the point. Perfect time to eat the fruit because you're generally going to be more active earlier in the day and you'll get some exercise in, get some walking to work or whatever you're doing. That would be the perfect time.

Yeah. And what she probably heard me say was if you're doing fasted exercise sessions, you shouldn't have a little piece of fruit beforehand or something like that. And that's certainly true because if you're creating a bunch of circulating free fatty acids and triglycerides from the fructose that you consume, or you are maybe metabolizing fructose via that fructolysis pathway so that fructose is entering into the what's called the Krebs cycle and getting burnt like other carbohydrates. You're basically not burning your storage energy because you're burning what you got from the fructose instead. And for that reason, don't have a banana before a morning workout. If the goal of the morning workout is to be like an aerobic fat burning session, that's the time when I'd be careful with fruits. And then if you are eating a low carbohydrate diet, if you are trying to be in a state of basically ketosis burning your own storage energy as much as possible for fuel, then I do recommend limiting total carbohydrate consumption, whether from fruits or potatoes or any other form of carbohydrate. It's just an effective fat loss method for folks who have issues with eating too many carbohydrates and having that excessive carbohydrate consumption causing them to gain weight or not lose weight.

Oh cool. That was a good eye opening discussion about fruit. Actually, it made me think of Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food. Saw him tweet one day. I'm not sure if this is his quote or not, but he said if you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're probably not that hungry. I like that sort of thought.

Yeah, you know, and I personally probably have the equivalent of about two pieces of raw fruit per day, whether it's made up of bananas, raisins, apples, you know, that type of thing.

Well, let's move along to the next question which comes from Tina. And Tina says, a year ago I joined a learn to run clinic and achieved the 10 minutes run with a one minute walk break. But as the distance progressed I found myself getting injured on my foot and hip. I took time to rest and strengthen my IT band as you suggested in a previous question that was clicking in my hip. So she stopped running and just did some cycling and strength training. Then when I felt I was ready to run again after about a month off, I started from the beginning at twos and ones. So running 2 minutes walking 1 minute and then progressed to 7 and 1 and did a 5k race and that went well. But then she hurt her foot again so she sort of went through this. And basically what she's asking is now that I've taken some time off, her foot's feeling better, her hips feeling better. Should she start right back in at the beginning doing two minutes running, one minute walking, or can she jump back into where she left off with the sevens and ones?

The short answer is don't jump right back in. Start gradually anytime you're coming back from an injury. That's the most common way that people re injure themselves is they jump right back in where they were used to working out. Probably the same reason I almost passed out on the bike yesterday is I tried to go through about it. It was almost a 70 minute long suffer fest workout and that was my first time riding my bike since I got back from that race in Thailand or since I dropped out of that race in Thailand halfway through. And you know I tried to jump right back in to where I remembered that I was able to do, but I certainly wasn't able to based on my fitness levels. So whenever you're coming back from an injury, start conservatively. And, you know, I'll put a link to my original response to Tina about hip clicking that she had in the show Notes that was back in podcast episode number 164. But whenever you're getting frequently injured, you need to step back and look at your biomechanics. So your running gait, the shoes that you're using, or the orthotics, the inserts in your shoes. And you also need to look at things from a biological perspective. Do you have hormone deficits? Are you depleted of a certain nutrient or mineral or something that is inhibiting your body's ability to properly heal, your soft tissues? Ability to properly heal? When you're getting frequently injured, that's a sign that something's wrong. Either your training protocol or your training gear or your biology. So I would step back and take a really good hard look at whether or not your body is actually optimized for exercise before you jump back into exercise. And it's probably the reason that I personally was injured at the end of the year. I pushed myself all year and went for a run in some iffy conditions on snow and ice and I slipped and hurt myself. But if I hadn't been pushing myself really hard for the previous eight months, I probably wouldn't have hurt myself when I slipped. But you get to a certain point where your body does need a break. And I would use this as a time, Tina, to actually inspect your gear, your gait and your biology. So kind of a short answer, but that's what I would do.

I think it really shows a strength of character in Tina that even though she keeps getting injured, she keeps coming back and she's working on things and doing the swimming, doing the cycling, trying to build up the strength. I know a lot of people who, if they get injured even once, let alone twice or three times, they just give up and stop exercising. So kudos to you for keeping going.

Yeah, absolutely. It's fine line between jumping back into exercise and being stupid about things and jumping back into exercise and structuring it so that you're able to stay fit through injury.

That's it. Be dedicated, don't be stupid. Okay, next question comes from Livingstone and it goes like this. I've been cycling for approximately two years and have made some significant gains using a structured periodization based plan. I train a Lot on the road for cross country mountain biking. And I've recently taken up the challenge of jogging a bit for cross training, as well as a quick morning session to trim my body fat down a bit. The problem I have is that my quads keep cramping. Not like explosive violence calf cramp, but more of a consistent tightening of the muscles which make up the front of my leg muscles, I guess, the quads. I get so sore that I actually have to stop jogging. And then it actually gets even tighter after I stop aerobically. I feel great and just want to break out into a fast jog, but my legs say no. Can the quad muscles on cyclists get shorter from cycling? What could be the cause of the problem? And can you suggest a plan to fix it?

Yes, when you cycle shorter. Answer. Your quads can get shorter. Your hip flexors get shorter. When you're sitting on a bike, you are leaning forward, and your hip flexors, which are responsible for flexing your hip and a little bit for extending the leg at the knee joint, can actually get into a shortened, cramped position. It's the same reason that people who sit at a desk all day long are more likely to have hip or quad cramps, because you have a shortened muscle. And when you're exercising a shortened muscle, often it can go into that cramped spasmic state. So, you know, the question is, why would he be cramping? You know, because there's multiple causes for cramps, electrolytes, hydration, et cetera. Well, if you look at that study that they did, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before on pickle juice and how pickle juice can stop muscle cramps, what they found was that simply tasting something incredibly salty can act on your neural reflexes. So that study proposed that cramps were due to neuromuscular fatigue and that what happened was you had this basically over signaling via what's called an alpha motor neuron into your muscle, causing over excitation of that muscle. And when you taste something salty, it inhibits that alpha motor neuron reflex and alleviates the cramp. The issue here is that if Livingston. That's his name. Livingston.

Yeah, that's where the email came from.

Yeah, Cool name. Sounds like something like from Sherlock Holmes. So if Livingston is not exercising to extreme fatigue, it's unlikely that his cramps are due to neuromuscular fatigue. And it's unlikely that tasting something really salty would help him in a case like that. If it's really not like over excitation via this alpha motor neuron the other thing that can happen with cramps, and one of the main reasons cramps occur is when muscles are basically unable to relax. And that's due to these fibers called myosin fibers, not fully detaching from the actin fibers. So you have these myosin actin fibers that kind of slide up against one another during exercise. And what happens is after they are attached to one another, ATP, which is basically energy, is what has to attach to myosin for myosin to detach from actin and for the muscle to relax. So if you don't have enough ATP, then the myosin heads remain attached to the actin. And that is why someone who is dead would go into rigor mortis because of the absence of ATP. It's also the reason that someone who doesn't have enough energy on board to make ATP, whether not having enough water or not having enough, you know, like sugar on board, could also have a muscle cramp during intense exercise. So it can also be due to a nutritional deficiency, not just like an electrolyte deficiency or fatigue. And that could also be an issue. However, in this case, I'm pretty certain that this cramp is simply due to inflexible quadriceps or shortened hip flexors due to spending time on the bike. And if you just throw in some hip openers, you know, some lunging hip flexor exercises, some standing quadriceps exercises, do some foam rolling on the front of the legs to lengthen those muscles, that should do a pretty good job alleviating those cramps and taking care of these muscles that have become larger and more shortened due to the cycling.

I think last week you went into some great detail answering a question about cramping too. So if you, if you go Back to episode 176, there was a question from Charles. You can hear more about all the different ways that you can alleviate cramps.

Yeah, there you go.

Okay, so next question comes from Dylan. And Dylan says, is the so called starvation gene or thrifty gene a myth? I'd like to start this year getting into competitive bodybuilding. But since no matter what I try, I seem to be stuck around 15% body fat, I was thinking of going on a very low calorie diet. But you sometimes hear about the thrifty gene kicking in on starvation diets, making fat loss even more difficult. Is there really such a thing? What is the fastest way to go from 15% body fat to 5% body fat?

Yikes. How quickly? I could probably sell that.

I think it's noroviruses, 15 to 5.

In just three days. Thrifty gene hypothesis. That's an interesting hypothesis. Some people misunderstand it and think that it basically is your body becoming fat because you have been put in a situation where you don't have enough food, so your body wants to store food. But actually, that originally was proposed as a hypothesis for the origin of diabetes, because in diabetes you become insulin insensitive and you basically tend to store things like sugar and convert things like sugar into fat a lot more readily. And of course, obesity and being overweight goes right along with that. But the thrifty gene hypothesis basically proposes that some people have this thrifty gene that would have been advantageous if you were, say, like a hunter gatherer population, because it would allow you to get fat when there was a lot of food around. And then fatty individuals who had these thrifty genes would better survive if food was in abundant or in a time of famine or starvation. And so you'd have basically diabetes as a way to keep people alive and to help these people who have the thrifty gene actually stay alive. So it's an interesting hypothesis, and it certainly is just that hypothesis. And I don't believe an actual genetic marker, a genetic thrifty gene, has been identified per se. But there was a really, really interesting article about this in the New York Times this week, actually came out last week that basically had researchers and researchers are looking into metabolic and hormonal changes that happen when someone is los losing weight. What happened was they looked at these folks who were basically obese men and women, and they put them on a very low calorie diet, just about 500 calories a day, for, I believe it was around 10 weeks, so a pretty long time of a very low calorie intake. And what they found was that despite the weight that was lost during that period of very low calorie intake, almost all of these folks regained a lot of the weight that they lost. And they also reported feeling a lot more hungry and a lot more preoccupied with food than they did before they went through the study, before they lost the weight. And one of the reasons for that is that your body remains in this biologically altered state after you've gone through a period of very low calorie intake. So, for example, you've got a hormone called ghrelin, which is the hormone that can spark your appetite and make you hungry. And they found that in these folks, that was about 20% higher than it was at the start of their Period of very low calorie intake. And then there's another hormone that helps to suppress appetite is called peptide yy, and that was found to be really, really low in these folks after they'd gone through a period of very low calorie intake. Leptin, which is kind of the opposite of ghrelin leptin, suppresses hunger and it suppresses appetite and it increases your metabolism that remained significantly lower than it was before. So what happened was post very low calorie diet, these folks metabolisms had actually kind of lowered. And it's possible that there is a genetic mechanism that causes some people to have more of a response than others to such a very low calorie diet. But ultimately, what's very important to realize here is that these people were not calorie cycling, meaning they weren't going on low calorie from Monday through Friday and kind of refilling the energy tank a little bit on Saturday or Sunday, which I recommend, by the way. And instead they were just going through this period of just very low calorie intake the entire time. And whereas a day of skipping meals and low calorie intake is not going to put your body into quote, unquote starvation mode, which a lot of dietitians and nutritionists would have you to believe, if you go through 10 weeks of very low calorie intake, 500 calories, that's not much at all, then yeah, you can certainly spark a change in your metabolism and in your hormones that can make your body want to stay fat and wants to put on weight and have these appetite cravings that you normally wouldn't have had prior to the very low calorie diet. So if you want to get into competitive bodybuilding, and if no matter what you seem to be stuck around 15% body fat, you should try what I tried in college to dump a lot of body fat. And that was I just completely cut out processed sugar and alcohol. Just completely cut it out. That sounds really simple, but it's actually kind of hard to do, especially when you're a junior in college and there are lots of parties, lots of carbs, and you have a lot of money to buy food and carbs are cheap. But I was on a high protein diet with no processed sugar and no alcohol. Now if I could go back and do it over again, I would balance out those proteins with healthy fats so that I didn't get into the hormonal deficit that I got into from, from doing a very high protein diet with very low fats. But what I would do is include healthy fats in your diet. Avocados and coconut type of foods. Coconut oil, coconut meat, olive oil and olives. And a lot of these healthy Mediterranean fats. Cold water, fish, omega 3 fatty acids, fish oil, things of that nature. And I would be eating adequate amounts of protein. And then I would cut out processed sugar and cut out alcohol completely. And you should be able to lose right around in the range depending on your weight. Really does depend on your starting weight, but your starting weight, anywhere from a little under a pound to almost two pounds of fat a week doing that and for me it was over the course of about it was about five months for me to drop from 10% down to just under 3% body fat. Using that approach to get into competitive bodybuilding shape. But simple processed sugar, alcohol, probably the two biggest culprits when it comes to keeping your body fat elevated. Wow.

Under 3% body fat, that's low.

Yeah, I was basically just like a big piece of muscle that laid around on the couch and went to the gym sometimes.

Nice. Okay, our next question comes from Bill. Bill says my sister in law is taking CrossFit classes and doing their diet. They tell her not to eat beans because it irritates the digestive tract. Do you have any thoughts on this? I've always thought that beans are very healthy.

It's kind of funny because we were talking about Tim Ferriss four hour body earlier and how he vilifies fruit. But he recommends a whole slow carb diet which includes quite a few beans and legumes in that. So it's also interesting that in that same book he talks a lot about some of the folks associated with CrossFit and how cool they are. So it's very interesting that beans are something that are actually not recommended by a lot of the CrossFit folks and Paleo people like Lauren Cardain and Rob Wolf and some of these people. There's multiple reasons that beans are not recommended. Probably the biggest one is that beans are tough on the digestive system and they can aggravate autoimmune diseases. So basically beans have lectins in them. And I don't think I'm going to get into lectins too much because I've talked about them before in other shows, but they're just sugar binding proteins. So what that means is that lectins can bind to and attach to cell membranes in your body and they can kind of disrupt metabolism and cause some issues, especially when it comes to digestion and especially when it comes to the Health of your immune system and production of antibodies. And so if you have an autoimmune condition, anything from irritable bowel syndrome, to Crohn's disease to arthritis, to Hashimoto's, to a hypothyroid issue, to allergies, tough allergies, diabetes, beans, and especially beans that aren't soaked or sprouted are going to have a lot of lectins in them and could cause issues, especially some of the beans like tofu and soybeans. Peas, lentils and peanuts are a few of the other big ones. So that is certainly true, especially if you're eating beans out of the can or if you're not soaking or sprouting your beans. The other argument is that beans are tough to digest, and that is true. Beans that aren't properly soaked and drained and boiled and preferably drained again and then slow cooked can cause some pretty big digestive distress or gas. And even when you do treat beans through all those methods, beans are still going to cause a little bit more gas than usual. Beans are very starchy, they're very high in carbohydrates. So a lot of the low carb people aren't big fans of beans. And yeah, that certainly is true. I mean, it's a slow burning carbohydrate. It's not going to cause quite as high a rise in blood sugar. So I actually do recommend them as a slightly more stable form of energy than say, like fruit or grains. But yeah, I mean, they are starchy food. They are a carbohydrate food. Some beans, like soybeans, fava beans, are another example. They have phytoestrogens in them. And phytoestrogens are estrogens that you're going to find in plant products in nature. But they can interfere with hormone function because they do simulate estrogen somewhat in the human body. And especially for females, that can be an issue because the whole reason that phytoestrogens evolved in plants was as a defense mechanism. It was to disrupt the reproductive status of predators that were eating those plants. And so it makes sense that you wouldn't, if you were trying to maintain your reproductive status or optimize your hormones, especially for females, that phytoestrogens may not be the best thing in the world for you to be consuming in like a, like a high amount in food. There have been studies that have shown that beans can have an effect on your brain. And this was tofu and soy in particular that were given to people in a study, and they found that Those people had a higher chance of getting Alzheimer's disease and they also had a lower brain weight and a smaller brain size. And the reason for that is that specifically soybeans, they are just chock full of phytic acid, especially if it's not fermented soy. Fermented soy would be like miso or tempeh or natto. And that phytic acid interferes with vitamin B12 absorption. And when you don't get them with vitamin B12, that is directly associated with your brain shrinking and dementia. So when you take a bean and you soak it and you drain it and you boil it, you can get rid of a lot of the phytic acids, but soybeans are still going to have a lot of phytic acids in them. So I'm not a huge fan of the soybeans. And then of course, a lot of beans have BPA in them because you buy them canned. So if you aren't buying your beans dried and you don't have the time to properly soak beans and drain them and boil them and drain them and slow cook them, you're going to buy canned beans. And canned beans are going to have bisphenol A in them, which is a big issue. It's an endocrine disruptor. It can have a very stark effect, deleterious effect on your hormonal levels. And BPA consumption is associated with a lot of issues including prostate cancer and breast cancer, breast cancer and erectile dysfunction and not fun stuff. So canned foods and plastic bottles and cups are the primary sources of bpa. And you want to be careful eating canned beans. Even though Trader Joe's, I think, has BPA free canned beans. So beans that are properly treated, that are soaked or sprouted, they got a lot of protein in them, they got a lot of fiber in them. As I mentioned, they have kind of the slow burning form of glucose in them. So a lot more friendly to the blood sugar levels. Really high in folate, really high in iron, high in a lot of minerals that you need. And of course, the fiber in beans means you're reducing your risk of colon cancer. Beans do have a lot of positive properties. And if you have the time to properly cook beans and to do all of the proper soaking and the draining and then boiling them and then slow cooking them, that would be how to properly prepare a bean then. Yeah, I mean, it's a great carb. A lot better than bread and a lot better, especially in the middle of the day when you're not exercising, a lot better. Than something like fruit. But if you have an autoimmune disease, I'd stay away from beans because of the lectin issue. And I would especially stay away from because of the phytic acid content, even when they are treated properly, any soybean or soy derivative, and probably the only other one that you don't see quite as common that I stay away from is fava beans. So that's the deal with beans. Not all beans are bad. Some of them are. If you are going to eat beans, eat them properly, treat them right.

All right, so this next question comes from Deborah and I apologize. Somebody is actually jackhammering just outside what would be my office here at home. So if you hear some crazy noises in the background, sorry about that. Hopefully you can ignore it. Deborah, I'm sorry people are jackhammering through your question, but your question says I'm confused about phytoestrogens. Should I be avoiding them or seeking them out? I'm a 44 year old woman with a history of fibroids and atypical ductile hyperplasia in both breasts. So I'm quite concerned about managing estrogen. I would appreciate your views.

Yeah, let me. I can hear the jackhammer. We need to feed this through it through like the jackhammer reducer. Isn't that a feature on most computers? The jackhammer? It is.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna engage it right now.

Okay. Engaging the jackhammer reduction. So what'd you do, shoot the guy jackhammering? I don't hear anymore.

I muted my microphone.

Oh, nice. Okay, so phytoestrogens, which I just got done talking about. Yeah, they can be an issue. They can be a reproductive disruptor because, you know, plants that are getting e want to make sure that whatever animal is eating them maybe doesn't reproduce so that that animal doesn't win out in the whole plant animal battle against, you know, who's going to end up surviving on the face of the planet. Sounds silly, but a lot of biology is based off of these type of mechanisms, these type of survival mechanisms. So when it comes to phytoestrogens. Yeah, they've done a lot of studies on them. And it gets confusing because is there's been some epidemiological studies that show a protective effect when you consume phytoestrogens against breast cancer. And there have also been studies that show that there could be a potential for tumor growth with larger concentrations of the same types of phytoestrogens. So it's almost like this diminishing benefit once you get to a certain point of phytoestrogen consumption. There are some studies that show that isoflavones have these mechanisms in them which can help to inhibit tumor growth. Which is interesting because a lot of foods that have phytoestrogens in them also have isoflavones. So it's interesting to note that it's possible that the same type of cancers that could be caused by phytoestrogens, if phytoestrogens are consumed in nature, may also have some isoflavones that help to inhibit that same risk. There were some recent studies that showed that consumption of soy estrogens were safe for patients with breast cancer and could decrease mortality and decrease recurrence rates. And so those fly in the face of other studies that suggest larger concentrations of phytoestrogens could actually increase risk of cancer. So my whole take on this is I would just be really, really careful with large amounts phytoestrogen intake, and you're gonna get your highest amount of phytoestrogens from soybeans. As I mentioned, a lot of whole grain cereals are really high in phytoestrogens, so I wouldn't be putting down the Special K too significantly. And you're gonna find some seeds, particularly sesame seeds and flaxseeds are also fairly high in phytoestrogens. So what I would do, if you want to cover your bases, is just don't eat soybeans, tofu, like soy milk, really limit intake of flaxseeds and sesame or flaxseed oil and sesame seed oil. And I wouldn't worry too much past that point when it comes to phytoestrogens. So it's kind of like, get any of the big sources out of your diet. And then after that point, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's the folks who are having tofu on their salad and a couple of soy milk lattes and maybe a bunch of flax oil. Those are the folks who are getting a lot of phytoestrogens with minimal phytoestrogen intake naturally that you're going to get from things like yams and rice and apples and carrots and pomegranates and some of these other things that naturally contain some phytoestrogens. I wouldn't worry too much about that. That I would just be careful with. Basically, like, soy would be the main one. Cool.

That seems to be a common theme on this show. It seems that soy and canola oils and things like that just avoid them or at least minimize them and you'll be in good stead.

Let's just name this podcast DAI Soy. No, seriously, just like anything else soy. I have soy in my diet quite a bit. I have miso and natto and tempeh. And you just make sure that's a fermented form of soy, which can reduce a lot of these phytic acids and make them not really an issue unless you do have, as I mentioned earlier, some type of autoimmune disease.

Sounds good. Onto the next question from Jeffrey. Jeffrey says, I just want to know what your thoughts on crank lengths for triathlon. He says he currently rides 175 millimeter and I'm considering dropping down to 172 pounds. What are the benefits of doing this? Should I do this? And I think I'm overcooking my quads with 175 millimeter cranks.

Yeah. And anytime you have a longer crank, you are increasing the amount of muscle tension and the amount of force that must be applied to the pedal in order to make your bicycle go. So when you switch to short cranks, you naturally are going to increase your RPM or your cadence and you're going to pedal around more times per minute, which means you're going to apply less force to the pedal with each pedal stroke. You'll have less muscle tension and you'll have kind of a natural propensity to have a little bit of a higher turnover when you run after you finish biking. You know, I personally switched from 175 millimeter cranks to 172.5 millimeter cranks last year, and it's kind of a fad in triathlon right now to go with a slightly shorter crank than would be recommended by a typical crank like length calculator. So yes, my opinion is that if you have knee pain, if you need to work on increasing your cadence, if you tend to be a gear masher like I tended to be when you switch to shorter cranks, it's going to help with some of those issues. So I would certainly encourage you to look into shorter cranks to find out. Kind of a baseline if you're listening in and you want to know like approximately how long your crank should be. There are crank length calculators out there. I'll put a link to one in the show notes to kind of find your optimum bicycle crank length. So you take whatever crank length is recommended based off of a typical crank length calculator like that, and you just go down one size and that would be about the size that you'd go for if you wanted to kind of have this shorter crank length philosophy that actually works pretty well. If you're doing triathlon and you want to run off the bike, that's crazy.

Like being a. I'm a child of the metric system and 2.5 millimeters is not very much. That's a tiny little difference in length. And it really makes that much of a difference. Sure.

You're looking at 2.5 millimeters over an entire circular motion. So you're multiplying that by every single point you arrive at in that circular motion times thousands of circular motions per hour. And yeah, it becomes quite significant. It's, you know, like running. If you were to have 2.5 extra millimeters of vertical travel from bouncing up and down while you're running, it doesn't seem like much, but by the end of a marathon, you know, you've traveled up and down like, I don't know, probably an extra half mile or so.

Yeah, that makes sense. So it's the incremental difference, not the actual difference in like one stroke.

Exactly.

The over the hours you're on the bike. Cool. Interesting. All right, our next question is from Graham. And Graham says is periodization dead? With the traditional view being build a base focusing on aerobic long slow fat burning, then focusing on more interval muscular endurance, then on a short pre race peak phase with the evidence pointing to the high interval, high intensity interval training being applicable for building aerobic base and also building VO2 and raising lactate threshold. Can you just train with variations to the interval training all year? Would that work? Are hard aerobic or lactate threshold intervals a good way to build a base aerobic foundation.

Periodization is, is basically very, very simply put, simply making sure that you're doing more race specific workouts. The closer you get to a race or the closer to an event. And because of that, it makes sense that you would be doing less high intensity race pace efforts when you're farther away from an event. And instead using the fact that you don't have to focus on that intensity then to do things like skill work and work on your basic fitness, your base, your ability to go for long periods of time, or your ability to generally maintain aerobic efforts. And when you're first getting into exercise, when you're first getting into something like triathlon or marathoning, that's very important. If you can't run more than 10 minutes without stopping, it makes a great deal of sense. If you're getting ready for say a Marathon to first focus on maybe being able to build up to being able to run slowly for 60 minutes or 90 minutes before you head over to the track and start doing 100, 400 and 800 meter intervals. Because you simply have to be able to last once you've been in the sport a while and you've got that base built up and you've put in the time, you've been doing it a few years and you know that you've got the endurance. You know, for example, me, I know that I have the endurance to be able to do an ironman. So now I just want to be able to do one fast. Well, that's where you shift focus and you're spending a lot more time doing intervals, doing track work, doing speed work. And so it really depends on where you're at with your training. So if you're looking at, say, like a pro triathlete who's been training for 10 years and competing at a very, very high level, yeah, you're going to see them doing a lot less aerobic base sessions just because they've got the base. They've been in the sport long enough to where they have that BAS engine. And so now all they need to do is work on speed and skill and economy and efficiency. But if you're just getting into the sport, you are going to find that you're doing a lot more kind of slow aerobic sessions. So if you are just getting into the sport, I would not recommend that you use high intensity intervals, track work, hard anaerobic sessions to build your base. Because you're going to do two things. You're going to develop bad form and you're going to get injured. It's very, very easy to go hard and have bad form when you go hard, and it's very, very easy to get injured when you don't have the endurance to lay that going hard on top of, especially if you're training to go for long distances. So if you're just getting into the sport, work on your aerobic base by doing long, slow aerobic workouts. And then once you're actually confident that you're able to go the distance and you've done so multiple times in many races, then you worry less about that and you actually can simulate that same type of aerobic base building with hard efforts like VO2 max efforts and lactate threshold efforts and these hard anaerobic intervals. But it really depends on your level of experience. So the answer is yes and no to Graham's question. Depending on how experienced you are. And remember that there are also recovery implications when it comes to building your base via doing hard anaerobic sessions. Like, for example, I'm using this strategy of doing these sufferfest workouts that I talked about really, really hard but fairly short cycling efforts to kind of get my base back up. I can do that because I've been in this sport for a while and I know I've got the basic endurance, but it's going to take me a lot longer to recover from doing a very dark place workout. Like, my legs are sore today. If I'd have just gone on like an easy two hour BASE ride yesterday, yeah, I would have spent more time doing it, but I certainly would have recovered a lot faster. So when you're doing the easy aerobic efforts for base training, you are able to recover faster and kind of bounce back and do the workout the next day. Whereas doing all the hard stuff, you certainly need to pay a lot closer attention to recovery.

Very cool. All right, our next question comes from Susan. Susan says I'm a triathlete currently training for my second half Ironman race in April. I got talked into doing the Ragnar Relay in Arizona at the end of February with my husband's team. This will include running three times over the course of 48 hours, anywhere from four to eight miles each time. So her question is, how do I work this into my training plan and how do I fuel so that I have enough energy for each of the runs? I try to follow a paleo ish diet due to stomach issues with gluten. So all that, all that you can eat bagels and Gatorade would be the recipe for disaster. I guess that's what they have at the aid stations in this Ragnar Relay. Sleeping will also be an issue as some of the runs are in the middle of the night and we only stop to sleep either in the van or at a hotel for three to four hours. So any advice as to how to maximize my recovery so that I'm not trashed for the following week of triathlon training? Training and am still able to put forth a good effort for the team?

Yeah, sure. This is similar to a question that I got over on the Endurance Planet podcast when I interviewed a guy named Christian Isaacson who was doing the race in Kona, where it was five Ironman triathlons in five days on each of the five islands in Hawaii. And we were kind of talking about what he should be eating. And this is. This is not quite as intense as that, but it certainly is kind of the similar concept, right? You're exercising and then you're stopping and recovering and then exercising again and just kind of going over and over again over the course of a couple of days. So what I would recommend, I'm going to go over four things. Okay? First of all, what you do before and during your run. So immediately before and during you can do things like the simple sugars. Okay? So you could do like a gel or a little bit of fruit right before you head out on that 4 to 8 miler and take in right around 200 to 250 calories per hour of simple carbohydrates, whether from juice or coke or gels or whatever else during. And that's what you would do immediately before enduring is easily digesting simple carbohydrates. Now once you've walked into the door of your van or whatever it is you guys are driving around on as you're doing ragnar, after that, then you switch from the simple carbs to complex carbohydrates mixed with protein. So for example, you could do, let me think of something that would be easy for you to take on the road. You could do something like a whey protein powder or rice or pea protein powder with nuts or a nut butter and a little bit of almond milk or rice milk in there, there. And you could have something like that as an example of a complex carbohydrate mixed with protein for right after you've finished. Okay. About twice as much or three times as much carbohydrate as protein. All right. So that's gonna gonna help to refill your muscles glycogen stores. And it works even better if you kind of split that into a few doses. So you like have a small meal right when you finish and another small meal like an hour after, another one about two hours after, rather than eating it all at once, once. Okay. The rest of the time, when you're not immediately before or during a run, or you are not immediately after a run, you're basically eating primarily healthy fats, healthy, slow burning energy, seeds, nuts, olives, avocados, coconut milk, that type of thing. So that's basically your slow burning energy so that you are not overdoing it on the carbs and getting the GI distress and kind of the, the hit on your hormones that will come with too many carbs. So you're basically doing fats when you're not immediately before, during or after your workouts. And those fats can come with a little bit of protein. But the problem with protein is it takes a lot of energy to digest and it stays in your digestive system for a long period of time and doesn't burn quite as easily as a fuel as the fats will. So that's what I would be doing. So those are the first three things. Things would be easily digesting simple carbohydrates immediately before or during complex carbohydrates mixed with protein right after fats most of the rest of the time. And then lastly, look into supplements so that you bounce back more quickly after each effort. So for example, I would do, if this were me, I can tell you exactly what I do. I do three things. I would take a whole amino acid supplement like master amino pattern capsule capsules. I'll link to those in the show notes. They're what I take. Master amino pattern capsules, five or 10 of those about 30 minutes before you head out. So that's going to spare you breaking down your body's own muscle for fuel. Okay, next, for what you eat during, you have a gel with amino acids in it, like Roctane, like Gu Roctane. That's an example of a gel with amino acids in it. Okay. That again will help to decrease soreness, help you to recover more quickly once you finish. And then the last thing you do is along with that, post workout, complex carbohydrates mixed with protein. Or at some other point during the day, in between your runs, you take in proteolytic enzymes. Okay. These will help to decrease inflammation and help your muscles to repair more quickly. That would be something like recover ease. I'll link to that in the show notes as well. But that's what I take for my proteolytic enzymes. And that would be it. So that's what I would do from a supplementation standpoint is the amino acids, the gel with the amino acids and then like a proteolytic enzyme immediately after.

That's some good recovery. Let's move on to the next question that comes from Sam. And Sam asks, what is your take on wheat grass and other grasses plus other sprouted grains? It seemed that Dr. Davis was tearing it all down. So I'm curious on what your take and if you talked with him more and no more on his take.

Well, of course Sam is referring to the interview with Dr. William Davis in the book Wheat Belly where we talked a lot about a ton of the issues with modern wheat. And it of course scared me silly. I didn't know a lot of the things that we spoke about in terms of wheat, even though I Eat wheat that is soaked and sprouted. I didn't realize that a lot of the modern wheat is just a completely different wheat, especially in terms of. Of the way that it was created. It's basically cultivated in a different way than like the ancient grains, like what would be called, like, the Einkorn or the Emmer form of grains. And what has happened in the process of actually increasing food supply by changing the type of wheat that we're consuming. One of the primary things is that the amount of gluten and the amount of wheat germ agglutinin, abbreviated wga, gone through the roof. So these are the proteins in wheat that can cause, like, leaky gut syndrome, that can cause autoimmune systems, that can cause an increase in gliadin, which directly stimulates your appetite through the roof and causes a lot of these issues that Dr. Davis was talking about. My initial thought about this was, a, can we find grains that are lower in this gluten and wheat germ agglutinin? And you certainly can. And then B, can we find forms of wheat that are closer to kind of like the ancient grains, basically, alternative wheat cereals. So. So there's five kind of alternative wheat cereals that are out there. There are Einkorn, Emmer, spelt Kamet, and one called Triticale. And these are spoken about in detail, in great detail in terms of their agronomy, their production, where you can get them, how they're made, et cetera. In an article that I will link to in the show Notes, a very comprehensive article about alternative wheat cereals. And any of these alternative wheat cereals are going to be lower in this wheat, germagglutinin, and lower in gluten, and would be a better choice. The problem is that if you get them in their flower form, they're typically old, okay? So they're more prone to mold. They are gonna be less fresh. A lot of the nutrients are gonna be degraded. So if you're planning on using any of these type of more anc, you got to buy a mill, okay? You got to buy a home mill and mill it yourself. So you're looking at spending a few hundred dollars on something like that. So just FYI, this is going to be an increase in the amount of work on your part. If you do want to want to have your wheat, need it too. But there certainly are studies that have shown that there can be a complete lack of toxicity in these type of grains, like in this Einkorn grain, in the Gliadin, Einkorn Grain. There was a study done on FOL folks who actually had Celiac disease and they ate this Einkorn grain with absolutely no issues. Total lack of what's called intestinal mucosal toxicity in these folks who had that form of grain. So yeah, you can certainly eat grains other than wheat and really lower the WGA and the agglutinin. And you would do that by, for example, when we're talking about Einkorn, you'd have to buy whole grain Einkorn berries and mill them your yourself and make your own flour and make your own bread doing something like this. But it's certainly doable. It just comes down to not buying your bread from the grocery store. So when you do that, you get a lot more of this wga. And the whole problem with the wheat germagglutinin, basically it's a lectin, like I talked about in the soybeans earlier, is it's extremely tough. It's got what are called disulfide bonds in it. And that's basically the same type of bonds you have in your hair. Everything about eating hair, it's pretty tough for your digestive system to break it down. And those are kind of the issues with the wheat germ and glutenin. It's just incredibly hard for you to digest.

If somebody wanted to make a million dollars, they could just start making some bread out of those ancient grains and sell it to the celiac population. I'm sure they'd be very grateful for that.

Yeah, I don't know what would go into all that, but. But I think that as people realize how bad wheat actually is for you, we're going to see more and more of these quote unquote ancient grains being marketed in food products. It's just a question of whether or not they retain a lot of their high nutrient status and stay away from mold and everything. And if they're actually milled in places that aren't milling wheat, which is the problem right now, is you just can't find anything that's that's milled. And at least I haven't yet on a mill that isn't also processing other modern forms of wheat. So you'd have to. I'm a fan of just doing stuff yourself. Buy your Einkorn wheat berries or your kamut or whatever else in its regular whole wheat berry form and then mill it. And there's obviously going to be a learning curve. You're going to have to learn how to make your own bread and learn how to make your own flour if you want to move forward with something like this.

I was just thinking while we were doing this episode that if we ever wanted to have the Ben Greenfield fitness drinking game, I think the key word would be gluten. Take a drink every time Ben says gluten.

Just not beer.

No, I think it'd have to be wheatgrass or something.

Yeah. Okay.

All right. Hey, our last question last question comes from Cheek and Cheek asks and I'm going to add in all cat caps. So she's very excited about this. I am 48 female and trying to train for a sprint triathlon. I cannot find any books or information on how to start from scratch. I can run 5k. I've trained in the past and ran a 10k, but I have no biking knowledge and I'm now just taking swimming lessons. But I'm a long way from being able to do 750 meters. Do you have any books or can you recommend one that would put me on the right track without wasting time doing things things the wrong way?

Oh, it's too easy of a question to answer because I mean this. I don't know if a lot of listeners know about this, but I spend much of my time creating triathlon training materials inside what is called the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. You could like if you joined over there as a bronze member, which is seven bucks a month, you would get access to all of our learning modules which are designed to take someone who is just getting started in the sport of triathlon and move them forward. So we start off with these are all seminars, videos and articles, but how to start training for triathlon moves into essential swim gear essential run gear essential bike gear how to sign up for your triathlon how to start your first triathlon training week how to lift weights for triathlon what to do in the last few weeks before your triathlon beginner open water swim tips how to set up your transition area how to actually race the triathlon what to eat during your triathlon how to recover after your triathlon and then we move into more intermediate topics like how to eat your triathlon diet more advanced swim gear that helps you go faster how to use the swim clock by the pool how to use a power meter on a bike how to choose an indoor trainer for the bike bike wheels and equipment modifications that make you faster more advanced running equipment like orthotics how to climb hills when you're running how to climb hills when you're cycling how to do the most common swim drills how to travel to A triathlon, how to taper, how to do a carbohydrate load, and then we even get into things like how to get into the pain cave during a race and how to legally draft during a triathlon. We've got a couple coming up, like, on how to get your pro card for triathlon. Little mental tactics you can use to kind of get yourself way deep into the pain cave during a triathlon. So, I mean, I'll cut it short there because I don't want this to turn into a big, long commercial. But, I mean, it's seven bucks a month. Just go join the Rockstar Triathlete Academy and you pretty much have everything you needed. I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but that's. That's what I do. I wouldn't read a book. I just go join the Academy. That's why I created it.

I think even in the Academy, you probably recommend a few books as well. I'm a Gold Wings member over at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, and it's. Yeah, there's. There's tons of stuff there lead you in all kinds of directions.

I mean, you actually, you can get, I think, about half my books for free, just, just as bonuses for joining. They're all right there in the members area, so there's a bunch of books there to, to get you going as well.

Well, usually this is where we would go into our feature topic, but because we're actually splitting the. The podcast up. That's it.

Yeah. So I really, really encourage folks, though. You know, go, go tune in to the podcast that will come out this Saturday about cell phones and the effect that they have on your brains. I understand that this podcast, I wasn't really timing it, but it seems like we went for about maybe an hour and a half or so. We're going to try and shave our Q and A down to a very palatable hour or so, just so you know, for future reference and that that will happen. But of course, we're still just in a huge stage of experimentation, and you, the listener, are the guinea pig. So congratulations.

We also just continue to keep getting such great questions all the time that it's really hard to limit it. Like right now, I think my backlog is over 20 questions, not including what we went through today. So if you are asking questions, if you're sending questions into Ben and you, you don't hear your question right away, don't despair. Just know that there is a backlog. We likely will get to the question just give us a little bit of time.

There is hope. So thanks for listening in, folks. Remember that Eating for Endurance seminar next week. Remember to tune to the podcast this Saturday and remember to visit the Show Notes for this episode, episode number 177. Because Brock and I put links to everything that gets talked about in there. And often if I mention a book or if I mention a product, I'll try as much as possible to make it so that if you go to the Show Notes to purchase or to look into what I talk about, it does help to support the show because I'll try and use some type of a link that will help to give us a little bit of commission. That always helps to keep the podcast going as well. So if you hear us talk about something, go to the Show Notes to to buy it if you get a chance. That also supports the show. So thank you for listening in, folks. And hopefully that podcast didn't create more questions than it answered. But Brock, I guess I'll talk to you next week.

Absolutely. We'll be back in a week.

All right, see you then, folks. Sam.