Episode #178: Why Sweet Potatoes Are Better Than Regular Potatoes
29 Jan 2026 · 73 min
Podcast episode #178 (Ben GreenfieldFitness, Jan 11, 2012). Co-host Ben Greenfield and Brock open with announcements (public talks in Coeur d'Alene on Jan 14 and Rose Creek, CA on Jan 21; Tri Ripped program launch and live seminar). News flashes summarize recent studies: unilateral leg training produces cross-education strength gains; rear-foot (heel) strike increases injury risk vs mid/forefoot strike and minimalist shoes; central governor model/VO2max testing can be influenced by protocol and mental strategies. The bulk is a listener Q&A covering: sweet potato vs white potato for endurance fueling (nutrient differences, GI, nightshade alkaloids—sweet potato preferred pre-race for those sensitive), credible senior-fitness personal trainer credentials (look for college degree, experience; certifications: NSCA, NASM, ACE, AFPA, AFAA; references, insurance), race planning timelines (recommended preparation windows and phases for distances from 5K/sprint to Ironman), bike-to-run conversion by calorie/metabolic equivalents (UT conversion chart referenced; example: 20mi@15mph ≈ running 5.7mi), tennis as useful plyometric/turnover cross-training with caveats, muscle fiber types (Type I, IIa, IIb and limited conversion—2a shows plasticity), ketosis vs ketoacidosis distinctions, and approaches to suspected adrenal insufficiency (lifestyle, diet, sleep, low-carb, supplements including omega-3s, MCTs, electrolytes, and adaptogenic herbs). Episode directs listeners to show notes for links and resources.
Chapters
In this why sweet potatoes are better than regular potatoes. Also, personal trainer credentials, setting race goals, bike to run equivalencies, tennis as triathlon training can muscle fibers change Type, ketoacidosis and adrenal fatigue.
Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top 50 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 there health, wellness and fitness fanatics. Brock here for another Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. And of course we're joined by the man himself, Ben. How's it going?
I'm freezing.
Oh, is, has winter caught up to you?
I went swimming this morning and the pool's boiler is broken and I'm just, I'm frickin freezing. I literally like, I'm, I'm bundled up right now with my hoodie and got home from the pool literally like 10 or 15 minutes ago. And it's gotta be, gosh, like maybe, you know, 65 degrees, which doesn't sound that cold. But when you're submerged in it for an hour and you know, it's early morning and it's cold outside and you drive home in the freezing car, I am just, I'm jonesing for like a roaring fire in my office right now. That's what I'd love to have.
Well, don't do it. Just don't, don't, don't start anything on fire. It's gotta be a better urge.
So other than that, I'm good. Brock. And are you recovered from your, from your double half marathon slash marathon that you did down in Florida over the weekend?
I'm getting there. I think I have a couple more days of some like some hardcore beer drinking to do and then I'll be, then I'll be back.
Yep, a sign from coach, right? Yeah.
Very important recovery beers over the first carb loading protocol.
You cross the finish line and start loading.
Exactly.
Special announcements.
So I wanted to announce a couple of speaking engagements that I have. If anybody is in these towns that I'm speaking at, then come on out and say hello. Saturday, January 14th, which is actually this weekend. If you're listening to this, when this podcast comes out, I will be speaking over at Pilgrim's Wellness Institute in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, which is fairly close to my home actually. It's an open forum over there. Myself and several physicians are going to be there answering questions primarily concerning health, nutrition and fitness in a really kind of open Q and A type of format. So that is kicking off at 11am in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, at Pilgrim's Wellness Institute the following weekend. Also a Saturday on January 21st, I will be down in California in Rose Creek, California, which is close to Sacramento, from 9am to 4pm that Saturday, January 21st, I'll be speaking at what's called the Total Transformation Health Expo down there. And I believe the general focus of that is actually Kids Wellness and Kids Fitness. So I'll be down there as well on Saturday. And then I also wanted to mention that today, the day this podcast comes out, I'm actually teaching a live seminar at 6pm Pacific time, I'm teaching a seminar on Tri Ripped, which is the triathlon training program that launches at midnight tonight. And I will be answering any questions that folks have about what goes into that, what distance is designed for, what levels of triathletes it's designed for, and what it's all about. Or as you would say, aboot Brock. So that's about it for the special announcements.
You haven't had a Canadian dig for at least three episodes, but you just had to get one in there.
Yeah, I'll blame it on the cold.
News flashes.
Okay. Www.twitter.com BenGreenfield what did you find for us this week that's new and interesting and exciting?
Well, as I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I injured my right knee recently and I was able to keep myself in relatively good shape, not only from doing things like swimming and upper body work, but also by working the opposite side of my body, the left side of my body. And the reason I bring that up is there was actually a study that just came out in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. The title was a little bit of a mouthful. It was actually called the reduction in Corticospinal inhibition in the trained and Untrained Limb Following Unilateral Leg strength training. Essentially, what that means in a nutshell is that when you are training one side of your body, even if you're not training the other side of your body, the other side of your body is still getting significantly stronger. And so in my case, when I injured my right knee, I was in the gym doing left leg extensions, left leg curls, left leg squats, left leg hops, and as much as possible with the left hip and the left leg as possible, because you get a lot of that Cross training effect. This has been known in sports medicine and sports science for a while. But this study really showed a fantastic strength response in the opposite leg when you're training one leg. So I thought that was interesting and wanted to bring it up for folks, anybody who's injured on just one side of your body, go work the other side.
That's just plain crazy. Especially with things like leg extensions and hops. It doesn't seem like that should be doing really well anything on the other side of your body.
It just has to do with the way that the nerves in your body work and similar stimulation in terms of the message coming down from the spinal cord. So you get a lot of a cross training effect.
Crazy.
Another study about running form looked at foot strike and injury rates in endurance runners. And I thought that this was quite eye opening in terms of emphasizing the importance of working on your running form. Looked at middle and long distance runners from a collegiate cross country team. So pretty fast runners. And what they found was a significantly elevated risk of injury in the runners who were striking the ground primarily with their rear foot, with their heel. And you'll see that a lot more often that heel strike in runners who are running with improper form or who are perhaps over striding or maybe even wearing the wrong shoe. And so it, it really emphasizes the importance of making sure that you work on your forward lean and kind of your, your mid to forefoot strike. And it wasn't necessarily this article that inspired me to do it, but I have personally picked up a pair of the, the Vibram five finger shoes. I got the Trek version of those, which is designed for a little bit more rugged, you know, kind of trail running, outdoor running. And I've been wearing those quite a bit. I've run a few times in them and they really do make me lean forward and strike on my forefoot a little bit more habitually. And so maybe it's that type of thing that you need to do to help you run forward on the front of your foot a little bit more. Newton running shoes are an example of a shoe that kind of shifts you forward. Any of this stuff you have to be careful with because whenever you shift yourself forward, you, you know, you might be running in a different way than you used to and setting yourself up for injuring muscles or bones in your foot that you're not used to using. But if you're really, really smart about it and you ease yourself into it, eventually you're going to reduce your risk of injury by shifting your body weight forward. And I'M working on getting somebody on the podcast to talk about running drills and ways that you can really, really train your body to shift the weight forward when you run.
I think we're seeing quite a bit, quite a number of these kind of studies come out just because of the popularity of the Vibrams. And I know the Merrell's making a version that's similar, and Adidas has even started making them. So it's just going to get more and more in the forefront.
Yeah. And I'm a big fan of this shoe. They're incredibly comfortable, too. The last thing I wanted to mention, and I will link to all this stuff in the show notes for this episode. Brock, remind me what episode this is. Is it 178?
178.
Okay, cool. Last thing. There was a really good article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, and I'll link to it, but it was about this central governor model and how it kind of regulates human exercise performance. It was written by Timothy Noakes, who I've interviewed a couple times on this podcast, and he basically went into detail about how you can really override what you may think is your maximum exercise capacity with little mental tricks. And I thought it was interesting because at the same time that this came out, another study came out that looked at actual testing of VO2 max of maximum oxygen consumption. And what it found was that when you don't do a traditional VO2 max test, which is typically starting with a really easy protocol and getting harder and harder and harder as you go until you max out, if you instead start with a really, really hard protocol and then make it easier as you, then what happens is your VO2 max ends up testing out to be higher. And one of the reasons for that is related to what Timothy Noakes brings up in his discussion of this central governor model. And that is that if you know that an effort is going to eventually get easier or eventually let up, you're able to push yourself a lot harder than you think you're able to push yourself versus if you simply start easy and drive yourself up to harder and harder efforts. So the practical manifestations of this is the more that you can take your exercise sessions, especially the hard ones, or your races or your hard, you know, anything hard that you're going to do and split that into really, really short, intermediate goals that you know you're going to reach, and then, you know, have that effort be over with, the harder you're going to be able to push yourself. And so it just goes to show that you can really trick your brain into pushing harder than it actually thinks you're able to push.
It's amazing what we can do to our bodies when the brain is fooled, or vice versa, how much we can limit ourselves by just perceiving how hard we're actually working or how difficult the exercise is.
I find myself doing it in the gym quite a bit, telling myself, okay, I just need to do, you know, 10 reps. And you know, a lot of times, even though if you hadn't been counting, you may have only been able to do seven or eight, somehow you do 10. Or you tell yourself you're going to take 100 strides when you're doing something like, you know, for me, like a treadmill sprint. And I'm able to push myself farther when I know I just need to make it to 100 and then I can stop than if I just get on and just kind of set a less specific goal. So just something to think about. And I think it's a really good read. I'll link to that, that talk by Timothy Noakes in the show notes. And that's about it for the news flashes. And we've got some really great questions today. So what do you think, Brock? Should we move in?
Let's go to the Q and A.
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 cut and 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 try ripped.com. Listener Q&A.
Okay, so our first, actually our first four questions are all audio questions. That's very cool. I love it when the folks out there do my job for me. So this first question comes from Keith.
Ben. This is Keith Mason from near Austin, Texas for a podcast question. I'm running half marathon on January 29th. I'm running a marathon on February 19th. I'm treating it as a training run for a 50k on March 10th. And my question is a little bit about nutrition. On my 17 mile run last Saturday, I I took three roctanes and I took Clif Bar at 10 miles. I've done quite a bit of running. I ran about 1500 miles last year. I never have any GI issues, but the last 50k I ran, I had a baked potato at about 10 mile or about 15 miles and then miscellaneous things at some of the other stops. I'm thinking about switching to a yam or something like that instead of the starchy white baked potato. And I'd probably take one at 10 miles and one again at 20 miles. It's three loops of a 10 mile course. So appreciate hearing something on your podcast. Thank you very much for all your work. Bye.
Cool. So gams or potatoes to fuel the long run? What do you think? Ben?
Well, just a little bit of semantics here. When you say yam, I'm going to basically qualify that as sweet potato because that's pretty much, especially here in America, how we actually eat our yams. We have two different things that we typically see at the grocery store here. One is what is traditionally called a sweet potato here. And it's got this thin kind of yellowish skin, kind of a pale yellow flesh, and that's a sweet potato. And then we have this, this darker skinned kind of thicker, dark orange type of tuber with a little bit redder skin and a little bit more orange flesh. And we call that a yam, even though that's also a sweet potato. Technically a true yam is not something that we get a lot, especially in America. It's usually a little bit sweeter than a sweet potato. It's usually really big. It's typically got like a brown or a black skin, but we really don't get many of those in America. So when I compare a yam to a potato, what I'm comparing is really a sweet potato to a potato, because the terms are used fairly interchangeably, especially in America or Canada, I believe is the same way as well.
Yeah, I think so.
Basically, when we look at a sweet potato versus a potato, the nutritional profile goes back and forth as far as which is more dense from a nutrient perspective. So they share a lot of nutritional similarities. Sweet potatoes and regular potatoes do. They both are good sources of vitamin C. They've got a lot of minerals in them. You'll get a lot of vitamin B6, a lot of potassium in each one. Potatoes are typically a little bit higher in a mineral called manganese. And sweet potatoes are a little bit higher in iron. And so that's one example of a difference between the two. A white potato has about 90 calories. So does A sweet potato, they both have fairly equal amount of carbohydrates. A sweet potato has a little bit higher fiber but a little bit less protein. And another thing to think about, even though it seems counterintuitive with the name of the sweet potato, is that the sweet potato has, has a slightly lower, what's called glycemic index than a regular potato, which is a measure of how quickly your blood glucose is going to rise after you eat it. Ultimately, it's kind of a moot point because the difference isn't that great between a sweet potato and a white potato. But ultimately, when you're looking at this from a strict sports performance perspective, there's not going to be a huge difference between the two in terms of actual caloric utilization. Now, there is another issue that's very important to bear in mind in terms of the difference between a sweet potato and a regular potato, and that is that they are technically from a completely different botanical family. And the reason for that is that the common baking potato, the common white potato, that is from the nightshade family and any of the nightshade plants, they have a substance in them called an alkaloid. And alkaloids are something that can be inflammatory, they can cause joint pain in people who are prone to be sensitive to alkaloid containing foods, in anyone who has something like an autoimmune disease, something like Hashimoto's, something like rheumatoid arthritis, Nightshade plants, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplants, things of that nature, are gonna be something that can actually contribute to joint pain. And you know, it's especially something that you don't want to be putting into your body prior to or during exercise, those alkaloids. Now for that reason, I actually recommend like, you know, pre race, pre important workout. If you're gonna go with a potato based starch, use a sweet potato or a yam versus a regular potato. Just because the sweet potatoes and the yams are a little bit less likely to be disruptive to the digestive system or cause an issue due to that alkaloid content.
So you wouldn't say to take a potato on the long run at all like a regular white potato, even though they're so nicely portable.
Oh yeah. You could take them on a long run, certainly. But what I'm saying is, if you've got the luxury of being able to choose between a sweet potato or yam and a white potato, choose a sweet potato or yam.
I just, I love, I have actually on a number of occasions taken those Little baby potatoes and you just boil them up, throw them in a, in a little Ziploc bag, and it's so, so easy to carry them around where like a sweet potato, you have to kind of chop up and you run the risk of it getting squished in your, in your fanny pack and stuff.
So, yeah, yeah, you're right that those baby potatoes are really, really convenient to just like, cook and put in a little aluminum foil, you know, maybe put some sea salt on them and take out on a long workout. And, you know, it's really only something that someone with an autoimmune disease needs to be really concerned about. But, you know, for me, typically I'm not eating while I'm working out potatoes. I'm eating them before I'm working out. And so in a case like that, I choose the sweet potato or the yam over the baked potato.
All right, well, our next question comes from Klynda, and it goes like this.
Hi, this is Kleinda Plaza. I'm 56 years old, and my question is, if a personal trainer states that they are a certified senior fitness trainer, what credentials should I look for? Because it seems on the Internet that there is a lot of questionable certificates that could be given. My phone number is 712-239-5424. My email address is Glenda G L E N D A P l a z aotmail.com. thank you. I enjoy your podcast. I listen to it all the time. Thanks. Bye.
So what kind of credentials would you look for, Ben?
Well, first of all, people should be aware that the personal training profession is not very well regulated when it comes to training certifications. And technically, a personal trainer doesn't legally have to meet really any like, federal or state requirements, you know, like, say like a doctor or a nurse would need to be able to do. And you can get a personal training certification in a weekend online if you really want to for just a handful of dollars and call yourself a personal trainer and slap a personal trainer certification badge on your website or your shirt or wherever else. And unfortunately, even a lot of gyms, especially a lot of independent gyms, not the big name gyms or the franchise gyms so much, but the independent GY gyms, you'll find that a lot of them won't hire these personal trainers just because they'll work for not very much money. I mean, the average personal trainer makes like $25,000 a year. And so you don't need to pay a personal trainer a whole lot, especially if they're coming to you with one of these weekend certifications, but gyms will still hire them because it's good for a gym to have a personal trainer on staff. That's, that's an added value that a gym can put onto its sell list. But when you look at actual personal trainer certifications that are worth their salt, so to speak, there are definitely some things that you want to look for. The first really, really important thing to look at over and above any certification from anywhere is whether there's a college degree presentation. Because when you look at basic fitness knowledge, and this was actually recorded in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, you'll find that trainers who have a college degree are going to typically score a little bit better on tests of basic fitness knowledge. And if you add experience into that equation, you're going to test even higher. So trainer with 5 years of experience or more, plus a college degree, are going to just blow out of the water. Trainers who maybe have a certification but no college degree, or have a certification and a college degree but very little experience. So those are some of the more important things to look for are college degree and experience. But when you're looking at the actual certification, I know there's a lot of kind of Alphabet soup out there when it comes to all the different certifications that you can get. But the ones that you want to look for, the certifications that actually have components in the certification process that cover working with seniors or programming fitness for older adults, would be basically five of them. Look at the National Strength and Conditioning association, which is abbreviated nsca. Look at the National Academy of Sports Medicine, which is abbreviated nasm. Look at the. And I realize I'm kind of focusing on America here, but look at the American Council on Exercise, which is ACE or ace. Look at the American Fitness Professionals association, which is afpa, and finally the Aerobic and Fitness association of America, which is afaa. Those are going to be certifications that generally are a little bit more rigorous, a little bit more difficult to get, aren't going to involve a weekend certification, typically require some type of experience and or college degree. And they're going to ensure that you actually get a trainer who at least you can have the peace of mind, is educated. Now, there are other things to look for. Look at references. Does the personal trainer have references? Have they worked with other people before? And do those other people have anything to say about them? Does the trainer carry insurance, or does the gym where the trainer is working provide that trainer with insurance? Every trainer should have liability insurance. I personally carry general and professional liability insurance for myself as a personal trainer. And I did that even when I worked at other gyms that also had liability insurance just because it's double coverage. And generally that's a sign that a personal trainer is operating themselves in a professional manner. You need to look into whether or not the trainer actually has the education to be able to dispense nutritional advice or medical advice if that's something that they're doing. Because if they're not certified as a nutritionist or a dietician, or carry some other type of certification that allows them to be able to intelligently dispense nutritional advice, you may want to kind of raise an eyebrow at that. I look into whether or not the trainer themself is healthy and I've seen this a lot before. I've seen some pretty dumpy looking trainers. And I'm not saying that you can't be a great trainer, a great personal trainer and maybe kind of sort of be out of shape. You know, maybe you just got something going on in your life that doesn't allow you to get as fit as you'd ideally like to be able to do. But for the most part, the better trainers are going to be fit themselves. They're going to be walking the walk in addition to talking the talk. And then finally, I would make sure that prior to any type of long term commitment with the trainer, you make sure that the chemistry is right. You make sure that you've had a chance to actually hang out with that trainer, maybe do some sessions with them and not be required to sign up for any type of long term contract before you've made sure that that trainer is actually right for you. You get along with them.
Wow. It sounds like it's a really complicated process when you lay it out like that, but really, I think if you, you go back and listen to what Ben just said, doing a little bit of research on the person that you've chosen to see what their actual, what all that Alphabet soup means is probably the first step. And of course I was glad you mentioned the experience because personally I think the experience can make up for a lot of lack of training or education in some ways too.
It's the same way that you should treat anything when it has to do with someone else being in charge of what goes on with your body. I mean, I don't go to the doctor until I've stalked that doctor online and found out as much about them as I can. I just don't do it. I don't take for granted that the Fact that the doctor is a doctor makes them a person that is going to take good care of my body. I always go above and beyond, and I look for references and I look for experience and I look for testimonials and basically do as much as I can to research the person that's going to be calling the shots when it comes to what goes into my body or, you know, basically the way that I'm taken care of.
Yeah, even the person at the bottom of the class still graduates.
Yep, exactly. Exactly. That's that. Yeah, that's what they say. The. What do you call somebody who gets, you know, a C or a D in medical school?
A doctor.
A doctor. Yeah.
All right, well, let's move on to the next question from Sean. And it goes like this.
Hi, Ben. This is Sean in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have a question for the show, and it has to do with setting goals for this upcoming triathlon season. I would like to know more information on how I can accurately set my triathlon goals for the upcoming year in regard to that post. Goal setting is how would one go about setting the appropriate specific time on a triathlon so I can take my training information and implement that into my overall race? Thanks for the show. Hope it made sense.
So I know it's a perfect time of year to talk about setting race goals. So this is really, really perfect, Sean. Now, how do you go about that, Ben?
Yeah, this. This was, you know, obviously kind of a tough question.
Yeah.
You know, it seemed really general at first. And, you know, what I want to do is just kind of lay out, you know, kind of a general response. But something that I think will be really, really helpful for folks, and that is that the very, very first thing that you want to do is have a realistic time frame in mind. Okay? So here are realistic time frames. If you want to do right around a distance of about a 5k, like a 5k run, up to about a sprint triathlon. Okay. Anything around in that range, give yourself 12 to 15 weeks. Okay. And you're always going to choose on the longer end, depending on your level of fitness. Lower fitness is going to be longer prep time. For anything from about a 10k run up to about an Olympic distance triathlon, give yourself about 12 to 20 weeks. Okay. And I realize that's a little bit bigger spread, but again, it's a longer event. From about a half marathon up to a half Ironman distance, give yourself about 12 to 25 weeks. Okay. 25 weeks would be. You've never done a half Ironman before, and you really want to spend a lot of time getting ready for it and being able to do it. Well, you can be ready for something like a half marathon though, in as few as 12 weeks. And if you want to do something like an Ironman, like a full on ironman, anywhere from 12, if you've done an Ironman before and you're not a beginner and you've got a lot of endurance, anywhere from 12 weeks up to about 35 weeks. And like my triathlon Dominator program, the Ironman program that I wrote out, that's 35 weeks long and actually technically it's 36 weeks long. But that takes into account the fact that the person using it would want to be as prepared as possible. And it comes with modifications that would allow you to jump in at the 4 or the 8 or the 12 week mark if you already were in pretty good shape. But those are some time frames that you would want to look at. And then once you have a realistic idea of what you're going to be able to do based on those time frames that I've just described, then you choose an event and you count backwards from that event. So what I mean by that is let's say that you want to do an Olympic distance triathlon. You choose that race on the calendar and then you count one to two weeks back from that. And those one to two weeks are going to be the weeks in which you do what's called a taper. And then you peak for that race, meaning you're kind of backing off on the workout, starting to go easy on your body, starting to let yourself get a lot of R and R, and kind of putting yourself into a state where you're going to have as much oomph as possible to attack that race for about eight to 12 weeks. Prior to that, you're going to do what's called a build phase, which is the toughest part of the entire training season. In the period of time during which you are building in your intensity and in the number of workouts that you do that are really at more of like a race pace intensity for anywhere from eight up to as many as 20 weeks. Prior to that, depending on the distance that you're going to do, you are going to do what's called base training, which is, you know, laying down an aerobic foundation, doing longer workouts, working on your skill, your efficiency, your form. And that's basically where you either stop or if you're still a long ways out, you know, maybe you're planning next year. You also work in a little bit of, you know, a pre base phase, which is sometimes just doing things like making sure that you know how to use all your equipment and you've done some strength training and you've taken care of any injuries that you may have, and you're kind of getting yourself ready to train. And that's kind of that foundation period or what might even be called an off season period. So when you're looking at, you know, trying to decide, gosh, you know, what kind of race can I do and when do I start and how do I prep for it? Obviously a coach really, really helps you go through that process. But those are the general recommendations. You know, give yourself 12 to 15 weeks for like a sprint to a 5k, 12 to 20 weeks for an Olympic distance or a 10k, 12 to 25 weeks for a half Ironman or a half marathon, 12 to 35 weeks for a full marathon or a full ironman. And then pick the date and count backwards using some of those recommendations that I just laid out in terms of giving yourself a 1 to 2 week taper, an 8 to 12 week build phase, an 8 to 20 week base phase, and then if you've got a little bit of time left over, a little bit of an off season.
Cool. So I'm going to take it just another step further and say that's a great way to plan for your first race, but let's say you want to actually do two or three races during, during the season. How would you choose the like the second, the third? How much time should you give yourself between the, between the races?
Give yourself about, anywhere from, from three to five races that you're gonna really have as like your most important races of the season and try and space those out by about three to four weeks if you can, which is going to allow you time to recover from one race and still kind of rebuild your fitness to get ready for the next race. And from here it really depends. This is something we could talk about for a long time. It depends on the distance of the race, really. You can't do three Ironman triathlons in a year and expect to do really, really well on all of them. Unless you're super, super advanced. What you generally want to do is just choose a few races that are going to be your real world priority races and then in between those, or leading up to those, you pepper less prioritized races, races that you're going to do just for fun or just for training sessions or just for experience to kind of get your chops before you go into the important event. And I mean, it's a long process. Like, I typically, about three to four times a month, I'm writing out annual training plans for folks who actually hire me to write out their entire training plan for the season. And it usually takes me about two to three weeks per plan, I mean, to sit there and actually plan it all out. So, I mean, this is not an easy process. A lot goes into planning out your entire race season if you're trying to do multiple races and peak for certain races and really have everything done just so. So this is a really involved process. I mean, this is something people go to school to learn how to do. So know, I don't want to blow off the question, but. And I know my response was kind of general, but if we got into the specifics, we could be here for hours.
So basically, Sean, what Ben saying is setting your race goals for the coming year. Hire Ben.
Easy.
You're done.
Or just replay and listen to what I just said about four or five times, and it'll eventually catch on.
All right, next question comes from Matt.
Hey, Ben. This is Matt calling from the Canary Islands. And wow, Usually the quality of a website or TV series, et cetera, goes down the hill as time goes on. And it's neat to see that then Greenfield Fitness just stays at the top. Thanks so much for your hard work, and it plays a big role in my training and nutrition. And I just had a question. Triathlete friend of mine and I are searching for and discussing if we can find a simple equation of factor to use when we're swapping a bike training session for a running session and vice versa. Our thought is, and there's lots of factors, I know, fat burning and weight and that sort of thing. But our thought is, assuming the same heart rate, you could take distance running on a flat circuit or a flat plate is about the same as three times that same distance on a steep incline with a bike. What do you think? Thanks for helping us try to figure out how we can swap a bike workout for one of our running workouts. Have a great day.
Bye.
Bye.
All right, so Matt wants to swap some bike training sessions for some running sessions, or vice versa. How would he go about doing that?
This is a good question. There was actually a doctor over at the University of Texas who did some studying on this, and he developed basically a conversion chart for cyclists primarily, who wanted to discover what a cycling session would translate into when it comes to its running equivalent and the way that it's basically done is you estimate the approximate calorie burning equivalent between running and cycling. So you're looking at the metabolic cost, the number of calories burnt, cycling versus running. And it's kind of difficult to do because, you know, for example, if you look at cycling, the amount of energy that you burn, cycling is really, really going to go up significantly based on your speed because the faster you go, the more wind resistance is going to come into play. You know, the difference between running, you know, four miles an hour and six miles an hour is not going to be super significant when it comes to wind resistance. But the difference between cycling 15 miles an hour and, you know, 17 or 18 miles an hour is actually fairly significant when it comes to the extra energy that you burn for wind resistance. So these are not exact calorie conversions, but the basic way that it works. And I'm going to put the conversion multipliers, or actually their conversion dividers, into the show notes so that you can kind of see as you take a certain speed that you've been riding. You know, for example, let's say you're riding your bicycle at 15 miles an hour and you know how many calories per mile you're going to burn based off of the. The numbers that I'll put into the show notes for this episode. But for 15 miles an hour, it's approximately 31 calories per mile that you burn. It's going to vary just a little bit. If you're heavier, that's going to be a little bit more. If you're lighter, it's going to be a little bit less. But it's about 31 calories per mile that you're going to burn when you're going 15 miles an hour on the bike. And so if you're riding 20 miles at 15 miles an hour, you would burn basically at 31 calories per mile. You'd multiply 31 by 20, and it's going to be about 620 calories that you would burn during a 20 mile ride at 15 miles an hour. Now, the way that you would determine the running equivalent of riding 20 miles at 15 miles per hour is you divide the distance that you cycled by the actual conversion divider that this doctor came up with for the 15 mile per hour speed. And what you get is 20 miles divided by the 15 mile per hour conversion divider, which happens to be 3.5, you get a result of 5.7 miles. So what that means is if you ride your bike 20 miles at 15 miles per hour, you would basically be doing approximately the same amount of work as running 5.7 miles. Now there's obviously a little bit of math that goes into this, but based on the conversion chart, it's fairly easy to do. And I'll put the numbers in the show notes for anybody who wants to kind of look into this. But I think that there's something important to bear in mind when you're looking at converting your cycling miles to running miles, and that is that you are going to be using some really, really different muscles in cycling versus running. So when you run, you're going to be using primarily your adductors, the muscles on the inside of your thigh and your hamstrings, so your hip extensors, the pushing off muscles. And when you ride your bike, you're primarily using essentially your glutes, like your upper, upper hamstrings and your hip flexors and your quads and your calves. And you're looking at a really, really significant difference. I mean, cycling, to put it in simple terms, using a lot more muscles on the front of your legs, and running, you're using a lot more muscles on the back of your legs. And so even though the calorie burning equivalent can be quantified and can be calculated, you're still going to be using a lot different muscles when you cycle versus when you run. And so you need to realize that even though it may seem like they're both cardiovascular leg exercises, they're really using significantly different muscles. And you really can't just straight up switch out a running session for a cycling session or vice versa and count it as a similar training session because it's just not. It's just very, very different in terms of muscle utilization.
Alright, so our next question comes from Jan. And Jan says, hey Ben, I heard you play some mean tennis. I used to play competitive juniors and collegiate tennis before I injured my knee. That's when I discovered running, which was my favorite cross training activity back then. And then I eventually moved on to triathlons. I've been getting the itch to pick up my racket again and play a tournament that my company is working on organizing. I'm a little hesitant to do that since I've already started training for the 2012 triathlon season. Although my first a race is in May, it's a standard distance triathlon and the tennis tournament is in March. So what do you think? Are there any benefits that I will gain from playing tennis? Or maybe I'm risking my triathlon season too much by Playing tennis. Thanks and great work. And by the way, you may want to consider the Ironman 70.3 Philippines this August.
Nice. Actually, that sounds like fun. Maybe I'll buy a plant ticket to the Philippines after we finish this podcast.
All right.
So yeah, I play a lot of tennis. I played collegiate tennis. I play number one singles for my team here in Spokane. And I'm usually on the courts about three times a week. And there is a little bit of crossover from tennis to triathlon. And the crossover that you're going to find is in your turnover and your leg speed. So in tennis you are shifting direction a lot. You are picking your feet up quickly off the ground. You're doing a lot of really short, kind of fast, twitch muscle type of sprints. And of course, it is a completely different sport, much different energy system, but you're still getting basically the effect of, say if you went to do like a plyometric session, which is a kind of a jumping, hopping, skipping, bounding type of session designed to make you a better runner, you're getting a lot of that similar effect if you play a tennis match. And I try and amplify that effect by doing a lot of things like while I'm waiting for a serve, kind of, kind of hopping from leg to leg in between games or in between sets, sometimes I'll just hop up and down a little bit just to kind of continue to work those elastic plyometric muscles, helping myself to reduce the amount of time my foot, foot spins in contact with the ground after it hits the ground, which can really, really help you become a faster runner. You know, for example, like when I, when I won gold medal for the USA at the IT World Championships, I was running once a week and that's it, one long run a week. And other than that, I was just playing tennis and riding my elliptigo a little bit. And the tennis was how I was keeping my leg speed up. And you know, that was about two to three times a week for 60 to 90 minutes tennis practice or tennis matches. So there is some crossover there. You do need to be careful. Tennis is tough on your shoulders, especially whichever shoulder you're swinging the racket with. And so you need to make sure you're not getting any overuse injuries. Playing tennis, for example, on the same days that you swim can sometimes be a bad idea. And you need to realize that tennis, tennis is not really, unless you're playing a real hard match, it's not super aerobically demanding. And so you can't go out and play maybe 90 minutes or two hours of tennis and check that off as having done a 90 minutes, two hour run. It's probably more like the equivalent of maybe a 20 to 30 minute run if you were trying to find out the calorie burning or the metabolic equivalent, kind of like we just did between running and cycling. So there are advantages, there are disadvantages. And of course, when I play tennis, the fact that I do try to hop from foot to foot as I'm waiting for a serve and do jumps in between games and stuff like that, it does make it more metabolically demanding and I can turn it into a little bit more aerobic workout by doing stuff like that. But I would say especially if you enjoy tennis, go for it. Play it as cross training, you know, And I play tennis year round and love it as a cross training sport.
Yeah, I wish I was better at tennis, man, that's such a fun sport when you actually can play. But it can be so tedious if you suck.
Yeah, the trick to getting better is all in your gear. So you got to get like some Andre Agassi style, like cut off jean shorts, headband, fake toupee like Andre wore and that'd be a great start. Good luck for you.
I grew out the John McEnroe hairdo for a while there. I found that really helped as well.
Yep, it's all in the hair.
Okay, Carlos, Carlos asks, can you clarify something for me? When it comes to the muscle fibers we contain, can they actually change from one type to another or do we just recruit one type more than the other based on the type of load?
Short answer is the latter. You mostly recruit one type or the other and use a mix. The research kind of goes back and forth in terms of muscle fiber conversion, but it's kind of inconclusive as to whether or not a muscle fiber can actually convert from one fiber to another versus just take on some of the characteristics of a different fiber.
Are we actually talking about like slow twitch versus fast twitch or what are the different types of fibers?
The different types of fibers kind of, kind of vary based on how detailed you want to get. But kind of the, the big picture is that you're looking at kind of like three types. So you have your type one fibers, these would be your slow twitch fibers, your very fatigue resistant fibers that can go for long periods of time. And the reason they can go for long periods of time is because they use an energy system that's called your oxidative energy system. So that means that they're really really good at taking oxygen that you breathe in and turning it into energy at a fairly slow rate, but for a long period of time. So slow twitch muscle fiber, it's red because it's got a lot of blood capillaries and a lot of mitochondria in it. So you get a lot of that iron content turning the muscle a little bit dark. You know, when you're looking at like a dark turkey leg or a dark chicken leg, those are the red fibers, the slow twitch muscle fibers. And they're really able to more efficiently do things like burn fat as a fuel, take oxygen and turn it into energy and just basically keep you going during aerobic activity. But they're really crappy at doing things like strength production and power production and jumping high and sprinting and things of that nature. When you're looking at kind of the next fiber up, it's called a type 2Amuscle fiber. And a type 2Amuscle fiber also has a little bit of a red appearance to it. And it is able to actually have a decent amount of mitochondria, have a decent amount of blood capillarization, which is why it's red. But it's got a little bit higher capacity for generating ATP through simply splitting sugars and turning sugar into energy, essentially, versus the type 1 muscle fibers, which basically they don't have large, large amounts of storage carbohydrate. They're called glycogen. And the type 2Amuscle fibers are, they're just stronger. There would be something you would use for like middle distance running or swimming. So they've still got some endurance, but not as much endurance as slow twitch muscle fibers. And then you've got your type 2B muscle fibers which are white. Now they don't have much mitochondria, they don't have much blood capillarization. They split ATP very quickly though, meaning they make energy very quickly. They've got lots of creatine in them, so they use a different energy system. They're very good at power, very good at strength. They're something you would use first for sprinting, for weightlifting. And they're the white meat on the turkey or the white meat on the chicken. And so, so that's kind of the differentiation between the three. Now what you're generally looking at is that middle fiber that I talked about, the type 2Amuscle fiber. That's the one that can kind of go back and forth between taking on more characteristics of a slow twitch muscle fiber, depending on the type of training that you do, or taking on more characteristics of a fast twitch muscle fiber depending on the type of training that you do. So if you do a lot of slow endurance training, you can increase the amount of mitochondria and blood capillarization and endurance characteristics of your type 2Amuscle fibers, but that doesn't mean that they're actually converting into a type 1 muscle fiber and vice versa. You could also, through a lot of sprint training and explosive training, cause your type 2Amuscle fibers to have more characteristics that are like a type 2B muscle fiber, meaning not so much mitochondria and a little bit better at using creatine and pure sugar for energy. So everybody's got a mix of all these different types of fibers, and whatever you do, you're using mixes of the different types of fibers. You know, you're never using just one type of fiber. You're always using a mix. But the type of activity that you do, your genetics, it's going to influence, you know, your actual percentage of muscle fiber types.
All right, hope that helps. Carlos certainly helped me. Our next question comes from Peter. And Peter says, while home for the holidays, both my mom and dad commented that my brother breath smelled like alcohol. However, I had not had anything to drink that day or for several days prior. As part of our investigation, I tested my blood sugar with my grandpa's machine, and the results were normal. My mum concluded that my body was producing ketones because I am not consuming enough carbohydrates. Having researched ketones online, I realized this can be a serious issue. I work out frequently, five to six days per week, and recently have been lifting and will be starting to train for a full triathlon taking place in April. Can you help me understand more about ketones, how they're caused, and how I can avoid this training fueling error going forward in my active life?
Sure. Absolutely. I'll do that in just a second. I'm not sure if any of the listeners can hear that. It sounds like right now I'm in a fire zone in a war district, but it sounds like my children are actually turning on their police cars outside my office door. So you don't need to cut this out of the podcast, Brock, Especially if we're going to start doing the podcast live. But if you're giving me just one moment, let me make sure that those police cars go away, and then I'll. I'll get on to ketosis. One minute. Okay. But you can cut that awkward long pause out if you want to.
Hey, I was singing. It was beautiful.
Oh, okay. Gotcha Good. Get your guitar out, too. Okay, so ketosis. Ketosis is something that confuses a lot of people because there's kind of like two different definitions of it, really. So one is ketosis and one is ketoacidosis. So the short answer is, when most people freak out about hearing about ketosis, what they're really worried about is ketoacidosis, which is a really, really dangerous state for diabetics to be in, but not something that the general population really needs to worry about too much. What ketosis is basically is elevated levels of ketone bodies circulating in your bloodstream. And the way that you would get elevated levels of ketone bodies is basically if your carbohydrate stores are fairly depleted. So you're eating a low carb diet, your liver doesn't have a lot of carbohydrate, your muscles don't have a lot of carbohydrate. You're going to have to basically use a different store of energy or a different form of energy when your glycogen stores are not available to be able to burn. And so what happens is you burn fat, you. You cleave fat, you split fat, and it makes fatty acid chains, and it makes basically what's called a glycerol molecule, and that's called lipolysis. When. When you break down fat to be able to burn it as a fuel. And that's really nice because most of the body is able to use these fatty acids as a source of energy. Basically through a process called beta oxidation, your body can take fat and it can actually convert it into ATP or energy. Now it does it a little bit more slowly. So when you're burning fatty acids as a fuel, you're not able to really, like, sprint and do heavy weightlifting all that well, but you can make energy just fine. And once you're used to it, and you're used to burning fatty acids for fuel, you can also think and function during the day fairly well. So when you are beta oxidizing all these fatty acids, one of the byproducts of that is called acetyl coa. Okay? And acetyl COA is in the liver used to produce ketone bodies, and that puts you into a state of what's called ketosis. So the reason that you produce these ketone bodies is that there is a part of your body that doesn't do a very good job at using fatty acids for energy, and that is your brain. And your brain loves to use these ketone bodies for energy. And so you'll get these ketone bodies crossing the blood brain barrier and kind of keeping you thinking and keeping your brain from turning off when you're burning all these fatty acids for a fuel. So your body is producing these fatty acids, and you're also getting the ketone bodies produced as a byproduct of producing the fatty acids. Your muscles are using a lot of these fatty acids for a fuel, and your brain is using a lot of these ketones for a fuel. And so ketosis doesn't necessarily mean that you're burning ketones for energy. Yeah, your brain is using them, but most of your muscles are actually just using fatty acids. And your brain eventually can adapt to using ketones. Typically, when you start into a low carb diet, it takes about anywhere from one week to three weeks for you to be able to focus and get used to your brain not burning glucose as its primary energy source. But what I'm getting at here is that ketosis is a natural mechanism, a natural response of your body to when carbohydrates aren't really around in high, high amounts and your body can get by just fine on that. May not be ideal for sprinting and for really, really active people, but for the most part, it's not going to be an issue. Now, what can be an issue is this ketoacidosis. And when diabetic patients are looking at their urine, they know that if they're seeing a high amount of ketones when they do a urine test, that that's a danger signal that they're not doing a very good job controlling their diabetes. Because if you get massive, massive amounts of these ketone bodies produced, then what it can do is it can affect the ph of your blood, and that's called ketoacidosis. And that overwhelms your body's acid base buffering mechanism, and you basically get into a very, very acidic state. And it's not a healthy place to be when you're a diabetic. And the only person that really needs to worry about that in most cases is somebody who is diabetic. In terms of ketoacidosis, keto, essentially it's due to a shortage of insulin. And it's usually something that happens to people who get type 1 diabetes. And what's going to happen is if you get into a really, really intense state of ketoacidosis, you can go into a diabetic coma. Simply having a breath that smells a little bit like alcohol simply means that you're burning ketones or you're Producing a lot more ketones. And that's not something to be worried about unless you have diabetes, in which case it'd be something to consider. So ketosis, though, overall, not really a bad thing. A lot of people really could use a little bit of training in how to burn fatty acids as a fuel with their muscles and how to burn ketones as a fuel for their brain.
I know my body could use some lessons on how to burn some fat.
Yeah. And I mean, it's as simple as switching to a low carb diet and letting yourself get into that state of ketosis. It's a little bit uncomfortable, but once you get used to it, I mean, I can go through a week of training and eat anywhere from 100 to 300 calories of carbohydrates a day now. And it's because I'm used to being in a state of ketosis. I don't do that when I'm getting ready for a race because I want more carbs to burn. But I certainly have trained my body to be able to do it and it's great to be able to be a fat burning machine like that.
Awesome fat burning machine. All right, and our final question for the day comes from Chris. And Chris asks. He says his question is twofold. My dad has been struggling with what we believe to be adrenal fatigue. He has a whole host of symptoms and has been to all kinds of doctors over the past year and has had just about everything else ruled out. He has really worked on reducing stress and this has helped to some degree. Degree. Currently his diet is excessively high in carbs, especially refined, simple carbs. So my first question is, do you have any specific diet recommendations for people with adrenal fatigue and supplements as well? And secondly, I'm curious if you have written a book or have a good recommendation of a low carb, whole food based diet for the general population. I'm aware of your fueling book for athletes, but not sure if you have one for a non athlete who isn't really concerned with fueling, etc. One of the major issues with whole food diet books that I that really bothers me is they seem to give fat a bad name.
Well, let me start by saying that adrenal fatigue isn't even a medical condition. It's not really like a real medical condition. There's no there, there's no actual diagnosis for adrenal fatigue. Typically, what you're looking at when you're talking about what most people refer to as adrenal fatigue is Just adrenal insufficiency. And that's a condition where your adrenal glands don't produce as many steroid hormones as they're supposed to be producing. Normally, your adrenal glands produce cortisol, and they're also going to be responsible for producing something called aldosterone. And both of these regulate, among other things, your sodium, your potassium, your water retention. And so a lot of times, that's why you will see somebody who's really stressed out, unable to lose weight, simply because they're retaining a lot of fluids, because their aldosterone mechanism is kind of thrown off. Now, adrenal insufficiency can be caused by overstimulating your adrenal glands over producing cortisol by stressing yourself out too much. That can be accomplished through chronic lack of sleep. It can be achieved through doing a CrossFit workout twice a day for a few months. It can be achieved through Ironman training and long, slow bike rides every weekend for years on end. There's many, many ways that you can overstimulate your adrenal glands and get into a state of adrenal insufficiency. The thing is, once you're there.
Your.
Approach to getting back out of a state of adrenal insufficiency is basically going to be reducing the type of stresses that caused you to get there in the first place. And they certainly can be dietary. For example, caffeine and alcohol are examples of two dietary substances that are able to stress your kidneys and your adrenal glands. And those would be two very, very obvious things to make sure that you reduce in your diet when you are experiencing symptoms of adrenal insufficiency. Gluten can also be particularly harsh on the adrenals. And I would also recommend for anyone who is experiencing adrenal insufficiency to look at going gluten free. And not just going gluten free, but also being really careful with severe fluctuations in your blood sugar caused by carbohydrates, which we just got done talking about. So making sure that you're not consuming a high carbohydrate diet would also be prudent if you're experiencing symptoms of adrenal insufficiency. When it comes to diet, there are certainly some supplements that you can take. But before you even start to dip into things like supplements, you need to look at stress and sleep. You need to make sure that you are controlling stress by maybe taking some time off work or really stepping back on what you're committed to from a work perspective, if you're working out and you're working out hard and you're experiencing symptoms of adrenal insufficiency, you should switch to just like doing yoga and some really easy walks. And I've had people come to me before who are weight loss resistant, who are just, just train the heck out of themselves. And they come to me because they're not losing weight and they expect all these different workouts from me. And then they freak out when I give them yoga and easy walking for two weeks, which I've done before. And I'll combine that with reducing caffeine, reducing alcohol, going on a low carb diet, not eating as much, period, and then using some of the supplements that I'll talk about in a second. And it's just like hitting the reboot button on your body. In some people who have really, really severely over trained themselves and are in severe states of adrenal insufficiency, unfortunately it can take almost a year sometimes to allow your body to reset. I knew a bodybuilder that had to do that. I mean he was like bedridden for six months and then eventually when he could get out of bed and he wasn't severely over trained anymore and wasn't completely rock bottom with his adrenal gland production, then he was able to slowly start into things. But I mean he was never even able to train again the way that he used to. So it can be quite serious if you let yourself stay in this state for a long period of time. So you need to dig yourself out from a stress perspective and you need to really, really focus on getting to bed at an adequate time, preferably before 11pm and trying to sleep for about eight hours a night. Because your cortisol cycle is really, really dependent on your circadian rhythm. And since cortisol is one of the primary culprits, or overproduction of it, or I'm sorry, underproduction of it, when it comes to adrenal insufficiency, you're going to want to make sure that you sleep adequately and then finally you can look at supplements. And the reason I say finally is because so many people just don't change their lives at all and try and shove a bunch of supplements down the half. And that's not the way that you fix your body. You have to make lifestyle changes and dietary changes first. But you can certainly increase your amount of omega 3 fatty acid intake. And the way that you would do that is through things like cold pressed organic flax and fish oil and cold water fish, wild caught salmon, walnut, things of that nature. You can stabilize your blood sugar levels by including medium chain triglycerides in your diet. Best way to do that is to add in a few tablespoons of an extra virgin organic coconut oil into your diet. Because adrenal insufficiency a lot of times causes essentially hyponatremia or really, really low levels of electrolytes in your bloodstream. Based, based on that problem with aldosterone production and the problem with being able to actually retain enough proper electrolytes, you can actually include electrolytes. You can get like a Himalayan sea salt, or you can even take electrolyte capsules and add some type of mineralized salt into your diet or make sure that you're using some type of electrolytes or full spectrum liquid mineral type of supplement on a daily basis. You'll want to really, really take care of your immunity and your digestive tract. So I would certainly make sure you're getting a lot of live active cultures in your diet. Fermented, naturally fermented sauerkraut, or like a turnip, kraut, kefir, yogurt, kombucha, things of that nature. As unprocessed and unpasteurized as possible. Be really, really careful with your carbohydrate intake. As I mentioned, and from a supplement perspective, the other thing that I would really, really think about, probably the single most powerful thing that you could do from a supplementation standpoint would be Chinese adaptogenic herbs. And not just buying Chinese cheap stuff, because typically the cheap stuff is sprayed with ethylene oxide and sits in big bins in China for four or five or six or 10 years. Get a really, really high quality Chinese adaptogenic herb. For example, one that a few of my clients take is called Tianchi. It's a T I A N C H I. And that's a really, really good mix of Chinese adaptogenic herbs, carbs, which actually, really, really help stabilize your cortisol production and can help with something like adrenaline sufficiency. So I'd really recommend that you look into that as well. There are a huge number of supplements that you're going to be able to find on the Internet that claim toto kind of take you out of a state of adrenal fatigue and stabilize your cortisol levels and all that. I mean, the list is like 20 miles long. I'm not going to sit here and read all these different supplements off to you versus just telling you the ones I would really prioritize. Omega 3 fatty acids, some medium chain triglycerides, like an extra virgin coconut oil, and then like a really, really high quality Chinese adaptogenic herb.
Cool. I know Chris was asking specifically for some advice for a non athlete, but I think all of this, the advice you gave is really, it's quite universal. It doesn't matter if you're an athlete or a non athlete. These are the things you need to address if you're showing the signs of adrenaline fatigue or insufficiency.
Yeah. And as far as that low carb thing, yeah. I did write a book, lowcarbtriathlete.com and yes, that book was written from an athlete's perspective. But all you need to do if you're not an athlete is cut out like the pre workout and the post workout meals and anything that says here after this workout, eat carbohydrate. You just cut out the stuff that has to do with working out and sports. And it's basically a really, really good low carbohydrate diet that doesn't include things like gluten, for example.
Excellent. Well, that wraps up all the questioner, all the questioner, all the listener questions for this week. Once again, it was awesome to have those audio questions. So if you do want to call in and leave an audio question, you will get priority over the written ones. So feel free to do that. Otherwise, keep the questions coming, everybody. They're awesome.
Yes. And as mentioned last week, we are splitting up the Q and A from the featured topic. The featured topic was supposed to be released last Saturday, but it's actually getting released this Friday. And it's a really, really shocking interview with Dr. Devra Davis, who wrote a book about essentially how cell phone companies gamble with your brain. And a lot of the stuff that we don't know and we don't realize when it comes to microwave radiation from cell phones. And you know, I don't want to be the silly guy sitting there with the aluminum foil on my head, but at the same time, this stuff was really, really compelling in terms of scientific evidence presented in her book that I talk with her about in the interview that I'll release this Friday. So I highly recommend that you take a listen to that. And then of course, if you have comments or questions, leave them on the show notes for that episode. And if you have comments or questions about this episode, episode number 178, or you want to access any of the resources that I talked about from the speaking engagements that I'll be at this weekend and the next weekend to the news flashes that we linked to to any of the listener questions. Just head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com show notes for podcast episode number 178. And while you're there, a donation is always appreciated and a huge thanks and a huge shout out goes to the folks who donated to the podcast. So Brock, I think that about wraps it up for this week.
That does. Just quickly, I wanted to say we got a couple of emails from people who were curious about the toothpaste you were talking about on the last episode. Remember, whenever we talk about something like that, it ends up in the show notes. So do go Back to episode 177. Those of you who are curious about the that charcoal toothpaste.
Yeah, I put a link there. Or if you just want to jot this down to yourself, go to innryou.com I'm not affiliated with that website at all, but it's innery.com inner yu is an inneru.com and that's where I get my charcoal toothpaste. So that ought to keep you busy folks brushing your teeth all week long. So until next time, this is Ben and Brock signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Sa. I'm back. It might be for a week, but I'm back. It might be for a month, but I'm back. I'm back. Yeah, I'm back.
More from Eric


Season 2 | Episode 86 | Technology, AI, and What it Means to Be Human with John Dyer, Ph.D.


Season 2 | Episode 85 | Kamusta ka? -- Cultural diversity in therapy, athletic performance, and all things RT with Marriage and Family Therapy Associate, Kim Agramon-Bai


Season 2 | Episode 84 | Noe Rivera, RT Therapist & Director of Relate Strong at Pepperdine


Season 2 | Episode 82 | Gil and Brenda Stuart's Journey to RT and Development of Their Book, Lilly's Pads


Season 2 | Episode 81 | RT, trains and The Little Engine that Could with Therapist Mary Lee Evans


Season 2 | Episode 80 | Therapeutic Models and Training Students with Lipscomb Professor Dave Morgan


Season 2 | Episode 79 | Trauma, Emotional Regulation and Learning RT, with Kaivon Asgharian