Episode #96: How to Know If You Ate Enough Carbohydrates.

In this podcast episode, how to know if your carbohydrate intake is proper. How long should it take for the heart rate to recover after exercise? Are some fruits better than others? Eating before a morning workout? How to stop appetite cravings Cardio before weights or weights before cardio should athletes train their bodies to burn fat? Does getting stronger make you faster? Do you have to give up a muscular body to be an Ironman triathlete? And and is something called Zone 3 training a bad thing?

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlois 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 podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming at you with podcast number 96. Wow, we're almost to 100 and I have to be completely honest with you. I have no special plans for the hundredth episode, but if you have ideas about something special to do for that hundredth episode, let me know. I'll probably end up doing something special anyways, but either way, it'd be nice to hear what you guys want for that 100th episode. Here's what I was thinking. I'm only going to answer questions that I get from call in listeners just to keep it interesting. I think that would be pretty cool, but I want to hear what you think. So as usual, leave a comment in the show notes to this episode. Episode number 96. If you have feedback for me and really anything that you want to talk about that you hear in this podcast, go leave it as a comment on the show notes. I actually love to start questions, questions and discussions and comments. And just a second. You could see right there I fumbled. I'm having difficulty talking. Did you hear that? That was my morning cup of coffee. It's about 5:30am right now. While I'm recording, this podcast makes it far more simple when you record from a home office not to have children running around and screaming in the background. The only problem is that was decaf coffee because I'm racing a triathlon in a few days and I really don't want to put too much caffeine in my body. However, the decaf still gives me that wonderful placebo effect. Okay, I'm droning on. Let's go ahead and move on to this week's special announcements.

Special announcements.

Our Featured topic today is going to be Dr. Cohen, who you long time podcast listeners have grown familiar with as the expert from Bio Letics. And he's going to be talking about a really cool new blood sugar and carbohydrate test that they have called the A1C. So listen in to this podcast episode later on after the Q and A if you want to catch that interview. Now, a couple of other special announcements. I have actually just put the finishing touches on a vegan meal plan. And like most of the meal plans and the training plans that I write, all of that is available over at my trainingpeaks store. And, and if you want to link to that, just head over to podcast number 96 because not only did I just release that vegan meal plan, but I also just put out a exactly how to train and how to eat for the last four weeks leading up to Ironman plan where all your workouts and your meals get delivered to your email or to your phone, whichever you'd prefer. And I also have a few different marathon training, triathlon training, fitness and fat loss programs over there that you can simply grab and download to your computer and follow. They send you an automatic email every time that your workout is coming up. You can go look at your calendar for the week, get your meals delivered, things like that. It's the same type of software that I use to dynamically coach the clients that I work with for endurance training or for sports or for fat loss. But I also have some prepackaged, more budget oriented plans that that I've written and I just released that vegan one that I think is quite interesting. So the next special announcement is that the Summer Body Challenge is underway. We have people from all over the country who have sent in their photos and their videos and those are of course completely private. I'm the only person that sees those, but that is how I am judging the contest to keep it fair. And each person gets a weekly mailing from me that gives them their fitness tips, their nutrition tips and their recipes. Then they go from now until August 1st, and whoever has the best progress by August 1st wins. Now, if you still want to get into that challenge, technically you're no longer eligible for the $300 and the exercise tools and the other prizes that come along with that competition. But if you just want the accountability, then head over to the link that I'll put in the show notes and you can get into the Body Transformation Club and be a part of the Summer Body Challenge, or you can get into the Body Transformation Club and not be in the summer body challenge, whichever you want. Now, the next announcement is that the Get Fit Guy podcast, my new Quick and Dirty Tip podcast to slim down and shape up, has been ranked as one of the top podcasts in itunes for the past few weeks. The number one podcast in the fitness category. And if you're looking for something that is really very quick that you can listen to maybe during breakfast or your drive to work, or you want something that's a little more basic, you know, somebody who may not be an Ironman triathlete or something like that, but just needs to start from square one, it's a really good podcast to listen to. However, I also put some tips in there that get a little bit more advanced. For example, this next episode coming up is going to be on spot reducing how to take a certain area of your body and targeted tone it. So you'll want to check that out. We're going to go ahead and move on to this week's Q and A. As you have probably discovered by listening, I am straight struggling this morning with my talking. Oh, just one more time. There we go. Let's get this listener Q and A done with. It's really good today, by the way.

Listener Q and A.

Now if you have a question for the podcast, then you can call 877-209-9439 and I'll put that number in the show notes as well. But that's a good way to leave a voicemail message for me. The other thing you can do is email ben greenfieldfitness.com or if you're international outside the US and you want to leave a Skype message, just Skype to Pacific Fit and any of those would work well for getting hold of me and answering or asking a question. Now the first question that we have today is from listener Mark and Mark says I regularly run with a heart rate monitor at the end of a short run. I'm used to seeing my heart rate quickly drop to below 120 when I slow to a jog a couple times. Now, following runs longer than an hour, my heart rate has barely slowed when I slow down. For example, this past weekend following an 80 minute run, I walked for at least five minutes, but my heart rate remained in the 140 to 150 range. When I came to a complete stop, my heart rate actually increased by 10 points over my walking heart rate. It took five to 10 minutes of sitting in the shade before my heart rate dropped below 120. On this long run, I didn't have any water or food and I may have been starting to bonk as I'm prone to low blood sugar. I also was exercising right around and occasionally above my threshold for the last two miles. Could any of these factors explain why my heart rate took so long to return to normal? And before you podcast listeners out there who know what's going on here, jump through your MP3 player or computer and try to answer Mark's question, because I know you're screaming at the top of your lungs right now.

Right.

I will go ahead and just go into a little bit of the idea behind this whole concept of heart rate recovery. Because your body has several liters of blood flowing through it and basically that blood has to be distributed to your entire body. And depending on how efficient your body is at grabbing oxygen from that blood, your heart's going to either pump slower or pump faster, depending on how efficient you are. Now, if you're very inefficient, you're going to have a higher resting heart rate, you're going to have a longer time to recovery and you're going to have typically a higher heart rate while you're exercising as well. Whereas if you're very efficient, if you're a trained athlete, then your heart rate is going to be lower, it's going to recover faster just because you're better able to grab that blood as it comes around. Now, a few things that could affect your body's ability to be efficient at utilizing that blood would be one, if you just don't have enough blood to go around and interact. Interestingly, one of the primary determinants of adequate blood volume is adequate hydration. And if you are dehydrated, you are going to have a higher heart rate during exercise and a longer time to recovery during your heart rate. Low blood sugar wouldn't necessarily cause the heart rate issues, but low glycogen levels. Being glycogen depleted would affect efficiency and for any given effort would actually increase your heart rate and increase the time to recovery. Now, there are actually calculations out there and research out there that shows that more than a 50 beat per minute reduction in your heart rate after a one minute period will reduce your risk of a heart attack or is indicatory of a reduced risk of heart attack. And less than a 30 beat per minute reduction after one minute is a predictor of a heart attack. What you need to understand though is that most of those studies were done after very short exercise periods, typically three to five minutes long, long hydration, depleting blood sugar, depleting glycogen depleting run like the one that you went on. And the fact that your shorter runs, you're not experiencing this, your longer runs show that you are experiencing this, point to the fact that with you, it's probably less of an issue of a cardiovascular problem. Although I'm not a doctor and you could go get that checked out if you wanted to. As much as an issue of not drinking enough or eating enough and having that affect your heart rate, it comes back to showing the importance of taking care of your body from a hydration and a nutrition perspective during exercise and doing your whole depletion at a different time. And we'll get into that in a little bit more detail in another question today's podcast. But ultimately what it comes down to is you need to be drinking more, preferably at least 10 to 15 ounces an hour while you're exercising and making sure that you keep your blood sugar up and your glycogen levels up by having a gel every 30 minutes or so while you're out there on that run Mark. So hope that answers your question. And the next question is from listener Patrick. Patrick says, in keeping with your holistic fueling plan, I've gotten pretty used to keeping nuts and fruit on hand to snack on after shorter workouts or for just afternoon hunger pangs. In the beginning, I stuck mainly to Granny Smith apples, but now that summer has hit, I'm eating more of the sweeter melons like cantaloupe and watermelon. How do sweeter fruits stack up nutritionally with the more conservative choices like grapefruit, pineapple and blueberries? Is there a significant difference from a recovery or general health perspective, or am I splitting hairs? What this question boils down to, for those of you who aren't really familiar with the differences between the fruits, is that some fruits have a low glycemic index, meaning that the sugar in those fruits is not released quite as quickly, and some fruits have a high glycemic index. And I'm not going to get scientific and say exactly how the sugar is actually metabolized, but suffice it to say that some fruits are fast release and some fruits are slower release. For example, berries are very low on the glycemic index, cherries are very low on the glycemic index, apples and pears and grapefruits. And if you use any of the nutrition plans that I write, you'll know that those are typically the fruits that I encourage you to eat, because as you move up the Index from apricots and peaches up to figs up to dates, and then finally to a lot of the citrusy melony fruits, the melons, the mangoes, the papayas, the pineapples, fruit gets sweeter and sweeter. Now, the issue here though is that fruit is very low in calories, meaning that it has a low glycemic load. And the glycemic load is an indicator not only of the rate at which the sugar is released, but also the actual number of calories in a serving. And because the calories in fruit is very low, you know, you take something like watermelon and it's basically mostly water, it has a low glycemic load. And as a matter of fact, the glycemic load of a serving of watermelon is lower than the glycemic load of apples. And so what this boils down to is that to a certain extent you are splitting hairs, especially if you're an active individual. Now, the people that I really recommend focus on lower glycemic index foods. Most of the time are people who are pre diabetic, struggle with blood sugar issues. Again, I'm not medically managing their diabetes. I'm making suggestions on the foods that are going to be less likely to cause the blood sugar levels to go on a roller coaster ride. And the people that would want to pay attention to the glycemic index fruits or the glycemic index of fruits would be those type of individuals. If you're active, you have nothing to worry about. I mean, you could eat 10 pears a day and you'd probably be just fine as long as you didn't have a pre diabetic or a diabetic condition. So in your case, Patrick, as a triathlete, because you've written into the show before, I know that you are an Ironman triathlete, you would probably be splitting hairs with this. But for someone who is very concerned about getting every little advantage they can get, someone who's very concerned about stabilizing blood sugar, that's when you would want to choose as your primary fruits the berries, the cherries, the apples, the pears, and the grapefruit, and maybe not do so much of the melons, the citrus, the papaya, etc. But like I said, very, very small issue. And they're much bigger fish to fry if you're trying to eat healthy. But good question. Now the next question comes from listener anonymous. Beautiful name. Living in Virginia. It gets pretty hot in the summer. I like to run in the morning as soon as possible to avoid the heat and humidity. What do you think would be a good thing to eat so that I can run but not be starving during the run I usually eat half a power bar to take the edge off. My runs are usually an hour long. I am part of a master swim group that meets at 6am I really don't want to get up and eat at 4:30 just so food will sit well on my stomach. Any suggestions? Sure, I've got a quick answer to this one. We just got off the topic of fruit. This is a great time to get back on it, but a little bit of fruit just to spike the blood sugar slightly is fine because when you wake up in the morning your body primarily is burnt through its livers. Carbohydrate stores, your muscle carbohydrate stores are still full, ready to rumble. And a lot of times just a little bit of fruit to spike the blood sugar is great. As a matter of fact, for a primarily aerobic workout, as long as it's under an hour, you're fine with not really eating anything at all so long as you have a little bit of breakfast afterwards to replenish the nutrients that you've gone through while you're working out. So if you don't like the fiber, the solidness of the food, then you could also use a sport gel or a little bit of sport drink. But even something as small as 50 to 100 calories right before you head out is just fine. And a lot of times you'll be a little bit groggy for the first 10 to 20 minutes of that workout. And as soon as your body really starts to efficiently tap into that muscle glycogen and bring your blood sugar levels up, you're good to go. So I have had people complain about that before when I've told them to go out and do their morning workout without eating. And once they get 15 or 20 minutes in they say, wow, that actually didn't feel too bad. So good question. The next question is from listener Olivia who says, I just finished my first half Ironman and now that it's over, I think I would like to focus on losing the weight I gained during training. I'm 58 and weighed 152 pounds before training, but now I'm pushing 159 pounds. What are the chances this weight gain is muscle? If it's not muscle, I want to lose the weight, but I'm having a really tough time eating less now that I am not training as much do you have any advice for how to taper calories and change the eating habits? I started during training. I'm still hungry. Olivia. I see this happen all the time with ironman athletes who get done training for an ironman or a half ironman and they're so used to being able to eat anything they want and tons of calories that as soon as they stop and lay off that intense exercise protocol, they balloon. And any weight that they put on during that training, unless they're doing a significant amount of weightlifting, which it doesn't look like you were, then it's a pretty slim chance that any weight gain experience during that training was muscle. And it's usually cortisol related, stress hormone related, water retention. And a lot of times that's a bigger issue with people who are eating a ton of food, typically inflammatory foods, high amounts of carbohydrates, doing a lot of slow aerobic training versus the people who are eating more of the protein, the healthier foods, the non gluten based foods, and engaging in a lot more of the interval based intense training. Those people usually do a lot better with not putting on weight and fat during the ironman or the half ironman style of endurance training. So that being said, you're at a point now where you need to satiate your appetite and get your body able to be satisfied with less or lower caloric intake. A few of the ways that you can do that is you can make sure that you increase the fiber content of most of the foods that you eat and treat. Choose fiber dense foods, do a lot of beans and legumes. You'll want to do things like quinoa, amaranth, millet, sweet potatoes and yams are fiber dense, although they're not so fiber dense that you can't have them before a workout. Do a lot of vegetables, salads, leafy greens, anything, or most of those will kind of expand in the stomach. A lot of fruit that has the skins on it, you know, apples are good, peppers are good, strawberries, berries, basically any of these type of things would be much better choices than lower fiber foods. You know, for example, breads that are not whole grain cookies, biscuits you'll want to avoid juices, sport drinks, bars, things like that, things that aren't so dense. So focus on that, focus on increasing the protein content because protein is very satiating. That's why protein diets sometimes tend to work is not because protein does something magical, it's just that it makes you less likely to eat a lot. And so if you Include like a soy, a whey, a rice or hemp protein. That would be good. That Living Green Super Fuel is really good. That's one that's over on the pacificfit.net website and that's got both the high fiber and the high protein. We interviewed the guy that designed that on the show sometime back, and that's something that's really good that I'll actually tell a lot of my clients to include is a meal replacement that satiates the appetite for a long period of time. It's called Living Greens Superfuel. Any of those type of things can also be replicated in your blender like a Vitamix. Taking a bunch of vegetables, fruit juices, cranberry juice usually works quite well. And blending all that together. I know a little earlier I told you not to drink juice, but if you're using the juice as something to mix a ton of fiber with, then it's not an issue. So go with the high fiber. Add proteins into your diet. You can also go with nuts as well. I talked about the beans and legumes already. If you struggle with gas while you're consuming high amounts of those, soak them. I actually just shot a video for the Rock Star Triathlete Academy on how to make your own homemade hummus. And I walked people through the process of doing that. And one of the things that I point out in that video was the importance. If you're doing this at home to soak the garbanzo beans or the chickpeas overnight in water and that improves digestibility. And then you also want to rinse them after you boil them again, which will improve the digestibility and give you a little less gas. The other thing that you can do is as you boil them, drop a little bit of seaweed in there, drop a little bit of nori in there. And that also will reduce the amount of gas that they produce after they've been consumed. Just a little bit of pre digestion going on so that your stomach doesn't have to do it. It so the higher fiber, the higher protein. And then include some blood sugar stabilizing type of compounds. Chromium is good, vanadium is good. Both of those are in the thermo factor. That's over at Pacific Fit. I'll just put a link to Pacific Fit in the show. Notes. Cinnamon is also really good. Being work in anywhere from 2 to 4 teaspoons of cinnamon into your daily diet. That also helps stabilize the blood sugar, satiate the appetite. This is all stuff that I Talk about in the book hundred ways to boost your metabol, I'll put a link to that as well. Now the higher protein, the higher fiber and didn't make mean to make that sound like a commercial, but the thermo factor, the hundred ways to boost your metabolism and the living greens are also really good as well. So I'll link out to that stuff and that should help you out. Now the next question comes from listener Eric and Eric says, I'm a big proponent of weight training. I really believe you are too and I like your strong triathlete training guy. My question is that most of the days I lift I don't have time to split my endurance training and my weightlifting. So on an average day I might do a hard 45 minute lift, an intense 60 minute spin class and then a 5 to 7 mile run with some intervals thrown in. I know I have depleted a lot of my glycogen stores during the lift and so this always makes cycling and running a lot harder. But knowing the times and paces I want to hit, I am able to maintain the same outcomes as the days I didn't lift. So if this is the case, is it better, worse or indifferent that I lift before all the training? And on days like this, should I be eating something during or after the workout? There have been studies done on the whole weight before cardio, cardio before weights issue, and what it boils down to is that if your focus is strength and power, then what you want to do is not glycogen deplete and fatigue your body prior to weightlifting. And in a case like that, you would want to do your weightlifting and then your cardio. If your goal is endurance training, which it appears that yours is, if you're talking about triathlon, probably your primary competitive goal is endurance training, then you would actually want to flip that and do your high quality cardio prior to your strength training. Now the issue with doing the strength training prior to the cardio is not only that you're going to deplete some of your carbohydrates stores before you go to your cardio, but you do muscle damage and so you're exercising damaged muscles that are in need of recovery after you strength train. If you're able to rearrange your workout to do cardio before strength, that would be ideal. So what you would do is you would have your pre workout meal two hours prior or have a little snack before you head to the gym, do your cardio session after your cardio session, replenish your glycogen stores, your carbohydrate stores because they that's really what your body taps into while you're weightlifting by eating for example a banana or an apple or an energy bar. Do your weightlifting and then have your post workout protein and carb based meal. Now if logistically it's impossible for you to actually do the cardio before the weights, do your weightlifting and then take in your protein and carb based meal. And because you're going to need better digestibility, the way that I would suggest you do that is just take in for example a branched chain amino acid source. Roctane is one example of a gel that has both branched chain amino acids and carbohydrate recoveries is a supplement in pill form that you could take with again like a banana, an apple, a little bit of carbohydrate and the protein will help you with the basically the muscle cannibalization or the lack of muscle recovery that's going to occur during the cardio session that you're doing after your strength strength. So best case scenario is cardio before weights. Next best case is do the weights, take in a protein carb blend and make sure the protein is easily digested. Chicken would not fit into that. Branched chain amino acids in powder or capsule or form are usually a really good choice in that situation. And then move on to your cardio and then of course have your post workout meal and try and get it within 20 minutes, especially after a two and a half or three hour session. I mentioned this before on the show, but essentially you take your target body weight, you multiply that by 2 calories for each pound of your target body weight and that's how many carbohydrates you should take in. And then protein would be half that. So if you want to be at £150 then you would take in 300 calories of carb, 150 calories of protein 20 minutes after and then about an hour later have your post workout meal. Listener Omar asks, I have been told that I have a very nice body. This is a result of a lot of weight training that I'm used to doing. After playing football in college, I am down to £187, but I can't seem to shed more weight and honestly, I'd still like to have a nice body. Is this something I'll have to sacrifice in order to be an ironman triathlete? I'm 6 foot 3 so it's not like I'm huge. Although I do know that I have a Large volume compared to most people my size. When I get your Ironman triathlon Dominator program, will I be able to consult with you in order to maintain both my goals in check? You know, it is kind of an interesting deal with ironman training and the amount of muscle that you need. If you look at Ironman athletes, even at the pro level, they're always a little bit meatier, a little bit more muscular than the small spry sprint and Olympic distance athletes simply because muscle does help you a little bit on a long 9, 10, 11, 12 hour day. That muscle, that strength is something that you need a little bit more than you need during a shorter one or two or two and a half hour event. So the muscle does help you just a little bit in the ironman. But yes, you do know from looking around at people that ironman athletes a lot of times will tend to have that gaunt marathoner type of look. And you may notice that even muscular people tend to lose some of their muscle. When I first started into triathlon I was at 205, 210 pounds of muscle hanging right around in there. And Now I'm at 175 and most of my weight loss was not fat, it was muscle. Now it is possible to still have a lean cut, muscular look whether you're a guy or a girl if you're doing Ironman triathlon. But the trick is to, as I mentioned earlier, incorporate lots of intervals, harder intervals in your training, not do a lot of the long slow aerobic training, especially unfed long slow aerobic training. Make sure that you're eating a healthy diet. You can use the holistic meal plan Omar, that you'll get with that Dominator plan and then make sure that you follow the weightlifting in there very closely. There's two chances to weightlift during the week. If you follow the rules that I write in there, you go at the intensity that I recommend, then you're going to find that you're actually able to maintain a pretty nice body. And remember that your body fat is probably going to dip a little bit as you're doing your ironman training as well, which even if you drop a little bit of muscle is going to make you look more muscular. So the way to do it is just to not do the long slow aerobic style of ironman training with no weightlifting. You can combine weightlifting, intense intervals, still do your ironman training. And the way the Dominator plan is written, a lot of the longer sessions are taking place towards the weekend with lots of shorter interval based stuff during the week and you'll be fine. You know, I would like to say that I still had a pretty nice body when I was doing Iron Man. Right now I'm focusing on half Iron Man. But you know, you can do it. You can still look pretty good when you're doing Iron Man. It is possible. And I've seen a lot of other guys and girls who do have nice bodies, who don't look like they've starved themselves, who go out and do Ironman. Now that being said, if you really want to take it to the next level and podium, you're probably going to have to get pretty dang lean and you may not have the gun show that you're looking for. So the next question is from Alicio and Alicia says, I am using your triathlon Dominator package to prep me for Ironman. I must say, for the money, it is a steel and extremely useful program. I've used many plans before but nothing comes close to what is included in your package. So thank you. I also love the website as it has lots of great information and secret tips. That's awesome Alicia, thanks. My question about the package are regarding your heart rate zones and workouts in these zones. When I compare your zones to other programs they seem a bit higher. Because of this, it seems that there is a lot of Zone 3 work which from what I understand leads to mediocre racing or injury. Do you have any thoughts or perspectives as to why or what the intent is behind training in Zone three under your program? You know, the whole Zone three training being bad for you idea I think initiated from Joe Friel's triathlon training bible. And in that he indicated that Zone 3 training was at a high enough intensity to deplete your muscles carbohydrate stores, but it wasn't at a high enough intensity to give you a good fitness response. The issue with that is that if you look at Zone three and I've studied this in the lab, most of the Zone 3 calculations put Zone 3 smack dab at the peak of fat oxidation, which is the money zone for an Ironman triathlon. Zone three should be the zone that you're in during the bike and really the majority of the run up until about the 20 mile mark. And so my question is if you're going to race in that zone, then why wouldn't you be doing some training in that zone versus doing all aerobic training and all interval based training? And because of that, that's why I put that into the Dominator program and that's what really differentiates it from a lot of programs that I've seen is a typical workout for you. Like in your base training, rather than doing like a four hour zone two aerobic bike ride, you might do 90 to 120 minutes smack dab right at zone three at peak fat oxidation. And so you're literally throwing down a workout that's exactly in the zone that you're going to be doing your ironman training in. Now that being said, yeah, if you're going out and you're always at zone three feels like about 70, 75%. But if you're going out and all your runs are at 70, 75%, and all your swims are just at that mid distance or that mid intensity pace and all your bikes are there, then you're just training yourself to be kind of a ho hum, medium pace athlete. But if you combine a few solid, focused zone three sessions, zone three, especially key workouts, like a key zone three bike run and swim, and then you supplement that with easier zone 2 recovery workouts and then zone 4, zone 5 and zone 6 high interval based workouts. That's an ideal program. So the idea behind eliminating zone three is that it's not intelligent. At least that's my perspective as a coach and as a physiologist. Just because you're avoiding the zone that you're going to be racing in. Now, for those of you who really don't understand zones, essentially the way that you get a zone is, and this is the way I do it in the Dominator plan, you go out and test either with power on your bike or heart rate on your run or your bike or your swim is pace based. And based on that test you have zones that are set up according to your heart rate or your speed. So if you go out and you test and your heart rate is at 175 and you follow the test instructions, then essentially, you know, zone one might be 130, zone two might be 136 to 140, zone three might be 140 to 150, zone four might be 160 up to 170, zone five would be 175 plus, zone six would be max, etc. So that's the idea behind the zone training. But good question, Omar. Or I'm sorry, Alicia. Alicia. Omar was the first question. You guys are coming at me with these unique names, games, at least for America. Chuck asks, as a triathlete, would it make me faster overall to get stronger, especially in the disciplines that I need A lot of muscle recruitment like the bike and the swim. I've been doing pretty hard lifting sessions three to four times a week. But how can I actually put on muscle while training at half ironman distance volume? And can this muscle and weight actually be beneficial in getting me faster, not slowing me down? This is kind of interesting because it relates a little bit to Omar's question about maintaining muscle and having nice body. Body. The idea is that maintaining the muscle and having a nice body is not going to make you faster. Getting stronger is not going to make you faster. There's no research to show that strength training actually makes people run or bike or swim faster. Now power training, plyometric training, doing lighter loads and lifting them very quickly, that can make you faster. However, doing the strength training, the benefit of that would be the, of course, as we talked about earlier, being able to maintain a nice body if that's what you want to do, but also being able to strengthen the joints and the ligaments and support the things that you're working in chronic repetitive motion so that you avoid injury. Whenever I'm doing strength training, I get injured far less. And if I'm doing an intelligent strength training program, I barely get injured at all, especially in the rotator cuff and the knees, two areas that, that a lot of triathletes tend to have problems in. So the reason for strength training would be for injury prevention. And based on that, there's really no need for you to be going more than two times a week if you're doing about 45 to 60 minutes and more than three times a week if you're doing a shorter 20 to 30 minute session. And I really wouldn't recommend you be spending a lot more time than that in the gym unless you have something that really needs focused work like a rotator cuff issue, a core strength issue. And, and that's a case where I would put an athlete in the gym just a little bit more to do targeted sessions that focus on that weak spot and then as soon as that weak spot catches up, back off that volume, taper that weight volume so that they can focus more on the swimming, the biking and the running. So ultimately getting stronger won't make you faster, but it can help you reduce your risk of injury. And we have a question here from Kevin. Kevin, kind of a long question, but it's our last one before we move on to the interview with Dr. Cohen. Kevin says, I am a 47 year old male, ran my first marathon in the early 80s and over the years have competed in ultras runs, long distance swimming and triathlon. I am 5 foot 9 and weigh 150 pounds. Back in the late 70s and 80s we used to follow a strict carb load diet prior to an endurance event which included two days of no carbs followed by three days of carb overload. In those days there were no gels and sports drinks. Water tables and races included water and pop. I primarily drank water and occasionally watered down coke. What did we know? We ate raisins instead of gels on long runs, sometimes bananas and even had chocolate in the very long events. Then along came Dave Allen who believed in I wonder if you mean Dave Scott. I've never heard of Dave Allen, but I could be off. Maybe you're mixing up Mark Allen and Dave Scott, but either way. Then along came Dave Allen who believed in using body fat for endurance events with the theory of training at a low heart rate to encourage the body to use fat as opposed to carbs for fuel. Interestingly, I recently read in a runners magazine two articles both in the same magazine. One covered the carb load and the other article dealt with runners that rely on fat for fuel. The no carb runner does not train with gels or sports drinks and just uses water. The thought being that as the run progresses they get stronger compared to other runners who rely on carbohydrates for fuel. What is your opinion on what works best? Have you ever tried to train your body to use fat as opposed to carbohydrate as a fuel? Great question Kevin. Kind of opens up a big can of worms, you know. Should you go out and train with no carbohydrates so that your body becomes more efficient at burning fat? Well, first of all, well, let's split this into a couple of camps. We have the people who are trying to lose fat and then we have the people who are trying to get fast trying to do endurance exercise. For the people who are trying to lose fat, what it comes down to is that laboratory studies have shown that if you don't eat anything during a long, primarily aerobic training session, your body actually tends to slow its metabolism during that session and also shuts down the post exercise metabolic rate resulting in you getting subpar results compared to if you fueled that long training session and then engaged in your caloric restriction outside of that session. So from a pure weight loss perspective, going out and doing long starved sessions is not doing you any favors unless that session is no longer than about 60 minutes. So an easy aerobic session after an overnight fast is fine. Going out and Doing a two or three hour ultra running type of workout would not be a good way to go. Now, if you're an endurance athlete, here's the deal. Research has shown that if you exercise in a glycogen depleted state, your body can actually get stressed out to the extent that it has a stronger fitness response because the workout essentially you're artificially making that workout harder. By exercising in a glycogen depleted state and assuming that you take care of your body afterwards and refuel and recover properly, you can have blood markers that indicate that you've had a better fitness response to that workout. However, the question is, can you actually push yourself at a fast pace, at a race pace, when you are training in a glycogen depleted state? And the answer to that is unless you're training for an event that is an ultra event, like a very long bike ride, we're talking about like race across America type of distances, 500 miles up around there, or up to the thousands of miles mark. If you're training for a very long run, the 50 mile, the 100 mile events, then yeah, it would be a slow enough pace to where it's really not going to matter if you're burning carbs or doing the beta oxidation of the fat, as long as you're maintaining enough sugar to keep you awake and keep your brain going. However, the practice of not eating carbohydrates during workouts for athletes who are wanting to compete in pretty much like Ironman events on down is really not all that smart because you're going to be essentially engaging in fat burning which causes your body or results in your body body being able to work out or having to work out at a slower pace. No matter what, when you're burning fat, you just have to go slower. The body does not engage in beta oxidation or fat burning at a rapid enough rate for you to be moving fast. So a long unfed session every now and again just to basically make you stronger as an athlete mentally, you know, that's okay if you're trying to cannibalize lean muscle, shed weight, I mean, if that's truly your goal, to cannibalize lean muscle, that's okay. I did a little bit when I was coming down off bodybuilding and I knew I had to lose some muscle to be a faster triathlete. And if you are training for an ultra distance event, then that's okay. Otherwise I would make sure that you fuel your training sessions that engage in your caloric restrictions outside of the training session. So I hope that makes sense. Hopefully that wasn't too convoluted a response, but if you have follow up questions to any of these topics that I just covered, then leave it as a comment in the show notes and we can generate a discussion around it. Now, the top question of this week because I really did think it was an interesting question and the person who's going to win a free month's membership to the Body Transformation Club is Kevin. The question I just answered because I thought it was very interesting. So Kevin, shoot me an email and I'll hook you up with a free month's membership to my Body Transformation Club and you'll get a postcard from me every week with fitness tips, nutrition tips, and access to a secret video page where I shoot videos for you, put up recipes for you, and really help you along your health and fitness journey. So we're going to move on to this week's interview with Dr. Richard Cohen.

Featured Topic.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. I'm here with Dr. Richard Cohen from Bioletics. And if you've heard podcasts number 53, number 64, or if you've just been to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and done a search for Dr. Cohen, that's C O H E N or for Bioletics, you are missing out on a ton of fantastic information on the internal performance factors that are just as important as things like a new pair of shoes or decreasing weight on your bike. And as many of you know, I've been using protocol from Biolytics in my own training and my racing and seeing some fantastic results. But I was on the Bioetics website and it's actually a fantastic website over@Bioletics.com and I noticed that they actually have a new assessment there called glycohemoglobal. Glycohemoglobin.

Glycohemoglobin, right, there we go.

Glycohemoglobin, blood glucose. And at first I thought that this was just the normal blood glucose measurement, but apparently it's not. So I wanted to get Dr. Cohen on to explain to you what it is and why you should even care about it. So what is the glycohemoglobin blood glucose and is there a shorter term that I can use for that so I don't have to say that over?

Dr. Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, well, some people call it hemoglobin A1C. And I don't, you know, well, we call it A1C. A1C. I've actually heard of A1C sense that one, yeah. So let me tell you what it is. It's glycohemoglobin is glycated hemoglobin. And by glycated, it's almost the analogy is when you, when proteins become exposed to sugars, they brown. So you'll see like browning in bread, it's actually the proteins changing its structure. So what happens in our body is the sugars, the glucose specifically in our body, binds with protein. And that's really not a good thing. In fact, it's one of the components of aging and illness, is the structural changes in protein. Glucose is damaging. And that's really the key component to think about it. It is a toxic substance. And our body has a very specific way of trying to keep those levels as low as possible, you know, but also, you know, to provide the necessary energy that we need to survive. So as the sugar is in our blood, it actually binds with hemoglobin. Hemoglobin has proteins in it. And this marker called glycated or glycohemoglobin, basically, you know, in the most simplistic terms, gives us a sense of the average amount of blood sugar, sugar that we've had over the past three months. And that's specifically what it tells us is what our average blood sugar has been for three months.

So it's not just like a snapshot of your blood glucose levels, but it actually gives or basically tells you how good of a job you've been doing at monitoring your blood glucose levels.

Right? Well, yeah, how maybe monitoring. So typically, if most people aware of it, aware of it, if you're in the medical or health field, you'll think of diabetes, and that's what it's traditionally been used for, is to sort of get a snapshot of what a diabetic's blood sugar has been over the past three months. And if the percentage of glycated hemoglobin is over 7 to 8%, you say no, this is their job is not good enough. You know, the blood sugars are high and like I said before, blood sugar is toxic to the body especially. The higher it goes, the more risk you are where if you check individual blood sugars, you're hitting and missing and you don't know, depending on what you ate, did you exercise afterwards or what's someone's ability to handle sugar. So this three month snapshot from the medical perspective tells us if the sugars are too high, you know, so why, why I added it to the performance, I guess, you know, we know we do. We've talked about the plasma amino acids, so I wanted to. And we've talked about the essential fatty acids.

So if you want to go back.

And listen to previous podcasts, they can.

They can hear about those.

Right.

So we have.

We have a way of assessing the body's ability, but. But basically capacity to produce structural proteins from amino acids and the essential fatty acids with regard to the immune response. And really was looking for a way to determine how well people are handling blood sugar issues and what this tells us. And it's an interesting way to look at this is like we said, blood, Blood sugar, glucose is toxic. Fortunately, a lot of athletes, and it's the one saving grace, when you are physically active, you burn up your glucose stores, which is something called glycogen. So a lot of times athletes can get away with eating a lot of carbohydrates and not put on weight. So you tend to think. And that's sort of the whole carbohydrate loading issue has gotten in. And people, people and athletes using a lot of carbohydrates for energy and then burning it up and saying, am I really doing the right thing? I think even recently you've talked about that in a previous podcast, we're learning that lots of carbohydrates really are not the ideal energy source for most people. What I wanted to see was an ability. Let me backtrack. So while we could burn up the carbohydrates and the glucose with our physical activity, it is a stress on the body. It's a metabolic stress on the body. It's a hormonal stress on the body. And we do, in bioetics, we do evaluate everyone's metabolic fuel needs. But I wanted a marker to get a sense of where and how well people are tolerating their carbohydrate load. Because. Because they may feel like they're doing fine and they may even be performing okay. But if we take a snapshot of their glycohemoglobin and it's sitting in the mid fives, to me, it's a sense of a metabolic stress on their body, ideally. So we talked about diabetics being around 7% glycated. A healthy person really should sit under five or even four and a half, and that's. In that case, we know their metabolism is really right on. They're handling their insulin, they're processing their sugar. They're not dealing with high bursts of sugar on a regular basis. So our body only. Let's go back Here what that can mean in the perfect world, you might eat a meal and then check your blood sugar an hour afterwards. You know, and it would tell you how well your body is able to handle that blood sugar load. And, you know, with people with cardiovascular issues and problems, you know, in some ways it's a very powerful tool because sugar affects your lipid levels and it changes them to the more damaging type of cholesterol and it causes swings in blood sugar and it can affect your mood and your energy levels. So but obviously that's, that's not very practical and realistic for a generally healthy person. It's not going crazy in monitoring themselves. So what we're able to do is get a sense of on average, is a person overloading themselves with carbohydrate. Are they able to process the carbohydrates effectively to use them for energy as well as storing them for body fat? So someone is carrying too much body weight. Weight, you know, that glycohemoglobin is going to be a telltale sign if it's sitting in the fives. You know, you're eating too many carbohydrates for your own body's metabolism. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. And do the type of carbohydrates affect the A1C? For example, if I'm eating more, say sweet potatoes than bread, you know, does the gluten content affect things? Does the grain content affect things?

Things?

Yes and no. I mean, it's really all going to vary. And you know, ultimately if someone has a problem, you know, if they're not, you know, if their glycohemoglobin is coming in five or six, especially for bitter act person, we then would need to go back and say, you know what, it might be worth you taking a look at some of your meals that you think you have nailed, you think that are right for you. And then you might want to check a blood sugar an hour later. Just a simple little finger stick and that will give you your clue. So it's sort of hard to say. For the most part, glutenous grains are worse. You know, processed foods, sugars, alcohols are going to give you the worst response. But, you know, some people individually, sweet potatoes could be a problem. You know, typically you'd want to see, you know, a fasting sugar, which could vary. But let's say, I'm sorry, not a fasting sugar. Premal sugar should sit around 75 or so, 70 even. But if you eat a meal and you're shooting up to 140, whatever that meal is, even if, quote, unquote, it's a healthy meal, that load is too much for your body. So it also plays a role of what types of food and what the quantity of food is. The healthier, the more metabolically balanced, the better your vitamin D is, the better your essential fats. In thinner you are, are, or leaner would be a better word, the leaner you are. So your muscles are, and the receptors in the muscles are more active and more sensitive to insulin, which drives glucose into the cells, the less you're going to be at risk. But, you know, as you start get older and as some of these other systems start to downregulate and you know, as you have deficiencies in those other critical nutrients we took a look at. But this is something that ultimately could do you in weight wise and metabolically wise as well.

So this would be for people who are not just trying to say lose weight, but also people who are concerned about their metabolic efficiency.

Absolutely. Your ability to process carbohydrates for energy and then what that load is on your system. And that's why I put it in there. So it really gives us now a way to look at proteins, fats and carbohydrates. A screen, a snapshot of how well your body's processing fuel for energy and how well it's utilizing this fuel to create the key factors in your system and ultimately performance. It's going to allow you, and it's another cornerstone for me to sort of say someone, hey, if you're still following the old carbohydrate load or eat carbohydrates as an endurance athlete and your glycohemoglobin sitting in these upper fives, low sixes and you're a little bit heavy. It's like the proof is in the pudding there. Even besides, if we would do a metabolic fuel assessment and they'd come back someone who really needs to eat more protein and vegetables. But it's been honed in so many people for so long. Do you eat lots of carbohydrates as an endurance athlete? And I think that's starting to things finally starting to fall.

And the interesting thing about this test is you can kind of tell if people have been honest too, right?

Oh, absolutely. You know, so from the diabetic, you know, the traditional doctor, it's like you could tell if they're cheating.

Yeah.

So, you know, it gives a sense. And this is not cheating, you know, it's ultimately how your body's handling it. And you Know, the more or the lower it is, whatever the fuel that you're taking is, the lower it is. It says to me that your body is that much more efficient. It's that much more efficient of processing fuel for energy. I'm not saying just go eat proteins and fats and not eat carbohydrate, but if you're active and you're processing things well and your energy is good, that should be in the force. Otherwise something's off metabolically or you're just eating more than your body needs with regard to a carbohydrate load or carbohydrate on a daily basis. It's a nice little reminder from a health perspective, as I mentioned briefly before, that glycohemoglobin or the high sugars relate to triglycerides. They relate to healthier lipoproteins and unhealthier lipoproteins and so forth. So it is a sort of a powerful first screen on your overall health status as well.

So walk me through the steps to where somebody would actually, how does it work logistically? Is this blood, saliva, urine?

Yes, it's another blood stick. So actually we're using the same lab that we do, we use for the vitamin D. So from on the initial assessment, it's really just another drop of blood, blood in the process. You know, if someone's done a vitamin D or they're not doing one concurrently, it's just two drops of blood.

Now, if someone's A1C levels turn out to be high after they're tested, what can they do about it?

Most importantly is, you know, take a look at how you're fueling yourself. You know, most likely they're, they're eating too many carbohydrates for their metabolic needs. So it's going to be reducing those especially major offending substances and then finding out where that happy balance point is, like I said earlier, is concurrently, though, trying to see what else is imbalance out of balance. So typically essential fatty acids and vitamin D are going to be a problem for people with carbohydrate intolerance.

Gotcha. Okay, so basically, people get this test sent to their home. It's a blood stick test. You test A1C and then you guys send the results back. How long does it take if I, if I get this test from actually getting it, doing the, doing the blood stick and then sending it back into you guys?

One week.

Okay.

Yeah, so it's pretty quick. And it'll just give you a snapshot of where you are with how you're fueling yourself and then allow you, you know, ultimately then. And it's. If you have someone hasn't done, they probably want to say, hey, what is my metabolic nutritional needs? What's my blood type? What are my particular. We've talked about, am I someone who is maybe closer to an Eskimo than an Asian? And obviously the typical American diet is very carbohydrate laden. Or like you said, if you're following higher carbohydrate diet because you're an endurance athlete, you need to reevaluate that. And you know, the simple analogy that I always use with my patients is think about a fire. You know, if you want to start a fire and you know how the carbohydrates are, the newspaper and the paper that you stuff in there, they're really hot, but they don't last very long. You need some of the carbohydrates though, to get the wood burning. And the wood is in essence your fat. You know, fat provides two to three times. Well, two to three, it's nine calories per gram and carbohydrates are four. So two and a half times or two, almost two and a half times the energy per gram. And actually based on how your body metabolizes it, it's probably even more than that. So think of carbohydrates is to start that fire, but it's really your fat storage that are going to give you the long lasting energy. So if you're someone who's existing on low fat, high carbohydrate, it's sort of like burning a fire with sticks. You got to keep feeding that fire to keep the energy going. Where ideally your body should utilize its fat stores and have a little bit of carbohydrate to get the process going. It's funny, ironically, I, a couple weeks ago I was in, in Marin, Marin Headlands and there was a ultramarathon there and I ran into Udo Erasmus down there. Yeah. And we had a great, great chat.

And you know, for those people listening to Udo Erasmus is. He's the guy that, that's the, the inventor of the omega 369 oil, right?

Correct. And you know, it's sort of the.

Yeah, good, good fats, bad fats.

Yes, correct. So definitely one of the pieces. A pioneer in the field of fatty acid metabolism and health. And they've gotten to the point, using their 369oil, having athletes use that actually carbohydrate deplete a little bit and using the 369 oils to fuel themselves. Is it not for everyone? Depending. We talked a little bit about individual needs, but the majority actually find that much more beneficial because they're sort of like throwing a thick log onto a fire as opposed to, like we said, using the stick. So something I wouldn't recommend you going out and try right away. But it's just fuel for thought in the fact that maybe we've missed the boat a little bit on how to fuel ourselves. That's the easiest way to think about fats and carbohydrates. Fats really are our primary fuel. Much more effective. So if you're someone who, and one way to just to get a sense for yourself is if you find yourself hungry frequently all through the day and sort of nibbling on carbohydrates and snacks and your body is not efficiently using fuel. Not even the person who gets low blood sugar type symptoms and they have to eat all the time. But it's just if you can't make it it 5, 6 hours without needing something, your body's not as efficient as it needs to be.

Interesting. Now, as far as the glycohemoglobin A1C test, people should basically at this point be thinking of that as kind of like the next, not the next best thing, but really the next wave in terms of science as far as measuring the effectiveness of your body at metabolizing blood glucose and also the levels of blood sugar fluctuations. That's kind of what it boils down to, right?

You know, this is an old marker, it's been around a while, it's just now available by finger stick. But it's a way. And what we're trying to do is to take some of these markers that are used for disease and you know.

Sort of turn them around. So we're using them for health. How do they tell us how we can fine tune our bodies? You know, because we're not just trying to avoid disease, we're trying to understand how we can perform and live at our best. And you know, if you're interested in your health, it's using these simple markers as guideposts to determine what you need to do. It's not the latest book, it's not the latest story, it's, you know, use your body as feedback. So just as we were talking, for some person, a particular meal may be just fine, but for the other person it's not. And it's going to affect their blood sugar, it's going to affect their metabolism. Unless you have some way of monitoring.

It.

With the focus on optimal health. So the sense is if you came in with a blood sugar, sorry, a glycohemoglobin of five and a half to your doctor. Someone came in to me when I was more medically oriented, practice, great, you're doing fine, but with a different set of glasses on. If we're really trying to finely tune our body to perform, you're not doing fine. You could be doing a lot better. Those small tweaks make all the world a difference in your body utilizing energy. It's just that little bit of difference with vitamin D or essential fats, or your metabolism with sugar, which can make all the difference, you know, in your performance. And, you know, that's, you know, I'm trying to get that across to people how powerful small little changes and for some people, dramatic changes, you know, with these key factors can be for their health and performance. And, you know, so if you're not recovering well, if your performance is not improving with training, look into your body. It's really straightforward. It's just a different way. It's something new. We really haven't looked. We haven't looked at performance with our body, and I think you've seen a difference.

I've yet to see one person not feel better.

I completely agree. I got a lot of my athletes doing very well with the protocol from Bioletics. And I want to thank you, Dr. Cohen, for giving your time to come on the show and explain that new A1C test. And I hope that people, especially people who are concerned about blood sugar management and about performance, are going to look into that. So until. Go ahead.

Yeah, yeah.

And I guess the point is, you know, it's something we've spoken about. You know, if you've looked at the bioetics, you know, there's ways to just take a step at a time. You know, it's not overwhelming yourself. It's just understand, you know, individual key factors, whether it's a vitamin D or whether it's. It's your blood sugar. You know, take one step at a time and you know that's going to be your.

Greatest advantage.

Okay, fantastic. This is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Cohen. Thanks for coming on, Dr. Cohen.

Hey, appreciate Ben.

All right, bye now. For those of you who really enjoyed that interview with Dr. Cohen and want to hear more from him, we're actually going to have Dr. Cohen on for a live Q and A over at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, and he's going to be giving all the attendees to the Q and A, a Coupon for a $20 discount off their new performance health profile as well, well as a brand new booklet that he's completed on internal performance factors for athletes. And so if you're a triathlete and you really want to get some one on one with Dr. Cohen and ask him some questions, engage in discussion with him, then make sure that you get into the Rockstar triathlete Academy before June 9, which is when that interview is going to be. It's going to be on Wednesday, June 9th 9th. So check that out. Now in addition, anything that I talked about today you can access in the show notes to podcast episode 96, including a link to the new Get Fit Guy podcast, a link to the Body Transformation Club and the Summer Body Challenge, and a link to those training peaks meal plans and training plans that I talked about, including the vegan meal plan that would be perfect for someone who's wanting to try out a vegan diet and see what it's actually, actually like. It's about 12 weeks of vegan style eating. Now if you like this podcast, please do me a quick favor. Go to itunes, do a search for Ben Greenfield and leave the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show a ranking in itunes and that really helps the show out. You can also leave a comment if you'd like. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield finally waking up.

Up.

I think that decaf coffee is hitting my system and I will be back with another podcast for you next week from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week.