FatLossWorkout-BenGreenfield.mp3

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield. The audio will not be perfect on this particular release, but what you're about to listen to is a seminar on secrets for fat loss, specifically pertaining to exercise for fat loss. This is a seminar that I gave at Pilgrim's Learning center in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. I think you'll get a lot out of it and I'll make sure that on the page where I release this audio you also have a chance to grab the PDF. Alright, enjoy. One thing that we really wanted to focus on in this series was honing in on specific fat loss topics. And because I am a fitness geek and an exercise addict, I got assigned the topic of Exercise Secrets for Fat Loss. And so today I'm going to share with you the techniques that work best best when it comes to movement, exercise, physical activity, what works and what doesn't in the gym. And I will allow ample time for Q and A. So probably the best thing is just save your questions for the end. Unless something is super, super pressing or unless my hair starts on fire or something like that, then please raise your hand, let me know. Okay, so fat loss workout secrets. Just real quick before we jump in, a little bit about what I do here in the area. For about a decade I worked as a personal trainer and an exercise physiologist in kind of a traditional gym studio setting, working with people one on one and exercising with them. When my kids were born four years ago, I kind of started to do a lot more online consulting and phone consulting and doing things like writing articles for websites and magazines and things of that nature and kind of stay at home more. So I don't do a lot of the bench pressing and the get in your face drill sergeant stuff much anymore. The only reason I say that is a lot of times people come up to me after these things and ask me where my gym is and it's the dumbbells on the floor of my office basically at this point my home office. So I write some books and I certainly have brought some of my books and put them over there for you. I chose some of my books that are specifically targeted towards fat loss and I do a little bit of face to face consulting here in the area, meet people at coffee shops and stuff like that to talk. But a resources for you are that I run a free blog with a bunch of articles on exercise and fat loss and the kind of things we'll talk about tonight over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I also have a private Q and A forum and that's basically like a $10 a month forum where you can come in and ask questions and stuff like that. And then I also work with a lot of personal trainers and fitness coaches, training them and how to get better results from their clients over at a website called superhumancoach.com now, if you remember anything from tonight's seminar, it is that pretty much most of what you know about fat loss is wrong. I know that I wrote everything you know about fat loss is wrong on the slide, but it looks like there's some pretty smart cookies in here. So I won't say everything that you know about fat loss is wrong. But one really, really important thing that surprises a lot of people is that the workout, the least important thing, you know, going into the gym and doing the training session, it's really only aside from Olympic athletes and, you know, elite trained individuals that we've kind of had gyms that we go move in traditionally. You know, up until about 100 years ago, people just moved on their own, right? They didn't go to a gym and pump dumbbells or, you know, get a trainer in their face or hop on a treadmill. You just moved and you burnt calories that way and you walked and you gardened and you farmed and. And industrialization certainly has played a part a little bit in our sedentary lifestyle. But the workout really is the least important thing when it comes to nudging your body into being in that place where it needs to be as far as getting the body that you want, the body that you deserve, the body that you're working hard for and maybe you're watching your food for. Some of these other concepts are super important, and we're not going to talk about these concepts tonight, but they're important. And again, we have to hone in on a specific thing tonight. So we are going to talk about the workout and the exercise. But some of the things include detoxification and gut healing. That's super important. And that's one of those things where no matter how hard you exercise, if you've got a toxic load in your body or if you've got basically a gut, if you have leaky gut syndrome or you're eating a lot of foods that cause inflammation in your gut, you tend not to see good results. Hormone balance, that's another issue. And I know that bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and hormone balance and all that stuff is kind of a hot topic these days. And it is for a reason. Because when you have a hormonal IMBALANCE that can really slow you down from reaching your goals. And you don't have to be somebody who's shooting testosterone into your behind to win the Tour de France to worry about hormonal imbalances. It's an issue with a lot of folks when it comes to optimizing your weight loss, Estrogen dominance in women and testosterone deficiency in guys and stuff like that. Nutrient deficiencies is another issue. I work for a company called Wellness FX and we do a lot of testing of people's blood and saliva and urine and then look at the results that we get on the person's lab. Micronutrient deficiencies and even carbohydrate and fat and protein imbalances. A lot of that stuff is important as well. I can certainly talk to you guys in more detail about this stuff afterwards if you you ask me, point you in the direction of some good resources. Elimination of a sedentary life, that's definitely more important than the workout. And research has shown that if you're sitting for longer than two hours during the day, doesn't matter how much you're exercising at the end of the day, after you've maybe been sitting in your office or at your desk for six hours, doesn't matter how much you exercise afterwards, there's still going to be a significant elevation of things like cardiovascular risk, disease, overweight, obesity, things of that nature. I mean, you, you have to stand up. You know, my rule is I never sit for more than an hour without doing 100 jumping jacks. That's just my rule. And, and I live by that rule. I'll talk about some other things that I do too, and some ideas for you, but it's super important to never be sitting for more than two hours at a time. Don't worry, I won't talk for two hours tonight. And if I do, I'll let you guys get up and run laps around the chairs, play musical chairs. And then of course, as you've probably heard somewhere in a magazine or a book, sleep and living as much of a stress free lifestyle as possible is also super important when it comes to things like decreasing the hormone cortisol, which is responsible for fluid retention and resistance to weight loss. That's just one tiny example of how sleep and de stressing can help. Eliminating appetite cravings through sleep and de stressing is another perfect example of how something like that can assist a ton with fat loss. I recently put a free book up on Kindle that you can download. It's just a resource guide called Become Superhuman that goes into a lot of little resources and tools and tips and tricks I use to address some of these other issues that I just mentioned. My plan is every month I'm just going to go in and update that book with the new stuff that I find and keep it for free on Amazon. But that's always a resource that you can use as well. So the workout is not as important as any of those other things that I just mentioned. But if you are going to workout, the next seven strategies are going to give you all the Jedi exercise for fat loss tricks that you need to know. And I will move through these slides at a decent pace. There are not a ton of slides. I've just got seven things that I want to share with you guys tonight, so let's jump right in. Ok. The first thing that's really important when it comes to fat loss for working out is it's important to know your fat burning zone. And I'm going to tell you right now exactly how to find out what your personal fat burning zone is. Because everybody has a certain point during movement, during physical activity at which the amount of fat that they burn becomes maximized. Now, most of you sitting here in your chairs, listening right now are burning primarily fat. That is the body's preferred source of fuel when you're not moving very hard. Once you start moving, walking, a treadmill, riding a bike, whatever, your body not only starts to burn more calories, but it starts to burn a greater amount of fat and a greater amount of carb. And you reach that certain point during exercise where fat burning peaks. And at that stage, what that means is you're training your body how to become a fat burning machine, how to become basically what's called more aerobically efficient. Here's how to find out what that heart rate is. It's a 20 minute test. You want to warm up well before you do this test, whether it be some stretching, a little bit of walking on a treadmill, or easy riding on a bicycle or something like that. And then what you do, and I like to do this on a bicycle, like an indoor bicycle, just because it's a really nice controlled environment. If you have a treadmill in your home or you have an elliptical trainer, you could certainly do this on those as well. But what you do is you exercise at your maximum sustainable pace for 20 minutes. Okay? This should be a steady effort. It shouldn't get harder as you go, it shouldn't get easier as you go. You may need to make a few little adjustments for those 20 minutes. To kind of make sure that you're staying at your maximum sustainable pace. For most people, this is about a seven and a half to an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten. So you're working. But if, let's say you're riding a bike, if your legs are getting really rubbery, if your cadence or how fast you're pedaling is starting to slow down, that usually means you're going too hard, because that's obviously not a sustainable pace. So you want to choose a pace that's your sustainable pace and you want to hold that for 20 minutes. Now, here's what's important. You need to have a heart rate monitor, or you can use those little handles that are on a lot of these bikes these days, little silver handles that will take your heart rate. But you want to get an idea of what your average heart rate is over those 20 minutes. And you shouldn't notice that your heart rate's jumping around too much over those 20 minutes. It should be at a, at a fairly steady pace. Okay, so you got to take your average heart rate over those 20 minutes. Let's say, you know, for example, for me, it's usually on a bike right around, around 165 or so. Okay? So let's say I find out that my average heart rate is 165 beats per minute by wearing a heart rate monitor, by checking the heart rate on the bike while I'm riding. The next thing that you want to do, because that heart rate 165 is not your fat burning heart rate. That's a different heart rate. You subtract 20 beats from the value that you get, 20 beats from that average heart rate that you get over those 20 minutes. This kind of makes sense. I'll see if you can nod. Just so I'm not leaving folks behind. Okay, so it makes sense. All right, cool. So you subtract 20 beats. So for me, if I was cycling at 165 beats per minute, subtracting 20 beats would put me at 145 beats per minute, right? Then I subtract three beats from that and add three beats to that to give me a zone. Because nobody's really going to be able to exercise right at 145 beats per minute during an exercise session. So that's why I subtract three and add three. So for me, that come out to my fat burning zone being 142 to 148 beats per minute. So it gives me a little six beat zone to play with. In a scenario like that. Okay, so that's going to be your fat burning zone. Very simple way to determine this. Now what do you use this for? We'll talk about this in a little bit more detail in a second. But, but it's a very, very useful zone to be in for fasted morning workouts. That means getting out of bed in the morning and doing a workout in that heart rate zone without having eaten any breakfast. Because what you're doing is you're working out very aerobically efficient, tapping into a lot of fat when you haven't given your body a lot of food. But it's not stressful on your body to do that because we all have tens of thousands of calories of fat to rely on in our bodies. So fasted morning workouts anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes in length. That heart rate zone works really well for. I also, with the clients that I work with, like to implement a few longer weekend workouts in this heart rate training zone. An example of that would be you get a heart rate monitor and you strap it on and you go for a hike or a walk, or you do tubs a few times, or you even just do a brisk walk through town and you're going for literally like an hour or two trying to stay at your maximum fat burning zone. For some people, this can be a bike ride. If you're up for something super boring, an indoor elliptical trainer ride, maybe put a movie in or something. But just one or two workouts like that. I'm not into doing those type of workouts a ton just because it tends to be kind of stressful on the body. But I like one longer fasted workout in your fat burning zone each week that's without eating trail mix and gels and energy drinks and things of that nature. Okay, just a fasted long workout. Now I'll get into that just a little bit more and I'll be laying out a sample week for you as well. But alternatives to this idea of finding out what your fat burning zone is, One is to do what's called a blood lactate test. That's a test that a lab can do for you, like an exercise physiology lab. There's one over in Spokane, for example, called Champion Sports Medicine. And what they do is they do something very, very similar to what I just described, except they prick your finger and they take a blood measurement at various heart rates. And what happens is once your blood lactate goes what's called one millimolar above your resting values, that is your fat Burning heart rate zone. Another way to do it would be via what's called a VO2 max test. In this test, you wear a mask, you breathe carbon dioxide out and oxygen in, and it approximates how much carbohydrate and how much fat you're burning during the test. And you get to a point during that test where you're at what is called your ventilatory threshold, also known as your anaerobic threshold. And then you can subtract 20 beats from that, similar to here, and also find your maximum fat burning zone. So if any of you are super geeks and you want to go into a lab and get this measured, you can get more accurate values, but you can also just kind of approximate it yourself. You guys can come in if you want. That's fine. Okay, so know your fat burning zone and realize that when you're exercising in your fat burning zone, like I mentioned, like a fasted morning workout, it doesn't have to be hard. This can include, you know, walking the dog for 20 minutes. It can be an easy bike ride. You know, I work with some, like triathletes who are trying to lose weight. For them, it could be an easy swim. It could even be like gardening or yoga. If your fat burning zone, you're able to reach it during those type of activities, even like doing housework. And one strategy, a lot of people don't really think about this, but you can get like ankle weights, wrist weights, like a weighted vest. And that will jack up your heart rate while you're doing housework and allow you to get up into your fat burning zone. While you're doing a simple activity like that. You're just making yourself way more. So those are some of the ways that you can use that fat burning zone. Now the next strategy is when you do workout, when you go to the gym, you want to do the best workout for fat loss. And there's basically two options. There's two strategies that work really well. And this is based off of some studies that have looked on calorie burn and post exercise metabolic rate, as well as the actual amount of fat burnt during the workout and the ability to lose weight over a certain period of weeks with a workout. So I'm going to give you guys two options when you're at the gym that work really well for fat loss. Option one is four to six full body exercises. You just choose four to six full body exercises and you do them in a circuit. And that means that you start with the first exercise and you go to the next and the next and the next, all the way through. And you do what's called a cardio boost at the very end of that circuit. So the example that I've given you here on the slide is you would do an upper body pushing exercise like a chest press, an upper body pull pulling exercise like a pull down lower body pushing exercise like a squat, lower body pulling exercise like a deadlift, a core exercise such as a cable torso twist. I'm not big time into crunches and sit ups and stuff like that. They're not that effective. And then you end with this cardio boost, which could be, for example, two minutes of bicycling at your maximum pace. A boost that really gets you breathing hard, gets your heart rate well over and above that fat burning zone that that we just talked about. And you would go through a circuit like this three to four times and use 10 to 15 reps for each exercise. You rest minimally, meaning you rest just as long as you need to to allow you to move to the next exercise with good form. So as you can see, you're not spending a lot of time kind of sitting down as you're going through this. You have your hand raised. Is my hair on fire?

Yes, it is. Okay, I'm afraid. Why no treadmill?

Why no treadmill? The main reason for an exercise like this that I say, I don't specifically say no treadmill, but the reason I gave cycling as an example is a lot of times it can take a few minutes fumbling the treadmill and getting it all set up and everything to even get it going. And by then your heart rate's kind of come down, whereas a lot of times with a bike, you can just hop on and get it. So that's the only reason. But you could use a treadmill. It would be okay. So some people will ask, well, what weight do I use when I'm doing 10 to 15 reps for an exercise like this? I just use the rule of three. What that means is if you're going to do 10 to 15 reps, let's say you've chosen 15 as the number that you're going to go for. If you can't even get up to 12 reps, within 3 reps of that number you're shooting for, you need to decrease the weight. And if you can go 18 reps, meaning three reps above and beyond that 15 reps, you need to increase the weight. So, pretty simple. I just like to use that rule of three. So you kind of know how to adjust the Weight as you go. Now, there's also another option, as I mentioned, option 2. And this option, rather than using a circuit style of working out where you're going from one exercise to the next to the next to the next style resting, this uses supersets. So supersets, all that is, is you're doing one exercise followed by another exercise. So back to back exercises and then you're going back to the beginning and doing it again. And I throw a little fat burning twist into supersets. And the way that this works, and this is super, super effective at burning a lot of calories, you do one exercise in the superset, then you do the next exercise in the superset, and then you do a short cardio boost. That cardio boost can be 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds. It doesn't have to be long. So, for example, a workout would be do a standing overhead press, followed immediately by pull downs and then throw in some jumping jacks and you go through that three to five times. Then you move on to squats, followed by leg curls, followed by a quick bout on a treadmill going through three to five times. See, I just broke my own rule about using the treadmill, but trying to give you guys some variation. Then chest press to seated row, followed by a quick boost on the bicycle going through that circuit three to five times. It's almost like mini circuits. And then lunges followed by some planks for your abs to an elliptical booster for three to five times through or three to four times through written on the slide. But it can be up to 5, 10 to 15 repetitions for each of those. Again following the rule of three with minimal rest. Now, in the past couple of minutes, I know I just Andrew probably about 12 different exercises at you and maybe used some terms with which you weren't familiar. I have a website that I've got a full free exercise video library at. It's pacificfit.net that's Pacific, like the ocean. Fitlikefitness.net if you go to pacificfit.net, there's just a button there you can click for an exercise library. And I show videos of all the exercises if you want to know how to do a few exercises. So those are the two different options. And I'll show you in a minute how you can work those into a week of workouts that also includes these fasted workouts that I talked about. But before I do, I wanted to show you one other thing. I love this cartoon, by the way. One little thing is that I also like to throughout the week just because they're so efficacious for fat loss. I like to throw in a few high intensity cardio intervals. And these type of things are very, very effective at giving a lot of bang for your buck without having you to like spend 60 minutes on a treadmill or 90 minutes on a bike or doing these type of long, long, long marathon type of sessions people do day after day after day to try and burn fat. They're just super quick in and out. We're talking about 10 to 20 minute cardio interval sessions. I like three different sessions. One is going 30 seconds hard followed by two minutes easy about eight times through. You can do treadmill, bicycle, elliptical, outside in the park, around the block, whatever for these. Another one that I like is one minute hard followed by four minutes easy and doing that four times through. And the last one I'd like is two minutes hard followed by one minute easy, five times through. Those are three good, good examples of high intensity cardio intervals that work really well. And they're doable. They're like mentally doable. You can get through them just about the time you feel like the workout's getting pretty hard, it's over. And you want to warm up a little bit and cool down a little bit after these. But let's look at how to actually incorporate this stuff that I just talked about into a typical week. And here's a sample scenario for a really, really good fat burning type of workout week. We start with Monday. Monday morning you wake up and you do 15 to 30 minutes of morning cardio without eating breakfast. And you do that in your fat burning zone that you learned a few minutes ago about how to calculate. Now I really like to use 2A days with fat loss exercise programs and I like to put the harder workout whenever possible, in the afternoon or the early evening. There's two reasons for that. Your body temperature is higher at that point in the day and your post exercise, what's called your protein synthesis, is higher. What that means is that your muscles are able to repair themselves a little bit better after an afternoon or early evening workout compared to a morning workout. It's not like you're going to completely destroy your routine and not get any results. If for example, you were to take the two workout examples that I give during the day. And maybe you do them all in the morning because that's your time zone for working out. Or maybe you do them all in the evening because that's when you can do them. But I'm showing you the Best case scenario here. So fasted 15 to 30 minutes of morning cardio in the morning on Monday followed by 30 to 45 minutes of afternoon or evening weights. Using for example, option one that I gave you. Tuesday, you would do a fasted 15 to 30 minutes of morning cardio again, but this time in the afternoon you do 15 to 30 minutes of one of those cardio interval workouts that I showed you. Wednesday you do the same as Monday, but use option two. So you do like the superset type of workout. And so instead of the circuit type of workout, Thursday you do the same as Tuesday but choose a different cardio intervals workout. By the way, I'm going to go and do everything possible to hook all of you up with the actual slide just in case you're writing furiously. I'm seeing a few people writing furiously. I'll try to make it happen. I'll give you both the slide and the audio that hopefully is recording right now. Okay. Friday would be the same as Monday, doing some morning fasted cardio followed by option one. So you can see that by the end of Monday through Friday, you've hit the gym three times, you've lifted weights three times. Super important for fat loss, by the way. And then Saturday, that's when you throw in that one kind of longer session that I like to do each week for fat loss. Not a ton of these, most people overdo these type of sessions, but just one facet effort. Hike long, walk with the dog, walk with your friends. So we're talking about a conversational pace here, but kind of like a longer pace where you're actually getting out there and putting your body into that aerobic zone for a little bit of time. And this really can be like an afternoon of gardening in your backyard. It does not have to be super duper structured for something like this. And then you use Sunday as an off day or as a makeup day or as a recovery day. As long as it's not like if you bon bons on the couch and catch up on all the tv, you miss today. So it's nice to have a little bit bit of recovery there too. Just so you don't stress yourself out. And you know, we talked about de stressing and too much cortisol and you certainly do want to give yourself some rest here and there. So so far we've gone through two strategies. The next strategy that I've already hinted at is to include fasting. Include fasting. So there's a few options for fasting. And fasting works really, really well, for keeping your body in this state where you're learning how to burn fatty acids very efficiently as fuel. We all have lots of storage fat, but most of us have been taught to graze, to snack, to eat five to ten times a day. All of these type of strategies keep your blood sugar levels elevated and never really let your body tap into its own fat source. So fasting is a really, really cool way not only to decrease a lot of chronic disease risk factors, like risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but it's also a really good way to teach your body how to burn fat efficiently, how to turn yourself literally into a fat burning machine. I fast every day. I use this method. I do one 12 to 16 hour period during the day where I don't eat. For me, what I do is I just stop eating after dinner and then I don't eat again until 9 or 10 the next morning. So I do a late breakfast without any eating after dinner. And I typically try and squeeze an exercise session, that window somewhere, one of those fat burning zone type of exercise sessions. That's one option. Just every day you do a 12 to 16 hour period where you don't eat. Okay, it's pretty simple if most of it is taking place while you're asleep, because it's a lot easier to resist the urge to grab Snickers bar when you're asleep versus when one's sitting on your desk. Another option is to fast one day per week. Like for example, in the workout scenario that I just gave you, that sample week of workouts, Sunday. That easy. You could just not eat anything on Sunday. Now when I say not eat anything, that's actually really hard to do. And there's a few little things that you can throw in that work really well to help you get through a day of not eating. I like amino acids. You can get them in capsule or powder form. They're a pretty accessible supplement these days. I guarantee if you were to walk out here into the supplement store, you'd be able to find amino acids, greens. Anybody here seen a green supplement before? Greens capsules, greens powders, things of that nature. That's another thing that would be okay during a fasting day, as long as it's not one of the kind of greens supplements that's literally like a meal replacement powder, like a 200, 300 calorie meal replacement powder. And it's just like a 1030 calorie shot of greens that would also be acceptable on a fasting day. And then caffeine can actually help amp up that fatty acid burning a little bit bit. So sipping on some green tea or some coffee during the day would also be acceptable during a day of fasting. But that stuff can, believe it or not, help a ton. If you've tried to go a full day or a long period of time without eating and try it with using some of these versus without, when you're using some of those things I just mentioned, it makes it a lot easier on you. Now the other thing is that I show here on the slide that if you're doing instead of the one day per week of not eating anything, just trying to work in every day, a 12 to 16 hour period of time where you're not eating. I like to combine that, like I mentioned, with a fasted workout. But I also like to combine it with what's called cold thermogenesis. This is something that's relatively new in kind of the fitness world. But what it means is that you actually let yourself become cold. And when you do that, your body forms a little bit more of what is called brown adipose tissue. And that's a very metabolically active tissue that will let you tap into your fatty acids a lot more readily. The way that I do it for, like when I'm fasting overnight and I want to do some of this cold thermogenesis, I don't necessarily go jump in the river or the lake or a cold bathtub. I do take a cold shower in the morning and then I've got this vest, it's called a cool fat burner vest. I got it from coolfatburner.com all it is is it goes here and here, so over your torso and then it goes onto your back a little bit. And it's got little ice packs that hit the areas on your body where you tend to have the maximum amount of brown adipose tissue. And I'll just leave that on for about 20 minutes, up to an hour, like in the morning when I'm checking email and getting ready for the day and toddling around the kitchen and that type of thing. And you're a little bit cold, but really amps up calorie burning and you tend to see a real, real big acceleration in fat loss when you let yourself be cold after a fasted overnight session of not eating anything. And that works really well. So that's something you can do. Now I also mentioned I have an asterisk after fasted workouts. Now, fasted workouts are appropriate again for easy stuff. Notice that in all the scenarios that I've just described. I've never really mentioned going and doing those hard cardio intervals or going and doing that weight training in a fasted state. That can tend to be very stressful on your body. It can tend to break down muscle, it can tend to make you eat more later on because you're so stressed out. And you can tend to get some immune system and some thyroid deficits from doing hard, hard workouts in a fasted state. So if you're going to use this concept of fasting, don't beat your body up when it's completely void of fuel. That can be tough on the body. The other thing that you want to be careful with is aside from only doing fasted workouts in your fat burning zone, is you want to be really, really careful, especially if you're in your first eight weeks of ever really having exercised or you are 30 plus pounds overweight. Now, I know this is getting kind of complex, but the reason that I'm throwing this in here and the reason that I give you that recommendation is because if you're just getting started into an exercise program and you haven't been exercising, or if you're 30 plus pounds overweight, there can be what's called an insensitivity to the hormone leptin, which is a hormone that's responsible for fat burning. It's responsible for appetite control and a lot of really interesting effects when it comes to fat loss. If you stress your body out by doing lots of hard workouts in a fasted state, then what happens is you can alter your ability to become leptin sensitive. Normally when you start an exercise program, you do become leptin sensitive. But if it's a very, very stressful workout program, then you want to be careful. So especially if you're a novice exerciser or if you're 30 plus pounds overweight, you want to be very, very careful with putting your body through a lot of stress when it's in this fasted state. I didn't mean to confuse you all too much with that type of thing, but you just need to know that insensitivity to the hormone leptin can be really aggravated by stress. So you want to be careful with that. Now, if you're fasting and you get appetite cravings, some of the things that can really help with appetite cravings, sour foods or fermented foods. Okay, I like kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles and relish is perfect examples of that. Generally, I'll go for the more natural forms that you might find out Here on Pilgrims, a lot of the stuff you buy at the grocery store is ultra high heat pasteurized and a lot of the good bacteria in it is dead. And it's not all that great for you. But a lot of these are really, really good at controlling the appetite. If you go to the Pilgrim's Wellness Institute YouTube channel, my wife and I recently taught a full hour and a half long course here on how to make a lot of this stuff at home, how to make your own probiotics at home. We didn't talk about this too much during that seminar, but a lot of these things are really, really good appetite controlling type of foods too. And they're relatively low in calories. Another strategy that you can use is water that has effervescent flavoring or electrolyte tablets added to it. If you go out and you get Vitamin water or Zero Water or Powerade Zero, or any of these other waters that are a little bit more commercial, they tend to sweeten those with acetylthami, potassium or sucralose or artificial sweeteners that may not be that good for you or your brain. But you can get effervescent electrolyte tablets and flavor tablets that aren't sweeteners with things like that that are things like stevia. One brand that I like is made by a company called Noon and it's called U Hydration. You can probably get it here. I imagine you can. Another company called Goo, they make one called Goo Brew and that's another example that's flavored with stevia. So some of these, you just dissolve them in water and it really helps keep your appetite full. It almost feels like you're drinking soda, except you're not. I also like sparkling water for that type of thing. I mentioned amino acid powders or amino acid capsules. I especially like to include those before a workout. And that would be something that you could even include before a fasted workout along with tea or they even make edible tea. I've been experimenting with these little green tea leaves that you can literally like to eat. And they're really good. They give you that same kind of amplified fat burning effect. Those also are something that can control appetite cravings. These greens powders that I talked about like spirulina and chlorella and things like that. Those also, when you use something like that, have a really, really good effect at stopping appetite cravings just because they're so nutrient dense with so few calories. So those come in really handy. And then one thing that a lot of people don't realize. And the reason I write sodium on here is because sometimes when people start onto a diet program or a calorie control program, they tend to really lower the amount of carbohydrates that they eat. And especially these days, low carbohydrate diets are becoming more and more popular. When your body sheds its storage carbohydrate, you tend to lose a lot of water along with that carbohydrate. And what happens is you get low blood pressure, you get very dizzy, and you tend to mistake that as hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. And so you go and eat, when in fact all you really need to do is get a little bit of extra sodium, salt your food, use some sea salt, use some of these effervescent electrolyte tablets that have sodium in them. And that can help to control that feeling of dizziness and kind of that blah feeling that you get that in many cases is not hunger or low blood sugar as much as it is low blood pressure. So if you're kind of doing like an Atkins low carb diet type of thing, that's something to bear in mind that can help you quite a bit. So I just talked a little bit about food and I want to make sure that especially when it comes to your workout scenario, pre, during, and post, they understand how to fuel. So a few rules. First of all, fueling is overemphasized in many cases. Much of the nutrition advice that we get when it comes to workouts is trickle down nutrition advice from like pro athletes who are going out and destroying their bodies for two to four hours. And if they're not getting fuel in before, during or after that workout, they have very subpar performance. But then we get a lot of folks going to the gym and getting the bar before the workout, and they're burping that up during the workout and maybe having a Gatorade or they're on the spin bike and then finishing up and grabbing a post workout smoothie. And by the time you finish the workout, you've ingested like 1,000 calories more than you've actually burnt. In reality, in most cases, pre, during and post workout nutrition, especially for fat loss and for the general public, is way overemphasized. And it's really not that important. If there were no, like smoothie bars and eating stations at gyms and health clubs, we'd see a lot less obesity and a lot less resistance to fat loss in people who are working out. But a few rules, if you are Doing a fasted workout, one of these fasted workouts that I've described. In that scenario, do try to eat within about 60 minutes after that workout. Because doing a workout fasted and then staying in the fasted state for a long time afterwards, words that can be stressful on the body and it can inhibit some muscle repair and recovery. So if you're doing a fasted workout, do eat within 60 minutes after the workout. Preferably it doesn't have to be anything fancy, it can just be your next real meal. In most cases. If you're doing a fasted morning workout, just go have breakfast. You don't have to do any type of fancy recovery shake. Also, a protein carb blend with that meal works really, really well. Adding in some proteins for some amino acids to help your muscles repair and recover. Adding in a little bit of carbohydrate. I especially like to have the carbohydrate earlier in the day, but preferably not a shake or a smoothie. And that kind of flies in the face of a lot of what you hear. And the reason that I say that is because it's so, so easy to overdo it when you're drinking your calories. When I make a shake or a smoothie, I end up drinking like 16 or 20 ounces and before I know it, you know I've sucked 600, 700, 800 calories down the hatch because I'm not chewing. And when you're chewing your food, you tend to eat a lot fewer calories. So I'm a bigger fan of if you're going to go for an engineered fuel and you got to grab something on the fly, at least go for a bar instead of a shake or a smoothie if you are going to do something other than a real meal. I'm not a fan of the shakes or the smoothies if it's not a fasted workout. If, let's say you're working out at one o' clock in the afternoon after lunch, then you don't have to worry about eating after that workout. The nutrients that you've given yourself during lunch are still in your body when you finish that workout. Your amino acids are still high, your blood glucose in most cases is still high. So you don't have to worry about eating. Unless one of those people out there who's trying to put on muscle as fast as possible. And I know that most of the people in this audience, you're not going after the, the ripped bodybuilder look, you're trying to shed fat in most cases. So I don't recommend eating afterwards unless you're trying to build muscle or unless you have blood sugar issues, pre diabetic, prone to hypoglycemia, that type of thing. A lot of times for medical reasons you do want to make sure that you get a little bit of fuel in your system after a workout. And then finally, if the workout is two plus hours in duration, I recommend you eat during the workout. And the reason that I say that is it typically takes about two hours. You completely exhaust your liver's storage carbohydrate and your muscles storage carbohydrate and you just tend to feel pretty blah after about two hours and your quality of your workout starts to suffer and you just don't feel as good unless you get in something during a two plus hour workout. Sample things to Eat before a Hard Workout Like I mentioned, I'm not a huge fan of doing hard workouts in a fasted state. So something like those amino acid capsules or powder that I just talked about, plus something really easy to digest like half a banana, a little piece of fruit. Alternatively rather than doing that, you could 20 to 30 minutes prior just eat like an easy to digest carb, like a little bit of potato based starch, like a sweet potato or yam. Works really well for something like that. Or you can just have a real meal. But a real meal in my book has proteins in it, it's got fats in it, it's got carbohydrates in it. And eating all that stuff 30 minutes before workout usually doesn't sit too well in your tummy. So if it's going to be a real meal, have that like two hours before the workout. If you do that, that still counts as a pre workout meal. Now after a hard workout, again after a fasted workout or after, I'm sorry, an easy workout. We really don't care that much about eating after a hard workout. A protein shake and I should write there a protocol protein slurry and I'll tell you why in a second. I like proteins like Deep30 or Living Protein or et cetera with some nuts and some fats thrown in. Those are really good too. I don't blend them though. What I do is I get out a little bowl or a cup and I put in my powder. Even as you walk out the door here, there's like a garden of life powder, a lot of these really healthy meal replacement powders that don't have a lot of artificial sweeteners on them or somebody Posing in a speedo on the front of them. Usually those are a little bit better for you. But what I do is I literally stir my powders. If I'm getting used to powder, rather than blend it and drink it and I'll eat it with a spoon. A lot of times I'll just stir up a little protein powder with some coconut milk or some almond milk, throw a handful of nuts in there and you can literally eat something that was designed to be prepared as a shake or a smoothie. And that kind of overcomes that. Drinking your huge 800 calorie Jamba Juice scenario. Or alternatively, after a hard workout, you just do a real meal. Now, like I mentioned, if you are going to eat during the workout, typically that's going to be during a workout that's two plus hours in duration. What kind of things could you do with something like that? Like a long, long hike? You could do some real food like trail mix or an organic type of fuel bar. You could do a slow release fuel. There's a certain type of fuel out there that works really, really well at keeping your body in its fat burning zone that a lot of the triathletes and the ironman triathletes that I work with are using. It's called Superstarch. It's a very slow release fuel. What you want to avoid though are sugary engineered fuels like gels, sports drinks, stuff like that. So try to stick to fats or very, very slow release carbohydrates during like a long two plus hour workout and understand that that's really the only time that you need to be taking in that type of stuff. Okay, Use supplements strategically. I'm always careful with talking about stuff like this because I to give you the impression that popping pills is going to solve your problems, that taking fat burning supplements is going to somehow turn you automatically overnight into somebody who's in the genes they were in 20 years ago. This stuff gives you tops a 5% advantage. It's marketed as stuff that just strips fat off your body. But in reality it's very, very insignificant compared to some of the exercise recommendations that I've just given you and even some of the nutrition recommendations that I've just given you. But let's say that you do want to use fat burning supplements. Some of the things that work well. I've mentioned caffeine, how I like to use caffeine before a fasting workout to accelerate the burning of the fatty acids. That can be green tea, it can be black coffee. There's another energy Supplement I use called Delta E, that's another one. Caffeine is one supplement that would fall into what I call a fat burning stack or a fat burning supplement protocol. Vanadium and chromium. What those do is those tend to control your insulin and your blood sugar, especially if you eat them before a meal. So you can get a vanadium or fat burning supplement that has vanadium and chromium in it. And eating something like that 30 to 60 minutes prior to a meal can help to control blood sugar and help to ensure that a little bit less of that carbohydrate gets converted into fat. Now another thing in addition to vanadium and chromium that can help you to control your blood sugar. And it actually shows some really, really cool effects in terms of insulin control. And I need to say as I'm talking about this, that I don't want you to misconstrue this as medical advice. I'm not trying to manage a condition like diabetes or anything like like that. But as far as blood sugar, Rock lotus and bitter melon extract also work really well. And you would do those same time you do vanadium and chromium 30 to 60 minutes prior to a meal. I like thermo factor as a vanadium chromium blend. I like that. Shouldn't say MCX100. It should say MTX100 as a rock lotus and a bitter melon extract. Okay. There's some other things out there that can accelerate fat burning. I pick and choose. The stuff that's actually been shown in studies to do be efficacious and preferably not sponsored by the company that sells the actual supplements, Alpha lipoic acid and acetyl L carnitine. Those are supplements that can assist with your ability to burn fatty acids more readily. The actual dosage on those is 300 to 600 milligrams of alpha lipoic acid split throughout the day and 750 to 2000 milligrams of acetyl L carnitine split throughout the day. If you are vegan or vegetarian, conjugated linoleic acid can help if you're eating meat and especially beef in your diet, like grass fed beef. Conjugated linoleic acid or what's known as cla is not as important to include, but that's kind of known as the fat that burns fat. And that's the final supplement that I would recommend that can be used in like a fat burning supplement protocol. About three to four grams per day. There's a couple websites that I put at the bottom of the slide where a lot of this stuff is available because I have like these kind of supplements on my website. Just be careful because if you drink coffee you do stupid things faster with more energy. But seriously, don't overdo the coffee. You've heard me a couple times now mention cortisol and how having too much stress in your life can inhibit fat loss. Too much coffee can really stress the out your adrenal glands produce too much cortisol and eventually end up inhibiting fat loss, giving you short term results but long term health effects. So you know, for me personally, I do one cup of coffee during the day and sometimes I add in a little bit of green tea but don't chug down, you know, like eight 24 ounce cups of coffee from the gas station, that type of thing. Just be careful with the caffeine component and look at any fat burning supplements that you're taking because a lot of times you don't realize and they've got ephedra and green coffee extract and stuff like that in them. Just be careful. A lot of that can add up during the day. Remember the importance of sleep as well. These next couple of slides are going to go by really fast and then I'll open it up for questions. The next thing is to use cold thermogenesis. You've already heard me talk about this and explain it a little bit so I don't need to spend a terribly large amount of time on how this can increase metabolic rate and fat loss. I didn't mention this, but it can also do a pretty good job because controlling blood sugar as well. If you happen to be someone who tests your blood sugar with like a blood glucose monitor, you'll notice that during a cold thermogenesis session, like such as wearing that vest that I talked about or taking cold showers, things of that nature, your blood sugar tends to decrease. What are some methods? I mentioned the fat burning vest that I use from coolfatburner.com I mentioned cold showers and I mentioned also combining this with fasting. A couple of things that I didn't mention already. Cold immersion. And that's something that I'll typically do in the spring, the summer and the early fall is I'll throw in exercise sessions where I'm swimming in a lake or a river. You burn literally thousands of calories per hour when you're exercising in cold water. You also burn a significant amount of calories when you're just exercising in cold weather. So trying to not get into the mindset that you have to go to the gym to exercise. The nice warm, heated gym. Get some gloves on, cover your hands, make sure your feet are insulated, make sure your head is taken care of. The crotch is another important area. But in most cases, people aren't heading outdoors with their crotch exposed. If any of those areas are exposed or get cold, your body can actually tend to down regulate your metabolic rate. So keep that stuff warm, but head out. And don't worry about being just a little bit chilly during your workout, especially in your core and your torso area and a little bit in your legs. That can help as well. So cover your face, your hands, your feet in your crotch. Cold immersion, cold showers. And any of this stuff is a little bit more efficacious when you combine it with being in a fasted state. And then the last thing that really helps is greasing the groove. This picture here is a picture of my office door where I have a perfect pull up bar installed. And my rule is that every time I walk under that pull up bar, I have to do three to five pull ups. And by the end of the day, typically I've done like 50 pull ups. And that's what I mean when I say greasing the groove. It's having a certain cue in your life that forces you to exercise at small, specific times during the day, but very, very short things. Things that really make you feel like you're going out of your way too much. Other examples, every time you go to the back bathroom, do 20 bodyweight squats in the bathroom or in the bathroom stall. Simple thing that you can throw in. I mean, literally, you're just squatting up and down just like that, 20 times. 25 jumping jacks for every hour that you're sitting at your desk. I mentioned that I do 100, but I'm crazy. I'm nuts. 25 would still be enough to kind of get your metabolism up a little bit. 10 push ups during every commercial break while you're watching TV. You guys kind of get the idea. There's just little cues. Just give yourself one rule that you have in your life and that can help out a ton. I see a hand raised back there.

I was going to add one.

You got.

Everybody has Sonicare toothbrushes. Down, up, switch, tooth.

Yeah, yeah. While you're using your toothbrush. I do calf raises sometimes while I'm brushing my teeth. Yep, same thing. So you find these cues and you just grease the groove. This kind of returns to the concept that I was talking about when we first started about how, you know, workouts are a relatively new phenomenon. But just being active, active throughout the day is something that people have always done. It's very helpful. So I want to talk to you just real quickly here about a few resources. I brought a book called get fit Guy's guide to achieving your ideal body. I wrote that book and you can find out more information about it at the website called getfitguy.com but it teaches you how to figure out what body type you are and then it gives you a workout program based off of your specific body type. There's four female body types and there's four male body types. And that book was published earlier this year and it's a really good guide. I also have a bunch of those books over there on the table and they are $15 tonight and I would be happy to sign them for you if you'd like. So that's a good resource. Another good resource is 100 ways to boost your metabolism. And kind of similar to the greasing the groove concept, this book is just jam packed with little things. Little nutrition tips, little exercise tips, little lifestyle tips that you can use during the day to burn just a few more calories. It's available at 100waystoboostyourmetabolism.com I also brought a bunch of copies of it. It's that little blue and white book that's beside get fit Guy's guide to achieving your ideal body. If you want to get that tonight, it's eight bucks. And again, I'll sign that for you as well if you would like that. And then the last thing that I wanted to give you as a resource, and I hinted at this earlier, is the inner circle. My wife and I run what is called the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle every month. We do video webinars, we do meal plan recipe handouts. It's 247 access to be able to ask your questions about your workouts. It's kind of like a budget friendly way to have someone who can advise you, someone to be your mentor, someone to help you out with your workouts without actually hiring a personal trainer. It's $10 a month to be part of the inner circle. For example, this afternoon we shot a couple of videos on how to make your own bone broth and how to make your own beef jerky, and those will go up in the inner circle tomorrow. And we're always just trying to put extra videos and extra tips and tricks into the inner circle. So I put Some little tiny white cards over there on the table. Table that have the URL on there where you can go and join the inner circle. And we've even got some free videos at that URL that you can just watch if you kind of want to get an idea of what it's like. And then finally I do some free newsletters, some free articles and some free videos and podcasts, which are just a podcast is a weekly audio release that gets downloaded straight to your phone. You can listen to it while you're driving or while you're working out. And I just give out a bunch of fitness tips and do talks like this via audio. I've got two podcasts and also two newsletters. One is @BenGreenfieldFitness.com and the other one is @QuickAndDirtyTips.com so those would be good resources for you as well. So I hope that was helpful. And we do have a little bit of time for Q and A. I know I threw a lot of information at you. Like I mentioned, I'll make the slides available. If this little recorder actually worked. I'll also make the audio available to you. But questions?

Yes, I have five children between the ages of 1 and 11. Two are at home, a 4 year old. And so I have a hard time finding time to do something. I have, you know, as soon as you start to do something, someone needs something.

Right.

From an app, dirty diaper.

Right.

Even turning off the phone and shooting the tv. It just seems like there's never time to actually do something other than your little, you know, the push ups or the, you know, calf lifts or something like that.

Yeah. Other than like throwing little things out throughout the day. So yeah, it can be tough when you've got kids at home and when you've got a lot of obligations. Do you enable yourself by having exercise equipment at home readily available like elastic tubes, elastic bands, treadmill. Okay, perfect.

I have Zumba and yoga videos.

You've got DVDs too?

Yeah, I just go to the gym for an hour every day and I have daycare and then. But I couldn't do the two a day. So it would be just one time a day.

That's fine. Yeah, you don't have to do the two. You're doing great. I mean, if you have all that stuff at home and you and you're going to the gym for an hour, you're doing more than most people. It sounds to me like you're on the right track. Don't beat yourself up if you can't do a two a day. You could for example, do a fasted workout, have like a banana there with you at the gym, eat half the banana and then jump into the hard stuff, you know what I'm saying? So you're not doing the hard stuff in a fasted state. So you can easily combine this type of stuff and don't feel like you got to exercise twice a day. There are also other things that you can can do and I won't pick on you right now, but a lot of times when people say this kind of stuff, I'll ask them what their favorite TV shows are or what their favorite websites are. Okay, good. Because a lot of times there are those 30 to 40 minutes during the day when you don't realize, but you are kind of watching TV and stuff like that. But in your case, don't beat yourself up about the 2A days and then also realize that research has shown, for example, that three 10 minute bouts on a treadmill does better for you metabolically than one 30 minute bout. And so I mean you can throw stuff in throughout the day. Again, like I mentioned, you know, a structured hour long workout is kind of a new thing. And for thousands of years people just did fine being at the weight. They wanted to be just moving throughout the day. So you know, really, really good scenario if you're super duper busy is follow a rule that you got to stay on your feet as much as possible. But then at least once during the day you gotta get yourself to the point where you're breathing hard. It's called going anaerobic every day. And it's just like a short two minute period of time where you are getting to the point where you're red in the face, where your heart rate is elevated and even something like that can get your metabolism boosted for a long time.

The way that my gym is, the gym is set up is Delivery Lake Athletic Club.

Yeah. I used to be the fitness manager there. Okay.

And I want to have the bikes in the back.

Yeah.

And then they have the weights by the gym they're not on. You can do bench press.

Yep.

Do you think that that would be more beneficial than the like cardio kickboxing class to do your reps like you were saying and then jump on the bike and then come back and do the reps.

If I only have an hour, it would be. Unless you find that having an instructor and doing cardio kickboxing pushes you more. And sometimes, you know, it's, it's the workout that pushes you the most. It's the best one or the workout that you're most likely to do. So.

Yes, quick question. We're doing this tonight to get a handle on losing weight. And I really work out. I watch my diet. I am type 2 diabetic. I'm not real tall. So when I go to the doctor's office and they're telling you to work out and do all that stuff, and I get on there and he tells me I'm overweight. What can we calculate? If you have some muscle mass on your body, Right. Versus fat.

Yeah, exactly. So the doctor is measuring your BMI and he's telling you you're overweight based on your bmi. And most, most of the fittest guys in the NFL that you see running around on tv, they're technically obese because of their BMI as well, because it doesn't take into account your muscle mass, just your weight. And I mean, it's very simple. Most, most physicians, in my opinion, should have skin calipers. And they, you know, for females, they pinch on the back of your triceps, they'd pinch you right here.

Here.

They pinch you right here. Very simple calorie calculation that's accessible online or that comes with any 20 to $100 set of skin calipers that spits out your body fat based off of those three measurements. The nice thing is, I mean, you could get skin calipers off of Amazon.com and you could track your body fat using that. You can track your body fat using these body fat scales. And as long as you're using them in a similar state of hydration at time same. The same time each day, those can be fairly accurate as well. You can get these handheld, what are called bioelectrical impedance devices. Track your body fat balance of working.

Out like they want you and you want to do maintaining the weight. Then you've really got to starve yourself on one side in order to make.

Room for the muscles.

I'm not saying that.

Right, right. But why do you even care what the doctor says if you know that? But is it affecting what you pay for insurance or anything? If it's really not affecting you, then, I mean, I'm not saying to dis qualified medical practitioner or disrespect them, but at the same time, take what they say with a grain of salt. If they're telling you that you are obese based off your BMI and you're not obese, just let that, you know, let that roll off your back like water off A duck's back because you know it goes on your chart. But you can be charting your own body fat at home and just say screw it to the BMI chart and ignore that part of your medical evaluation. And that's not the same for everybody. There are some people who their BMI is a true picture of their obesity or their risk factors. But in your case, I wouldn't say that's the case. Yes.

I'm just curious about two things. Number one are those vibration machines that people stand on for 10 minutes, they really do anything. And the opposite of cold exercising, the infrared saunas, do they really burn calories?

A lot of these things, Vibration platforms, infrared saunas, a lot of research will show that they'll do things like help to boost growth hormone before a workout or even help you lift more weights during a workout. If you do vibration training beforehand. Some evidence that infrared saunas may help to decrease inflammation or improve recovery. Recovery. Frankly, though, a lot of this stuff is simply an excuse for people not to move and not to hurt a little bit during a workout, not to breathe hard and to have something that's moving instead. I mean, it's. And I know that that will offend some people to hear me say it, but it's true. When I see somebody standing on a vibration platform at the gym and they're obviously overweight or obese in terms of choosing the, you know, you hear about the 80, 20 rule, the 20% of stuff that's really going to get you good results, results that's way, way out on the fringe of that for fat loss. I am not a fan of that stuff at all. I think it gives people the wrong mentality that you can get results. Just like popping a pill could give you results. And the only people that would really benefit from stuff like that would be like super serious athletes, for example, who are going to do a vibration platform session before they go to heavy squats to be able to max out a few more reps. Or infrared saunas would be people who. Like an ironman triathlete who's literally living in a state of inflammation and has to do as much as possible to control that inflammation. But for fat loss, there's far, far better ways to spend your time. Yes. Correlation question on the correlation between heart rate and fat loss, you were talking about getting your heart rate up to 165, right? Okay. I go to and do the treadmill and then I alternate every other day Nautilus equipment over at 360.

And the best I get my heart.

Rate is up to about 130, 132. Now I'm on a high blood pressure medication, but is there a correlation between the two? You have to get it higher than that to be in a fat burning area. Well, the first thing to understand is that everybody's maximum heart rate is going to decrease as they age. And so for me it's 165. For you or for me that maximum sustainable heart rate is 165. For you it might be 145 or 135. And then for you being on a high blood pressure medication is going to drop it about ten beats past that. So it sounds to me like you're kind of in the ballpark anyways. But yeah, remember that that maximum sustainable heart rate isn't the fat burning heart rate, it's 20 beats below that. So yeah, I wouldn't be worried about it too much. Just understand that, that. What are you on like a beta blocker? No, no, it's, I don't know. Yeah, they, they typically, typically down regulate your maximum heart rate by about 10 beats or so. So just something to bear in mind. Yes. Relating to age. When one does the exercises, does the body respond less as you become older? Yes, it gets harder to build muscle, especially as you get older. Aerobic exercise, you don't tend to see quite as much of a decrease in and in many cases this is why really good marathoners, really good triathletes, they are kind of older individuals. Your body tends to hold on to it's what are called mitochondria, the little oxygen utilizing powerhouses of your cell and it tends to do better at ropes. But with muscle, that's especially the case as you get older. Weight training and loading the joints becomes more and more important. So yeah, I mean it can get harder to hold on to that kind of stuff as you age. Are there other techniques relating to age that can enhance muscle? You know, probably the biggest thing for aging males is the correlation between andropause and loss of exercise results and loss of muscle mass. And that's just that drop in testosterone that happens. And you could, you could literally go to I really like a website called directlabs.com because it lets you get a full range of biomarkers and blood tests for like a quarter of the cost that you'd get if you wandered into your hospital or your doctor's office. You go there, you buy the test, they send you what's called a requisition form and then you just bring that into like LabCorp and Post Falls. And you can get everything, like anything you can think of done for like 300 bucks. And that includes testosterone. So once you get a picture of testosterone, you see whether you're high or you're low, then you can do some natural. You know, I'm not a fan of testosterone replacement therapy for me especially because I'm an athlete and that's illegal for me to do when I'm going out and doing triathlons. But even for older individuals, it shuts down your body's own natural production of testosterone when you're using something like that. So there are things that you can do naturally. You can take magnesium, you can use cod liver oil, you can eat Brazil nuts, you can include grass fed beef regularly in your diet. You can eat eggs. I mean, there's natural foods and even some herbs out there like tribulus and maca and nettles root that you can use to keep your testosterone elevated if it's low. And that can really, really help older males do a much, much better job responding to exercise, maintaining muscle mass, and also still having a little bit of fun, if you know what I mean. Is that some of the material on your website? Yeah. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you click the Start here button, there's a link there that's just like this huge page where I recommend. I've got a list on there for testosterone enhancement. I've got a list on there for estrogen dominance in women. I've got got a list on there for detoxing. I've got a list on there for fixing your gut if you've got gut issues. And I just list all my little tips and tricks. That's the same thing I'm doing with that book that I've got on Kindle. That free book that I have on Kindle is. I'm kind of doing the same thing, except for people who have a Kindle. You can just put it on your Kindle. But yeah, that stuff's available on the website. I just wanted to say one more thing. I personally breathe hard. My face gets red when I cross the street. So. You're out of shape. Okay, let's go ahead and take two more questions.

What are some common reasons for slow recovery for sore muscles?

Slow recovery for sore muscles can mean a few things. First of all, it can mean that your body is in a state of inflammation. And a state of inflammation can be induced by eating foods to which you're allergic to, especially protein containing foods. A Lot of people are allergic to dairy, they're allergic to eggs, they're allergic to the protein in wheat called gluten. You pile inflammation from exercise on top of inflammation from diet and it becomes much, much harder to recover from soreness. As you age, as we were just talking about, your muscle fibers become a little less prone to repair quite as quickly. And so that again can be an issue. It can be helped by things like the cold that I talked about. It can be assisted by massage, by using a foam roller, by cooling down well after your workout. There are a couple of different compounds that help really, really well with soreness. Proteolytic enzymes are one. Wobe enzymes, for example, is something. Proteolytic enzymes are similar to digestive enzymes that help you to digest food, except you take them on an empty stomach, they break down something called fibrinogen, which is a component, post workout component that makes you sore. So proteolytic enzymes, using those on an empty stomach at some point during the day, on the day that you worked out, those can help out quite a bit. I also like a lot of these, like cartilage derived compounds, especially for people who get joint pain. You've probably heard of glucosamine, chondroitin, kind of hit and miss with that stuff. There's, there's one brand I like called Cap reflex that tends to work really well. Or bone broth, is it, you know, bone broth, all you're doing is boiling bones for a long time time. The marrow leeches out from the bones and literally you're just eating cartilage and that helps a ton with soreness as well. Making your own bone broth or getting bone broth, that can help out too. And then I mentioned those tests that you can get, like direct labs that will also test your inflammation, your hscrp, interleukin, a lot of these biomarkers of inflammation and you can literally get a snapshot of, okay, am I in an inflamed state or not? Food allergy tests usually got to go above and beyond and do like a, like a three day stool test is a perfect example of a decent test. That's again another one that you can order to your home and you can do all that yourself. So let's do one more question. Which website? Oh, to order your own lab, direct labs. If you follow the link on my website and you go and order tests, they'll pay me like 10 or 20 bucks or something. So order from my website. Yes, let's go.

It was on your last question about the bone broth. I have been just beating myself up. It's funny. It's only just like, walking, but walking really fast. I'm out of breath.

Yeah.

For like an hour every other day or whatever. Five days a week or something like that. And so I am making bone broth. How many times a day would you. Should you drink bone broth and what quantities? And this is bone broth. And then it boils like three.

Right, right. And you.

How many calories right in it?

Well, I mean, if you skimmed the tallow, the fat off the top and you've done a decent job skimming that, it doesn't have a lot of calories. It's got a lot of minerals. It's got a lot of sodium. There are some people with some advanced gut issues that really, really struggle that. I mean, the gelatin, the glycine, a lot of the gut healing components of bone broth, they're doing that three meals a day. I mean, you don't have to. Literally, if you're drinking like, 8 ounces of bone broth during a day, that's more than enough to be able to overcome soreness and help you out with some of those aspects. If you're healing your gut, you can go with a little bit more than that. But I mean, it's so easy to make if you get your hands on. And so many butchers just throw out their bones. I mean, it's so easy to get your hands on that stuff. I love you boiled. It depends on the bone. I mean, chicken is like, see you later. Chicken's like 12, 18 hours full on like a. Like a big, like, cowbones and knee hinges and stuff like that. You can go two, three days. So it depends. Well, you don't boil it for that long, but it simmers. But your house will smell wonderful.

So does it matter which type of bones?

Not really. I mean, it doesn't. Doesn't matter. You get more marrow out of a huge, you know, like, cowbone or pig bone than you will from a little chicken bone. But no, it doesn't matter. You guys should join the inner circle and watch the how to make bone broth video that's going there tomorrow. We're running really short on time. I know there's lots of other questions. I see other hands getting raised. Okay, what's your question? I just can't see. They're raising her hand and not answering.

I have a tendency to eat the cartilage on the bones.

Yeah.

And I do, like, I eat the marrow, too.

That's great.

And I'm 68 years old, so that's helped me a lot.

That's awesome. That's good advice. So, yeah, real food. Okay, cool. If you do want a book, like I mentioned, the get fit guys book is 15 bucks a night. 100 ways to boost your metabolism is 8. Probably just check or cash if you want a book, but I'm happy to sign it for you. And I'll stick around a little bit afterwards and answer some. Some questions as well. Thank you guys for coming. I hope that was helpful. And yeah.