How Females Can Lose Body Fat Fast, How To Fix Your Vision Naturally, 4 Science-Based Superfoods & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how females can lose body fat fast, how to get lean on a vegan diet, four science based superfoods, natural ways to maximize eye health, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Rachel, My chest is killing me.

Why is your chest killing me?

I'm having a heart attack. I haven't been following our advice. No, I have a. I have a fire coral sting on my chest.

That sounds super painful.

It. It was really painful. I. I just got back from the Bahama and while I was there, I spearfished just about every day. I rented one of those crappy little pole spears from a local fishing village and went down in the water and spearfished. And it was just like offshore, right? Like, not deep spearfishing off of a boat. And so I'm like brushing up against rocks and seaweed and piers and old docks and I found like this old sunken boat. But I also happened to brush my little, my little nipples and areola and chest against a fire coral. And it freaking, like, it knocked me out. I went, I came out of the water and my kids were. I went with my kids every day so that my kids would stand at the edge with their buckets and two little knives that they brought from the kitchen because I taught them how to kind of like basically kill the fish. After I brought it in, like, they put the knife through its eyes and the fish just dies painlessly. Don't worry, there's no pain involved.

It's totally okay.

And then we, of course, ate them right afterwards. So we had fresh fish. We weren't just killing fish for the heck of it anyways, though. So I stumbled out of the water and went home and just like passed out in bed for two hours because of this fire coral poison that was. That was running through my system. We posted. If, if you're listening, you go to instagram.com BenGreenfield Fitness you can see my chest. And I'm looking at it right now. It's still just like covered in all these little red spots and this was like five days ago.

So, yeah. I don't know if you know this about me, Ben, but I'm from the land of weird things that sting you. But I've never heard of fire coral, so I'm curious what it is.

I may possibly have just made up that term. Fire coral. No, actually there is such a thing as fire coral. Google it. Yeah, I'm serious. If it shows up on Google, it must exist. The rest of my body's sore too. I tackled the obstacle course last night because I can't say too much about this, but in addition to making the Spartan pro team this year and that lighting fire under me to go get my training in, I'm also on a reality TV show. I can't talk too much about it, but I'm out training hardcore now for this new reality TV show. I'm going to be jetting off to film in just a couple of weeks.

So Ben, my big question for you is, are you gonna win the Spartan world champs this year?

Well, if I. If I wear Nike's new magic shoes. Have you heard about Nike's new magic shoes?

Yes, I saw this article and it sparked a lot of interesting conversation on Facebook and I think if you wear the shoes, you might win.

All right, let's talk about the shoes in the upcoming news flashes. So those of you who don't know about Nike's new magic shoes and the two hour marathon, we will fill you in. So that being said, we, we should probably just like go ahead and jump in, shall we?

News flashes.

Nike's new magic shoes. Hey, we said we'd talk about it, so we might as well just lead off with that. So the, this whole like Nike, they, they want to do, they want to host like a sub two hour marathon attempt. I don't know if you've heard about this, but basically they have identified this autodrome which I think is in Italy, where they want to do it. It's like a Formula One racetrack in Italy. And it's a 1.5 mile loop which if you do the math, you got to run around that 17 and a half times to run an actual marathon, which just sounds boring as hell, doesn't sound fun at all, but they want to do it. It's near Milan, Italy because it has like the ideal temperature which is apparently 54 degrees. I don't know who identified that as being the ideal temperature for a marathon, but apparently it is. It's got the ideal wind conditions which supposedly are like next to nothing. And then the altitude is kind of perfect. It's like 600ft above sea level. So Nike's plan is not only to try and have some of their athletes, I think it's three like Nike sponsored athletes to try and break the world record there. But they also just rolled out a new shoe. I don't know if you've seen this shoe. You said you saw the article, right?

I did see the article and I don't know if I buy it.

Well, I mean honestly running it, running a sub two hour marathon is not completely out of sight considering that people can already run like a two oh, I don't even know what the record is. I think it's like a 203 and a half, something like that. But I mean you know you look at like Roger Bannister, right? He did the sub 4 minute mile and since then a whole bunch of people have run a sub 4 minute mile. Same thing with a 2 hour marathon or a sub 2 hour marathon. As a matter of fact Outside Online called me last night and they wanted to do you know the Outside magazine, they were asking me a bunch of questions about how someone's fuel would change running a two hour marathon. And one of my replies was like it's not that going to be like carbohydrate oxidation rates and gastric emptying are not going to be that much different for like a two hour versus a, a 203 or a 204, you know. And for an athlete like that who is extremely glycolytic for two plus hours or for two hours even, you have to kind of like eat a mix of glucose and maltodextrin or glucose and fructose or fructose and maltodextrin specifically because you're using multiple carbohydrate transporters in the gut. And I realize this is a complete, this is a complete rabbit hole away from the actual shoes themselves. And it has to be a liquid or a gel source because that's going to facilitate gastric emptying best when you're running. And there's little things that athletes can do to bring a normal carbohydrate oxidation rate up about 25% or so in terms of how many carbs you can burn when you're running a marathon. But that's an aside the shoe. And we'll link to this article if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com what is this Rachel? 367.

367.

367. I can't say it as well as sexy and Australian as you can. 367.

Maybe one day you will.

One day. Anyways though. So it's called the Nike Zoom Vapor Fly. If I can talk. Nike Zoom vaporfly Elite. That's a mouthful. So they put a carbon fiber plate inside it and then the heel juts out so you get a whole bunch of stiffness. Apparently it increases your running economy fairly significantly when you wear this shoe. At least that's the way that they've designed it. And it's kind of a Frankenstein looking prototype if you check out this shoe online. But they've got a different type of foam density that apparently gives you a huge energy return when your foot strikes the ground. It's almost like running on springs. You kind of like bounce off the ground, which kind of. You know, I think that some people might raise an eyebrow whether or not it might be like an illegal performance enhancing aid. Right. Like there is a. There's a big controversy. I think it was. Was it Oscar Pistorius, the guy who had like. Do you remember this Olympian, he had like a prosthetic limb that allowed him to like.

It's not what I remember him for though. He did a lot of other things as well.

I think he killed somebody too.

He did that too.

Okay.

Well, he didn't apparently. Anyway.

Well, we digress anyways. So it's called the Vapor Fly. The Vapor Fly. I don't know who came up with that name, but it's. It's worth checking out the article if you're into running and specifically improving running economy and efficiency or if you just want to see what they're going to break the two hour marathon in. It's a pretty sexy looking shoe.

Do you reckon they're going to break the two hour? Mark?

I reckon, I reckon, I reckon it's going to happen.

That's a southern accident, not Australian.

I think it's going to happen. Human. Humans are getting bigger and faster and stronger and heck, you give someone enough chocolate milk and a cool shoe, they'll do it.

Who knows what they can do?

Milan, Italy by the way, speaking of, of cool wearables, have you seen the new sex wearable?

This made me giggle. So this was a great article.

It's a brand new smart condom. A smart. It's actually a self quantification condom. It will. When you wear it, apparently it answers pretty much every single burning question you've ever had about sex.

Every man has ever had sex.

It will tell you. Get this. It will tell you thrust, velocity. It'll tell you how fast your thrusts are. How many calories that session just burnt, how many times you had sex in case you have trouble keeping track of that, if you're one of those people, the average skin temperature of your, your nether regions, your girth, how many different positions you were. I mean it will measure, I believe, just about anything you'd ever want to know. It's the future of wearable technology in the bedroom.

So curious. If a man has ever questioned what.

His thrust velocity is, well, there'll be men all over the globe now submitting competing, submitting status updates to their, their Facebook feed with this thing, it's called the icon I.c o n. We should get them as a, as a sponsor for the podcast. So it's made in Britain apparently.

So they into one super practical thing as well is it detects chlamydia and syphilis. Oh, which, you know, I can see how that would be.

I missed that. I was too into the whole thrust velocity thing. Sounds like a spaceship measurement anyways though, so you can check that out. And perhaps we should talk about some more relevant things than magic shoes and smart condoms. In today's news flash, for example, four science based superfoods you should be eating. Our friends over@examine.com came out with a very practical list steeped in research about four things that actually do have lots of research behind them when it comes to superfoods. So Rachel, drumroll please. You want to know what they are?

Yes.

Okay. Number one is something that my mom actually uses a lot of for blood pressure. And also since she started using it, she swears that she never gets mosquito bites or insect bites at all, ever. You know what it is?

I know what it is because I'm looking at the article. But tell us.

Garlic, garlic, garlic. Anti cancer effects, antioxidant effects, precursor to glutathione, which I think, I think we might talk about later on in this show or possibly next week. A pretty cool new research study came out on marathoners and ultra thoners. Ultra thoners, mountain climbers. Anyways, how quickly glutathione gets suppressed in them. So anything that increases glutathione is going to be super relevant to that crowd. But glutathione or garlic specifically has a whole bunch of research behind it on everything from blood pressure to blood flow to cholesterol to anti cancer effects. So including a clove of garlic a day. That's the new apple a day. Clove of garlic a day.

Have they ever researched anti kissing effects?

I don't know, but I mean, you Know what they say about garlic is as long as your lover too is consuming garlic, it's.

Then it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

So, all right, what's next?

Next is dark berries. Dark berries have been shown lately improve memory. I don't know if you've seen this, but blueberries are like the new nootropic food that increases a growth factor for neural tissue called BDNF or brain derived neurotrophic factor. And it's as simple as eating dark berries. And you can even go to the grocery store and get the frozen bag of berries. Have you seen this? The blueberries and the raspberries. And what I do is my wife gets the one. I think it's from Costco and I eat all the cherries out of it because I don't like any of the berries in there except the cherries. So the kids will open the bag and all the cherries will be gone. Yeah. But everything else remains the blackberries, the red, all the, all the crappy fruits are in there, but the cherries are gone because cherries, I actually specifically choose them because they have the, the best anti inflammatory effect. So anyways though, so dark berries are number two. The next one is spirulina. And they talk about some interesting things in the article which we'll link to in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 367. Now it's probably the worst tasting superfood on the list, I'm gonna have to say, but it has a lot of evidence behind it now for its neuroprotective effect. It's been shown to lower risk for diabetes and obesity and also increase something called bottom bile acid in the blood, which can help with things like digestion. He said as he tried to suppress a burp from his morning smoothie that had spirulina in it that apparently made him talk in the third person. But yeah, spirulina. So that's number three. And then the last one is leafy greens. This one kind of seems kind of boring, but they specifically talk about the extremely high levels of nitrate that are in leafy greens. Very similar to beetroot. Beetroot and leafy greens have so much nitrate in them that they are legitimate ergogenic aids and pre workout supplements. And you just have to be careful, of course, with your leafy greens because using that as a pre workout supplement could result in a diaper moment if you do too much of the kale smoothie prior to a workout. However, regularly eating foods high in nitrates can help lower blood pressure over time and also be an ergogenic performance enhancing aid. Possibly as good as a $200 plus pair of Nike magic shoes. So there you have it.

Greens eat leafy greens.

Four science proven superfoods. Garlic, dark berries, spirulina and leafy greens. If you had to bring four foods to a isolated desert island, those would be the four to pick.

They're also four superfoods under $10.

That's right. Speaking of foods, another study or more. It's not really a study, it's more of an article about the Mediterranean diet. One of my friends, Dr. Colin Champ, he recently went to Italy and he came back with some pretty interesting observations on the Mediterranean diet, which of course is heavily pushed as a way to lower blood pressure and reduce stroke risk and improve health. And you're going to see the typical Mediterranean diet, it's less. Yeah, you eat a lot of fish, you avoid red meat, you avoid dairy, and you eat a lot of whole grains. And so when he went over to southern Italy, he made some very interesting observations about how flawed our perspective of the Mediterranean diet actually is. For example, he says pasta, which he figured would be raining from the skies, was consumed in extremely small amounts and he actually barely saw any bread at all. And even fish. And you know, what you would expect to be like the staple of the Mediterranean diet. You know, like fish and olive oil. He didn't see as much of those as he did. The things that we hear are not in the traditional Mediterranean diet, like buffalo and liver and offal, like, you know, organ meats, cheese meatballs, aged meat and aged cheese platters, you know, minimal amounts of vegetables. Surprisingly, rather than seeing a lot of lettuce and spinach and arugula and a lot of these vegetables we see hailed as the staple of a Mediterranean diet. It was really more meats and cheeses and liver and lungs and tripe, which is like the stomach of an animal. And a lot of these foods that are like ancestral organ meats combined with cheeses and quite a bit of red wine. That's probably one of the main things that he did note, kind of, kind of fit into the traditional Mediterranean diet that we also see in, in the recommended modern Mediterranean diet. But yeah, it kind of, the article is very interesting, but it kind of redefines what our expectations of this whole Mediterranean diet is. And of course he has a few other observations. First of all, they fast a whole bunch. And that's not something that we ever see in the US Americanized or Westernized version of the Mediterranean diet. But, you know, my dad actually follows a traditional style Mediterranean diet. And half the time I'm with him, he's like fasting or he's protein restricting or he's engaged in something other than just like, you know, eating breadsticks and drinking wine. And the other things that, that Colin Champ highlights in this article is they had a lot of calamari, a lot of octopus, rather than just fish, they were having these, these other strange animals of the sea. Walking a ton, several miles a day, extremely steep hills. And of course, being surrounded by some of the most beautiful places on earth in the Mediterranean didn't seem to hurt as well. So it's a very, very interesting article in terms of what an actual Mediterranean diet and Mediterranean lifestyle is compared to what our westernized perspective of what it is.

Well, either way, it looks delicious.

It does look pretty delicious. It made me want to. One of my favorite vacations I ever went on was with my wife. We flew into Rome, we rented bikes and we rode our bicycles up to Florence. So we rode about 30 to 40k a day. And we'd stop for picnics out in the fields and we'd ride up these giant hills up to castles and we'd of course stop along the way and buy red wines and cured meats. And it was just a magical, magical vacation. So that's, that's one of the ones that we have on our bucket list to go back and do again is, is the bicycle ride through Italy. And if I went back and did it again, I would actually probably go more out of my way to, to try some of these foods that Colin highlights in the article. Everything from, from Buffalo to tripe to organ meats to a lot of the stuff that I don't think we did. I think we did a lot more of the gelato, the baguettes, and the, the red wine.

Wine.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, it's a great article. And then the last thing that I wanted to highlight was this concept of geopathic stressors. I realize this is a complete aside from everything else that I've talked about, but I did find this article very, very interesting and I'll link to it in the show notes. But it has some really cool diagrams in it and some really cool thoughts in it in terms of geopathic stressors and landscape trauma.

Had you heard of this concept before you read this article?

I'd heard a little bit about. You know, of course, I've always been familiar with like this concept of grounding the body and earthing the body and how, you know, the electromagnetic field on the surface of the planet Earth oscillates at a frequency of about 7.83 hertz. That's called the Schumann resonance. And that's identical to the alpha brainwave zone of human beings, like, like our ability to be able to get into the zone. And life on Earth has kind of, you know, evolved or existed over the past several thousand years with that background magnetic field. And, you know, all creatures on Earth, including humans, are accustomed to living in the presence of that field and, and absorbing these magnetic radiations from the planet Earth. When we're standing on it or lying on it or sleeping on it or, you know, or sitting on it or whatever, what they go into is when you, when you look at the electromagnetic frequency in different places on Earth, it's actually been, it's, it's been tweaked quite a bit by what they call geopathic stressors. So what we're talking about are tall buildings with steel pilings and power stations and sewers. Sewers and drains and buried utility pipes and wires and dockyard pilings and bridges and tunnels and quarries and mines. And they have these diagrams on the article that go into how when you look at these specific areas, especially areas around cities or industrialization on Earth, you see a change in the vibratory frequency in that Schumann resonance, and you see vibrations far, far higher than that 7.83 Hz, like up to about 200. Meaning that the ability of the planet to heal you actually decreases the closer you get to industrialized areas. And so it turns out that, you know, when we talk about the feng shui of our planet, if you really want to have harmony with the planet earth or experience the healing ability of land or earth or dirt or the Schumann resonance, and you live in like an urban area, you may need to drive pretty far outside of the urban area and kind of get away from all this to really, truly feel what the earth is like without all these man made geopathic stressors that it's now being exposed to.

Yeah, and it makes sense because, I mean, as soon as you get, you do get out of urban areas, you do tend to feel a lot different.

Mm, yeah. Yeah. So, so basically, you know, there's even this idea in Chinese medicine that the yin yang balance of the Earth can be pretty heavily distorted by cities. And that's why when you go to some places, you can feel like the sacred energy in that place. Like there's a place over in Montana where these hot springs are, where I can feel a difference in the actual energy emanating from Earth. And they've like isolated these springs and kept a lot of buildings from being erected close to them. And it's kind of cool. There are certain places on Earth I feel the same thing when I go to Kauai, Hawaii, for example. For some reason, as soon as I step foot on it, it feels like a different vibratory frequency. I know it sounds kind of woo, but I think there's something to be said for, for, especially if you live in an urban area, getting out, getting away from it, and getting exposed to a part of the planet that hasn't been exposed to these geopathic stressors.

Yeah, it does sound super weird, to be honest. I read it and I was like, oh God, I'm really wooing. This is super woo for me.

Or you could buy one of these man made like Earth pulse devices or delta sleeper devices and just like slap something underneath your mattress or on your body, which I've been known to do. So there are ways that you can, you can biohack your geopathic stressors away as well. So interesting article though. For those of you who care about the feng shui of planet Earth, go knock yourselves out with that one.

Listener. Q and a.

Hi Ben and Rachel, thank you for an amazing podcast. I've learned so much and sometimes it's overwhelming for me all the information that you give out, but I try and retrain some of the snippets and I'm always going back to check the notes afterwards to make sure that I heard correctly. I have a little bit of a strange question. Over the winter I managed to increase my muscle mass quite a bit, but now it's running season again and I'm just too heavy and need to lose some of this. So I was wondering what's the safest way to go about losing this added weight, which is largely muscle, but to try and maintain the benefits of the bone density, better haemoglobin, etc. I was wondering if you had any tips.

Thank you.

Thanks for a great show.

Bye. What do you think, Rachel? Should Des shed some of her. Some of her swole muscle?

Yeah, she should. Why not? She wants to. Whatever you want, Des.

Yeah, I mean, it's honestly. So I did this right. I used to be £215 and I'm at about £175 now because I used to be a bodybuilder and then I switched to Ironman triathlon and I had to catabolize a lot of that muscle so that I could run. I remember my first triathlon that I did when I was a bodybuilder. It was one of the most painful races of my life because my boobs were bouncing up and down.

Welcome to every woman's world.

Yeah, I mean, I had it. I had a nice big old chest and it came back to bite me, so I just catabolized it away. And there are definite ways that you can do it. I don't endorse getting rid of too much muscle, though, because of the fact that you, once you reach a certain age, can have quite a bit of difficulty maintaining or building muscle as you age due to something called sarcopenia. And so you need to be careful with excessive muscle wasting as you age. But at the same time, if you got to drag your ass up hills as a runner or an obstacle course racer or a marathon er, and you can't afford Nike's new Vapor fly shoe that apparently fixes all your running ills, then you may want to catabolize a little bit of muscle.

What is that age?

Effectively, the age at which you, you.

Don'T want to lose muscle anymore.

It's, it's between about 35 and 40. So it's pretty young in terms of. It's kind of similar to bone density. All right, so for a woman, the bone density that you go, that you have going into about 30 to 35 years old plus is the bone density that you're mostly stuck with for the rest of your life. So if you don't do a good job with resistance training and axial loading of the bone along its long axis and some of the other things that can assist with bone density. It's not like you're totally screwed, but you definitely have an uphill battle to fight. If you're a woman, not exposing yourself to, to loading and loading can be everything from inversion positions in yoga to barbell back squats. Right. It can vary. It can be gardening and carrying rocks around. I mean, it doesn't have to be you going in, doing a CrossFit wat every day. But there are similar to bone density. There are some definite downsides to neglecting something like muscle mass as you age. However, if you wanted to actually lose muscle and do so without harming your body too, too much, there are, there are some definite things that if I could go back and do it over again, losing muscle, I would probably do it this way because it'd be a little bit healthier. And this is the way that I recommend it to you. So the first would be calorie cycling. Calorie cycling is a way for you to be at a calorie deficit without getting into a lot of the metabolic or physiological damage that can occur when you're just restricting calories day after day without doing calorie cycling. So the idea behind this is that for calorie cycling, you have certain days that are higher calorie and certain days that are lower calorie. And in the most common calorie cycling scenario, you do five days of the week that are lower calorie or five days of the week in which you're eating just enough calories to sustain metabolism. So if you were to measure your metabolic rate in a metabolic laboratory, or you were to use a calculator, for example, I have a website over@getfitguy.com where there is a metabolic rate calculator that allows you to plug in your height, your weight, your body fat percentage, etc. And find out what your resting metabolic rate is, or what's called your basal metabolic rate is. Well, what you would do on your low calorie days, like your two low calorie days of the week, is you would only eat that many calories, right? So let's say you find that you're burning at rest, 1500 calories a day. And that doesn't account for like your daily activity levels, climbing stairs, getting in and out of bed, you know, making breakfast, whatever. You're only going to eat that many calories on those two days, so they're lower calorie days. And then on the other days you're eating to calorie balance, meaning as many calories as you burn. So you find out your metabolic rate, you add to that how many calories you're actually burning. So let's say instead of 1500, it's more like 2,600. And on those other five days of the week, you would eat that 2,600 calories. So what that allows you to do is you avoid some of the things that can happen with long term calorie deprivation. So the main things that you'll tend to see, our testosterone will decline more in men than in women in response to calorie deprivation. But it happens in women as well. You get a decline in your resting energy expenditure, meaning your metabolic set point will actually decline. And that's usually after about four weeks of calorie deprivation where you haven't introduced a higher calorie day or what some people will call a refeed. So if you don't have that day where you're sending your body a message that it actually does have access to adequate calories. Your body will downregulate metabolism and it will downregulate fertility. And so you want to actually send your body a signal. And in this case it would be a couple days of the week, you send your body a signal that it actually does have access to adequate calories. The other thing that can happen with long term calorie deprivation would be you get a decrease in thyroid hormone, or in conversion of inactive or less active T4 into active T3, you get an increase in cortisol, interestingly. So there's kind of this excessive catabolic effect. You get a decrease in leptin, which is the hunger hormone that's supposed to tell your brain to be full and to stop eating. So you get some leptin dysregulation, which means that you have a hard time knowing when you're full or knowing when to stop eating. And then you get an increase in ghrelin, which will signal to your brain that you're constantly hungry. So you essentially are just always glancing at that Snickers bar versus if you have those two days of the week where you're adding in your excess or your adequate calories, you're less likely to engage in binge eating. You're less likely to engage in, like, junking, you know, snacking on junk food, because your leptin and your ghrelin levels are out of control. So there's a lot of benefits to calorie cycling.

And so, sorry, just to get this clear, the maintenance calorie days are five and the less calorie days are two.

Yeah, exactly. So basically there's two days of the week where you're not fasting, but you're decreasing the number of calories that you take. So you got two days of the week where you actually are losing some muscle, because frankly, if you're only eating 1500 calories, but you're burning, let's say 2600, those are two days of the week where you're having to come up with your own calories off of your body to be able to satisfy your energy burn. So that's the first thing that I would do, is I would implement calorie cycling rather than just long term excessive calorie deprivation.

Does this work also just for fat loss in general?

It does, yes, it'll work for fat loss, but it'll also work in an active person for muscle loss. The next thing that I would do to maintain the benefits of bone density, hemoglobin levels, athletic performance, et cetera, is I would still weight train, but I wouldn't do weight training that's considered to be hypertrophic weight training or weight training that's going to increase the size or the number of muscle fibers. And there are two ways that you can increase size or number of muscle fibers. One would be high rep, low weight training to failure, meaning sets of like 30 pushups, 30 bodyweight, squats, et cetera. Even body weight training, when done to failure at a higher rep range, can increase muscle mass or maintain muscle mass. The other thing that of course can increase or maintain muscle mass would just be heavy weightlifting, right? The complete opposite, low rep, high weight training, deadlift, squats, et cetera. But a way that you can maintain muscle performance without actually increasing muscle mass would be to do what you see these small, wiry, athletic power lifters do. Because if you look at a power lifter, sometimes they're deceptively small. I remember when I was at an event last year down in San Diego, a guy standing behind me in line at the line to the cash bar. We were both getting a glass of wine. He was standing behind me, just this very small, mild, unassuming man wearing a suit. And he looked very, very skinny. But when you kind of glance at his hands and his neck, you could see like he had a lot of veins in his neck. Like his hands were kind of, kind of meaty. He seemed to be carrying himself quite well. His posture was really good. And I got into a conversation with him. It turns out he's a competitive power lifter, right? Just like this small, unassuming, wiry man. And that's what powerlifting can do for you. It can maintain your bone density, it can increase your power, it can allow for you to maintain your athletic without you actually having to have large amounts of muscle. And so what we're talking about is doing so powerlifting. Typically, the definition of it is that you're lifting a weight that's not super heavy for you, say, like 60% ish of what would be your maximum lift, right? So if you could maximally hoist 100 pounds over your head, you would lift with 60 pounds. But what you would do is you would lift that weight as quickly and as explosively as possible for anywhere from 2 reps up to a maximum of about 8 reps. So you can lift multiple days per week and maintain quite a bit of force, production and athleticism by implementing a powerlifting protocol without actually getting a lot of the hypertrophy that you would get from something like weight training, traditional weight training. So using more powerlifting when you're at the gym. Right. So we're talking about light to medium weight lifted very explosively and quickly for anywhere from two to eight repetitions. And using full body weight type of exercises. You know, cleans, deadlifts, jerks, squats, presses, things along those lines. Or you could just, you know, google powerlifting and you come up with a, with a pretty good list of exercises. But that's the style of training that you'd want to be doing. The next one that I would recommend to lose weight without excessive damage would just be cold. I mean, staying cold is one of the best ways to burn calories off the body. Now recently on Snapchat, I actually, I don't know if you saw this, Rachel. I Snapchat little stories I find in magazines, et cetera. Any of you want to follow that, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Snapchat but it turns out that people who live in colder countries and in Norse regions like Finland and Norway and Sweden, et cetera, they've found a direct correlation between happiness levels and exposure to cold.

That's so counterintuitive.

To me, it's totally counterintuitive.

I hate being cold.

Yeah. But apparently these people have figured out a way to be very happy and satisfied with whatever life throws at them because they've just been exposed to cold. But in addition, cold can keep you lean and cold can do a really good job keeping you lean. That's why I not only use like a chili pad when I'm sleeping to keep my room temperature around 60 to 65, it's not because I want to get skinny. For me, it's because I know my central nervous system repairs and recovers better in a cooler environment. But anything from like a 5 minute cold shower at the beginning and the end of the day, keeping your house a little bit cooler, even wearing things like there's this company, if you go to coolfatburner.com they make a vest and a waist wrap that actually burns fat or converts specifically white adipose tissue into metabolically active brown fat. And they've shown in studies with those that you increase your metabolism by up to 300% when you're just walking around with cold stuff on, on. So that would be another thing that I would do in addition, like power training and calorie cycling would be use cold thermogenesis to lose weight. Because unlike say like pounding the pavement for a fasted two hour Run. It's a lot less stressful. You just put on like the cold and you're just like mildly cold. You don't have to be shivering, you don't have to have your teeth chattering, you don't have to be blue in the face, but you're just like a little bit cold during the day. And you can even wear it under your clothes. Nobody will know.

And the same thing works just in being cold without wearing the vest. If you had cold room or something like that, would the same thing happen?

Yeah, it's just the vest really accelerates it. Because what the vest does and what the belt does is it actually comes with cold packs that are specifically placed over areas where you would tend to form more brown fat. So you're just biohacking.

It's a good little hack. Exactly.

The next one would be in moderation, glycogen depletion. So one of the reasons that people lose so much weight when they first start onto a diet is because they're either incre, typically they're increasing their protein intake or they're lowering their carbohydrate intake, or both. You know, sometimes these days, people who are doing like, ketosis, they're also increasing their fat intake and decreasing their carb intake. But whatever. Anytime you're on a diet that decreases carb intake, carbohydrates, specifically your muscle storage glycogen and your liver storage glycogen, carry up to four times their weight in water and also carry a lot of salts and minerals. And so over the first two weeks of a diet like that, you shed a lot of your glycogen stores, you lose weight like crazy, and eventually it kind of like plateaus, which is when people throw up their hands in despair and quit their diet. But ultimately, glycogen depletion can help keep you pretty lean, pretty light. However, just like long term calorie deprivation can cause some thyroid and metabolic and fertility deficits, so can long term carbohydrate deprivation. So what I'm a fan of is limiting carbohydrates all day long. Right. So eating no to low carbohydrates all day long, then at the very end of the day, and for most females, it's going to come out to about 75 to 150 grams of carbohydrates. You eat those all at the end of the day. You know, from yams, sweet potatoes, sourdough bread, white rice, red wine, dark chocolate, you name it. So if you really want this spelled out for you, there's a really good little ebook called the Carb Backloading Protocol. I'll link to that in the show notes. But that would be, the next thing would be doing something like carb backloading. And you can combine that with calorie cycling. Right. So whether it's on your low calorie days or your high calorie days, you're saving all of your carbohydrates until the end of the day. So that would be in addition to calorie cycling and power training and cold thermogenesis. The next thing would be glycogen depletion, kind of like in moderation. So you're just saving your carbohydrates until the end of the day. And then the last one is kind of like a 1, 2 combo. And I found this to be really effective for me to maintain energy levels and not excessively catabolize muscle once I started doing it. And that is to combine fasted training, especially in the morning, with high blood levels of amino acids. What that allows you to do is burn through fat and burn through some of those muscle glycogen stores without catabolizing muscle too excessively or too quickly. So an example of this would be to use something like an essential amino acids or a whole amino acid. It's not a branched chain amino acid because that's just leucine and isoleucine and valine. And that just having those three present is not going to save muscle. Those are just burnt as energy. But they don't actually keep you from catabolizing muscle. You gotta be consuming a full amino acid spectrum from all the essential amino acids that your body can't make in order to actually maintain some amount of muscle or slow the rate of catabolism. So it's not, not occurring quite as quickly. So what you do is you get up in the morning and you do a fasted morning workout, but you consume about 10 to 20 grams of an essential amino acid source either right before or during that workout. So you would go out, let's say you're like a runner. You'd go out on your morning run. Let's say it's like a 30 to 45 minute run and you would take in amino acids right before you head out on a fasted morning run.

And is there an intensity level of fasted workouts that are, that's best for something like this?

Yeah, you, you generally want that to be an aerobic conversational pace and that's going to be a little less stressful. Cause a little bit less of a cortisol. Cause a little bit less excessive catabolism or cannibalism self cannibalism. I like cannibalism. It's a much sexier term than catabolism. It'll basically lead to your body getting a little less stressed out when it's an aerobic conversational fasted workout. And by putting amino acids into your body. The difference between that and a cup of bulletproof coffee is the problem with the coffee is you're sucking down 500, 600 calories of butter and MCT oil. Not that there's not potentially time and a place for that if you're looking for the cognitive performance hack, but if you're just looking for a way to keep muscles from catabolizing excessively without dumping a bunch of calories down the hatch. The nice thing about essential amino acids or whole amino acids is they don't have calories, they don't cause an insulin release, but they do keep you from catabolizing muscle without actually introducing a whole bunch of excess calories into your body. So that would be the last thing would be combining amino acids with fasted morning workouts. So that's what I would do. Yeah, we're using that word a lot in today's episode anyway. So that would be a way that you could lose some muscle and you could do so in a safe and effective way without losing out on the bone density, the hemoglobin, et cetera. So that's where I would start. And we'll link to all that stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 367 hi Ben, Rachel, this is.

Dave calling from Bloomington, Indiana. I'm an active 29 year old recently diagnosed with open angle glaucoma. I take a pressure regulating eye drop as recommended by my ophthalmologist and I've also tweaked my diet to increase my intake of eye healthy foods like sweet potato, carrot eggs and dark leafy greens to help manage eye pressures. I'm curious though, since I am still pretty young, if you had any additional protocols you'd recommend either to combat the progression of glaucoma in specific or even just to promote better eye health in general for the long term. I love the show and hope to hear response on the air. Thanks guys.

Rachel, you ever have eye issues? Do you wear glasses or anything?

As I age, my eyes are deteriorating but I went and got them checked and the eye doctor said don't get glasses.

How do you know your eyes are deteriorating.

Well, I. My long distance sight is very blurry. Sometimes I'm like, I can't read that. Jake, can you just tell me what that is?

Have you ever heard of like, like the Bates Method or the Vision Gym?

Nope.

You told me.

Tell me, tell me everything.

I, I bought it, I own it. For if my eyes had ever knock on wood, my, you know, I, I practice what I preach. Like, I constantly do, like the eye breaks and I stare at different. At objects, excuse me, far off in the distance or close. And so that way my eye muscles are constantly contracting and relaxing. And I do a lot of these kind of things passively. Right. Like right now, I'm not looking at a computer screen or a wall. I'm looking off through a window out into the distance as we talk, right. So I'm looking at trees, at mountains, and then I'll look at closer up rocks. And sometimes like a chicken or a dog will walk up to the window and I'll look at that smile and wave. But ultimately, what I have, just in case, is this whole collection of posters and programs that walk you through diversions and conversions, which are two different ways to train the eyes. And they're almost like those 3D posters at the mall that they sell. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah. Where you have to figure out what it is.

Yeah.

Squinty eye pissed me off because I.

Could never figure them out for years until I started doing these posters. But there's this company called Z Health, and they sell this whole program called the Vision Gym. And it's based off this old school method called the Bates Method, which is basically a way of either completely weaning yourself off and fixing your vision, even if you're already wearing contacts or wearing glasses, or a way of keeping yourself from having to get into a situation where you need to wear those. Because it just basically trains the eyes to relax and contract, and it trains the eye muscles as well, left, right, up, down. And it's a fantastic way to naturally train your vision when you combine that with really taking care of your eyes. From a health standpoint, when you look at screens, especially in terms of using blue light blocking glasses, installing a program like the one that I have on my monitor and on my computer is called Iris. Flux is the one that most people talk about, but Iris is even better, not only because it's named Iris, but because it actually affects things that flux does not affect, like the actual temperature and the brightness of the screen. And I have a whole podcast with the inventor of that particular piece of software that I'll put in the show notes this brilliant. I think he's like a Romanian programmer. Daniel Kohev Khev Georgiev. He might be from Bulgaria. I don't know, Maybe I'll meet him when I go over there, you know, randomly show up at some Bulgarian coffee shop. Anyways, though, so your computer monitor, the glare from the screen, the glasses that you wear, and then your ability to train your eyes like that, to me is just as important as all of the kale and the fish and the eggs in the world when you're looking at all the supplements and the diets that people are following for things like eye health. So to answer your question in a very long winded fashion, Rachel, you need to get this vision gym.

Yes, I do.

Yeah. It's super easy to use. Just like a collection of little papers and stuff that you look at.

Are there things that it doesn't fix?

Well, that's where we get into glaucoma. And, you know, and so what Dave asked about was, he said he has open angle glaucoma. Now, I'm not an ophthalmologist, please do not take this as diagnosis of medical advice, blah, blah, blah. But glaucoma is like open angle glaucoma. That's like 90% of glaucoma cases. So the way that it happens is you get like a clogging of the drainage canals in the eye, and then you get increased eye pressure, and that causes this wide open angle between the iris and the cornea, and it develops slowly over time. And what happens is eventually your eyesight starts to get affected, but it affects like 3 million people in America alone. It's a very common form of glaucoma, but very similar to other forms of glaucoma. It can not only be controlled a little bit by reducing glare and by training the eye muscle muscles in the ways that I've just outlined, but there are some other things that you can do from a dietary standpoint that can help out. So, and I'm not kidding, like kale eggs and like carrots or anything orange, you're getting lots of beta carotene and what are called lutein and zeaxanthin. And those are just like power foods for the eyes. So if you're concerned about your eye health, eggs, kale and orange stuff, you should definitely be eating. And orange juice does not count, by the way. It needs to be like, what about good orange juice, Sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, orange mainlining? Fructose into your bloodstream generally is just not good, period. So I'd avoid it anyways though. So what, what can you do? So for foods, foods high in carotenoids. Yeah, any. Anything orange is going to help out quite a bit. So. So I'm a big fan of yams, sweet potatoes, carrots, those type of things. A squashes, the blueberries that we talked about or those cherries that I steal from my kids, frozen bags of fruit in the freezer, those can also help out. Those have something called anthocyanidin in them and that helps fight free radicals that specifically damage the eyes. So blueberries and cherries would be another big one. Wild caught fish, biggie obvious. Epa, dha, what's called astaxanthin in those can also help out quite a bit with eye health. And then there's one that flies under the radar. Oh, and eggs, I should mention, are also a biggie. So all these foods put together, you're getting high amounts of lutein and zeaxanthin. Also great for the eyes and eye health. But brewer's yeast, you ever heard of brewer's yeast? Have you tried brewer's yeast?

No.

Ton of chromium in it. And chromium is a mineral that you tend to find people who have glaucoma are deficient in. So getting a brewer's yeast, like you can get it and you can just like, like I'll, I'll put a link in the show notes. You can just like off of Amazon, for example, and you just sprinkle that on, say a salad or into a smoothie, and it gives you massive amounts of chromium, which can actually help with blood sugar control, which is often why glaucoma can happen. That's why you see it so often in diabetics, for example. But it's a mineral that can really help anyone, not just diabetics with glaucoma. So that would be another one to include would be brewer's yeast. Now, a few other things from like a supplement standpoint that you could include that I'd recommend one would be astaxanthin. And astaxanthin, if I can spit that out, it's not only like eating sunscreen. So I used to load up with it when I'd race Ironman, Hawaii. I'd take like 10 to 15 milligrams of astaxanthin before a race like that, but as little as 2 milligrams a day provides you with a really, really potent source of carotid retinoid. Like you could eat like six sweet potatoes or you could take 2 milligrams of astaxanthin. Helps prevent retinal damage. And the way that I get it is I get it combined with fish oil. So that, that super essentials fish oil that I take, that's astaxanthin, vitamin E and fish oil all blended together. And all three of those are fantastic for the eyes. So something like that would be really good. Any fish oil that's got astaxanthin added to it, you're killing two birds with one stone. Um, another one, I talked about blueberries and cherries as being really good sources of these anthocyanidins. But if you want a supplement that again, kind of gives you this in a very concentrated manner at a dose much higher, without all the fructose you'd be getting from the berries. Bilberry extract. Bilberry extract would be, oh, you can do like about 300 milligrams a day of bilberry extract or a bilberry capsule or just, you know, find yourself some organic bilberries. I suppose those are a little bit harder to come by. But bilberries would be another thing that you can put in in terms of like a, a supplement. So that would be number two, in addition to like an astaxanthin and fish oil. Another one that I Recommend is Coenzyme Q10. That really, really helps specifically with the type of free radicals that can cause damage to the eyes. Just a basic antioxidant. Thorne has a really good one called Thorn Coq 10. They also have one called Resvericel Resveracel which got, it has resveratrol, it's got quercetin, it's got betaine, it's got a lot of things that specifically can help with anti aging, but that also help very, very much with the type of free radicals that can cause eye damage or glaucoma. And then the last one would be magnesium. So about 500 milligrams a day of magnesium. What that does is it relaxes all the blood vessel walls around the eyes. And it's really cool to use as like a bedtime supplement too because it will relax you and you'll wake up in the morning and have a glorious bowel movement. Like a dumb and dumber with your legs up around your ears. Is that how most people poop in the morning, by the way, their legs?

No, I don't poop like that. But, you know, I'm hoping.

No Magnesium is not going to cause that, but it will relax things just a little bit, make stuff come out a little bit easier. And it'll also relax the blood vessel walls around your eyes. Perhaps more relevant and important to you, Dave. And that would be another one to include. So you've got your vision gym. You've got monitoring the glare on the computer monitor and wearing these blue light blocking glasses. Magnesium, some coenzyme Q10, astaxanthin, fish oil, some of these bilberries, dark leafy greens, eggs, fish. And then the last one that I would throw in there that you may want to check out would be essential oils. And it turns out that there are specific essential oils that when you apply them around the cheeks or the lateral, don't put them in your eyes. All right, dude, I don't want you to go blind, but you can put these around your eyes or. And the cheek muscles. There are three that can help to improve circulation, that can help to improve eyesight and that can help to improve vision. And studies have been done on all three. I'm a huge fan of essential oils. I was actually in my sauna earlier this morning and I diffused. I always miss her on new oil. So this morning I was diffusing sage. Sage essential oil. Which is almost like it's very similar to what would be burnt if you were going through some kind of a ceremony. What do they call it? A snuff. Like you'll burn it like incense. But you can get an essential oil. I just sprinkle it around the sauna. Makes me feel like an old Native American medicine man sitting in there.

Sounds lovely.

Sweating it out, doing my down. Dogs smelling sick anyways though. So frankincense, helichrysum and cypress. Helichrysum is really good for wounds. It's really good for healing topical issues, but also helps to improve vision and supports nerve tissue Health. Health. And then cypress. So frankincense, helichrysum or cypress. Any of those you can apply just a few drops of around your cheeks or your lateral eye area and can help with eye health. Who knew but they actually work.

And for everyone from Australia, Cyprus is. Cyprus.

Cyprus. That's right. So I use this stuff from young living essential oils. There are other essential oil companies out there there as well. Just about every single one of them is a multi level marketing machine. But I don't know why. But anyways. So essential oils though, you don't have to have your friends over for a Tupperware party and deal the essential oils you can Just buy some. But anyways, I will put links to all that stuff in the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 367 and enjoy your new 2020 vision, courtesy of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Hi, Ben and Rachel. This is Heather calling from Michigan. I love the show. Keep up all the hard work. I have a question regarding food. I am competing in my first bodybuilding competition in 20 weeks. I'm doing the fitness division. The training is going really well. However, food has become an area where I'm struggling with. I frequently binge and it's. It's very uncontrollable and it almost feels primal. I was wondering if you have any advice, tips, supplements, things I can take to get that under control so when I get a little closer to competition, I can get my body fat down to what it needs to be. There's two caveats. I'm a vegan and I've also been dealing with Candida for about five years now. Any thoughts? Tips are appreciated. Thanks, guys.

Wow. Heather is doing a bodybuilding competition, which means stilettos and silver bikinis that look like they came out of the 80s.

And gold and lots of oil.

You know, when I used to bodybuild, some of the women who'd be backstage were scary. Scary.

Yeah, you were scary when you used.

A bunch of double take. Are you a man scary or women who look like frickin the female version of Adonis. What would that be? I don't even know. What's a Greek goddess? Athena?

Aphrodite.

Aphrodite from far away. And then you get close up and you're like, oh, Lord. Like, just like wrinkles. They look like the grandma from Something about Mary. Not good.

All right, Heather, we're not talking.

Don't be that person, Heather. However, Heather, you are fighting an uphill battle. If you're vegan and dealing with Candida and doing the fitness division, there's a lot. I mean, I'm probably preaching to the choir here, Heather, but. But you're looking at risks for everything from the female athletic triad where you've got some eating disorder, some low bone density, and some amenorrhea, which can affect your fertility and your thyroid for years, to obviously some of the psychological blowback from just constantly having to look in the mirror and analyze your body, which can be tough. I mean, trust me, even as a bodybuilder, when I used to have to just flex in front of the mirror every day, that stays with me to this day. Right?

Like, is that why we always get selfies of you in your undies.

No, but it's like you look at your body and you're like, oh, that bicep is slightly larger than that bicep. Or I think my nine pack is going away, as Batman would say.

Yeah, it's intense for sure.

So you're really looking at more like damage control than anything else. Than health. Yeah. And so what you need to do is control the damage. And there are some ways that you can, You. You can lose body fat fast and still maintain some amount of health. I still don't think that being a fitness competitor as a woman is going to be ideal for health. I mean, just because our modern perception of what a sexy female body is is flawed and distorted. In my opinion, women have essential body fat stores for a reason. Reason Women, whether it seems fair or not compared to men, actually have bodies designed to make babies. Right. To actually propagate the human population. And when you get rid of all those mechanisms by lowering body fat and by training excessively and by restricting the type of nutrients necessary to do things like grow healthy nerves and grow healthy hormones and grow healthy babies, you're actually doing. Doing some damage to the body. I mean, whether or not you want to have kids. I'm not saying every woman needs to be like, barefoot in the kitchen, dropping babies at your vagina, but what I am saying is that if. If you're putting your body into a situation where it can't have children, whether or not you want to have children, you're actually looking at sacrificing health. Health. So in women, optimum fertility equals optimum health. That's really what it comes down to. And when you're competing in a female fitness division and all of a sudden fertility is gone and your menstrual period is gone, and your essential body fat stores become non existent, you really are putting yourself in that situation where, again, regardless of whether or not you want to be barefoot in the kitchen popping out babies. And I don't know why my perspective of every woman who wants to have a family needing to be barefoot in the kitchen. Kitchen.

Right. That's true.

Yeah. But anyways, so you get where I'm going. I'm not going to kick that horse.

Super healthy.

Yes. Okay, so what can you do? First of all, one of the main things that is going to happen when you are doing what you're doing, which I've already alluded to earlier in this podcast, is there is some thyroid dysregulation that is going to occur whether you're vegan or whether you're omnivorous, the thyroid takes a hit. So for women who are having to limit calories, train excessively, et cetera, I recommend some form of thyroid support. I do not recommend things like Levothyroxine or Synthroid or these isolated versions of what would be called T3, but I instead recommend a full spectrum T1, T2, T3 and T4. I have no financial affiliation with this company, but the one that I like, like that I've even used myself in the past is called Thyro Gold. You can get it@natural thyroidsolutions.com but it's whole gland thyroid powder sourced from non GMO pasture fed New Zealand cows, fed by a one armed monk riding a unicorn.

They're just already, just inherently more happy than every other cow in the world because they live in New Zealand.

Well, New Zealand is, is among the countries that has completely banned Monsanto's genetically modified hormone, which is called Posolac. And Posolac is also known as recombinant somatotropin. And that's the hormone that they use to stimulate the growth of calves and increase milk production. But they're not allowed to use that in New Zealand. So when you get something like a whole gland thyroid powder from a cow in New Zealand, you're not getting all that nasty the crap that is given to us by the lovely folks at Monsanto. And then they take that and they blend it with L aspartic acid, which is designed to give you further thyroid support, something called Coleus for scoli, which can also help with thyroid support and a few other derivatives without any like, you know, corn or gluten or sugar or soy or yeast in there. So that is, that's one thing that I would recommend is look into supplementing with, with thyroid support. Another thing that tends to be notoriously deficient in female fitness competitors and females who are trying to stay on the pointy edge of fitness is you tend to see progesterone decline. And progesterone is a hormone that would normally signal the lining of your uterus to get ready for implantation. It's secreted from your ovary after ovulation. So it's the hormone that's responsible for keeping you pregnant. But it's also a hormone that is very crucial for things like libido, energy levels, normal menstruation, et cetera. And in many cases you'll see women who have lots of exposure to estrogens from things like plastics and pharmaceuticals in the water supply. And synthetic hormones in personal care products or household cleaning chemicals. They didn't have lots of estrogens and very low progesterone levels. But you also tend to see very low progesterone levels in women who are just training a lot. So what can you do to naturally increase progesterone? There are a few things that I like. First of all, anything that is high in magnesium can help with progesterone levels. So you can supplement with magnesium. You can also do things like include lots of fish. Dark chocolate is high in magnesium. That's a bonus. Dark leafy greens, which we already talked about, is a scientifically proven superfood. And then lots of seeds, specifically like pumpkin seeds, are really high in magnesium. So look for foods that are high in magnesium and that will help your body to absorb calcium, which will help to regulate the pituitary gland, which will regulate hormone levels. And the pituitary will regulate the production of FSH and luteinizing hormone and thyroid stimulating hormone, which will help to increase progesterone levels. So basically really prioritize your magnesium. Vitamin C would be another one. I'm a big fan of supplementation with vitamin C in women who have low progesterone levels because they've shown that women who take about 700 to 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C a day see a leap in progesterone by over 75%. But also including, of course, foods that are high in vitamin C. Peppers are a really good one. Dark leafy greens again, broccoli is actually pretty decent. You know any of the berries that I was talking about earlier? Those are really good. But vitamin C and magnesium. Zinc would be another. Zinc acts on multiple organs of the body implicated in progesterone production, like the pituitary gland, like the ovaries. My number one top, top recommended form for zinc would be A beef and B oysters. But you're vegan, so you may want to also consider supplementation with zinc or a good multivitamin that has zinc in it. I actually like the thorn multivitamin for that. Another thing that a compound that flies under the radar that really helps women in progesterone levels is L arginine. L arginine. And L arginine is an amino acid that creates nitric oxide and that widens, thickens and relaxes arteries and blood vessels. And it's especially important for supporting what's called the corpus luteum, which helps to increase your progesterone levels. And they actually showed in the Journal of ovarian research that 6 grams per day of L arginine supplementation could massively increase progesterone levels without you needing to be on, like, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Pumpkin seeds have a lot of arginine in them, so there's another one to chalk up for pumpkin seeds, soaked chickpeas or garbanzo beans. Those also have arginine. But honestly, like arginine supplementation would be something that you may want to actually look into. There is a special herb that can increase progesterone levels, again without you having to be on bioidentical hormone replacement. Now, guys, be careful because if you take this, it's almost like chemicals chemical castration. But in women, it appears to be able to do a pretty good job stimulating progesterone production and reducing levels of estrogen in the blood by suppressing something called prolactin. And this stuff is called Chaste Berry. Have you heard of Chaste Berry before, Rachel?

I have. It's in a lot of natural medicine remedies for people with period issues.

Yeah, great way to keep you chased, especially for those period issues.

Very well named.

That would be another one that I would include. So progesterone support in the form of things like Chaste Berry magnesium, a good whole foods, vitamin C, L arginine. Fish oil is actually very good. But again, if you are vegan, you may want to consider an algae source, right? Like chlorella or spirulina for your omega 3 fatty acids. Powdered flaxseed is okay. You don't get a lot of conversion into DHA and some of those things that you'll need for progesterone, but it's better than nothing. And then the last one that I'd recommend to make sure you don't have excess estrogen levels and that your progesterone levels are balanced out well would be diindolmethane, which you'll get from things like broccoli, but you can also supplement with. It's known as dim. Really great for the liver. Keeping the liver in good shape is a really, really good way to keep estrogen levels low and progesterone levels high. So dim is another supplement that you'd want to look into. So you want to naturally increase your progesterone levels. The other thing that you'd want to focus on would be your DHEA levels. And DHEA is the other one that I tend to see really low in females who are trying to stay fit and keep body fat levels low. It's a pro hormone that's tied to things like longevity and a lean muscle mass and you naturally create a certain amount of DHEA in your body. But if it is legal for you to supplement with DHEA, you can simply supplement with anywhere from 25 to 75 milligrams of DHEA from a supplement source. You could also consume things that would naturally increase dhea and usually those are going to be fatty based foods that you're going to want to be taking in as a vegan anyway. So your coconut oil, olive oil, heavy amounts of avocado, things like that. But honestly, if I were a female fitness competitor and were legal, I would be considering supplementation with DHEA. There are a couple of really interesting precursors to DHEA. I just recently wrote a post over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com on this supplement company called Vaxin Vaccin. Sounds like a sexy reindeer, doesn't does vaccine. And what Vaccin has is a bunch of DHEA precursors in it and stuff that you'll want to make sure is legal for you to be consuming for whatever division of fitness competition that you're in. Because sometimes certain supplements are banned, sometimes they aren't. But either way, getting extra DHEA precursors into your body, even if it's just supplementation with with a small amount of DHEA per day, would be prudent. And then a couple other things I want to throw at you as resources. First, the Candida Cleanse Protocol by Christa Arecchio. That's my number one go to Protocol for Controlling Candida. I don't have time to delve into the details, but I'll put a link in the show notes. It's called the Candida Cleanse. If you haven't done that yet, freaking do it. Because it's the best way to get rid of Candida. In my opinion. Chris is a total ninja when it comes to that stuff. The next thing I would recommend is an article that I wrote about everything that vegans need to do when it comes to supplements and when it comes to things that you're not getting if you aren't eating meat or things that you should supplement with because you're getting lower levels of them. As a vegan, some of the biggies that I mentioned in that article are vitamin D3, vitamin K2, making sure that you're soaking and sprouting any of the grains and legumes and nuts that you eat, getting a good heme based source of iron like an iron bisglycinate that you can supplement with and then a couple others that fly under the radar, specifically taurine and iodine. Go read that full article though, because I really geek out on it in that article that I wrote about how you need to customize your diet as a vegan. And then the final thing I would recommend to you when it comes to dhea, adequate hormone, adequate fats would be really adopting more of like a high fat version of a vegan diet. So for example, you know fat sources that's really not rocket science, right? Like avocado oil, cocoa butter, coconut oil, macadamia nut oil, MCT oil, olives, avocados, coconut cream. Do a lot more of those than doing whatever quest protein bars and tuna fish cans.

Are you I see you saying that because of the uncontrollable binging that she's experiencing.

Yeah, that'll those those high fat sources will really help to keep your appetite and your hormonal levels. Well, your appetite satiated, your hormonal levels elevated, protein sources you're looking at like fermented forms of tofu like miso and tempeh and natto pumpkin seeds like I mentioned earlier, almonds and almond flour, flaxseeds, chicken chia seeds, spirulina chlorella, even things like Brazil nuts and hazelnuts and unsweetened coconut flakes have some amount of protein in them. Macadamia nuts are a really good source and then just a crap ton of plant matter because you don't have to count that as your carbohydrate intake. Low carbohydrate vegetables will help to keep your appetite satiated and help you with some of that. The liver and the progesterone issues I talked about. So things like like beet greens and bok choy sprouts are amazing. Like alfalfa sprouts, broccoli sprouts, any sprouts are super nutrient dense. Even things like quinoa, amaranth and millet sprouts. But basically lots of sprouts, lots of greens, lots of really healthy fats and then tons of a variety of different protein sources from fermented soy seeds, nuts that have been soaked, coconuts, etc. Really well rounded. Almost like a vegan cyclic ketogenic diet would be a really good way to go for keeping the hormone levels elevated. And I know I flew through a lot of that. I'll put some recommendations in the show notes for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 367 but that is where I would start. Heather and then of course to wrap things all up. What's really going to make or break the entire fitness competition for you is whether or not you've got Nike's new magic stilettos with the carbon fiber insoles and the negative drop. And a self quantifying condom could help too. Possibly get your thrust velocity measured. Should we wrap this thing up before we digress even more?

I think we should, yeah.

All right, so here's the deal. First of all, we always, towards the end of the show give something away.

And today those are great people.

We definitely have something to give away to you. If you leave a review in itunes and it's a five star review, or you say something nice, or you just leave us a one star review but you say something entertaining. Please don't do that. I'm joking. Leave 5 stars if you can. Helps with the karma for the show, helps to support the show, helps with our itunes ranking. If you hear your review read on the show and then you email your t shirt size to GearreenfieldFitnessSystems.com that's, that's gearedreenfieldfitnesssystems.com we're going to mail you a cool gift pack and we got a doozy for you today. Five stars from Big Pat tn who says great for fitness, bad for finance. You want to take this one away, Rachel?

I do. It's a great subject line. Okay. The show is a great resource for learning about ways to improve and optimize training and performance. The only downside is between Ben and Tim Ferriss. I've accumulated a host of obscure training tools and supplements and my friends think I'm crazy. My house also looks like a cross between a physical therapy studio and a pharmacy. The show definitely keeps you up to date on the newest advances in training technologies, which is great for a personal trainer like myself. I look forward to meeting Ben at the Asheville Spartan race as long as he doesn't have any coffee in his butt.

I always have coffee.

Do you walk around with coffee in your butt?

That's the one time you do not want to have coffee in your butt is during a spartan. Trust me. Now they do. They actually do make these. I talked about them in my interview with Dr. Dan Pompa. Complete. We don't want to divert into this right towards the end of the podcast, but I'm going to do it anyways. Glutathione and caffeine suppositories that you can travel with to give yourself the equivalent of a coffee enema without actually getting giving yourself a coffee enema. And it literally is glutathione and caffeine in a suppository. I have some up in my refrigerator. I do travel with them. They're called Xenoplex. So at any moment X, E N E P L E X Don't take them before a Spartan race. But you can actually shove those things up your butt when you're traveling and get all the benefits of a coffee enema without actually giving yourself a coffee enema. So you're welcome for that final little tip thrown in and something else for you to Google and spend money on. Dude, sorry to throw that last little bad for finance tip to you, but Xenoplex, it's like sunshine in your butt and your ears. Okay? We've totally equipped people with everything they need for happiness in life at this point. So let's wrap this thing up. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 367 is where the show notes reside. And we got plenty more goodness coming at you this weekend where you're going to learn how to measure your body's electrical capacity and a lot more if you're in the LA or Malibu area. Look for me this weekend. You might see me running down the street with my shirt off, possibly carrying a large paddle board or sweating after an intense sauna session. But either way, that's what I'm going to be running around this weekend. And Rachel, Ben, thanks for making yet another morning magical.

Thanks for having me.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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