Podcast #23: Holiday Special! Thanksgiving’s Five Fattiest Foods and Our Top Holiday Fitness Tips

Podcast episode number 23 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm a certified personal trainer, nutritionist and exercise physiologist. Each week I'll be bringing you cutting edge information on nutrition, fitness and sports performance, including interviews with leading experts in health, diet and exercise fields. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to lose a few pounds, you're guaranteed to find content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com that breaks the mold of run of the mill wellness advice and helps you reach your goals as quickly as possible. Welcome to the Ben greenfieldfitness.com holiday special podcast. In today's podcast, we've got a personal trainer roundtable with over 40 combined years of nutritional programming and exercise experience. Split up. Split up among three personal trainers, Mark Cavallaro, Jolene Wilkinson, and myself. We're going to be going in depth into some very practical tips that you can utilize during the holidays and specifically on this coming Thursday during Thanksgiving to make sure that your health or your weight loss efforts are not sabotaged. In addition, I'm going to be responding to a listener Q and A on how to utilize some of the fat loss techniques that I shared in a previous podcast episode. I'm going to be talking a little bit about how people who are naturally thin, specifically guys who are naturally thin, can actually add a bunch of lean muscle mass to their bodies using a special type of bodybuilding plan that I'll talk about a little bit later in this podcast episode. And then finally, for anybody looking for a Christmas gift for someone on their list who is an exerciser or who is into physical fitness, I've got a great gift tip for you. So that's all the content for today from BenGreenfieldFitness.com let's go ahead and jump right into the Listener Q and A. Listener Q and A so in today's Listener Q and A, I got a question from listener Tina and she said that she listens to podcast number 20 where I gave my 1, 2, 3 secret to fast fat burning. And in that podcast she says, basically you advocated 20 to 30 minutes at 60% of your RHR on an empty stomach. And Tina, I'm assuming when you say RHR, you actually say or you actually mean MHR. It's 60% of your maximum heart rate, not of RHR, your resting heart rate, but either way advocated 20 to 30 minutes at 60% maximum heart rate on an Empty stomach. My question is that I work out five times a week at an hour each morning, two to three times full body weight training and two to three times high intensity cardio, 85 to 95% heart rate or interval training to increase my fat burning potential. How do I use this slower, steady cardio technique? Should I continue with my current workout program and then tack on an extra 30 minutes of steady cardio? There is, there's probably one component missing from this question, and that would be whether or not Tina is actually eating prior to that hour long, more intense workout that she does in the morning. And the reason that would be crucial is because I actually don't advocate hard workouts in the morning on an empty stomach because it can often put your body in a catabolic state where you're actually kind of cannibalizing your own lean muscle mass and getting a pretty big release of cortisol hormone, which can actually be damaging to your immune system and inhibit fat loss. And what I recommend is that morning sessions be slightly easier if you're doing them unfed or if you're going to do a harder workout. Make sure that you eat a little bit beforehand, even if that's something as simple as a banana or an orange or something that boosts the blood sugar levels. Now, if you were going to utilize the slower, steadier cardio technique of doing a long fat burning session, or I'm sorry, not a long fat burning session, but a 20 to 30 minute fat burning session on an empty stomach, the best way to do this would be to get up and to do that fat burning session on an empty stomach and use that as a warm up for your more intense exercise session. That comes after you do this slow, steady cardio. So you do your slow, steady cardio and then you eat. Okay, you have something small, something that's going to get your blood sugar levels up and that's going to allow you to perform the harder workout with a little bit of carbohydrate in your system. And so, like I say, that can be something as simple as a whole piece of fresh raw fruit. You could have a couple slices of whole grain toast. I wouldn't necessarily recommend something fat or protein based, like say eggs or almond butter or something of that nature, because that's actually going to divert a lot of water and blood into your stomach to digest fats and proteins that take a little bit more out of your body to digest. And when that happens, it leaves your muscles with less water, less blood flow, and subsequently less oxygen and energy to complete a hard workout. So that's why you don't really want to take on fats and proteins right before a workout, but do your long, slow, steady cardio 20 to 30 minutes and then simply eat something and move on to your harder workout. So great question, Tina. Remember, if you have a question for us on the show, you can leave a comment on any of the blog posts or you can email me BenGreenfieldEnGreenfieldFitness.com that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com to get your question featured on next week's Listener Q and A. Okay, I got some great news for you skinny guys out there. Back in college, when I weighed about 170 to 175 pounds, I actually got talked into doing a bodybuilding competition. And so I had to pile about 30 pounds of lean muscle mass on my body during one semester of school. And I used some lifting strategies that I've decided to actually turn into a training plan that reflects almost exactly what I did during that time to actually put on that amount of muscle mass. And I've titled this training plan Bodybuilding for Skinny guys go from zero to huge in 20 weeks. And I actually even put a picture of myself up there at the point where I was at about 205 and 3% body fat during that competition. If you click on the link in the show notes, you will get basically a link that takes you over to the actual plan, lays out the details of how I design the workouts, what the proper exercise form is, the type of exercise you'll be performing, sets, reps, etc. With full instructions on how to get that program downloaded to your computer and instantly be able to use it. Now I use the same program for that particular training plan that I use for all of the plans that I deliver to my class clients. And that's an online training software called TrainingPeaks. It's a great way to actually be able to log your workouts to see sets, reps, videos, etc. And TrainingPeaks is actually turning into the gold standard for online fitness training as well. Now this isn't a program where I walk you through step by step. It's literally the pre written plan that I've designed. And so if you click on the link in the show notes, you can link over there, check it out. And what I'm doing is I'm featuring that plan for $79.99. You get the full 20 weeks of exactly what you need to do and the exact program that I followed it's really only probably going to be ideal for lean people who want to add a lot of muscle mass to their body in a short period of time. So if you or someone you know is interested in gaining a lot of muscle mass, go over there, check out that program. Alright, we're almost to our featured interview for the day, but before we get there, I know that a lot of you out there have started into Christmas shopping. And so I wanted to let you know about a special coupon code that I'm only releasing to the people who actually listen to this podcast. And this coupon code is good for a gym stick. And as many of you know, the gym stick is one of my favorite exercise devices for portable exercise. It's actually a perfect thing for you to have on hand during the holidays while you're traveling to maintain a good exercise routine. Each gym stick comes with a poster of all the exercises that you can perform, as well as a video with three different workouts on it. I've done all three of those workouts and they're actually very effective and they're a lot of fun. And of course it's mindless because you just stick the videos in and you do what the person on the screen is doing with your gym stick. And it's a great workout and highly portable. It decreases the need to go find a gym membership. When you're traveling over the holidays, you can simply take your gym stick and use it in living room, hotel room, backyard, wherever. So this coupon code that I'm going to give you is going to save you a flat straight up 10% discount on a gym stick. When you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and order a gym stick using the link in the show notes, using the link on the right sidebar or Simply going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com gymstick and the coupon code is holiday. That's all caps. Holiday all caps H O L I D A Y All caps is going to automatically save you 10% on the gym stick. So there you go. I just helped you out with your Christmas shopping. And now we can move on to this week's Holiday Special Interview, a personal training roundtable with three of the personal trainers from pacificfit.net. Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I want to welcome you to the holiday special from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and today's podcast is going to help you get through the holidays. We're going to primarily be focusing on what you can do if you're wanting to maintain your fitness through the holidays or also maintain your weight or perhaps even lose weight or lose fat as you're going through Thanksgiving, Christmas, the New Year, etc. Now, I do have some great minds on the show tonight to actually elucidate a little bit more and share some of their thoughts on how you can be successful through the holidays. And a couple of the people that I have on you may have heard of before. They're actually, well, two of the individuals are coaches over at Pacific Elite Fitness@PacificFit.net and Mark Cavallaro was on with us a couple of weeks ago. And Mark's been personal training for 15 years. He's done 10 different Ironman triathlons. He's got degrees in exercise physiology as well as nutrition. He studied down at San Jose State University and he's been doing this for quite a while. Jolene Wilkinson, we actually haven't had on the show today or haven't had on the show yet, but she's on the show today. And Jolene actually just finished Ironman, Arizona about a week ago, or actually less than a week ago. Probably feels like it was what Jolene, was it yesterday day before it was Sunday? Yeah, it was Sunday. So I'm sure she's more than happy to put her legs up and talk into a microphone for today's interview. But basically she's been coaching for over 30 years. She has a degree in psychology, physical education, sports science. She's a certified check exercise coach. And she also has quite a bit of experience in nutrition and in training. So we're talking about tons of experience on the show today. And then finally, John Gilbert, who you may have heard of or who you may have heard from in a couple of the newsletters, is also currently attempting to get onto the call with us, but experiencing a little bit of technical difficulty. And so what I may end up doing while Jolene and Mark are talking during a bit of this podcast is check out and try and get John hooked up with us because he's contributing some fantastic information to the newsletter that comes out tomorrow, Wednesday, November 26, and he's going to be talking a little bit more about what he'll be going through in the newsletter. So the type of things that we're going to be covering today are not only some substitutions you can make, but also some of the more dangerous things that you might encounter over the holidays from a caloric or a fat perspective, some of the excuses that you might have when it comes to exercise and holiday travel, some of the ways that your routine might get hijacked and some of the answers that you might have for that. So first of all, Mark, Jolene, I'll have Mark go ahead and go first. But what are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Oh, boy. I've got three of them. I had one this weekend at In Laws. This one I have one Thursday at a friend's and then the weekend at my mom's. So I've got a plan for all three of them. So it's going to be a rough go of it.

When you say a plan, you mean like a nutrition plan to be able to survive three different meals? Because I've got two to go to. And I'd be interested to hear what your plan of attack is to be able to get through this. You know, for me, what I'm looking at is right off the end of the holidays, I've got a race to go to down in Chile. I mean, go to Half Ironman Poucon Chile. So I'm trying not to gain too much weight over the holidays because I don't want to drag my butt up the hills down in pucan, Chile, with 10 extra pounds of fat from the holidays. So what's your strategy?

Well, I tried a little bit of that this weekend. And so my first strategy was get up before everybody gets up. I did exercise, I ran and had, I think, a big. The thing that really helped me was after exercising, get back and eat a normal, healthy sort of breakfast where people kind of skip those. They're trying to save calories for later. Okay. I know I'm going to eat a lot later, so I'm not going to eat breakfast or I'm not going to eat like I normally do. One of the factors that I think really helps me and other people that I talk to is to. To eat like you normally would. Don't plan on saving calories for later because it doesn't work and you tend to overeat anyway. And you can't metabolize. If you're going to eat a gigantic meal, you won't be able to metabolize it. Don't plan for eating the big meal by not eating in the morning is one of my big factors.

So exercise first and then have your meal. Okay. So here's what I've seen some of the people that I coach do, and I want to warn people not to do this. You don't. If you're going to exercise on a day like Thanksgiving or Christmas where you know there's going to be a huge feast, you don't go out and exercise right before the main meal. Right. Because then you're basically going to just stuff your face and eat thousands of calories. You're going to be famished. But Mark's approach is really good. You get up in the morning, you jump start your metabolism, you get exercise out of the way before anybody else gets up. Because a lot of times in these holiday situations, there's family just everywhere. Right. It's hard to.

They're gonna suck you in.

Exercise in. Yeah, exactly. Or they're gonna say, no, no, you don't need to go exercise. We're gonna go for a walk after dinner, and then you eat. And that's something I do on Thanksgiving and on Christmas. I get a little run in in the morning, and then I eat a big breakfast so that I'm not famished by the time the big Thanksgiving meal rolls around. But I don't know, Jolene, what. What do you do? Or what are you doing for Thanksgiving? I lost you for just a second. Okay, sorry. Let's go ahead and start that over. Okay. So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Oh, well, I actually. I just got back from Arizona and my family is from Arizona, so I got to kind of have an early Thanksgiving. Of course, after an Ironman, it seems like all triathletes want to do is eat bad food, greasy food, the things that we've been depriving ourselves from. So I did get to eat a little bit of pizza and not something I usually eat. And then I don't really have any plans for Thanksgiving.

Right, you don't have to.

I basically are. What's that?

You don't really have to. You just did an Ironman. For us mere mortals, though, who. Who are not sitting around the Thanksgiving table after running 26 miles, I don't know. What do you usually recommend? Do you have clients who usually recommend certain protocols for the holidays?

Well, I think you guys already mentioned a basic good approach is to get your exercise in early, eat a breakfast. Another thing is to, before you even start, is to drink a full glass of water. Because sometimes, you know, water fills you up and sometimes it's just because you might be dehydrated a little bit and water will fill you up a little bit. You can also. I just wrote an article about this already and is to not really to think about the one thing that is actually your favorite favorite thing at Thanksgiving. You know, it might be Aunt Susie's pie or something. And think about that favorite thing. And then you might pass up on Some of those other things, like if you're waiting for the dessert and when they're offered to you, you know, pass the gravy bite or pass the marshmallow sweet potatoes pie and save for that one thing that you do want to indulge in and take your time, eat it slow and enjoy it, you know?

Yeah. And that's one of the things is eating slowly is big. You know, I'll just make little choices like grabbing a smaller plate so I actually put less on it. I mean, even something as simple as that actually can help you to eat just a little bit slower. The fact that there's less in front of you. But I actually have in front of me a list of the top five most fattening foods for turkey day, for Thanksgiving. So the first one kind of surprised me because it's dinner rolls. And these are actually in order. This is number five as dinner rolls. Number one is the most calorically dense. But dinner rolls to me are something that people sometimes grab just because they're there. Right, because dinner rolls.

Yeah.

Like dinner rolls you can have anytime. Really. I mean, to me, that's not like a festive holiday food. I don't know. How do you guys feel about dinner rolls?

I agree. They're just kind of an afterthought. And a lot of the rolls that people do make for the holiday dinner or the pre made ones that you buy in the can that are loaded with fats, like the crescent rolls or something, instead of making homemade ones that are healthy, because that's the last thing you want to make that are homemade.

You always hope that you're the person that gets picked to bring the dinner rolls to the Thanksgiving meal.

And what comes with it. People load on the butter to. They're dipping it in gravy and all sorts of stuff.

Yeah. So that's something like at any buffet or any dinner like that. One of the first things that I do is I leave the rolls and the bread off my plate. Because if you think about it, it's not like some kind of special food that you never get to have. It's a freaking piece of bread. You know, it's a roll. And those are a few calories that you can save to have your favorite piece later on. So I'd say tip number one on that would be avoid. Just avoid the dinner rolls. That's, that's what I would actually do. But the, the second one was cranberry sauce. You guys do cranberry?

I actually make my own. I think it tastes a Lot better. And it could be healthier than. I don't, I don't even like the canned ones. I think they taste pretty gross and they're loaded, you know, with their processed. They're loaded with sugars. I don't think much healthier to make your.

Those have the high fructose corn syrup in them the canned stuff does. But how do you make yours, Jolene?

I have, I make it with. I find a recipe for cranberry chutney, it's called, and it usually has cranberries and apples, raisins like cinnamon. It's very easy to make and it smells delicious.

I've never been like that before. So do you actually have the recipe for that?

I can find it, definitely.

What I'm going to say is if Jolene finds a recipe for that and she sends it to me, I'll try and make sure that gets out in the newsletter. And then before I go on to number three, I'm going to cut out the podcast and for you listeners out there, I'll break this. So this will sound seamless to you, but John Gilbert's trying to call me. I'm going to answer real quick and see if he's got his sound working and I'll be right back. So I spent about the next 20 seconds trying to get John Gilbert online, unsuccessfully. But be sure to check out his article in the next newsletter as he does have some great tips to share with you. Now back to the interview. Still no John. So we might not actually be able to have John Gilbert on the show today, but yeah, I don't know. What do you do for cranberry sauce, Mark?

I don't touch it. I don't actually like it. So with me it's not an issue. But I can tell you that our family wise, they died of a can and they slice it up and eat it and sugar up on it. It's not an issue for me. It's not something I really enjoy anyway. I don't have a lot to comment on that. It's just a weird thing that people do on Thanksgiving to me.

Yeah, well, I personally have to. Is it a dessert or is it.

A part of the.

I don't know, it's both. It's that, it's that good.

Where do you put it?

Uh huh. Yeah, you know, I, I have to have cranberry sauce with my turkey. I love cranberry with turkey, but if I'm at the Thanksgiving table, there's usually a few different types of cranberry sauce out there. I don't know. It seems like everybody gets assigned to bring cranberries. So I'll usually go for what appears to be the most fruit like and the least processed and factory morphed as possible cranberry that's on the table. So it sounds like Jolene's actually got a really good recipe. So I'd be interested to hear what that is. Maybe I'll even do an.

I will send you that. I made a note to myself, awesome.

Maybe I'll do an emergency run to the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning and just bring my own cranberry sauce and dinner rolls because then I just look like I brought a lot of food. So the third one on this list that I'm looking over is candied yams.

Oh, yeah.

Do you do candied yams, Mark?

I don't. Again, it's a family thing. Yeah. It's another sort of desserty thing that's offered at dinner. To me it seems like a dessert. So that's why if something seems kind of desserty or sweet like that at dinner, then I tend to tell people to kind of lay off and stick with what's kind of a normal dinner food. The insulin level is just going up and down and up and down and that kind of thing. I try to save. Tell people to save your special sweet thing if you have sweet tooth for dessert so you have something to look forward to kind of thing.

Right. Yams. I don't know. I always have eaten yams as a healthy food. That was what Usain Bolt apparently lived on during the Olympics when he broke the 100, 200 meter world record was yams. And that's something that I prescribe to, well, to two different types of populations. One, I prescribe it to the athletes that I coach as a pre workout meal because it's carbohydrate dense, but it doesn't kind of kind of gum up in your stomach the same way that bread sometimes can. And then I'll also recommend it as a carbohydrate source to people who have gluten intolerances. These yam recipes call for like a stick of butter. Yeah. And a pound of sugar. So, yeah, it's really not yam straight up that you're getting. What do you think, Jolene?

I've seen people make them so that they're so sweet. They're disgustingly sweet. They come with that evaporated that sugar. What is it called? The canned sugar stuff. Yeah, they just pour that on and the marshmallows and you know I think I love yams and I think they're already sweet enough, you know, just by themselves because they actually have a sweet taste to them. You know, you can make a bite yourself and still have the yams there without adding all the extra marshmallows and butter and sugar on them.

Yeah, I agree. Something my wife made actually a few weeks ago, just because it's more of kind of a fall recipe was she actually pureed sweet potatoes, which she could have substituted yams for and then like a pumpkin puree and apples and it was actually almost like an apple sauce, but it had a lot more of that sweet potato type of texture to it and it was like kind of a healthy version of mashed potatoes with none of the sugar, a little bit more of the nutrients that the sweet potato and the apples and the pumpkin have to offer, but a great kind of fiber dense alternative to something like candied yams. So I guess general consensus would be stay away from the yams if they're candy or substitute a. Substitute a yam recipe that is healthy. Mashed potatoes and gravy. That one is no surprise at all. Do you guys. Mark, do you do mashed potatoes?

Oh, God, I'm going to sound so boring. I didn't this weekend.

Mark, what the hell do you eat at Thanksgiving?

I know.

Well, I tell you, he just grabs the whole turkey and heads back to his house.

Exactly. Like I said previously in that other podcast is. I'm a big advocate of caveman style. I know potatoes come from the ground, but mashed potatoes really don't. And so I stick with things, turkey things that I can actually hunt or grow. And I really tried to use it this weekend, so I'll be honest with you. And I didn't do it. I actually saw the way it was being made. My mother in law's Italian, so the amount of butter that goes into that and it wasn't potatoes, so it looked more like whipped cream. But yeah, I think everything again in moderation. I think mashed potatoes, it doesn't surprise me that that's one of the highest fat content of the whole meal. For sure.

Yeah. What about you, Jolene?

I like mashed potatoes, but I don't like the boxed kind. I like the homemade kind and I don't put all the extra gravy on them. But actually I would rather substitute, you know, a yam for the white potatoes. So, you know, so what you could.

Do technically is you could skip the sweet potato pie or the candied yams. You could skip the mashed potatoes, and just go for something like a mashed yam or sweet potato or like some type of potato that is naturally prepared, like diced or cubed potatoes with salt and pepper or something of that and nature.

It's all the extra stuff that people put in them, you know, like the sour cream and the butters and the. You know, I've seen people put cream cheese, like a stick of cream cheese in their mashed potatoes, making them. I had a friend that did that, you know, and made them that way. So.

So it's not the. The potatoes that were. We're not saying go carb free on Thanksgiving. We're saying avoid the things that have a lot of stuff added to them to make them almost, you know, like the yams. Yams aren't bad, but yams mixed with a stick of butter and a pound of sugar would be something that you'd want to avoid if you're trying to make or to lose fat. Potatoes wouldn't necessarily be bad, but mashed potatoes mixed with cream cheese or butter or cream or topped with gravy probably.

Would be, pretty much, yeah.

And what about gravy? What's your take on gravy, Mark? I keep calling him Mark. First, Jolene. What's your take on gravy, Mark?

Do you eat gravy?

Oh, boy. You go for hunt gravy.

I've never seen it in the wild, but.

What do you think, Jolene?

Oh, I'm not a big gravy fan, actually. I think it's kind of gross because I've seen it, I guess, when it gels and stuff, and when you refrigerate.

It for leftovers the next day and.

You see what it actually is. Yeah. So it kind of grosses me out just to think it's mostly just that you're eating fat, you know, like a piece of fat.

Yeah.

Sauces in general, salad dressings, gravies, etc. Are a great way to add a lot of calories to a meal, but at the same time, there's a reason that they exist, because they make things taste good. My opinion on it is that life ain't a gulag and you want to enjoy the flavor a little bit. But the mistake that I see with most people is not that they use a salad dressing or they use a gravy, but that they use way too much of it. And a lot of that starts with the ladle that the gravy is in or the pouring device that it's in. If you just skip the ladle and go for the gravy boat that you can pour out of. My recommendation is grab a spoon, one of the smaller spoons at. At the table on your place setting, and use that to dish yourself out some gravy. Tiny little bit on your potato or a tiny little bit on your turkey. It does not take much gravy to actually make something taste nice and rich. So the way I do it is I don't skip the gravy altogether because I think it does really make the food taste a little bit better. But I go with a very small serving spoon to actually portion it out.

And I think it also, you know, people use it because the other things are kind of dry. Like, they might get the white meat or, you know, the lighter meat or the potatoes that kind of don't have the flavor, and they are kind of bland and dry. So that's why people add the gravy too.

Right.

I see with the mashed potatoes, since you can mold those mashed potatoes, they make the big. It's like a pool. And it's just fun to put the gravy in the pool, I think.

Right? Don't dig the pool. Don't dig the hole in the mashed potatoes.

Right, right, right.

Resist the urge. Okay. The number one. I know everyone's on the edge of their seats for this one. The number one, most fattening. And of course, it's going to fall into a dessert category. We all wonder which pie is the most fattening. And it turns out it's a tie between cheesecake and pecan pie, both of which average, for a normal slice, about 600 calories per slice.

Nice.

So, Jolene, what do you usually go for on the dessert table during Thanksgiving meal?

Actually, I'm gonna pull a mark on this one. I do not like pumpkin pie. I do not like pecan pie. I don't like cheesecake. But I. So I am usually making this Oreo dessert that I make, and that's my big sweet tooth thing. So I don't go for any of those. But I think the fruit. If you're gonna have a dessert that was my dog, skip the cheesecake and the pecan pie and go for maybe a fruit pie instead, like apple pie.

Or a cherry pie.

Apple or pumpkin or cherry? Yeah, I mean, it's still loaded with sug sugar and, you know, the crust, but, you know, it is a lower fat option.

I read this. I kind of chuckled because at our Thanksgiving meal, we actually kind of divvy up who's in charge of what and my wife and I are at the point still, because we're a fairly young family where we're going, we're going off family for multiple Thanksgiving meals, like Mark. But we were in charge of dessert this year. And I read this article that cheesecake and pecan pie were tied for the highest calorie. And this was last night as I was looking over this article. I go out into the kitchen because my wife is making dessert. And I said, what are you making? And she says, this is a pecan cheesecake. We got the best of both worlds.

I do do pumpkin, by the way.

You do pumpkin?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

I do turkey and pumpkin pie.

I love pumpkin. I actually use pumpkin as one of my carbohydrate choices. In the fall and winter, you can literally stick a pumpkin or a squash or sugar pumpkin in the oven at about 350 for 30 minutes. And it actually makes a great pre or post workout meal. You can put a little yogurt or almond butter, a little cinnamon on it, and it's almost like kind of a sweet squash. That's just a side note, I don't eat that for my Thanksgiving dessert, but I like to eat dessert on Thanksgiving. And what I will generally do is I just try and control it from a hormonal standpoint. Because like Mark said, you get up in the morning and you do your exercise session, you eat a big breakfast, so you're not ravenous by the time your Thanksgiving meal rolls around. Incidentally, if it's a Thanksgiving dinner, you would also want to make sure that you eat lunch. But then what I'll do is after the Thanksgiving meal, I don't go straight to the dessert. And I know this will be simple for a lot of people listening because I know the tradition, a lot of families is not to go straight to dessert, but instead to have a little time for cleaning up or games or whatever afterwards. But then I will go exercise. Usually it will just be a walk with people that want to go on a walk, football game in the backyard, whatever. I put my body into a state where the heart rate is up, it's a little bit more insulin sensitive. And then I'll go in and have whatever happens to be my favorite piece of pie. In my case, I'm actually a big sucker for pecan pie. I know it's one of the highest calorie items on the menu, but what I would recommend to people is make sure that you're not just piling calories on top of more calories, that you kind of get your Appetite under control, go out, exercise, which by the way is a great appetite support so that when you come back in to eat dessert, you might not be so likely to grab a huge chunk of pie versus when you're in your food drunk state right after the turkey and mashed potatoes and then eat. So my take is if you want to eat dessert, go out, get a little exercise. These days that might even mean that you're playing the Nintendo Wii. But whatever, you go out and you get the heart rate up and then you come back in and eat dessert. I don't know, what's your take on that?

Yeah, I think that's a great idea if you can convince other people to encourage them to do something first. A lot of times right after dinner people are stuffed. And in fact, I got the question this weekend, are you guys ready for pie? And nobody was.

So.

Rather than sit there and feel even more bloated and waiting, go out and do something because you know everybody's going to partake. So we actually have a two year old and so he's always on the go. So we actually just walked to the park and back and spent an hour over there. So that helped big time. By the time everybody got back, we felt much better for sure.

What do you think? Do you guys end up exercising at any point during the Thanksgiving Day apart from that morning exercise?

Jolene usually cheering for the Cowboys. Yeah.

Nice.

I'm joking. I have some Texans in my family, so it's always Cowboys are always playing on Thanksgiving. No, I like to exercise on Thanksgiving too. It is good to walk it off a little bit. We always had all the family together and all the kids would go outside and play games anyway and go to the park or whatever. It is a good idea to burn some of that off and it always feels good after your stuff to go walk, walk some off and then go back for seconds.

Yeah, go back for dessert. Do sit ups and push ups during.

The football commercial for every touchdown.

So we've talked a lot about nutrition today and a little about exercise, but I also have the top three excuses for not exercising over the holidays and I also want to hear your take on these. The first excuse is with all the holiday distractions, I'm not motivated to exercise. And I guess this would come from someone who's going all over the place. I guess it's maybe not about finding time as much as about finding motivation. What would be your recommendation to someone who just maybe has a hard time grasping the fact that they're going to have to set A January weight loss resolution to lose X amount of pounds. Is there something else that they can use to motivate themselves as they go through the holidays?

Goals are always good and it gives you something to look forward to and to work towards. I would also maybe recommend having somebody like an accountability partner or maybe your spouse or a friend or something that, you know, can get you out there and get you motivated to go out or keep some kind of journal. You know, just. Just put anything out there in front of yourself to make it easier to get out there and go and, you know, a lot of the times just getting out there is the hardest part. But once you're out there, That it is good for you, that you're enjoying it and you know.

Just start. Even if you're not motivated to exercise, just try and get through the first two minutes or whatever and see how you feel and maybe you'll keep going. That type of thing.

Exactly. I mean, sometimes I get, you know, I'm not motivated to work out and some of those are my end up being my best workouts ever. You know, you might not feel like it, but once you get into it. Exactly. You never know.

I think the log thing is huge. I give all my clients logs and they feel a little bit more accountable, even if I'm not necessarily checking them, but if they know they're supposed to write something in there or have a weekly. I may not have them have a daily goal, but how about a weekly goal? Even say, this week I'm going to do 120 minutes of aerobic exercise. That way you can kind of chop it down one day, say on Thanksgiving, you have 15 minutes. Well, that's 15 minutes off that end of the week time. You kind of break it down into little sections like that. It really seems to help people. It doesn't seem like this, I've got to do 45 minutes today or what have you. The biggest thing I think is that people just do something. That's what I try to encourage people to do and set a reasonable weekly goal and just kind of each day kind of chop down on that goal.

And that's interesting because that's something that I've done on really busy days where I have a ton of people that I'm coaching or working with is I'll tell myself, okay, my goal today is I'm going to get 30 minutes of exercise in and it might be that I'm doing two minutes of jumping jacks here and I'm running down to the post office. Five minutes and back five minutes for another 10 minutes and then I'm doing 50 push ups at some point. But basically I have a clock that I wear or a chronograph on my stopwatch. I just press start every time I start exercising, stop every time I stop exercising, and I try and get my 30 minutes in by the end of the day. And even something like that, you know, telling yourself on Thanksgiving Day you're going to exercise an hour and basically starting your clock in the morning and pressing start and stop every time you start doing something just to help you burn calories, keep the metabolism elevated. And that's something, you know, not just for Thanksgiving, but also during some of the other days during the holidays where you're just surrounded by distractions. And then probably the other most important thing that I've always done or not always done, but the past two years where I've had probably the most healthy holidays ever, is I've signed up for some type of event, whether it be like, you know, the Jingle Bell Christmas, 5K, a turkey trot on Thanksgiving or day after Thanksgiving, or even like a triathlon in something like January. So you're always thinking during November and December about continuing your exercise routine. I think that's huge for people who have a hard time being motivated.

Yeah.

Incidentally, are either of you guys signed up for any events? I mean, obviously you just got done doing Ironman Arizona Jolene. So you probably.

Where's my event? That was my taper for Thanksgiving.

Yeah. Jolene's top piece of advice, get through the Thanksgiving meal by doing Iron man two days before. What about you, Mark? Are you doing anything in December or January?

Nothing concrete. Well, we do. It's called the Turkey. There's a run to feed the hungry out here in Sacramento that's on Thanksgiving morning. And that we usually do. And we usually. This year I think my wife's actually going to run it and I'll run it with her with pushing the, the baby stroller. So it's a 5k, 10k. But that's really it.

And the second excuse is I can't stick to an exercise routine because of all my holiday travel. So travel exercise. Mark, top tips.

I get that a lot. And I just am always. There's always time, there's always a way to do it. And what I tell people to do is actually most people write things down and what they have to do and that kind of thing and put that into the equation. I mean, okay, I got to pack suitcases, make sure that I turned off the heat or what have you. I have to exercise. So it's in your schedule. I mean, we're probably a little bit different in that we've been in the industry and it's one of our favorite things to do. And so that's always first on my list usually. But I like people to actually write it down on their schedule and kind of keep. Make it. That's a part of what you're going to do as far as either packing up for the travel or what have you. Just make it a priority.

What about you, Jolene?

I would agree. You could always make an excuse for not exercising, whatever it might be, by putting it just something in your schedule, just like anything else. And also, you know, there's so many tools there now that you can use to bring with you and, you know, like exercise bands or, you know, little, little things like that that you could just pack along. They don't take up a lot of space or weight. And you could do things in your motel room or at your family's house or even at the airport. You know, walk around, go climb some stairs, you know, do whatever you can. A lot of airports now even have little fitness centers.

They do, they do. There's a website called Airport Gyms.com where you can actually look at the cities that you're going to and find out what kind of gyms there are at the airport. I've used that before. That's a really useful tool. There's also. Because when we're talking about time to exercise, running is one of the things you can just kind of do at the drop of the hat. So pack your running shoes. And there's a few other websites that you can use. One's called mapmyrun.com that one's great for finding local places in the community that you're going to to run in, because a lot of times you're going back to visit family, sometimes you. You need to be refreshed on which are the best running routes. And that's a good website. There's a lot of road running clubs out there as well. Like Road Running Clubs of America website is rrca.org and that's a great way to get hooked up with some running clubs who might have some type of local event over the holidays during the time that you're in an area that might help you get into some kind of exercise routine during your travel. And then I think you hit on something huge. Jolene. Portable exercise tools. My favorite one. If anybody listens to this podcast, they probably know by this time that I love the gym stick because they make it in this little telescoping version that you can just slide up and stick in your bag and take with you anywhere. And, you know, I'm trying to shoot more gym stick exercise videos than what I have right now@the BenGreenfieldFitness.com website. But gym stick is a fantastic kind of elastic band type of exercise tool, or even just some elastic bands that you throw into your bag that you're going to do some bicep curls with, some side raises, some front raises, some squats, that type of thing. And literally just go to a Google search for, like, exercise band workouts, and you'll be able to find some things that you can do or, I mean, email any of us you have access to to Mark's email address, my email address, and Jolene's over@PacificFit.net just click on about us and you can read about any of the coaches and pick our brains. Get some ideas from us. We're not trolls. We're not going to bite your heads off. If we get an email from you. We might shoot a few good tips your way. Let me see, the third excuse was, oh, this, this one's, well, maybe we already addressed this. I don't know. I can't find the time to exercise. Kind of went over that with the motivation point. But for, for your really busy people, I mean, other than just saying, you know, make the time or, you know, get a little bit in here and there. Are there any. Are there any ways Jolene or Mark that you help your clients find or make holes in their calendar for exercise.

During the Thanksgiving and the holidays and stuff? It can be a very busy time with obligations, with families and, you know, work parties or whatever. But, you know, if you're staying with a family, like Mark said, get up before everybody else is awake and do things. Don't take time away from them either, you know, because you kind of feel obligated to spend the time with them, you know, because you don't see them a lot. You might not see them a lot or, you know, get one of your family members and go for a walk, do things together as a family, or go out and play a football game, you know, as a family, and do just engage in some activities together. And that's also a good bonding time, I think. But just try to fit it in, even if it's some minutes here, some minutes there, like you guys were saying before.

I think the thing is, if you don't do it, first thing, you're probably not going to do it.

So.

The most, I know it doesn't seem like a convenient time, but the best time is very first thing before people are up and people are doing things. And I find people, if they skip it and they say I'm going to do it, it just gets pushed off, pushed off, pushed off. So set your alarm, have whatever you're going to wear, plan on wearing that morning exercise laid out already. If you need a goo to get going or a bar or water, have that already out. So you got this plan and it's already set. So there's no excuse to take more time to get dressed and all that kind of thing. I think the longer you let it go and unless you actually physically put out this plan and see it, it's going to get pushed to the side. Sometimes it's hard. If it was really easy, I wouldn't have a job. I know it's hard to do this thing and not everybody enjoys it. But I think that the benefits of doing some sort of exercise way outweigh everything else.

And then I tell people to remember like they did a study, the metabolic effect of repetitive exercise sessions and three 10 minute bouts on a treadmill were more effective at boosting the metabolism and causing fat loss compared to one single long 30 minute bout of exercise. And people need to know it's okay if you exercise five minutes here, five minutes there. There's no rule that you have to make this big hour long hole for exercise in your calendar and you can still get results with these little mini exercise sessions. The other thing I kind of like, and this more comes from like the mixed martial arts fighting, UFC side of things, but there was this kind of bodyweight fitness expert who wrote a book that I read, I forget the name of the book. The author was Pavel Zazolini, kind of like a Russian mixed martial arts fighter and he has his fighters do this thing called Greasing the groove that I've kind of adopted to use with some of the people that I'm helping to do body toning or weight loss. And all it means is that like grease the groove, an example would be that you wake up and your goal for the day is that you're going to do 50 push ups. And so once every hour you do five push ups. That might be a goal for like an intermediate based exerciser or another thing you might tell yourself is that over the course of the day you're going to try to run one mile. And so like, you know, running from your car to the Grocery store counts as a tenth of a mile. Running from the grocery store back to the car is a tenth of a mile and you just kind of add it up throughout the day. But it's the concept of greasing the groove or just gradually kind of getting your exercise throughout the day as the day goes on by accomplishing these little goals that you set for yourself. So you tell yourself, like on Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, I'm going to do 100 squats, 50 push ups and I'm going to run a half mile. And I mean even that doesn't seem like much. But if you split it up throughout the day, you're boosting your metabolism in just little bouts as the day goes on. So I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that. You guys still. Am I still on? I'm like, well, gosh, everybody just hung up. So the three top excuses and the three fattiest foods over the holidays. I think that will really help people get off to a good start for fat loss. For you listeners out there, make sure that if you're listening to this podcast on the days before Thanksgiving, go to the website and sign up for our newsletter where you'll have access to some links and some feedback on some great articles by our house metabolism expert John Gilbert, who unfortunately was not able to overcome his technical difficulties today. So he may not know a lot about microphone headsets and computer microphones, but he does know a lot about nutrition, so he will give you some great information in that newsletter. And then Mark and Jolene, I know you've probably got a lot of people right now who are waiting to get their last minute exercise sessions in before Thanksgiving. So I know my Monday yesterday was just packed. I had people calling me right and left wanting to basically get their butts kicked one time before they took off for Thanksgiving. Do you guys have any final resources, Mark, any final resources or pieces of advice that you give to people?

Well, first of all, like you said before, I'm happy for. I mean I love talking about this stuff, so it's not at all. I don't mind anybody emailing. I love to answer any kind of questions. It's actually fun for me to talk about, so it's not an imposition at all. Secondly, what I've been telling my clients is if you've been putting in the time all along, allow yourself to have some fun. Don't, don't be a sad sack like me and only eat caveman style. But just be smart about it. Portion exercise a little bit, drink some Water, everything in moderation. Just basic knowledge that they already know, but just impart to them a little bit more.

Okay, what about you, Jolene?

That's really good advice that Mark just gave. You don't have to be weird or, or abnormal or anything. Just, you know, you could do regular things and have fun and, you know, you don't have to be so strict with yourself all the time. Allow yourself to have those, you know, indulge a little bit, but. But just don't go overboard. And I think the moderation thing is good. And also, you know, they're speaking about the food and stuff. There's so many sites out there where you can find healthier versions of the things that you do like and alternatives. So look for those, too.

And I think that's a great point that you make, that you do have to enjoy yourself a lot of the time. And I'm sure some people are going to listen to this podcast and they're going to be like, they don't eat candied yams and they don't dig holes in their mashed potatoes and they only eat stuff that you could shoot with the gun. And, you know, these people don't have a realistic. But you know what it's about. Basically, I can guarantee you that if you were to sit down at a Thanksgiving meal with Mark and Jolene and I, we eat like a lot of the other people around the table, but we make these tiny little decisions that you may not even notice, like leaving the dinner roll and maybe going for the real cranberries or leaving the cranberries off the plate. But I think even more important than that is that 8020 rule that if you follow your nutrition really well, 80% of the time, 20% of the time, you're going to be able to get away with doing some of the things that you really, really enjoy from a nutritional perspective. And that's where I think the law keeping comes in handy, because I look at a lot of people's logs who I help out with nutritional coaching, and one of the things that I see is that people who think that they're making the right decisions, 80% of the time, really not a day goes by where they don't make a couple of nutritional errors that add up, and nowhere is that more true than the holidays. So I would encourage you keep a log during the holidays and go back and look at it every few days and make sure that you really are following that 8020 rule and that you're not sabotaging your diet just because there's so many nutritional mistakes that you can make over the holidays that just add up day after day after day. Mark and Jolene, I know you've got a lot to do, so I want to thank you for coming on the show today.

Sure. Thank you for having us.

And again, if you want to talk to Mark and Jolene a little bit more, jet over 2 Pacific and you can read a little bit more about them. They're both available as fitness coaches as well as triathlon coaches and just a wealth of knowledge and information. So until next time, this is Ben, Mark and Jolene from PacificFit.net signing out. So that's all the content for this week from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and remember, if you have comments, you can always leave them for us on the blog or email me. Ben greenfieldfitness.com if you want to leave us a ranking in itunes, you simply go to our album page in itunes, leave us a few stars or tell us what you liked about the show. And then finally, if you're interested in having Mark, Jolene or myself help you out with your nutrition, your fitness or your performance goals, Simply go to pacificfit.net or even better yet, I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a form that you can fill out. And one form will be labeled for triathletes. One form will be labeled for people who are just going after general fitness or fat loss. If you simply simply fill out that form and click submit, it will give us a real good idea of what kind of program would be perfect for you. So you can check all that out and more on this week's show Notes. This week's podcast, episode number 23 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com until next time, this is Ben Greenfield. Have a great Thanksgiving. It.