Podcast #57: What a Doctor Thinks About The Paleo Diet

In this podcast episode, what a doctor thinks about the Paleo diet, heart rate monitors and calorie burning, transdermal magnesium absorption, or whether you can take too much magnesium running faster for triathlon. And big news about an upcoming training camp.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I'm going to start right off by delivering to you the content that I completely spaced last week. I was going to tell you whether or not a heart rate monitor could really tell you how many calories that you've burnt. And I completely forgot to discuss that, just left it out of the podcast. So we're going to jump straight into that and then we'll go on to special announcements and the listener Q and A and finally, our interview on the Paleo diet. The reason that I wanted to talk about whether a heart rate monitor can actually tell you how many calories that you burned is because heart rate monitors are claiming to do a lot of things these days, including cleaning your house, doing your dishes, flushing the toilet, making your bed. No, but really, some of these companies, like Polar and Suunto, they do have a button that you can push that will tell you how many calories you're burning during your workout. Well, there's a recent study in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, and this study was entitled Validation of Heart Rate Monitor Based Predictions of Oxygen Uptake and Energy Expenditure. The whole idea behind the study was they were checking to see how heart rate monitors actually measured calories and specifically how accurately they did so when compared to laboratory measurements. Because traditionally you can go into a lab and actually find out exactly how many calories you burn, but you can't drag a lab around with you when you're out in your afternoon run. So essentially, they've got special software built into these heart rate monitors with equations in the software that approximate how many calories that you're burning based off the length of time between each of your heart beats or your heart rate. And they will also approximate your maximum oxygen consumption, or it's also known as your VO2 max when they do that. So in this study, they compared the heart rate monitors to gold standard laboratory measurements and what they found was that the heart rate monitor usually was off by about 6% when it came to estimating your VO2 max or your maximum oxygen consumption. Not that big of a deal, because that's just a measurement of how aerobically fit you are. And 6%, unless you're an elite athlete, it's not going to be that big of a deal. However, it underestimated the heart rate monitor did. It underestimated your caloric utilization by about 13%. And that's pretty significant because if you think about even 10%, if you're doing a workout that you think you're burning, say 1,000 calories during, and you're really burning 900 calories, and you're doing that every day, and you're taking in those extra 100 calories every day, that comes out to about a pound of fat a month that you gain or 12 pounds of fat a year just from trusting what your heart rate monitor says when it comes to calorie burning. Now, I'm not a huge calorie counter to start with. However, I did take this information to heart just because I was curious. I get that question a lot, and it's something that I'm going to be careful with with my own personal heart rate monitor. Just that that information that I'm getting from it from a calorie burning perspective may not be the most accurate information possible. So we're going to go ahead and move on to the special announcements for this week. And there's just a couple quick. Special announcements, just a few things to go over today. The first is that I am going to give every listener to this podcast. $10. That's right, $10 that you can use on anything that you like from the Pacific Elite Fitness Bookstore. Whether you want a book on nutrition, fat loss, metabolism, training, triathlon injuries, you name it. If you surf over to the Pacific Elite Fitness Bookstore and I'll put a link to that in the show notes, then all you have to do is use coupon code book, and that's a $10 free gift that you can use for anything. When we're talking about some books over there only being $14, $15, that's pretty significant. And I am going to take that one step further. For those of you listening in who are triathlon coaches or personal trainers or people who advise others on nutrition or fitness, because I know there's some of you out there, I would like to actually send you a free copy of Shape 21 because I want to see what some people who are fitness professionals and nutrition professionals think about it. I will send you a free copy of Shape 21 if you can write back to me and give me feedback about what you liked and didn't like about the book and how I could change it to be even better. Because I'm constantly making revisions to my books to make them make them better and better and more relevant. So all you need to do is email me if you want me to send you a free copy of Shape 21. I'm basically going to take the first three fitness professionals who write into me and I'll send that out to you. You'll just have to give me your mailing address and I'll toss the book and the DVD in the mail. Now again, the coupon code that you can use anybody out there, not just fitness professionals, but anybody listening in $10 coupon code you can use the bookstore is book. So one other special announcement and that is that anybody out there who's listening in who is a triathlete, I am going to have a very special announcement for you, but I'm going to save it for the end of today's show so that those of you who are not multi sport athletes or triathletes listening in, who don't care about that special announcement and very big announcement, you don't have to listen into it because it is going to be a little bit drawn out. A five to ten minute announcement. So those are the special announcements. Remember to stay tuned to the end of this show. If you're a triathlete, use your $10 discount coupon code book and then email me if you are a fitness professional and you'd like a free copy of Shape 21. And that's just a nutrition and fitness plan that takes you through 21 days of reshaping and reinventing your body.

Listener Q and A Not a huge.

Number of questions this week, but remember, if you do have a question, just email me ben greenfieldfitness.com or leave a comment in the show notes to this podcast. And I put a lot of stuff up there in the show notes. Any link I ever mention is right up there for you to click on. So if you're not currently going and visiting the website after you listen to a podcast episode, you're actually missing out on a lot of really valuable information. So two questions this week and the first is from listener Matt. Listener Matt asks what recommendations do you have for improving speed? For my run in Olympic half Ironman triathlons, I am thinking about spending the off season doing strength training for the run, squats lunges, etc. And doing hills as well as intervals of 800 meters. The mantra of triathlon is to run faster, comma, bike more, which I agree with. But in Iowa, biking during the winter months is not ideal. More endurance on the bike, you have energy on the run, and faster cadence will improve footage turnover. I can only spend so much time on the trainer before I get bored. And then he finishes, completely off topic, but he finishes and says, also, I may want to set up some time to talk about opening my own personal training studio. Let's save the last part of your question here for a second, Matt, and move on to the first part, because those are two very different questions. Improving speed for your run. Something that I personally have had to deal with. I am not naturally a very fast runner. I do very well incredibly short sprints because I was a high school and college tennis player. And I do well at very long death march type of runs. You know, anything from like 13 to 20 miles in the heat, I generally can can move for long periods of time without stopping. Now, as far as improving speed for the run, you've talked about how you want to spend your off season doing strength training for the run. And that's a paradox for people because when you add muscle to your body, it takes to cool that muscle and it takes energy to carry that muscle. I personally have competed in triathlon at about 210 pounds of muscle and 3% body fat when I came off of a bodybuilding stint. And that was some of the most painful and inefficient running I have ever experienced. So obviously there's a law of diminishing returns. And what you'd want to do is if you were strength training to become a faster runner, you'd want to make sure that you weren't making the mistake of actually adding lean muscle mass to your body. Now, squats and lunges can bulk up the legs quite a bit, depending on how you do them. There are several variations of squats and lunges in my book about resistance training for triathletes. The top 12 resistance training routines for triathletes, but they're done primarily at high reps and at body weight resistance so that you don't bulk up. Now, some of the strength training exercises that you could and you should do for the run, that may not be considered traditional strength training exercises, but ones that I'll personally do. One is called a hip hike, where you're simply standing on a platform that's above the ground or a stair works fine. You drop one hip lower than the other and then you raise that hip. Another one is called fire hydrants, where you get into a crawl position on the ground, you just hike your leg up like a dog. Well, I'll let you take the analogy where you may. The final exercise would be elastic band side raises with your legs, where you attach one end of an elastic band to a bed post or any other stationary device and you kick out and to the side with your other leg. There's also a variation of that with the gym stick that works quite well. I will do those three exercises, for example, while I'm watching TV during a commercial, whatever, spend about five to 10 minutes a day or every other day on those exercises because those strengthen the external rotators, specifically the gluteus medius and the gluteus maximus. And those tend to be some weak muscles that can make you a stronger runner. Craig Alexander, who won Ironman last year, that's one of the things that he really spent a lot of his time doing the offseason was developing his gluteus medius. And you'll know you're doing it properly if the next day your upper outer body but is a little bit sore. So I would work on developing endurance and stability in your gluteus medius as well as stability in the single leg stance phase. So if you're going to the gym and you like to go to the gym and you're doing whatever overhead presses, let's say maybe you're even doing curls. I'm not a huge fan of curls, but sometimes they're fun to do. You would do those standing on one leg and that's it. You just stand on one leg and get your body used to activity of the upper body with only one leg to support you, because that's what's going on when you run. So from a stability standpoint, that works well. Now from an actual speed standpoint, yeah, it's all about neuromuscular turnover. Two of the things that I've been implementing to make myself a faster runner. And I was able to shave about 45 seconds off my 10k just in the past couple of months. And these are the two things that I added. One was barefoot running to work on a forward center of gravity, to work on muscular turnover and to work on a better feel for the ground. Literally just jog to a park and do about 10, 100 or 200 meter barefoot sprints back and forth and then run back. The other exercise that I've started implementing is working on turnover with the run, focusing on high cadence. One of the best ways to do that, and you can implement this with the barefoot running, if you wanted to, is to run downhill, whether that be throwing your shoes on and hitting the pavement, hitting rolling hills and really conserving when you're going uphill on the flats, but just FL flying down the hills to get your legs used to that high turnover that they're going to need to become a faster runner or going out to a grassy park, taking off your shoes and just running downhill and trying to get your legs to turn over as quickly as possible. While we're on the issue of cadence, those of you who listened to the Swimming Super Special last week heard John Kenny and Paul Newsom talking about a cadence of 84, 85, 86 being optimal for open water swimmers. Paul actually was kind enough to send me something called a wetronome, which is literally just a metronome that you put in your swim cap that you can listen to and it gives you a cadence of anything you want, you know, from 40 on up to 100. And you can get those at his website, swimsmooth.com but I put it in and used it. And 84 is a very difficult cadence to maintain. You have to have a lot of of neuromuscular skill and the ability to turn over your arms quite quickly and efficiently in order to maintain that cadence. So that's not strength, that's simply neuromuscular training. And the same goes for running. If you want to actually train yourself to be fast, you get the legs to turn over a little bit quicker. And downhill running and barefoot running are two of the ways that I've developed to be able to do that. With regard to the second part of your question, Matt, those of you who listen to the show may not be aware, but I do quite a bit of business advising for fitness professionals and for coaches. I have a website where I help you make a little bit better use of your time and implement different types of marketing techniques, blogging, etc. I would refer you to the website train4top$com and there is a blog and there is a podcast over on that website. And I have helped several trainers open their own personal training studios. So head over to that website and that'll give you the information that you would need to know about that. And then the second question for this week comes from listener Jerry, who says, I believe I read somewhere that the skin has the ability to self regulate its magnesium absorption so that not too much is absorbed. But I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I would be interested to hear your opinion on this, Ben. Can you take in too much magnesium by using it transdermally? On a similar note, I just wanted to shout out that since I began using transdermal magnesium in the last couple weeks, I've noticed an incredible improvement in my ability to recover after tough workouts. Like you said, Ben, this stuff works. If you're a new listener to this show, you probably haven't hopped on the magnesium bandwagon, but I literally get dozens of success stories via email every single week about especially athletes who sweat who have started using this and they're seeing incredible results from diminished cramping to increased speed to better sleep, you name it. But what Jerry asks is, can you take in too much magnesium by using it transdermally? Theoretically, yes. Once you get above about 600mg daily dose of magnesium, you can start to get the loose stool, the upset stomach, some of the toxicity symptoms of over mineralization. If you look at something like transdermal magnesium, especially the spray that I recommend on the show that I personally use, you're looking at anywhere from about 15 to 20 milligrams per spray, assuming you haven't watered it down. And so you would have to. Let's do the math real quick. You'd be looking at about 30 sprays per day rubbed into your skin and fully absorbed before you may start to experience some of that loose stool, diarrhea and toxicity. Overload of magnesium. That's a lot of sprays and that's assuming full absorption. So yes, you could take in too much magnesium. There is no way that you're going to experience. I know someone had asked me, you know, does it mess up your heart? You're going to have a lot of problems just with your bowel before it starts to act on your cardiovascular system. So I would limit yourself to no more than 30 sprays unless you're a really heavy sweater. I personally do about five to 10 sprays before workout and five to 10 after workout and feel just fabulous with that. So that's the, that's the skinny on magnesium, Jerry. And those are our two questions for this week. So again, if you have a question, just email BenGreenfieldFitness.com or leave a comment in the show notes to this podcast and we're going to go ahead and move on to this week's interview about the Paleo diet.

Featured Topic.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and in today's featured topic, we're going to Be talking about the Paleo diet. And I know that some of you may be familiar with the Paleo diet and what it is, but today we have a naturopathic physician on the show to talk about her experience with the Paleo diet. And the unique part about this particular physician is that she is actually an athlete herself. Her name is Dr. Callie Phillips and she started really doing bike related sports as soon as she could pedal. She started road racing when she was 16 years old. She moved on to track racing after that, and she spent several years in the upper echelon of American track racing. She had an injury, she kind of had to retire, but then she went to medical school. Little bit of a change up there, right, Kelly?

Yeah.

So she's a licensed naturopathic physician now, and she practices primary care medicine down in Eugene, Oregon. So she integrates a lot of herbal medicine, a lot of homeopathy, you know, occasional pharmaceutical prescriptions as well. But really, you know, like a lot of the naturopathic physicians that I've run.

Into.

You'Re trying to remove the cause of the condition and remove the barrier.

To health, which I think is great.

More of a focus on preventive medicine. So since you got out of medical school, Callie, did you start racing again?

I did, I did. I had a little more time on my hands after I graduated, so.

Okay.

Started back up as Cat 4 last year.

Nice. So back into the competitive cycling and the doctoring simultaneously. That's. That's quite the load.

I'm sure it's a stress reliever.

Well, let's talk about the Paleo diet. You, you picked it up. When did you become familiar with that?

Well, I became familiar with the Paleo diet in a more general way when I was in school. I had quite a lot of nutrition training in school, and the Paleo diet was one of a handful of diets that we studied and critiqued through our nutrition training, but became aware of the Paleo diet for Athletes, more specifically, maybe about a year ago. And it's taken me about a year or so to get my hands on the book and read through it.

So there actually is a book called the Paleo Diet. Is that what it's called?

Yeah, it's the Paleo Diet for Athletes. It's by Lauren Cordain, who is the author of Paleo Diet, as well as Joe Friel, who is kind of the grandfather of endurance sports in the United States. So kind of a good combination of some really knowledgeable folks, one really knowledgeable about nutrition and the other super knowledgeable in endurance Sports. So they put their two heads together and wrote the book.

Well, hopefully he doesn't take issue with you calling him the grandfather rather than the father. We'll see if Joe Friel writes in upset to the show. So what is the paleo diet, Callie?

The paleo diet is the simplest way to put it, is basically a diet that our paleo canthus would have eaten before we started farming, before we started agriculture and basically growing and eating grains and legumes and actually in dairy as well. To implement the paleo diet, the simplest way to put it would be to avoid which includes grains and potatoes as well as dairy products. So lean healthy meats and fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds. That's kind of the basis of the diet in general. And there's a modification, it's made for athletes, but that's the general.

So essentially you're eating like a caveman if you want the simplest terms possible. So when you walk into the grocery store and and you're looking around the aisles and trying to decide which foods would actually adhere to the paleo diets and which wouldn't, are there like a set of rules that you try to follow?

Well, nothing that comes in a box more or less would be included in the paleo diet. So anything, of course in the produce section and you kind of have to be careful with the meat section, but more or less any seafood or bird. So chicken or turkey or duck would be okay. Just be kind of careful with red meat, with pork and beef. Just because our agricultural farming practices have created the meat that comes out of our agriculture system is more inflammatory than it would be if it were just grass fed, Purely grass fed beef would be ideal, but that's hard to come by and it's more expensive. So you're not going to find that in the grocery store aisle necessarily.

And for more on the meat, go watch Food Inc.

Right, sorry.

I said for more on the meat, go watch that movie Food Inc. That just recently came out, if you want to know what you're talking about, with inflammatory markers. So it sounds like you'reyou're taking that concept that is good to follow anyways about shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store where most of the natural foods are. And you're taking that one step further by essentially implementing foods that are even more paleolithic or more like your caveman ancestors. So like a bag of Oscar Mayer processed bologna meat, they wouldn't have necessarily.

Been able to hunt down, track and.

Kill or pick hanging from a tree.

No, no. If the food Is in as close to its whole state as possible, as in, as close to the way it was in the world into the grocery store. The closer the food is to that state, the more ideal it is, I guess would be a simple kind of rule of thumb.

Right. And so are people using this diet, Callie, to lose weight? Are they using it to, to manage health? When you're, when we're talking about say just like a non athlete or someone who doesn't have really high aspirations in sport, is this a diet that would.

Actually work for them?

This diet is, I have found in my clinical experience in the more general population to be extremely anti inflammatory. I have a handful of patients who I'll call them volcanoes. They're all of their inflammatory markers are really high, their blood pressure is high, their blood sugar is high, high cholesterol, you know, all that stuff that leads to a heart attack eventually, who also refuse my prescriptions for pharmaceuticals, which, you know, if the naturopaths tell you that it's a good idea to take a pharmaceutical, it may be a little more serious than you maybe need to take it a little more seriously. So when I have these patients who refuse the med and I really strongly encourage them to implement the Paleo diet, that's been the only thing in my clinical experience that consistently brings numbers down in a pretty quick reliable way. So it also helps them stick to the diet. If they give the diet a month and then we do their blood work again and all their numbers are already coming down, that's really good incentive for them to stick to it because it is really difficult to do. I've tried implementing it on my own and I definitely have had some backsliding here and there from it.

So it's a diet that, I mean, is it one of those diets where you're going to be pretty good if you can follow the 8020 rule? Or is it something that you say, okay, I'm going to implement 100% all out for four weeks to get some condition under control like weight or inflammation and then I'm going to go back to eating the way that I was eating before.

I recommend if I have a patient who doesn't have really serious condition, but they do have inflammatory situation going on, which inflammation is really the root cause of just about any condition that a human being can have, whether it's cancer or heart disease or psoriasis and asthma. So if it's not a super serious inflammatory condition, then I have them kind of start with doing one meal a day, grain and starch Free. But it's something that I try to have people implement as a lifelong commitment, which means not necessarily implementing it 100% the day that they walk out of my office. But I try to help them figure out award systems for themselves. Whether it's one day a week where they don't worry about it or two meals a week where they don't worry about it, or whatever they feel is their comfort level that they can have those days where they aren't worrying about it and not backslide into five days a week not worrying about it.

Right. So you're having your nuts and berries and you know, maybe some. Well, did you say that the whole grains in any amount are okay on this diet?

Nope, no grains at all.

Now what about like a, you know, a grain such as, like a quinoa or an amaranth or millet or something of that nature? No, on those.

Sure. Yeah. No, here's the simplest way that I break that down for my patients. If you take a serving of an ideal grain like quinoa or brown rice, and compare it to a serving of any fruit or vegetable, doesn't matter what it is really, as long as it's not white potatoes, the fruit or vegetable is going to have more, it's going to be denser in micronutrients and anti inflammatory nutrients than the whole grain is. And if you're spending only a certain amount of calories in your day, if you're spending some of those calories on that grain, then you're losing out on insert more nutritious fruit and vegetable.

Gotcha. Okay, so I guess go ahead.

Oh, I was gonna say grains. The modification for athletes, for the Paleo diet for athletes does include grains.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was justi was just gonna say. Because therein lies the rub, right? If you try to get, you know, if you're one of the, say, Ironman triathletes listening to this show and you're trying to shove 4,000 calories down the hatch, and you're doing that with oranges and apples and bananas, then you're gonna have a whole different set of issues. Speaking from personal experience, being someone who, you know, I have tried to completely eliminate grains before and you're either dead dog tired because you have no energy or else your gut is doing funny things. So what type of modifications are out there? And are they in the book or do people go elsewhere to find those?

No, they're in the book. And the basic modification is about half an hour before and then during and then for the half hour glycogen recovery window after your workout or event, you have either grains or potatoes or sweet potatoes or, you know, energy gel, sports drinks, recovery drinks, those kinds of things to keep your glycogen high and then stop after your workout.

Now, is there a reason that it's only around the workout time that people are taking in those type of nutrients or taking in those type of carbohydrates on the Paleo diet?

Right. So the only other way our bodies pull blood sugar out of the, pull glucose out of the blood to muscles using insulin is during exercise. The body doesn't need insulin during exercise to keep blood sugar at a low level. So it keeps the insulin levels fairly low and it also still allows you to keep your glycogen levels topped off, if that makes sense.

Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I've had some people tell me before, like some of my athletes, when I send them their meal plans, oh, this looks like a paleo diet meal plan. I've never really known exactly what they were talking about. I actually have never read this book. I've heard it dropped here and there. But that's interesting. That's one of the things that I try and encourage them to do is have their sweets, have their cheat foods, have their grains and have their, their sugary foods before, during or after a workout. And I guess it's, you know, it's all the same science. That whole insulin response.

Yeah, exactly.

So do you have any bones to pick with the diet? I mean, what, what do you think about the way that it's been modified for athletes? Being an athlete yourself?

I don't have any bones to pick with the diet. In general terms, they include in the book kind of an ideal day for an athlete, including time of day and what this ample athlete eats at what time during the day. And then their time and the way they laid it out was about, let's see, it's about 3,000 calorie day and a little over 1,000 calories of those calories were in the form of energy gel, sports drinks and recovery drinks.

In a day.

In a day. Yeah. So that was really the only, the main kind of bone I had to pick with it in that if I'm going to not eat any grains and then I'm going to have this many calories that I can use to eat grains or less ideal foods, I'd rather eat a croissant than have drink.

Right. Because at least you're getting a little bit of fiber and a little Bit of protein. Yeah. See that's interesting and I guess that's a paradox that I've encountered before with some of the athletes I work with where when they're burning so many calories, but they're saying, well, you know, you want me to limit bread, you want me to limit potatoes and those type of things. Can I take my sport gels instead while I exercise? And you know, my thoughts on that, Callie, are the gels, the sport drinks and the compounds that are completely nutrient stripped and almost 100% processed and 100% refined are something that you're going to encounter on race day. And so maybe you should practice with it once a week or so during a long session or during a race pace session. But what I encourage my athletes to do, and this is something I do myself, I mean, I'll grab a bag of trail mix and shove it in my jersey. And granted it may not be ideal, but my stomach feels a lot better. I sleep a lot better. I don't know if anybody out there has ever laid awake after a, a long bike ride or a half iron man or an ironman. A lot of that is just that hyped up sugar and caffeine response that.

You get from some of these.

So I mean, that's the way that I do it. Do you have substitutions that you use during training for the gels or the sport drinks?

Yeah, I use. Well, it's a great five year. Fruit is in season, but I use figs and I'll peel an and just have that in a little bag in my pocket. The thing with whole fruits during a race is they do have fiber. And that might not agree with all of the GI systems out there, but just a basic training ride or run or whatever, a little fiber is not really going to hinder your workout. It's really more of an event concerned with that way.

My take on that too is that, you know, it's not just about the fruit necessarily having the fiber, but also from an aerodynamic perspective or from a convenience of storage perspective. That is the one thing that you really can't beat a sport drink or sport gel with is they're easy to carry. You know, you can't shove an apple up the leg of your wetsuit for a long swim.

No, but I've seen folks take a really small baby potato and boil them and peel those and have them in little tinfoil packets. It's just like a dough in terms of how fast it'll increase your blood sugar.

That's true, that's true. But there's also no million dollar companies going out and putting advertisements for baby potatoes in Triathlete magazine.

No, it's better than chemistry is what they'd like us to believe.

Well, interesting. So your take on the Paleo diet is that it' sit's good for the general population, it's good for athletes, butbut especially for athletes. Just be careful with the fake food or fake sugar recommendations. Huh.

That's really well said. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I feel about the Paleo diet.

Okay, well, we have a lot of. Yeah. Difficult to implement. I'm sure that initially someone coming out of eating fast food and shopping for packaged and processed food at the grocery store would have a real hard time with this. I think people who are trying to eat healthy would probably. Do you think they'd have an easier time, somebody who's already kind of eaten vegetables and fruits?

Yeah, yeah. I think a big part of it is just planning ahead, you know, planning your day or planning the next few days ahead and prepping, prepping things out so you aren't coming into the kitchen totally hungry and, and feeling frustrated that you don't really have anything to eat.

Well, we have a lot of listeners I know in the Portland or the. Well, you're in Eugene, but where can people find out more about you? Callie?

So I work at Village Health Services. It's just on the edge of town on Coburg Road, and it's a interdisciplinary clinic. So I'm the naturopath there. And then there's a chiropractor. We have a couple of massage therapists, a few other practitioners as well, and acupuncturists. So villagehealthservices.com is our website and all our contact information as well as my bio is on there.

Well, fantastic. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. And just while I have you on, is there any chance that maybe you'd come back sometime and join us for another topic?

Oh, I'd love to. I'd love to. This is super fun. I'll have to figure out another book to read though.

Yeah, definitely. Well, shoot me an email anytime once, once you get another book, down the hatch and. And we'll talk on the show. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield, Dr. Callie Phillips from the Portland and Eugene, Oregon area signing out. Okay. Well, for many of you out there.

This signals the end of our show. However, there are some people out there who are triathletes, who are multi sport athletes who are going to want to listen in to the rest of you, I'll say goodbye. Remember to use your $10 code at the Pacific Elite Fitness Bookstore. That code, once again, is book, just B O O K. And the link to the bookstore is in the show notes. All right triathletes, listen up. As a matter of fact, you can perhaps sit back, grab a glass of wine, maybe a post workout smoothie or a bottle of sparkling water with a wedge of lemon. Or just keep working out if that's what you're doing right now. And I want you to think forward to your training this January. Are you going to be tired of the indoor trainer and the treadmill, the black line at the bottom of the pool? Maybe you're going to be struggling to stay motivated for a wet five hour slog in a rainy or snowy winter climate. And maybe you're planning on a 2010 triathlon event. Really any event from Olympic distance all the way up to Ironman. Well, here's the news, the big news. We are officially planning the first Pacific Elite Fitness Triathlete training camp and this is going to be January 18th through the 25th in sunny Endurance Mecca training grounds of Austin, Texas. Having been to a lot of camps myself, I decided that I really, really wanted to treat the athletes who attend this camp. So it is 100% all inclusive. This is at a brand new completely furnished endurance house in Austin where pro triathletes live and train and where you're going to get the chance to go live and train for a full week includes all meals. Not only organic meals prepared by trained chefs in the kitchen, but also any meals around Austin on the various bike rides and runs and swim outings that we'll be doing during that week. You get picked up from the airport with a snack and a smile, no need to rent a car, you get to ship your bike down and we'll have them assembled and ready to rumble when you arrive. We'll provide all the training and all the recovery food that you need. And every single ride and training session that we do is escorted by pro triathletes on bikes as well as myself as the head coach for the camp. And the rides will also include a sag wagon so you will get a comfortably furnished house. It's got high end linens, big screen TVs, wireless Internet, cold recovery pool, hot tub, group core and yoga classes available, massage appointments, sports medicine, chiropractic appointments are all right there. And we've got tons of beautiful trails, pools and roads all around Austin that we can go train. So I have thrown together a Training week that is just going to be fantastic every day. We're going to be riding, we're going to be running, we're going to be swimming. There's tons of brick training sessions, but tons of fun as well. Breakfast, lunch and dinner is all planned, both home cooked at the house as well as at various restaurants and venues around Austin. We'll have nights where we go out on the town, we've got days that we're going to go see bands, where we're going to go to open art galleries, where we're going to go tour downtown. And all of this is mixed in with just tons of high quality training. And the itinerary, the detailed itinerary for the camp is actually up. I'll put a link in the show notes to the podcast, but it's up over at the Pacific Elite Fitness website. Total for the week, we'll have about two to three long rides, two medium distance rides. We'll have a race day, the opportunity to compete in a duathlon or a half marathon there in Austin on a Sunday. We'll have three open water swim workouts, we'll have three regular pool based swim workouts, about two to four different brick runs and then anywhere from two to three kind of medium to long distance runs and just tons and tons of activities. You will be busy the entire time having tons of fun. So I know that you're probably wondering about the rates for an all inclusive camp like this. I would invite you to go ahead and check out the prices on any other camps going on right now across the nation. But what I've put together for an all inclusive triathlon training camp is a deal that it's a deal of a lifetime. Now the reason that I can get this deal is because this is a brand new, fully furnished endurance training house and they've put this together specifically for triathlon camps and it is launching officially in 2010. They've given Pacific Elite Fitness one of the first cracks at this house and they have offered for every single athlete that's coming down a huge discount of $400 for the discounted rate that you receive for the week. So everything would normally be 1700. You're getting everything though, lodging, meals, coaching, training, you name it. It's going to be $1,300 for that whole week. You're living in luxury and training just as much as you want, getting tons of great restaurants, meals, friends, camaraderie, coaching. It is really going to be a good time. And I've already got athletes reserving spots all My coached athletes kind of got the first crack at this a few days ago and now we're opening it up to the public. So if you're even remotely interested in the first official Pacific Elite Fitness triathlete training camp, or you're like me and you're on fire and you're ready to go train in beautiful Texas in the middle of the winter in January, all you have to do is leave a comment on the blog or just email me Ben Greenfield Fitness, and I will get you set up and ready to rumble. And one other thing for you triathletes, while you're thinking about this, I am putting a picture of some of the some of the jerseys that were getting printed, some of the cycling jerseys and cycling bibs that were getting printed. If you want to get your hands on one of those to ride around in, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But primarily this camp, just email me and I'll hook you up with everything you need to know. I'm going to put a link to the details, the itinerary in the show notes to this podcast and you're not going to want to miss this. It's going to be very, very cool experience. For every eight athletes, we're going to have at least one coach and one pro triathlete. So make sure that you email me sooner rather than later. I know from most, from most airports around the country, you can get nonstop flights into Austin for $99 or less each way, which is a pretty good deal. So, yeah, that is it. Let me know if you want to go and I will add your name to the reserve list and I'll see you January 18th down in Austin, Texas. Until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week.

Sam.