Podcast Episode #12: Podcasting From Poland!

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. This is your weekly free audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, diet and wellness news. Hey, whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, this podcast is going to present you with the latest exercise and nutrition content from the nation's top experts. My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, certified nutritionist, and exercise, diet and wellness guru. Each week I'm going to be bringing you cutting edge fitness, nutrition and wellness advice. Stay tuned for this Week's podcast from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey Ben Greenfield Fitness fans, this is Ben Greenfield podcasting from Warsaw, Poland. And to those of you who are wondering what the heck I am doing in Warsaw, I am actually here for my brother wedding.

I'm about to catch a train to.

A remote little town whose name I cannot pronounce, somewhere in South Central Poland where I'll be attending his wedding and then returning back to the states right around September 3rd. In the meantime though, I wanted to get a little content out to the listeners and didn't want to miss recording this podcast episode. As you can understand, I'm not going to be able to conduct any interviews.

From over here in Poland.

So I'm actually putting off the interview.

That I was going to have with.

Matt Masuda from Millennium Sports to next week's episode. Matt's going to be talking to us.

A little bit about some of the dietary supplements that they have over there, Millennium Sports.

He'll be talking about this brand new.

Product that I'm a little excited about. It's actually a creatine based product that works for sports performance and power, but also for endurance athletes.

And he'll also be talking about some.

Of the other health, wellness and sports.

Performance products that they put out over at Millennium Sports. But we'll have to wait for that interview until next week. In the meantime, today we'll have a slightly brief podcast. I will be introducing a brand new.

Fitness device that I'm very excited about that I just discovered.

I'm going to be giving you a little bit of listener Q and A. I'll be introducing some of the new content@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and that is about it for today's podcast episode. So short and sweet. Let's get to the content here in podcast episode number 12 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Listener Q&A.

Okay, I have a couple of different.

Listener questions this week and the first is focused on Nutrition and Pat from New Jersey wrote to me, and what Pat says is, can I cook with butter or should I just cook with olive oil? And the basic idea behind butter versus olive oil is that butter is of course, a saturated solid fat at room temperature, and olive oil is what would be considered a monounsaturated fat. It's a liquid at room temperature. And.

For the most part, olive oil.

Is consistently going to be slightly healthier and lower in calories than using a solid based oil. But I don't want to give saturated fats like butter a bad rap because they're really not as bad for us as we may have learned in an average nutrition class. Basically, part of maintaining a high metabolism is ensuring that your cells are operating properly. And saturated fats are a major part of your cell's membranes. And the membranes are crucial in the flow of nutrients in and out of the cell and the actual metabolic rate of the entire body and the maintenance of proper cellular function.

So the other thing is that is.

That heart and muscles actually use saturated fat as a fuel. So your body has to have some source of saturated fat in the diet. Now, the problem is that people who eat a diet high in saturated fat simply have too many fat circulating the bloodstream and so they increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and obesity, etc.

But the much more evil fat compared.

To saturated fat are the modern day replacements for it. And this would hydrogenated fats and trans fats, things like margarine, mayonnaise, most of the fats in packaged food, like crackers, pretty much anything that's fried, all of that is going to be more damaging to your metabolism, to your cardiovascular fitness than the natural saturated fats that we find in things like animal meat, like dairy, like butter. And the reason for this is that those processed, basically fake fat, factory produced compounds are very difficult for your body to metabolize because they're not natural and they're heavily associated with heart disease, with obesity and with metabolic damage. So I could go into how your body processes saturated fat in greater detail, but what I want you to take away from this is that basically you'd be better off choosing butter over margarine. Choosing for instance, string cheese for a snack over say, boxed crackers, choosing steak instead of like a chicken salad with mayonnaise on it.

So even though you need to be.

Careful, because saturated fats are very, very calorically dense, you don't have to use that much of them. Don't get the impression that you simply have to cut things like butter, like Eggs, like red meat, completely out of your diet. You just need to make sure that you consume it in and the much more damaging fats for you are the fake ones. So just remember that having a little bit of butter with dinner, like a small pat of butter on a potato, is sometimes going to be as many calories as a potato itself. But also don't completely avoid saturated fats. So I hope that answers your question. Pat, you can use butter, but you'll want to use it in moderation. One of the times I'll use butter is for example, when I'm cooking at high temperatures, because high temperatures can degrade olive oil and cause production of a lot of free radicals. When you heat it up to really high temperatures, I'll use just a little bit of butter instead and it really is a more flavorful way to cook. Now the second question that I have is from Matt, and this is more of a triathlon nutrition oriented question, but Matt asked me why I in Ironman Canada used goo instead of Roctane. Now for those of you who have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about, you may want to visit another blog that I have called BenGreenfieldTry.blogspot.com that's BenGreenfield T R I.blogspot.com and this is a website where I give race reports from my triathlons. Now goo is just basically a plain maltodextrin based sports performance carbohydrate in gel form. And Roctane is the same thing, but unlike goo, Roctane has branched chain amino acids in it, basically proteins that can be used as fuel and also has caffeine in it. So I like to use that for my longer endurance events because the body does need protein during these Ironman or ultra endurance type events. It helps the body recover faster after the event. It also helps enhance your performance during the event. Goo does have caffeine content though. It's got about 35 milligrams of caffeine per pack. And so if I were taking in for example 300 to 350 calories per hour, which I do during an endurance event, then I'm looking at consuming for example, the equivalent of an entire cup of coffee per hour. So what I do is I actually stack the goo with the Roctane and I take for every one roctane two goos. So I'm still getting 300, 350 calories per hour. But I'm not taking in quite as much caffeine as I would if I were taking in say three Roctane or four roctane per hour. So that's why I stack the two. And you can read more about these type of gels just by visiting the Goo website. And I actually don't have that. I don't think it's goo.com, but just Google Goo or Google Roctane. You'll find out more information about it. So those are the listener questions of the week. And remember that if you have questions you can send them to BenGreenfieldFitness.com or even better, just leave a comment on any of the blog postings and you might be able to generate some discussion and have some other people post their related questions as well. So remember, just go to BengroiverFitness.com any of the blog postings you can simply click on and easily leave a comment or send me an email ben greenfield fitness.com.

New Content at Ben Greenfield Fitness I just want to briefly mention a series, a two part series that I am doing while I am on the road called the Healthy Traveler. And in the first article in this series, which you can find in one of the latest posts at Ben Greenfield Fitness, I talk about the Healthy Traveler and the contents of the carry on.

Bag of a healthy traveler.

And to write this article, I literally on the plane took out the contents of my carry on bag and described them in detail in the article and also gave information on why I carry these particular things with me. So check that out@vangreenfieldfitness.com and look in.

The next couple of days, most likely.

As I travel back from Poland for part two of the Healthy Traveler. In terms of other new content, I'll actually be talking about the additional content that I have there in my special.

Announcement for this week's podcast. And you'll be able to check that out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gymstick but you may just want to wait until I talk about it here. A little later in this podcast. I have a special announcement. In this podcast, episode number 12, I have discovered an exercise device that's so simple I was actually kicking myself for not having invented this on my own because it's this fantastically diverse exercise tool that conceptually is just beautiful in its simplicity and very easy to use. I discovered it at a training conference that I was at and it's called the Gym Stick. I use it about three times a week for core performance, for sports performance, and for general toning and calorie burning. And basically it's just this stick with A couple of elastic bands attached to each end that allows you to do literally hundreds of different exercises. And it's highly portable. You can take it anywhere. You can travel with it. You can keep it at home. You can do exercises in your living room.

You can take it to the gym.

And supplement your gym workout with it. You can throw it in your travel bag and take it with you on an airplane. But basically, the way that you work.

Out with it is you increase or decrease the resistance by simply twisting the elastic band around the stick.

And I have pictures of this. You can kind of conceptualize it on the website@bengringelfitness.com in the show notes for this podcast. Now, it's available in five different resistances. I use the silver resistance, which is one resistance down from the heaviest one. But the nice thing about it is that if you buy one resistance, you can always increase or decrease accordingly to make it a little bit harder, a little bit easier. And you can read about all the different resistance levels on the link that I have@BenGreenfieldFitness.com There's a couple ways you.

Can get to it.

You can go to BenGreenFitness.com Gymstick you can just go to the show notes for this podcast, episode number 12. Or if you scroll down the right hand side of the page@BenGreenfieldFitness.com There's a little link there with a picture of the gym stick. If you visit any of those areas, you can read a whole bunch more about how you actually utilize this tool in your training. And so I like it so much. I'm such a big fan of it. I actually called the company and they're letting me feature it@bengreenfulfitness.com and also offer free shipping on it to the listeners of the podcast. And the special discount code that you want to use to get your hands on this thing is BG Stick, BG.

S, T, I, C, K. Use discount.

Code BGSTICK when you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and click on the gym stick and you'll get free shipping on it. The cost of this thing is $79.95, and I use it so much that it paid for itself within about three to four weeks. And I have really experienced a great increase in my core stabilization, my toning by using it, and it just makes working out with an exercise band a lot more fun. For instance, I can attach either band to one leg, hold it, and do single leg squats with an overhead press. I can do sit ups combined with.

An elastic band curl. I can do a squat to overhead press.

I can do an incline chest press.

Kicking one leg out behind me. I mean there are literally.

Well, actually, if you go to gymstick.net and just click on some of the information that they have over there, you can, you can see the different sports performance programs that you can do with this thing. So check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gymstick or just.

Click on the link in the show.

Notes for this podcast and enjoy this thing. It's pretty cool. I highly recommend that you get your hands on one. You won't be sorry. So anyways, that's my special announcement for this week from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and that's all.

The content in podcast episode 12 from BenGreenfieldFitness.Com remember, go to the webpage and leave a comment in any of the blog sections. I actually wanted to congratulate Jesse, Phil and Brad for winning a free copy of the 21 day diet and exercise plan called Shape 21, which you can read more about at shape21.com I would also really like to encourage you to go to itunes and visit the homepage for this podcast.

You can simply go to the podcast.

Directory and do a search for Ben Greenfield and leave us a ranking in itunes or a comment in itunes because that really helps get the word out about this podcast. And I would like to give the nutrition and the fitness advice in this podcast out to the greatest number of people possible. So if you can go to itunes and leave us a ranking, that would be fantastic. Remember, if you haven't yet checked out the new Synergy system, you can do so by going to pacificfit.net that's www.pacificfit.net.

And clicking on Personal Training.

And that will give you a little bit of information about this brand new system I've designed.

I'm very excited about. I'd like you to check out, give.

Me some feedback and remember, you can always email me your questions, your comments, your feedback to ben@BenGreenfieldFitness.com. until next time, this is Ben Greenfield, over and out.