Podcast Episode #37: Hyperhydration, Midnight Food Cravings & Junk Food for Kids

Podcast Episode 37 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and certified nutritionist. And each week I'm going to be bringing you cutting edge, non run of the mill advice on nutrition, fat loss, fitness and sports performance. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, you're each week you'll get interviews, Listener Q&As, special discounts, and all sorts of information on everything that you want to know regarding fitness. So sit in and enjoy this Week's podcast from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Hey podcast listeners. So this week I'm actually sitting at one of my favorite coffee shops, pulled over from the side of the road because I wanted to get you a podcast. This week it's been an incredibly busy week, but I have gotten a lot of interesting listener questions and so I want to address three of those most compelling questions on today's podcast. One is about hydration, one's about nighttime eating, and one is about junk food and kids. In addition, I'll have a few special announcements a little bit brief on the podcast this week. I'm especially busy right now heading down to Atlanta this weekend for a book promo on the 100 Ways to Boost your metabolism book, and then I'll be going down to race the New Orleans Half Ironman Triathlon down in New Orleans, Louisiana the following weekend. I do have some great interviews lined up for this spring through April and May, but this next couple of weeks are going to be fairly hectic. I will be getting podcasts out to you, however, so go ahead and sit back. If you're like me right now, grab your mug of Yerba Mate. I'll have to say my energy drink of choice would be the Delta E, vitamin B, taurine, caffeine jolt type of powder that I mix into water. But right now I'm actually sitting at a coffee shop drinking a glass of Yerba Mate. So if I begin to sound incredibly hyper and my voice speeds up and the podcast starts to play loud driving rock music rather than the gentle, lulling tones that you usually experience. That might be why let's go ahead and move on to this week's announcements. As I mentioned last week, I unfortunately have had to cancel the live fat burning exercise online TV show that was scheduled for this Sunday. As I mentioned, I will be in Atlanta and unable to record that. However, I will still be doing an April Q and A. And remember, those always are on the last Sunday of each month. So last Sunday of April will be doing that live video exercise session in addition to that, for this week's announcements, stay tuned to the listener Q and A because I have a very special announcement before the listener Q and A. But in addition to that, if you'll click on the Show Notes to this podcast or you go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and link into the Show Notes, you'll notice that there are still some slots open for the Ironman Coeur d' Alene Triathlon Camp for you Ironman triathletes out there. That's Saturday, May 9th through Thursday, May 14th. And as a matter of fact, for the two days following that camp, I'm going to be tacking on a swim clinic, a bike clinic, and a run clinic. So for any of you local Spokane or Coeur d' Alene athletes, or anyone in the Northwest, that's a very easy camp for you to pop right into. For anybody across the nation who wants to fly in and experience some of the most beautiful swimming, cycling and running country on the face of the planet, just shoot me an email or click on the link in the Show Notes. It's a fairly inexpensive camp compared to compared to the ones that are out there. In addition to that, I'm offering a 10% discount code to the listeners of this podcast. All you have to do to get that 10% discount code is use discount code BGF, as in Ben Greenfield Fitness. Now what does it get you? Get you a discount to any of the supplements that I link to in the Show Notes to this week's podcast, including the main ingredient of that secret energy drink tea recipe I was discussing earlier, the Delta e. So a 10% discount on any of that stuff. All you got to do is plug in discount code BGF and use all caps. You'll notice in addition to that, in the Show Notes of this podcast, I have a special announcement about the knee bulletproofing program that I just put out. It's a 14 part text and video module program that teaches you how to protect your knee during exercise. And then I also have released a Ironman Triathlon Nutrition plan. I've written out a daily meal plan for every single day leading up to the race, including your base training, your build training, peaking for the race, carb loading for the race, and I've put that in the online training software TrainingPeaks. You just sign up for a free account with TrainingPeaks you can get the plan, download it to your account and you can also use that same discount code BGF for a $20 savings on any of the Ironman training or nutrition plans that I have over there on that website. Now that is a free way to actually keep track of your fitness. It's some of the top fitness software on the planet. And my special announcement for this week's Listener Q and A is actually linked to that very topic. So let's go ahead and move on to the main event. Listener Q and A. So here's the deal. Here's the special announcement. You can, as I mentioned last week, ask me a question by recording it via audio on the free Skype software that I've linked to in the show notes to this podcast. You download this free Skype, it's like a, like a program that allows you to call anybody else that has Skype downloaded their computer. You can Skype me at the username PacificFit and I do list that username in the in the show note links and that's a free way to call me and leave voicemail questions. However, as many of you may be aware, I also have a toll free number on that you can reach me and you can also leave a voicemail. That voicemail will automatically be delivered to my email inbox as an MP3 file and you can ask any questions about fitness, nutrition, fat loss or sports performance. I'll answer them on this podcast. That toll free number and I'll list this in the show Note links is 1-18-772-099439. That's 1-877-2099439 and you can leave your questions for me. Now the first audio question. This is the big announcement. The first audio question that I get this week via Skype or via that toll free number is going to get a free three month premium subscription to TrainingPeaks. And that's the world's top online fitness and nutrition tracking software. Premium subscription. That's going to be about a free $49 value. That three month premium subscription. And the first question that I get, all you're gonna get is a promo code emailed directly to you and that will allow you to get a premium subscription for free. And this stuff, this software allows you to download fitness plans to your computer to record your training, to use free workout nutrition plans. There's all sorts of really cool features. You'll have to go to trainingpeaks.com to check out more about that. And that's also where I'VE written and feature a lot of plans. As a matter of fact, just this week I put out a 12 week general fitness plan for somebody who's never exercised before but wants to take it to the next level, has 12 weeks to get their butt into shape. All you have to do is go to trainingpeaks and you can do a search for any of the training plans that are on trainingpeaks and you'll be able to find some of my plans on there. And usually you're looking at like, you know, anywhere from 25 to 50 bucks to download a plan, load it into your account, and then have detailed daily workouts automatically emailed to you in workout calendar format. It's pretty cool stuff. So anyway though, enough with that special announcement because I want to move on to this week's listener Q and A's because we got a pretty wide range of questions.

Ben, this is Jason. Here in the Northwest. I just had a question about just alcohol and diet stuff. When you're working out, I find it's really hard to stay fully hydrated, especially in the summertime. Is there anything else diet wise that I could that will help me retain water and stuff like that for hydration? Especially, like I say, especially in the summertime when it's hotter. Thanks.

Well, that's an interesting question, Jason. Now, I could have swore at the beginning of that question you mentioned alcohol, and I'm not going to go into too much detail about that here because most of us know that alcohol can dehydrate you. And if you're worried about staying hydrated on a hot summer day, one of the first things that you may want to do is make sure that you're not permanently glued to a margarita glass over the course of that hot summer day. But in addition to that, I'd like to use your question as the opportunity to introduce a certain type of supplement that some of the people in the audience may not be aware of. And it's called glycerol. The idea is that when you consume a supplement called glycerol, extra water that you ingest with that supplement can be held in the body for several hours. This can especially be useful if you need to enhance your performance during an athletic event that takes place in a hot or humid condition. But there's quite a bit of controversy over whether or not glycerol actually works. Basically what it is, it actually is a little bit similar to alcohol, as you would guess with that ol ending. It's a three carbon molecule and it occurs naturally in your body it's actually stored in your body fat when you ingest, like a supplemental form of glycerol, which you can get from a lot of sports supplements type of outlets. What it does is it causes your body to absorb and increase the concentration of water that's stored in the tissue. Now, obviously, if you were to take in too much water, it would cause swelling. You can actually get water intoxication. And that's one of the concerns with glycerol, is that you could get, for instance, swelling of the brain or swelling of the eyes or just a little bit of increased weight. That might actually detract from your sports performance or detract from the benefits that being super hydrated might give you. So there are some studies that have been done on glycerol that show that there could be a slight amount of benefit. There was a study in 1990 that investigated whether or not glycerol hyperhydration altered sweating, regulation of your body temperature or your cardiovascular function. What they found in this study was that when you ingested glycerol, it didn't significantly reduce the exercise heart rate, but it could potentially improve evaporative cooling of the body during exercise in a hot environment. And the reason for that is because your body actually uses blood to help cool you. It shuttles blood out to your extremities, and that's one of the ways it cools off your body. And when you have increased water on board, you're actually able to give the blood a little bit more volume to assist in cooling. Now, there were also a couple other studies that were done in 1994, and these were only with fairly small populations of just about a dozen subjects. And in one population, moderate to high endurance fitness athletes were given either glycerol supplement with water or given just a regular water supplement. And the subjects who had the glycerol actually exercised an average of 94 minutes before they were fatigued, versus only 73 minutes for their counterparts. And when they threw carbohydrate into the mix and started giving both the groups carbohydrate, the glycerol group was able to exercise 123 minutes before fatigue versus 99 minutes for the non glycerol group. But there wasn't really much of a change in core temperature, and there wasn't really much of an observed change in blood volume. And so the way that glycerol actually worked during that study turned out to be unclear. There was another study done in 1991 that gave subjects glycerol solutions about every 15 minutes. And there was really no effect found. But the glycerol wasn't used to hyperhydrate the individual prior to exercise, it was used during exercise. And in my experience, glycerol is something that you actually have to take leading up to an event to actually allow it to work now. So there's not a ton of research and not a lot of the research has been done with very large numbers of subjects on glycerol. But if you're wanting to try this out during one of your exercise sessions in the heat to see if it would work. The greatest amount of hyperhydration that has occurred in any studies that I've seen today was in 1996. And during that, the glycerol ingested started about two and a half hours before exercise. And that was basically a 20% glycerol solution. That's glycerol mixed in water. And about 5 milliliters of that was consumed per kilogram of body weight. So 5 milliliters per kilogram kilogram of body weight, and then 30 minutes after, another 5 milliliters per kilogram of body weight. Fifteen minutes after that, another 5 milliliters per kg of body weight. Fifteen Minutes after that, 1 milliliter per kg of body weight, and then another 30 minutes after that, 5 milliliters per kg of Body weight. And then the individual began exercise one hour later. And so the total volume of water ingested was about 2 liters, which I think might be just a little bit excessive. And if you were to get a headache or blurred vision or anything along those lines while trying to use glycerol, you may want to exercise caution. Now, I personally don't use glycerol for sports performance. However, as I've mentioned, there has been a little bit of evidence that suggests that it may help you to hyper hydrate. But you're probably going to want to use caution with that as a supplement. Now, typically, glycerol is going to be found in liquid form. The one company that I'm aware of that has it, a company that I've dealt with in the past that puts out fairly high quality supplements is called Hammer Nutrition and they have something called Liquid Endurance. And that's what it is, it's glycerol. If you go to the usage information link on their website, their instructions are that you would take one tablespoon of their product for 100 pounds of body weight and you consume that three times daily for three days prior to the event. So different type of loading protocol than was inspected in that max loading research. But man, that's a lot less water that you would have to drink because they say to mix it into 16 to 28 ounces of water. So basically you're drinking three water bottles a day with a tablespoon of glycerol in each water bottle for three days prior to the event. So if you're somebody who's going to compete in a hot event and you want to experiment with this stuff PR using in the race, it may be something that actually works for you. If you're somebody who just wants to use it for day to day hydration outside of sports performance, you're probably better off just using that old standby equation. Take your body weight, divide that in half, and that's about how many ounces of water you should drink during the day. Now, my second question this week was from listener Steven. And Steven is actually an athlete that I coached back in Philadelphia. And what Stephen asked was, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, I usually go to the bathroom, drink a half glass of water and go back to bed. But sometimes I have a little craving and have a handful of one of your trail mix recipes that I have stored in the fridge. Or 1/4 1/2 of a Bumble bar with water. Is this okay to do? Are these items okay or would you recommend something else? Is waking up in the middle of the night with a craving an indication of not getting enough of a particular nutrient, such as carbs? First of all, that Bumble bar that Steven mentioned was just a certain type of bar that I personally use in my programs. It's kind of a snack bar, not as something necessarily during a workout, but something it's kind of a seed nut based bar that you use during the day and it's called Bumble Bar. They're actually made right here in my city in Spokane. But I'm a big fan of those bars. They're gluten free, high in healthy fat content. But to return to Steven's question, if you're waking up in the middle of the night with a craving, typically there's something going on that is causing your body to wake up. And in most cases, what I found with athletes or with people who are frequently exercising is it is a matter of not taking enough calories and specifically not taking in enough calories after a workout. What happens is after a workout, your body's muscles are depleted of a lot of their carbohydrate stores. And if you don't adequately remove replenish those carbohydrate stores or those glycogen stores. After a workout, you may find yourself laying awake at night staring at the ceiling, fantasizing about ice cream because your body's basically craving that nutrient intake. The problem is that if you get up and eat, then your body's going to be a lot more likely to take some of what you eat and have a pretty high increase in the hormone insulin, which just isn't the healthiest thing to be doing to your body late at night. It would be better to be making sure that you consume adequate amounts of nutrients after your workout. And what I mean by that is typically you want to eat anywhere from a 3 to a 1 or a 4 to a 1 ratio of carbohydrate to protein. Depending on your body size. It's usually about 200 to 400 calories, and that should preferably be within 20 minutes after a workout. Now, if you're still having trouble sleeping, one of the tricks that you can use that I'll do sometimes is use protein as a bedtime supplement. Basically, your body has something called human growth hormone, and that's not the type of hormone that ladies, if you're listening, is going to make you bulk up. It's basically a hormone that helps you form lean muscle and burn fat. And circulating levels of your growth hormone follow a certain circadian rhythm. So they're going to peak while you sleep and they're going to kind of ebb in the morning. Well, if you consume a high protein snack before going to bed, you're actually going to provide your body with the raw materials necessary for maximizing growth horm production. So what I would recommend prior to bed, if you're still having trouble sleeping, is actually drink a protein supplement that's preferably not full of artificial sweeteners or colors or flavors, but is literally just whey protein or protein isolate or even better, a complete protein source. And that means that it's going to be slowly released over the course of 8 to 12 hours rather than a little bit more quickly released by your body. Now there's a great article on complete protein and more information on complete proteins that I just linked to this week from BenGreenfieldFitness.com it was written by one of my friends, Joe Stout, and if you want to check that out, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and it's actually the blog post that comes right before this podcast episode. Check that out because it really gives you the full amount of information on complete proteins versus like whey protein isolate. But either way, I would recommend something like that before bed if you're having trouble sleeping. Now, the last question that I received this week was from listener Karen. And what Karen says is let me go ahead and open that question up. I'm afraid my kids are addicted to junk food. But unfortunately, Ben, I can't just start feeding them goat's milk and quinoa like your kids or they will run away forever. What's your advice on changing my children's diet? The goat's milk and quinoa reference may be to the fact that I actually post pictures of my children on a, on a personal blog. And I know that some people that go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com end up over there watching videos of my children and the strange things that I feed them. Quinoa and goat's milk are some of the healthiest foods on the planet. However, you are correct, that may freak out your kids if they're used to Mickey D's Chicken McNuggets. So first of all, here's some ideas for you if you're some ideas for substitutions if your kids are hooked on some things that you've been giving them in terms of junk food, some junk food alternatives. Okay. Instead of french fries, what you can actually do is you can make baked sweet potato fries. They taste just as good. You can sprinkle them with a little bit of sea salt. Yeah, you could even put some ketchup out there. I know ketchup has high fructose corn syrup, but when we're talking about a box full of McDonald's french fries, the high fructose corn syrup is just a drop in the bucket. So sweet potato french fries that you can bake, there's recipes for those all over the Internet. And basically all you're doing is slicing up a sweet potato and grilling it in the oven for anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. They're very, very tasty. And you can keep them in a Ziploc bag in the fridge, give them to your kids. Great substitute for french fries for ice cream. I'm a big fan of using like a low fat frozen yogurt or even taking like a plain fat free yogurt that you can get at the store. And you can mix some almond butter in there or some peanut butter. You can put a little bit of dark chocolate, like dark chocolate chunks. You can sprinkle some cinnamon in there, you can put some frozen blueberries in there. But actually it comes out tasting Pretty, pretty fantastic. And it's much, much lower in fat than traditional ice cream. Sorbet is also a great alternative to ice cream. For chicken, I would just definitely recommend that you give your children baked or grilled chicken rather than fried. And if you serve those up with the sweet potatoes, they're still going to love you. Versus the fried chicken, the french fries. If your kids are liking donuts or pastries for breakfast, try and get to that halfway point. You can use bagels, you can use English muffins. If they still like a little bit of that chocolatey taste, use something like Nutella, which is kind of a chocolate hazelnut spread. Just use a little bit less. All you're trying to do is give them some of that taste that they're familiar with while pushing them just a little bit in the direction of general health. So like a donut, chocolate donut with cream in the middle versus a whole wheat English muffin with chocolate hazelnut, Nutella on top. The latter is going to be a little bit healthy for your kid and they'll still enjoy it. Chocolate chip cookies. Your kids like chocolate chip cookies. Think about things like graham crackers, fig bars, vanilla wafers, like a fruit and caramel dip. You can get those prepackaged at the grocery store now. Just chopped up apples with a little bit of caramel. Any of those are going to have a little bit less of the trans fats, which are, which are a little bit more damaging. And they're going to usually be slightly lower in sugar content as well, versus a chocolate chip cookie. And then for potato chips, if your kids are really liking that crunch, I know they may not be willing to switch to carrot sticks, but think about things like pretzel. And they do have rye pretzels out there that are fantastic. A little bit lower on the glycemic index or the sugar release. Try unbuttered popcorn. You can do baked potato chips rather than regular potato chips. Soy crisps and rice crisps are two of the things that you're going to find in the snack food aisle of a lot of grocery stores. Now, all of those are great alternatives to junk food, and they're still things that kids are going to kind of like now as far as restaurant eating is concerned. And just don't be afraid to make some substitutions. For example, rather than like a big plate of macaroni and cheese, go for chicken and vegetables or spaghetti with tomato sauce always. Whenever you can, try and convince your child to go with water or go with milk or even with iced tea as an alternative to the diet soda. And then you can even like if you want to have them, skip the fries. You can take along a little bag of the soy crisp or the rice crisps or mini carrots or grapes or any other type of fruits and vegetables to have around. Most restaurants will be pretty understanding if you have a little bit there, but that's only when you have the kids and you're able to play the kid card. Bringing your own giant Ziploc bag full of carrot sticks and grapes when you go out with your spouse to a fancy restaurant may not be the best idea. So that's all for this week's listener Q and A. And I realize this is a little bit shorter podcast than usual, but I'm going to be trying to bring you content the next couple of weeks, even as I'm going through some busy times. So keep those questions coming. Remember, we're giving out that free Training Peaks Premium account to the best question that we get. Or not really the best question, but the first question that I get via audio this week. And remember, the toll free number to call is 1-877-you can Skype pacificfit.net or you can email me ben greenfieldfitness.com with any of your questions. Hey, remember to leave us a ranking in itunes and check out all of the links to this week's show Notes as well as some of the blog posts for this week. I put out a couple interesting posts on there, including one that is a book review about a book called Combat the Fat. And if you haven't seen that, I recommend that you go check out that article. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield checking out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.