Podcast Episode #7: Nutrition and Fat Loss Q & A

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 podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and in today's episode, we're going to be looking at questions and answers from podcast listeners. If you have a question about a general fitness, nutrition or wellness lifestyle topic that you want to ask to me, simply shoot an email to BenGreenfieldFitness.com or you can post a comment on any of the blog postings at Ben Ben Greenfield, Fitness So in today's Q and A, we're going to be answering a few questions on nutrition, on fat loss, and a little bit on the fat burning cream topic that got brought up in last week's podcast. So to begin with, there was an episode called the Secrets of Burning Fat that I put out last week, a podcast episode. If you didn't get a chance to listen to that, I highly recommend that you go back and give a listen to some of those brand new techniques that you can use for weight loss or fat loss to maximize the efficiency. Now, an anonymous listener asked a few questions about some of the information in that podcast. First of all, one of the things I said was that it's very effective from a metabolism standpoint to eat frequently, which we all know. But the interesting part of that study was that two groups of individuals who both consumed the same amount of calories had significantly different amounts of fat loss because one group ate six times a and one group only ate two times a day. The group that ate six times a day lost far more fat. And listener Anonymous asks, what do you think of eating every three to four hours? Well, every three to four hours for most people's metabolisms is actually not high enough. As a matter of fact, in my lab, I test resting metabolic rate using something called indirect calorimetry, which is where you actually wear a mask. You breathe in and out, and I test how many calories you're burning at rest. Well, I have individuals who do that test fast for at least four hours prior to testing well, four hours is typically long enough to actually reduce the thermic effect of food or the effect that food has on increasing your metabolism. So if you're only eating every three to four hours, you're actually not keeping your metabolic rate up as high as you could if you were eating every 1.5 to every 3 hours. So in a lot of individuals, if you have a little bit of flexibility in your job or in your day to day routine, you're going to get the most benefit out of eating literally every one to 1.5 hours. That's actually what I do. On a typical basis, I'm typically eating 100 to 150 calories every one to 1.5 hours. And that's typically how my day goes. I don't really have a big stop for lunch or dinner. Now I do eat a big breakfast because that's crucial to elevating your metabolism earliest in the day. So as far as eating every three to four hours, I actually recommend that you eat closer to every one to two hours, or if that's a little bit too much for you, every 1.5 to 3 hours. And then the listener asks, can you eat anything as long as it is vegetables? And I'm assuming what the listener means by that question is, do you have to count your calories when you eat vegetables? And the answer that I give to most of my clients when they ask that question, the answer that I give to this podcast is in most cases, no. If you go to the website that I mentioned in another podcast episode, nutritiondata.com where you can get data on any food, if you look up, say, a cup of broccoli florets, that's 20 calories. If you had 10 cups of broccoli, you would be consuming 200 calories. Most people cannot consume too many vegetables. There's obviously going to be some effect of fiber on your digestive system. You may experience some gastric distress if you consume 10 cups of broccoli. You may also get some weird glances from your friends, but ultimately it's not going to hurt you from a caloric intake standpoint. That being said, in a typical Western society eating situation, we're a lot of times not consuming fresh raw vegetables. They've been cooked in vegetable oil, they've been sauteed in teriyaki sauce that has high fructose corn syrup in it. They've been fried. In any case, vegetables can have a lot more calories added than just what you get from the vegetable itself. So if it's fresh, raw vegetables that you're eating, then yes, you can consume just about as many as you want without deleteriously affecting your diet or your weight loss. Follow up question from this listener is, if it is possible, can you tell me what to eat in the morning, lunch and dinner? Well, I can't tell you exactly what to eat. I don't necessarily prescribe diets. I'm not a registered dietitian, I'm a sports nutritionist and a nutrition consultant and I do give quite a bit of advice on what would be ideal to eat. But I can't give you an exact meal plan or prescribe an exact meal plan. Now, as far as what you can eat in the morning, lunch and dinner, let me give you one tip. It's the carbohydrate taper, very, very effective technique to use for fat loss or weight tapering. What you do is actually eat the largest amount of carbohydrates earlier in the day in the a.m. hours and taper the carbohydrates so that by the afternoon you're eating primarily protein and fat based meals. The way that works is that for example, in the morning you might have a big bowl of oatmeal, your mid morning snack might be a piece of fruit. With lunch you may have a whole grain muffin and then going into the rest of the day you're consuming very, very low glycemic index carbohydrates like sugar snap peas or broccoli or cauliflower. You're consuming proteins and fats. So we're talking about nuts, eggs, lean turkey breast, avocados, olives, things of that nature. So as far as eating morning lunch and dinner, I highly recommend that the primary amount of your carbohydrate intake come in the morning, taper it off a little bit for lunch, and then by the time you get to dinner, you're basically eating just protein and vegetables and very, very low glycemic index carbohydrates or carbohydrates that don't have a large effect on your sugar levels. Finally, this listener asks, should I just eat when I'm hungry? Definite no. You should eat every 1.5 to 3 hours if possible. If you're waiting until you're hungry to eat, typically that means that your blood sugar levels have dropped to the point where you're going to have a spike in blood sugar levels when you actually do eat, which is followed by appetite craving and is accompanied by the inability to actually make really intelligent food choices. So don't wait until you're hungry to eat. Eat every one and a half to three hours. That will keep that metabolism elevated. Moving on to listener Angie. Angie asks what is a complete amino acid count? And what she's referring to is the newsletter that I sent out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and by the way, if you haven't subscribed to that newsletter, you can do so for free right there on the right hand side of the page at Bengreenfield Fitness. She asked what is the complete amino acid count? And I had sent out a newsletter where I talked about how I actually managed to put together a healthy meal from the 711 in Las Vegas on the Strip when I was down there for a conference. And in that meal I included nuts, cheese and chocolate. And one of my comments was that I was able to actually get a complete amino acid profile from that meal. Well, here's the lowdown on incomplete versus complete amino acid profiles. Proteins are made up of amino acids. So when we talk about an incomplete or a complete amino acid, we're talking about an incomplete or complete protein. If it was derived from an animal, it's generally a complete protein, meaning that it has all the amino acids in it that are essential to life, including the amino acids that your body can't make itself. Well, that's things like meat, fish, poultry, milk, cheese, eggs, any of those type of things were originally derived from an animal and our complete source of protein. However, there are many foods that have proteins in them but that don't have all the amino acids in them. Usually those are going to be vegetable based proteins, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and pretty much any type of vegetable. I talked about broccoli earlier. Even a cup of broccoli has 2 grams of protein in it, but it's an incomplete protein. That means that it's missing, that doesn't have all the amino acids. So what you can do is by combining certain incomplete proteins, you can make a complete protein. So for example, grains have certain proteins that legumes don't have, and legumes have certain proteins that nuts and seeds don't have. So the way that you can make combinations if you're not eating animal foods and vegetarians have to do this quite a bit, is you can combine grains and legumes. You can combine grains with nuts or seeds, or you could combine legumes with nuts and seeds. So let's look at some examples of food combinations which combine grains and legumes. You could do a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread. That's a complete amino Acid profile. Other complete amino acid profiles Rice and beans. Okay, you could have bean soup and a whole grain roll. You could have a salad that has chickpeas on it for your legume and for instance, cornbread on it for your grain. You could have a vegetable stir fry with tofu that also has rice or pasta served as a side dish. Another example would be like a vegetarian chili that is served with bread. All of those are legume grain combinations that satisfy complete amino acid profile. Other ways we can do that is we can combine grains with nuts and seeds, like a whole wheat bun with sesame seeds or rice cakes with peanut butter. Another thing you can do is legumes with nuts and seeds. This would be like hummus that's made with chickpeas and sesame paste. Or like a trail mix with for example, almonds and sunflower seeds. Or I'm sorry, peanuts. Almonds are not a legume. Peanuts are a legume. Peanuts and sunflower seeds, for example, would satisfy the need for a complete amino acid profile. In this case, I had consumed almonds and I knew that I wasn't getting a complete amino acid profile from almonds. So I decided to balance out that meal by actually consuming an animal based protein. And I had a couple of cheese sticks and that satisfied the essential amino acid profile. And Angie also asked which amino acids were satisfied by each of the foods that you ate in that newsletter. Well, cheese actually satisfied all the amino acids when I was consuming the almonds. Technically those are supplying most of the amino acids, but nuts are pretty low in one of the essential amino acids that your body can't make. And that would be lysine. And the final question in today's podcast, listener Pat asks, After severing my patella eight years ago and after bone carpentry, I literally sat for nearly a year and during that time my quads wouldn't respond to any brain commands to even flex. When I was up and around again, I noticed cellulite had developed between my knees and hips once regular workouts began. And now this. Many years later, the cellulite pretty much still remains on top of the muscles. I'm looking forward to trying at least one of the fat burning products you talk about @Ben grief fitness.com to see if the cellulite diminishes. But I am curious, what does this topical cream do to the skin texture with repeated applications? I am aware that both of these skin creams that I mentioned, the Targax and the AB Solution plus for fat loss, they cause the skin to tighten with repeated application, and you're supposed to do repeated applications of these for at least two weeks. But I would caution you because these creams are both considered vasodilators, meaning that they increase blood flow to an area. And that's part of the reason that they have their effect is because when you increase blood flow to an area, if that is accompanied by increased activity of fat burning enzymes, you're going to have an increased ability to move the fat out of the area where the fat burning enzymes are breaking down the fat. That increased blood flow though, can cause flushing to an area. So if you were putting this on your thighs, for instance, you may actually experience a little bit of flushing, a little bit of increased blood flow to the thighs. That's why I would not recommend that you rub fat burning cream all over your face or you may get a little bit of a flush another way, in addition to eating 10 cups of broccoli to get funny looks from your friends, A couple of things I wanted to mention towards the end of this podcast Podcast. First of all, someone has offered a discount code for one of the products that I have talked about called Greyhound Juice. Now, Greyhound Juice is not like the fat burning creams that I just got done talking about. It is designed just to warm a muscle and specifically to warm a muscle for exercise. It's what I use during Ironman Coeur d' Alene to get my body ready for the cold swim in Lake Coeur d'. Alene. It's also what I use when I don't have much time to warm up before exercise, but I can put it on the muscles to actually increase the heat that's delivered to that muscle. Well, I put a link to Greyhound Juice in the show notes because they're now offering a 5% discount on any of their products. If you use the link that I put in the show notes, but use discount code bgf, as in Ben Greenfield Fitness. Use that code, you can get a 5% discount on Greyhound Juice. I use it in all my racing and all my triathlons to increase blood flow to the muscle prior to the race and give me just a little bit of an added advantage. The other thing that you may notice if you scroll down on the right hand side of BenGreenfulFitness.com is that there's a product called Action Wipes. Action Wipes is both a spray and a wipe that is really kind of refreshing. I use it quite a bit after a workout. It's designed to smooth sore muscles and joints. It refreshes, it deodorizes it cleans off anything, sweat, sand, dust. It'll clean out your scrapes, your cuts, your road rash. It's got eucalyptus and tea tree oils in it so you feel like you just left a spa. I put a link to that in my show notes because I've been using it all the time, especially in the summer when I'm riding my bike back and forth to work, don't have time to shower, spray some of this on my body and it just does the trick. They actually featured it in the August issue of Triathlete Magazine, but I put a link to it in my show notes for this podcast. Episode number seven, Go there. Check out Action Wipes. It's good stuff. That's all I have to talk about. Next week, I'm going to be interviewing yoga master Johnny Gillespie on the benefits of yoga, as well as massage therapist Tim Joreath on exactly how massage therapy can help with injury management. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield from benroutualfitness.com signing out.