Podcast Episode #74: How to Figure Out Your Perfect Body Weight

In this podcast episode, more talk about good fats, gluten, ideal body weight, corn syrup versus high fructose corn syrup, brain boosting supplements, and how to use quinoa.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triangle 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 with podcast episode number 44. You know, usually if you can picture this in your head, I actually don't record this podcast in a professional recording studio, but I actually record it out of my home office. Now, typically to cut down on echo on the sound of dogs barking and children playing, I actually record it from a closet. I actually go into a special closet that I've designed with and some pillows and hanging clothing to cut down on the feedback and the echo. And that is where I record my podcast. I'm not ashamed to say I actually record the podcast sitting in a closet. I'm not doing that today. I'm at my desk, okay? I have a nice steaming hot cup of coffee and I have absolutely no motivation to leave my coffee behind, to leave my desk behind behind with the sunshine coming in the window and crawl into my closet to talk to you. So I'm going to record the podcast today right here, San's closet. Now today is going to be a listener Q and A session. We got some great questions this week and remember I will be coming back to you and featuring interviews with health experts from around the nation. And I have been carrying on interviews and I've got some good ones that I'm lining up for for you. But I'm not going to return to those until February just because over at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy for all you multi sport athletes out there, I'm actually doing a bunch of free teleseminars and those are taking up the time that I'd usually spend getting the interviews on this podcast out to you. So don't worry, I will resume the interviews in February or at the end of January. But for now I am still going to be answering all the questions that you write in and ask. And we're going to get to those in just a second. But before we do, remember if you have a question, just email BenGreenfieldFitness.com or you can call in to 877209. That's completely toll free. Or you could even Skype me and my Skype name is Pacific Fit. I love to get your questions. I love to help you out. Don't think that you are interfering with my personal space when you ask me a question. My goal in life is to help make this world a healthier place. And so if I can do that by answering your questions, then I will absolutely do so. So fire away. And let's go ahead and move in to this week's content.

Listener Q and A.

The first question this week comes from listener John and listener John asks Ben, A friend of mine recommended that I email you with a problem I have. My wife has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. At 339 years of age, she has a real problem with working out and exercising. She could work out 10 days a week. She would. The arthritis is in her right hand, index finger and beginning to spread to her wrist. She's very upset because working out with weights is painful, riding a trainer or spinning is painful, and many Pilates moves and yoga moves can't be performed due to her range of motion. The only thing she has left is running. There is a second underlying issue we are trying to conceive as well, and most of the drugs the doctor will prescribe cause birth defects. Can you supply and help at all with supplying some homeopathic remedies and other exercises that will circumvent the pain generated by other exercises in her hand and wrist? I feel awful for her because exercise is such a huge part of her life. She is an incredible athlete and loves a healthy lifestyle. Well, first of all, let me say that when I get questions like this, I need to be very careful because I'm not a doctor. I'm not supposed to be prescribing medical advice and telling you that the things that I say will help you with a medical condition per se. So when I read over your question, John, the first thing that I would say is make sure that anything that I say you run by your wife's physician. Anything that I say should be run by that person because I don't know what kind of medication she's on and I don't know what type of therapies that she's getting. Now the first thing that I would recommend is a natural treatment that has been traditionally used for rheumatoid arthritis is acupuncture. And if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I'll put a link in the show notes but you can also just do a search for this podcast. Number 21 that I did was with a certified Chinese physician and acupuncturist, and she gives some great information about acupuncture and why it helps with things like arthritis. So that's number one, is I would look into acupuncture. Now, there's also reasonably strong evidence that omega 3 fatty acids, which we've talked about on this show, can actually help with rheumatoid arthritis. There's been about 13 different studies and those were all well controlled studies. They were what are called double blind studies. So the researchers didn't know who was on Omega 3s and who wasn't. They were placebo controlled studies, which means that some people got omega 3 fatty acids and some people got something that basically was like an omega 3 fatty acid but didn't have any in it. So nobody really knew what they were getting. And all these studies involved a total of more than 500 people. So the things that I just talked about, all I'm saying is that they're good studies. And all of them suggested that omega 3 fatty acids may improve symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. And the proposed mechanism for that is that it actually help to decrease the production of some of the inflammatory chemicals that are associated with the pain that you get with arthritis. So acupuncture and omega 3 fatty acid supplementation would be two of my recommendations. And then the last thing you may want to look into is a non weight bearing exercise such as swimming. Okay, not just swimming, but water aerobics. Essentially anything that takes place in water could be something that would be kinder to your wife's joints. So acupuncture, omega 3 fatty acids, look into swimming. Those would be some of my recommendations. Again, that's not medical advice. Those are just some of the things that come to mind when you ask me this question. We also have a question from listener Chuck and his question is kind of related. He says in your podcast you suggested that a ratio of omega 3 fatty acids to omega 6 fatty acids should be about 1 to 1. What would a diet that achieves this actually look like? Thanks. So John would probably benefit, or John's wife would probably benefit from Chuck's question as well. I'm just going to give you an example of what I would do if I weren't say, you know, just popping a bunch of fish oil capsules or flaxseed oil capsules. And now we're trying to get omega 3s from natural sources. What you could do is if you have cereal or you have oatmeal or even omelette in the morning, you can use a flaxseed powder. And you can get flaxseed powder now at most commercial grocery stores. And about a teaspoon to two teaspoons of this would give you a good dose of omega 3 fatty acids. And it doesn't taste bad. It just gives you kind of a buttery, almost a nutty taste to what you put it into. Almond butter would also be a good Choice. Higher in omega 3s than peanut butter would be. And also something that you can use pretty, pretty broadly with breakfast in terms of being versatile for toast, oatmeal, quinoa, which we'll talk about later, things of that nature. Moving on to lunch. Some things that you might want to include with lunch would be, for example, olives, walnuts, avocado. All of those go great on a salad. I really encourage a lot of my clients to have a salad with lunch and have a salad with dinner. But those three fats, olives, walnuts, and avocados all go great, great on a salad. So moving on to dinner, one of the things that you could do is look into increasing your salmon consumption. I did a podcast that talked about farmed salmon and a lot of the big and kind of scary issues with it. But wild salmon, if you can get your hands on that, I know it's not cheap, but even just one or two times a week, salmon is very high in omega 3s. And there's actually a vegetable that's fairly high in omega 3s as well. That would go well with the salmon dinner, and that would be square. You can actually just essentially roast a squash. You could even just chop up a squash and saute it if you want to go the lazy way and just throw it there on the burner along with your salmon. But squash would be a great choice as a vegetable that's high in omega 3s. And then to bring those omega 6s down, one of the things that I would recommend that you do is really limit your consumption of processed packaged foods, baked goods, things of that nature. Okay, so you're trying to bring your omega 3s up, up at the same time that you're bringing your Omega 6s down. So that's how you could practically do that. You could still supplement with a fish oil capsule or flaxseed oil capsule. I personally do that. I take something called nrefa. But in terms of real food sources, you obviously want to include those in your diet as well. My Next question is a training question. This was a comment on the blog and by the way, there are a lot of comments on the blog. If you go there. There's a great discussion going on right now@BenGreenfieldFitness.com in the comments section for podcast number 73, which talked about fat and cholesterol. Some really, really good and knowledgeable comments there that go even deeper into the discussion we went in the podcast. So again, if you go to the website, there's a lot going on there. Listener Todd asks My prime focus right now has been to work on enhancing recovery, staying healthy and reducing injury. I'm doing several things differently this season and I'd love to hear any other suggestions from the triathlon community. So Todd's not just asking me for help, he's asking the listeners for help as well. He's going to go into what he's doing for recovery and I know that there are going to be some beginners listening in who are like, holy cow, where's this guy coming from? Essentially, Todd is doing everything that I've suggested in the past on the podcast to help him recover better. Okay, this is a pretty high end recovery protocol that he's on, so he says. After hard workouts, I immediately fuel with whole food carbohydrates, meaning he's eating real carbohydrates. You know, say like a sweet potato versus a power bar and protein, something I've never done before as I'm usually not hungry after a hard effort. I use a topical magnesium spray that I leave on for 15 minutes and then shower once per week. I also have an Epsom salts bath to decrease or I'm sorry, to increase magnesium absorption. I usually take a recovery day on Fridays, but I move it up in the week if I'm tired or sore. During my recovery day, I do a stretching session with a foam roller focusing on my IT band, piriformis and SI joint, which can tighten up. I also pay close attention to nutrition, choosing as many anti inflammatory foods as possible. I think in the past inflammation has been my prime source of injury and lack of recovery. Finally, a number of supplements have significantly impacted my ability to recover and stay healthy. I use a salt solution from Himalayan Crystal Salt first thing in the morning and 5 drops oil of oregano under my tongue before bed. Lastly, I'm taking flaxseed oil in capsules, a green food supplement and 5,000 units of vitamin D every day with breakfast. Since using this protocol, I've not been sick once and am sleeping very soundly Currently, my training hours equal about six to eight hours per week. I complete two high intensity training sessions per week and I'm able to recover. I'm wondering if I will still be able to recover well, once I ramp up to 12 to 14 hours per week, is there something more that I can do? My fear at this point is burnout or injury due to the increased intensity so early in the season. Right now I am simply paying attention to what my body is telling me and mixing in a recovery day whenever I feel a bit sore and tired. Do you have any recommendations to ensure I don't become over trained or increase my my chance of injury? When I read over Todd's description, he's doing a lot of things right. He's doing more than 99.99% of people are doing when it comes to being very smart about his recovery and about his body. And he is reaping the dividends from that if he's not getting sick and he's sleeping soundly, because that's more than most people can say. Now, when I'm looking at Todd's recovery protocol, I'm looking at this more the way that I look at the protocol of, say, a pro athlete, or you're looking for that extra 0.5%. And there's no huge red flags that jump out at you immediately. But then you can only suggest little things that might help even more for that little bit of extra advantage. So, Todd, here are the little things that you could try to actually increase your chances of recovery even more, even though you're doing a very good job. The first is you didn't talk about how you were actually applying that magnesium, but you need to make sure that you gently rub magnesium in, okay. For about 15 to 20 seconds. Make sure that you're not just leaving it on, but that you're rubbing it into the skin. And you see that you're doing five sprays per appendage, which would be 20 sprays total, assuming you have the same number of arms and legs as the general population. And that would, I believe, be about 200 milligrams of magnesium. You're looking about 100 milligrams in 10 sprays. If you're using a magnesium spray, you can take 400 to 500 milligrams of that. So you could even double your use of topical magnesium. Okay. And you would want to just stop at the point where you get loose stool. That's kind of the sign that you're getting enough or too much magnesium. The next thing is I did an interview with Lance Armstrong's recovery specialist and massage therapist on this show. There's an interview with a guy named Jeff Spencer. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and Google Jeff Spencer over there. He talked about a lot of things that he did with the Lance Armstrong and Lance Armstrong cycling team. And one of the things that he talked about that you're not including in your protocol, that would be probably a big step. And I personally haven't taken this step. But they actually sleep in special beds that are grounded electrically, meaning that there's an actual current going through the bed while you sleep. And that is supposed to increase your blood flow while you're asleep and enhance your recovery even more. Again, we're talking about a little bit more extreme when it comes to recovery protocols. But hey, man, you asked. So grounding would be another thing that you could try that the pro endurance athletes are doing. Water consumption. I don't know if you're using a water filter in your home. If you're drinking a water that's more acidic, that has a higher number of hydrogen ions floating around in it, that can contribute to an inflammatory condition within the body and decrease your recovery time. Okay. I would recommend that you look into consuming more alkaline based water. There are filters out there now that you could just do a search for alkaline water filter that would actually increase the alkalinity of your water, make it less acidic. That's something that we're looking to doing. I personally now have a countertop unit. The reason I haven't talked about it a lot on this show is because I really don't like to push anything that I haven't tried too much myself. And I'm still trying to figure out if this countertop unit would be the way to go versus a central home water filter. So look into that. And then a couple of other things would be don't talk a lot about your actual diet other than the fact that you take in whole food, carbs and protein after your workout. I'm assuming that you're limiting your sugar and your starch consistent consumption apart from that, in that you're decreasing the number of inflammatory foods that you're consuming. The only other thing is manual massage. You're doing foam roller massage, which you're able to hit some muscles with. But getting a manual massage from a real person every once in a while can help tremendously. I try and do that at least once a month. I use a place called Therapeutic Approach in Spokane, Washington and that guy works on a lot of triathletes. So he really knows the endurance athlete body and that's why I go to him. His name's Tim. Actually had him on the show a couple of times. But having a massage therapist that you have a relationship with who kind of knows your body would be something I'd recommend as well, if you're able to afford that addition to your recovery protocol. So I hope that helps. Todd and good job with what you're doing so far. I mean, you're really doing a lot, which is, which is very, very good. So I have a question now from listener Chuck. I don't know if this is the same Chuck that asked the question before, but he's actually got a three part question. He says. One question I have is I would like to be more competitive at Ironman triathlon, but I'm 5 foot 9, 180 pounds and have 14% body fat. So he's 5, 9, 1, 8, 14% body fat. If I keep my bone and muscle mass and try to get around 10 to 11% body fat, I'm still at 175 pounds. That just seems too heavy. The number that floats around in my head for a racing weight is 165 to 168. But I don't know if losing muscle in order to get to that weight will pay off in a lower body weight. Do you have any quick thoughts on that? You know, it's really tough to say just based on your weight and your body fat because I don't know from a skeletal perspective how you're actually built. But one thing we can look at is the actual weight to height ratio in competitive male triathletes, which is where you want to go. Because when you get to a certain low amount of body fat, you actually inhibit your ability to perform well in endurance sports. Because it's. Endurance sports do draw on fat as a fuel very significantly, especially the longer endurance sports. So the way that you figure out your height to weight ratio is you take your weight in pounds. Okay? So you're. What did you say? £180. And you divide that by your height in inches. So 5 foot 9 would be 69 inches. If you look at competitive male triathletes, that ratio is going to be usually about 2.1 to 2.3 pounds per inch. Females usually 1.8 to 2.0 pounds per inch. Now if you are above 2.5 pounds per inch and you're a male or you're above 2.3 pounds per inch and you're a female, then you would do better on flatter triathlon courses without a lot of hills because of that extra mass that you're carrying around. Okay, so again, it's the weight to height ratio. So again, we can just look at yours. Let's do the math right here. Let me pull up my calculator here. And you are, what did we say? 69 and 180. So we divide 180 by 69 and we get to 2.6 as your ratio. So based on that, your ratio would be a little bit high for being competitive at triathlon. Now, if you were to go down to that, say, like that 165 weight that you're talking about, and we divide that 165 by your height, assuming that you stay the same height, that brings you down to 2.39. Okay. Competitive male triathletes are usually about 2.1 to 2.3 pounds per inch. Gives you an idea of how lean they are. You could lose 15 pounds, Chuck, and you still wouldn't be in that range. But then you get to the point where you start asking yourself, well, is this worth it? I mean, you know, are you doing it for money or are you doing it for fun? You don't want your life to be centered around just eating like a monk because you're trying to get that weight to height ratio. But those are the numbers that you'd be looking at. Okay, so, great question. I'm going to move on to the second part of your question. You say, I was eating a balance bar the other day in a pinch for a snack, and when looking at the ingredients, it had high fructose corn syrup in it. I'm sorry, it had corn syrup in it. Is there a difference between corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup? That is a great question. So essentially, corn syrup, or what is also known as corn syrup solids, does have a little bit different ingredient profile than high fructose corn syrup. Primarily, corn syrup solids are made out of dexterity dextrose, if I remember correctly from chemistry classes, is two, what are called sucrose molecules linked together, whereas you're looking at fructose, of course, in high fructose corn syrup. So you're going to see corn syrup as corn syrup solids, corn syrup powders, and essentially those are just made from a process that takes a concentrated dextrose liquid and removes about 97% of the, the water from it. Okay. Whereas high fructose corn syrup is starting off again with the same type of ingredient, a dextrose sugar like the corn syrup is, but it's actually converting it chemically through the use of enzymes in a factory to fructose sugar. And fructose actually tastes sweeter than corn syrup. And that's why they put it in more foods than they put corn syrup into is just, you know, it's sweeter. So people get addicted to it. So food companies make more money when they use it because it tastes better. So essentially the corn syrup is actually a little less sweet than table sugar. It's about three quarters as sweet as table sugar. And so again, it's not quite as popular in the use in our food supply. Now, as far as fructose goes, the whole idea behind why fructose is might be something that you'd want to avoid is that your liver treats fructose very differently than it does glucose or dextrose. Okay? The liver can pretty easily decide to use the glucose for energy, or it can convert the glucose into what would be called triglycerides, which would end up having them stored as fat. But studies have shown that fructose, strangely enough, seems to be be converted into fat much easier in the body than other forms of sugar. So what it comes down to, to answer your question, is that corn syrup is less sweet, it's made from dextrose, and it's actually not quite as bad for you as high fructose corn syrup. Now, sugar is sugar, okay? And you know, it's still going to be something that you'd want to consume in moderation. But if somebody put a tablespoon of high fructose corn syrup in front of me and a tablespoon of corn syrup in front of me, I would choose the corn syrup. Okay, so good question. And then your final part of your question in preparing for a half ironman, what kind of timetable should I look for to begin my specific training? Like how many weeks out will I need a regimented plan? If you are fit already. If you've done triathlons before, generally for a half ironman, you need about 12 weeks leading up. That's the magic number that I use with a lot of my athletes. We'll do about four weeks of base aerobic training and then an eight week build into the half ironman, with the last couple weeks or the last week of that build starting to taper down to get ready for the race. So if you're fit, you should be able to do it in about 12 weeks. If you're unfit, starting from complete zero, give yourself at least 24 weeks. So give yourself 12 weeks of just base preparation training before you do about four weeks of more focused endurance work and then a final eight weeks of intensity. I found that to work very well with both the beginner and the advanced athletes that I work with. The 24 week or the 12 week option. Next question is from listener John. And John says, are you familiar with no tropic products? That's spelled N O O T R O P I C? No tropic products. They're supposed to enhance the. The dopenergic system and acetylcholine function in the human body. I don't think I pronounced that word correctly. Dopaminergic system. An acetylcholine function in the human body involves motor skills, mentation. I don't know if mentation is a word, John. I'm not sure. Cognition, reward and drive, movement, reaction time, and communication between cells. Do you have any experience with this type of supplement? Well, the funny thing is that term, the nootropic term, has been coined for a long time. And essentially it's a coverall term for pretty much any type of drug or chemical that you could put into your body that would affect the neurochemicals in your brain. Vitamin B would fall into this because vitamin B plays a vital role in your brain, brain function and your nervous system. The omega 3 fatty acids that we talked about, which really influence the communication between your cells and they affect your cell membrane health, those would fall into this system. Antioxidants which are beneficial to your brain and help to protect your brain from what's called free radical damage. Those would fall into this. Amino acids. We've talked about amino acids a lot on this show and how they're used both as protein building blocks, but they're also used as precursors for your body to produce a lot of hormones like epinephrine and dopamine. And those also would be considered a nootropic supplement. Okay? Now, at the same time, amphetamines would fall into this category, as would what are called xanthines. And that would include something like caffeine. Okay. Cocaine would fall into this category. Any memory enhancers that are out there would fall into this category. Nicotine would fall into this category. So there's a ton of things that could be considered nootropic supplements. And so to answer your question, it's obviously going to come down to a case by case analysis of which ones work. Now, we all know that cocaine and methamphetamine and nicotine are going to affect our brains and they're going to enhance dopamine release and they're probably going to give us a short happy high. But long term, not so great for your central nervous system, not so great for your heart, for your health. Or as you take an omega 3 fatty acid or an antioxidant from fruits and vegetables, or you take a vitamin B supplement and all those are going to do the body good. Okay, so it really depends on what you take in. But if somebody's telling you that, you know, I've got this brand new nootropic supplement that is the first of its kind, probably not. They've been being made since the 60s and that term has been around a while. I think that as people get onto this whole anti aging, make yourself smarter through the use of drugs and supplements kick, that word will start to get thrown around more. But realize that's nothing special. Most of you are probably already taking some form of a nootropic form or another. So gonna move on to the last question and it's a three part question from listener Chris and the first part says, I just bought an order of the MAP supplement and that's the master amino pattern that I talked about on this show with Dr. Minkoff. Before I realized that the recommended dosage is five capsules and before I heard that I may need to take as many as 10 to 20 capsules per day. My question is how I might be able to strategically use this bottle as I'm a fledgling musician, a couple years out of college, without a real job and without the financial means to buy a bottle a month or so. The aspect of this product that convinced me to buy it was to help with a nagging hamstring injury I've been dealing with, which has been preventing me from doing the running I'd like to do. I'd like to start doing triathlons in 2010 for fun, but I am mainly concentrated on competitive cycling. Should I use the product to maximize my fitness to continue my training immediately, use it minimally over time to spread its use or save it until racing season officially starts in a few months? Great question. Rationing out your supplements is something that a lot of people need to do just because they're not free, they're not cheap. So what I would recommend with that particular supplement, because it's designed to assist your body in rebuilding muscle, is that you take any of the workouts during the week and especially if you can't do it now, focus on doing it during the race season, week weeks and take your mass domino pattern after those workouts only. Essentially what this comes down to is that you should take it after your runs, after your very, very hard sprinting type of efforts on the bike, and after any type of weightlifting protocols. Okay. Long endurance rides in the saddle, not going to be as necessary. I mean, it'll help you, but it's not going to be as necessary if you're rationing, it swims. Again, not a lot of muscle damage that occurs when you're swimming. So it's not going to be as necessary there. And any kind of easy endurance effort, even an easy run, I wouldn't really take it after that. So. Good question. And that is how I would use the master amino pattern. Chris. The next question that Chris has is, could you share recipes that you use for quinoa in greater detail? I am just starting to eat it and I love it, but I have only boiled it up and used it as a spoon side with dinner after a hard workout. You have referenced eating it in several situations throughout the day, but I was wondering if you could be more specific on how you prepare it. Absolutely. So quinoa is that whole grain. It's higher in protein than pretty much any other vegetable based protein on the planet. It's got all the amino acids in it. You can get it just about anywhere. Now, I get it in the bulk food section at the grocery store. If you want to rinse it and soak it overnight before you eat it. This is something that I actually recently learned. Similar to soy, quinoa has a lot of phytic acids in it, and those can prevent some of the digestion and absorption of nutrients and minerals. And so if you soak your quinoa, then it's going to be even a little bit better. And all that means is that you put it in a pot with some water and then the next morning you pour the water out and you filter out the quinoa. It takes about 15 minutes to cook. Just boil it for 15 minutes. You can let it simmer for a little while after that if you like it to be a little bit more well done. Some of the ways that I use quinoa, Chris, I will use it as a morning breakfast, meaning the same way as oatmeal. I'll put a little almond butter in there, a little yogurt, a little cinnamon, sometimes chop up a banana or throw some raisins in there, stir that up and have it as a hot morning cereal. You can saute it, use a little bit of oil, and I like coconut oil as a high heat cook. Cooking oil and essentially cook it and then saute it. Throw some fresh garlic in there, chop up some onions, put a little spinach in there, and then just saute that all with the quinoa in coconut oil. That's a fantastic meal. You can actually just make it into a salad. Take a little bit of quinoa and chop up some carrots, some zucchini, few other vegetables, dice up a tomato, chop some onions, throw that over the quinoa, good salad. Same way as you would do like a couscous salad. One of the other things that you can do, and I put this into the show notes at one point, is you can make a Greek salad with it. And that's got feta cheese and some chopped up olives, parsley, a few other ingredients in there. And if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for quinoa Greek salad, you should be able to find that or just do it, even just do a Google search for quinoa Greek salad. But those are some of the ways that I personally use quinoa. So. Great question. And the last part of Chris's question, our last question for the day on today's podcast is my question. My last question is about gluten. Is there a compelling reason to consider eating gluten free foods if you are not resistant or intolerant to gluten? Now, gluten is basically just a protein, okay? And this is me talking now. This is not. Chris's question was just whether it was bad for you if you're not intolerant to it. It's a protein, it's not a sugar. And it's found in wheat, it's found in rye, it's found in barley. And most people eat it every day. You get in bread, pizza, cereal, beer, soy sauce, whatever. But a lot of people have something called celiac disease, which is essentially an intolerance to gluten and inability to process it properly. It's, it's an autoimmune disease. About 1 in 133 people have it. And what happens is you get GI distress, you get gas, you get problems only in your gut, but also mentally, you lose your focus and you can get rashes and breakouts on your skin when you consume gluten. And with celiac disease, all those people, yeah, gluten would be bad for. You need to avoid gluten. And that's why as people become more aware of this celiac disease, that gluten free food is a growing market. You're going to see a lot more gluten free foods out there because the celiac disease is becoming more recognized. But the thing is, even though you're seeing all these new gluten free foods on the market, that's not because of some groundbreaking research that found out that gluten was bad for everybody. It's primarily because people with celiac disease are becoming more recognized. Now, speaking from personal experience, I can tell you I don't have celiac disease, but when I consume a food with gluten in it, I have a slower digestive process. I sometimes have a little bit more gas and I get a little bit more tired than if I consume a gluten free product. So if I have bread with dinner as my starch versus if I have potato with dinner as my starch, potatoes don't have the gluten in them. I feel better with a potato based meal. So for my pre race meals or my preference pre workout meals, I avoid gluten. I avoid a lot of consumption of bread on a daily basis just because it's almost like gluten. It feels like it kind of gums up my gastrointestinal tract. Have a lot of clients who feel the same way and they're not diagnosed with celiac disease. They just have a sensitivity to gluten. For example, the book that I wrote, shape 21, which is kind of a lower egg, lower soy, lower gluten, lower in just about anything that you might have in a intolerance to, it's essentially kind of a detox diet combined with a lean body program. So it's designed to just melt fat off your body. I took gluten out of that and it's not a book for people with celiac disease. It's just a book for people who want to feel like their diet is completely clean and non toxic. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And you know what I'm also going to do is I'm going to play a call in question or a call in comment that I got from from a listener who tried the Shape 21 book. And we're going to end with this comment today. So I'm going to play this and then we'll leave off with this part of the podcast.

Hey Ben, this is Scott Rydock calling and I was giving you a testimonial about your shape 21. I've been utilizing the meal plan since you released that. I think I started back in August, about August 20th and just kind of keep rotating through the three weeks. And since I've done that, I've lost using the calipers about 7 millimeters of fat off my belly. And just that has been the one thing, in my opinion that has allowed me to have that kind of fat loss. I haven't really changed my workups workouts very much. My workouts are very similar to the ones you do in shape 21 sort of body weight and interval workouts. And you know, if anybody's doubting the low glycemic sort of diet full of, you know, foods that non inflammatory and non allergen, they could just ask me about it because I've had more results in the past four months by sticking to that than I have probably in about a year. So want to say thanks for the great plans and always look forward to your podcast and your information. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Thanks, Ben.

Alright folks, well that's going to wrap it up. Merry Christmas to those of you who are listening to this podcast. In December, we've got Christmas just a couple of days away. Keep your eyes on your email. If you're subscribed to my email newsletter for some little Christmas giveaways I've got going out and subscribe to that newsletter over@BenGreenFeldFitness.com if you haven't yet. And be sure to go to itunes and leave us a ranking. Leave us a comment. That's one of the one of the biggest ways that you can help out this show and ensure that I can continue to deliver the information to you. So have a great week. Have a healthy week. This is Ben Greenfield signing out with podcast number 74 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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