The Best Way To Measure Body Fat, Tricks To Increase Pain Tolerance During Workouts, Colloidal Minerals & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the best way to measure body fat, exercising in the heat versus sauna training. Should you use colloidal minerals? The healthiest way to clean water bottles, how to increase pain tolerance during workouts, and more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an iron triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Ben, you sound different this morning somehow.

I don't know. Fresher, lighter, cleaner, Cleaner. I'm actually picking fresh spinach out of my teeth, so I don't know about the cleaner part, but I'm actually pretty stoked because the garden is all springing up now. We have a giant garden with these eight raised garden beds and about 12ft of deer fencing surrounding the whole thing. So the white tailed deer don't eat our green goodness. But I went out there this morning and I picked some fresh spinach and some romaine lettuce for my morning smoothie. I was actually, I was nude while I was picking my greens, so I felt very, very natural.

That's why you sound so fresh.

Well, it's, it's this freaking this morning. No, it's actually, it's a biohack. It's a biohack. I, I do a little morning cold swim, right? I'll get in there and I'll swim for five or 10 minutes and then I air dry. I think I've mentioned this on podcasts before, by the way. Walking nude through the forest. And so I harvested all of my grains out there, drip drying and air drying myself nude. And I went in and made my morning smoothie. And just in case all of our listeners are now disgusted with that vision in their heads, please know that I now am clothed. I'm wearing my Timex hoodie and my shorts and I'm clothed.

Sometimes I feel like you're only a stone's throw away from the Manson family.

I think that was before my time. Is that up there with a Unabomber?

There was a predecessor to the Unabarmer, we'll put it that way.

All right, great. I'll take it.

Whether he's nude, whether he's fully clothed, whether he's making a smoothie or not, Ben is constantly tweeting stuff out on twitter.com BenGreenfield that's right.

I actually have a phone embedded in my arm to allow me to tweet more efficiently.

I'd like the vision of you naked in the forest, but with a iPad.

That's right.

Wearing nothing but an iPad.

I do have a few interesting things that I discovered on the Internet this week that I wanted to let folks know about. First of all, calculating your resting metabolic rate.

This I was hoping you'd cover this.

Yeah, this always seems to be something that throws people for a loop. Like how do you figure out a good, accurate, but easy way to figure out how many calories that you're burning during the day? And one of I'm not sure if.

It was because it was on Twitter and it had to be 140 characters or less, but I did not follow this arithmetic.

Okay, the arithmetic is actually pretty easy. So here is what I tweeted out. I said a super simple but accurate equation for finding your resting metabolic rate. If you already know your body fat percentage, and actually we'll get into later in this podcast about accurate ways, find out what your body fat percentage is. But that aside, let's say that you actually know your body fat percentage. Well, a very accurate way to determine how many calories you're burning each day at rest just sitting around, that's your resting metabolic rate, is to take the number 12 and to multiply that by your lean body mass. So your lean body mass would be basically everything that's left over when you subtract the fat if you were to strip all the fat off your body. So let's say that your body fat percentage is say 10%, you fat piece of lard. So let's say you're at 10%.

I'm actually 9.6 I think last time.

I checked and you weigh 180 pounds, then that would mean that 18 pounds of you is fat. Right? If you were 10% body fat and so your lean body mass or your fat free mass would be 180 pounds minus 18, which would be 162 pounds. So you would take 12 and you would multiply that by your lean body mass, which would be 162 pounds in this case. And then you add two times your fat mass. And we know that your fat mass in this case, if you're at 10% body fat would be that same 18 pounds. So two times your fat mass would be 36. 12 times your lean body mass would be whatever 12 times 162 is. And you'll come up with with a number. Let's, I'm just going to say off the top of my head, that number is about 1800 or so. That is 1800 calories as you're resting metabolic rate. So the way that this calculation was derived, I actually subscribed to several different research journals. But one of the research reports that I subscribe to, that's actually just like a collection of articles and commentaries on the latest and greatest research and strength, conditioning, nutrition, etc is Alan Argon's A Research Review. And one of the articles in that review was an article that took all of the different calculations out there, the very complex calculations for figuring out your resting metabolic rate, like that one called the Harris Benedict equation, which just to give you an idea of the complexity of this versus what you've just what we just talked about, it's like 66.5 plus 13.7 times weight plus 5 times height minus 6.8 times your age. Or the, the Mifflin equation, which is another rather complex equation. Or, or the body surface area equation, which is height times 0.425 times height times 0.0725 plus a multiplier of 0.007184. Like, there's a lot of different equations out there for figuring out your resting metabolic rate. And while the gold standard would be to get what's called an indirect calorimetry test, which is where you actually go into a sports performance lab or a hospital or kind of other metabolic laboratory and actually have this measured, the next best thing, especially if you're like say a personal trainer working with a lot of people and you want to give them a ballpark or you just want a ballpark for yourself, is to take this, this pretty simple equation of 12 times your lean body mass plus 2 times your fat mass. And it turns out, based on this article and all the different calculations that they did in this article, that that is actually a really dang accurate way to get your resting metabolic rate. So I thought it would be an interesting one to tweet. And again, very simple. 12 times your lean body mass plus 2 times your fat mass. And we'll put that in the show notes too.

Not kilograms.

Yes, that would be in pounds. And the shownotes for this episode are over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 316 and I'll also link to some helpful resting metabolic rate calculators that I have over@getfitguy.com if you do want to try the calculator. But if you just want some something super simple and that's it, and that's how it works so there we go for you math heads out there.

Beautiful.

Yeah. And, and by the way, I, I am one of those people that actually sucked at math all the way up until college. And I was actually under the impression that, that some people are right brain, some people are left brained. And I was a right brained creative kid who didn't do well at math. And then I realized in college once I got highly motivated that you can actually get good at both left brain and right brained activities. And I wound up going through 400 level math classes in college with a 4.0 GPA. So I'm basically just saying that to brag. Okay.

And it worked. I failed out of grade 12 remedial math.

No, but actually the bigger point is you can pretty much learn anything you want to learn.

So I believe that.

So the next interesting article that I tweeted was 4 ways to know how your beef is grass fed. Because I know we have lots of listeners who go to the butcher and have a raised eyebrow about whether or not that grass fed beef is really truly grass fed and grass finished, meaning not just grass fed and then fed grain for the last eight months of its life or whatever.

So these are ways to find out without just asking the butcher.

Yeah, interesting article that appeared on iquitsugar.com, great name for website by the way. So number one, number one way to tell if your meat is grass finished. The fat will be yellow. Grain fed beef actually has a thick white layer of fat. But because the fat is higher in omega 3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acids and things of that nature, the fat is yellow in grass fed beef. The next thing is the meat will be tougher. Grain fed beef has a soft buttery texture and the meat is actually tougher in grass fed beef which is why grass fed beef a lot of times is better for like crock pot meals or slow cooked meals or casseroles and you know, grass fed beef and this actually disappoints a lot of people actually isn't quite as good as grain fed beef when it comes to just like wanting a soft buttery steak. Now I would say that if you're doing a good marinade or you're pre digesting your meat or you're even using, there's actually a new new product. I don't know if I mentioned this before to you Brock, but there's a product called, it's electrical muscle stimulation for meat. It's called Tender Tender Buck. I think it's what it's called.

I think we did talk about that.

Yeah. It's marketed to hunters, but it's actually, it looks like car battery chargers that you attach to your meat and it just sends this shock through the meat. Theoretically, you could probably use like a, like a Mark Pro or a Compex Electrostim device to achieve the same effect. But it's a, it's a meat tenderizer for the type of meat that tends to be chewier. Right. Like venison, for example. But anyways, grass fed versus grain fed. Grass fed actually is a little bit tougher.

So, you know, I have no problem with a little bit of a tougher meat if it's got better flavor. I don't know when I think it's just lazy North Americans who decided at some point that if food isn't easy to chew that it must be bad quality. Yeah, we're just that lazy.

Yeah, that's softness equated. Yeah. And while we're inside this rabbit hole, I should mention I actually have a bunch of meat out in my garage curing right now. I bought an old used refrigerator off of Craigslist and then I bought a temperature controller and a humidity controller. I hooked the temperature controller up to the main plug of the refrigerator. I hooked the humidity controller up to humidifier that I have inside the refrigerator. And I have a fan inside the refrigerator as well, which is blowing the humidified air up to meat that I have hanging in the refrigerator. And I'm actually using this refrigerator as a meat curing unit. So I dry rubbed about four pounds of beef with some juniper berry and black pepper and sea salt and rosemary and thyme. And now it's hanging in there for four months, basically curing. So if it works out, I will have some fantastic charcuterie. If it doesn't work out, I will die of mold.

So yeah, it's a, it's a chance worth taking.

It could be some, some great meat. I may just give up the whole podcasting gig and start something like Greenfield Bee. Two things though.

Old Benny's beef. Old Benny's jerky.

Say sir, don't start that one. The Family Guy. Old guy. So also, grass fed beef. Stronger flavor and tastes better. I don't know if I agree with that or not. I would have to say I've had some really tasty grain fed beef as well, but that's one thing they list. But it's not like you're going to be standing at the butcher counter asking to taste your raw beef to see whether or not it's truly gr. But. But one that I think is a little bit more practically applicable is the fourth thing that they list and that is that there's less marbling. So grass fed can still produce some marbling in the muscle, but it's not as consistent as you see with grain fed beef. So I. I would say that the two of these that are, that are actually practical and would allow you to look inside the meat case and, and make a good decision would be look for yellow fat versus white fat and look for less marbling.

I'd always heard that the marbling was partly a response to the antibiotics as well. They actually put a antibiotic or a bacteria in the ear of the cow that made more fatty muscle meat interesting. Which is also something you should probably be looking out for.

Why would you place the antibiotic in the ear?

I don't know. I guess it was just the delivery mechanism was just easier to jam it in their ear.

I would think a giant antibiotic cattle suppository would be even better than an ear.

Yeah, but we know that things don't often digest or ingest the same way through different parts of the body, so it might just come shooting back out. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. The ear may actually be a little bit more. More readily available than. Than the rectum too when it comes to friendliness for the farmer. So yeah, there's that. Okay. And then a complete 180 switch from the rectum of a cow into something more gender injury prevention. This was an interesting article that appeared at the Sweat Science blog. And the subtitle of this was Women get injured from the hips down and Men get injured from the Feet up. And this was actually a commentary on a recent study that was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports in which they took a bunch of runners who had it band friction syndrome, which is the bane of a lot of runners, frankly. I've had it before. I think you've had it, Brock. I believe that pain in the outside of your knee, you know, it's something that happens to a lot of athletes. And what they found was that in the women who had it, band friction syndrome, it was related to their hip angle and also to weaker hips. Whereas with the men it was related to weak knees and poor foot strike patterns. And so ultimately the takeaway here was that when someone gets injured, especially when a runner gets injured, it could be worth it, depending on the sex of that runner to start with a specific area. Particularly in women, pay attention to hip rotation, hip movement patterns, the sacroiliac joint, the width of the hips and the strength of the hips. Whereas with men, you may want to start by looking at the knees and the feet because since men have narrower hips, fewer injuries arise from the hips in men versus women, whereas men tend to have more issues with the feet and the knees. So it's. I thought this was interesting.

I thought this was the. I'm just scanning through the article because I. I remember Alex wrote a similar article about this where he basically said that men got injured more because they were idiots. This isn't the same article though.

No, it's probably a little bit different article. Even though that, that makes perfect sense. And I'm sure he, he probably gained a lot of female readers based on that article. But no, this, this is more related to them. Child.

This one's a little more scientific.

The. The child bearing hips of females and the. The screwed up feet of males, so.

And because they're idiots.

Listener Q A hey, Ben, I know you talk a lot about cold thermogenesis and also even working out in the cold. And recently you've talked a lot about saunas and heat exposure. But what about working out in really hot environments? I'm currently in Sierra Leone. I know when I work out I instantly just start sweating like a pig as if I'm in a sauna. And my heart rate, I can just tell, is super jacked up. Up. So I was just wondering, am I getting any added benefit of combining, you know, hot environments with working out? Thanks.

I had to actually look at a map to see where Sierra Leone was.

Where is Sierra? I thought Sierra Leone was a crayon color.

It is. You're a genius.

Where, where is Sierra Leone?

It's located right next to the Indian Brown and right before the sky blew.

Ah, yeah, of course. But above sunset red.

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

Right there. Bordered by guinea and Liberia.

We talked a little bit about heat exposure and you know, a lot of the benefits that are going to occur with exercising in a hot location or exercising or even sitting in a dry sauna when we had Dr. Rhonda Patrick on and you know, all these physiological adaptations occur to heat acclimation that most of us are aware of, like improved cardiovascular mechanisms and a lower heart rate, whether during exercise or at rest. Lower core body temperature when you are actually exercising. An increase in heat shock proteins, which basically make you more resilient to stress. You get better blood flow to skeletal muscle that's also known as muscle perfusion. If you want to impress your friends at the next Trivia Night, you actually get a. Because of that increased muscle perfusion, a lot of people don't know about this, but you get a reduced rate of glycogen depletion. You actually burn through carbohydrates more slowly. When you have better blood flow to a muscle, you get an increased red blood cell count. Yeah. And we talked about this a few weeks ago on a podcast. Especially if you save your heat exposure for post workout and you go to a sauna for like 20 to 30 minutes post workout, you get an increase in erythropoietin, which is a red blood cell precursor, and you get increased increased efficiency of oxygen transport to muscles as well. So there's all sorts of cool things that happen with heat exposure. But the question is, do you get this same thing if you're just exercising in the heat versus doing a sauna session? And the short answer to that is yes. The longer answer is that you must actually get yourself up to the point where you are uncomfortably hot and where if you were to actually swallow one of these thermometers that they have athletes use now in these core heat studies where they measure your actual core temperature, not how hot you feel you are, but how hot your actual core becomes. Because a lot of times you can feel hot, but you're not getting a big increase in core temperature. And it turns out that you need to be at a relatively high temperature in order to get some of the same benefits of heat acclimation that you would get when you're, when you're like sitting in a sauna or even exercising in a sauna. And we're talking about temperatures that exceed 40 degrees Celsius, which is, you know, that's around 104 degrees Fahrenheit, in order.

For you, Sierra Leone right now is 86 degrees.

Yeah. So, I mean, so that's not hot enough in that condition. I mean, sure, you're going to get better cardiac output and you're probably going to train yourself to do things like increase your, your efficiency of cooling via sweat. You are going to improve your tolerance to exercising at that specific temperature, that 80 to 90 degrees. But if you want to get yourself to the point where you're producing a significant amount of heat shock proteins and you're getting this significant amount of epo, we're talking about really high temperatures that can be difficult to replicate in your environment or that can be difficult to exercise in. And that's why this whole concept of just like sitting in a sauna that's at 40 plus degrees Celsius. Okay. A sauna is easily 110, 110, 120 degrees Fahrenheit, often much more than that. That's pretty easy at your gym or, you know, if you have a sauna in your house to go and sit inside and replicate, it's a little bit more difficult to hunt down those kind of extremes of temperature in most places. And I don't think Sierra Leone, for example, comes close. So understand that there's a difference between, between heat acclimation allowing you to exercise better in whatever hot condition you're preparing for. Okay, so let's say you have a triathlon or marathon or cycling race or something like that that's going to be at 85 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, in that type of situation, exercising at 86 degrees Fahrenheit in Sierra Leone is certainly going to prepare you for that. But if you want to take advantage of the significant boost in heat shock proteins and the increase in erythropoietin and the massive increase in muscle perfusion and even the increase in this brain derived neurotrophic factor, which has also been shown to increase and improve your growth of neural cells and your IQ basically is what that comes down to cognitive performance. You need a pretty significant amount of heat, often a very uncomfortable amount of heat that can be difficult to exercise in. And that's where something like a sauna would come in handy. Now, that being said, there is something that I found on the Internet called fell runner heat suit that's spelled F E L L R N R heat suit. And this fell runner heat suit actually can allow you to increase heat dramatically whether you're exercising in a hot or even a mild condition. And it's just, you know, very similar to one of these types of suits that you traditionally see like a wrestler wear. Right. When they're trying to, to sweat off. What, what do you call those? Not, not the sauna suits, but they're, you know what I'm talking about. Right. They look like a big garbage bag that you'd wear.

Yeah, yeah. I can't think of what they're called.

Right. You must have never wrestled. Yeah. Anyways, it's called a fell runner heat suit and it's, it's two different layers. It's a single waterproof layer that traps your sweat and prevents your sweat from evaporating. Right. From, from cooling your body. And then there's another layer on top of that that kind of keeps that sweat up against your skin. And so you just it sounds horrible. You know, and, and me, I'd personally just rather go sit in the sauna and read a magazine and, you know, hang out with all the, all the old guys in there and the Swedish bikini team. That's right. So anyways, though, hopefully that, that kind of helps to elucidate what, you know, true heat exposure is versus, like, passive heat training. And if you want all of the benefits of heat exposure that, you know, Rhonda Patrick and I talked about in that episode, you do have to get, you know, 40 degrees Celsius plus or 104 degrees Fahrenheit plus.

Isn't that the problem with the infrared saunas? They just don't get hot enough.

Yeah. So infrared saunas I've been experimenting with because I'm thinking about putting one in my house, one of these finish infrared saunas. And specifically I'm choosing finish not because it's sexy, but because the specific type of sauna they build in Finland for an infrared sauna has electromagnetic field control on it. So you're actually getting a much, much lower amount of EMF compared to a standard infrared sauna. These are the same type of infrared saunas you'd see a guy like Dr. Mercola selling on his website. The issue though is that the infrared saunas, although infrared heat penetrates a good 6 to 8 inches past your skin, assuming you're not wearing clothing, doesn't do a good job penetrating clothing. But, you know, assuming that you've got your skin exposed, you get kind of an inside out type of heating effect that increases the amount of sweat that you produce quite dramatically and has, you know, and I know this is an overused word, but it has a little bit more of a detox effect compared to a regular dry sauna. However, it doesn't get quite as hot as a dry sauna. But because I'm interested in putting one of these infrared saunas in my home, I actually experimented. What I did was I went on a pretty hard bike ride. I rode like a bat out of hell to my local sauna shop where they have one of these infrared saunas. So I walked in there all hot and bothered and I asked them if I could sit in their sauna for 30 minutes. And I said, called a couple hours beforehand, A, to make sure it was okay and B, so they could turn the thing on and heat it up. So I went in there and I parked my bike inside their shop and I walked into the back and I sat in this infrared sauna for 30 minutes. And I was really Hot. I actually noticed that it felt pretty similar to a dry sauna, but apparently they take longer to heat up and you got to be hot when you walk into it them. And because I. I felt pretty hot and uncomfortably hot in there after about a half hour. It's something that I would be comfortable using, assuming that, you know, you preheat the infrared and you go in there after you've already worked out. So you actually can get pretty hot in one of these infrared saunas.

I just want to know what was making you so hot and bothered on the bicycle, especially the bothered part. What were you doing?

The bothered was just riding through traffic. The hot was just because I was riding like a bat out of hell. Ben, this is Wade from South Florida. Got a quick question for you on colloidal minerals. A friend of mine told me to look up these vitamins, or more specifically, Dr. Joel Wallach, who promotes a bunch of different things. But I looked up, you know, what his, his deal is, and it seems like the main thing that, that he's pushing are colloidal minerals. Just wondering what your take is on these. Thanks.

Colloidal.

Colloidal.

Colloidal. It's fun to say.

I think those minerals just get brownie points just because they've got a cooler name colloidal than the other type of form of mineral, which is called ionic, because minerals are found in two different forms. So you've got this colloid form that's C O, L L O I D for those of you who like to imagine words in your head. And the colloidal form means that the minerals are suspended in what's called a stable form, meaning they're evenly distributed through whatever medium they're suspended in. So minerals that are in this colloid state are in these large organized patterns and they remain in suspension without settling out. They're just basically evenly dispersed in whatever liquid that they come in. And typically, you'll find colloidal minerals derived from clay are also called humus. It's related to the hummus that you'd find in soil. There's clay or humic deposits, and they're mined from these deposits. And manufacturers will basically say that the supplements that are made from these colloids, these mineral, like liquid mineral supplements made from colloidal minerals, are more balanced than other mineral supplements and are in a natural form that is easier for the body to use because they get them.

Out of whatever they're.

Yeah, they say the colloidal mineral forms are more easily dispersed in the body and, and that somehow improves their absorption. But in fact, because colloidal minerals are typically larger and, and actually unable to often pass through the membrane that lines your digestive tract, they can actually be more difficult to absorb because they don't diffuse as easily through a membrane. It's just, you know, simple physics when, when you have a, a large variance in mineral size and particle size, what you get is a, a, a, a solution or particles that more readily pass across a membrane. So when you look at something like ionic minerals, ionic minerals are pretty easily transported across the cell membranes of your digestive tract. And one of the reasons for that is because ionic minerals are actually charged, they actually have an electrical charge. And colloidal minerals, in order to have an electrical charge, need to be basically dismantled into smaller parts in order to cross the intestinal membrane. And because ionic minerals readily pass across an electrical gradient from an area of higher concentration, in this case your intestinal tract, to an area of lower concentration, in this case your cells, you technically get better absorption of an ionic mineral solution with a charge compared to a colloidal mineral solution. So just based on chemistry and the simplicity of the electrochemical grad gradient, ionic minerals are going to be more readily absorbed just because they're comprised of atoms or collections of atoms that retain an electric charge, whether that's a positive electric charge or a negative electric charge. So I would say that based on, on my understanding of, of the charge on minerals and also the size of these colloidal minerals, they would actually be less likely to get absorbed compared to how you'll find most minerals in, in the body, which would be in their ionic form, and how you would find minerals in, in most supplements, which would be like an ionic mineral form. So I'm really not convinced that colloidal minerals are, are worth the money that you'd spend for them, even though I would agree that that colloidal is a much cooler word than ionic.

Ionic's pretty cool. I, I'd be, I'd be happy with both.

Yeah. Yeah, so, and I actually don't know who this Dr. Joel Wallach is, and I haven't personally used colloidal minerals too much. So I'm basing everything that I've just said on, on science, not on personal use of colloidal versus ionic. I don't know, maybe if I use colloidal minerals, I would begin shattering world records and I would be in the Olympics. So there's that. Hey, Ben, this is Meg from Atlanta, Georgia, and I've just got a real simple question I'm wondering What you use to clean your bike bottles and straws with. This is something I've been wondering about for a while. I just soak mine in hot water with a little bit of bleach added and I rinse them real well. But I always wonder if that's the best thing for me. And anyway, just curious about what you do about that. So thanks for a great show. Love the podcast and keep up the good work. Thanks a bunch.

Bye, Meg.

Bleach.

What are you putting in your bottles, girl?

I don't know. She could do worse than bleach.

I just, I've never felt the need to clean my bottles that thoroughly.

Dishwashing liquid. That's pretty nasty stuff. Or I don't know what else. Bleach, Dishwashing liquid. I like vinegar. Yeah, vinegar, exactly. So there's a lot of different ways to clean a water bottle. And I mean, obviously if you leave a half finished drink in your water bottle, it's going to turn into a little incubator for bacteria and mold. And even though I talked about curing meat in my refrigerator, which basically involves growing mold on the meat, I would not recommend curing meat in your water bottle. It's not going to taste all that great. So what happens, especially if you're mixing like protein or electrolyte or carbohydrate drinks, you've got like sugars and proteins and heat and saliva and that's just basically going to be a breeding ground for bacteria and germs. You know, whether it's a standard sports water bottle or like one of these camelback style hydration bladders. And you can get pretty sick from this stuff. You're not, I don't know if you've ever taken a swig off of a water bottle that hasn't been cleaned properly, Brock, but it's, it's got a serious pucker factor to it.

I like to think that that's why I haven't been sick in so many years, is because I've exposed myself to such nasty crap all over the world.

Yeah, and bleach can work. The problem with bleach is it hangs around the water bottle. And drinking bleach is not all that great for the good bacteria in your intestinal tract. So could create a little bit of a kind of like a floral dysregulation type of condition if you're constantly sucking on bleach infused water. So there are some things that work pretty well. You mentioned vinegar, Brock, and just a basic white wine vinegar can work really well when you Rinse out your water bottle with some water. You can use a little bit of soap if you want, as long as you rinse the soap out pretty well, because the soap can be a little bit of a. A digestive irritant. But then all you do is you fill your water bottle with some vinegar and you can leave it for a few hours. You can even leave it overnight. And then you just rinse and dry the bottle and it's ready to rumble. And this will work in one of those hydration bladders that you'd use in like a Camelback or in a regular water bottle. Another thing that works really well is to actually mix in with the vinegar some baking soda, which removes the odor and can really help with the cleaning process as well. So you get a little bit of fizzing, but what you do is you mix the baking soda and some vinegar in there and you let that settle for about five minutes and then use a brush or a cloth to clean the inside of the bottle. And then you just basically rinse it out. And this works better. If you don't want to let it let the vinegar like sit for several hours or sit overnight. Adding the baking soda accelerates the process. It's an extra step, but it'll allow you to clean it a little more quickly if you don't want to soak.

Works well for cleaning the toilet too.

Yeah, exactly. It's perfect for the toilet. You could even probably dump the vinegar and the baking soda from the water bottle into your toilet. Oh, you're just kill two birds with one stone. That's right. It's all about efficiency here. Of course, I can't talk about any of this without, of course, highly suggesting that you choose a BPA free cycling bottle or water bottle. You know, like, like one of, one of the gold standards in the industry is like Specialized makes one called a purist. And there's a lot of companies that just white label the specialized purist bottle and sell that as their BPA free cycling bottle.

Is that what yours is? The Greenfield Fitness System?

The Greenfield Fitness Systems is not a specialized purist. It's a different brand, but it's. It's similar. I mean, it's almost the identical material. BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear grab it today.

Boom.

Boom. Anyways, though, I'll link in the show notes, though if you get a benfitness.com that place/316 where the show notes for this episode are, I'll put a link to some other BPA free water bottles. But Ultimately, I recommend either the vinegar or the vinegar plus the baking soda. So Brock may have his own little, little solutions that he uses as well up there in Canada. I don't know. Beer. Is that what you guys do up there?

I just put it in the shower, like while I'm showering and just sort of kick it around the bottom of the shower while cleaning myself.

Yeah, I was. I was talking to your girlfriend down in Austin, Brock, who said that she actually uses beer as shampoo.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I heard that conversation.

Yeah. Well, actually, I think the way that. That the story went was she was actually. She happened to be drinking beer in the shower because she didn't. And she had beer and she didn't want it to get too warm and she needed to finish it off and then kind of came to the realization that she didn't just need to be drinking it, she could also use it to clean her hair.

And that's apparently how we roll in our house.

Gives your hair a nice, shiny, clean appearance, so there's that as well. Use baking soda and vinegar for your water bottles. Use beer for your hair. Hi, Ben and Brock. I was wondering how you deal with discomfort, extreme pain, and what it takes to get through all of the training and the rules that you set for yourself. One way that I've read in popular media is distraction, and that would be music for me. I have heard that it helps with a lot of things in working out. I was wondering what your view is on this. You never seem to mention it in your training. Thanks a lot. And I do have a lot of pain and distraction helps a lot. But I was wondering if you have any secrets. Thank you. Bye. Well, Brock, we actually talked about this in a podcast. I don't know if you remember this a couple months ago, and there was a study that looked into this, and it turns out that swearing is actually the best method. You remember that?

I do remember that. Yeah.

They actually did a study.

Curse profusely the entire time you're working out. You can endure anything.

That's why people with Tourette's are such good runners. I don't think that's true. I think you made that up. No, I do have some things that I do specifically to deal with discomfort and pain, whether I'm in a race or whether I'm training. And I can share you with you some of my. Some of my little insider tips here if you would like.

Sure. Wait, before you start, did you. Have you watched the Netflix show the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt?

No.

Oh, it's a. It's a funny show, but she at one point talks about how she can do anything for 10 seconds.

So.

So she just counts to 10 repeatedly. And she can keep doing anything for. For as long as she needs to.

You know what? That's kind of funny because that is one of my tips. When I have a really hard workout, I will actually count to 100 over and over again.

Oh, yeah, I remember you did that in Ironman Kona two years ago.

Yeah, actually, Ironman, Hawaii. In the last three miles of Ironman Hawaii one year, I counted to 20 over and over again. And that's. That's. And I mean, the way that I figure, it's like, you know, what if I'm really in the throes of competition and it's do or die? I can think of worse things than just counting to 20 over and over again. And all you're doing is you're distracting your central nervous system. You're distracting what's called your central governor. And by keeping it distracted like that, you know, it's the reason that if you are, say, let's say you're doing. I don't know, I'll use an example of like an Olympic distance triathlon, which has a 10k at the end of it, right? I always tell myself during that 10k, which is about 6, what, 6.2 miles? Ish. 6.4 miles. All I tell myself is I have to run five miles. Because if you run five miles, it's like the last 1.2, 1.4 miles is just adrenaline, right? So you essentially tell yourself you got to run just a little bit less than you actually do have to run, and then you just run that last mile on pure adrenaline. But I do use counting quite a bit. I'll count to 100 over and over again. And typically, as I'm counting to 100, there's some kind of a pacing there, right? So I'm not just counting randomly. I'm either counting my steps or I'm counting my breath, right? So as I'm counting, it's, you know, for example, if I'm using like a rhythmic breathing of a. Of a two count in and a one count out. It's in two out, three in, two out, six in, two out, eight, you know, so as you're going up, it's, you know, you're counting with breaths. And counting strides also works pretty well also. So counting certainly does work. You know, that's kind of like this simple, stupid thing. Another thing that I do is I really moderate my use of music because it is true that music is a great motivator and they've done studies with this as well. Whether it's the RPM of music, whether it is the actual melody of music, enhancing alpha brainwave production, whether it's your favorite tune that really gets you amped up because of the lyrics or because of the melody. The problem with that is that if you constantly work out with music, you become a little bit, you, you become almost like used to and tolerant to the effects of music in the same way that, you know, if you drink coffee every day of the year without ever giving up coffee, you eventually become tolerant to the caffeine, right? And so that's why I always recommend that you take breaks every now and again during the year and switch to decaf. So with music, a lot of times if I'm working out, even if it's a hard workout, I'll use podcasts, audiobooks, things that aren't really like a driving hardcore source of motivation. And then I will moderate my use of music only for the very, very difficult sessions. Like for me, Saturday is a really hard workout day. I usually have a tough, tough workout on Saturday and that's the day where for me all load up, you know, for me it's techno, right? Like that's what really drives me is like you know, some, some driving house techno beats like I'll listen to, to Felix Cartel or I'll listen to TSTO or, or Planet Perfecto which is Paul Oakenfold or Hardwell on air or any of these. Well, either just like free 60 to 90 minute podcast techno beats that you can get off of it. But I don't use those every day. I'll only use those very, very rarely. So that when I do decide I'm going to pull out the music, it's incredibly motivating to me. So in addition to the counting I do that. Another thing that I'll do often for running workouts that are tough is I will find a way. I'll find something that pushes me more than I'd normally push myself. And in a case like that, a treadmill does work really well for, for cycling, a computrainer works really well. So of course the treadmill, if and, and they, they've done studies on this too that show that people who are forced to self pace a 10k will often run it more slowly than they will if a treadmill is used to pace them on that 10k because the treadmill pushes them just a little bit harder in terms of cadence and speed than they would push themselves. So for example, if I have to do a steady, hard 30 minute run and I need to do that at a tempo pace, right for me, which would be like 9 miles an hour and 1 1/2% incline on the treadmill. I will get on the treadmill and do it because I know I'll run a little bit slower than I would if. Or I'll run a little bit slower off the treadmill than I would on the treadmill. A CompuTrainer all that is, is it's a, it's an indoor bike trainer that allows you to set a consistent power, let's say 300 watts. And it will force you to stay at 300 watts no matter how slow you're pedaling. No matter how fast you're pedaling, it'll stay at that same power. So if you start pedaling really slower, your cadence drops off, things get really, really hard. But if you maintain your cadence and your RPM and your tempo, you can maintain that power a little bit more, more sustainably. And so any of these like indoor training devices or stationary training devices that force you to swim at a specific or to move at a specific speed work really well. Swimming, same thing, right? Like if you can get they, they sell for example, these things called swim metronomes. Like there's one called a Finis. A company called Finis makes one called the Tempo Trainer. You put it in your swim cap and it's a metronome. And so you're forced to beat, beat, beat, beep. Maintain a more consistent rhythmic stroke than you would if you weren't using that. That metronome also called a, a wetronome.

Wetronome.

Anyways though, have you seen those things.

At the, I was at the Olympic Training center in Victoria watching some of the, the Olympic swimmers and they had this crazy contraption that was like a, like a, a winch on one side of the, one side of the pool and they hook the, hook it up to the back. Like they basically be in a harness and they'd put this hook on the back and it would drag them across the pool. So basically you had to, they had to swim at a certain speed otherwise they just sort of get dragged across the pool.

Yeah, those work really well. Yeah, those work really. That's more for like overspeed training when you want to just get yourself. The problem is that that's not practical for a lot of people, you know, versus like putting a little metronome inside your swim cap app. The whole like winch Band thing is a little bit more tricky to. For the average person who's whatever, going for a lap swim at 7 o' clock in the morning to hook up and do. But that, yeah, that's certainly, certainly a way to push yourself is the winch with the bands anyways though now hopefully that makes sense, right? Like treadmill and or bike trainer or some kind of a pacing device for swim. Another thing that I think kind of flies under the radar is just daily stress resilience. So many people, they can't handle a cold shower or can't handle 20 or 30 minutes in the sauna or can't even handle like you know, for example, doing, doing yoga or doing stretches on just like a hard floor or a driveway without like a mat. Right. So there's all these little things that you can do during the day in terms of little things that build stress resilience and make you okay with discomfort. And I think that just going outside the box, maybe keeping your house a little bit cooler than you would normally be inclined to keep it. And maybe if you're going to stretch or do yoga, do it on a hardwood floor out in your driveway. But try doing it without a mat or it's just you and your body weight. Or try going without shoes and just barefoot for the day so you don't have the cushioning of a shoe. Or try my little trick of only sitting to eat eat. Right. So you go the whole day, you gotta stand, kneel, lunge, line your stomach, line your back, whatever. But you only allow yourself to actually sit when you're eating breakfast or lunch or dinner. These little things add up when it comes to little daily hormetic stressors that make you, you know, there's a book that, that's called Antifragile. Right. And one of the ideas behind the book is you just increase stress resilience with these little things that you expose yourself to each day. So I think that that's certainly something that, that helps me out a little bit as well. So that's, that's another one that I'd recommend for, for pain tolerance.

I, I like that one.

That's good. Yeah. A few others one would be, and I learned this from Commander Mark Devine when I went through the, the SEAL fit training down in Encinitas. And that is prior to your hard workout or prior to you know, a race or a hard effort rather than just like warming up and launching in Visualize. And what I'll do now is I'll sit cross legged and I'll do box breathing for anywhere from two to five minutes. So the box breathing, that's just the four count in, four count hold, four count out, four count hold. But you're not just trying to think of a mantra or block thoughts from coming in and out of your head as you're doing the box breathing. Instead, you're actually going through the workout in your head. Right. So let's say it's a run where you're going to go up a really steep hill, you know, across a prairie, down a hill, through the forest, back around and back home. And you know, it's supposed to be a really hard run that you're going to be running at tempo pace the whole time you're doing your box breathing, you're visualizing yourself going through that whole thing. Running like the wind, smile on your face, running smooth, running strong. You know, same could be said for a hard weight training session. So it accomplishes two things. First of all, it kind of, kind of primes your mind for the workout and allows you to mentally rehearse the workout before it happens, but it also allows you to visualize yourself being a little bit more comfortable during that actual workout. And I know it sounds woo woo, but it actually works pretty well. So I'm a big fan of the box breathing and, and usually I'll do something like that for a run or like a complex or difficult weight training workout.

So I don't think that sounds woo woo at all. That's exactly the kind of stuff that Dr. Jeff, Jeff Spencer talks about all the time. Yeah, he, he worked with the, all the Tour de France teams like back in the day with Lance and stuff. That's, that's just visualization is very, very well established as a, as a technique. And that's just another extension of that.

Yeah, absolutely. So, so that's called the box breathing. And there are even apps like the, the Pranayama app that's P R A N A Yama Pranayama app works pretty well for that. Two other things I'd recommend, and these are a little bit out there, but I think they were one interestingly is this whole concept of electrostimulation and the reason for that, you know, the whole.

Cattle produce somewhere inappropriate.

Yeah. Is that when you use electrostimulation, you're essentially hooking yourself up to an external brain that causes your muscles to contract and often causes your muscles to contract more forcefully than you would normally recruit them them. And you know, probably the.

I think you need to explain what do you mean by hooking it up to an external brain.

Okay, so an electrostim device comes with a control panel that allows you to choose a specific frequency and intensity of the muscle recruitment, which is more or less a shock. Right? That's all it is. And you, you place the electrodes over, let's say your, your, your quads and then you put it on and Iraq Cruise recruits a ton of muscle fibers and often recruits them more violently and forcefully than you would recruit them yourselves. Especially if you're using one of these units like a, like a compact or even like, you know, the, the really, the gold standard is it's like an eight thousand to ten thousand dollar unit versus a Compex, which is closer to a thousand dollars. But this more expensive one is called an ARP wave. Right. And, and these things, you know, I actually, you know, was talking about Instagram earlier. I've also got an Instagram video up recently of me down at Paleo FX doing one of these ARP wave sessions on my biceps. And it's incredibly uncomfortable and I would even say painful to be stimulated to that extent. But you learn how to focus and distract your mind from the discomfort and the pain and eventually by the time you finish, you've just got this big rush of endorphins and you've worked your muscles much harder than you would normally be able to work them if you were just contracting them yourselves all on your own without like a, some kind of a device controlling you. So it's kind of in the same way that like a treadmill would push you to run for a longer period of time at a consistently faster pace than you would normally run yourself. Same thing with an electrostim unit. It's just grabbing muscles more consistently and forcefully than you might with your own brain can do yourself. So I actually am a fan of throwing in a little bit of electrostimulation training here and there and I think that's a great way to increase pain tolerance and threshold as well. And then the last thing, and I know a lot of people hear me joke about this, but it actually does work. The use of psychoactive substances, particularly the thc, if, if it, if it's within the bounds of legality where you're at, using like a, like about 5 to 10 milligrams of THC allows you to focus and almost gives you a little bit of like tunnel vision during a workout. But I've found that for, for especially like longer cardiovascular or endurance based workouts where you need that combination of focus and pain tolerance and chronic repetitive motion and Pounding. And also something that's not super compl. Because I do find that, that with the use of something like thc, sometimes your. Your. Your motor coordination can slip a little bit. Not, not a lot. Not in like a funny way, like, you know, like a Muppet flailing around as you're exercising, but, you know, more like, you know, if you were to ask me to. To pull off like a heavy, dead heavy squat, some muscle ups, and maybe like a pistol single leg squat, I'd probably be able to do those better without the influence of something like thc. But for a long focus, for which you just need a slight increase in pain tolerance, I've actually found that to be a useful approach. And I mean, you know, taken to the extreme, I've actually finished up a workout after about 10 milligrams of THC and had a tweaked calf that I didn't even notice the calf was injured until about a couple hours later after the THC had worn off. So, I mean, you got to be careful with this. Sometimes it can allow you to push through almost too much. But even, even a psychoactive substance like that, that can actually help. And I would say that that would fall within the bounds of something that I would recommend and that I have used myself for increasing pain tolerance during a long, tough workout. So that'd be another one. And of course, you know, adhere to USADA and WADA and NCAA regulations, know that it's illegal, you know, under all those three governing bodies, but it's certainly something you could use, for example, during training, so. Hi, Ben and Brock, it's Sol from sunny Santa Fe. I just saw an ad for this new $200 body fat composition gadget, Sculpt, and I'm wondering if you have any experience with it. Is it really as good as their marketing material makes it sound? Can you really easily figure out your body composition? It uses this bioelectrical impedance, but apparently which. Which is what is used in those cheap body fat scales, but apparently this approach that they're using is so much better. Anyway, I'll shut up now and listen to what you have to say about this. Thanks very much. Love your show. Bye.

Have you ever seen the Sculpt gadget?

You know, I was actually just speaking at a conference in Napa Valley, and they gave away. I think Sculpt was one of their sponsors. So they gave away an. A number of these devices, and I actually thought that it was just, well, you know, like the, the body fat scale that you stand on or the Handheld device that you hold at the gym. There's a BIA like bio bioelectrical impedance. Right. And that's certainly something that, you know, has been around for a long time. And you know, the, the BIA is well, well, it's based off of the speed with which an electrical signal will travel through the body. So bioelectrical impedance analysis, essentially, if you're standing on a scale that tells you how fat you are, it applies a current to one foot, it measures the voltage at the opposite fingertip and calculates the impedance of your entire body to that electrical signal. And because that signal will bounce at different velocities off bone versus fat versus muscle, what happens is that scale has a built in equation in it that's been validated. It's called a BIA to body composition equation. And so it's estimating your fat mass and your fat free mass based on an equation that's been validated against other methods of body fat measurement, specifically hydrostatic weighing or underwater weighing, and then also dexa, which is traditionally something you'd use to measure your bone density, but also something that can be used to, you know, as a full body scan to measure your body fat and specifically your body fat distribution. So bioelectrical impedance is something that's been around for a long time. It's basically whole body impedance Impedance, right. Whether you're standing on the scale or whether you're holding a bioelectrical impedance device, it's measuring from, from your hands through your whole body, or from your foot through your whole body, coming back in, feeding into the equation, and giving you a ballpark estimate of your body fat percentage. And when you look at bioelectrical impedance, it's somewhat accurate if you're dehydrated, over hydrated, if you're very skinny, if you're very overweight, if you're measuring at a different time of day each day, which would mean you're in a different state of hydration, it's not super accurate. But if you're measuring in the same state at the same time of day, in the same state of hydration, and you're not obese, and you're also not excessively skinny, you can get a decent number from bioelectrical impedance analysis. But this sculpt, contrary to what I think a lot of people think, is not actually bioelectrical impedance analysis, it's actually something called electrical impedance myography, or eim, and it's actually Pretty straightforward. You use this device, and it applies an alternating electrical current across your skin, and it measures the resulting voltage change in a specific area of the body. So rather than measuring your whole body, you're measuring specific areas of the body. And this electrical impedance myography was originally used and designed, and this sculpt device could be used for this as well, to measure the quality of the actual muscle. That's the M in EIM stands for myography, which actually means description of the muscles. That's what it means. So what this technology has been used for in the past has been to evaluate the strength of patients with neuromuscular disorders. Because what happens is the current will flow differently through a muscle that has, like, dense quality strong fibers versus, like, weak fibers or fibers that have some kind of a neuromuscular disease or like a. Like a. A muscle wasting in them. So that's the idea behind this, this eim. But it turns out that it can be used because it's simply measuring impedance in a specific area of the body. It can be used to actually approximate body fat as well. So, you know, think of it this way. If you think of, say, like your leg is a bunch of cells, charge is flowing around the cells or through the cells. And what happens is the interior of the cell conducts a charge, but the bilayer of the cell membrane, this fatty layer of the cell membrane, doesn't really conduct a charge. It acts as a capacitor. Right. It kind of like, like, stores a charge. And so what's happening is when you're using electrical impedance biography, you're measuring how fast an electrical current will travel through that extracellular path. So ultimately, I know it sounds a little bit complex, but what this sculpt is promising to do is measure the specific quality of the muscle and then also the body fat fat in one small localized area of the body. The. The. The problem is that unlike bioelectrical impedance, because this is so new, it hasn't been validated against, like, a DEXA scan. It hasn't been validated against kind of the gold standard of body fat measurement, which would be underwater weighing. And so I'd say that even though it looks promising, I can't speak to the accuracy of it at all. Even though it does look cool and probably similar to bioliptical impedance. It's something that you could use as long as you used it in the same state of hydration every day and you followed the rules and you used it. I think the way that it works is you Measure specific areas of your body, like your legs, your arms, whatever, and kind of like skin calipers. You measure three different areas or seven different areas and you come up with an approximate body fat. Same thing with something like this. If you really truly want to get the most accurate body fat measurement, whatever you would use underwater weighing or you'd use what's called a DEXA scan. If you want to get an approximation, you would use something like this bioelectrical impedance or something like this sculpt device. Another one would be, there's this one called a BOD pod which is measuring how much air your body displaces when you sit inside a chamber. And then, then that measures your body density and then you estimate your body fat. But ultimately, you know, I, I would say that, you know, unless you're, you're planning on, you know, competing as like a bodybuilder and you're trying to figure out the difference between like whatever, 5% body fat and 4% body fat, something like this is going to give you, you know, a ballpark, just like a Fitbit, right? We will give, we'll give you a ballpark of calories. Yeah, it's not going to be incredibly accurate, but it'll at least give you an approximation. So that's what this sculpt device is. It's not bioelectrical impedance, it's something new. What I think is cool is it could potentially tell you the quality of the actual muscle, which could be interesting if you're say out of shape and starting to get into lifting weights and you want to see how your muscles are responding. But ultimately could be interesting. Let's put an Amazon link to this in the show notes so we can make money when everybody rushes out to buy their skull. Helped.

So do you actually have one?

I don't have one. You know, I, I believe I, I want to say somebody offered to send me one at some because I get offers for, to get these gadgets all the time and frankly I don't, I don't really measure body fat that often. I don't see it being something that I would personally use. You know, I, I just, it's not really a metric. I pay much attention to body fat. I pay more attention to, to performance, to sleep, to heart rate variability. Those are some of the things. Qualitatively I pay attention to performance. Quantitatively I measure my heart rate variability every morning and I don't really worry too much about body fat just because I'm a skinny ass guy.

Your Ass is pretty.

So, yeah, I guess speaking of being a skinny ass guy, we might as well jump into this week's review. What do you think?

Sure.

All right, well, here's the way it works. If you're listening in, if you leave a review, if you go to itunes and you leave this show a review, all the strange things that we fill your head with, if that makes you happy and you want to actually give us stars, go to itunes, leave us a review. And if you hear your review read on the show, then just email gearreenfieldfitness systems.com gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com Let us know that we read your review on the show, give us your address and your T shirt size and we'll send you a BPA free water bottle that you can clean with vinegar and baking soda or bleach, depending on your fancy. We'll send you a really cool tech T shirt. Not one of these big cotton tents, but natural really cool, tight fitting T shirt that makes your pecs look awesome. And then we'll send you a beanie, a nice beanie that you can either sleep in or give to a homeless person. But either way we have.

I got all excited at Paleo fx. I saw somebody wearing a BG fitness T shirt and I was like, oh, cool. And then I found out that he actually works for you.

Ah, yes. Those are some of the people you'll see wearing a T shirt are people who work for him. Nobody else will wear those things in public. So anyways though, we have a review this week from Swopies.

Swap eyes.

Swap eyes on itunes. And Brock, what Swap eyes have to say?

Well, the title is awaken your mind and body with these podcasts.

And that almost sounds like it should be read with a movie announcer's voice.

Awaken your mind and body with these podcasts.

Or Sean Connery, awaken your mind and body with each podcast. Go ahead.

I thought I knew a good amount about health and physical fitness information until I tuned into Ben and got blown away.

Trebek.

I basically hit the empty empty the trash icon on my brain desktop. Is that good or am I?

No, it's good. It's. It's fantastic. It's a little bit. It's a little bane, but it works.

And started just rewiring my shelf to Ben's programs and info. Listen to these and transform yourself today, not tomorrow. Okay, stop reading and download. I don't know what that turned into at the end.

I'm not quite sure who Sean Connery is. Superior Brock.

Well, we'll have to get Ms. Moneypenny in here to find out.

Trebek I'll take anal bum cover passwords for 200. All right, we should probably end before we digress into worse accents than Sean Connery, but in the meantime, that's just ridiculousness. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 2No3 316 for the show notes. Stay tuned this weekend for something else, something awesome, and visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for all your health and fitness advice. Goodbye. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.comfor even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. It.