The Truth About "Starvation Mode", Does Ketosis Work For Crossfit, Measuring HRV During Exercise & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, the truth about starvation Mode, Ketosis and CrossFit. Raw milk versus whey protein measuring HRV during exercise, should you eat before bed, and much 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 Ironman triathlete or you just to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Dude, two big birthdays within 24 hours.

Two.

Quite a. Quite a day.

Well, it was my wife's birthday last night. Who. Who else's birthday?

It's Dominion Day. It's Canada's birthday. Well, birthday as being a. A confederation.

I'll sing, I'll sing. I'll sing you the Canadian national anthem. Here it goes.

Okay. You'll make me cry. That's about how well I do the American national anthem too. The Star Spangled Banner, Coconut hockey. Hey, actually, here's a. I'll just really quickly. A little gift for all of the Canadians out there. If they're listening today.

Do it. Hey, good day. Welcome to the Great White north. I'm Bob McKenzie. This is my brother Doug.

Do you remember Bob and Doug McKenzie? Did you ever. Did you guys get them down across the border?

Like, vaguely.

That was the theme song to their television show, the Great White North.

Oh, well, there you have it. You just. You just endeared all of our Canadian listeners.

Yeah, that's more Canadian than the Canadian national anthem, I'd. I'd venture to say, and made the.

Rest of the planet cringe.

Yeah, well, now they hate Canada.

On, on a more pleasant note, we, the boys and I made Jessa dinner last night. And I think I've mentioned this before on a few episodes how we're kind of getting a lot more into wild edibles and finding wild edibles, hunting for them, identifying them, adding them to our vernacular, learning about their medicinal properties, their edible properties, etc. So, um, we made mom a nice. Well, actually, we. We got fresh lobster and we made lobster with a garlic butter sauce. But then everything else was just picked from the land. So we picked everything from wild pineapple to miner's leaf lettuce to pretty much just like, you know, I sent my boys out for like two hours, and they were just out in the fields finding all the edibles, and we dressed them with olive oil and lemon, sea salt, black pepper, and it was kind of cool. And actually, I used all the leftovers in my smoothie this morning. So we're almost to the point where we don't have to step foot into the produce aisle of the grocery store. And this is a tip for you parents out there who may have access to land or a farm or whatever. I know it's a small section of our listeners, but one thing that we're doing now on a weekly basis is the kids. From breakfast up through dinner or not up through dinner, up to dinner. Once a week we're implementing an only eat outside day, which means they can't eat from the refrigerator, from the kitchen, anything. They have to either grab eggs from the chickens or else plants from outside that they find that they can eat and they can prepare them however they want. But the rule is they have to, they have to pick drinks from the wild to sustain their bodies during the day.

I like it. It's so old timey.

I love it.

I feel like we're back on Little.

House on the Prairie and I have yet to have one of my boys munch into a bunch of poison ivy or poison oak. So gotten lucky so far.

Just be ready.

We'll see how long it's going to happen one day. That's right.

So earlier this week@twitter.com BenGreenfield you tweeted out something that I clicked. The link, was all excited, just going to dig into it. It was 147 fricking pages long.

Speaking of sending my boys out to live off the land for the day, this particular tweet was actually about starvation mode. Really the best article I've come across in a really long time when it comes to laying out everything that goes on inside your body when it comes to this idea of starvation mode. And we'll link to this same article in the shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 3:22 but basically it goes into all the different studies that have been done out there on what happens to your body when you lose weight, what happens to the body in response to energy restriction. Because there is this idea out there that when you restrict energy that it can do everything from whatever damage your thyroid to lower your metabolism. And they found some very interesting things and obviously 100, whatever, 40 pages or so, I'm not going to go over the whole thing in the podcast, but a go read it. You know, if you want to wrap your head around this stuff. But some of the highlights, for example, there are specific things that happen as a result of energy restriction and this would primarily be related to studies in which folks went on low calorie diets without any refeeds. Right. Without a nightly refeed or without perhaps maybe a weekend day where you're eating calories ad libitum, et cetera. So in most cases, we're talking about three to four plus solid weeks of energy restriction. So what did they find? First of all, they found that humans naturally downregulate physical activity during periods of energy restriction, meaning that not only does your metabolism naturally lower through a downregulation of thyroid hormone production, but you also move less. Whether that's consciously or subconsciously, when you are on a diet, you move less, you exercise less. And they found this to be true across a variety of studies, which was really interesting when you consider that, you know, a decrease in physical activity can affect your fitness levels. And so that was interesting, but then getting a little bit more nerdy, folks want to strap on their propeller hats. Another thing that energy restriction did was it induced a decrease in a specific component of adipose tissue or fat tissue called adipose Eldo C. And what eldo C does is it reduces your glycolytic capacity, which means that it reduces your capacity to be able to break down muscle glycogen and liver glycogen, or I'm sorry, it increases your capacity to be able to break down muscle glycogen and liver glycogen so that you get more glucose into your bloodstream to rely upon for energy when you are in a state of energy restriction. But for athletes or for people who are exercising a lot, this actually is a catch 22 because it means that you have reduced ability to store glycogen, you break down glycogen more readily. And so it's one of those things where once again, if you're engaged in long term energy restriction and calorie restriction without doing refeeds, you are inhibiting your ability to, to store away glycogen in times of need. So that was one, one kind of interesting takeaway.

So would that be the same reason why people like if you put a diabetic on basically on a long fast, like a 72 hour fast, is that the same, Would that be the same mechanism?

Do you mean that, that for a, for someone who's a diabetic to fast would be a bad thing or.

No, it'd be a good thing because they're actually increasing their ability to break down the glycogen rather than just storing it away?

Not necessarily. Because in a diabetic the frequent surges in blood Glucose that would come with a, an energy restricted diet. And this, this breakdown of glycogen would not necessarily be a good thing versus restricting carbohydrates, but not necessarily restricting calories. Meaning for a diabetic it would be better to just have fatty acids to rely upon for energy by restricting sugar and starch intake versus going on a, on a very, very low calorie diet. So, okay, yeah. Another, another interesting takeaway was related to leptin. And what they found was a significant decrease in the hormone leptin in response to energy restriction. And leptin is one of the hormones that assists with our ability to be able to control our appetite. And so long term energy restriction, long term diet can actually decrease your ability to be able to control your appetite. And the other thing that is associated with a decrease in leptin is a decrease in sympathetic nervous system activity in fight or flight nervous system activity, which we would think would be a good thing. But again, in athletes, exercise enthusiasts, et cetera, that long term energy restriction and the complete down regulation of your ability to kind of like go hard when you want to go hard could kind of be a catch 22. So the article goes on and on, but ultimately for me, the biggest takeaway point was that it's better to consistently push yourself away from the table when you're about 80% full and to have one meal if you're an athlete or someone who exercises quite a bit, one meal a day where you're eating calories ad libitum, such as your evening meal. And even if you're not an athlete and you're just kind of living a quote unquote normal life and you're not doing like CrossFit wads or triathlon training or something like that, to have at least one day during the week where you are giving your body a little bit of a feast in response to the fast, if you will. So ultimately I've only skimmed the surface of the actual article itself and I recommend you go read it if you want to dig into starvation mode. But the takeaway point is that you, your body definitely responds biologically to calorie restriction and long term calorie restriction appears to have more downsides than upsides.

So yeah, that seems logical now that we just fast is okay, but a long term starvation, you will die.

You will die. Now that we've just thrown everybody off their diet bandwagon, let's turn to something more pleasant.

Okay.

Tea. Tea. They actually did a recent study.

Delightful.

Oh yes, delightful. Recent study on tea. And Specifically, what method of tea preparation results in the greatest amount of benefits from said tea when it comes to you being able to get access to all of the antioxidants and the tannins and the flavanols and the polyphenols and all that good stuff that's in tea. And it was really interesting because what they found was that most teas actually respond best to what's called cold extraction. And so with cold extraction, what they actually did was they put the tea in cold water and they let it steep in cold water for about two hours with the stirring about every 30 minutes or so. And I'm not necessarily convinced that the stirring is necessary versus kind of like making your tea in cold water, like steeping it in cold water, then just like putting it in the fridge and letting it sit for a while. But ultimately, compared to our traditional method of making tea, which is boiling tea and you know, pouring the boiling water over the tea once the teapot is whistling or the kettle is whistling, it turns out that cold water extraction is actually better when it comes to tea.

And when you say cold, like cold, cold or room temperature.

Yeah, we're talking, well, we're talking about room temperature and then putting it into preferably. And this would especially be the case for like a matcha or a green tea, very cold water. And this is, you know, in my, in my recent quarterly, I mailed out matcha tea or green tea that was part of the, the Ben Greenfield Fitness quarterly that we, that we mail out on a quarterly basis. Which is why it's a good name. Quarterly. Great Quarterly box. Yes, quarterly. Delivered our quarterly that we ship out yearly. No, but, but the, the matcha or the green tea, you'll note that the instructions that came along with it indicated that it is best prepar cold temperature. So for example, when you're, when you're using like a matcha powder, you get very, very cold water, even water that you've kept in the freezer for like 30 minutes before preparing the tea. And you steep the tea in that. And then you can either use a latte frother if you want to speed up the process, or you can simply shake it up really well, put in the refrigerator and let it sit for up to two hours, taking about every 30 minutes or so to shake it again. And it turns out that if you really want to get the most benefits out of your tea, the, this cold extraction method is superior. And I'll link to this article. The title of the article is Evaluation of Hot and Cold Extraction of bioactive compounds in teas. And it appeared in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology.

Wow. With a title like that, I can understand why you needed to rip into it.

Yeah, so. So check that out if you are. If you're a tea drinker. So now that all of our Canadian listeners and our English listeners are happy, let's talk about drinking something else, shall we?

All right.

Alcohol. Sweet. This was interesting. I thought at least it was. And I have no clue who thinks up these studies, but this was in a journal of physiology and they found that melatonin administration reduces the ethanol induced increase in duodenal mucosal permeability and motility in rats. In non geek speak, what that basically mean is that alcohol can eff up your gut. And it can. And most of us are somewhat familiar with that post drinking morning experience of kind of like a little bit of bloating gas, stomach upsets, maybe decommissioning a few bathrooms. And it is true that ethanol, alcohol, et cetera, and the more that you drink of it can, can affect gut permeability and can cause gut damage. But what they did in these rats was. And I. I love Brock, how you. You sound almost guiltily silent in response to that.

I. The only thing I was going to add to the conversation was a really disgusting term that I. I've heard that referred to as. And I decided I would not say it on the podcast.

Oh, well, go ahead and say it and we'll boing, boing it out.

Well, it's just called bud mud.

Ah, that we don't have to boing boing that out. That's.

No, actually, no. It's just gross.

Mud. Mud. I like it. Anyways though, can we introduce a boing, boing sound effect here just because I was so disgusting. Yeah. All right, now that we're back to the rats. So what they did with the rats was they basically got them really, really messed up on alcohol. They gave them a bunch of ethanol, but then what they did was they gave some rats melatonin because melatonin has been actually been shown to have a positive effect on specifically what's called your duodenal barrier, which is a part of your small intestine. So it helps with intestinal barrier function and it can also have a little bit of a gut healing effect. And what they found was that administration of melatonin actually reduced some of the damaging effects of alcohol. So it turns out that if you go out on a bender, it may behoove you to keep a couple melatonin capsules on your bedside at night and take some melatonin after you finish drinking to not only help you with sleep and some of the sleep disruption that can occur with alcohol consumption, but also with some of the gut damage.

Now here's a question. Does it have to be taken orally or could you use a melatonin patch.

Or a suppository perhaps? You know that that is a great question because a melatonin patch is something that I've endorsed before as a good way to get like a slow time release of melatonin and not get that wake up at like 3 or 4am that you can get from melatonin when the melatonin wears off. And you know what, they gave it orally to the rats. They administered the melatonin in the tap water. And I would suspect that for this specific goal of melatonin you would probably need an OR administration. But frankly, one of the things that you can do is just keep another dose of melatonin next to your bedside when the melatonin wears off and you wake up at 3am take a little bit more and fall back asleep. So there's always that sneaky listener. Q and A.

Hey, Ben, this is Anthony, longtime fan of the show. I met you through the SILFIT folks and then we hung out a little bit at Neil's event not long ago. And my question today is about CrossFit and ketosis, cyclical ketosis and just fueling for that type of strategy. I know you've talked a ton about ketosis and endurance training and yeah, and I totally get how it's extremely effective, particularly like in that, you know, 60 to 70% capacity kind of exertion level. But I also know that seems like, like with a higher intensity, explosive movements in a really short period of time, like CrossFit requires that it's. You generally seems that this seems that you need more carbohydrates and I know you're skewing a little bit more, a little bit less away from extreme endurance and a little bit more in that direction in terms of your own training, even your own diet. So yeah, man, I just, I've been doing CrossFit here. I made a lot of progress and I just found doing strict ketosis is pretty hard. Doesn't seem to be totally optimum for that, for that kind of workout. And I know a lot of, there's a lot of disagreements in the community in terms of fueling and how much carbs you should have and that kind of, you know, in that overall thing. So, yeah, that's my question. Great job with the podcast, blogs, products. Everything you do is awesome, man. Love it. Thanks, man.

For all of you listening at home, you just missed me sniffing Ben taking a big drink and then clearing his throat. We're like, while Anthony was asking his question so politely, we were being disgusting in the background.

That's right.

Yes.

If, if we ever record this podcast live, people are gonna get completely grossed out. Anyways, though. Anyways, this question on ketosis is interesting because they did a study last year in the International Society of Sports Nutrition Journal where they took a bunch of high intensity athletes. In this case, they took elite gymnasts and they put them on a ketogenic diet that primarily comprised of green vegetables, olive oil, fish meat, virtually no carbohydrates. Actually a more strict ketogenic diet than the type of diet that I personally would tend to recommend for athletes. What they found in this situation was that there was no deleterious effect upon performance in these elite gymnasts. And they've observed similar effects on cyclists, for example, who have been put on a high fat ketogenic diet. And especially for example, in the recent Faster study by Jeff Volek, they have found no deleterious effect in people running on a treadmill in terms of VO2 max. Now, the problem is that it typically takes a long amount of adaptation in order for you to be able to perform high intensity exercise on a high fat or a ketogenic or a carbohydrate restricted diet. Now, before I jump into what the implications of that are, please understand I'm making the assumption here that you are familiar with what a key ketogenic diet is. If you're not, this is not the the podcast for you to discover that. I'm not going to go back and explain everything about ketosis and what a ketogenic diet is, because we have plenty of episodes about that in the past. We have my podcast with Jimmy Moore about his Keto Clarity book. We have the guest podcast that Brock and I hosted on Jimmy's Living La Vie to Low Carb show, in which Brock and I actually delve a lot into this topic of exercise and ketosis. We have the article that I wrote called how to Become a Fat Burning Machine, Part one, Part two, in which I go into my own participation in Jeff Volek's Faster study. And then we even have the Keto Meal Plans for Athletes book that I helped to create and that is available over at Greenfield Fitness System. So I'll link to all that in the show Notes. But ultimately the idea here is that if you want to use ketosis for CrossFit or you want to use ketosis for high intensity and explosive workouts, there are some hoops that you need to jump through that most people don't take the time to jump through. And, and so ketosis tends to get a bad rap in the high intensity or the power or the strength or the explosive or the CrossFit community in many cases. So a few things to bear in mind. If you are going to perform at high intensities and use a high fat or ketogenic diet to do it first, it will take you, yes, as you've probably heard before, about two weeks after you switch from a, any other diet onto a low carb or ketogenic diet before you begin to not feel crappy. Crappy, yes.

And they call that the keto flu.

During that initial two week period of time, I don't recommend you do any wads at all, period. Yoga, sauna, cold thermogenesis, easy walks, et cetera, that's all fine. CrossFit, WADS, High Intensity Exercise training, just don't do it. You're literally just going to feel horrible and you're probably going to get sick and you're going to sacrifice biomechanics and there's, you don't have any business doing deadlifts for time or high rep snatch sets when you are feeling as crappy as you're going to feel for those first two weeks.

Yeah, you'll get sick or worse yet, injured. Yes.

So that is number one. Number two is that in terms of length of adaptation, I have found that it takes six months before you really start to be able to rock workouts and think about competing on a, on a ketogenic high fat diet. It takes about a year before you really get super comfortable. And it took me two years of eating like lower carbohydrate, higher fat intake before I began to get to the point where I could just like, you know, easily go for, for 12 hours during the day without eating or go out on a fasted workout and be fine for hours and hours on end. So understand that for you to build the mitochondrial density that's necessary for you to be able to burn enough fat to produce high amounts of ATP even at moderate to high intensities. We're talking about a process that just like musculoskeletal training takes patience and a great deal of time. Okay, so jumping from diet to diet is not the way to do this. So that's one Thing to bear in mind is the length of adaptation. Another thing to bear in mind, I.

Just to interject, I liked it when you were Talking to Chris McDougall a few weeks ago when you had him on the podcast and, and he was talking about how people are in such a fricking hurry all the time. Like when it comes to fat adaptation or trans transferring to a barefoot or minimalist running strategy. And everybody's like, oh, it's going to take me six months. Well, screw that.

Yeah, exactly. So it takes time.

What is your hurry? This is. It takes time, but it's awesome in the end.

Next, ignore most of the recommendations that are going to come at you from the, the regular ketosis people. And what I mean by that is a lot of the recommendations for ketosis, ketosis, ketosis and ketogenic diets are trickle down information from a medical population or sedentary population who is not, who, who are not using ketosis for exercise, per se. And what I mean by that is you'll generally see talk about needing 20 to 40 grams of carbohydrates per day to stay in ketosis and something like, let's say Terry Wahl, you know, and Terry Wahl's book is great, like the Wahls protocol. But, but, you know, Terry Wahls is using ketosis to heal Ms. She's not using ketosis for something like, you know, hacking endurance or, you know, jacking up ketones for liver and diaphragm and heart and brain for something like an intense wad. And what I have found is that for athletes, typically on, on an average training day, you need about 75 to 100 grams of carbohydrates, and on a hard training day, 100 to 200 grams of carbohydrates. And in an athlete who is exercising quite a bit and who is also eating in addition to those carbohydrates, higher amounts of fat rather than higher amounts of protein, ketosis is still completely doable in that situation.

Yeah, okay. You're not going to get kicked out of ketosis just by having those extra carbs because they're going to other places.

And even if you do, because you're an athlete who is highly insulin sensitive, you're only out of ketosis for one to two hours before you're back in it. And you'll find that if you test breath testing, blood testing, whatever, the next thing to bear in mind for something like ketosis is that you'll often hear that you simply cannot create enough glucose or cannot have enough glucose during High intensity exercise to be able to support glycolysis or rapid generation of ATP.

Yeah, this is the thing that people bring up the most when they complain about this.

There are two things to bear in mind for this. First of all, you a cycle in your body called the Cori cycle, which can take lactic acid generated during, during muscular contraction and can shuttle that lactic acid back up to the liver where it is converted into glucose, shuttled back down into skeletal muscle and burnt as energy. And if you train that process by engaging in high intensity exercise while in a carb restricted state, right, so your body is using endogenously produced glucose rather than exogenous sources of gluc glucose, you can actually train yourself to upregulate the CORI cycle. And so what, what that means is that you're basically producing your own glucose when you combine that with a little bit of extra creatine. And I'm a fan of taking about 5 grams of creatine a day so that you are keeping your creatine levels elevated for the, for the phosphogenic component of intense exercise that lasts up to 30 seconds. That 1, 2 combo is enough for you to sustain like the highly glycolytic efforts that lasts anywhere from 10 seconds up to two minutes. So you simply have to train that cycle and you have to train with high intensity interval training in a carb restricted state to upregulate that cycle. Okay, so that's the next thing to bear in mind and then related to that is the idea that when I'm talking about high intensity interval training and when I'm talking about exercising at you know, intensities that, that cause at least a lactic acid release, if not higher, you know, if not approaching like your VO2 max. Understand that even at those intensities, those very, very high intensities, it's going to take at least an hour and closer to an hour and a half before glycogen depletion begins to set in. Right before you begin to need maybe a slow bleed of starch from something like you can super starch or, or even, you know, the use of bars or extra fuels, etc. I, I've rarely found, you know, CrossFit wads, etc that are getting up into that hour, an hour and a half range. That's, that's, that's more like a seal fit wad, right, where you're exercising at a very, very high intensity for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours. So understand that you're not nearing glycogen depletion anyways. And your glycogen levels are gonna be just fine. As long as you're following that recommendation that I gave earlier of going closer to 75 to 100 grams of carbohydrate on an easy training day and 100 to 200 on a hard training day, you won't have any issues with going to the well for long periods of time. So ultimately that's kind of the overview of what your expectation should be when it comes to ketosis and high intensity exercise. And I know I just, you know, I spent maybe 10 minutes addressing that when we could probably talk about this for an hour. But I wanted to at least give you a few, a few little tips and we'll put plenty of our other resources over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 322 but ultimately the, the, the reason you'd want to use something like ketosis for high intensity or explosive workouts would be that you are going to have high amount of ketones available for, for cognitive performance. You're going to avoid a lot of the glucose fluctuations that can result in energy swings. You're going to avoid some of the fermentation, you're going to avoid some of the free radical buildup. You know. And for example, I recently competed, I said I was in southern Idaho, I did the Train to Hunt competition down there. And you know, that's incredibly intense, extremely intense. So anywhere from it was about 10 minutes of very, very hard rucking through the mountains with £100 on your pack at full on, all out heart rate intensity like you're running for your life up to, you know, obstacle course that included shooting, focus, cognitive performance and then also moving, you know, through burpees and sandbag poles and tire drags and stuff like that, but extremely intense, right? For just 20 minutes. So something that very, very closely correlates to a CrossFit wad with some shooting thrown in. I was in ketosis for both the two days of that event and I was using some hacks like I was using a little bit of creatine, I was using a little bit of baking soda, which I've talked about on the podcast before. And I won the event. I won the entire event and took on nearly close to zero carbohydrates during the actual competition itself. So ultimately it can be done. It just takes some adaptation.

Ben and Barack, I have a question about whey protein versus raw milk for a morning smoothie or morning shake. Ben, I know you say you use whey Protein. But I was thinking about using raw milk from my local cows and just to make my morning drink a little more au naturel.

And I was wondering if there's any negative effects of raw milk versus whey protein to get some protein in with.

Avocados and kale and ginger and all.

The rest of the stuff I stick in there.

Thank you very much.

Great show as always. Bye.

Alright, we do have another milk question, but we'll hold off until you answer, Allie.

First, everybody's interested in milk this morning, so. Yeah, so raw milk rather than whey.

Protein because it's more au natural.

That's right. Well, first of all, when it comes to raw milk in general, and a lot of the fears out there about raw milk, there are some things to be aware of when it comes to what the CDC says about raw milk. Because there was this big study done by the CDC in which they estimated that a lot of people were getting damaged from, from raw milk. And when it comes to raw milk or unpasteurized milk, if you look at the period of time over which they conducted that CDC study, there were 37 outbreaks and 800 illnesses from unpasteurized milk during the period from the year 2000 up to the year 2007. So that's about 100 cases per year, 100 illnesses per year from not much unpasteurized milk. And that was conducted on a US population of about 313 million folks. So that's not much at all. Yeah. So if we use the CDC's survey data that indicates that 3% of the population consumes raw milk, then based off the number of people in the United States, for example, we can estimate that like nine and a half million people drink unpasteurized milk. Approximately nine and a half million people. So if you look at the average of 100 illnesses per year, that means you've got about a 1 in 94,000 chance of getting ill from drinking unpasteurized milk or raw milk. So when we look at pasteurized milk, the cdc, during the period of time that they, they were studying unpasteurized milk, also studied pasteurized milk. And they found eight outbreaks with a little over 2,200 illnesses. So that average is about 277 illnesses per year. And that was again done over a population of about 246 million people who were consuming pasteurized milk. So about 78% of the US population. Now once we look at that, that means when you crunch the numbers, that for pasteurized milk, such as you might buy at the grocery store, that's a 1 in 888,000 chance of getting ill. So you've got a 1 in 94,000 chance of getting ill from drinking raw milk. You've got a 1 in 888,000 chance of becoming ill from drinking pasteurized milk. So your risk is about nine and a half times higher. Although the CDC claims it's 150 times higher. It's not once you look at the actual population numbers that were studied because we're looking at a much, much smaller percentage of the population that's drinking raw milk. But there is, there is definitely, and I will admit, a higher than the, a higher risk of getting sick. Even though it's still a very, very low risk. You've got a higher risk of getting sick from unpasteurized milk than you have of getting sick from pasteurized milk. Now the illnesses though that they use for that CDC data in terms of people getting ill from raw milk included illnesses associated with, with what's called bathtub cheese, which is basically Mexican style queso fresco that people are making illegally at home. It's way more dangerous than raw milk. It's associated with way more serious outbreaks and illnesses. And compared to a properly aged raw milk cheese, for example, this queso fresco is not fun stuff. So understand the statistics here. Understand that a, your risk is higher than your risk from drinking pasteurized milk, but it's still very, very low. Now Chris Kresser has a really, really great breakdown of the statistics that I'll link to where he goes into much greater detail than I just did. But ultimately what it comes down to is relatively low risk. Now when you compare that risk to the actual benefits of drinking raw milk, then there's some, some pretty interesting, interesting things to think about. So first of all, raw milk has much higher nutritional content than conventional milk, especially raw milk that comes from cows that graze on grass. You've got much, much higher levels of conjugated, conjugated linoleic acid cla. That's like the fat that burns fat really, really important for, for everything from cell membranes to healthy cholesterol. And you've also got a much, much higher percentage of essential fatty acids. When you pasteurize milk, you vastly reduce the nutritional quality. So you get a decrease in manganese, you get a decrease in copper, you get a decrease in iron. You completely destroy most of the vitamin C in milk. You impair the bioactivity of the vitamin B6. In milk. There's something called beta lactoglobulins and that's a heat sensitive protein in milk. It would normally increase your absorption of vitamin A, but that gets completely destroyed by pasteurization. So when you're drinking unpasteurized milk from the grocery store, or rather pasteurized milk from the grocery store, it's far inferior in terms of its vitamin and its mineral content. A lot of people get digestive problems with pasteurized milk. I used to be up at night with severe stomach aches and gastric distress when I was a kid and I would drink anywhere from a half to a full gallon of 2% milk every day. And that was just one of my go to snacks. Now when you look at unpasteurized milk, there is a great deal of the population, including myself, who suffer from everything like lactose intolerance to digestive discomfort when we're consuming pasteurized milk. And that completely disappears from drinking unpasteurized milk. And we'll get into this in a second. But even more so once you get into unpasteurized goat milk versus unpasteurized cow milk. So ultimately raw milk reduces the incidence of specifically lactose intolerance. So there's that as well. There may also be a significant increase in your immune system function, especially in children from drinking pasteurized milk, or I'm sorry, from drinking raw milk or unpasteurized milk. And that is because it is going to have a higher percentage of some small trace amounts of contaminants in it. I mean, there will be not only good bacteria but also a small amount of bad bacteria. But it's going to be higher in probiotics, it's going to be higher in antimicrobial enzymes too. So a lot of that is balanced out. And when you look at unpasteurized milk studies, they found that it contains a variety of antimicrobial components that are completely absent in pasteurized milk. So pathogens that are in raw milk actually grow more slowly or die more quickly than those same pathogens when those pathogens are added to heat treated milk. Now I'm not saying that you should go out and find the dirtiest raw milk out there because it's got the things in it that help pathogens to die. But understand that if you are finding like a clean farm, right? And specifically like I would use a website like realmilk.com to vet your farm and to find a good farm to get raw milk from. Ultimately raw milk contains bioactive components that are going to going to help with your immune system function anyways. So there's that consideration as well, and, you know, we could get into things like, you know, the sustainability of small dairy farms that produce raw milk and being more environmentally friendly compared to like typical large scale dairy farms that are far more energy intensive. And the ethics of the way that, that a pastured cow, you know, raised on grass is treated versus a, you know, a large scale, you know, commercial cow production facility feedlot. But you know, honestly, I'm already droning on a little bit, but ultimately the idea here is that raw milk actually is quite, quite beneficial and nourishing for you compared to pasteurized milk. Now if you had to kind of look at this versus say, whey protein, you know, I personally, I don't do well with whey protein isolate. I use vegan protein. I either use the living fuel living protein, which is like a mix of pea and rice protein. I'll occasionally use the onnit hemp force hemp protein, and I also use the exos, vegan protein and the exos. By the way, they're getting NSF certified for athletes for all of their protein. So you're guaranteed it's not laced with stuff. But the problem with whey protein, there's a few issues with it and a few reasons why. Sometimes people who drink whey protein or use whey protein isolate in their smoothies get like a thick coating of mucus in their throat, get like, sometimes like head colds. They'll get like bloating gas. All those things happen to me when I consume whey protein. And so there are a few reasons for that. First of all, you'll always hear people say that whey protein isolates contain very little lactose or very little of the type of proteins that might cause mucus productions or allergenic issues. But the problem is that in studies that they've done on whey protein isolate powders, they still find significant amounts of whey protein concentrates, even if the manufacturer claims that it's a whey protein isolate. And if any protein powder has what's called whey protein concentrate in it versus just whey protein isolate, then it definitely has lactose in it. It's impossible to have whey protein concentrate without the presence of lactose. So if you're lactose intolerant, and I am lactose intolerant, whey protein isolate that has trace amounts of whey protein concentrate in it can mess with you. And a lot of companies will have concentrate in there even though it's not listed on the label. So that's one thing when it comes to whey protein There are protein fractions of dairy products in many whey protein isolate supplements out there. That again, even though it's not going to be as high as what you might find in, like, milk, yogurt, cheese, et cetera, there are enough protein fractions in a whey protein isolate that are specifically those dairy proteins that again, if you don't do well with dairy or you have a little bit of an allergenic response to dairy, whey protein isolate is going to mess with you versus a hypoallergenic protein source, such as a. Probably the most hypoallergenic source of protein out there is a rice protein isolate. And yes, it doesn't have a complete complement of amino acids in it, but ultimately, if you're taking a rice protein isolate and you're adding like some, some raw nuts, like some almonds or some walnuts, and, you know, you're adding a bunch of, like, plants and some coconut milk and stuff like that to a smoothie, you're going to get a pretty complete protein profile anyways. So. And, and the other thing is that the lactose and the dairy proteins that you're going to find, even in trace amounts in a whey protein isolate are not packaged with a lot of the enzymes, the probiotics, and even the lactase, which is technically an enzyme that you're going to find in raw milk. Hear my rooster crowing back there. He's pecking at the window right now. So ultimately, what this means is, is that you may be able to digest, ironically, raw milk even better than you digest a whey protein isolate. And if I personally had to choose, I would use a raw milk in my smoothie instead of a whey protein isolate in my smoothie. If I were going for the maximum bang for my buck from a nutrient density standpoint, with the consideration that if you are a person who's just like, sensitive to dairy, period, just use like a hemp or a rice or a pea protein. So there you have it. And my rooster agrees.

Rooster agrees. Now we've got another question about milk. So we'll go straight into Mark's question.

Hey, Ben, I have to start by saying thanks for all that you do. It's a tremendous help. I got a question. What is your take on drinking raw goat's milk? Seems like there's a lot of. Of different information and camps of people out there that are either die hard, you should be doing it, or you're a lunatic and you're going to die within five minutes of doing it. So what are your Thoughts? Do the benefits outweigh the negatives? Is getting the good bacteria versus the bad bacteria for things like gut health and other functions worth it? And would you recommend doing this in any scenario? Or do you. Would you recommend it for maybe weight gain, weight loss, performance, just a normal life, etc. I appreciate it. Thanks again.

So does all the same things that you just said to the last question to Ali, does that apply in this case as well to Mark?

It does as far as the raw milk considerations and the unpasteurized versus the pasteurized. But when we look at, say, like, a raw goat's milk versus a raw cow's milk, if I had a glass of each sitting in front of me on the table, I would choose the goat milk. And, you know, that's one reason why once my kids were done being breastfed, we didn't switch them to a raw cow's milk. We switched them to a raw goat's milk. So a few reasons for that. First of all, there is a protein called Alpha S1 casein that you're gonna find in pretty high levels in cow's milk, and you find almost none of it in goat's milk. And Alpha S1 casein is one of the primary proteins that you find in dairy products made from cows that people are allergic to. And so folks who are allergic to cow's milk can drink goat's milk with virtually no side effects. So that's one thing.

Isn't the casein also the reason why the paleo diet, like a strict Paleo diet, doesn't allow dairy?

Yep, it is. Exactly. So technically, if you're on a paleo diet, you know, goat's milk, if the paleo police are looking through a window, would be a little bit more.

And they always are.

That's right. So another thing, and this is really interesting when you look at homogenization, you could take a glass of fresh cow's milk and you could take a glass of fresh goat's milk and put both in the refrigerator overnight, and the next morning, the goat's milk would look exactly the same. But the cow's milk, actually, it separates into two phases. Right? You get the cream on top.

It's the delicious part.

Right. And you get the skin at the bottom. And that's a natural separation process because of a compound that's in cow's milk, that's agglutinin. And it's basically, you know, homogenization gets rid of that. That's why when you buy milk from the grocery store, you don't get that same separation occurring because they homogenize it. They force the milk through a tiny hole under a tremendous amount of pressure. And that destroys the fat globule cell walls in the milk and allows the milk and the cream to stay homogeneous or suspended and well mixed. And the problem with that homogenization is that once the cell wall of the fat globul, you get a really, really big release of xanthine oxidase. Xanthine oxidase is a really potent free radical that can cause DNA mutations, cancer, metabolic damage, etc. So goat's milk, the reason that it doesn't separate like that is it has very, very small fat globules that are better absorbed by the human body. Goat's milk doesn't have a gluten in it. And so goat's milk is naturally homogenized. So you eliminate all the dangers associated with homogenization as well as all the inconveniences of having to, you know, have that, that separation occur. So it's something really interesting a lot of people don't know about, about goat's milk, but it makes it really, really convenient from that standpoint. Now, I mentioned these fat globules and, and how goat's milk has smaller fat globules, but it also has higher levels of water called medium chain fatty acids. And what that means is that when you digest goat's milk, the fat globules and the individual fatty acids have a larger surface to volume ratio. Right? So, so it's just the same as, you know, as why it's easier to digest a bunch of greens that have been blended up in a smoothie rather than eating those greens. It simply results in a larger surface to volume ratio and a quicker and easier digestion process. Now, when the proteins that are found in milk denature, they basically clump up in the stomach because of that fat globule structure. Goat's milk forms a much softer, what's called a bolus in your stomach. Like whenever you, you chew anything, it causes like a, like a bunch of clumping in your stomach. But the goats is much softer and easier to digest because of the composition of those high levels of medium chain fatty acids and the smaller fat globules. So that's another advantage to goat's milk. Another one is lactose. I mentioned lactose, you know, and how, you know, cow's milk allergy related to lactose is an issue for a lot of people, including myself. Goat's milk has very, very low levels of lactose compared to cow's milk. It's simply something, you know, where lactose isn't an issue. So, you know, for example, one of my kids stutters like crazy after he has dairy from cows. It doesn't happen to him at all after he has goat's milk. It's an allergenic reaction. And it may be related to that. That casein. Right. That alpha S1 casein. It may be related to the lactose, I don't know. But either way, he simply has no issues with goat's milk, you know, and we actually have. I'm still trying to finish up the fencing at our house. They're not at our house yet. We're keeping them on a different farm. But we have Nigerian dwarf goats that, that we're putting on our property here for milking in a couple of weeks. Yeah, and they're really, really cute. Tiny, tiny teats. So easy to milk. Our boys will be able to go out there and milk the tiny goats. And then the last thing, speaking of tiny, thermodynamics of the goat protein. So the goat's milk is better for human consumption because the proteins are closer to the. The size of the, the, the. When you look at the protein, you eat a human.

Yeah, basically, if you were a cannibal.

Let me put it this way. So you look at a baby goat usually starts life at around 7 to 9 pounds. A baby human usually starts life at around 7 to 9 pounds. Baby cow or a calf usually starts life at around £100. So when you look at things from a purely thermodynamic position, the two animals have significant and different nutritional needs for maintenance and for growth. And so both baby goats as well as adult goats, which weigh anywhere from 100 to 200 pounds, are closer to the size of humans. So biochemically and thermodynamically speaking, goat's milk simply matches up better to the human body. And I know I'm making some scientists out there, all of our milk scientists are cringing right now because I'm not, not. I'm not explaining this in great chemical detail, but it comes down to the thermodynamics of the protein. And if you want me to throw in a few other things, Goat's milk has a higher amount of essential fatty acids, even a higher amount of essential fatty acids than raw cow's milk. It's got higher amounts of vitamin B6, higher amounts of vitamin A, higher amounts of niacin. And as if that weren't enough, all the things like the if you go to Greenfield Fitness Systems, the colostrum over there, the joint support compound, the Nature Flex, the cleanse, the Nature Cleanse, all of that contains products from organic grass fed goats raised on a farm in Central Washington. Everything from the minerals to the, the colostrum itself to the the ingredients in the Nature Flex, all that comes from those goats. So. So interestingly, I actually use supplements made primarily from goats, so you can check Those out at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com you can check out a link to realmilk.com, chris Kresser's raw milk article, et cetera, over in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 322 but I personally am infatuated with goats, so there you have it. Hey Ben, it's Chris here. Love the show HRV during exercise. I wonder if maybe you can give an indication of what type of values one should be looking for, you know, during say steady state low intensity cardio. Like you know, should it, you know, mine's basically dropping out and hanging like a flat line. And yeah, hopefully you're able to have a look at these questions if you have time. Once again, love the show and take care. Did Chris say he is hanging like a flat line?

Not he isn't hanging a flat line. I hope he's not hanging like a flat line. I assume he meant his hrv.

His HRV is hanging like a flat line.

Like a flat line.

Okay, so let me put this in context for you. So HRV your heart rate variability. Excuse me? As I belch I'm I'm drinking. What is this stuff? Pellegrino Sparkling Natural Mineral water. I've been like burping our entire podcast. It's great for you. Fantastic. And for minerals, very very hot these days in, in spokane it's like 100 plus degrees. So I'm trying to drink mineral mineral rich water.

And how did did Iron Man Coeur d' Alene actually happen or was it too hot?

It did. It did happen. Yes. I was up in the hill shooting things with my bow and arrow during Ironman Coeur d'. Alene but from what I hear it did happen. So yes. Anyways though. So heart rate variability and the studies that have done on been done on heart rate variability specifically during high intensity exercise and I'll link to a particularly good one in the show Notes have found that HRV is going to decrease significantly during exercise and the more intense the exercise is, the greater the decrease in the heart rate variability simply because both branches of your nervous system become stressed and when you look at your low frequency power. So when you're, when you're tracking your heart rate variability, it's going to show your low frequency power, which is a measurement of your parasympathetic nervous system strength. And it's also going to show your. I'm sorry, which. The low frequency power is a measurement of your sympathetic nervous system strength. The high frequency power is a measurement of your, your parasympathetic nervous system strength. You're going to find that both drop significantly during exercise. So typically, what happens, a typical response, especially during intense exercise, is the first thing to take a significant hit is your parasympathetic nervous system or your high frequency score. That should have a significant dip at the beginning and then continue to fall throughout the workout. Your low frequency takes a little bit longer to drop compared to the high frequency, but ultimately the sympathetic nervous system score drops as well. It's just kind of a more consistent drop, probably because it takes a little while for you to get warmed up and then stressed out. And then sympathetic nervous system begins to drop and it's going to be.

That's an intense exercise, right?

That's during. That's during intense exercise. However, if you look at even the study of heart rate variability during aerobic exercise, you find a significant drop. Even from something as simple as aerobic exercise, you find a significant drop in heart rate variability when you get out of bed in the morning versus lying in bed. It's just the nature of your nervous system all of a sudden being up, moving around, regulating your body, et cetera. Now, one of the things to bear in mind with this is a, that's not necessarily a bad thing when heart rate variability drops during exercise. That is why you exercise. If heart rate variability did not drop, it would indicate that exercise is not stressing your body significantly. Therefore, you are not getting quote, unquote fit. Now, at the same time, during aerobic exercise, if you are looking at your sympathetic nervous system score, right, your low frequency score, if that drops significantly compared to your high frequency score, it would indicate that you are potentially working out at a pace that's intense enough to where you are stressing your fight or flight nervous system, and if you find that you back off and you get less of a drop in that low frequency, you get less of a drop in your sympathetic nervous system score, then that would indicate that you are doing a better job staying aerobic, doing, you know, whatever. If you're training like Maffetone or Lydiard Pace or something like that at the same time, the, the. The question is whether heart rate variability is the best way to be measuring it, since heart rate variability is going to drop anyways versus just say, keeping at your aerobic heart rate, keeping at a conversational pace, staying at an intensity that would allow you to say, for example, breathe through your nose. Right. Like to me, those all have far better research behind them in terms of what happens to them during exercise versus heart rate variability. So that's one thing to bear in mind. The next thing to bear in mind is that as we talked about during the podcast episode with Dr. James Heathers a couple of weeks ago, breathing has. Breathing introduces a variable into heart rate variability that goes above and beyond just movement. Meaning once you begin to, for example, breathe deeply, breathe short and shallow, breathe through your nose versus breathe through your mouth, or hold your breath, right. All of that affects heart rate variability and it throws an uncontrolled variable into the measurement.

And unless you're almost skews the numbers.

It skews the numbers. And unless you are lying in bed for five minutes each morning, which is exactly when I personally take my heart rate variability, and you're just breathing normally there, lying in bed, your breath is always going to skew your numbers, regardless of what your nervous system is doing. Okay, so that's another thing to bear in mind is that it may not be that, that beneficial for you to be taking heart rate variability during exercise anyways, because breath is going to skew it so much. The last thing to bear in mind is that I have experimented a little bit with heart rate variability during exercise, and I've identified certain things that really stress my body. Okay, so two things. For example, one is back squats with a barbell on my back, and another one is sprinting uphill. Both of those result in a significant drop in my heart rate variability, even more than I'd experienced with something like, like deadlifts or kettlebell swings or say, like, you know, underwater cold swimming.

So I just have to ask though, is it just back squats or would like front squats or goblet squats or something like that do the same thing?

You know, I don't know if it's something about having a weight on your back, but that seems to drop it the most and it's some kind of a defensive mechanism, I suppose that occurs from having a, you know, a bear climb on your back. But ultimately you can use that to your benefit because if you can identify certain exercises that stress out your sympathetic nervous system the most, then you Know that if you do those exercises and then you recover properly from them, those are the exercises that are going to make you the most stress resilient. And so by putting on a heart rate variability monitor, and I'm not a fan of doing it for the rest of your life because you are exposed to a Bluetooth signal, there is some EMF that occurs. But let's just say you're going to do it for two weeks during every exercise session that you do to see which exercise sessions stress you out the most, which exercises stress you out the most and which stress you out the least. Then you'll be able to paint a picture of the best workout sessions for you to choose for a recovery phase or recovery day and the best workout sessions or exercises for you to choose when you want to get the most bang for your buck from a a stress standpoint from your training. So ultimately you can get some value out of measuring heart rate variability during exercise, but understand that it's always going to drop or even flatline compared to what you might get while say, lying in bed. And then the last thing to understand is that in the Journal of Physiology measurements they had an article about heart rate variability reproducibility during exercise. And it is, you know, if you were going to measure for two solid weeks, it turns out that you are going to get good data, right? So you're going to generate good relative data about what your heart rate variability does in response to your exercises and your workouts. Okay, it's reproducible. That doesn't necessarily mean that we can take everybody and do some study on heart rate variability during exercise. And the necessarily see data that allows us to draw good conclusions from each of those people. But for you measuring just relative to your own body's response, it is something that will give you some benefit. So you could use something like a Bluetooth heart rate monitor. You could use the Greenfield Fitness Systems Nature Beat app and Nature Beat Nature. I always like to spend more time in nature. Look up nature guy on YouTube people. Anyways though, sorry I totally interrupted your.

Train of thought there.

So, yeah, you can measure it. It's not something that, like I mentioned, I measured for a couple of weeks, you know, back in the day. I don't really measure that much anymore just because it's one more thing to be wearing during exercise. And I know what stresses my body out, frankly. I know when I'm not aerobic, when I'm not at my fat burning heart rate. And so I don't use heart rate variability anymore. But When I did use it for a couple of weeks, I did find some interesting things. Things. So that's the skinny Chris on measuring HRV during exercise. Hey, Ben Rok, it's Vladimir from Serbia. I'm a huge fan and thanks for doing for what you're doing. It's useful, informative, intelligent, and fun to listen to podcasts. I also have the book and I exercise on a regular basis. So I've got two questions. When I work all day and the only thing I want to do is to go to bed, but I haven't had to time to eat, should I eat or not before bed? So basically never eat before bed or never go to bed hungry. And the second question is, what's wrong with being called Vladimir? Thanks, guys. And P.S. i wrote you a review.

You know, there is nothing wrong with being named Vladimir. Just don't use it as your coupon code for Harry's dot com.

Vladimir. Vladimir. There's nothing wrong with being named Vladimir, especially if you work for the Russian mafia. You can get a baseball bat and break a leg when your name is Vladimir.

I'm afraid he's gonna be at your front door when we finish this podcast.

Vladimir, I will be waiting for you. I will be waiting for you. Insert evil laugh here.

You sort of sound like the guy from the Minions movie. What's that called? I was thinking Despicable Me.

I was thinking Sesame Street. Oh, despicable Me. Yeah. You are like a little girl, Vladimir. Okay, Vladimir, seriously though. Yeah. You probably have heard that eating before bed is bad, that the food sits in your stomach or turns to fat or whatever. And there's been a ton of research on this subject. It's like everybody wants to see what makes you fat or eating breakfast or eating dinner, et cetera. And way back in the 90s, they actually tried to compile the findings of a bunch of different studies regarding meal timing. And they found way back in the 90s. Way back in the 90s.

Back in the 1990s.

Yeah. And that was one of the. One of the more. What shall I say? Not. Yeah, I guess one of the bigger studies that was done, what they found was that obesity rates were not connected to the times of day that you eat. And they were primarily significantly connected to. Insert drumroll here. The amount of calories that you eat per day. So what, the old saying, breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper. There's not necessarily a lot of studies to back that up. And yeah, I know that Dan Buettner says in his Recent Blue Zones book that a lot of these blue zones, they do that, right? Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper. But at the same time, when you flip that around and you look at something like, you know, John Keefer's research on carb backloading, you could say that for an anabolic effect, you could breakfast like a popper, you know, lunch like a prince, dinner like a king. And if you are injecting a workout at the end of the day, you would also be relatively bulletproof to gaining fat. So there was also though, a pretty recent article on the, it was called the Health Impact of Nighttime Eating. And this came out just two months ago and was actually published at the time that we're recording now, April of 2015. And they found some really interesting things in this study. So first of all, they found that a bedtime supply of nutrients could promote positive physiological changes in populations that were already healthy, like populations who didn't have chronic disease, who weren't experiencing obesity, things like that. Specifically small, nutrient dense, low energy foods or foods that were comprised of single macronutrients rather than large mixed meals. So from this we can draw that a nutrient dense food would be something like, you know, having a handful of like chlorella or spirulina tablets before bed or doing something like, you know, essential amino acids and maybe like coconut oil, you know, dense, concentrated sources of a high amount of nutrients. And so that's one thing. Or single macronutrients. Single matronutrients would be like this practice and I know I just talked a lot about casein and the issues there. But let's, let's hypothesize for a second that you, let's, let's theorize for a second that you do just fine with dairy, right? Like you could have just whey or not whey, but just like a casein protein before bed or like a slow bleed of amino acids. Or you could have, for example, you know, another example of a single macronutrient meal would be one that I've recommended before on this show. Like a handful of almonds, right? Or even doing like the, the raw honey and tea. That would be an example of a carbohydrate single macronutrient. So it turns out that that bedtime supply of nutrients promotes physiological changes. One of my favorites is you take coconut milk and you blend it up with chocolate stevia, right? And I'll put that in the freezer for about 10 minutes. And that's just kind of like a Fat bomb before bed. Now they've found that the nighttime consumption of these single nutrient meals or these meals with small nutrient dense, low energy foods doesn't appear harmful and may actually be beneficial for muscle protein synthesis and for cardiometabolic health. And, and this is the most recent study that, that was a meta analysis of a lot of these studies that are out there. So you know, it's, it's kind of been done since the 70s or since the, since the 90s, so. 70s, 90s, it's all the same way, way back in the day, freaking long ago. So ultimately, whereas back in the 90s, from an obesity standpoint, they did indeed verify that doesn't matter. You know, big dinner, big breakfast, eating before bed, whatever. What's ultimately most important is the number of calories that you eat the entire day. And yes, that is important. But it turns out that, let's say that you were to take some of those calories and shift them into a nighttime snack. You could actually benefit from a muscle protein synthesis and a cardio metabolic health standpoint. And a lot of people report anecdotally that they don't wake up at 1 or 2am from something like, like hypoglycemia when they incorporate this strategy. Now understand that the amount of calories used in this particular study and the average amount of calories in the studies that, that this latest 2015 study looked into was about 150 calories. We are not talking about half a pizza before bed. We are not even talking about the average size, whatever, you know, protein bar, like whatever, a quest bar or a bonk breaker or something like that. When I personally have an energy bar before bed, which I will occasionally do, like if I'm traveling and you know, I've gotten to a location, I'm hungry, I want to eat something before bed, but all I have in my bag is like bars, stuff like that. I rip the bar in half, right? Like I save half to put the chunks in my morning smoothie and then I have the other half right there before bed because a lot of these bars are like 300 calories. So understand that 100 to 200 calories max is all you need for these nighttime snacks in order to get the benefits of eating before bed. So that's what we see in terms of the actual research again in healthy populations. Now when you work all day and you get home and you just want to go to bed, if you working all day means that, let's say you are eating, I'm just going to throw this out there, 2,500 calories a day keeps you at energy balance. If you get home at the end of the day and you've only had 1500 calories, let's say, by the time that you finish work, Vladimir, what that means is that you can, based on research, eat a thousand calories when you get home from work. And if that, if you're still in energy balance, there's not going to be a deleterious gift effect from doing that. Now, granted, I'm making the assumption that you're eating a thousand calories of good nutrients. Right. Like, let's say you're making some scrambled eggs with some nori and maybe a little bit of fish and some roasted vegetables. Right. Or, you know, not, you know, a bowl of popcorn and some ice cream and dark chocolate. So assuming that the actual composition of your meals is sound, from a health standpoint, it appears at, at this point, based on the research that's out there on nighttime eating, that if you're, you're healthy, chronic disease is absent, diabetes is absent, obesity is absent, et cetera. And if that meal is not putting you at a positive calorie balance, that it's just fine. So.

So go ahead. I'm gonna say so theoretically, if you're somebody who has trouble with like nighttime snacking, like, that's. There's a lot of people I've have a lot of people I coach always come to me and they're like, oh, by like 7 o', clock, 8 o' clock at night, I just lose it and end up eating a whole bunch of crap while I'm sitting there watching tv. Yeah. So theoretically, they could skip breakfast, wait until like 1, 2 o' clock in the afternoon to have their first meal, and then as long as the food isn't again, popcorn, dark chocolate, ice cream, pizza kind of thing, have, have those snacks later in the evening. So they don't what I like. Would that work?

It would, it would. But then remember that in addition to light and activity, the one other thing that really helps regulate your circadian rhythm is food. And so by skipping breakfast, if you're a person who struggles with sleep, insomnia, getting up too early, waking up too late, that type of thing, skipping breakfast may not serve you best. And in a case like that, you could like, like cut the number of calories for breakfast in half, skip a snack that you might have after lunch, eat dinner, and then shift those calories that you cut earlier in the day to after dinner. And that would work. So there you have it. Wow. We covered a lot today. And not only that, but we're even going to throw a little bonus at you guys because every week I release a new chapter of my book, Beyond Training Inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness.

More like every month.

Yeah, every month, Ben. They take a long time to record, but I'm not.

I'm just saying.

Anyways, if you want to get a taste of that and the type of stuff that you get inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness Premium channel, where We've got over 300 secret hidden episodes, PDFs, videos, et cetera. Stay tuned for after this episode because we've got some extra extras coming at you there, so. And it's going to be all about how to get all the benefits of being uber fit without neglecting your family, your friends, your career, etc. But before we delve into that juicy piece, we do have a review.

Yeah, I like it when you call me a juicy piece.

Yes, I like to call you a juicy piece. So. Juicy piece. Brock, we. We've got A review from Swopey531, who left a review on itunes. And if you leave a review on itunes, if you're listening in, you head over to itunes, find the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Leave five stars in a review. If you hear us, read your review on the show and you email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com and include your address, your T shirt size, everything, we'll send you a fancy bpa, free water bottle, a cool tech T shirt, and what else do they get? Brock? A beanie.

A beanie or a toque.

A fashionable as we like to call it. Fashionable toque. So Swopey, if you hear us read this review, we're going to get a fashionable toque out to you. Brock, you want to take this one away?

Yeah, just a second. My juicy piece is hanging like a flat line. All right. Swopey531 says Ben is one word rocks. You're one more. Okay.

Dramatically interesting.

I. Yeah, it's. And there was an extended ellipses in there as well. I'm not sure what that indicated. I mean, he can climb them, figure a way to eat them if there is some value to them, I'm sure.

Okay. Swopi must be foreign.

Oh, perhaps. What a life changer in quotation marks. So not sure what it's indicating there of a podcast. Keep up the great stuff for the BG Nation.

Interesting. Interesting.

I have no idea what this. What this review means.

Figure out a way to eat them. I mean, he can. I don't know but I. I think it's a play on the word rocks.

So, yeah, I guess.

Yeah, what. What Swopey doesn't know is that I actually include rocks in my enema as well.

Now that is a life changer.

That's right. That is a life changer. No, I don't actually do that before all of our listeners who take every word that I say, like the gospel rush out to find little rocks to put in your enema tubes. Don't do it.

Marbles. Of course not. Rocks, however.

And this is the last thing I'll say because I know we're droning on. I interviewed the science babe who wrote the article about how the food babe is full of sh://t. And we're releasing that interview this weekend. And you could hear her jaw drop when I told her I do because she was calling Dave Asprey a douchebag during the interview and I told her I do bulletproof coffee enemas. And it was an interesting conversation that ensued from there. So you will want to tune in to this weekend's episode with the Science Babe, but until then, you can check out today's show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 322, where we'll link to everything from the article on starvation mode to the stuff about how to become a fat burning machine to the article on the health impact of nighttime eating and oh, so much more.

Oh, so much.

Oh so much more.

So very much. Delightful.

Delightful. Until then, have a healthy week and we apologize to everyone from the Russians to the elderly who we just insulted. But either way, hopefully you come back for more. Talk to you later. BenGreenfulFitness.com 322 over and out. Welcome to Beyond Training Book, Chapter 19, in which you're going to discover the Zen of getting uber fit without neglecting your friends, your family and your career. A few years ago, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Workout Ate My Marriage. It begins with the tale of the wife of an endurance athlete, Karen Waxman, who wakes up alone every morning, including holidays. Her husband leaves before dawn each morning for hours of exercise to prepare for his upcoming triathlon. The article goes on to describe other exercise widows and lonely husband husbands who often wake up to an empty bed, a sure sign of their spouse's morning workout, or they find their dinner plan spoiled by a sudden avoidance of any complex foods or big meals before an evening workout. And of course, parties or nighttime social events get completely thrown out the window if they remotely threaten to sacrifice the quality of the almighty morning workout. Regret grows as romance falls to the wayside, since the exercise enthusiasts in the relationship collapses collapses like a sack of potatoes by the time 9pm approaches. Intense commitment to a demanding training schedule for triathlons, marathons, CrossFit, or some other lofty physical goal leaves couples fighting about who does chores, who gets time for themselves, and who decides where and how the family has fun. And while the effect of extreme exercise on divorce rates has never really been investigated, resentment on the parts of friends, spouses and families is an undeniable reality, with many lonely wives, husbands and children wondering when the exercise insanity is going to end. Of course, the consequences of extreme fitness pursuits can go beyond family disputes and can also include degrading of important relationships and friendships, decreases in personal income or stagnant career growth, and a complete lack of the ability to do anything well except lift a heavy weight, row 500 meters very quickly, or swim, bike and run faster than all your neighbors. Well, let me ask you a question. You don't want to regret the finish line, do you? Let me ask you another question. Are you missing the important things in life? Let me ask you one more question. Is your tombstone or obituary simply going to say this person was really good at exercising? The fact is, unless you're a professional athlete and your paycheck depends on your performance, the temporary glory of crossing the finish line of an Ironman or a marathon, winning CrossFit regionals or riding your bicycle 100 miles is simply not worth the neglect of your friends, your family, your career, and all the other things in life you could be enjoying. But the fact is, there's a way to become uber fit without creating exercise widows or exercise orphans, without giving up important advances in your career, without missing out good friendships and relationships, and without feeling like you never got to get good at other things you really wanted to try, like music or theater, cooking, art, sports or whatever else strikes your fancy. So in this chapter and the next, I'm going to fill you in on all my insider training and time saving secrets that allow me to be in the upper echelon of some of the fittest folks on the planet while still having time to write and play guitar, play tennis and basketball, learn new languages, travel, take my wife on dates, throw dinner parties and play for at least a few hours every day with my twin boys. You may find that this chapter is skewed towards advice for endurance athletes like Ironman triathletes, and that's simply because not only is that my wheelhouse, but I also find that endurance athletes simply tend to have more pressure to put in long hours compared to say, crossfitters, weightlifters or more recreational, sane exercisers. However, no matter what you are or who you are, you're going to to get some serious exercise time management gems. So let's get started. As you learned in Chapter three, most endurance athletes, and especially Ironman overdo exercise big time. Based on the research@ironman.com, triathletes train an average of seven months for the Ford Ironman World Championships. The average hours per week devoted to training for these World Championships generally fall between 18 and 22 hours. Average training distances for the three events are miles per week swimming 7 miles per week biking 232 miles per week running 48. That's right, the majority of Ironman triathletes training for the World Championships in Kona are averaging close to three hours per day. And as an Ironman coach and competitor, I can tell you that the training programs of other Ironman triathletes aren't far behind. Yes, professional athletes train up to four to six hours per day, but their job depends on on it does yours. But there are exceptions to this rule. Take Sammy Incinen for instance. Sammy's just coming off an amateur Ironman winning time of 8:24 at Ironman Sweden a couple weeks ago, and last year his finishes included Overall Amateur Champion at Wildflower, Overall Amateur Champion at Hawaii, Half Ironman Age Group World champion at Ironman 70.3 distance in Las Vegas, Age Group World Champion Runner up at Ironman World Championships in Hawaii with an 8:58 Kona performance. Here's the kicker. Despite kicking the butts of the 20 to 30 hour per week athletes and beating many of the professional Ironman athletes, Sammy trains a maximum of about 12 hours per week using many of the methods you're about to learn. At that same Ironman Hawaii that Sammy performed an 8:58 at, I was about a half hour behind, completing the race in about nine and a half hours, but on a training schedule of 10 hours per week. In a podcast I recorded with sammy@bengreenfieldfitness.com entitled how to Maximize Triathlon Success with Minimal Training Time, you learn the nitty gritties of many of his personal strategies. I'll link to that podcast over at BeyondTrainingBook.com Chapter 19 and we talk about everything from using a swim snorkel to training on a computrainer. But I'm also going to take take now several important takeaways from that discussion, as well as other tips and tricks I've picked up over the years to avoid an extreme number of hours wasted in the pursuit of uber fitness. Now, before we jump into exactly 13 ways to get fit in less time without neglecting your friends, your family and your career, please remember to review or revisit Chapter three, in which I outline much of the science behind these techniques and why they work so well. That being said, let's jump right in in Number one Do short Swims to be a decent swimmer, you don't need massive yardage, you simply need frequent exposure to the water. Swimming requires much more efficiency, economy and feel for the water than it requires pure fitness, which is why a 12 year old girl can easily beat me in a hundred meter pool sprint. For this reason, frequency and consistency in swimming is much more important than marathon esque swim workouts of 60 to 90 minutes like you might experience in a 10 typical master swim class or a classic swim workout. Let's use Ironman swim training as an example. For Ironman, you only need to swim long once per week and that swim doesn't need to be longer than 4,000 meters. Rather than a steady slow swim, you could structure this workout to include hard race pace intervals with short rests like warmup 3 by 800 at race pace and a cooldown. Then you can simply pepper additional brief 15 to 30 minute swims like 20 x 50 or 10 x 100 throughout the week, preferably before a strength training session, bike or run so that you minimize prep time, goggles, swim cap, pre shower, post shower, et cetera. Number two is to train indoors. Outdoor bike rides and runs often involve getting into your workout clothing, inflating tires, filling water bottles, scheduling driving to and meeting with a group, and engaging in other preparatory activities that can take 15 to 20 minutes before your training session even begins. And once you're finally out there, traffic lights and stop signs can significantly detract from the efficacy of your workout. For athletes who live in inclement weather, this process becomes even more laborious and often includes arranging multiple layers of clothing, getting hats, gloves or toe warmers, and of course, removing and washing all that fabric once you're actually done with the workout. So if you want to maximize your training bang for your buck, find a room in the house to be your pain cave, set up an indoor trainer or treadmill, and do one to two short intense indoor bike trainer sessions or indoor treadmill runs per week. You'll stay focused and structured with this approach. If you need some ideas for killer indoor training workouts I'd recommend you check out some of my favorites like MACA X Pro Cycling and Treadmill Workouts, sufferfest Cycling and Brick Workouts, and runnerville's Treadmill Workouts. I'll link to all those over at beyond training BookTube. To save yourself driving time, make sure you've got a good indoor home gym too. I've written an entire article and recorded a podcast on how to make a home gym, but my personal setup costs less than 300 bucks and just includes a suspension strap, an indoor sprinting device called a Fit 10, a stability ball, a gym stick, a door frame pull up bar, a kettlebell, and a few other free weights that I got for nearly free. I off Craigslist. Zero fancy machines required and I've saved many, many minutes by heading out to the garage rather than getting dressed for weather conditions, going outside and fighting stop signs, stop lights, traffic and grandmothers on rollerblades with her eight grandchildren and two schnozzle dogs on the bike path. And if you don't have time to head to the pool, just check out my baby. It's too cold outside to drive to the pool swim workout over@Ben Greenfield3Fitness.com, which simply requires some elastic tubing. Number three is to do minimal off season training in contrast to their peers who are disappearing into the basement during the winter to do three up to five hour indoor training sessions, often followed by long jaunts on the treadmill or heading outside to do four to six hour bike rides up to several months before their actual race. Most of my athletes save all their big training for that final eight to 12 weeks before their big event and I encourage you to do this too. When it comes to mental and physical freshness and vigor when you really need it, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to beat yourself up all fall and winter long in preparation for a spring or summer event. After all, do you really think that two hour run in January is going to help you in an August marathon? Or that watching back to back movies on an indoor trainer during the winter is going to create any kind of fitness that's still with you during a summer summer? Ironman Number four Train Alone don't get me wrong, I understand the concept of tribe, the importance of social interactions and the exercise motivation that can be derived from peer pressure and a friendly competitive environment. If that's your only social outlet and it's not stealing time from your family or other things you want to do, then by all means join a master swim, a running, cycling or triathlon club or a CrossFit box. But if you really want to maximize your time and and workout efficiency, then for both indoor training sessions and outdoor rides or runs, you should try to train alone quite frequently. Here's why. Group training sessions not only require significantly greater time investment to schedule, gather a group together and head out for the actual session, but for athletes, these sessions rarely simulate what you're going to experience during an event. Just think about it. How often during an Ironman, for example, are you drafting, socializing or or frequently fluctuating pace? A gym can be a complete time suck. With plush chairs and couches conveniently located near big screen TVs, smoothie bars well stocked with snacks, piles of magazines, friends, workout buddies, vibration platforms, scales, saunas, spas, flyers, articles and fancy new workout contraptions, you can literally spend hours at the gym preparing to exercise, eating for exercise, learning about exercise and talking about exercise without actually doing much exercise. Case in point, I recently went to the gym to take a metabolism boosting class. The class was scheduled to begin at 6:30. I left my house at 6 to drive to the gym and get there by 6:15 so I could get into the class. I then waited around for 15 minutes for class to start and then a few extra minutes waiting for the latecomers. I then spent another 10 minutes in the class warm up. Although I'd already warmed up while waiting, each section of the class included demos and instructions from the teacher. By the time the class was over and we spent 10 minutes doing a simple cool down and some stretching, I'd spent 90 minutes devoted to working out, but when I looked at my watch found that I only actually engaged in significant fitness boosting exercise for a total of 22 minutes. Although I guarantee that multiple class participants would proudly check off the class as being 60 minutes of exercise. Had I stayed home and just used my inexpensive home exercise equipment, I could have achieved three times as much exercise and still had plenty of time left over. One long run a week. You heard me right. In your build up to a marathon or an ironman, you really only need one long run, typically three to four weeks out from your main event. Just the other day during an EndurancePlanet.com podcast, the host informed me that her coach advised 20 runs of up to 20 miles prior to an actual marathon. I responded by pointing out that this multiple long run strategy is all good and fine if the race involves a paycheck for you, but if not, you've spent 19 weekends pounding the pavement when you could have been spending time with your family or learning a new hobby. And while a long bike ride is a session from which you can recover relatively quickly, a long run of two plus hours can significantly impact your joint and keep you inflamed and beat up from for several weeks. So what do you do instead of a long run? In the same way that anaerobic high intensity interval sessions have been shown to significantly enhance aerobic fitness, short and intense runs of 80 to 90 minutes are all you really need to get you ready for a marathon or an ironman. And some of my best ironman performances have come from running only once per week for 80 to 90 minutes, often with elliptical training on my elliptigo or noon basketball or tennis for the other run sessions. The trick is that you need to make each of those 80 to 90 minute runs high quality, not long, slow death marches like most endurance athletes treat their long run. Do the session on fresh legs after a good day's rest and you'll maximize the intensity and efficiency of your one key run training session. And for pete's sake, whether it's your one long run or any of those short 80 to 90 minutes minute runs, make it a devoted practice of form, efficiency, economy, turnover and focus. And not a mindless slog. Number six is to run on short courses or loops. When you run, try to stay away from long courses like loops that are actually longer than about three miles or lengthy trails, because the longer the course, the more likely it is that you'll take your time and run it slow. Instead, choose to run on tracks, neighborhood blocks or short loops that are far more conducive to brief, high quality and intense intervals. It's a strange mental trick, but the closer you are to home or the shorter the loops that you're running, the faster you typically go. Perhaps your body simply knows that it's always relatively near a safe haven, food and comfort, so it's okay to go hard. For example, if I'm running more than once per week, one of my key ironman training sessions would be 12 by 200 meter range repeats literally in the cul de sac outside my house, including full recovery between repeats. That workout takes a maximum of about 30 minutes, but it's performed at maximum intensity. I feel as though I've run two hours by the time I finish and my kids can join me on their bikes for this session. To race Daddy number seven is to lift. We kind of kick this horse to death in chapter three. But multiple research studies have shown that strength training can improve endurance, preference, performance by increasing neuromuscular recruitment, efficiency and economy, especially for cyclists and runners. In other words, you can get fit without necessarily spinning or running for hours on end. Anecdotal evidence, particularly from many older endurance athletes, guys like Mark Allen and Dave Scott, suggests that strength training also plays a significant role in injury prevention. And you can even get a significant, significant cardiovascular boost from certain types of strength training, like the super slow and isometric training I discuss in chapter four. The nice thing is that when you lift, you can easily train at home with your family. My twin boys will often drag their kid sized kettlebells and medicine balls into the backyard and join me for swings and slams. They also have miniature jump ropes, yoga mats and their own stability ball. Sure, the workout is not quite as high quality as if I I had strapped on my earphones and headed to the squat rack at the gym, but once again I'm concerned about more than my tombstone simply saying he was a good exerciser. I'd rather my children have some fond memories of sweating with dad. More on training as a family later. Number eight Is to Eat Lunch Kind of Fast now it's never a good idea to eat extremely fast meals in a stressed state. Or as my mom used to refer to it, hoovering your food like a vacuum cleaner cleaner. At the same time, I've heard many folks complain that they just don't have enough time left in the day for both exercise and the other elements of life they want to enjoy. But then they spend an entire hour just eating lunch. In reality, you can get a healthy, solid lunch comprised of real food into your system within 10 to 15 minutes, and much less time than that if it's a smoothie or a shake. In other words, when lunch hour rolls around, you can head out for a 30 to 50 minute training session, get back, take a quick cold shower and still have plenty of time for lunch. So what kind of lunch takes a long time to eat? Salads, casseroles, dinner leftovers, and pretty much anything that requires cutlery or getting together with a group to eat. So choose faster lunch alternatives instead if you're pressed for time wraps, smoothies, shakes or edible real food that you can actually take out on your training session with you. Chapter 11 has plenty of fast, easy real meals, and chapter 16 has plenty of portable edible foods you can take with you on the fly. Number nine is to commute. Now I own a pickup truck, but I only drive it once, about every one to two weeks. Sometimes I worry that I'll forget how to drive. This is because I go by foot or Bicycle almost everywhere Commuting is not only a great way to mimic an ancestral hunter gatherer life, but it can drastically cut down on training time. For example, you can skip all your bike workouts for for the week and just ride your bike to work, put your clothes in a backpack and pack baby wipes or action wipes to wipe yourself down. If you're like me, you can even go so far as to wash your hair in the sink. For two years I trained for Ironman just by commuting eight miles on my bicycle five days of the week, then throwing in one tougher, slightly longer effort on the weekend. Now, if this doesn't work for your work location, life or training schedule, you could also do things like run or bike to the grocery store for small items like bags of spinach or bananas. Grab a backpack and run errands like post office and banks on your bike, sprinting between stoplights and stop signs, and recovering during your stops. You can ride or run to social events like parties, make sure you've packed a backpack with a change of clothing or yourself or your family's car, and then drive home with your friends or family. There's a reason those little Ethiopian boys who run to school every day grow up to be world champion marathoners. Number 10 is to include the family. As soon as my wife and I found out we were pregnant with twins, we equipped our garage with a double bike trailer and a double jogger. The bike trailer always had two little bike helmets and a bunch of books and toys inside to keep the kids entertained during rides. And until the boys were just too heavy to push around, that double jogger was used nearly every day for neighborhood jogs, 5Ks, 10Ks nature field trips, running the kids to soccer tots practice, running to the gym, and even running to the grocery store with the kids. If you have younger children, try to join a gym or health club that's child friendly with free kid care like the ymca so that you and your spouse can exercise together while the kids are being safely watched. And if you have older children, begin to include them in your workouts. Several times per week, the kids and I go fitness exploring, a fun workout that involves running through the neighborhood, finding trees to climb, obstacles to jump from curbs and fences to balance on and up other elements of play around us, a technique discussed in my podcast episode with Daryl Edwards who owns the Fantastic Fitness Explorer website. This type of play, also seen in movements like parkour or movenat, is included in my chapter On Balance in this book. I'd also highly recommend you check out the website mykidsadventures.com for more fun physical activities you can do with your family. Now once a month I take the kids to the local sporting goods store and I let them choose a new piece of piece of physical fitness equipment to bring home like a kettlebell, medicine ball, dumbbell bouncy ball that bounces in different directions or anything else that strikes their fancy just to keep them excited about fitness and anxious to join me in any home workouts that I do now I know some training schedules and coaches say that invisible training is advised, which involves only training early in the morning or late at night when your training is invisible to your family. But I encourage the complete opposite. Make your family a part of your training. Number 11 is to communicate. You, your spouse, your family, your friends, your co workers and your boss should actually be aware of your training schedule when you have a five hour bike ride planned for the weekend or you decide to disappear to the gym for an extra hour on Wednesday morning. Trust me, it's better to announce the huge amount of time you plan on devoting to fitness rather than trying to keep it secret and pretend you're not training. We used to keep a giant calendar on the bulletin board by our front door where we wrote down workouts, family events, races, and sometimes the ever present reminder for me to mow the lawn already, which, as you'll learn in the next chapter on time saving, I never actually do anymore. Nowadays we're slightly more geeky and my wife and I use a shared Google calendar. Jessa knows my training plans and I know hers, and whenever it becomes necessary, I can share the calendar with coworkers, employees, friends, etc. Even though it's an extra step, I try to have a basic idea of where I'll be and when at least 30 days in advance so that there are no surprises. I don't lay things out very, very thoroughly, but just enough so that my family and friends can have a basic idea of what I'm up to now. I also log all my workouts over@bengreenfieldfitness.com innercircle if you want to take a peek at those. Now don't be embarrassed to wear your training schedule on your sleeve. Most people will respect you for being committed to fitness. Just make sure you give it advance notice and when the temptation arises to be rigid in your schedule no matter what, remember to ask yourself whether fitness is your hobby or your job. Number 12 is to cross train socially, even though I do indeed, like I mentioned, perform my actual training nearly 100% solo. Many of my social relationships are formed from playing tennis with a group of guys in my local tennis league, smacking around the volleyball on Sunday afternoons with friends, or hopping into the occasional noon basketball game at the gym. For me, these are social outlets that keep me from being an isolated training geek who's lost the skill to communicate with the general population and instead stare off into space focused on run turnover or pedaling stroke. Of course, you're also not wasting precious fitness time when you cross train in your training schedule. There's a wide world of sports just outside your front door and many of the these sports are not only entertaining and a fresh mental break from your normal training routine, but are also a perfect way to address cardiovascular fitness deficiencies. Train weak muscles, stimulate your mind and give you a way to expand your social circles. And while the social sports of golf, softball and baseball may not be the best cardiovascular cross training activities, you can look into things like soccer, basketball, tennis, tennis, or maybe, if you're an international listener, cricket. Now, for more details and tips on how to socialize, get fit and cross train simultaneously, read a two part article series that I wrote on cross training. I'll link to that over@BeyondTrainingBook.com Chapter 19 and then there's greasing the groove, a concept I originally discovered in a book called the Naked Warrior. The idea is basically this Instead of doing a long workout at the gym, you spread your exercises through the day. This not only allows you to become more proficient at certain movements, but also elevates your metabolism through the day and gets you fit or maintains fitness without you needing to always set aside time for structured workouts. Since it's an integral part of being an ancestral athlete, which you learned quite a bit about in chapter four. This is an important rule to have in your system. For example, I have a pull up bar installed in the door of my office. Every time I walk under that bar I have a rule that I have to do five pull ups. Other examples of greasing the groove that I include in my own life to become fit even when I'm not exercising are beginning and ending every day with 10 to 15 minutes of yoga and calisthenics with deep nasal breathing, doing 20 bodyweight squats every time I take a bathroom break and of course using a squatty potty doing 25 kettlebell swings at least once per day, spending as much of the workday as possible at a standing workstation or a treadmill workstation, doing 100 jumping jacks for every hour that I sit taking an icy cold shower two to three times a day, which is actually a good cardiovascular and mind enhancing trick, consistently engaging in deep diaphragmatic breathing similar to what you learned about in chapter nine. You get the idea you don't actually have to work out to be working out. And this is one of the biggest ways that I trick my body into staying in mildly active hunter gatherer fitness gaining mode all day long, freeing up more time for family, friends, work and play. Now all of the tips I've just shared with you are already included with or can be worked into the training plans that accompany the final version of this book over@BeyondTrainingBook.com now. Incidentally, I happened to write this chapter while I was hooked up to an electrostimulation device that was firing away on my quads and and hamstrings, giving me a training and a recovery effect while I sat on the couch and my kids were playing Legos on either side of me. Had I wanted to burn fat at the same time, I could have been wearing a cool fat burner vest. And if I wanted to free up even more time and if you were willing to incorporate these type of time saving biohacking technologies in your own life, I could have used any of the other type of things I recommend in my Underground Training Tactics for Enhancing Endurance chapter. Now I will admit that if you feel as though some of these biohacks or time enhancing techniques make you feel as though you're missing the journey of your quest to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve, then you can skip some of this stuff. If you enjoy a five hour bike ride, by all means do it. But make sure that you ask yourself whether perhaps a two hour bike ride and then three hours with your kids might be an even better option. Well, a full list of additional chapter resources, helpful links, scientific references and surprise bonuses for this chapter are available at BeyondTrainingBook.com Chapter 19 Enjoy. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. SA.