Podcast Episode#213 from

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/10/episode-213-healthy-foods-that-

cause-belly-fat/

[0:00.00.0]

Introduction: In today’s podcast, healthy foods that cause belly fat. Also, is fasting

effective for recovery, what to do about degenerative disc disease,

how much should you eat to gain one pound of muscle, losing

weight without becoming amenorrheic, how to be less susceptible to

injury as you age and when to use grape seed oil?

Brock: Hey everybody! Welcome to another episode of the Ben Greenfield

Fitness podcast. I’m Brock and I gotta warn you, I have 2 cups of

coffee, I’ve ridden my bike 30 km. and I’ve practiced accordion this

morning, so, I am on fire. How about you, Ben?

Ben: Did you play the accordion?

Brock: I sure do. I played professionally for 12 years.

Ben: You’re like an international man of mystery, you’re a ballerina, and

you play the accordion.

Brock: No, no, no…don’t call us ballerinas. We’re male dancers.

Ben: Ah…Gotcha! Is there anything else that listeners should know about

you that they’ll find shocking or entertaining?

Brock: There is, but I’m not gonna say it right now. You have to keep

tuning in to find out all the mysteries that make me who I am.

Ben: I love the intrigue. For those of you listening in, I’ll actually get to

hang out with Brock over in Thailand here in a month and a half.

Brock: Oh…don’t remind me…so nervous, so excited.

Ben: We’re going over there to do a couple of triathlons along with a

group of over a dozen athletes, some Ben Greenfield Fitness

listeners and fans and athletes that I coach and it’s gonna be a

fantastic time. But we’ll send you a few videos and you can

see…maybe Brock and I will do the Ben Greenfield podcast live via

video.

Brock: Yey…I’ll bring my accordion too.

Ben: I just got back from Ironman Hawaii.

Brock: Yeah! Was it awesome? Was it amazing?

Ben: Yeah. It was pretty cool. For the first time in my life, I actually

slept through the swim star which was great after having the B in

the swim for the past 4 years. And then, I rode my bike out to the

energy lab out there where people go in one end with a smile on

their face and come up the other end looking completely nuked.

And that was pretty fun to try my bike out there and just hang out

in a different part of the race course. So, those of you who are in

Ironman Hawaii fans, of course, one of the things that you can do is

you can go to ironmanlive.com and this is something I did last year

and you can watch the whole race from start to finish. And for

those of you who are maybe training for Ironman or just triathlon

geeks, you can actually stream that live and watch it while you’re

riding your bike indoors or playing accordion as the case may be.

Brock: We won’t spoil it for you but we will say “Kroie didn’t win”.

Ben: He didn’t win. And then one other thing, I signed up for Ironman

Canada yesterday.

Brock: Hey! Cool! The new one in Whistler.

Ben: Yeah. We’re in Whistler. So, if you’re a listener to the podcast, then

I will see you out there next August.

News Flash:

Brock: Okay. To get these and other interesting news flashes every week

and perhaps everyday, make sure to follow Ben on twitter at

twitter.com/bengreenfield and on Google+, of course and you can

find that all at bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Ben: All right. Here we go with the first interesting thing. You can get an

eight-fold increase in a specific protein that builds your

mitochondria. And remember that the mitochondria, little oxygen-

consuming organelles, part of your cells that are responsible for

producing energy as you exercise and the way that you can get an

eight-fold increase in a specific protein called PGC1 alpha is by

training at a moderate intensity in what’s called the glycogen-

depleted state. And this was based on a study in which they took 2

groups of actually fairly elite competitive road cyclist and mountain

bikers and they have them do a workout following a carbohydrate

depletion protocol and even a pre workout meal comprised

primarily of eggs and bacon rather than the traditional pasta and of

course, they gave the other group pasta, oatmeal, orange juice,

bananas, things of that nature. And in the low carbohydrate group,

performance did not suffer and also they had a fairly significant

increase in this protein that’s responsible for mitochondrial

expression.

[0:05:27.7]

So, the practical take-home message of this is that the tool that you

can have in your workout toolbox is to engage in some kind of

glycogen-depletion or low carbohydrate state prior to a moderate

exercise routine in this case, I believe, was a series of 4-minute

intervals that this group did. And that can be something that you

can use as an alternative like a super high intensity workout which

actually has a similar effect on this PGC1 alpha protein and

mitochondrial expression. That was something that I thought was

interesting.

Brock: Cool! So, it’s not necessarily going into a fasted state, it’s just going

into it with more fats on board than carbohydrate.

Ben: Either one would technically work, although fasting is of course, a

little bit more stressful on the body when it’s combined with

exercise or interval-based routines.

Brock: Gotcha.

Ben: Another interesting study was on probiotics specifically what the

study looked at was probiotic intake in athletes and what they found

in trained athletes who they put on a probiotic protocol for about 14

weeks was that it had a very cool effect on the digestive system

particularly in reducing pretty well known markers of inflammation

in the digestive system. Something called the protein carbonyl

group which is a specific group of proteins that you see in a lot of

inflammatory diseases like Alzheimer’s and arthritis and diabetes

and things of that nature, that decreased TNF alpha which

modulates inflammation and is associated with leaky gut syndrome

where you have these undigested food particles crossing form the

digestive system into the bloodstream. That was decreased and

then interleukin 6 which another marker of inflammation – that

decreased in response to probiotic intake specifically in athletes.

And the other thing that happened was that zonulin which is

basically a protein that’s associated again with leaky gut syndrome

tended to decrease with the probiotic intake and the idea behind

that is that the more zonulin that your body produces, that leak

your gut kinda becomes so what they found in these people who are

on the probiotic intake was they had tighter gut junctions – the

cellular junctions that will allow undigested food particles to cross

in the blood stream. They had lower levels of oxidation and lower

levels of inflammation and this was all in response to probiotic

supplement use. While I am, of course, a fan of introducing

fermented foods in your diet as much as possible to get your good

bacteria, this was a 10 billion count-a-day pribiotic intake which is

fairly standard probiotic supplement.

Brock: Okay. I was gonna ask if they talked about what the dosing was.

So, is it a 10 billion?

Ben: Yeah. 10 billion. You’re gonna find a lot of capsules. I believe that

cap probiotics that I take is a 20 billion. You can find probiotic

capsules that go up to 80 billion. In this case, 10 billion seem to be

doing a pretty good effect. That was another interesting article.

And then the last one that I wanted to mention was an article over

in Sweat Science which is a blog about runners’ world from Alex

Hutchinson. He usually has some good stuff. And he had a post

about whether drafting helps in running, meaning running closely

behind the runner that’s in front of you and whether or not that

drop in air resistance could actually help you. They looked in to

whether or not tucking behind the runner in front of you would

actually allow you to save energy. And it looks like you save about

80% of the energy that you’d otherwise spend fighting air

resistance. And so what this means is that there can be what comes

out to about 1 second for every 400 meters of running and possibly

even more than that on really windy days where you’re running into

a head win. When you’re running right around the pace of about a

6-minute mile, these are fairly fast runners. But either way, if

you’re running a 5k, a 10k, a marathon, whatever, if it’s a windy day

or even if it’s not a windy and you just wanna save your energy

from fighting air resistance, tucking closely into the runner in front

of you actually has a fairly significant effect. And I’ll link over to the

article on the show notes. We link to everything that we talk about

over on the show notes. This is gonna be Episode 213.

[0:10:27.7]

Brock: That’s right. Yup!

Ben: So, we link to that article on whether drafting helps in running in

the show notes at Episode 213 at the bengreenfieldfitness.com and

also to some of these studies I mentioned.

Brock: Just make sure, if you’re tucking in behind somebody, watch for the

snot rockets.

Ben: Yeah. The snot rockets and you may wanna ask the folks what they

had for their pre race meal. If beans or legumes are involved, you

may wanna keep your distance.

Special Announcements:

Brock: Okay. Make sure to go to audiblepodcast.com/ben because this

podcast is sponsored by Audible, a fine purveyor of audio books for

many a year now. And Ben, I think you found a cool book on there

this morning.

Ben: Yeah. That’s right. If you’re into fitness audio books, in this case,

specifically, mental fitness, you should check out Keep Your Brain

Alive: Neurobic Exercises to Help Prevent Memory Loss and

Increase Mental Fitness. I’m a big fan of doing anything you can to

keep your brain aerobically fit. For me, it’s doing things like playing

instruments and learning new languages but you can also do these

neurobic exercises. This is one of the top rank books in Audible

right now in the fitness category so you can check that out.

Brock: Don’t just go to audible.com, go to audiblepodcast.com/ben so they

know that we sent you.

Ben: That’s right. So we get our credit. Speaking of mental performance

and keeping your brain alive, many of you who listened and

participated in the survey that we sent out a few weeks ago about

diet and sticking to a diet and overcoming the mental challenges

that go along with healthy eating, Chris Jansen, who is the mental

performance coach over at Pacific Elite Fitness, and myself have

been working pretty hard on your survey responses and we’re

developing a series of live webinars that are going to teach you how

to stick to a diet. It’s actually going to be called (my surprise) the

Diet Dominator. Stay tuned, if you subscribe to the Ben Greenfields

Fitness Newsletter which you can grab for free over

bengreenfieldfitness.com, I’m gonna give our listeners the first tab

that taking part in these webinars and they should launch fairly

soon. So stay tuned for that. It’s called the Diet Dominator and I

wanted to make sure that people know about that and….

Brock: I’d still think you’d get more hits if it was Diet Dominatrix.

Ben: I probably would but not from the crowd that we’re trying to target

for this.

Brock: Okay. Thanks for the hits men.

Ben: Yes, that’s true. And then the other thing that I wanted to mention

I don’t know if this is a special announcement or not but, I figured

out a really cool way, if you like to use audio to help you to sleep. I

know there are some people out there that use white noise apps. I

put together a pretty cool audio track that I was using down in

Hawaii so it’ll make me sleep just because you’re in a different time

zone and sometimes, you’re waking up three hours early. So, all I

did was I downloaded one of these free 20-minute body scan mp3s,

you can find them all over the internet and if anybody wants to link

to the one that I used just leave me a comment in the show notes to

this episode. It’s about 20 minutes of body scanning and body

scanning is where you start down at your toes, you can put and

relax your toes then you move up to your legs and your hips and

your stomach and your face and your forehead until you’ve basically

relaxed your whole body. And I created a sleep playlist that went

straight from that 20-minute relaxation scenario into a delta wave

frequency binaural beats that kinda lower your brain into these

delta waves. And it worked really well. So, kind of a cool way to

lower yourself to sleep so what I did in iTunes was I created this

sleep playlist where I just had literally 8 hours of these delta wave

beats that were preceded by this 20-minute body scan. So, put your

body in this total state of relaxation and takes you into delta wave

activation. So, for those of you who like to sleep hack and there’s

audio and stuff, there’s a quick tip for you and just leave a comment

for me in the show notes if you want some links to the stuff I use

with just some pretty downloads I got off the internet, basically.

One last thing, probiotics video I put up over an hour-long live

kitchen presentation in Watch Me and My Wife teach you how to

make your own probiotics at home. It’s free. It’s posted over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com. So, check that out if you haven’t been

over there and watch that video. I think it’s super helpful for any of

you who wanna learn how to make your own kimchi and sour crout

and stuff like that.

[0:15:35.5]

Brock: Or anybody who’s concerned about what kind of yogurt to buy after

last week’s podcast.

Ben: That’s right.

Brock: Just make it yourself.

Listener Q and A:

Graeme: Hey Ben and Brock! It’s Graeme from Australia. I’ve got a question

or a bit of a theory about maybe using a fasting diet as part of

recovery. If you look at some of the markers after marathon or an

Ironman like inflammation markers and oxidation markers, well

those are exactly the same things we choose when you fast. What I

was wondering is, could you use a fasting diet maybe 2 days after a

marathon or an Ironman as a way of expediting recovery.

Appreciate your podcast.

Ben: You know this is an interesting question because it’s absolutely true

that fasting can have a pretty cool effect on inflammation. And

there was in particular, a study done a few years ago but it was in

the annals of nutrition and metabolism that looked at what

happened to inflammatory markers in people who are observing

Ramadan which is basically just a series of intermittent fast, some

are just not eating at all from morning to evening.

Brock: Sunrise to sunset.

Ben: Yeah. And they collected twice daily blood samples on these people

and they found significant reductions in inflammatory markers. So,

you’ve got these traditional markers that you tend to test when

you’re looking at whole body inflammation. One is interleukin 6

and interleukin 6 is this pro inflammatory substance. It’s released

by your macrophages which are your white blood cells. And a ton of

studies have shown that what happens with this interleukin 6 is it’s

produced by adipose tissue (fat tissue) in your abdomen or also

what called your visceral fat tissue which is some of the deeper fat

tissue runs your organs and this interleukin 6 tends to be

inflammatory and it can bind to microbes and it can help the

immune system attack form and damage cells and you tend to see it

in higher amounts when there’s higher immune system activity but

they found that this interleukin 6 tended to decrease when you were

in a fasted state specifically implying that the immune system is

allowed to settle down a little bit. C-reactive protein is another

inflammatory marker that you tend to measure you’re looking

specifically at risk factor for cardiovascular disease but it can also

be really really elevated when you have, for example, ran a

marathon and that’s something else that you can measure. And

then the last thing that they measured was something called

homocysteine and homocysteine is another inflammatory molecule

that reacts with proteins. And high homocysteine levels cause a lot

of what’s called oxidative damage. They cause inflammation of

many many times in the gut and so elevated homocysteine levels,

that’s something you can also measure as a risk factor for

cardiovascular disease but also for general whole body

inflammation. And so, all of these tended to decrease when

intermittent fasting protocol was being observed.

[0:20:20.8]

So, when you’ve run a marathon, of course, you wouldn’t wanna be

fasted right away because your body does need nutrients for cellular

repair and recovery. It needs some carbohydrate to replenish the

body’s glycogen stores because a lower immune system activity can

occur when you’re in a severely glycogen-depleted state following a

hard workout. And then, of course, you need amino acids for

cellular repair and recovery. So, crossing the finish line of a

marathon and going straight into a fast sounds horribly unpleasant

for those of us who slam to pizza and beer post race. But it could

also be very stressful on the body. However, once you’ve adequately

replenished the body’s energy stores and you’ve had at least a 24-

hour, possibly, up to a 48-hour window of re-feeding, you still got

high levels of a lot of these inflammatory markers. In marathon

runners, these inflammatory markers that I just mentioned, they’ve

been observed to stay elevated for up to 19 days after the race. So,

even though it hasn’t been looked at in studies, running a

marathon, re-feeding and then going into a fasted protocol, it is

highly likely that you may actually experience some beneficial anti-

inflammatory effect of, after you’ve replenished the body’s energy

stores having a day of lower calorie intake. Now, Graeme does

mention a few supplements that may be helpful like using branch

chain amino acids and I do recommend that. I recommend two

things if you’re using this fasted type of protocol to keep the body

from being stressed too much. One would be branch chain amino

acids. The brand that I would recommend would be one called

Recoverease because it not only have the amino acids to keep your

body from essentially cannibalizing lean muscle tissue when you’re

doing a fasted protocol but that also has proteolytic enzymes in it

which, especially, when taken on an empty stomach which of course

you’d have if you’re in a fasted state, have a really really good effect

at breaking down fibrinogen, one of the primary causes of muscle

soreness. And so you’ll get kind of a double whammy effect of the

amino acids along with the proteolytic enzymes with Recoverease.

And then the other one would be some type of a greens supplement.

Greens supplements, whether they’re in capsule or powder form,

even if you’re taking a bunch of spinach and kale and stuff like that

and blending it, you’re highly alkalinic so, it can fight off a lot of

that whole body acidity that you tend to experience after a hard

effort like a marathon. And that also is something that can be quite

useful that you use when you’re going through a fasted protocol – a

little bit of a detox – what’s called an alkalinizing effect of the green

supplement. So, I would include the greens supplement, I would

include branch chain amino acids and then, of course, water. But

yes, absolutely, there could be something to trying this protocol. I’ll

put a link to the greens supplements and the branch chain amino

acids supplement I recommend in the show notes and also on the

MyList for this episode over at facebook.com/bgfitness.

Brock: Would it still actually qualify as a fast if you’re taking the greens

supplements. I know the greens supplements that I’ve had has a

considerable amount of calories.

Ben: Like how many?

Brock: I guess like 200 or so for 2 scoops. It’s the Living Feel Super

Greens.

Ben: Well, Living Feel Super Greens is a meal replacement powder.

That’s a form meal replacement powder.

Brock: So…you’re not talking about a real supplement but just a

supplement.

Ben: Yeah, Usually, it’s like blends of spirulina with some blue green

algae and broccoli and kelp. Like you take Capra greens which are

the one that I use – super duper dense green supplements for a

double dose serving of that, you’re looking at 40 calories max. So,

it’s pretty insignificant.

Brock: Now, how about some omega 3 like some fish oil or something?

Would that help with the inflammation as well?

Ben: Yeah. You tend to see a little bit of an anti inflammatory effect with

the good triglyceride-based fish oil that’s been packaged with some

antioxidants in it like some vitamin E and some astaxanthin stuff

like that so, yeah, you could use a good high quality fish oil as well.

But I definitely recommend getting the greens and amino acids in

there and like an anti-inflammatory omega 3 fatty acid, absolutely.

So Graeme, if your athletes try this protocol or if anybody else

listening in tries this out and finds success with it in terms of

decreasing soreness or helping you to feel better after a hard effort,

and then go for it. I personally tend to eat like a pig for the week

after I’ve done an Ironman or a marathon or something like that so,

I’d have a tough time doing this one.

[0:25:22.8]

Stacy: Hi Ben and Brock! This is Stacy and I have a question for you. But

first, let me give you some background. I first injured my hip about

a year and a half ago and I was told that was trochanteric bursitis.

Then in April this year, my back went out. About a day or two later,

my stomach started hurting and it’s straight through from where

my back hurts. You could put an aero for a _____[0:25:55.0]. I

had therapy and many up and down since then and that MRI was

done finally showing that I have degenerative disc disease between

L5 and S1. Doctor said 100% he is sure this is the cause of my pain

and even my hip issue. I’m only 41 and was told that this will just

get worse and surgery may be in my future. My question is, can this

be the cause of the pain and is there anything I can do about it and

with regard to exercise, what can I do without making it worse?

What kind of exercise can I do because I definitely don’t to

aggravate it and make it disintegrate basically anymore. And then

the next question is, are there any supplements that I can take that

could help? I am 6’3” and weigh 150 lbs. My goals are just to be fit

and maybe some mini-guns would be nice. And thank you for the

podcast and everything you guys do.

Brock: Okay. I did a little bit of research myself on this one and the first

thing I noticed was that’s a really terrible name for it. It’s not

degenerative and it’s not really a disease so degenerative disease is a

pretty bad name for it.

Ben: You mean it’s not degenerative because…

Brock: Because it doesn’t actually worsen or doesn’t necessarily worsen

over time which we sort of just believe when you hear that word.

Ben: Yeah. And a lot of times, you don’t need surgery to fix degenerative

disc disease. There are some cases where immediate surgery would

be required like if you completely lose bowel or bladder control,

that’s a pretty bad sign. You can also get what’s called cauda equina

syndrome which is, you have this group of nerves that kinda hangs

off the end of your spine and it looks like a horse’s tail, so literally,

that’s the Latin term for the horse’s tail is cauda equina and what

the syndrome which is a pretty serious disorder is extreme little

back pain and weakness in the legs, pain that goes from the back

into the legs and again, loss of bowel or bladder control and a

situation like that a lot of times, you do need surgery. But in many

cases, there can be non-surgical options for degenerative disc

disease and alternative treatments. Physical therapy is of course,

the most common treatment and what you’re doing, decompression

type of exercise for the low back and a type of stretches and

flexibility. But there are other things that you can try. For example,

acupuncture, which is the use of these very very defined needles

without medication can be used to treat pain. And the

acupunctures would leave needles and precise points in your body’s

vertical meridians and those are typically left in for 20-40 minutes

and it causes your body to release pain phytochemicals like

endorphins or serotonin and those may actually help to initiate a

little bit of healing process as well. That’s one example of an

alternative treatment for this that you may want to try. There are

herbal remedies that are out there. A few traditional remedies that

would be used would be different types of anti inflammatories like

white willow bark cherry juice extract, turmeric, I’ve mentioned the

joint supplement Capraflex before as one of the things that I found

quite efficacious for joint pain and one that I’ve had a lot of people

writing to me and tell me that they found to be especially useful for

things like knees and hips and ankles and injuries but you may want

to try something like that for degenerative disc disease as well

because it does have many kind of aspirin-like compounds in it that

don’t actually irritate the stomach and that can be useful for pain or

inflammation and relief.

[0:30:21.3]

There’s another type of supplement called S-adenosylmethionine.

It’s abbreviated SAME. And there’s a little bit of evidence that

suggests that might be useful for a lot of age-related wear and tear

type of spinal conditions like osteoarthritis or like degenerative disc

disease. Interestingly, it’s also been shown to have a decent effect

on depression as well but that’s just like a powder that you can get.

I’ll put a link to it in the show notes but it’s pretty easy to find just

about anywhere. But that would be another kind of supplement

type of thing to look into. The last supplemental treatment that I

would probably recommend the highest that you check out would

be Hyaluronic acid or what’s called sodium hyaluronate. The

reason that I recommend that is that when you’re looking at

degenerative disc disease, a lot of times, you do see a little bit of

cartilage damage. And your cartilage works kinda like a hydraulic

system. And you can look at how hyaluronic acid as being like the

hydraulic fluid that would fill up your spinal column and act as the

fluid in that hydraulic system. You can get this restorative effect

with hyaluronic acid and I’ve come across many many cases where

people have tried out hyaluronic acid supplements for back pain,

for back stiffness and found some really good results within one to

two weeks. You have to take a pretty high dose of hyaluronic acid

for something like this. In most cases, you take like a powder and

you’d want around 500 mg of hyaluronic acid powder. I’ll put a link

in the show notes. You can get the stuff off Amazon in pretty pure

format but you mix that with sea salt and the actual formula is

about 500 mg of hyaluronic acid powder and you mix that in about

10 g of sea salt and you put that into water and you need about half

a liter of water or so. And that’s something that you can dose with

and the 500 mg would be about a daily dose of hyaluronic acid and

you would wanna mix that in bowl. You wanna mix it fresh because

it’ll tend to degrade if it’s not in use. But that’s basically, it’s

something that’s been used in anti-aging circles but it’s also

something that you could definitely try for degenerative disc. You

wanna use it for about a week to see if you notice results in terms of

pain and range of motion. Now, of course, I need to throw in the

medical disclaimer here that I don’t want you to misconstrue this as

medical advice or any type of prescription. I’m simply reporting on

what I found the people have tried when it comes to this and

reported success with. But that’s something that you could

certainly experiment with. I’ll put a link to just basic book

Hyaluronic Acid and Sea Salt in the show notes if you wanna try it

out. The other thing that can contribute to muscle stiffness is a lack

of magnesium. Magnesium combined with MSM can actually do a

pretty good job with neck pain and with back pain. And there is a

specific type of magnesium + MSM lotion. It’s put up by a company

called Magnetic Cleanse like a topical lotion. If you apply that

topically along with oral consumption of hyaluronic acid, you’ll

probably notice a little bit of an effect. If it were me, that’s what I

would try. A very very last thing you may wanna look at and this is

something that I’ve spoken with the physicians down the show

before, Dr. David Minkoff, down at Lifeworks Wellness Center in

Florida. He uses a lot of prolotherapy for this type of issues.

Prolotherapy is basically an attempt to stimulate growth of new

ligaments and tendon tissues using an injection of what’s called the

proliferants which is sometimes like a sure water, sometimes it’s a

mix of different enzymes, but it’s supposed to kick start the body’s

healing process by crossing just a little bit of inflammation and

usually several rounds of injections of prolotherapy or something

that would be used in something like degenerative disc disease. But

that’s another thing that you could visit with like an alternative

medical practitioner about would be going for a series of

prolotherapy sessions. I know it’s a lot of stuff I just threw at you

but if you’re looking for an alternative to surgery, those are some of

the things you could try.

[0:35:14.7]

Brock: Yeah. She also talks about whether or not she should exercise when

she’s got this condition and I’m just looking, she also mentioned

she’s 6’3” and 150 lbs. so, that’s quite light for that height. It’s very

light for that height so, maybe some strengthening would really

help out.

Ben: Yeah. Strengthening but you wanna be careful that is not really a

compressive type of setting where you’re doing like an overhead

dumbbell press or squat with something on the back or something

of that nature. Generally, spinal decompression is gonna feel a lot

better like doing, for example, the assisted pull up machine or a lat

pull down or even a seated row or something of that nature. The

other thing that has a really really good effect in terms of spinal

decompression is swimming because that weightless environment

it’s not gonna have much of the strengthening effect but it can

actually could have a pain relieving effect. You see that a lot of

times in a physical therapy setting for degenerative disc diseases are

water therapies. And that’ll be another thing that you could utilize

would be just experimenting with different strokes in the pool and

using that as an exercise as well.

Brock: Those pull downs and pull ups will certainly get you the mini-guns

that you’re mentioning too.

Ben: That’s right.

Anonymous: Yeah! I would like to ask a question. My question to you if you

workout and when you get done, how much time we have to be able

to still accumulate 2500 calories or to be effective to gain 1 lb. of

muscle? That’s my question. Thank you very much.

Ben: The idea behind this question is that it takes approximately 2500

calories to gain a pound of muscle and around 3500 calories to gain

a pound of fat. The problem is that even though if you take a lab rat

and you get those 2500 calories to somehow build a pound of

muscle, if you’re eating as many extra calories as you need to eat to

gain significant amount of muscle, you do risk many of those

calories getting converted into fat instead of muscle because you

can only build muscle so quickly. And when you look at a lot of

personal training programs, they’re taking those 2500 calories and

dividing them to get around 350 – 400 extra calories per day to

gain around a pound of muscle per week. The problem is that, in

many many folks who eat those 350 – 400 extra calories per day,

they tend to see some of that getting converted into fat. And so you

see this slight rise in muscle but unless you’re exercising a lot, doing

a ton of lifting, maybe doing some kind of a body building type of

protocol, you tend to see this kind of high calorie intake changes

resulting in an increase in muscle but also an increase in body fat.

And what I have found is that in most people who are trying to gain

muscle and who wanna make sure that the muscle is achieved via

more of a lean gains type of protocol, via putting on muscle and not

putting on body fat, shooting for closer to about a half pound of

muscle a week tends to work a little bit better. And so when you’re

shooting for closer to a half pound of muscle a week, generally,

instead of eating 2500 calories per week, it’s closer to 1250 extra

calories per week. So, you’re only looking at right around 150 - 200

extra calories per day – kinda over and above what your metabolic

rate would be. The way that you would actually figure this out is

you need to figure out your metabolic rate and you can do that

using a metabolic laboratory, you can use that using what called

bod pod if you’re a gymnast, one of those. You can even go to my

website and getfitguy.com. That has some really good calorie

calculators on it that will let you input your height and your weight

and stuff like that and approximate your metabolic rate. You just

take that metabolic rate and then you multiply by a certain factor.

In most cases, where most people who are doing an exercise

program, it’s 1.5. And then you add 150 – 200 calories to that and

that’s your approximate amount that you would eat per day in order

to put on about a half pound of muscle a week. And putting on

about a half pound of muscle a week is going to, in most people,

result in ability to put on muscle without also putting on fat. That’s

kind of a route that I would take as far as how quickly after workout

you need to eat extra calories. That doesn’t really matter as long as

your total calorie intake by the end of the day comes out to being

around 150-200 calories more than what your metabolic rate is or

the amount of calories that you’re actually burning are.

[0:40:48.4]

You do, of course, wanna make sure that you generally try and give

your body some carbohydrates and some amino acids within

anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour after you finish working out-

the closer to the workout, the better, especially if you haven’t had a

good pre workout meal. But yeah, rather than 2500 calories a week

for a pound of muscle a week, closer to 1250 extra calories per week

for a half pound of muscle a week is gonna allow you to gain weight

without gaining too much fat.

Anonymous: Hey! I wanted to know what’s the best way to lose fat if you’re a

skinny guy but you gained a little weight in the stomach and you

just wanna lose some stomach fat.

Brock: Okay. I actually went to the website bengreenfieldfitness.com. and

searched for “belly fat” and there’s quite a lot of information there.

One page in particular, called 10 Ways to Burn Belly Fat Fast and

there’s a link in the show notes to that. But it is one of those topics

that come up a lot so it’s probably worth going through one more

time.

Ben: Yeah. There’s certain foods that are heavily associated with belly fat

and I’ve always mentioned before in the show I think that sugar and

alcohol are the 2 biggest things that I just say cut right away if you

wanna get rid of that last little bit of fat around the waistline.

Brock: Oh my Cuba Libra!

Ben: Yeah. Your rum and cokes are out. However, if there are other

things that would traditionally be viewed by a lot of people to be

health foods that are the biggest culprits in both guys and girls

when it comes to belly fat. Those traditionally thought of as

potentially healthy foods would be first of all like whole wheat bread

or whole grains, I will cut those out and generally, that’s because of

their ability to really spike blood glucose levels, spike fat storage

and insulin levels and essentially cause a little bit of gut

inflammation. So, I would get rid of any of that stuff – bread,

pretzels, cereals, chips, whole grains, cut it.

Brock: So when you’re talking about gut inflammation, that’s not…I think a

lot of people think that that’s actually sort of the stuff is sticking out

and makes our T-shirt look bad but you’re talking about something

that’s a lot deeper inside the body, like in the gut.

Ben: Well, both. When you have, let’s say, the protein portion of wheat

like wheat from a gluten and/or gliadin causing an inflammatory

response in the gut, you not only get some damage to the villi of the

small intestines so you get less vitamin and nutrient absorption and

you get a little bit of an inflammatory and in cortisol response in the

blood stream which can cause swelling and fluid retention and stuff

like that. But you can also get a little bit of unresponsiveness of the

nerves in the stomach. The same nerves that are responsible for

enervating a lot of your stomach muscles, a lot of your ab muscles

or also the nerves that are responsible for gut function. And so,

inflammation in the gut can lead to lack of tone in the stomach

muscles. So, both really - food for swelling, weight retention,

immune system response, high cortisol levels and then also lack of

nerve enervation to your stomach muscles. So, yes, both. Fruit juice

would be another one. Fruit juices now loaded fructose which, if

your muscle’s carbohydrates stores are full in your liver’s

carbohydrates stores is gonna get very easily converted into fat. But

you also tend to get a pretty dense and quick calorie load with fruit

juice. So, in addition to whole grains, I would cut out fruit juice.

Soy from tofu, soy milk and stuff like that, a lot of times, it is

considered healthy alternative to regular milk but because of the

estrogenic effect of soy, we tend to see that also being issue

especially in guys not only with belly fat but also men boobs. So, soy

is another thing that I would cut out.

[0:45:13.8]

The next thing would be vegetable oils. Vegetable oils, just because

of what happens when you cook them in terms of oxidation, some of

the inflammation in terms of the high amounts of omega 6’s, in the

same way that you can get some inflammation from wheat and

whole grain consumption, you tend to see somewhere amounts of

inflammation from vegetable oil consumption. And you see,

vegetable oils, a lot of times, in healthy foods – healthy packaged

crackers and stuff like that and a lot of times, even healthy foods

like vegetable and rice bowls that you might get at the restaurant.

All of the things that people are going out of their way to eat, as

they’re trying to fix their diet, can be gut bombs literally. Frozen

yogurt, you see a lot of people start to cut out ice cream and go for

frozen yogurt instead, I think that’s a big big issue when it comes to

belly fat ‘cause you’re combining commercial dairy with all of its

hormones and antibiotics and estrogenic type of compounds along

with high amounts of sugar and it advertises fat-free in many cases.

And I think that you’ll see a lot of people cutting out the ice cream

and going for frozen yogurt instead and that really doesn’t do you

any favors from a belly fat perspective as well. And then the last

thing, the artificial sweeteners. I’d cut out Splenda, Aspartame, all

these stuff, not only can have a pretty nasty effect on your gut flora

and the good bacteria in your gut but it also can tend to spark the

appetite and cause you to eat more food later on and these are also

pretty heavily associated with overweight and obesity. So, whole

grains, fruit juice, stuff with soy, vegetable oils, frozen yogurts and

artificial sweeteners, you’ll tend to see all these things in a “healthy

diet” but they’re associated with belly fat and I’d cut them out.

Brock: That’s some good advice. And also make sure you go to the

websites. I know we’ve talked about it in depth a few other times.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: Okay.

Marianne: I want to lose about 10 lbs. so I can carry less weight and hopefully

become a bit faster running and biking. But if I decrease caloric

intake, I’ll lose weight but I get amenorrheic. I’m constantly

hungry, thinking of food all the time and I feel weak and dizzy.

When I eat enough, I’m not hungry but I gain weight which I

attribute to muscle gain because my body fat percentage does not

change.

Brock: Now she gives us a few some more breakdown and stuff but I think

the most interesting thing is she says her diet is about 50%

vegetables and fruits, 25% fish and chicken like proteins and 25%

whole grains. And she also trains 6 days a week for about 2 hours

each day.

Ben: Yeah. This is kind of classic female athlete triad – that’s basically

the combination of low energy availability, so low calorie intake,

combined with amenorrhea or loss of female reproductive function

or lack of the menstrual period and then, osteoporosis or low bone

density. And I’ve had a guess that if Marianne tested her bone

density, it’d probably be pretty low. Now, Marianne says that she

wants to lose about 10 lbs. And I think that that might confuse a lot

of people because they may mentally associate this female athlete

triad with being associated with really really skinny girls like cross-

country runners and stuff like that. But the fact is there is no real

association between the female athletic triad and body weight or

BMI or body fat. It’s most heavily associated with lack of adequate

energy availability and the entire hormonal cascade that causes low

bone density. And the drop specifically in hormone called LH

(luteinizing hormone) that leads to amenorrhea is all a function of

low energy availability. It all comes straight from that. So, when we

look at Marianne’s diet, what she needs to look at is basically calorie

intake and that combined with low energy availability from the high

high amounts of exercise. The only way to defeat the female athlete

triad and actually very very quickly and effectively bring someone

back out of that because it’s pretty simple to get the hormone levels

back up, to get the fatty acid levels back up and to reboot the body is

through dropping physical activity almost completely and

combining that with high calorie intake and even, yes, shockingly,

high carbohydrate intake.

[0:50:32.0]

That can reset the female athlete triad within 2 -4 weeks. I know it

sounds simple, I know it sounds stupid, but essentially, what

happens here when we look at this from an evolutionary

perspective, is that drop in energy availability actually sparks this

mental trigger in the female athlete or the female exerciser to

increase physical activity and this is basically kind of an

evolutionary response that when there is not enough food around,

your body begins to drive itself towards physical activity to go out

and find more food. It’s like a foraging hunting-gathering response.

But the unfortunate thing is that rather than going out to find food,

you’ll see that many female athletes or females who are engaging in

calorie researching or energy researching will rather than using that

drive to exercise to go to the grocery store and get food and fuel up

and take care of their bodies again will instead hop on a treadmill or

bicycle and use up the energy that way. And so that you create this

vicious cycle in terms of energy depletion, hormone depletion, drop

in luteinizing hormone combined with a real real rise in cortisol and

a lot of the inflammation that can arise from the over-exercising

and you get this triad. What I would recommend to Marianne

would be dropping physical activity and then increasing calorie

intake specifically increasing carbohydrate intake not from whole

grains but getting lots of sweet potatoes and yams and parsnips and

carrots and beets and your healthy carbohydrates continuing the

vegetable and the fruit intake and just going through a 2-4 week

reboot because a lot of times, the feelings of constant hunger and

thinking of food all the time, a lot of that is due to real real high out-

of-control levels of ghrelin and drop in leptin. Ghrelin is the

hormone that causes you to be hungry; leptin is the hormone that

can help you to control appetite a little bit. Those tend to be way

out of whack when you’ve got this female athlete triad going on and

so that can help to fix those as well and deal with some of these

hunger issues that Marianne is experiencing. So, basic big picture

is if you are female and you’re experiencing some of these

symptoms, you need to essentially, just give yourself 2-4 week

reboot window where you eat what you want when you want. I

don’t wanna say the pizza-beer diet ‘cause I’d rather you go gluten-

free here as much as you can and combine that with not exercising

too much. I know it sounds annoying and it sounds counter-

intuitive but that’s really what you have to do to dig yourself out of

this hole.

Brock: Yeah. It’s really hard for some people to hear taking that time off

but really the time off will pay off big time in the long run.

Ben: Yeah. Absolutely! And like I mentioned with that Diet Dominator

that Chris Jansen and I are gonna come out with here pretty soon,

we’re gonna be addressing some of the issues as well. Not only

issues of sticking to your diet but also kind of overcoming the

mental barriers to changing up the way that you eat because it can

be really really difficult especially for someone who is eating

“extremely healthy” to make a change that they might perceive to be

unhealthy or excessive when it comes to calorie consumption. We’ll

be talking about that stuff too when we launch this program.

Brock: All right! Our next question comes from William.

William says: How do I make my muscles less susceptible to strains and pulls,

particularly my hamstrings? I am 55 years old and have been

competing at skiing and running at the serious levels since I was a

child. I have a very healthy diet and low stress lifestyle. I’ve got a

good handle on managing my muscle health. I’ve had the best

success with some massage, topical magnesium, EMS complex, and

so on and so on, these bunch of things. It sounds like he’s really

taking good care of himself but he just wants to know, “Am I

missing something or as other people have said to me, I’m doing

okay for my age, just be grateful.”

[0:55:11.9]

Ben: You know, you get a lot of older folks especially older athletes

finding themselves more susceptible to these strains and sprains

and it can come down to a few things. The first thing is that when

you look at the body, you wanna look at it from a fascial standpoint

and fascia is this tough membrane bearing thickness that envelopes

and separates everything in your body from your muscle groups to

your bones literally down to each individual cell. Now, fascia is

almost like this 3-dimensional net and it surrounds all of these

different components of your body and in a normal and a hydrated

and a healthy state, fascia is able to stretch and is able to move

without restriction. And when it is restricted, you tend to see this

lack of mobility and this increase susceptibility to sprains and

strains. So, when you see fascia that’s not healthy, what you tend to

see or what are called fascial adhesions and ideally, in fascia, the

fibers run parallel to each other but often when the body has been

damaged or with age, you tend to get fibers that tend to stick to

other fibers running parallel to them almost like you’ve got a violin

with a bunch of strings on it but all of a sudden the strings in the

violin are glued together so it’s not gonna play correctly. Now,

when you put strain on a fascial adhesion, you typically tend to

make the issue even worse and also increase risk of injury and

stretching by itself doesn’t tend to fix the issue. A lot of times, it

tends to aggravate the issue of adhesion so you gotta do things

other than just stretching to get rid of fascial adhesions. And this is

where you tend to see things like deep tissue work being something

that can help out quite a bit. When I say deep tissue work, I’m

talking about literally working with a massage therapist or doing

lots and lots of foam roller type of drills. This is what I’ve talked

about in the show before like the Rumble Roller with the ridges

sticking out of it to dig deep into the fascia and work down into the

tissue to help to relieve a lot of these adhesions and to improve

mobility and decrease a lot of this susceptibility to injury. Golf

balls, tennis balls, stuff like that and rolling in areas that have lack

of mobility that can help out quite a bit. Ask and working with

massage therapist anywhere from once a week to once a month

depending on what your wallet is able to handle. You can also

support the fascia or even relieve some of the stress on the fascia

from what called kinesio tape. If you to bengreenfieldfitness.com

you could listen to an interview that I did with Gregg from Rock

Tape. If you go and search for rock tape and he explains how

kinesio tape actually can release some stress from the fascia and

strategically placed adhesive taping can essentially reduce areas

where fascia would normally be strained. Now, this type of taping

method would really be something that you’d use if you found

yourself susceptible to this type of issues and you wanted to go to a

triathlon or a marathon or basketball game or soccer game or

something like that. That can help usher in the process of

improving your actual mobility. But that’s still something that I

would consider to be a band aid. So, stretching is not going to be as

effective as deep tissue work. The other thing that I’d really really

focus on is actual hip mobility. So, in addition to doing some deep

tissue work with foam roller, tennis ball, golf ball, and massage

therapist, do some classic dynamic hip mobility drills like front to

back leg swings, side to side leg swings, fire hydrants, reverse

lunges, mountain climbers, hip thrust or squatting really low and

then thrusting towards the sky. There’s actually really good series

of hip mobility drills called the Agile Eight Hip Mobility Drills. I’ll

put a link to the Agile Eight in the show notes to this episode but I

would certainly be using a ton of dynamic stretching and hip

mobility exercises rather than coming at this from a stretch to

hamstring standpoint which again, isn’t really gonna do much for

you especially when it comes to your fascia.

[1:00:05.8]

I would be going after this in terms of actual movements like some

of the movements that I just mentioned like the mountain climbers,

the deep squats and the lunges and stuff like that.

Brock: And so that would be different then because he did mention is I’ve

lost a bit of spring and explosive power but if I train for that I tend

to tweak things.

Ben: Yeah. See, that’s not plyometrics per se. Plyometrics would be like

depth jumps and lunge jumps and stuff of that isn’t mobility as

much as it is actual explosive exercises so I’ll be focusing more on

dynamic mobility exercises and I’ll put a link in the show notes to

some of my favorite hip mobility drills. And then when it comes to

weight room exercises, stuff that can really help with improving hip

mobility would be like dead lifts, deep squats, single leg squats, side

to side lunges, again, not necessarily going after explosive exercises

as much as exercises that take you through full range of motion.

One really really good exercise to engage the hips to really work on

hip extension and also improve hip mobility is just a like a simple

Romanian dead lift where you’re picking the weight from about the

sheen level in a dead lift style move but keeping the legs relatively

straight, slight softness, slight bend in the knees but Romanian

dead lifts are great exercise for improving hip mobility and

hamstring strength without increasing the risk of straining the

hamstrings as well. That’s another one I would look into but that’s

what I’ve comment from the standpoint of – making sure you’re

taking care of your fascia with some deep tissue work, doing some

dynamic mobility especially like a dynamic warm up prior to

exercise sessions and then just doing some weight training moves

that take you through full range of motion.

Brock: Perfect! There you go, William. All right and our last question

comes from Brigid.

Brigid says: I just listened to podcast 192. It talked about different oils and which

ones are good for high heat content vs. others? There’s one that I’ve

been using for all my stir fries, sautés, pan-frying fish and anything

else that requires high heat. It’s called the “Grapeola” or “Grape

Seed Oil”. Is this a good choice to use for all that I stated above? I

also use it as a salad dressing mixed with Red Wine Vinegar.

Ben: Well, the interesting thing is that you have to consider more than

the heat point or the smoke point of an oil when you’re looking

whether or not it’s gonna be healthy to cook with. If you’ve listened

to some of the things that I’ve said about fats and oils before,

they’re basically made up of different fatty acid types –

monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and then saturated

fats. And if you look at what the predominant type of fatty acid is in

a specific oil or specific fat, that helps to determine whether or not

it’s should be exposed to heat in cooking. And the general rule of

thumb is that if you look at an oil or fat and it’s got high levels of

what are called polyunsaturated fats in it, then it shouldn’t really be

used for cooking regardless of what’s listed as its smoke point. If

it’s got high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids in it, that means

that it’s a highly reactive oil and that means that you’re gonna get a

high amount of what’s called lipid oxidation and also free radical

production which are two things that can contribute to

inflammation in your body. You need to get those things taking

place very quickly when anything that has high amounts of

polyunsaturated fatty acids in it are exposed to any degree of heat,

even very low heat. So, when you look at grape seed oil, it does have

a really high smoke point. The smoke point on grape seed oil is 485

degrees but grape seed oil is over 70% polyunsaturated which

means that it shouldn’t technically be exposed to any degree of heat.

If you have grape seed oil, you could store it in a refrigerator and

you could use it as in moderation a salad dressing or something like

that. But because of the levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids in it, I

wouldn’t cook with grape seed oil at all. And to illustrate this, you

can take something like rice bran oil and rice bran oil’s smoke point

is almost identical to that of grape seed oil but rice seed oil is only

about 35% polyunsaturated, about half of the amounts of

polyunsaturates compared to grape seed oil. And it’s much much

higher in saturated fatty acids and those saturated fatty acids tend

to protect more the delicate polyunsaturated fatty acids with

something like rice bran oil is exposed to low heat cooking. So, that

would be an example of where smoke point is not the only thing

that you wanna look at. Some other oils that have lower levels of

polyunsaturates and decent levels of saturated fatty acids that

would be okay for higher heat cooking would be avocado oil,

macadamia nut oil, or regular olive oil, not extra virgin olive oil but

regular olive oil. And any of those would be better for higher heat

cooking and the stuff that you’d wanna stay away from in addition

to grape seed oil for cooking would be corn oil, safflower oil,

sunflower oil, flax seed oil, walnut oil, hazel nut oil, anything like

pine nut, pumpkin or wheat germ oil for any of those you wanna

keep them away from heat, from light, from oxygen. And I think

like I mentioned last week when we’re talking about olive oil is you

wanna look for the cold pressed unrefined versions only. And then

for anything that’s like a cod liver oil or fish oil or anything like that,

those should never be sauté or cooking or anything of that nature.

So, go above and beyond smoke point when you look at whether or

not an oil should be used for higher heat cooking for sure.

Brock: Oh but that would be all right to use a grape seed oil for salad like

she said.

Ben: Yeah. To use it with the salad dressing mixed with Red Wine

Vinegar would be just fine but in terms of cooking at home, in

addition to butter, coconut oil, macadamia nut oil, avocado oil and

olive oil would be the ones to use for actual heat.

Brock: Unfortunately, those are all the most expensive ones on the shelf.

Ben: I don’t know what to tell you, Brock. You can’t have your cake and

eat it too.

Brock: I don’t want cake.

Ben: I don’t want cake. I just want good oil, that’s all.

Brock: All right. Well, that wraps up today’s episode. Make sure you send

us your questions and you can do so by going to

bengreenfieldfitness.com and using the handy dandy record audio

track button or you can go pacificfit on skype or you can just send

an e-mail.

Ben: That’s right and we will link to everything that we talked about in

this week’s show in the show notes for episode#213 at

bengreenfieldfitness.com and also be sure to go to

facebook.com/bgfitness and check out the MyList for this episode

where you can click on and add to your own list some of the stuff

that we talked about. So, that’s gonna wrap up today’s show. Be

sure to leave a ranking in iTunes if we dig the Ben Greenfield

Fitness podcast. And Brock will play us home.

For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or

DVD’s from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at

http://www.pacificfit.net