Podcast #233 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/03/233-how-to-

become-a-curvaceous-lean-ripped-female-athlete-without-destroying-your-

health/

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Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast: How to

become a curvaceous lean ripped female athlete without

destroying your health. Also: What does deer antler velvet spray

do, how to use UCAN Superstarch properly, how to get rid of

migraines using your diet, what is the Moxymonitor, and are

activity tracking devices (like the Fitbit) useful?

Brock: So…we both survived the Become Superhuman Live event.

Ben: We did.

Brock: How do you feel?

Ben: I feel good. And my booby doesn’t hurt anymore. Somehow,

putting on a live conference healed my twinpack. So I’m happy

about that, too.

Brock: There you go. Anybody who have heard tears their pectoral

muscle, make sure you spend a lot of money and invite a lot of

people to your city and put on an awesome spread for them for 2

½ days.

Ben: Yeah. That was fun. I thought the event went pretty well.

Brock: Yeah. I was blown away. Not that I had low expectations but you

exceeded my expectations for sure. Hot quite an event.

Ben: Highlight for me was Phil Maffetone, the aerobic guy when he

came on the stage, he forgot his little powerpoint dungle, which I

happen to have an extra one sitting in my bag and all of a sudden,

he was gone. He disappeared and we’re all looking around

because he’s supposed to be there onstage. I’m introducing him

and he’s just gone. And you hear this little kinda shuffle on the

speakers overhead because he’s still mic’ed and he’s literally

sprinting back to his hotel room across the street from the

conference center to go get the powerpoint. So Phil Maffetone,

the aerobic guy dead all out sprint comes back on the stage all red

in the face and then proceeds to talk about how to use music to

relax. But I thought that was pretty funny.

Brock: He was really fast, too. And then he almost put us all to sleep

which was kind of the other thing. Not because he was boring but

because he got us to do that diaphragmatic breathing with our

eyes closed and listening to one of his songs. I didn’t realize he

was such an accomplished songwriter. That was fantastic.

Ben: Yeah. After he coached some guys to win Ironman World

Championships, he disappeared from the scene for a while and

just wrote music and became a musician. He’s recently gotten

back into endurance sports. It’s interesting stuff and yes, I put

actually that picture of everyone leaning back in their chairs and

half sleeping is around the website. If people go over there, I did a

full on synopsis. If you to bengreenfieldfitness.com, I did an

article called Superhuman Review and just put pictures of

everything from Phil Maffetone speaking to Ray Cronise to Dave

Asprey to the Nutrition Diva and myself drinking Superhuman

cocktails to Brock, slightly inebriated at the after-party during

pirettes and everything that…

Brock: I was not slightly inebriated. Never!

Ben: You’re full…

Brock: I was full on. That’s right.

Ben: All right. We’ll what do you think? Shall we jump in?

Brock: All right. Here we go.

News Flashes:

Brock: All right. If you follow Ben at twitter.com/bengreenfield and go to

facebook.com/bgfitness and also at Google+, you’ll get all kinds of

awesome news flashes just pretty much everyday of the week and

this is the time of the show when Ben goes through those and

helps us make sense of what the hell he’s talking about.

Ben: All right. Let’s talk about a few studies here, Brock, shall we?

Brock: Yes, please.

Ben: Time course of muscle damage and inflammatory response to

resistance training. What I mentioned to folks when I tweeted

about this study was, just imagine what your blood would look

like after Ironman if it looks like this after resistance training.

And this was kind of a cool study where they went in and they

looked at all these different parameters of muscle damage and

inflammation after just one bout of resistance training. And what

they found was creatine kinase was through the roof. C-reactive

protein was to the extent to where your doctor might send you

into the hospital to get looked at for whether or not you’re gonna

have a heart attack.

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What are called neutrophils, leukocytes, lot of these, basically

acute phase inflammatory response molecules, all these pain killer

molecules that your body produces, almost all of them are jacked

through the roof for 24-48 hours. I’ve talked about this before.

After you do say like an Ironman triathlon, you actually see this

type of response for up to 19 days after a race like that. One of the

things that I think that folks should be aware of in the era of self-

quantification where I think many people are getting more into

like taking their blood markers and looking at their lipid panels,

their inflammatory markers, things of that nature, is, you really do

need to pay attention when…let’s say you test through a company

like Wellness FX or Direct Labs, you actually do need to pay

attention to the part that tells you to go easy on the working out

for a good 24-48 hours prior because a lot of times, when I’m

doing consults with people through Wellness FX (they send me a

lot of their crossfitters and their triathletes to look at after these

people have had their blood markers drawn), I see high

creatinine, high blood urea nitrogen, high creatine kinase, high

HSCRP, high interleukins. And for me, a lot of the time when I ask

people, “Did you exercise the day before this test or 2 days before

this test?” and “Well, yeah, I hit the weights and I actually

crossfitted that morning…” Be careful with that stuff especially if

you’re testing but ultimately, this really highlights the importance

of making sure that you’re giving yourself adequate rest and

recovery and taking into account that that practice of putting the

body into the state of inflammation that this particular study

shows is quite pronounced especially in response to weight lifting,

allowing yourself to bounce back and then rinsing, washing and

repeating. And I would say the 2 activities were such most

important would be weight training and running. Those are the 2

things that are gonna produce the most amount of inflammation

like this. If you like to look at charts of inflammation, I’ll check

out the link that we’ll put in the show notes.

Brock: And who doesn’t? That’s how I spend my Saturday nights.

Ben: That’s right. When you’re not doing pirettes at bars in Spokane.

Brock: Yes.

Ben: Another study looked at alternate-day fasting. And this is

something that’s popular. The whole intermittent fasting –

skipping meals, putting in 12 hours, 16 hours, sometimes 24-hour

periods of not eating into your…

Brock: Yeah. I think it’s really hitting the mainstream, too. I hear people

talking about intermittent fasting that aren’t necessarily involved

in the Paleo community or the low-carb community. It’s really

getting quite prevalent.

Ben: Yeah. And one question that I get quite a bit and I think I’ve seen

pop up a few times is, how this affects you in terms of your

hormonal response, especially in females because a lot of times,

you tend to see females who start to do things like fasting

everyday – 12-hour fast, 16-hour fast, alternate-day fast,

whatever. They tend to start to do things like go amenorrheic –

lose their periods, start to feel overtrained, start to lose their

libido. The question is, whether or not this is just them being

hungry or whether there’s an actual hormonal response to

intermittent fasting. And it turns out that they actually put (this

was a test in rodents, which a lot of these tests actually are). But

they looked at the effects of this alternate day fasting in rodents.

I’ll put a link to the study in the show notes. But it was pretty

pronounced what happened. You saw a 28% decrease in

luteinizing hormone which is the hormone in females that’s

partially responsible for the formation of the corpus luteum

during the menstrual cycle and in men for the formation of

testosterone in the Leydig cells in the testes. You saw a 14%

decrease in leptin, one of your primary appetite control

hormones. 44% decrease in testosterone in men.

Brock: Whoa!

Ben: And through-the-roof increase in estrodial in women, which is

one of the main increases that would be a symptom of estrogen

dominance, meaning drop progesterone, increase in estrogens as

well as 73% decrease in ovarian weight, which is one of the

primary measurements of your fertility or the health of your

reproductive organs. Across the board, after 4 weeks of an

alternate day fasting protocol, meaning, fasting one day, eating ad

libidum the next day, there’s some pretty significant hormonal

fluctuations shifted towards the side of it, not being a good thing

in…

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Brock: Gosh! 45% drop in testosterone! It’s terrifying.

Ben: On the flipside, the lipid panels are really good. There is drop in

weight, there’s a drop in body fat, there’s a decrease in LDL,

increase in HDL. The trade-off was that body composition

changed favorably but you gotta understand that if it’s anabolic

sports performance, muscle gain, feeling good, having libido,

increasing reproductive health, limiting your calories in the way of

frequent fasting especially in females, is not really all that great

for you if you’re gonna combine this especially with exercise and

calorie restriction. The message that I wanna give to people is, be

careful and understand that yes, fasting will help to make you

skinny but that’s not necessarily a good thing if your goals are

staying fertile, being healthy, that type of thing. There’s always

that trade-off that you gotta be aware of.

Brock: You probably said this in the beginning but I can’t remember now.

How long were these fasts that they were involved in?

Ben: Well, in this particular study, what they were doing was one day

was a fasting day.

Brock: A complete 24-hour period?

Ben: They had a 2-hour feeding window put in between 12 and 2 PM.

So they did eat some food on the fasting day but it was 4oo

calories a day on the fasting day. And then they had a follow-up

day that was just eating whatever you want. It’s called an

alternate day fasting protocol. I’ll put a link to that in the show

notes. It’s pretty interesting stuff. The last thing: I think I

mentioned this last week about how they were doing a pee test on

guys after they got out of the shower. After they got out of the

shower, after using commercial shampoos and the amount of

phthalates they were finding in their urine. This was an

interesting study where they actually measured what’s called

monoethyl-carboxy-pentyl phthalates, also affectionately known

as MEPs. It’s the fragrance that gets put in personal hygiene

products, whatever – kiwi, strawberry, coconut, pine (whatever

your shampoo’s particular flavor is). All of the MEP

concentrations in the post-shower urine just 3 hours after using

these fragranted shampoos and soaps and hygiene products in the

shower were significantly elevated. And you can get a self-test.

There’s a Metametrix panel called the phthalate panel to urinary

panel. Companies like Direct Labs allow you to do something like

this. They’re significantly elevated and this is one of the reasons

that I tell people be really, really careful with these fragranted

personal care products. For me, I use Dr. Bronner’s super natural

liquid soap in the shower and I put a few drops of oil of oregano in

that so it has a little bit of an antibacterial effect, antifungal effect

on the skin just because you’re exposed to a lot of fungus and stuff

when you shower in locker rooms and things of that nature.

That’s what I use and I stay away from the stuff that smells nice

now. This is something I haven’t given up but I’m really careful

with cologne and stuff like that now just because of the endocrine

disruptors. I met with quite a few people after the Superhuman

event who stayed in town and I spent some coffee shop time with

me just going back and forth. And there’s this one woman who

was classically estrogen-dominant. You could see it in her eyes, in

her face, she had cholesterol deposits under her eyes and she’d

had the post menopausal increase in weight gain and she was

sitting there, eating a “healthy gluten wrap” from the coffee shop

and drinking a low-fat coffee. She’s sitting there talking to me and

sort of her personal care products and everything was just like

Mary Kaye, fragrant of these all these different make-ups and

personal care products. A lot of people don’t realize how much

you leave on the table when it comes to your performance, your

weight loss, your hormonal balance when it comes to what you’re

using to clean your body. So…just something to think about and…

Brock: Your skin is a mouth.

Ben: That’s right. Your skin is or as we say here in the states, a mouth.

Anyways though, something to think about and we’ll link to all

these studies in the show notes for folks. So there you go.

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Special Announcements:

Brock: Okay. I guess, we should probably mention right off the bat, make

sure to go to audiblepodcast.com/ben and sign up for your

audible gold member subscription and you’ll get yourself a free

audible book that you can download and listen to on your MP3

player, your phone, your CD player, your discman. Did you ever

have a discman? That’s where I first knew about Audible. They

used to make books on tape and books on CD back in the old days.

Ben: Back in the dark ages.

Brock: Back in the 1990’s.

Ben: No, I didn’t. But there’s a guy who has a book on Audible and I

wanna put my book on audible when I finish my book. And by the

way, a big apology to all my readers at bengreenfieldfitness.com. I

know I said that I was gonna be putting out a book chapter from

my book every single week but with this conference, even though I

have the chapter done, I didn’t publish it ‘cause I wanted to show

you guys all the magic of the Become Superhuman conference but

I’ll be pushing that book chapter this weekend. Anyways though,

a guy whom I’m gonna be debating tonight has a book on Audible.

Rich Roll has his book on Audible. It’s called Finding Ultra:

Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Man

and Discovering Myself and he narrated it, which I think is

kickbutt. That’s what I wanna do when my book comes out. I

wanna narrate it myself with voices, too. I’m gonna go back and

forth like I’ll half like me talking…I’ll switch and go to my special

maybe like my triathlete voice…

Brock: I don’t know who that is.

Ben: And I can do my “hi-ho kerropi frog” and then go to….

Brock: That’s pretty good! Can you do Chewbacca?

Ben: I can’t do Chewbacca so I never was able to get the girls. But

either way, yeah, check out Rich Roll's book on

audiblepodcast.com/ben and then if you want even more

magic/virtual, go listen to me and Rich Roll and a celebrity trainer

named Vinnie Tortorich, all 3 of us have podcast. All 3 of us have

some different dietary views. Rich Roll’s kind of a vegan. Vinnie

Tortorich is the ketosis – no sugar, no grains guy and I’m the eat-

it-if-it-moves guy and we’re all gonna debate each other tonight at

6:00 PM if you happen to be listening to this podcast on the day

that it comes out. And if not, if you listen to this afterwards, don’t

get too depressed because you can get access to the playback of

that when it comes out.

Brock: And beware everybody who tunes in, I’ve heard Vinnie before and

he does get a little blue occasionally and I don’t mean sad.

Ben: I was gonna say, “you mean depressed?”

Brock: Well, maybe. Maybe, that’s where his cursing comes from.

Ben: He may be getting a little salty.

Brock: He gets a little salty. There you go.

Ben: Yes. There you go. A couple other special announcements: The

Jimmy Moore. Jimmy Moore was actually at the Become

Superhuman event and he’s a ______[0:18:43.4] a fun guy.

Brock: He’s a delightful fellow but has a terrible accent. I can’t do it in the

show.

Ben: I like how he showed up at the after-party in his pajamas.

Everybody’s kinda dressed and Jimmy’s there in his pajamas

‘cause he was going to bed. But either way, good dude and Brock

and I are gonna be guest-hosting Jimmy Moore’s Low Carb

Podcast.

Brock: Living La Vida Low Carb.

Ben: And when we guest-host that, what we want for you to do is

actually leave us your low carb questions and you can do that by

going over to bengreenfieldfitness.com and using the “ask Ben” a

question option, which is on the right side of the page there or you

can just call toll-free to 8772099439. If you happen to live in the

states, it’s toll-free. If you live in the far reaches of Canada or

anywhere else, I have no clue how much it’s gonna cost you.

Brock: Just use the website. It’ll be better.

Ben: Yeah. So, leave your low carb question. Help us out if you can

and tell us like “this one’s for the Jimmy Moore Low Carb

Episode” or something, so that we know.

Brock: Yeah. And audio only, please. We just wanna do all audio

questions, so don’t write them in. Talk them in.

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Ben: Yeah. So you’ll be on the Jimmy Moore Living La Vida Low Carb

episode. There’s one other thing I wanted to mention. Go ahead,

Brock.

Brock: I was just gonna say, make sure to go over to

bengreenfieldfitness.com and complete the survey. We’ve got a

survey. There’s a link in the Special Announcements section. If

you click on that, you can go and fill out a survey just to help out a

little bit with the expenses. I mean, if we got enough sponsors,

that is, it will help out the hosting expenses, which is really the

only hard cost associated with podcasting, so every little bit helps.

Ben: Yeah. It’s one of those dumb ad surveys but we gotta pay the bills

so, yeah, check out that survey.

Brock: It’s not that dumb. Don’t worry.

Ben: And then, the last thing is that, if you missed the Superhuman

Live event and you want a little piece of the magic, then, I do have

some goody bags left over from that event and they’re jampacked

with a bunch of supplements. There are a couple of books that

I’m gonna put in there. I’m even putting a $40-50 value extra

supplement bottle, everything from MPX100 to adaptogenic herbs

to Extreme Endurance to whatever I happen to grab to surprise

you with. I’ll put it all in that goody bag along with a

bengreenfieldfitness.com specialized purest water bottle and a

bunch of other stuff and I’ll mail it to you – free shipping.

Anyone, you ask and just a small stipend for shipping anywhere

internationally and we’ll put a link in the show notes if you wanna

get a custom sport bag jampacked with books and supplements

and gear and everything you need to become superhuman.

Release, feel like one as you’re traipsing around with your shiny

new backpack.

Listener Q & A:

Zach: Hi Ben! I’ve heard some recent talk about deer antler velvet

spray. Just wanna know what it is exactly and whether or not it’s

effective. Thanks.

Brock: The only person I’ve actually heard talk about this before was

actually Rich Roll.

Ben: Really?

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: Interesting! Does he use it?

Brock: Yeah. It was one of his hidden secret things that he swears by.

Ben: He’s a vegan and he actually uses a supplement that comes from

crushed deer antlers that they cut of the deer.

Brock: Well, I guess, the deer survives.

Ben: Yeah. And that is how they harvest deer antler velvet is the antler

is sought off the base of the deer and it doesn’t actually kill the

deer but if you look at some of the studies on the deer antler

velvet, some of the supplements actually end up with the

painkiller that they have to give to the deer in the actual

supplement ‘cause they got a smear lidocaine on the deer’s antlers

to kill the pain from sawing off the deer and some of the analgesic

medication binds up in the deer antler velvet supplement.

Brock: Your skin is a mouth.

Ben: There you go. I’m not quite sure about the whole cruelty to

animals perspective on that. Whereas, I just shoot the deer and

eat the whole thing. Not the antlers.

Brock: You don’t eat the antlers.

Ben: No.

Brock: You just sell the antlers.

Ben: There’s actually no evidence that deer antler velvet increases your

testosterone or helps out with your libido. They’ve looked at

luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, prolactin

levels, insulin-like growth factor, everything. I’ll tell you in a

second some stuff that deer antler velvet could help with but as far

as the whole sexual libido thing, which is the reason that you’d

wanna take it, zero evidence that it could help with that stuff at

all. And I’ve tried deer antler velvet because the same company

that makes the painkiller supplement that I really do recommend

that is efficacious – the Phenocane stuff that I use when I’m

injured or when I need to shut down inflammation, they also do a

deer antler velvet spray.

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And they’ve sent me samples of it before when I ordered

Phenocane and I used it for 30 days. I did a whole 5 sprays

sublingually in the morning, 5 sprays sublingually in the evening

and then I sat there staring at my crotch, waiting for the magic to

happen and it really does not do anything at all to me or in the

studies either. So there you go.

Brock: I just pulled up the website before our work week – website where

Rich Roll was talking about it. He says that he’s using elk antler

velvet as testosterone booster.

Ben: Elk. I suspect that elk, probably falls into the same category in

these studies as deer antler velvet. I’m not 100% sure on that. Elk

is a bigger animal than a deer but I believe the chemical

composition is pretty similar.

Brock: Likely. Yeah. I should probably add here. I just read in the second

paragraph, he said, “I eschewed animal products from my diet so I

do not myself use elk antler velvet. From what I understand,

antler remove…” So he doesn’t actually use it. It’s probably good

that I looked that up. I don’t wanna do and make him sound like

a hypocrite.

Ben: Gotcha. Don’t get me wrong. The antler does have hormones that

circulate in it. It’s got testosterone and epiandersterone and

progesterone and estrodial, and all these things that baseball

players love to munch on in the antler. But it does not appear that

the actual extract is high enough in any of this stuff to cause any

type of an effect in terms of free concentration in human blood.

Brock: Okay. So what would possibly come from it, then?

Ben: There’s been some evidence in cardiovascular health studies that

may help a little bit with coronary artery rebuilding after heart

surgery. So it may have a little bit of cardiovascular effect, which

makes sense because antlers grow back, right? So it’s something

in the antler that is helping the human body to re-grow new cells

after something like coronary artery damage. There’s also some

evidence (and this is in rodent studies) that it may have a little bit

of an anti additive property, meaning that rats that were given

morphin were better able to withstand withdrawal syndromes and

get off the morphin when they were given a deer antler velvet

supplement which they use during the normal withdrawal period

after using morphin. So it may help with like stopping cigarette

smoking, or stopping the use of painkillers or something along

those lines. The only other thing that might help with is (and this

is again, a study on rodents, not in humans) it was shown to

reduce immunoglobulin responses to allergens when mice were

exposed to allergens and so it had a little bit of an anti asthmatic

effect in regards to allergies. And so if you deal with seasonal

allergies, stuff like that, it may help. And again, it’s a rodents

study but still, we can extrapolate some of this slightly to humans.

But as far as turning you into a sex machine, there are probably

better ways to do it than your deer antler velvet or elk antler

velvet. You could try elephant tusk velvet. That might be good

enough to do the trick.

Allie: Hi Ben and Brock! I have a question about trying to use UCAN

Superstarch for marathon and I’m trying to figure out how much I

would use on a race. Thank you very much. It’s a great show.

Bye.

Brock: And we also got a question from Tony.

Tony: Hi Ben! Tony from Scotland. Just a question about Generation

UCAN. I’ve just done 2 centuries and maybe 10 days between

them both in a fasted state with no breakfast both for 3 days off

the bike beforehand. The first one went really well. I’ve just done

my latest century for about 50 miles in, stopped for water and a

bag of peanuts and then I started to weaken then I had to have to

stick to a bus to get home. Just wonder what gives does UCAN

only work when you’re in a ketogenic state? Just interested to

know your thoughts. Thanks for everything you do and hope to

hear from you soon. Thank you.

Brock: So, this is one of the things that came in that handy dandy little

gift bag that you’re giving out at the Superhuman event.

[0:30:11.9]

Ben: Yes. And UCAN Superstarch is something that I do use. I am not

a fan of using engineered fuels (period) unless I absolutely have to

so don’t get me wrong. Superstarch is not something that I’m

pouring into a blender everyday and starting off my day with

along with raw eggs and steak.

Brock: Yeah. This is our race fuel or very long workout fuel, not everyday

fuel.

Ben: Right. But the idea is that, when you look at common sports

drinks and sports gels, most of them are comprised of things like

glucose and sucrose and fructose and multidextrin. And those are

all relatively simple sugars. So when you ingest them and they’re

broken down by the body, they give you this immediate source of

energy. And that immediate source of energy causes this flood of

insulin from your pancreas to be released and what happens is,

that causes the glucose or the sugars to be taken up by the muscles

and then you get a little bit of a hypoglycemic drop and you

basically go through this blood sugar roller coaster ride. So the

idea behind using a very, very high molecular weight starch, a

starch that is literally thousands of times longer than any of these

other simpler sugars is that it gets broken down much, much

more slowly and release them in the bloodstream much, much

more slowly and that takes the pancreas out of the equation,

meaning that you don’t get that insulin spike. And when you don’t

get that insulin spike, what you’re able to do is metabolize fatty

acids a little bit more efficiently. And so there’s 2 things that

happen here: One, you’re tapping into a fuel source that your

body has literally tens of thousands of calories of your own storage

fat or your own circulating fatty acids. And at the same time,

you’re also not reliant as heavily upon carbohydrates. You can

literally take in fewer carbohydrates from Superstarch than you

can from other starch sources. And this makes it a very palatable

and attractive supplement for someone who is wanting to stay in

ketogenesis or wanting to burn primarily fatty acids as a fuel to

use as their source of fuel. And we do get a lot of good athletes

that are starting to use this stuff. If you look at Med Koslosky,

who is a marathoner, he uses the high molecular weight starch

and if you watch him running, he uses fuel water bottle. It’s a

UCAN Superstarch water bottle and that’s what’s in the bottle that

he uses during his events. There’s another marathoner, Annie

Yoder Begley, who uses it as well. And she’ll literally go off and

do a 20-mile run using about 1 ½ packets of UCAN Superstarch

which only comes out to about 200 calories or so of UCAN that

you’d actually use. I found that with the athletes that I work with

and also with myself, I’d take the normal amount of carbohydrate

that I’d normally take in from gels or sports drinks during a race

and I raced for years on gels and sports drinks and for example,

on the bike, for something like a half Ironman or an Ironman

Triathlon, I’d be at about 400-450 calories an hour or so from

traditional maltodextrin fructose plan. I was using the Goo

energy gels.

Brock: And you’re taking that probably like every 20 minutes on the

bike?

Ben: I didn’t time it too much but that was about what I came out to

per hour. And for me, it was a blend of gels and some of those

gummy chews and stuff like that. And with the UCAN

Superstarch, I get away with half of that. So I do about 2 packets

of it per hour when I’m going hard and heavy during a race. I’m

sort of a little bit big on the triathlete size. I go about 175 or 180

lbs, around in there.

Brock: I think if you fell on Pete Jacobs, you’d probably kill him.

Ben: Probably. I think I almost did fall on him at Endurance Live just

based on the amount of alcohol I was consuming at that particular

event. Anyways, the amount of carbohydrate that you need to take

in when you’re using UCAN, is far less as well. So the tricky part

here though, is in terms of proper use. The whole idea like I just

explained is that you are able to tap into your own fatty acids,

thus, able to take in fewer amounts of carbohydrates when you’re

using UCAN. But if you start to introduce exogenous carbohydrate

sources like Snickers bars or Extra Gels or anything that really has

simple sugars in it that are going to cause an insulin release, that’s

important to consider because there are some sugars out there

such as fructose, and I’ll get to that in a second, that wouldn’t

cause the same insulin release ‘cause it goes straight to the liver.

[0:35:25.1]

But if you are taking in glucose maltodextrin and things of that

nature along with Superstarch, you’re defeating the purpose

because you’re spiking your blood sugar levels, you’re causing that

insulin release, you’re taking yourself out of primary fatty acids

utilization. If you start trying to understand something like

ketosis, you’re taking yourself out of the use of ketone bodies as a

fuel and all of a sudden, the Superstarch, from a metabolic

standpoint, is not doing much for you other than providing you

with some fuel but you’re not going to avoid that crash that’s

ultimately going to come with using the simple sugar sources. So

if you’re gonna use Superstarch, pretty much the only other fuels

that you would want to combine with it, would be using a medium

chain triglyceride. So it would be okay if you mix some coconut

oil or some MCT Oil with it. And that would be the equivalent of

about a tablespoon or so per serving. That’s something that I

haven’t personally experimented with too much but something

I’m gonna start into this season is throwing that into the mix

along with some of the other things I’m about to tell you that I

personally mix with UCAN Superstarch. The other things that you

can use with it would be fructose. Fructose would be okay

because that bypasses the whole pancreas insulin scenario and go

straight to the liver. Now, I personally use that Energy 28 stuff,

which is a liquid superfood that has maca root and some of these

adaptogens in it. So I put that the plain UCAN Superstarch to give

it a little bit of flavor but it’s not causing that same insulin release.

So I go about a 1:1 ratio. I put about one serving of Energy 28

superfood and with each serving of Superstarch that I consume

for each hour. And then the last thing that I throw into the

equation, another thing that’s not gonna spike insulin levels,

that’s not gonna cause that strain from fatty acid utilization or

that glucose-based energy spike, is amino acids. There’s a few

different amino acid compounds out there but I use the Master

Amino Pattern (the MAP capsules) and I just put those in the

ziplock bag in my back pocket so what I’ve got in one water bottle,

I’ve got however many packets of UCAN Superstarch or however

many servings of UCAN Superstarch that I’m gonna be using for

that hour or for that multi-hour event mixed with some Energy 28

for each serving of UCAN. And then, literally, I just chew on them

– 5 of those Master Amino Pattern capsules per hour. And then

the other important thing to realize is that, for your pre-event

meal, you also need to us UCAN Superstarch. The reason for that

because it takes about 30-60 minutes to hit your bloodstream and

you want to be beginning to metabolize that stuff before your

event. So when you’re having your breakfast or whatever, 1 ½-2

hours prior to your marathon or your triathlon, you could take a

couple of packets of UCAN, you could put it to blender with some

almond butter, a little bit of some coconut milk and some ice or

something like that, blend that up and go with a fat-based plus

Superstarch-based meal prior to your event and then don’t tighten

your cup, drink that down. And then, as you start into your event,

you’re basically, just using Superstarch plus the option to use a

fructose-based superfood like I mentioned plus amino acids like I

mentioned plus if you wanted to, a medium chain triglyceride oil

or a coconut oil. I have something I created over at pacificfit.net,

which is called an Endurance Pack, where I’ve got a bunch of new

packs over there where you save if you get it all at once. And one

of the packs over there is basically, UCAN Superstarch + Master

Amino Pattern + Energy 28, and it all just comes as a bundle and

that would be a really good way to go as well if you wanted to do

something like that.

Brock: Would it be effective for somebody who has been reliant on

straight up carbohydrate for all the racing? Could they just switch

to that? Or do you need to really become fat-adapted before you

can use that?

[0:40:01.3]

Ben: Great question. There’s 2 things you gotta do: First of all, because

it’s such a high molecular weight carbohydrate, you have to train

your stomach to be able to use it. And I found that a lot of the

athletes who either switch from using gels and traditionally, easier

to digest simple sugars, they have to ease their way into using, for

example, I mentioned I use about 2 servings of UCAN per hour,

but you would start at half a serving probably on the first week

and then go into a full serving per hour for the second week and

then 1 ½ servings for the third week, and then get up to 2 servings

for that 4th week. So you’re gradually easing your body into being

able to digest it well if you find that it creates gastric discomfort

for you, which I have found that for a few people, ‘cause it’s such a

heavy, heavy carbohydrate that it can and the taste is kinda

chucky too, which you gotta get used to. That’s another reason I

mix it with the Energy 28. The other thing is that it doesn’t work

that well if you’re not fat-adapted, if the rest of your diet has a lot

of starches and sugars in it and you’re kind of a traditional 55 or

65%-carbohydrate-diet type of person, it doesn’t work that well

for you. And it works really, really in people who are either staying

in a relative state of ketogenesis, meaning, you’re testing your

blood ketones and staying above one, or else, you are eating a low

carb diet. And for me, I don’t do the ketogenesis thing quite as

much as I just focus on low carb, and so for me, I’m metabolically

efficient, I’m in a fat-adapted state and my body really does well

with that transition to using Superstarch as a fuel. And I

remember when I was racing at Leadman last year in Bend, that

race that I won, every single half hour in that race, I was getting

stronger and stronger and stronger and eating less and less and

less. It was weird. And by the end of that race, I basically sprinted

that last 2 miles just to make sure I had that gap between me and

2nd place. It was pretty crazy and that was the first race where I

actually broke out that UCAN and used it. And then I used it

again when we raced Thailand. It was the same thing. I got

stronger and stronger and stronger. I won my age group at the

70.3 in Thailand and I think I was third amateur overall. But I was

6th or 7th coming off the bike and just got stronger and stronger

and stronger as I ran. I think that’s one of the things that you feel

when you use it. It stabilizes your energy levels to where you

don’t feel at the end of the race like you’re bonking or running out

of energy as much as you feel like you’re just getting better and

better at tapping into your fatty acids. And I totally don’t want

this to sound like a commercial for Superstarch. You could

achieve the same effect. There are other things out there like

Three Fuel is another example of a blend that I think they use like

a whey protein + a high molecular starch + I think they’ve got

some medium chain triglycerides in there. There are more than

one way to skin a cat but ultimately, what it comes down to is, I’m

a huge fan of straying away from this traditional sugary carb

approach, going after the more fatty acid burning conducive fuel

sources and then understanding that’s a bad idea to mix the 2.

Jason: Hi Ben! My name is Jason. I think your podcast is fantastic.

Been enjoying it for the last few weeks. I’ve a quick question

regarding actually your wife and her migraines. I heard you

mention recently that she was able to eliminate her migraines by

altering her level about alkalosis or acidosis in her body by

utilizing certain food sources and I was hoping you could talk a

little bit about that as I’m a migraine sufferer and it tends to

impact my training substantially and I was hoping you could give

some suggestions. I greatly appreciate it. Keep up the great work.

Thank you so much.

Brock: So this has really just come down to the acidity of your body or

your diet?

Ben: I’ll put a link for Jason to the original episode that inspired my

wife to try to get rid of her migraine headaches by switching to

what’s called an alkaline-based diet. I remember when she

tweeted (I’ll put a link to the tweet in the show notes.): “I swear

green smoothies have cured my migraines. I have warded off 3

migraines with green smoothies.” Who knew? She was convinced

to do this after she met with a friend of mine, who was kind of a

disciple of this guy named Dr. Ted Morter. And Dr. Ted Morter

has this program and I interviewed him on the show about it and

I’ll put a link in the show notes. He has this program where it

teaches you how to test your urine ph everyday for 30 days, as

well as your salivary ph. And based off your urine and your

salivary ph, you are able to see whether your body is in an acidic

state or whether it’s in an alkalinic state.

[0:45:18.3]

Brock: And you test that just with those little strips that you can do this

at home. You don’t have to ship it off and bail a bunch of money

or anything. You just go to the drugstore, get the little ph strips.

Ben: Exactly. And he has a package like a book and some CDs and it

comes with the urine strips, too. Anyways though, sometimes

migraines can be caused by consumption of foods that have a lot

of what are called tyramines and histamines in them and that will

be like cheeses and sauekraut and kiefer. Sometimes, they’re

triggered by foods that have a lot of what’s called arginine in them

and that will be nuts and chocolate. But in many cases, they are

triggered by foods that leave what’s called the net acid load when

they’re metabolized by the body or net acid ash. And this would

be a lot of foods that would be like starches, sugars, even red

meats to a certain extent. Whereas, when you look at alkaline-

producing foods, which are primarily like dark leafy greens and

lemons, to a certain extent, some kind of non-sugary type of fruits.

You can find acid-alkaline list out there in the internet and also in

this program by Ted Morter. But they leave this more alkaline

residue and the idea is that, that doesn’t leech as many minerals

from your body and it also allows you to basically have better

blood flow delivery to your cranial muscles and vasoconstriction,

a lot of times in the blood vessels to your head is the one that can

cause migraines. It’s one of the same reasons that using like a

magnesium supplement, especially, a topical magnesium that’s

rubbed into your upper neck and your head, that has a similar

alkalizing effect as eating an alkalizing diet and that’s another

thing when combined with an alkalizing diet, can be quite

efficacious when it comes to getting rid of migraine headaches.

But yeah, it was very, very simple. All she did was, she adjusted

her diet to the point where her urine was more alkalinic and her

saliva was more alkalinic. Don’t get me wrong. You can get too

alkalinic. You can get too much magnesium to the point where

magnesium is actually inhibiting calcium absorption or causing

you to become too alkalinic and you can completely avoid acidic

foods to the point where you’re not eating any red meat, you’re

not eating citrusy fruits and get to the point where you’re shifting

your body towards too alkalinic of a state, which isn’t great as well

because then, you create mineral imbalances. If you test as you go

through this, she basically switched to alkalinic, she started using

topical magnesium everyday and that fixed it for her. She didn’t

have to take out fermented foods or take out chocolate or take out

a lot of these other triggers that can be migraine triggers. And

that was it. She used this program by Dr. Ted Morter. I’ll put a

link to my interview with him in the show notes. I was pretty

amazed ‘cause it was getting to the part where it was a big

problem for her like every month, there would be a couple of days

where she was just miserable and she’d be lying in bed, and I was

having to take care of the kids. It was just pretty nuts. I’d check it

out and we’ve got a transcript for that interview as well, if you’re

lazy and read it while you listen to it.

Brock: That’s backwards. I think lazy people don’t read.

Ben: Yeah. I guess so. Dr. Morter’s kit is called the Best Living Kit. It’s

interesting stuff.

Brock: Beautiful.

Ken: Hey Ben! This is Ken from California. I’ve got a question for you

since you’re into some digital gadgets. What is your thought on

the Moxymonitor? I think it’s a prototype form from

www.moxymonitor.com. They’re looking at building basically, a

muscle oxygen sensor that you could, instead of needing a full cart

to do things like lactate threshold testing, do it with algorithm

through this relatively inexpensive wireless monitor. Curious if

you checked it out and if not, will you check it out? Thanks. It’s

awesome. Bye.

Brock: So, do you think Ken invented the Moxymonitor?

Ben: I’ve wondered sometimes, when people call in to a podcast and

they talk about a product or something, whether or not they

actually are the mastermind behind the product and they’re using

it, they question to promote it but…

[0:50:09.0]

Brock: He knows a lot about it. I’ve heard being in beta. It’s sounds cool,

though.

Ben: Yeah. I looked at their website and actually, it does look pretty

cool. In the morning, sometimes, especially when I’m leading up

to an important race or Ironman, I measure my pulse oximetry,

which is my blood oxygen saturation. And that’s that device that

you put on the end of your finger and it simply measure the same

ways as the ones in the hospital measure when you put that on the

end of your finger, it measures your oxygen saturation. And

generally, good oxygen saturation is 96-100% range and as you

drop below that, then you’re looking at improper recovery or

maybe you’ve got low hemoglobin, low iron. Basically, you’re in a

sub-optimal oxygen utilizing state. This Moxymonitor is kinda

doing a similar thing. It’s measuring oxygen levels but in your

muscles and in specific areas of muscle tissue. So rather than just

putting it on your finger, it’s this device that you can use to shine

near infrared light into the muscle to measure the amount of

hemoglobin that is saturated with oxygen in whatever muscle area

that you put it over and then it ____[0:51:28.4] that out giving

you your muscle oxygen saturation percentage. So, you can

literally rather than just putting it on your finger and looking at

your full body systemic oxygen saturation, you could see like

“okay, what’s the oxygen saturation of my quad or my bicep or

whatever muscle that you happen to be working.” So we can

monitor the oxygen levels in specific muscles and it’s portable so

you could do it while you’re working out as well.

Brock: Would low oxygen saturation, let’s say, in your quad, would that

indicate inflammation or what would it indicate?

Ben: That’s the thing is like, I don’t know. I’m trying to wrap my head

around the reason how you’d actually use this information

because when you’re working out, you’re gonna get to the point

where, in some cases, especially if you are going hypoxic or you’ve

really fatigued the muscle or you’ve got a ton of lactic acid build-

up, you’re gonna see some oxygen saturation drop anyways. And

so I’m trying to figure out like when you’re using a Moxymonitor,

what are you trying to measure? Are you trying to ensure that you

are dropping oxygen saturation low enough? Are you trying to

ensure that the muscle is adequately saturated with oxygen so that

that’s a day that you could work that hard? That’s what I’m trying

to figure out. How you would actually use something like this? It’s

a cool idea and it’s certainly going to tell you… it would be for me,

more efficacious to use something like this for recovery like to put

the near infrared light over my quad, see how saturated my quad

levels are with hemoglobin, with oxygen, etc. and then like, “okay,

I’ve got good oxygen saturation in my quads, I’ll make a kill on the

bike.” Whereas, if you got low oxygen saturation, I guess it would

be a decent tool to measure have I fatigued this muscle

adequately? You know what I’m saying? Because hypoxic

training (I think we’ve mentioned this a few times on the show

before) like holding your breath when you’re training, training in

the simulated low oxygen environment, that can actually cause a

pretty cool growth hormone effect to exercise. It can cause

basically what’s called the hormetic effect that allows you to get a

better response to that exercise session than you would if the

muscles were on a fully oxygenated state. So cutting off oxygen to

the muscle…right now, for example, I’ve got a front mounted

snorkel that I use for swimming. And when you use a snorkel for

swimming, it lets you focus a little less on breathing and a little

more on your body rotation and at what your hands are doing.

But I just found out that they make an air restricter for the

snorkel.

Brock: Like a little blog in the end.

Ben: Yes. So I could put an air restricter on the snorkel and be doing

hypoxic training in the pool. Another example of hypoxic training

would be this whole idea behind vascular occlusion training,

which is this new kind of training and they use this in rehab

settings a lot, where they literally tie a tourniquet above a muscle

area and you’ll train a muscle like doing bicep curls with a

tourniquet wrapped above the bicep. Again, vascular occlusion-

cutting off oxygen to a muscle so that you get a better bounce back

response hormonally.

Brock: So you could strap the Moxymonitor around your bicep and while

you’re doing bicep curls, you wait until you get an oxygen

saturation of 93 or something before you finish your set.

[0:55:03.2]

Ben: Yeah. Exactly.

Brock: That could work.

Ben: Yeah. Moxy is gonna indicate your oxygen saturation and I don’t

own one, I’ve never tried one. I know they have a book on their

website called Using Muscle Oxygen to Guide Interval Training.

I never got a chance to read or to look into it. Maybe I will at

some point just to see what’s it’s all about. So there you go.

Probably worth looking into. It’s one of the self-quantification

toys that might be cool to play around with.

Valerie: Hi Ben! I’m wondering if you’ve ever used one of those activity

trackers like a Fitbit. And if you have, what are your thoughts on

it? So they work well? Are they accurate? All right. Thanks. Bye.

Brock: Do you have Fitbit, Ben?

Ben: I have this new black box coaching program where I’ve got some

high level executives who I am doing a little bit more intensive

coaching with so I’m doing some life coaching. I’m tracking their

sleep and their calorie-burning and all these different parameters.

I’m using the Jawbone app for that which is similar to the Fitbit.

It’s a wristband that allows you to track sleep and track calories

and movement and things of that nature. Fitbit is very similar.

The accuracy is very similar. They have the same idea behind

them. Unfortunately, neither is water-proof so these folks can’t

swim with it. Well, it’s water-proof to the extent where you can

shower but you can’t actually jump into the water and swim with

it. Another example is, they have this new My Basis Watch,

which, not only measures your motion and your sleep but also

captures perspiration and skin temperature. There’s another one

coming out called the Bobo device. And that one is actually

supposed to (and I’m kinda excited about this) measure heart rate

variability as well. And then, of course, you have the Nike (what’s

the Nike one called?)

Brock: Maybe Nike One? Nike Plus?

Ben: Yeah. I forget. Any of these devices are going to give you a pretty

good picture of calories burned throughout the day of metabolic

activity, etc. And most of them are pretty decent in accuracy and

getting better in accuracy. They work well. Are they worth it?

They’re getting less and less expensive and so it was interesting

because I was sitting at a table during the Become Superhuman

event. There were a lot of people who are pretty into tracking

their bodies and are kind of in the cutting edge of health and

fitness. I think it was Ray Cronise and Dave Asprey and myself, a

couple of other guys, Phil Maffetone, we’re all at Sushi before one

of the after-parties on one night. And I was looking around the

table, 40 from people on the table were wearing Fitbits or

Jawbones or some kind of…

Brock: Yeah. I think Ray had a Jawbone, I saw a lot of Jawbones.

Ben: Yeah. It’s not a bad looking bracelet. It kinda blends and okay

with most outfits and it’s kinda cool looking and a lot of people

are using this because they’re eating certain ways and seeing what

that does to metabolism or they are doing certain things before

they go bed and see how that affects their sleep. And this is kinda

cool if you like to play around with this stuff and get feedback.

And if you look on the negative side, sure, maybe you don’t want

feedback all the time. Maybe you wanna be able to unplug, maybe

you don’t want something transmitting a Bluetooth signal all the

time on your wrist. And that’s up to you. I personally don’t use

one of these devices. I would say if they ever came out with a

device that monitored in real time 24/7 my heart rate variability,

which I consider to be a really, really valuable score in terms of

giving me some information how healthy my nervous system is, I

would consider using one. I’ve thought about getting a Jawbone

app and probably getting close to getting one, just to play around

with it but ultimately, I’m one of those guys and I don’t know if

I’ve talked about this on the podcast before but sometimes, I get

to the end of the day and I’ve been working with athletes and

clients and looking at their power read-outs and looking at how

many calories they burn during the day and talking to people

about their sleep levels, the amount of time they’ve been in deep

sleep and by the time I get to the end of the day, I’m kinda sick of

all that. And I just wanna go out and basically, run with my shorts

and my vibrams through a field of flowers and skip naked to the

mountains of Austria. But basically, just like unplug and for me, a

lot of times, (my wife will see me do this) I’ll get to the end of the

day and I just hop on my mountain bike and just go out for

completely unstructured training session or literally, go out

running in my bare feet or some vibrams and just chill on the

trails for a little while or go hop in the river and just swim

upstream and look at the fish and I do quite a bit of that

unplugging just because for me, much of the day is spent so

plugged in and looking at all the stuff and talking about all the

stuff that I really do like to unplug.

[1:00:51.5]

I think some people get this idea that I’m always wearing all these

gadgets and tracking these and tracking that and taking all these

supplements and I really do try and keep things pretty simple

especially when it comes to my workouts. Not that I don’t

recognize the value in a lot of these stuff. Sometimes, I think it’s

also okay to just unplug.

Brock: Yeah. I definitely go on cycles where sometimes, I’m hyper

vigilant about tracking everything - I’ll put the foot pod on and the

heart rate monitor and the garment and everything going. And

then other parts of the season, it even seems like a chore to put

the garment on and I probably wouldn’t if I wasn’t supplying the

information to my coach and it’s just so much easier to use the

garment than it is to write down every little variable that I felt

during the run or the exercise.

Ben: Yeah. And I can tell you the one thing that I do, do everyday, is

that I do track heart rate variability every single morning and I

talked about that at the conference when I was onstage talking

about the things that are working for me right now. And I do that

5 minutes cohesion meditation exercise with heart rate variability

measurement every single morning. And I think if you had to

choose between doing something like that and tracking calories

everyday with the Fitbit, I would actually choose the former just

‘cause it kinda grounds you at the beginning of the day and I

found that it works pretty well for me. There you go.

Jenna: Hello Ben and Brock! I really enjoy your podcast for all its

informative dialogue as well as the humor. I believe that I’m

probably one of the minority of your demographic of listeners.

I’m a 19 year-old female triathlete from Canada. I’m underweight

and I’m currently looking to build muscle mass. Currently, my

BMI is below healthy levels. I was wondering if you could suggest

training protocols or methods for a female triathlete that are

conducive to building muscle and if there are any hormonal

correlations with strength training that would accelerate this

process. I know that you’ve answered questions along these lines

in the past but I would appreciate an answer that’s more specific

to a female triathlete. Thank you very much for your time. Bye.

Ben: I would not say Jenna’s in the minority. Would you, Brock?

Brock: No. That’s exactly what I was thinking.

Ben: Let’s put it this way: what female does not wanna go after that

lean and ripped look but still be curvaceous and have muscle and

everything. That’s a pretty common desire among female athletes.

Brock: And the desire among male athletes as well.

Ben: Yes. You mean the male athletes who are running behind them or

looking at them.

Brock: Exactly.

Ben: Yeah. When it comes to female athletes, there really is that big

issue being skinny fat, being amenorrheic, kinda losing that

curvaceous look and just getting too skinny. I don’t think it’s an

attractive look. I think that a lot of girls and women who are out

there training for endurance sports, especially, I think that you

kinda get 2 problems. You get the women who kind of get that

whole estrogen dominance, fluid retention, I’m-fat-no-matter-

how-mush-I-train-type of look. And then you get the girls who

tend to get this whole skinny-fat-too-lean-amenorrheic type of

look. I’ve got some definite ideas in terms of things that you can

do to make sure that you can get lean and ripped, stay curvaceous

and not destroy your health or destroy your fertility in the process

while doing endurance sports. The very, very first thing that I

would make sure that you focus on is, knowing where you’re at

hormonally. And one of the best ways to do this if you’re a woman

and you really wanna know where you’re at, 24-hour urine steroid

test would be the gold standard. And that’s something that you

can’t do through one of these online testing services that you

actually have to go into like a naturopathic clinic.

[1:05:05.8]

And you’ll find a lot of naturopathic clinics in many, many places

are gonna do this. Jonathan Wright’s clinic in Tahoma,

Washington, the Tahoma Clinic, is the main clinic that came up

with this test and a lot of clinics do it now. It’s a 24-hour urine

steroid test. And you wanna see what your estrogen levels are at,

what your progesterone levels are at, your luteinizing hormone,

your follicle stimulating hormone. It’s really, really good to get a

glance at what you might be deficient in because that can give you

really, really good idea of, are you estrogen dominant? Do you

have a progesterone deficiency? Do you have a testosterone

deficiency? Luteinizing hormone deficiency? And once you find

out what you’re deficient in, you can really go after things with a

sniper rifle. If you’re progesterone deficient, you could do

something like liposomal progesterone or if you are testosterone

deficient, you could look at doing something like getting off the

pill if you’re on the pill. But basically, knowing where you’re at

hormonally, is really, really important if you wanna make sure

(whether you’re male or female) that you’re going after the right

parameters from a hormone standpoint. If you can’t hunt down a

24-hour urine steroid test, there is a performance panel and we’ll

link to it in the show notes but it does give you a good idea of

some of the basic hormones – testosterone, estrogens, cortisol – 3

of the biggies which, for both males and females who wanna look

good, have good fertility, put on muscle, lose fat, you maintain

health while doing endurance sports, it’s important to test. I test

every 4 months for this stuff. I’ll put a link in the show notes to

both of those tests – the 24-hour urine steroid test as well as

what’s called the performance panel, which will at least give you

your testosterone, your cortisol, your estrogens.

Brock: Cool.

Ben: Number 1 would be to quantify. The next thing that I would do is,

I would understand the whole concept behind getting strong to

stay lean. Getting strong to stay lean – this is a concept again, that

I talked about at the Become Superhuman event. It’s a concept

that I learned from a really excellent book, which I’ll link to in the

show notes. It was written by Dan John. Dan John is a really

great strength coach. I believe he’s a listener to the podcast, too.

Hi Dan! If you’re listening in.

Brock: Hi Dan!

Ben: But he has a really good book called Interventions. And in that

book, he talks about some of the things that he’s found that if

female athletes can do these things, they’re gonna have very, very

low barriers to staying lean, getting strong and looking sexy and

looking good. A few other things would be, being able to do 3 body

weight pull-ups - being able to squat your body weight. So if

you’re a female athlete and weigh 135 lbs, you should be able to

squat a 135 lbs.

Brock: Like on a machine, not just stand and squat?

Ben: Yeah. With a barbell on your back.

Brock: Oh I see. In addition to your own body weight.

Ben: Right. Exactly. You should be able to take whatever you weigh

and you should be able to squat that. You should be able to

deadlift – to pick up off the ground 1 ½ times your body weight.

You should be able to walk a farmer’s walk, which is just holding a

weight in each hand. You should be able to walk 50 feet with half

your body weight in each hand, meaning that if I weigh 180 lbs, I

should be able to put in 90-pound dumbbell in each of my hands

and walk 50 feet.

Brock: And a piece of straw in your teeth.

Ben: And a piece of straw on my teeth.

Brock: ‘Cause that’s farmer’s walk.

Ben: Exactly. Yup. I got that when you said the straw.

Brock: Okay. Good.

Ben: You didn’t have to explain it. So, you should be able to do that –

do a farmer’s walk like that, the deadlift, the squat, the 3 pull-ups.

Those are the biggies. I think Dan John, in his book, talks about

bench-pressing and it should be a low. So bench-press close to

body weight but I’m not a fan of bench-pressing. I think bench-

pressing is kind of a silly exercise in most situations. But you

should understand this concept behind getting strong to stay lean

and how those types of parameters are far more important than

how fast you can run a mile or how long you can ride a bike.

Based off of that, I’m kind of extrapolating from that, I

recommend that female athletes who wanna look good like female

endurance athletes, especially, who wanna stay curvaceous and

lean and ripped, you need to lift heavy at least twice a week. Full

body workout at least twice a week, you can do a whole 5 by 5

protocol where you do something like a squat, a deadlift, a clean

and overhead press, and a pull-up, 5 reps of each, 5 sets through.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

[1:10:14.7]

If you read the program that I wrote to get male and female

athletes ripped and looking sexy without getting the whole skinny

fat look, my program is at triripped.com. That’s another good one

to look through in addition to that book by Dan John,

Interventions. Going to the program at triripped.com would be

really helpful as well. So, you test your hormones, you lift heavy

understanding that you get strong to stay lean, you limit cardio.

This is again, something that I mentioned at Become Superhuman

and that is that if you really wanna look good, if you really wanna

maintain hormones, fertility, sexiness, etc., you shouldn’t really be

running much more than twice a week. And you can maintain

good speed and good endurance by doing one high, high intensity

interval training session for the run per week like a 30 by 30

second full on uphill sprint on the treadmill combined with one

mid distance high quality type of tempo run on the weekends.

And you could train for a triathlon and be doing your biking and

your swimming and your heavy lifting and easily get away with

doing just a couple of runs a week if you’re doing that type of

thing. So, limit the amount of running that you do, especially if

you’re female, because running tends to beat up females and leech

bone minerals and cause that hormonal deficit even more than it

does in males. Hand in hand with that, we started off the podcast

talking about, and that would be to limit the amount intermittent

fasting that you do. I probably don’t need to explain that again,

but it’s a whole estrogen dominance, drop in luteinizing hormone,

drop in testosterone, drop in ovarian weight, just all these things

that affect reproduction, fertility and sexiness in females,

intermittent fasting really accelerates that. And so doing this 16-

hour fast, doing the whole IF thing, especially when you’re

combining it with exercise, not a great idea if you’re female and

you wanna keep your sexy on.

Brock: But you’re not saying that you should be snacking every 2 hours,

either.

Ben: No. But what I’m saying is that long periods of caloric restriction

send a message to your body to down-regulate a lot of that

reproductive function that is gonna help you to maintain those

curves. So I’d be really careful with that, too.

Brock: So you wanna be eating like 3 meals a day, then?

Ben: Yeah. 3-4 solid meals a day.

Brock: 3 meals a day and a pre-workout snack kind of thing.

Ben: Yeah. There’s no hard and fast rule. But basically, you don’t send

that frequent message to your body that calories are sparse. Last

thing for females would be, when it comes to the whole

supplementation protocol, naturally assuming that you’re not

amenorrheic, you’re gonna be losing more iron than a typical

male, and so making sure that you’re getting lots of what’s called

heme-rich iron and heme-rich iron would be the most

bioavailable form of iron that you’re gonna find in red meat and

poultry and fish. Egg yolks would be another source. You wanna

make sure that you’re getting that stuff in and combining it with

vitamin C can really help with absorptions. Making sure that

you’re getting that along with some citrus fruits and you could

even use cast-iron pans in you’re cooking, which can help you to

absorb iron. Some of these non-heme sources of iron are okay,

too, like beans and peas and seeds and nuts and leafy greens. But

generally, you’re gonna wanna prioritize some of those heme-rich

sources of iron. The other thing (and I mentioned this earlier in

the podcast) was that for that bone density, calcium is a horse that

gets kicked to death for female athletes, magnesium though, is

what’s gonna help you absorb that calcium. So I recommend that

you not only focus on the heme-based iron but you also focus on

good magnesium supplementation. Use some natural Calm

Magnesium, which is like a magnesium citrate source or use some

transdermal magnesium on your muscles. But as a female athlete,

you should definitely make sure that you go after the stuff that

female athletes tend to have issues, and that would be the iron

and then the calcium, with an understanding that typically,

calcium, you get enough from your diet if you’re focusing on a lot

of these iron-rich sources, you should make sure that you’re not

magnesium deficient so you’re able to absorb the calcium. I’ve got

a bunch of new what I call packs at pacificfit.net. Earlier, I

mentioned the Endurance Pack that I’ve got over there, which is

Superstarch + Energy 28 + Master Amino Pattern.

[1:15:06.3]

I also have over there the Muscle Gain Pack. And the Muscle Gain

Pack is cold processed goat protein, which is the Deep 30. It is a

Capra Colostrums, which is the growth hormone precursor that’s

a really, really great way to build muscle fast and then it’s this

Master Amino Pattern (amino acid). That’s something that a male

or female could take – 3 pretty natural supplements, basically just

protein, amino acids, and colostrums that you could include on a

daily basis post-workout to enhance muscle repair, muscle

recovery, muscle growth. For those packs, I just tried to create a

bunch of packs that were the top 2 or 3 things I do like the biggest

wins that you could get. And then , they all include free shipping

just because they are shipped as packs – I’ve got the Endurance

Pack, the Fat Loss Pack, the Muscle Gain Pack, Recovery Pack, the

Injury Pack, the Detox pack, the Anti Aging Pack, the Brain Pack

and the Sleep Pack. But the Muscle Gain Pack will be one to look

into for her as well. That would be what I would do if I were

Jenna and I wanted to look like the Incredible Hulk.

Brock: The sexy lean one.

Ben: Exactly.

Brock: Cool! Well, that wraps it up for this week. Make sure tonight,

March 13th at…did you say 6:00 or is it at 5:30 PM Pacific?

Ben: It was gonna be at 5:30 and then it’s hard when you get 3 people

trying to get together but yeah, at 6:00.

Brock: Okay. So 6:00 PM tonight on March 13th, if you’re listening to the

show, right away, you’ll have to tune it tonight or watch it on

spreecast a little bit later on. Make sure you go to

audiblepodcast.com/ben to get your free audio book. And make

sure to send us your audio questions about eating low carbs so we

can use them on Living La Vida Low Carb podcast when we guest

host in a few weeks. Anything else?

Ben: If you missed the conference, you suck but stay tuned ‘cause I

literally have a crap ton of SD cards on my desk right now with

every single recorded lecture that took place at become

Superhuman. I also have all the slides and so what I’m gonna do

for folks is, I’m gonna create high resolution videos, I’m gonna

have the slides available for each video. I’ll totally make it

affordable. 2-4 weeks from now, I should have all that available

for you to be able to just log in and download. If I’m really on top

of things, I may even get it on some DVDs that you could get

shipped to your house or whatever. But stay tuned if you missed

the conference. I’ll be sure that I hook you up with some way that

you can at least get some of the magic even it’s not going…

Brock: It’s 30% of the magic.

Ben: Yeah. It does not include Brock doing inebriated pirettes at the

after-party so you’ll just have to show up next year for that.

Brock: Never to be repeated. Never.

Ben: All right. Well, I guess, that wraps it up. Check out

bengreenfieldfitness.com and of course, also check out the MyList

for this episode over at MyList.com/bengreenfield and on the

MyList, I’ll put everything I linked to the Dan John book, Tri-

ripped, the Muscle Gain Pack, the Moxymonitor and the deer

getting their antlers hacked off.