Podcast #88 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/03/podcast-

episode-88-are-you-eating-dead-food/

Introduction: In this podcast episode: what is Living Fuel? What to do if

you’re a female with too much muscle mass, body bugs

versus heart rate monitors, where to ride your bike when you

don’t have room to train, is too much exercise a bad thing?

How to use electrolytes, compression socks versus

compression tights. The Egoscue method of pain

management, do smoothies destroy your food? The best

protein for women, do expand-a-lungs work and a good

substitute for hamburger patties.

Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield on a beautiful

Wednesday afternoon. I just got back from Miami, Florida

yesterday doing a few things for the Rock Star Triathlete

Academy, the online triathlon school I run over at

www.rockstartriathlete.com Check that out if you haven’t

been over there yet. But we have – if you hadn’t guessed

from the announcements quite a bit of activity in today’s

podcast. We’re not going to waste a lot of time jumping right

into it. In addition to some really unique questions that

might have been influenced by my threat to give anybody

who asks the best question a free month of membership to

my Body Transformation Club, we have an interview with KC

Craishy from Living Fuel, and if you don’t know about Living

Fuel, you’ll know all about it after you listen to the interview

with KC. It’s pretty interesting stuff, and something that I’ve

been starting to implement. So sit back and enjoy another

issue of the www.bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast.

Alright, so remember if you have a question you can call

8772099439. You can Skype, if you’re international you can

Skype at Pacific Fit. That’s the user name that you want to

Skype to. Or you can email ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com.

And the first question is from listener Julia.

Julia asks: I have a question you probably have not been asked before. I

am a top age group female triathlete, age 56 who’s been

competing for 21 years. I’ve done 11 Ironmans including four

Hawaii Ironmans. (Dang girl.) I’m very strong on the swim

and the bike but my running is slow due to what I think is

excessive muscle mass and a knee issue. My body fat varies

between 18 and 19%. How can I lose muscle mass? They say

that around 35 years of age, you start losing muscle mass.

Well I’m still waiting. How can I lose muscle mass besides

starving because then I would not be able to train for the 8 to

10 triathlons I do a season. I do not eat excessive protein or

take anything that would beef me up. People constantly

comment on my muscles and I do not lift weights.

Ben answers: Great question Julie. It is very possible for both males and

females to have what’s called mesomorphic bodies. You tend

to be very athletic. You put on muscle mass, you just tend to

have genetically that body type. Okay, first of all, let me say

that it doesn’t sound like you’re suffering from an athletic

standpoint with the body you’ve been blessed with. So the

first thing I would not be doing is comparing yourself to

skinny, lean females who are that way genetically. They can’t

help it. You can’t help it either to a certain extent in terms of

the density of your muscle fibers and the amount of muscle

that you have. However it is possible to cannibalize your own

lean muscle mass. I want to make that evident to you

because that is what you’re going to be doing if you use some

of the recommendations I’m about to give you. You will be

cannibalizing lean muscle mass. You guys know that one of

my recommendations for leaning up, for losing fat – is to

wake up in a fasted state and do some light exercise. Nothing

too catabolic. Nothing that’s going to break down the muscle

too much. Nothing like a two hour workout or a hard and

heavy workout with intervals but just kind of a long – or even

a short – slow, easy, fat burning session. That’s the time that

fits in. For you Julia, I’m actually going to recommend that

you take that to another level. You get up in the morning

fasted and you do intervals. You don’t have to do

weightlifting, but you do cardiovascular intervals. You do

hard intense work. You do some of your long workouts

minimally fueled. 100 calories an hour, waking up in the

morning on an empty stomach for a three hour bike ride. The

types of things where you’re still working on fitness but

you’re also slowly starting to eat up your own muscle mass,

okay? I do not condone this. You’re asking me. It’s not

something I would if I were you because you will lose muscle

as you age as you mentioned. I think that it could come back

to hurt you when you’re 65, 70 years old and you’re starting

to really lost a lot of strength and a lot of muscular

endurance because you cannibalized your lean muscle mass

between the ages of 55 and 60. But that’s one of the things

that you’d want to do. The next thing that you’d want to do is

kind of lower the protein intake a little bit and up the carb

intake. Up the glycogen intake. So what we’re talking about is

eating closer to a 60 to 70% healthy carbohydrate diet from

whole grains like quinoa and amaranth and millet, fruits,

melons, vegetables. Things of that nature. And actually

bringing down the protein intake a little bit. Again to starve

your muscle. To wear away some of your muscle mass. The

other thing that I would do and again it kind of flies in the

face of what I typically recommend but I do lots of long, slow,

easy cardio and not very many intervals that you don’t get

the hormonal release that occurs. The testosterone release

that occurs when you do harder intervals. When you do more

of the intense versus the aerobic fat burning. So you got to

kind of re-design your whole program. If you are going to do

a lot of those intervals, do them starved so you’re not able to

go very hard and so you’re wearing away your lean muscle

and then do lots of long, slow, fat burning efforts. You’re

right. Not a question that I typically get, but that’s the way

you would want to go about doing it. And again, I’m going to

emphasize this point. I don’t recommend that, but hey it’s

your body, you asked.

Patricia asks: I need your help. I am so confused. I’m a female. 5’7, 160

pounds. I’m trying hard to lose weight but I’m really

struggling in this department. I’ve been focused since

November and even though I’ve run three marathons in

three months, bike long rides every weekend, run, swim and

weight train during the week and eat moderately well, I have

not lost a single pound. I’ve gotten a local personal trainer to

help me with muscle gain to aid towards this goal. And

recently she lent me a body bugg device. My polar heart rate

monitor has been indicating I burn approximately 10 calories

per minute during moderate to intense exercise. I work the

Body Bug for a 70 mile bike ride, windy and hilly and while I

didn’t hammer it, I was working pretty hard. That took about

four hours and the Body Bug says I only burned 1200

calories. But according to my heart rate monitor, I burned

2400 calories. That’s a big difference. No wonder I can’t

accomplish any progress. My trainer says welcome to the

reality of calorie burn and that Body Bugs are much more

accurate because they use body heat. My question is what is

your input on the difference between the two and what

should I trust?

Ben answers: Then she also follows up and says that when she runs, the

Body Bug is a lot closer to the heart rate monitor in terms of

what it’s telling her she’s burning versus when she bicycles

and then finishes up. Hopelessly confused and quite

frustrated. Okay so there is kind of a debate between the

heart rate monitors and the Body Bug. Heart rate monitor –

what happens is it counts the number of beats and the

amount of time between beats and there is an equation that

the heart rate monitor uses to approximate the number of

calories that you’ve burned and they can typically be accurate.

Some are accurate. They can vary by up to about 16% in

terms of their accuracy. Okay, the Body Bug doesn’t measure

heart rate. The Body Bug measures a few different things. It

measures motion. So it’s got what’s called an accelerometer

in there. It measures changes in direction, changes in speed,

measures the heat flux in terms of the amount of heat that

your body is giving off. And the body bug is basically just a

device that you wear on your body. It can measure your skin

response, more specifically something called your galvanic

skin response, your skin conductivity. So, it can basically

measure the amount of stimuli to exercise stress, the amount

of sweat due to physical exertion. Those types of things. And

then finally it will measure your skin temperature. The Body

Bugs are fairly accurate too. There are a lot of people who’ve

had success with the Body Bug. I believe that is the preferred

measurement tool that they use on the Biggest Loser as well.

As far as accuracy, there are a lot of variations in what you’ll

find out there in research in terms of whether the heart rate

monitors or the Body Bugs are more accurate. A couple of

things that I would wonder is, is your heart rate monitor

actually measuring your heart rate beats accurately or if it is

over-exaggerating the number of calories that you burned? Is

it actually counting too many beats? Some heart rate

monitors will go nutty every once in a while and if you

happen to look down, you might notice they’re saying you’re

doing 220 beats per minute, which is unlikely. So I would

question the accuracy of the actual heart rate monitor. At the

same time, some of the numbers that you’re throwing out

there for a 70 mile bike ride – 2400 calories is probably

closer to the number of calories you burned, versus the 1200

calories that the Body Bug is telling you that you burned. So

it’s really a little bit foggy. Here is what you can do. You need

to get what’s called indirect calorimetry, okay? You need to

go to an exercise physiology lab at your local university or a

metabolic laboratory and you need to actually have them

hook up a gas mask to you and measure the amount of

oxygen you consume, the amount of carbon dioxide you

produce and that gives you a laboratory accurate

measurement of the number of calories that you’re burning

at every different heart rate. Okay? And every different speed,

and every different intensity, and then you go out and you

measure those numbers up to what your Body Bug’s giving

you and what your heart rate monitor is telling you. And

then you choose the one that’s most accurate. But I’m not

going to finish there, because when you write me – and I can

tell this a lot of times – I’ve been doing this for a decade,

helping people lose weight, and you’re telling me about all

these things that you’re doing and the way that you’re writing

– you’re frustrated, you’re confused you sound stressed – be

careful. You’re probably a very cortisol personality. Okay?

You tend to be stressed. You tend to get a net acidic load due

to that cortisol and stress. You tend to retain water, you tend

to retain fat when your body is in a non-alkalinic state and

you tend to be very resistant to weight loss when you are not

relaxed, when you are not in control of your emotions, when

you are letting something like a weight loss plateau stress

you out. One of the most important things that you can do if

you are at a weight loss plateau is not to freak out. To take a

deep breath and analyze your life, take control of what you

can take control of and basically make some changes but

don’t let anything stress you out, okay? If you’re going this

way, going that way, exercising and exercising and exercising

and starving and stressing your body out, getting net acid

load, fat gain, water rate retention – returning to that cycle

over and over again the next day. A lot of times you are

overdoing it more than underdoing it, okay? Overdoing the

calorie burn more than underdoing the calorie burn when

your body is doing this. I see it happen all the time. It’s a big

problem especially in triathletes – endurance athletes who

are working out all the time. Then you say you eat

moderately well. I would recommend that you look into a

highly alkalinic diet. Cut any acidity from stress. Cut any

acidity from sugar consumption and grain consumption. Let

go. Read some books that will really help you relax and have

a little bit more stress-free personality. I’m just going to say

this not because I think it’s the best book on the planet, but

because I just finished it – The Magic of Thinking Big. Great

book to help out your personality and help out your life. So

that’s what I would recommend Patricia. The other thing that

can really help is relaxation. Tapes, CDs. There’s one CD

called the “I Am” seminar. It’s very good. Google it. The “I

Am” seminar. That’s again something that can really help

you get a little bit more relaxed when stuff like this is

stressing you out. So great question.

The next question is from listener John. Oh by the way you

guys, just so you know, I will be announcing which one of

these questions won the entry to the Body Transformation

Club at the end of the Q and A. So listen in.

John asks: While it is fresh in my mind, I was wondering if at some

point you could give us some idea on training in a city that is

not friendly to bikes. This weekend we had a car hit someone

riding in a large group of cyclists while obeying traffic laws.

In Tennessee, we’ve passed cycling laws but they don’t seem

to be getting through to motorists. What are your ideas on

how to train when it’s not safe to ride all over town? Some of

my thoughts – much more training on an trainer or roller or

finding a short loop in a park. I want to improve my skills on

a bike but I want to be safe also.

Ben answers: Great question, John. I’ll tell you exactly what I do – exactly

what I do when I have this issue, okay? Realize that you need

the equivalent of about a mile – a mile long stretch of road to

get a good bike workout. That’s all you need. I have one

workout that I do on a quarter mile stretch of road by my

house, okay? What I do is a five minute warm-up riding

some loops back and forth and then I go out and do 20

standing sprints, each one separated by a seated spin back

down that quarter mile to my starting location. Okay? I have

a very similar workout that I do on a hill near my house

where it’s just up and down the hill. Hill repeats, okay? So

you don’t have to do a full on ride. Now the indoor trainer

works very well. I use one called a Kirk Kinetic road trainer.

A computrainer if you can afford one is really great because

then you can get videos that are actually real videos and the

resistance on the computrainer changes as you watch that

video. So it’s really one of the closest things you can get to

riding outdoors. Doing a loop in a park, you could do that too

but if you do that, I’d recommend to – if you want to spice it

up a little bit – if you can splurge and get like a 500 to 700

dollar cycle cross bike or even a mountain bike then you’ll be

able to do some off-road, have some fun and kind of get off

the road. I have a cycle cross bike that I kept down in my

office for a while. Now I keep it in my house. It’s what I use

when I want to ride short because that allows me to go off-

road, to kind of switch it up a little bit. A little bit more

rolling resistance so you get a better workout in a shorter

period of time. So, those are my recommendations. It is very

hard to ride in a city that’s not friendly to bikes. I agree. I’ve

been there before and I’ve used some of the strategies that I

just laid out.

Mandy asks: My husband is reluctant to get into endurance sports

because he read an interview with Dr. Ken Cooper that said

that the free radicals produced by heavy endurance training

cause all sorts of diseases from heart disease to cancer to

virtually everything else. What is your take on that?

Ben answers: Okay, this is a great question because the idea is that when

you exercise it produces something called oxidative stress,

alright? Skeletal muscle, when it’s contracting, increases the

rate of oxygen that you use during that contraction. Anytime

you’re using more oxygen, there’s a lot of little biochemical

changes that occur at that muscular level, specifically an

increase in the activity of the anti-oxidant enzymes because

of the radicals – the little free electrons that are being

circulated as you use that oxygen to produce energy. Okay?

There is a significant increase in free radical production that

occurs when you exercise. In addition there have been

studies that have looked at ultra endurance athletes and

when they look at ultra endurance exercise training, one

study found that the increase in oxidative stress, all those

free radicals that were being produced could actually

contribute to the development of atherosclerosis because

what happens is when you have enough of that oxygen going

on, enough of that production of free radicals it can actually

oxidize some of your cholesterol and anybody that knows

much about heart disease has heard that term oxidized

cholesterol thrown around because that’s the worst thing you

can do for your heart – is have oxidized cholesterol. Sugar

can cause you to oxidize cholesterol. So can heavy, heavy

amounts of exercise. Now remember, when Mandy first

asked me this question, I wrote back to her and I said, well

technically your husband is right because really, ideal

exercise scenario – we’re kind of staying active during the

day. We’re farming, we’re moving, we’re walking and then

maybe every now and again we’re running really fast from a

lion – and that would actually be the ideal scenario because

you don’t produce a lot of free radicals, but you’re still

moving, circulating blood, circulating lymph fluid and

basically doing what the body was designed to do. But now

we sit around all day and we’re at our computers or whatever.

Then when we get up we want to exercise hard. And

exercising hard like that does produce a lot of free radicals. I

do know that people that are farmers, that are ranchers and

they look great and feel great and they don’t have to exercise

at all just because they are kind of getting the same amount

of physical activity that people who exercise do but they’re

not doing it at such a high intensity state. Now that being

said, some amount of free radical production is okay. And

this returns to something I talked about a couple of weeks

ago – the idea that you don’t want to always taking high,

high levels of anti-oxidants because when your body

produces free radicals like it does when you’re exercising or

like it does when you’re mildly stressed then your body

responds by increasing in its ability to handle stress. In

other words, you grow a harder shell so to speak. Your body

ends up being able to recover faster. You end up being able to

produce your inflammatory response just a little bit quicker.

You end up being able to repair and recover muscle tissue

just a little bit faster and there are all sorts of cool things that

happen when you exercise. And that’s kind of one of the ways

that exercise makes you fit and can also help you to live

longer – is because you actually get this stress response

bounce back, get stronger effect. And as long as you allow the

bouncing back and the getting stronger to occur, that

exercise is actually pretty good for you. You just have to find

that fine line. Too much exercise as the study showed with

the oxidation of the cholesterol can be a bad thing. I do think

that people overdo it. You do see people – they look like

they’re premature aging, wrinkled skin. You do see people –

even athletes sometimes dropping dead of heart attacks. You

see people look like they’re constantly run down, okay?

That’s not all that great. That’s one of the reasons that I’m

kind of in the whole low volume high intensity training

scenario where you’re staying pretty active during the day,

you’re feeding yourself well and then every once in a while

you’re going out and doing a real, real hard work out that

invigorates the body and allowing yourself to relax and

recover. So Mandy, your husband is right – to kind of wrap

this up – to a certain extent. And he’s wrong to a certain

extent because it just depends on how you define heavy

endurance training. If you’re listening to this and you’re like

“I’m not going to exercise an hour a day because Ben said it

can cause atherosclerosis,” no, no, no. I’m talking about

people who are going out there two, three, four hours a day,

ultra-endurance athletes… these are people running multiple

dozens of miles per week. Those are the types of things that

can be a little bit damaging, that I would recommend that

you be real careful with. But it’s your body. It’s your life. If

you know that it’s dangerous and you enjoy it, you get a rush

out of it – that’s fine. That’s your call. I’m not saying that it’s

morally wrong. I’m just saying that free radical production

could hurt you a little bit. So great question.

Chad asks: I was wondering what your recommendations are for taking

salt tablets while racing? I’ve read where you can just take

them orally and your body will know when to spit them out.

How does this affect your overall health long term? I fall flat

after about three to three and a half hours of training or

racing no matter what or how much I ingest for fuel. All the

symptoms that are said to come from low sodium, I feel at

that point. So I know I need it but I would really like to know

the healthiest way to get it.

Ben answers: Great question, Chad. Basically the idea when you say your

body knows when to spit salts out if you take too much – it’s

not really necessarily true to a certain extent. What you’re

talking about is what’s called the aldosterone mechanism.

That’s a hormone that your body produces and essentially it’s

a blood pressure regulating hormone. There are two things

that happen when you begin to lose too much salt, sweat too

much salt out. The first thing that happens is your body

produces something called ADH which is an antidiuretic

hormone and whereas a diuretic is going to make you lose

water, the anti-diuretic hormone which is also known as

vasopressin, that’s going to make you retain water. And the

reason for that is when you’re losing a lot of salts, when

you’re sweating a lot – what else are you losing? You’re

losing water. Okay? So your body has to actually retain more

water. So you produce that vasopressin, that ADH – and

that’s what that helps you to do. Then you produce

something else called aldosterone, and what aldosterone

does is it actually helps your kidneys to lose less sodium.

Okay, so not only are you starting to lose less fluids, but

you’re also starting to lose less sodium. And this delicate

balance between the aldosterone and the vasopressin or the

anti-diuretic, the ADH hormone – that’s how your body

responds sensitively to salt and water loss. That’s the reason

that when you’re sweating a lot, you don’t actually have to

replace all of the salt that you’re losing. In fact, most of the

research and specifically the research done by a fellow

named Tim Nolks down in South Africa suggest that it’s right

around 30 or 40% in terms of what the human body actually

loses in terms of electrolytes compared to what it actually

needs to replace. Now really fit people – if we’re just talking

about sodium – really fit people tend to lose about 1 ½ to 2

grams of sodium an hour. People who aren’t fit, who really –

their bodies aren’t acclimatized to sweat loss – they tend to

lose a lot more. They’ll tend to lose closer to three to four

grams of sodium per hour. And they’ll lose a higher amount

of all the other electrolytes per hour too. So, either way

you’re looking at it, you’ve got to put those back in or else

your body loses the ability to produce a muscular contraction.

When you’re looking at the types of salts you want to put in,

a couple of things you want to think about is first is it’s not

just sodium that you want. Because there are a host of

electrolytes that are responsible for keeping your muscles at

their optimal amount of contractility. So in addition to

sodium, you’re looking at wanting to get calcium,

magnesium as you’ve heard if you listen to this podcast at all

is very important. Chloride is another important one. And

the other thing – potassium would be the last one. Potassium,

you’d also want to look at. But basically a collated electrolyte

is a lot better too because they tend to provide for greater

absorption. Alright? So what that means is they’re actually

tied typically to an amino acid to make them more bio

available. Now I use something called Athlytes from a

company called Millennium Sports and two of those Athlytes

are going to give me about 350 milligrams of sodium an hour.

Which for me is about 15 to 20% of what I’m losing. So I’ll

take about four of those Athlytes every hour and I’ll typically

do two every 30 minutes. So I get those from a company

called Millennium Sports. If you’re an athlete that I coach

and you’re listening in, then you know you get 45% discount

on those so you essentially get them at cost. But either way,

they’re relatively inexpensive anyways. They’re at

www.millenniumsport.net. And the Athlytes would be the

way to go. If you took four of those an hour – that’s what I

tell most of the guys that I work with to take. Most of the

females I tell them to take two to three per hour. That will

help you out quite a bit in terms of keeping your sodium

levels topped off. Now, the last thing I want to leave you with

is that in most cases when people tell me what you’ve just

told me that you start to crash at thee to three and a half

hours no matter what or how much you ingest for fuel,

typically yeah I look at salt and hydration, it’s off a little bit.

But then I look at fuel and it’s also way lower than what

somebody thinks they should be getting, alright? I mean

heck, during Ironman I’m up around 350 to 400 calories an

hour. And a lot of times that’s what you need to keep you

rocking and rolling. So, really experiment with that fuel even

if you think you’re getting enough Chad. So great question.

Chuck asks: You’ve talked about the benefits and science of wearing

compression socks. Will wearing compression tights have a

similar effect or are the socks designed differently? I have

under armor tights and I’m curious if I would get benefit out

of wearing these or not.

Ben answers: Alright, great question Chuck. The idea behind the

compression socks is there’s been a ton of different research

studies that have found them to probably be helpful for

muscle recovery, okay? And a lot of the initial use of these

socks was in people with poor blood circulation in their legs,

chronic pulmonary disease, those types of things. And then

athletes started using them for recovery and then athletes

started using them for performance and the manufacturers

claim that the compression socks can help to optimize the

blood flow, reduce fatigue, prevent injury, help remove lactic

acid. Help decrease some of the muscle vibration that

happens during exercise and there’s been some studies that

have gone back and forth but specifically in runners there

were some studies that showed that runners who were

wearing the compression socks tended to move a little bit

faster. But most of these studies were done on the socks. Not

on the tights. However, the tights are made of the same

material, Chuck. The only difference is they cover more of

your body. Lots of athletes use the tights. The only issue is

you’re probably not going to wear the tights in a triathlon.

I’ve worn them in one triathlon before but it’s because it was

cold. But you’re not going to want to swim in them because

none of them have a drawstring that’s going to stay around

your waist while you’re swimming and they tend to retain a

little bit of water and make your legs feel kind of healthy.

And you’re not going to try to pull on a full on pair of

compression tights after you get out of the water before you

get on the bike. However if you sleep in the compression

tights which I do during a hard training week or during a

camp, things of that nature, after a race. Definitely. There is

a lot of evidence to suggest that those could help you with

recovery. So yeah, you’re going to get similar benefit from

the compression tights as you are out of the compression

socks. It’s just that the compression tights are not going to be

as conducive to using for performance.

John asks: An interview on goat versus cow’s milk (and I believe he’s

referring to an interview on my podcast. There are three of

them that I did actually. If you go do a search for “milk” on

www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, you’ll find a couple of

interviews with a guy named Joe Stout. Then you’ll find one

interview with a guy named Paul – I’m blanking on Paul’s

last name, but really great interviews on milk.) And the guest

speaker mentioned that homogenization of milk destroys the

fat globules and releases free radicals. So we have reduced

our dairy consumption but still consume low fat plain

yoghurts, some cheese, whey protein and occasionally raw

farm fresh milk. I like to make fruit smoothies that include

yoghurt, whey protein and sometimes milk. Is the blending

of these ingredients homogenizing the globules and releasing

free radicals?

Ben answers: Well the homogenization process, John, is typically high,

high pressures putting the milk through very fine filters. And

unless you have some blender from space that I don’t really

know about right now it’s unlikely that you’re doing anything

that stressful to the actual fat globules and milk you’re

consuming. The whole idea is you don’t really want the

proteins in the milk to pass undigested into your gut and the

way that would happen is if they’re bound up in the fat

globules, and the idea is that homogenization basically

blends all the proteins and the fats together and you get the

fat globules surrounding the proteins, you get poor digestion

of the proteins, you get the protein circulating in the

bloodstream and then the body mounts an inflammatory or

an allergenic reaction against those proteins. Voila, you get a

dairy reaction. You gain weight when you drink milk or you

get a lactin if you’re lactose intolerant. That’s something

that’s different. That’s just lactin enzyme. But you get

basically almost like an allergic reaction to the milk and you

get fatigued and you have poor performance after you

consume it. Those are the reasons we want to be careful with

consuming a lot of homogenized dairy products. Don’t worry

at all about the blending, man. I use a VitaMix and that

thing’s powerful enough to actually heat up some of the

foods that you put in it. If you left your yoghurt and whey

protein in a VitaMix for 10 minutes and came back and it was

smoking and warm and you really turned it up, it’s possible

that you’d get some mixing of the fat globules and the

protein globules. But a little blending, light blending, mixing

of yoghurt and whey protein milk – not an issue. I really

wouldn’t worry about that. So great question. And again as

far as the whole raw milk thing goes, I tell people just be

careful. Be careful with the raw milk because you never know

about the cleanliness of the farm you got it out of. I shouldn’t

say that. It’s not that you never know, but you need to make

sure that you do know. I’ve gotten raw milk from a farm

before but I’ve gone and visited the farm to make sure that

it’s actually clean milk and clean farm.

Grace asks: What’s your take on Pete Egoscue’s pain management

methods? I just started reading this as a way to relieve SI

pain and IT band pain.

Ben answers: She has a follow up question, let’s address the first part of

this question first. Pete’s pain management methods, those

are spot on. And what he does is he doesn’t say okay you

have this syndrome, you have this pain. Let’s go straight to

the pain and eliminate it. He looks at the underlying

structural issues that have caused the problem. So we talked

about it before on this podcast, like the SI joint – the joint in

your pelvis. A lot of times, that precedes knee pain. If you fix

the SI joint, mobility in the SI joint and then you rehabilitate

the knee pain, rehabilitate the body and return to activity

then you actually achieve results that are lasting, permanent.

Well it’s the same with those pain management methods.

Typically what this method does is it identifies the injury,

identifies the biomechanical abnormalities that could be

producing that injury, fixes the underlying abnormalities

while working on the pain and voila, that’s the way it works.

It’s the same way that I design my IT band friction syndrome

at www.bulletproofknee.com. When you go into that, that’s

13 different modules from nutrition modules all the way

through to adjustment modules, physical therapy modules.

And if you follow point A to point B step by step, it

eliminates IT band friction syndrome. It’ll eliminate knee on

the outside of your knee and I designed that over the course

of an entire year of rehabbing my IT band and everybody

didn’t want to go through all the same guessing games that I

had to play to fix my IT band. So, it sounds like what the

Egoscue method does is it it’s kind of designed some similar

protocols for as many different injuries as possible. So

there’s just different moves that you do – whether with the

foam roller or with your own body – to relieve the pain. So

it’d be a great method. I’m totally not getting on my soap box

here Grace but you say a way to relieve SI pain – the same

thing I did with the www.bulletproofknee.com, that’s the

same thing I did with www.runwithnopain.com. It’s a step by

step module for identifying and fixing pain related to your

low back joint. That’s $17. I don’t know how much the other

pain management methods are that you’re talking about, but

it’s kind of a do it yourself method. So I’d definitely check

those out. As a matter of fact, I’ll write a note to myself to put

links to those in the podcast for you. Okay the next question

is also from Grace.

Grace asks: What protein supplements should women take? I’ve heard so

much about whey protein that is not positive. Now I’m stuck.

Ben answers: Whey protein, the only issue with that is if you have a casein

or a whey or a dairy or an animal intolerance, yeah it might

not be the best thing for you. That’s why I actually do the

goat whey protein. The proteins in that are a little bit smaller,

a little bit more conducive to human digestion. But if you’re

looking at a different protein source, listen to the interview

today for sure with KC Craishy because he talks about that

Living Fuel Protein. He’s spot on. You got to go with the

vegetable based proteins and especially if you’re a female,

not so much the soy protein because of the phytoestrogens in

that, but I’m talking more along the hemp protein, pea

protein, rice protein route. All of those – even though they’re

not as well-absorbed as some of the animal-based proteins –

you’re still going to get a great protein source out of them. So

that’s what I’d look at if you’re really worried about the whey

protein. So specifically, to give you brands – I would

recommend if you want to do whey protein but you want to

go with a healthy whey protein, use the organic goat whey

protein that I use. It’s called Mt. Capra Double Bonded

Protein, I’ll put a link to that in the Shownotes and then also

the Living Fuel Living Protein that KC talks about in the

interview today. I’ll put a link to that as well in the

Shownotes so check both those out.

Jim asks: Do expand-a-lungs work?

Ben answers: And just so those of you listening in know, the expand-a-

lungs is a device that you breathe into and then you breathe

through it as well, and it’s called a resistance exerciser for

your lungs, and basically it increases the resistance to both

exhalation and inspiration and the idea is that it increases

the strength of your inspiratory and expiratory muscles and

the studies that specifically expand-a-lung has on their Web

site is that they looked at some cyclists who trained with this

and they found that the cyclist did nothing to their training

programs except started using one of these and found that

after about eight weeks of using one, that they improved

their time to fatigue while riding at a high intensity from 22

minutes up to 31 minutes. So, I’m not quite sure if there were

any other training effects in that study. It was also a very

small study. It only had eight people in it. The other studies

that they looked at were primarily done with like scuba

swimmers. They did some with people who were breathing

into snorkels, see how long they could swim while using a

snorkel. They cited a few studies of people with the

pulmonary disease and the lung disorders, that helped with

them a little bit. This would not be the magic key in your

program to help to make you the ultimate athlete. It would

be kind of like my recommendation for some supplements or

foam roller, things like that. It’s kind of the extra 5% here,

the extra 2.5% there. The reason that this would be different

than something like breathing through a straw while you’re

driving down the road – which technically could make your

lungs stronger – is that this has something that could

increase or decrease the resistance of the actual – the

difficulty of the breathing exercises that you do. A lot of

triathletes do use these. They do sell them at a lot of triathlon

expos. The expand-a-lung. The other one they do is the

Power Lung. But basically same concept all around. Again

it’s not going to be your saving grace. Training hard is what’s

going to make you work better but it just makes sense

intuitively that if you’re working hard to breathe that it’s

going to increase the strength of your body. This is one of

those things that I would suggest that you do, not as a

replacement for an exercise session but for example when

you’re driving your car or when you’re watching a movie or

when you’re reading a book or at a time when you’re able to

double up in terms of your productivity. So that’s when I’d

throw something like this in. So great question.

Then I’ve got a comment from listener Lorenzo. This is

actually one of the guys that I coach and he wrote into me.

Lorenzo says: Dude, my wife stumbled onto a new recipe. Our dog is four

years old today so we had a party and my wife made him a

cake. She took one half cup of cooked quinoa and one half

cup of cooked kidney beans that were smashed and enough

almond butter to keep everything together. She made a cake

out of it. Well I watched my dog eating this cake and

wondered, can I have that cake and eat it too? So I tried it. (I

hope you tried something other than what your dog was

eating Lorenzo) and he said it’s very good and stayed

together extremely well. Probably would be suited best as a

meat substitute in hamburger patty applications. Use as you

will, but if you get rick off of my wife’s invention, I need

some kickback.

Ben answers: Well I’m not a food manufacturer so I’m not really driven to

get rich off inventing a quinoa cake but hey, listeners, if

you’re listening in – we got a half cup of cooked quinoa, half

cup of mashed kidney beans and putting it all together in

almond butter. If you try this out, and it works and you’re

able to literally grill it and make a burger out of it, write in

and leave a comment on this podcast because I would love to

see that. Heck, video record it and show it to me and we’ll

make you famous and put you up on the Web site. 15,000

people a week will see your hamburger patty invention. So

check that out. Try it out. And remember if you like that type

of stuff definitely go back and watch Chef Todd’s videos from

last week. If you’ve seen those cooking videos, they’re

hilarious.

We’re going to finish up with a call in comment from listener

Chuck before we move on to this week’s interview with KC

Craishy.

Chuck says: Hey Ben, this is Chuck Seerick. I just wanted to give you an

update on how I’m doing with the Triathlon Dominator plan.

My half Ironman is about a month and a half out now. I did a

half marathon two weeks ago and beaten my previous best

time by a minute and a half. Also did the longest bike ride

I’ve ever done today, about 65 miles and was able to

complete that, no problem and do a six mile run afterwards

and felt great. Also during that ride, beat my 50 mile time by

about six minutes from previously two weeks ago. So it’s

going great. Just wanted to say thanks again and I’m going to

be keeping it up. Thanks for the podcast.

Ben answers: Well Chuck congratulations on your success and if you’re

listening in and want to check out the Triathlon Dominator,

go to www.triathlondominator.com. Okay, I bet you guys

want to know who won the Body Transformation Club. It’s

going to go to Patricia. The confused and frustrated person

who wrote in about trying to lose weight, trying everything,

not being able to do it, being confused by the number of

calories – I’m going to give you a free month to the club. So

write me in, if you’re listening to this Patricia, I’ll hook you

up and hopefully what you learn there – the accountability

you have to me, the weekly mailings you get from me, the

videos that I show to you will give you that edge that you

need to get you started with effective weight loss. So let’s

move on to this week’s interview on Living Fuel with KC

Craishy and remember that if as you’re listening here talking

about some of the stuff, you can go over to the Shownotes for

podcast 88 and click on the links and check it out.

Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and on the other

end of this call I’ve got KC Craishy and KC is an expert in

something called super foods, which you’re going to learn all

about today. And this guy is a big time health advocate. He’s

done a lot of collaborative work with a lot of medical and

nutritional practitioners, researchers. He’s had health

problems in his own family which he’ll tell us a little bit that

kind of led him down the road of super foods and he actually

now sits on the Clinical Nutrition Review Board which is the

certifying body of the International and American

Association of Clinical Nutrition. He also has a little bit of a

background in sports performance nutrition. So he’s going to

be able to share some of that with us today and just a wealth

of knowledge on the topic that you’re going to learn all about

– super foods. So KC Craishy, thanks for coming on the show.

KC Craishy: Thanks for having me Ben, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Ben: I guess the best place to start would be for you to tell me just

a little bit and tell the audience just a little bit about super

foods and how you came to discover the whole concept of

what a super food is.

KC Craishy: Well allow me to back up a little bit to give you some

background. Several years ago, my wife, four years prior to

this incident was Miss Florida and then she was Miss Florida

USA, competed in both Miss America and Miss USA and won

swimsuit at Miss USA, first in swimsuit. So on the outside

she was an absolute picture of health and within just a short

time after we were married, she came down with clinical

depression and panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. The

doctors said she had anxiety disorder and they gave her

Xanax and Zoloft and psychotherapy and at the time I was

running a medical device pacemaker company and I just

decided at the time that they were messing my wife up and

we decided together this was not the answer so we decided

that I was going to dive into the literature and I wasn’t

coming out without an answer. So over a 10 year period of

research and trial and error, we discovered the seven areas to

manage that became the foundation of my bestselling book

Super Health, and also discovered the foundational

principles of our company Living Fuel and the Super Foods

and so on. I’ll say initially I thought I could get there all the

way with clinical nutrition, that that was going to be the

magic bullet, the answer – that if we solved all these

nutritional components, that she would be once again perfect

and we would move on. But as I did the research I discovered

that several other things kept popping up that were really

important in the literature. Things like hydration and

exercise and stress, managing stress, sleep, environmental

hazards, meditation and prayer and so on. And that each of

these things has such a profound effect on the body and the

performance of the body and on the hormonal flows and so

on that if you were to fish into any one of them that you’ve

got physiologic consequences coming and most people

listening today would have probably deficiency in probably

four of those areas. And in retrospect, my wife was rock

bottom on all seven. So that was the foundation and what got

me into this so I worked to develop the perfect food and in

the literature – I really had in the past a weight problem

from my youth, that it was a struggle. It wasn’t really a

problem. It was a struggle. That last 10 pounds and such, and

so I had tried basically every diet system out there so I had

some background in the diets and performance and nutrition

and those sorts of things. So I wanted to get into the

literature and see what did the research say? Not what did

this author say and what did that author say and so on. So

the thing that became profoundly important in the literature

was that if you would cut the calories and increase the

nutrient density that you could extend life, delay disease,

enhance performance, optimize weight. Essentially the

fountain of youth is essentially what the research was saying

and then there were about 2000 studies in everything from a

single celled organism up to primates and humans that

would show all the same thing. It was really profound. So I

got such an interest in that area. Now you’ve seen the calorie

restriction with optimal nutrition work out there, right Ben?

Ben: Right.

KC Craishy: Well it seemed to me that that wasn’t quite enough because

this was so profound that scientists don’t really even argue

anymore of whether or not that cutting calories work and

increasing the nutrient density – does that work? They know

argue why it works. So you’ve got a group on one side that

says well the reason the low calorie works is if you cut the

calories you automatically cut the oxidation going on in the

body because less food equals less combustion equals less

oxidation. So the theory on that side was that if you would

have less oxidation, you could get a similar response to

cutting the calories and increasing nutrient density. So that

side said less food and more broad spectrum anti-oxidants is

the reason that low calorie works. And the other side is – this

group says that you cut the sugar and the glycenic response

and you get the same result as cutting the calories and

increasing the nutrient density. And they did studies to show

that that would also give a similar response. 150% of the

calories of greens, of the low calorie diet and they were able

to get similar responses. So then there’s the group with the

healthy fats – the things like the fuel fats like coconut and

the essential fats like fish oil, EPA, DHA and so on. Well

those studies essentially were saying that you could take fish

oil and extend life, delay disease and enhance performance

and all the things that you want without making a single

other change in your diet. It was that profound. So on the

way to Super Food Nutrition, which is what we call this is – I

discovered that you could actually put all four of those

concepts together in the same nutrition program. We’ll call it

the four corners of optimal nutrition or the four corners of

Super Food Nutrition.

Ben: So, essentially the idea is that you’re taking the four most

successful – I don’t like to use the word diets – but the four

most successful eating habits on the planet when it comes to

fat loss and performance and you’re trying to interlock all

four of those together into one basic eating plan?

KC Craishy: Precisely. I have found some research that would back this

up also. Journal of Nutrition 2002 did a study and one of my

favorite little studies that really says the story – they had

four groups of mice. One group was the all you could eat

group. You’re familiar with how people eat out there.

Polyunsaturated diet, no Omega 3s and they eat all they want,

right? Well this group was able to eat anything they wanted,

all they wanted and they lived an average of 232 days, okay?

The second group was the fish oil group. They had the same

amount of food, same kind of food but they added fish oil to

the occasion and they lived 100 days longer with absolutely

no change in the diet except for the fish oil. The third group

was the calorie restriction group. They took the same food,

the same food the other two groups ate and they cut out the

calories by 40%. This group lived an average of 200 days

longer than the first group. Now the fourth group was the

same food as the third group, 40% less calories but then they

added fish oil. They lived 400 days longer than the first

group which is 300% longer by adding those two concepts.

Ben: Wow, that’s amazing. So we’re not just talking about fat loss

here. We’re talking about anti-aging is what it sounds like.

KC Craishy: Essentially because interestingly that the pace of cell division

– cellular apoptosis, cells divide and die over a lifetime.

Correct? And they only do it a certain amount of times. And

there are things that you can do in your diet to either speed

the pace of cell division or to maintain the pace of cell

division. Well one thing we know about that speeds the pace

of cell division is the increase of sugar. We take a micro

nutrient sugar and made it a macro nutrient in the diet of

Americans today. So 100 years ago, the average intake of

sugar was thought to be about 5 pounds a year. Mom would

make an apple pie sometimes, you’d go to the store and get a

treat. That sort of thing. It was a luxury. But now it’s become

a staple in the American diet and do you know how many

pounds per year now that people are eating sugar?

Ben: Oh I don’t know but I’ve heard multiple pounds per week.

KC Craishy: It’s 150 plus pounds a year in sugar. Okay? And what this

sugar does is it speeds the pace of cell division and death and

it collapses the term of lifetime. So yes, I’m not saying that

everybody needs to live to be 120, but I’m saying that it’s not

about being older longer, it’s about being younger longer.

And that means a lot in terms of an athletic career as you

know. An extra few years in an athletic career is huge as far

as money and so on. So it’s about being younger longer. So

now we’ve come all the way back around to the concept

backing the Super Food concept. How do you get low calorie

nutrient density? How do you get there? Well there are foods

out there in nature that are – the broccoli, spinach, kale,

spirulina, chorela, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry,

cranberry – that have extremely high nutrition but not a high

amount of calories.

Ben: Right, so those are the types of things that you see a lot in

greens powders.

KC Craishy: Exactly. Greens powders. Barley grass, wheat grass and so on.

This is kind of the craze but greens powders can’t get you all

the way there so we have to combine the concept of the four

corners of Super Food Nutrition that we talked about with

how much protein does a human body need and how much

essential nutrients does a human body need, because the

Super Food Nutrition piece that is really important is that we

know about in medicine – we know that there are 52, 53

depending on how you slice them essential nutrients and

that just means that you have to get them from outside your

diet. In the case of vitamin D you can get some from the

sunshine. But people are not getting all of their essential

vitamins. So it’s not like getting a pill because that doesn’t

quite do it. You got to combine what we know about in terms

of the number of nutrients that are essential with the highest

quality, most bio-available forms and then combine that with

the highest nutrient density super foods because they

contain so many things that we have yet to maintain. As you

know, we in medicine find – the doctors and researchers,

they find nutrients that they know call essential that weren’t

called essential a little time back as you know. Right?

Ben: Right.

KC Craishy: So once you combine all of these yet to be named

phytonutrients with the ones that we know about, that now

covers the bases that every person needs and if anybody is

deficient or insufficient in any of those essential nutrients

and known and unknown co-factors, there is a physiologic

consequence associated with that, that you may not even

have any clue is associated with a nutrient deficit.

Ben: Now, how can somebody actually take all these different

compounds that you’re talking about? Because the average

person doesn’t go to the grocery store and pick up a bag of

spirulina or a bunch of powdered kale and eat that for dinner.

How do you actually take these concepts and put them all

together?

KC Craishy: That’s a very good question. When my wife was going

through this situation years ago, I would be in the kitchen

and I was mixing in the blender my wife’s, and my breakfast

and our children and it was a myriad of things. It took quite a

long time just with the blender to put all these things

together in the right ratios to make the fuel for the family so

to speak. So I really wonder if it is even possible to do

without the help of some powdered, freeze dried super foods

these days, because the vegetables that you get in the store –

even the organic ones – most often have been picked 14 days

prior at a minimum to you getting them and they’ve been put

on a truck and shipped to somewhere and so the nutrient

availability is not what it was and the fact that they picked it

before it was mature. So you got to eat a lot of the things like

the greens and the bright colored vegetables and those sorts

of things. That needs to be a staple in your diet. So, that’s

why I designed Living Fuel because what differentiates

Living Fuel from anything that we know of is that it’s

designed to sustain life indefinitely. More calcium and

vitamin D than milk, more potassium than bananas. More

resveratrol than wine, more protein than half a dozen egg

whites. More phytonutrients than 20 servings of fruits and

vegetables and more friendly bacteria than 10 cups of

yoghurt in a single meal combined with all the known and

unknown essential nutrients and co-factors and super foods

and so on.

Ben: So you basically took all of these things that are the

components of the four successful diets that you just talked

about and you essentially blended them all up and put them

in a container and people just use that as a meal or as a

supplement?

KC Craishy: You can use it as a meal or a supplement, but see yes, it is the

most nutrient dense low calorie broadest spectrum anti-

oxidant with healthy fats known to man.

Ben: What I’m used to is exactly what you’re saying but typically

like I talk about these green supplements – no calories. So

you would take something like this, whatever, with a meal.

Have some potato and chicken and a greens smoothie or

something on the side. What you’re saying is that all of this

actually has the calories in it as well?

KC Craishy: Yes. Exactly. See, the thing is it’s kind of a funny story. When

I first built Living Fuel, I was building it from the ground up.

How much protein does a human body need? What is the

amino acid profile? What is the broad spectrum of anti-

oxidants to get all five radical groups? What is the probiotic

combination? How do you encapsulate them? So on and so

forth. So once I put all the fiber and the protein and the carbs

and everything in here, I was really shocked to find that at

around 300 calories, and I was really kind of bummed about

it. I said what am I going to do to get the calorie levels up

because basal metabolic rate theory says that 1600 calories

for men and 1200 calories are required to maintain

metabolic balance. You see? So this was a real troublesome

thing for me to start with but as I got further into the

research I realized that once you lower the calories and you

max out the nutrient density, because the nutrient density of

this thing is so far beyond a meal of five times the calories

because you couldn’t have a team of organic chefs put

together a meal as balanced as this is for the human body.

You’re feeding the human body at the cellular level and that

as long as you can maintain energy levels and not be hungry

for a four to six hour period of time, the calories are really

not what you’re looking for.

Ben: Gotcha. So this is kind of cool because I could imagine that

for especially the people who I’m trying to help lose weight

who just need almost that simplicity, not only when they’re

first starting off but when they need to round out their diets,

this would be kind of a perfect way for somebody to just grab

something and have a meal and know that it’s complete and

know how many calories are in it. But in addition to

something like fat loss, I coach a lot of athletes. I personally

go for a lot of sports performance benefits in my diet. Is this

something that you could take after a workout, before a

workout? Does it jive with sports performance diets as well?

KC Craishy: Very interesting. You know nutrition performance is an area

of specialty of mine. I just love it because people always think

that because we’re dealing with world class athletes, it

doesn’t apply to them. But the truth is that maximizing

performance is important at every level. Every person that’s

listening here today – from the world class athlete – and we

do have many world class athletes including Dara Torres. Are

you familiar with Dara Torres, the swimmer?

Ben: Yeah, absolutely.

KC Craishy: Yeah Dara is a tremendous athlete at 41 years old and she is

at the peak of her career. She uses Living Fuel on a daily

basis and to answer your question, how do you incorporate it

into a sports performance kind of diet, well it’s really

interesting that people that are trying to optimize their

weight or they’re trying to enhance their performance – both

require the elements of nutrition that we just described. Now

an athlete is going to require more protein than someone

that’s a couch potato, which is why we developed Living

Protein because we had our athletes coming to us saying hey

we really love this Living Fuel stuff, but 26 grams of protein

is not enough for our meal. We’d really like to kick that up by

10 or 20. Is there any way that we could get some more of

this high quality complete plant protein that you guys have

developed so we can add it to the shakes? And that’s how we

came up with our Super Anti-Oxidant Living Protein Fiber

Probiotic blend. It’s designed for the active people who want

to kick up the protein levels and the fiber.

Ben: Okay so sports performance ideally you’d want to add a little

bit of protein to something like this Super Green…

KC Craishy: Yes, because there’s so much literature around. Up to 1 ½

grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. Some people

will say 1 pound of protein per pound of lean body mass. But

still you’re talking 100 plus grams of protein on a daily basis

for someone who is an athlete or someone who is trying to

lose weight also, it’s important to get high levels of protein.

So yes, the Living Fuel, most people can survive easily on

either Living Fuel Super Berry or Living Fuel Super Greens.

But adding in the Living Protein is something that I do every

day. Something that Dara Torres does every day. JD Drew

with the Boston Red Sox does that as well, and many other

athletes that use Living Fuel always incorporate either one or

two scoops of Living Protein on top of their, say, breakfast

meal. Now how does an athlete use it beyond that? Well, the

prevailing theory of fueling an athlete is 20W15, if you’re

familiar with the concept. 20W15 is 20 minutes prior, you’ll

have say a scoop of Super Berry. During the workout you can

have more Super Berry is an extended, very difficult workout

because you want to maintain – what you’re trying to do is

block the rise of cortisol. So during the workout. So post-

workout, within 15 minutes you want to have a recovery fuel

which would be one scoop say of Living Fuel Super Berry or

half a scoop of Super Berry with a sugar kind of source. So

you would put it in some lemonade or something like that.

Ben: What did you call it again? The 20 what 15?

KC Craishy: 20W15. It’s 20 minutes for, W means while or during the

workout and 15 means post-workout. So I say 15, a lot of

people will tell you anytime you do your post-workout fuel

within 90 minutes of your workout, you’re fine. I’m sure

you’ve heard that a lot because that’s the prevailing theory

but the truth is that the research is more refined than that

now and it really is showing that 45 minutes really is the

optimal window for protein synthesis and synthesis just

means building proteins from amino acids in your body.

Right? So if you can get your insulin – because also your

insulin sensitivity is the highest after a hard workout, okay?

So if you can get that going 15 minutes after your workout

and you can get it going before your workout, during your

workout and within 15 minutes after, you now have

controlled two of the processes which cause significant

soreness on subsequent days. There are at least three

processes that cause soreness for an athlete. And the first

one is the physical breakdown of the tearing of fibers which

is what you want, right? But that process is exacerbated by

the rise of cortisol that happens in most athletes and then

beyond that the oxidation that is allowed to occur. So it’s not

just inflammation. It’s inflammation, oxidation, glycation.

The big three, I call them. Okay? So beyond the breakdown

of the muscle, if you can control inflammation, glycation,

oxidation, now you have given the athlete a chance to recover

almost twice as fast as the athlete who didn’t pay attention to

that. So when you’re thinking about the post-recovery shake,

that really is as important to your workout as the workout

itself. So post-recovery fuel if you will. Okay? So post-

recovery fuel – also I think you take the Super Essentials

Omegas, making sure that you have enough fish oil with the

right antioxidants to help with the inflammatory processes in

the body and the blood flow of the body and so on – those

things are really critical for athletes and people who are

weekend athletes. I’m talking about world class to any level

really. So an athlete who is just a weekend athlete, who

doesn’t work out that much or that hard is really going to

want to minimize or eliminate the sugar part of the post-

workout fuel.

Ben: Gotcha. Okay so you have the powder in the canister that

people can take probably adding a little bit of protein if

they’re doing the sports performance. Now you also have a

bar, and that was actually how I first found you, is I tried one

of these bars. Stumbled across it and really liked it and then

tried some of the other stuff that you guys have – but the bar

was initially the thing that I thought was really good because

my wife actually does a lot of raw foods and she makes a lot

of our own – these raw food energy bars at home, and this

tasted just like that homemade version that she makes. So

what was the idea behind the CocoChia bar? Is that also the

concept of Super Greens just in bar format or what would

somebody use that for?

KC Craishy: You know that’s a great question. These are sustained energy

bars. And it’s funny. You say it’s like your wife developed in

the kitchen – if she’s doing really good stuff, I encourage you

to take that on and make a bar out of it because that’s exactly

how I developed the CocoChia bars. Chia seeds are part of

our Living Fuel shakes and you know, they’re the highest

percentage source of plant omega 3 of any seed and the most

easily digestible without even grinding them. So Chia is a

really power super food that was used by the Aztec Indians.

They say that two teaspoons of Chia seed would be the – or

one tablespoon of Chia seed would be the nutrition for an

entire day of hunting. That and water. So it’s a super food all

by itself. The other super food that I’m very enamored with

and have been for many years is coconut. Coconut is a high

source of medium chain triglycerides. People are scared away

from saturated fats but the truth is if you really looked at the

literature, you’d say there is a difference in saturated fat.

There are saturated fats that are unnaturally, hydrogenated,

saturated fats – those things are horrendous for your health.

No question about it. But medium chain triglycerides

actually can increase performance, can increase the thyroid

performance. They have lauric acid which is somewhat anti-

microbial and so on. So there are so many benefits to

coconut. If you look at the indigenous populations who eat a

lot of coconut, there’s very little obesity in those cultures and

so on. So Chia seed, coconut and raw almond. The power of

almond – most people know about the power of almonds so

combining those three things together in a bar format was

just – we wanted to give people the concept of sustainable

energy and not quick sugar fix, crash kind of energy. So it’s a

true super food and fats need to be a part of – from the

athlete all the way down to (inaudible). The healthy fats are

one of the key components to the four cornered concept. So

the bar is a healthy fat and fiber bar with protein.

Ben: Okay so it basically keeps you full for a longer period of time

compared to say, like a power bar.

KC Craishy: Yes, exactly.

Ben: Gotcha. So these are all great for people going after fat loss,

sports performance. My next question because I get a lot of

these types of questions from people who listen to some of

the nutrition supplements that we talked about on this show

– but is it something you could use with kids?

KC Craishy: Oh in fact it’s terrific for kids. See every human has the same

foundational needs. Now some people have additional needs

that you need to customize on top of that. But you’re still

made of the same kinds of proteins, the same kinds of

essential nutrients and so on. So for instance when my

babies – I told you about the situation with my wife when

she had her panic attacks and depression and that sort of

thing – if we hadn’t solved that, we would have had one kid

today. But we now have five children and another one on the

way at the moment. So I really believe that this is hugely

important for everybody.

Ben: Okay so kids can tolerate this kind of stuff, okay.

KC Craishy: Well the first food for my children after breast milk is Living

Fuel. We mix coconut milk with Living Fuel and that’s their

food until they transition to Living Fuel shakes for breakfast

and then the regular food that everyone else eats.

Ben: Fantastic, okay, cool. Go ahead.

KC Craishy: I was going to say it’s terrific for women who are trying to get

pregnant, women who are pregnant. It’s terrific. Instead of

the pregnancy multi-vitamin, it’s just a terrific way to go. My

wife has done that with all of our children.

Ben: Nice, well over at www.livingfuel.com, because you kind of

just scratched the surface of super foods and you have a lot of

great articles over there at www.livingfuel.com, and I’ll put a

link to that in the Shownotes to this interview, but also those

of you listening in should know that I am now including the

option for you to be able to get some of the Super Greens or

these CocoChia bars that we talked about with any of your

orders from www.pacificfit.net. I’ll put a link to that in there

as well. So if you want me to send you some of these with

anything that you might currently order from that Web site, I

can definitely hook you up. So KC that was awesome. I have

a lot better understanding now. I think a lot of people hear

the term Super Food and it’s just like this concept that it’s a

bunch of mystery foods, but I think you’ve cleared it up

pretty well today. I want to thank you.

KC Craishy: It’s my pleasure. One thing that I want to point out that –

there’s a lot of hype out there in the market and people need

to be able to look through it. When you talk about a green

drink on the market, you’re talking about a 9 gram salad.

You cannot sustain life on a 9 gram salad. It’s very good food,

don’t get me wrong. Wheat grass shot, barley shot, those

things are terrific, but you’re not going to be able to have it

for breakfast, lunch and dinner indefinitely like you can

Living Fuel. The other thing is that anti-oxidants or ORAC,

people talk about ORAC, how high the ORAC is. But ORAC

simply measures one of the five major radical categories.

Living Fuel is tested against all five of the major radical

categories that attack the body. So there’s nothing else that I

know of that’s rated that way. So it’s really important to

really understand what you’re getting into and go with it.

Ben: Fantastic, well cool. Thanks for your time. For those of you

listening in, I’ll put a link to everything in the Shownotes to

this interview with KC Craishy and until next time, thanks

for coming on the show, man.

KC Craishy: It’s a pleasure, brother. I look forward to us doing it again.

Ben: Alright, cheers.

KC Craishy: God bless, bye bye.

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