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Fueling for Performance

got behind me a ton of healthy foods that I'm gonna be teaching you guys how to prepare in just a little bit. And today is gonna rock because we get to just geek out on all things eating. I don't know about you, but I love to eat. So we will get a chance to see how we can actually fuel our body with the thousands of calories that are necessary to achieve ultimate human performance and do so without destroying our bodies. And that's really the key, right? There is athletes, people who work out a lot exercise enthusiasts. We're not gonna lie. We all love to eat, like and in many cases I mentioned this yesterday. There are some cases where we eat to train and train to eat. And while that can certainly be dangerous, there's also a positive side to food the positive side of physical activity in that we can drive a great deal of pleasure and benefit from food, and we can also use it to become better athletes or to achieve those goals we want to achieve. So I want to touch over a few little c...

oncepts today in terms of the science behind how you choose what it is that you are or you aren't going to eat. And then we're gonna We're gonna delve into the nitty gritty. I'm gonna bring a special guest up, and we're gonna learn how to prepare some of these beautiful, wonderful, nourishing foods. And I'll teach you some of the things that I personally dio to keep my body going during the day, but feel really, really good mentally and physically. So that being said, um, let's go ahead and talk about two important things when it comes to choosing the foods that you're going to eat. These are the two parameters that I use to decide whether or not I'm going to consume something Nutrient density and digestibility. Now I used to be like many, many athletes and many exercise enthusiasts and even exercise coaches out there into the concept of simply ensuring that something was calorically dense. OK, so when I was a bodybuilder, I used to do four or five of these bodybuilding shakes every day, which are like these, you know, man in a can shakes where you're drinking down 405 100 calories a pop, and it's very convenience and you've got all your calories. But there are issues, even though something like that was actually very, very nutrient dense, it had digestibility issues, and we'll get into that in just a second. I also have been through that phase for me as a runner and an endurance athlete in a triathlete, where I did a lot of gels and sports drinks and powders and kind of the traditional endurance athlete fuel. You know, I was kind of like the Gatorade Power Bar energy bar sports drink type of person. And those foods are also very, very calorically dense. But they lack actual nutrient density, which is one of the reasons that you're hungry all the time when you're fueling your body with those type of things as an athlete. So we're gonna learn how to do things the right way today. Now, when I'm talking about nutrient density and we're going to get into some very, very nutrient dense foods, what I'm talking about is choosing foods that are very, very rich in nutrients, vitamins and minerals. You can actually find, uh, nutrients, density scales on the Internet, that kind of kind of rate nutrients. There was actually a really, really good and a free presentation. Given that I watched a couple of years ago, I mentioned that ancestral health symposium yesterday that I went to the 2012. I also went to the 2000 and 11 and there was a talk given their by a really, really smart guy from Harvard named Matt Holland. And he did a presentation on nutrient density, where it ranked the the nutrient density of off all the foods on the face of the planet. It was very, very interesting that one of the one of the highest nutrient dense foods in the face of the planet turned out to be bacon, which made a lot of people very, very happy. Not not plants or oatmeal as we as we might believe. Now there could be some issues with relying on bacon is your primary source of fuel, but it's a really interesting presentation. I'm pretty sure you can download it for free at at their their Ancestry Foundation website. The other thing that I really look at is digestibility, so food may be very, very nutrient dense. Let's say, keen wah, for example, Keen wah is kind of this grass slash grain that's very, very rich in amino acids that until about two years ago, when I really started getting geek out on this stuff, I would have walked in the grocery store and called it quinella because that's how it's spelled and I had no clue. Chemo actually was. But Kenya has aton of amino acids in it, and it's very nutrient dense and it's high in minerals but keen wah itself. If you were to go to the grocery store and just buy a bag of keen wah, it naturally is covered with Sapone, INTs and Sapone. INTs are are essentially soap, and when you consume keen wah, if you just take it out of that bag and you cook it, you are digesting soap. That's why a lot of people start to eat something like Keane one. They're like, I can't eat that crap. I felt horrible on my digestive system was all over the place, and I had bloating and things hurt. Well, the issue is that that King was not digestible. Now there is a way to take a nutrient dense food like that and make it digestible. In the case of Keen Wah. You would soak it overnight and you'd rinse it. And that's a That's a very simple, easy way to get rid of these opponents in something like King Wa. But you have to take into account the digestibility of the food as well. Um, and many, many things like keen wah, um, plants, seeds, nuts, legumes. Things of that nature they do require you to do something with them before you eat them to make them digestible. Because basically one of the ways that plants survive is they want you to eat them and then go poop them out somewhere so that they can grow in that new place. So they're kind of designed to pass through your digestive system without actually being absorbed. And in some cases that causes irritation to your digestive tract. And that's why if you're going to do things like eat, you know, legumes, beans, wheat, things of that nature. Ah, lot of times it does need to be treated properly. It needs to be soaked and sprouted and fermented. We're going to talk about some of those things today. We'll also delve into this stuff in a little bit more detail at the end of the day when we talk about how to push the reboot button on your gut, how to fix your gut. But when I use a word like nutrient density or word like Digestibility, that's what I'm referring to. And when I'm looking at a food before I put in my mouth, I ask myself, Is this nutrient dense? Was a shock full of poly phenols and antioxidants and vitamins and nutrients and minerals. And not only that, is it digestible? Is it in a format that is actually going to allow my guts to take it in without doing damage without making me feel bad later on? So, um, I have created what I call the superhuman food pyramid, and this is available for free on my website. Now it looks very, very simple, but it's a downloadable PdF, and if you zoom in on this pdf, it actually lists foods according to eat moderate or avoid, and you'll see you can you might be able to see a very, very small tax in there that if you could zoom in you to be able to see. But one of things that you might notice is that this pyramid is kind of flipped. At the bottom are fats. Some of the more nutrient dense type of foods on the face of the planet are fats and the bodies. Preferential source of fuel at rest, as you learned yesterday, is fats. That's what your mitochondria burns through, a process called beta oxidation to form a teepee based energy. And that's why fats this slow burning fuel, this log that your body uses to burn forms the base of this superhuman food pyramid. And then we get vegetables right above fats and many people who have seen my diet a lot of times think at first glance that I'm a vegan or vegetarian or plant based user because I eat aton of vegetables, with the exception being that I dress them up quite a bit and healthy fats like olive oils and avocados and all. I was a lot of the stuff that we're about to talk about. But then I also include sources of amino acids and very, very nutrient dense sources. So, yes, I eat things like liver in oysters and grass fed beef and salmon and things of that nature. But I eat a ton of vegetables along with my fats proteins, you can see you're kind of in the middle of the food pyramid proteins. As you learned yesterday. A lot of times are over emphasized, especially in athletes. If you remember back to the strength building section of yesterday, we really only need about 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight in order to maintain Arlene muscle. That's about half of what you read in the typical muscle and Fitness magazine. They'll tell you a gram of protein per pound of body weight. The fact is that that can create a lot of ammonia buildup and nitrogenous waste. Build it. That's hard on your kidneys. So 0.55 up to a maximum of about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight is the ideal range. And that's why protein doesn't fall kind of towards the base of the food pyramid, as you might expect it to for athletes and people who are beating up their bodies a lot. But it's really only in the middle. Then we get grains and legumes kind of towards the top, and again, these are These are okay, Um I think I mentioned yesterday. I'm not paleo. I'm not one of those guys who says that you can't eat plants and grains and legumes and things like that, but you got to make him digestible, and we'll talk about that today on. I do have an expert guest today who knows a lot about making foods Digestible fruit is a little bit towards the top of the pyramid. The reason for that is that fruit is nature's desert. It is relatively nutrient dense, but it's high in fructose. It can cause some weight gain issues and people who are trying to lean up and a lot of people do too much fruit fructose that's not utilized for energy. Convert e easily get converted into triglycerides in the body. Yesterday, when I showed you that lipid panel that's like an ideal lipid panel, one of the things that I mentioned was that it's really good toe have as your focus high cholesterol levels try to get your cholesterol levels above 200 if you can. If you want to optimize neural function, but at the same time you should try to keep triglycerides low. So if fats form the base of your food pyramid. You do have to be kind of careful with fructose, even if it's from natural sources such as fruit. I personally eat the equivalent of about one piece of fresh raw fruit about every two days or so, so I actually don't do a lot of fruit. I do a lot of vegetables, but not a lot of fruit because of that fructose content, and I found that I'm able to keep myself very, very lean. Why limit my fruit con my fruit intake like that again? I have nothing against fruit. It's it's fantastic and actually ate a crap load of mangoes last week in Thailand. I have to admit I average more than one piece of fresh raw fruit per day there. So sometimes when I'm traveling in exotic locations, I will take advantage of the exotic fruits there. But in most cases, in my day to day life, not a lot of fruit. And then, of course, herbs, spices and sweeteners will talk about some of those. I mentioned that I start off every day yesterday, shutting down brain inflammation by consuming 1000 milligrams of Kirk Human Teoh to allow my body toe actually begin. Teoh have that anti inflammatory effect that it needs, especially at a neural level. And curcumin is an active component of to America, which is a nerve that I personally use quite a bit. I dump a lot of that on my food. Cinnamon is another one that he used quite a bit to control blood sugar levels. You're gonna learn about some other things today, like sea salt, apple cider vinegar. You know a lot of these little things that you can add into your diet to do everything from boosts the metabolism to shut down inflammation, to improve digestibility, to give your body extra minerals. And, um, these also, of course, are an important part of the food pyramid. And then I've also got on that food pyramid drinks and I list about 30 different drinks from coconut water to kombucha, two sodas to fruit juices, etcetera in order of what's best to what's worst. And we we really can't zoom in on this on this TV that you see here. But if you want to download the superhuman food pyramid, you get it for free at Ben Greenfield fitness dot com slash pyramid and It also comes along with a really comprehensive grocery shopping list, about five extra pages of grocery shopping lists that lists all the foods that would kind of be ideal to fill your refrigerator with. So that will help you make a kitchen that looks a little bit like what we're looking at right now.