Podcast Episode #7: Nutrition and Fat Loss Q & A

Ben Greenfield (0:02)

Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness.com Podcast. This is your weekly free audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, diet, and wellness news. Hey, whether you're an Ironman triathlete, or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, this podcast is going to present you with the latest exercise and nutrition content from the nation's top experts. My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, certified nutritionist, and exercise, diet, and wellness guru. And each week, I'm going to be bringing you cutting edge fitness, nutrition, and wellness advice. Stay tuned for this week's podcast from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and in today's episode, we're going to be looking at questions and answers from podcast listeners. If you have a question about a general fitness, nutrition, or wellness lifestyle topic that you want to ask to me, simply shoot an email to ben at bengreenfieldfitness.com, or you can post a comment on any of the blog postings at bengreenfieldfitness. So in today's Q&A, we're gonna be answering a few questions on nutrition, on fat loss, and a little bit on the fat burning cream topic that got brought up in last week's podcast. So to begin with, there was an episode called The Secrets of Burning Fat that I put out last week, a podcast episode. If you didn't get a chance to listen to that, I highly recommend that you go back and give a listen to some of those brand new techniques that you can use for weight loss or fat loss to maximize the efficiency. Now, an anonymous listener asked a few questions about some of the information in that podcast. First of all, one of the things I said was that it's very effective from a metabolism standpoint to eat frequently, which we all know, but the interesting part of that study was that two groups of individuals who both consumed the same amount of calories had significantly different amounts of fat loss because one group ate six times a day and one group only ate two times a day. The group that ate six times a day lost far more fat. And a listener anonymous asked, what do you think of eating every three to four hours? Well, every three to four hours for most people's metabolisms is actually not high enough. As a matter of fact, in my lab, I test resting metabolic rate using something called indirect calorimetry, which is where you actually wear a mask, you breathe in and out, and I test how many calories you're burning at rest. Well, I have individuals who do that test fast for at least four hours prior to testing. Well, four hours is typically long enough to actually reduce the thermic effect of food or the effect that food has on increasing your metabolism. So if you're only eating every three to four hours, you're actually not keeping your metabolic rate up as high as you could if you were eating every 1.5 to every three hours. So in a lot of individuals, if you have a little bit of flexibility in your job or in your day-to-day routine, you're going to get the most benefit out of eating literally every one to 1.5 hours. That's actually what I do on a typical basis. I'm typically eating 100 to 150 calories every one to 1.5 hours, and that's typically how my day goes. I don't really have a big stop for lunch or dinner. I do eat a big breakfast because that's crucial to elevating your metabolism earliest in the day. So as far as eating every three to four hours, I actually recommend that you eat close to every one to two hours, or if that's a little bit too much for you, every 1.5 to three hours. And then the listener asks, can you eat anything as long as it is vegetables? And I'm assuming what the listener means by that question is, do you have to count your calories when you eat vegetables?

And the answer that I give to most of my clients when they ask that question, the answer that I give to this podcast is, in most cases, no. If you go to the website that I mentioned in another podcast episode, nutritiondata.com, where you can get data on any food, if you look up, say, a cup of broccoli florets, that's 20 calories.

So if you had 10 cups of broccoli, you would be consuming 200 calories.

Most people cannot consume too many vegetables. There's obviously going to be some effect of fiber on your digestive system. You may experience some gastric distress if you consume 10 cups of broccoli. You may also get some weird glances from your friends. But ultimately, it's not going to hurt you from a caloric intake standpoint. That being said, in a typical Western society eating situation, we're a lot of times not consuming fresh raw vegetables. They've been cooked in vegetable oil. They've been sauteed in teriyaki sauce that has high fructose corn syrup in it. They've been fried.