5 Random Nutrition Thoughts

1 Dec, 2008  1 Comment  Nutrition

I always have ideas and thoughts bouncing around my head, coming up with some of my best stuff on my 35 minute drive to CP. Unfortunately my mind is always going full tilt so that by the end of the drive I forget some of my self-described brilliance! I’m putting together some of my favorite random tips and thoughts from my drives.

1. Only Eat Foods that DO Something for You.

Bread that does something for you

Bread that does something for you

This is a great point made my Leigh Peele on a recent FitCast episode. (I listen to the FitCast to and from CP) For optimal health, do not eat foods that don’t do anything for you. A great example would be white bread. Some people make it out to be the worst thing ever created, which isn’t true, but nutritionally speaking it doesn’t really do anything for you. You would be much better served eating a sprouted grain product like Ezekiel bread. Ezekiel has no preservatives, is higher in fiber that normal bread, is a complete protein and has a minuscule impact on your blood sugar. This food is so much closer to its original state than white bread, and does a whole lot more for you, clearly making it the better option.

2. Simple Sugars are NOT Necessary Before, During, or After Training.

Unless you are an endurance athlete, our carbohydrate intake does not have to come from nutritionally empty sugars around training. People use the argument that it replenishes glycogen faster, which is only half true. Yes it is faster, but glycogen is replenished within 24hrs if normal carbohydrate consumption happens anyway. Unless you have twice per day training then it is irrelevant. I would much rather see people consume carbs that do something for them nutritionally besides glycogen resynthesis. If we use whole, minimally processeds foods and grains, like fruit and oatmeal, we not only replenish our glycogen, we provide our body with tons of vitamins, minerals, and increasingly important phytonutrients during a time of great stress. This isn’t too say that there is no application of simple sugars, but that for most of us, we are much better off using actual whole food sources. Our body composition and overall health will thank us.

3. If You Don’t Like Green Tea, Try Red Tea.

The Green Tea Alternative

The Green Tea Alternative

Red Tea, or rooibos, is an herb from Southern Africa that has been found to have an even higher antioxidant content than green, white, or black tea. While research is truly just beginning on this wonderful herb, it is already known to have a lot of health benefits. For those sensitive to caffeine, it is caffeine free. It is also calorie free. Rooibos has no oxalic acid, so people with kidney stones need not worry. It is also low in tannins, so it does not inhibit iron absorption. Though I would still urge you to find a way that you enjoy Green Tea consumption, if you really can’t manage it Red Tea is certainly the way to go. I drink a cup every night before bed.

4. Being a Teetotaler is NOT Necessarily Optimal.

A lot of people in this industry, or even just fitness enthusiasts seem to think that completely abstaining from alcohol is one of the ultimate health promoting choices they can make. I wouldn’t agree. Research has clearly shown that people who consume a drink or two a night are actually healthier than people who do not. While I am certainly not advocating that more is better, or that you need to have some alcohol every night. Consuming some small amounts several times per week will actually benefit you. Red wine contains a powerful antioxidant called resveratrol known to have tons of health benefits, including reducing lung cancer risk, especially in smokers, ala the French Paradox.

A recent study treated mice with three kinds of diets: high calorie, standard or calorie restricted. Each group of mice got their diet with or without resveratrol supplementation (creating six subgroups). Regardless of the diet, the mice given resveratrol supplementation for one year had significantly less symptoms of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, cataracts, and decline in motor coordination. The resveratrol-treated mice also had liver and muscle tissues resembling much younger animals. So I tend to urge people to consume some red wine or dark beer on a semi-regular basis for optimal health. If you don’t want the calories or alcohol, they do make resveratrol supplements such as Rez-V by Biotest.

5. Eat Fruits & Veggies From ALL Colors.

A new trend in the nutrition world is to push only green veggies. That all veggies and fruits of other colors are not necessary. While it is true that leafy green veggies are tremendously good for you, and they do very well in clinical studies, they are not the only ones with benefit. Limiting yourself to just one color limits the amount and variety of nutrients and antioxidants that you are consuming. It makes no sense to me to only consume green. Sure maybe make that a point of emphasis, and consume more of them, but do not exclude the others. Tomatoes, Pumpkin, Yellow Peppers, Eggplant, Blueberries, Strawberries and more are all being missed out on in the green only diet. For optimal health, consume fruits and veggies from all colors of the rainbow and enjoy the health benefits you will reap.

Thanksgiving Madness

26 Nov, 2008  2 Comments  General Health

This will be the last post for the week as I will be going home to Maine for my favorite holiday. Thanksgiving is awesome. Its a holiday mainly about food, and yes giving thanks, but mainly food. Its genius. Who doesn’t love food?

I plan on eating my face off. Stuff my face til I crawl to the couch, pass out watching football, then slam down some pie. The way I look at it, I eat well the rest of the time, so 1 meal is not going to do much or really any damage. If your diet is spot on, fear not Thanksgiving and enjoy yourself guilt-free. Have some turkey, stuffing, loads of carbs, pie, all of it, and love it. Just be smart the rest of the day and it wont do anything. If you can manage it, crank out a morning session and really negate the impact this meal could have. Its up to you.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone, thanks for reading and see you next week. Lastly, I want to thank Tony Gentilcore for greatly increasing my readership, if any of you don’t read his blog, definitely check it out. Tony is hilarious, smart and always some interesting stuff to talk about. And he has a 6-pack, ladies.

A Day In the Life

25 Nov, 2008  5 Comments  Nutrition

I often have people ask me how I set up my own diet, so this is for everyone who wants to know. Also this blog was inspired by the Precision Nutrition Blog on Cassandra Forsythe-Pribanic where they showed her nutritional intake and exercise for the day. So I have decided to post my nutrition intake for the day, and my training log is located on TheFitCast forum for those interested. I am currently training on a 3-day total body split with 1 day of med ball/plyo/sprinting/strongman work with the goal being increase in strength and mass. I will try to make this as detailed as possible.

Wake @ 8:00 am. Not too shabby huh.

Breakfast @ 8:30:

Snack @ 11:30:

Lunch @ 2:30:

Dinner @ 5:00

During Training @ 8:00:

Post Training @ 9:30:

Post Training Meal @ 10:30 - 11:00:

Before Bed @ 12:30:

Been crushing the weights lately with the higher calorie, higher carb diet I’ve had the last few months. Weight is up about 10lbs in the last 2 months, so things are going according to plan. God I love food.

A Pill for Damn Near Everything!

24 Nov, 2008  No Comment  General Health

There was a great article on MSN about over prescription of medications that I would like to discuss. Do read the article, it will be well worth your time.

Health in a bottle? I think not.
Health in a bottle? I think not.

This is a topic that I am very passionate about as I definitely feel that the medical community has gone off the deep end in regards to prescription medications and pills. Doctors have just decided that the best course of action to solve almost every problem is a pill. Your shoulder hurts, here’s a pill. It hurts worse, here is another pill. And the cycle continues. When you have to prescribe a pill to offset the effects of another pill, doesn’t that just strike you as odd? Granted there may be occasions when that is necessary and beneficial, but it should not be the norm.

The worst part is that doctors and physicians as a whole seem to ignore the possibility that taking so many prescription drugs in conjunction with one another could pose health risks of their own. A drug is a drug, and they all have side effects and we need to stop blindly following the advice that is being given by doctors through the pharmaceutical companies. These companies have a huge influence in the medical community as they fund research projects, pad doctors pockets (which is finally being looked into) and influence what is taught in med school. Half of the 10 leading causes of death in the US are diet related, yet our solution is to teach our doctors the best pills to pop, not the best dietary intervention strategies? Seems a little ass backwards to me.

The Medical Community Motto: Buy Prescription Drugs!
The Medical Community Motto: Buy Prescription Drugs!

Consumers do carry a portion of the blame, as many people would much rather just take a pill every day to “solve” their problem(s), rather than take preventative action, and doctors know this. It is often the path of least resistance to prescribe a pill, so both parties are at fault. We as a society need to reclaim our health through proper nutrition and exercise and stop expecting someone or something to solve our problems, least of all a pill.

The Non-Awesomeness of MSN Health Tips

21 Nov, 2008  No Comment  Training

I’m not gonna lie, I am a huge fan of msn.com. It is my homepage, and where I like to get my daily dose of online news. Its not so much because it has great content, I am just used to the set up. It usually has some interesting and fairly unique rotating news stories at the top of the page. The one place where I feel MSN really struggles is in their “Health & Fitness” section. They spew a lot of the same crap that most educated professionals are working so hard to eradicate from the industry. They interview dietitians who give them the ridiculous Food Pyramid style advice that has made this country fat in the first place! And while recently they have begun to post info from some really smart guys, like Chad Waterbury and Bill Hartman, they usually choose attention hungry dumbasses who are just trying to make a buck. Like this:

Does this look challenging to anyone?

Does this look challenging to anyone?

“Grace Miastkowski, a mother of two in Rochelle Park, N.J., had a flash of inspiration during a recent home workout. To do an arm curl, she tied one end of some exercise tubing to a dumbbell, anchored the other end around the leg of her couch, then curled.”

“The magic behind this dynamic duo is simple: “You have to work harder to keep your body moving in a straight, steady line, so you really hit those hard-to-shape deep muscles,” explains Scott Berlinger, the founder of Full Throttle Endurance Training in New York City. Here, he’s revved up traditional dumbbell moves with the tubing-and-weight method to create a body-sculpting program that will tone you from head to toe.”

Really? And what exactly are those hard-to-shape deep muscles? Yeah that band must really stimulate those extra deep biceps brachii muscles that I just can’t reach! And tone me from head to toe? Haven’t we obliterated this myth yet? How is this garbage still around? You can not “tone” a muscle, a muscle can do 1 of 3 things: hypertrophy, atrophy, or stay the same. Granted, you can increase muscle density, and decrease intramuscular fat stores and subcutaneous fat to see more definition, but there is no such thing as a muscle “toning” exercise.

People need to stop buying into bullshit hype and learn 3 keys to getting slim and “tone”:

1. Put down the processed anything. Yes, this includes most whole wheat products, soda or pretty much anything in a box.

Reality = not much better than a bagel

Reality = not much better than a bagel

2. Lift weights. Real, challenging, heavy weights to build some muscle and burn some calories.

3. Put down the magazine. If you can read while you are “training”, then you are just spinning your wheels. Even with cardio it is still all about progressive overload.

Don’t believe everything you read, especially when it comes to training and nutrition. There are a lot of people out there who have no qualms about taking advantage of people who just do not know any better. As the old saying goes, if it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is. Getting results might be simple, but simple does not equal easy. It does require actual hard work. So get to it.

The FitCast Interview

18 Nov, 2008  No Comment  Nutrition, Training

Just a quick one today. I was interviewed on the mid week show of The FitCast last week. It is a fitness and nutrition podcast hosted by Kevin Larrabee. It is the highest rated fitness and nutrition podcast on the internet, so if you want to hear 25 minutes of me rambling on about nutrition and what we do at CP check it out here.

You will be hearing a lot more about The FitCast and myself in the coming months, so stay tuned!

Wednesday Movie Review

12 Nov, 2008  No Comment  Movie Review

So since everything I have written so far has been almost completely “educational”, I thought I would have a little fun with this one. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a movie fanatic with a rather large dvd collection. And yes, it’s alphabetized. Though there are some director based groups at the bottom, like the Coens and Tarantino. Once in a while at CP we will get into a movie discussion, with Tony and I usually agreeing, Eric offering nothing, and Kevin having the worst movie taste I have ever seen.

Today I wanted to review a great movie I just watched the other night called the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Not gonna lie, Casey Affleck is becoming an absolutely incredible actor. He is fantastic in this very subdued and nuanced role, giving a haunted and beautiful performance. Sam Rockwell also gives a very strong performance, and I feel he is a very underrated actor, who consistently gives solid effort. Brad Pitt is very charismatic and is also very strong as Jesse James, but it really is Affleck who steals the show. Ever since Good Will Hunting, where he stole every scene he was in, Casey has been absolutely phenomenal. It amazes that he is finally getting his chance to take on some bigger, meatier roles. Did it really take big brother Ben casting him in Gone Baby Gone to get his career as a lead role started?

This is a movie that certainly requires patience. It is a slow burn, that stays pretty consistent. It takes its time and is never in a rush to tell the story, letting everything take its proper course. The original cut was 4 hours long, and I heard it was even better, but the standard version is 2 hours and 40 minutes. This is a movie made for movie lovers. The cinematography is gorgeous, obviously the acting is excellent, and Andrew Dominik gives a great directorial effort, doing a great job of keeping the focus on the actors and the story and letting that speak for itself.

This movie is certainly a little slow, and is that odd western without any real action, but if you are willing to take the time to really get into these characters and the underlying stories, then you are in for a great ride. Overall I gave this movie an 82/100.

Once you go Greek…?

11 Nov, 2008  No Comment  Nutrition

I know almost all I have talked about so far has been food, but this is one of my favorites so it had to be done. Greek yogurt has become one of my new favorite foods for its higher protein content, thick creamy texture, high live and active culture content and cooking/recipe versatility.

Greek yogurt is much thicker than our traditional US yogurt. It is rich and creamy and much higher in protein while still retaining the traiditional sour taste of yogurt. The flavored versions are also much lower in carbs and sugar and higher in protein than the usual yogurt with just the right amount of sweetness.

Working at CP as the nutrition guy (we dont really have a title for that yet, might make Kevin work on that) Greek yogurt has by far been my greatest success story with the high school athletes. Part of my job is sitting down and having a small 10 minute chat with each client as they join, having a general nutrition discussion. With the high school athletes getting them to eat anything resembling a healthy diet requires some serious nutrition re-education, which we offer, but isn’t the point here. One of my recommendations is trying to get the kids to eat Greek yogurt. It is a quick easy snack they can bring to school, and most of them eat “regular” yogurt anyway, so it doesn’t seem so odd to them. Once they try it they are hooked, and it is one small step in the right direction. They have actually been my most receptive crowd to this “new” food. Some of my older personal training clients are resistant to yogurt in general, as it wasn’t really something they grew up with. Oddly enough I even learned about this in college, it is apparently well documented that older generations find yogurt to be abnormal from normal dietary foods. Though an odd fact, Greek yogurt is a great food to begin to incorporate and I would urge you all to give it a try.

5 Easy Ways to Eat More Fiber

30 Oct, 2008  1 Comment  Nutrition

Everyone has heard by now about the importance of fiber. How awesome it is for your cholesterol, for your blood sugar, for your regularity. People often ask me how they can get more fiber in their diet. The usual answer of eat more fruit and veggies tends to falls on deaf ears, so here are some quick and easy dietary additions to increase your fiber intake. Just be sure drink plenty of water!

1. Eat more Milled Flax Seeds

Milled Flax is awesome. I am obsessed with the stuff, along with almost everything else on this list. It provides about 3 grams of omega-3’s per serving, along with 4 grams of fiber and can be added to a wide variety of recipes. Add 1-2 tbsp to your morning oatmeal, protein shakes, cottage cheese recipes, yogurt, etc. With its quality serving of heart healthy omega-3’s and fiber, this is one food you should be sure to add to your diet.

2. Eat more Pumpkin

This fantastic little veggie (or fruit, it’s really both) has 5 grams of fiber per 1/2 cup. It is also one of the worlds richest suppliers of bioavailable carotenoids, a powerful antioxidant family including beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene. It is absolutely fantastic. A great way to incorporate more pumpkin is to make My Favorite Pumpkin Recipe.

3. Eat a better Cottage Cheese

Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese is awesome! Not only is it thick and creamy, but it contains 3 grams of fiber per 1/2 cup! This is the only cottage cheese I know of that has any fiber at all. The fiber is from inulin, a soluble fiber that is incredibly versatile. It is extracted from chicory root, and has been shown to have many unique health benefits, including increasing the absorption of calcium and magnesium, and since it is a prebiotic,  helping to support digestive health by stimulating the growth of beneficial gut bacteria. To make this cottage cheese even better, Friendship infused each 1/2 cup serving with 1 billion live active cultures from one of these beneficial gut bacteria, Bifidobacterium, making this my cottage cheese of choice.

4. Eat more Avocados

Another one of those is it a fruit or is it a vegetable conversations. It’s really both, but we will call it a veggie as most do. Avocados are known as a great source of healthy fat, but did you know that one avocado has, on average, 13 grams of fiber! While you do have to keep in mind that there is also about 30 grams of fat in an entire avocado, 20 of it is monounsaturated. Just add 1/2 avocado to sandwiches, salads, salsa, and more to get a great tasting high fiber veggie!

5. Eat some Low-Carb Wraps

Maybe they aren’t the worlds most perfect food, but they will help you keep your carbs lower, and get more fiber, while still giving you the illusion of having a sandwich. Not a bad combo in my book. Be careful with these because a lot of companies add in trans fats, so definitely make sure to check the ingredients list, no vegetable shortening or hydrogenated oils! Can be used for sandwiches, pizzas, burritos, fajitas, quesadillas and more. (plus avocados go great on low carb wrap sandwiches)

6. Bonus!

Here is a fun little food to have as a “treat” source of fiber. Kozy Shack No Sugar Added Chocolate Pudding. It is glorious. One pudding cup contains 11 grams of carbs, with 5 of it being fiber. The fiber is from inulin, just like in the Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese. Although I am not a big fan of adding artificial sweeteners to your diet, and it does contain some Splenda®, a little bit here and there won’t hurt.

Bonus Kozy Shack Recipe: (fiber in parentheses)

1 cup Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese (6)

1 Kozy Shack No Sugar Added Chocolate Pudding (5)

1 scoop Chocolate Metabolic Drive (1)

1 tbsp Barleans Forti Flax (2)

2 tbsp Natural Peanut Butter (2)

Thats a total of 16 grams of fiber. 1/3 of your daily needs. Not too shabby, considering it’s chocolate and peanut butter! Who can resist?

Low Carb Dieters: Eat Your Fruit & Carrots!

27 Oct, 2008  No Comment  Nutrition

Time and again I run into people who have taken their low carb diets so far that they avoid fruit at all costs and even some non-starchy veggies like carrots. It blows my mind. From a health perspective, eliminating an entire food category like fruit, especially fruit, from the diet is asinine. Unless you are actually trying to do a ketogenic diet where pretty much all carb sources are eliminated for a while, I assure you that some fruit consumption will not decrease your fat loss ability. It actually might even help.

While fruit does contain ample amounts of carbs, mainly in the form of sugar, it contains a plethora of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, antioxidants and loads of other awesome things we have yet to discover. Berries especially should never be taken out of someones diet unless they have some type of allergy. If you really think that consuming 1 small apple, 1/2 grapefruit, and 1/2 cup of frozen berries as a daily example would halt your fat loss progress, you are sadly mistaken. Grapefruit itself has been shown to aid in weight loss. Apples are great sources of soluble fiber to help maintain satiety, and berries are just nutritional powerhouses that should almost never be eliminated from the diet. Consuming copious amounts of fruit could potentially be detrimental to a low calorie, low carb diet, but eliminating it completely is not the answer. The solution is to consume most of your fruit when it will be best tolerated: at breakfast, and after exercise. This will help to ensure the carbs are either stored as glycogen, or oxidized as fuel, not stored as fat, while still getting in the innumerable health benefits of fruit consumption.

Many people not only eliminate the great and wonderful fruit category, they will eliminate many veggies as well. Now I can understand where many low carb dieters don’t want potatoes and corn in their diet, which are closer to grains than vegetables, but pushing out things like carrots and pumpkin is just going too far. If you are one of those people afraid of carrots because someone told you it’s GI is too high, then you are sadly misinformed. While carrots do have a fairly high score on the GI (glycemic index, which is a measure of how much a food raises your blood sugar after eating a standardized amount), it is really taken out of context. The GI is useful, but is does have many flaws, the greatest in this case being that it requires the tested food to have been consumed in an amount that would give 50 grams of usable carbohydrate. For carrots, this would require eating one and a half pounds! Most people probably don’t consume an entire bag or more of baby carrots in one sitting. A normal serving is about 9 baby carrots, which contains approximately 9 grams of carbs, 2 of which are fiber. Pumpkin is a similar vegetable (and is actually higher in carotenoids, a powerful antioxidant) that people should eat more of. Pumpkin also contains 9 grams of carbs per serving, with an impressive 5 grams of fiber. It is fast becoming one of my favorite vegetables.

So long story short when on a low carb diet, you can eat more than broccoli. Eat an assortment of fruits and veggies from the entire color spectrum, your body will thank you and your fat loss efforts will not be diminished, I promise.

My Favorite Pumpkin Recipe (borrowed and modified from Tony Gentilcore, through Mike Roussell):

1 cup Cottage Cheese (Friendship Digestive Health if you can find it)

1 scoop Vanilla Metabolic Drive Protein Powder

1/2 cup canned Pumpkin

1 tbsp Milled Flax Seed

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

dash Nutmeg

2 tbsp chopped Walnuts

and Enjoy the Pumpkin Goodness

This will get you about 52 grams Protein, 27 grams Carbohydrate, 15 grams Fiber, and 19 grams Fat for about 490 calories.

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