Thanksgiving Madness

Filed under: 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

Filed under: 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:

• 2 whole omega-3 eggs
• 1 cup egg whites
• 2 cups chopped broccoli, onions, red and green peppers
• Topped with 1oz shredded mozarella and some salsa.
• 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/2 cup frozen wild blueberries
• ~2 tbsp Barleans milled flax
• cinnamon to taste
• 1 banana
• 2 cups Stash Fusion White/Green Tea
• 2000 IU vitamin D
• Fish Oil = 1.8 grams EPA/DHA
• I love breakfast A LOT, I eat almost the same thing every morning, it is that good.

Snack @ 11:30:

• 1 6oz Chobani Vanilla Greek Yogurt
• 1/4 cup mixed nuts – almonds, walnuts, pecans
• 3 pieces reduced fat string cheese
• 9 baby carrots
• 2 tbsp Joseph’s original hummus
• 1 Stash Fusion White/Green Tea
• this is a staple snack for me, its easy, quick, requires no skill, and I just love it.

Lunch @ 2:30:

• 1 cup Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese
• 1 scoop Vanilla Metabolic Drive
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup wild frozen blueberries
• 1 scoop Biotest Superfood
• 2 Stash Fusion Green/White Tea (just for you Eric)
• Absolutely fantastic, again meets my needs and requires no cooking or skill.

Dinner @ 5:00

• 1 cup Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese (I like cottage cheese, get over it)
• 1/2 cup Libby canned pumpkin
• 1 scoop Vanilla MD
• 2 tbsp chopped walnuts
• 2 tbsp Barleans milled flax
• cinnamon to taste
• dash nutmeg
• 1 Stash Fusion Green/White Tea
• probably the greatest meal ever, I eat this every day. It is that good.

During Training @ 8:00:

• 1 scoop Wild Raspberry Surge
• 3.5 grams creatine
• 5 grams leucine

Post Training @ 9:30:

• 16oz organic whole fat milk
• 1 scoop chocolate whey
• 3.5 grams creatine
• 5 grams leucine
• 1 banana
• love the whole fat milk post training, get more cals in.

Post Training Meal @ 10:30 – 11:00:

• 4 slices Ezekiel bread – toasted
• 1 chicken breast
• 1.5 tbsp canola oil mayo
• 1 cup baby spinach
• 4 tomato slices
• mustard
• 1 Pink Lady apple
• 1 Red Tea (yeah I drink a lot of tea, what of it)
• Fish Oil = 1.8 grams EPA/DHA
• this sandwich is rare, but fantastic

Before Bed @ 12:30:

• 3 ZMA
• late night tonight, fairly normal eating day.

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!

Filed under: 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.

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.

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

Filed under: 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?

“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

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

Filed under: 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

Filed under: 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…?

Filed under: 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.