Post about "Nutrition"

How Bad is Your Nutrition

May 17, 2023· Category :Uncategorized· Comments Off

Chances are your nutrition is terrible. Or at the very least, your nutrition plan is good but you allow yourself far too many treats. Take today for example. How many Halloween candies have you treated yourself to at work? And you still have to go home and resist the leftover candy bowl or your child’s Halloween loot. The bottom line: You can’t succeed in your fat loss program if your diet is average.

I need to bring up this point because of the many emails people send me about their nutrition. From what I read, most people’s nutrition plans are far too poor to allow them to lose fat. And yet they are working harder than ever in the gym and wondering why they aren’t losing fat. No workout will help you build muscle and lose fat if you keep eating at fast-food restaurants, drinking sugary sodas, and raiding bags of leftover mini-candy bars.

And it’s frustrating because the secrets to fat loss nutrition are so simple. The best approach is eating several small meals per day, with each meal containing lean protein, vegetables, and other whole foods. You must eliminate unnecessary calories such as soda and high-fat, high-sugar snacks (like that mini-Snickers bar that’s on your desk right now). If you’re trying to lose fat, you can’t have treats every day. If fat loss is the goal, then cookies, apple pie, ice cream, nachos, fried foods, etc. just don’t make the cut, as unfortunate as it is.

Research shows that an increased intake of fruits and vegetables is associated with fat loss (nutritionists never put a limit on the number of vegetables that people should eat – provided they are not fried or covered in fat or sauces). Other research suggests that replacing carbohydrates with almonds (a source of fiber, protein, and monounsaturated fats) leads to greater weight loss. Almonds are a very healthy snack and help curb hunger. A typical serving is 1 ounce of almonds (about 22 pieces) and can replace chips, chocolate bars, and cookies in your diet.

Make sure you are logging your food intake and making notes about your energy levels when you eat certain foods. Soon you will identify the nutritional reasons for your fatigue or for your consistent energy levels. You will quickly associate sugar and fried foods with poor mental performance, while noticing that small, whole, natural food-based meals and snacks help keep you alert and full of energy.

If you are overweight and just starting to improve your nutrition, I have some good news for you. You should begin losing at least 1 pound per week (probably 2 or more) simply from the nutritional changes.

Nutrition is that powerful. Don’t expect to start eating perfectly tomorrow, but you should slowly build up to eating much better and healthier than you were yesterday. Try to improve your nutrition plan everyday. Stay consistent and focused with your nutritional approach. You can do it. Here are three nutrition changes that would pay huge dividends for a fat-loss beginner:

1) Eat several small, whole food meals per day.

2) Don’t consume any unnecessary liquid calories (i.e. no soda, alcohol, or sweetened beverages). Drink more water – nutrition experts recommend 3 liters per day.

3) Eliminate processed carbohydrates and sugar from your nutrition plan (no soda, cake, chips, white bread, or chocolate bars).

If you’re fed up with the body fat and spare tire around your middle, then it’s time to take a structured approach to fat loss.

If your current nutritional plan is preventing you from losing fat, then it’s time for you to start working on building better eating habits. This can be as simple as committing to one small nutritional improvement per day (such as replacing your lunchtime soda with water) and one large nutritional change per week (such as setting aside time on a Sunday to prepare a weekly menu and all of your meals).

But you need to have a plan to make this work, just like how you have a plan for your workouts. Your nutrition plan should include the contents of every meal, as well as your grocery list for the week. This will enable you to have meal alternatives for nights when you might need to be running from one event to the other with no time or healthy snack alternatives when you are on the road between meetings.

It’s important that you make your plan something you can follow. If you are currently eating 7 meals per week at the golden arches, it wouldn’t be realistic to plan to replace those meals with carrot sticks and tofu this week. A better plan would be to substitute a couple of those meals with healthier sandwich options and then work on improving things even more in the following weeks.

So here’s a three-step guideline on building a better nutrition plan:

1) Prepare a weekly menu. Outline each meal and snack for every day of the upcoming week. Take into account the possibilities that you might work late or get invited out to lunch. The more options you have and preparations you make, the better you will be able to stick to your fat loss plan.

2) From your menu plan, you’ll now know what foods and ingredients you need to make it through the week. Make your grocery list and stick to it (see mine below). Grocery shopping is your first opportunity to break some bad nutritional habits. You can’t eat chips, cookies, or cakes if you don’t have them in the house – so don’t buy them and you’ll avoid any future temptation.

3) Prepare the meals or prepare the ingredients so that making the actual meal doesn’t take a lot of time. Like shopping, it’s best to do all of these preparations at one time (such as on a Sunday or another day off).

My shopping list includes:

Fruits

· Apples

· Oranges

· Blueberries

· Melon

· Peaches

· Grapefruit

· Raspberries

Vegetables

· Peppers (red, yellow, green, & orange),

· Spinach

· Asparagus

· Broccoli

· Snow Peas

· Mushrooms

· Frozen mixed vegetables

· Tomato sauce

Protein Sources

· Chicken breasts

· Turkey breasts

· Salmon fillets

· Lean beef

· Skim milk & low-fat, low-sugar yogurt

Carbohydrates

· Oat bread

· Oatmeal (no sugar added)

· Whole-wheat pasta

Other

· Green tea

· Unsalted, not roasted, Almonds

You’ll notice that most of these foods come without a food label. Most of the foods that you should avoid come in a bag or a box. Building a shopping list that contains very few bagged or boxed items is something to aim for. But when you do purchase something with a label, make sure to avoid two of the unhealthiest ingredients created by man:

1) High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)

2) Hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil (the sources of trans-fatty acids)

You might have heard of these two ingredients. They are strongly associated with obesity and other lifestyle-diseases (such as diabetes).

Sports Nutrition In 5 Easy Layers

April 10, 2023· Category :Health· Comments Off

Glamour Of Nutritional SupplementsNutrition is a high tech business with millions of pounds of research being spent on the latest ergogenic aides, but for most people getting the basics of nutrition right will reward them with maximised sports performance, healthy weight loss and body, and a robust immune system. Unfortunately the basics on nutrition are often not met, being eclipsed by high tech products such as creatine, HMB, weight loss tablets such as Proactol, Zotrim or Alli, or the plethora of weight loss and fitness supplements that are marketed to us.A common mistake made by those looking for improved sports performance, weight loss or health is to look for a supplement to do the job. People concern themselves with exotic products rather than addressing the basics first.Hierarchy Of Nutritional NeedsConsidering nutritional needs to be a hierarchy of needs is a good way to develop a successful nutritional strategy. You may be aware of food pyramids – the ones you learn in cookery at school, or the ones found on sites such as the Good Food Guide – but these have some fundamental flaws in them (for another blog post). Consider the pyramid to have a wide base representing the most fundamental of nutritional needs, and an narrowing towards the top representing nutrients that are gradually more specialist towards the top. The more specialist needs we see at the top should only be considered once the fundamental base needs have been met.Base Layer 1 – The Fundamentals: The basic needs of nutrition can be met by including a balance of the macronutrients carbohydrates, fat and protein. The balance will vary with your lifestyle requirements and body type. Essential to get the system working is water and fibre, both soluble and insoluble. These will largely be met if you consume lean meats, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and fish. Limit your intake of sugar and refined grains which are considered to be anti-nutrients and actually contribute no nutritional value apart from energy, yet use up resources in the process. Add protective and micro-nutrient rich foods such as variety of colourful fruits and vegetables. Try to include raw or lightly cooked foods as the nutrient content may become denatured by intense heat.Layer 2 – Protection:Part of life is oxidation, and this is part of exercise too. As a metal car rusts so do we, and when we talk of anti-oxidants we are usually considering ways of limiting or repairing the damage caused by the aerobic nature of our body functions – free radicals affect our health and well being. Once the fundamentals are established you can consider tweaking your micro-nutrient needs to include anti-oxidants that are essential in combating free radical damage to the body including immune system.Consider the fruit and vegetables you do consume according to their anti-oxidant content. The richer in anti-oxidants the better able to combat the oxidative stresses placed on the body by air pollution and intense exercise, both of which place damage on the cells of the body. Taking a broad spectrum multivitamin may add to the daily protection from free radical oxidation, and a regular intake of omega 3 oils, through foods or supplement form will also help.Below is a table of high antioxidant food types. Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) is a method of measuring antioxidant capacities in biological samples. The higher the ORAC the more antioxidants are available. (US Dept. Agriculture; Brunswick Laboratories; JACS)FOOD: ORAC UNITS PER 100G70% cocoa solid dark chocolate 13500Pomegranate 10500Dried prunes 5770Red delicious apples 4270Raisins 2830Kale 2410Blueberries 2400Garlic 2320Blackberries 2040Spinach 1700Brussels sprouts 1580Strawberries 1540Alfalfa sprouts 1450Broccoli flowers 1290Raspberries 1220Beets 1170Plums 949Red bell peppers 810oranges 750Corn 720Cherries 670Onion 560Eggplant 510Cauliflower 510Cabbage 480Potato 460Sweet potato 430Leaf Lettuce 410String Bean 390Carrot 340Yellow squash 280Iceberg lettuce 230Tomato 195Celery 130Cucumber 110Layer 3 – Fueling For Sport – Real FoodNow you have a good general diet, an availability of macronutrients and micronutrients and a consideration of how best to protect our body from free radicals for health and immunity, it is time to consider what and when is best to eat. Also an optimum hydration strategy will be useful for those performing exercise – whether for sports or weight loss.Fluid needs are closely linked to air temperature and humidity, plus the intensity and duration of your exercise. If exercising aim to begin fully hydrated – a guide is to keep your urine a light straw colour, and re-hydrate immediately post workout. If you weight yourself pre and post workout, add the mass of the fluid you consumed during the exercise to the difference between pre and post workout weights. Aim to consume 1.5 times this figure.Example; pre workout 75kg, post workout 74kg, drinks 500ml during workout = 0.5kg so a difference of 1.5kg. It is therefore advised to consume 2.25l fluids post workout.Fueling your sports from food is also essential. I recommend making a daily 500kcal deficit if you are trying to lose weight. If you use 1000kcal during a workout it is therefore useful to eat accordingly, so you do not have too much of a calorie deficit, and you do not overeat.If you are like me and love to eat carbohydrates it is best to consume them pre and post workout as you are highly insulin sensitive during and up to 2 hours post exercise, particularly if your training consists of high intensity intervals or resistance exercises. However for best weight loss I suggest you stick to whole grain and vegetable sources of carbohydrates, and avoid sugar.For athletes my advice is different in that you are not trying to create a calorie deficit. More focus is on recovery for the next session. You should therefore consume your carbohydrates during and after exercise as this is when your body will best use it – absorbing it like a sponge and maximising your recovery and boosting your immune system. If you burn 1000kcal in training aim to replace this with real food during your session – cereal bars, flap jacks and dried fruit. Post workout try to include protein with your meal, whether it is in a milk shake, bowl of cereal or meat and veg meal. Aim to consume a proper meal within 2 hours post exercise and have a snack within 15mins of exercise.Layer 4 – Fueling For Sport – Sports NutritionFirstly I have to say that if you are after weight loss avoid sports drinks at all cost. They are essentially sugar and will do your weight loss efforts no good at all, will make it difficult to create a calorie deficit, and will make it difficult for your body to access fat stores for energy if an available source of sugar is present to use.My advice for athletes is to use sports drinks to enhance your sport. Although nutrition and hydration needs can be met through food and water such as dried fruit, cereal bars etc, there are benefits of using special sports drinks. They provide a ready source of easily assimilated energy which is essential if exercising for over 1hour in a bike or run race. The stress on the gastric system is minimised and in the case of electrolyte drinks the essential minerals lost in sweat are replaced. The lack of fibre in sports drinks is also beneficial in longer races such as marathon or long course triathlon.Recently a series of protein:carbohydrate drinks for use during training have been launched. These are particularly useful for sessions or races over 3h in duration as the branched chain amino acids (BCAA) that are catabolised in muscle during endurance events are ‘saved’ by the available BCAA in the sports drink.Recovery drinks are also a revolution in the quest for swift recovery. In the field, recovery drinks allow athletes to consume a meal within the 15minute window of opportunity bu drinking a 2:1 carbohydrate to protein drink, that often contains vitamins and minerals too. This 15 minutes post race or training session is so crucial due to the ability of the body to use the materials we provide it. We are highly insulin sensitive, and any protein we consume with the carbohydrate will have the extra insulin to deliver it to where it is needed – the muscle – where repair will take place and glycogen will be replenished.Layer 5 – Ergogenic AidsIf you have the first 4 levels of the hierarchy of nutrition needs sorted then it may be beneficial to invest in some supplements such as creatine, beta-alanine, caffeine or HMB, and depending on your sport each of these may or may not be beneficial. However if you have not fully adopted the principles of real food and sports nutrition there is no way that you will be able to rely on a supplement to realise your potential. Unfortunately as with everything, there are no short cuts and although it may take time and effort the gains you will get from real food and hydration will far outweigh the gains from the specialist supplements mentioned – even if their adverts promise otherwise. It is essential to walk before you can run when it comes to nutrition, and to get the building blocks in place before trying supplements is the key to success.