by Corey A.
9. November 2009 09:50
I love going to the health food store. I feel like a wizard collecting regents to cast spells...night sage, spiders silk, muscle milk! (wtf). There are brilliantly colored lineups of pills and powders with flexing giants hulking on the labels. It's like a socially accepted opium den for fit people!
But seriously... I know very little about supplements and powders and the right mix for me has been an experiment in trial and error. Right now, I'm drinking protein shakes twice a day between meals: a mix of three different brands: ISO Sensation (chocolate fudge and Cafe Brazil) GNC Well Being Be Buff and ISO Femme Vanilla (Kristin's, but there's not much difference between the male and female marketed products. Sometimes we'll mix them with ice and fruit, sometimes just water. I was told by a trainer that my workouts are basically wasted without these supplement shakes - but it's a hard theory to prove and they don't seem to be hurting..
It's probably taken longer form me than it should have to develop good eating and exercise habits. I've made a lot of mistakes based on assumption and could have saved myself some effort had I done a little more research . I'm hoping that, when completed, this site will serve as a slick way of exchanging habits tricks and tips.
In the meantime, I wanted to share a few things that I have learned:
1
First, diet is everything. Wait that wasn't right... diet is EVERYTHING. In my experience with trying to stay lean, I would say that diet accounts for as much as 65% of the results that you are going to see. What this means is that the changes I wanted to see happen came slow and tediously, until learning ways to change and maintain, healthy eating. This may come as no surprise to some... but for me, it took a long time to start eating right. For many years I tried to seriously reduce my calorie intake to the point of eating very little, while working out a lot. No one was more surprised them I was, when I began eating more and actually started to become leaner.
2
Throw out your scale. If I remember correctly from Physics class... we should really be weighing ourselves in Newtons (The force of gravity accelerating us to earth) Where as (Kg or lbs.) is our mass (the quantity of matter something has)... which remains constant all over the Universe. So we are not even doing it right... so why bother (
The basics of physics. Your weight is a bad motivator. It is a fact that when you start to workout your body will retain more water and thus more weight... this has freaked a lot of people out of the gym. For me seeing visual changes in my body is the largest motivator. Stay positive and keep your mind focused on what you would like to see happen... it will start to happen.
3
Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). This is the idea that you will continue to burn more calories for hours after your workout then you would having never worked out.
"One experiment found EPOC increasing metabolic rate to an excess level that decays to 13% 3 hours after exercise, and 4% after 16 hours. Another study, specifically designed to test if the effect existed for more than 16 hours, conducted tests for 48 hours after the conclusion of the exercise and found measurable effect existed up to the 38 hour post-exercise measurement." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_post-exercise_oxygen_consumption. So staying active is going to increase your overall metabolic rate. Essentially the more active you are, the easier it will be to maintain your fitness.
What are we eating
Kristin really has been the master mind behind our meal planning, and she has me hooked now. We've tried a few different meal plans and found for the most part that we were hungry a lot of the day. Kristin had done the "Body for Life" plan before and so we decided to give it a try. So far it has been excellent. We both feel like we are eating the right amount... and the food is surprisingly good.
We have been organizing our meals in a shared google calendar... so we got to thinking. Why not share it with all of you? So below is an embed of the calendar we are using for your own use. There are a few things to note:
1) There is a month worth of meals, that then repeat.
2) All the meals are Body for Life approved. (That should mean that they are ~300 cal. per meal)
3) Take note of the serving sizes on each meal, they vary from 1 serving up to sometimes 6 for the preparation instructions.
4) You get one free day a week (Eat whatever you want).
5) Let us know which ones you like
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