Guidelines for Eating Out

One of the easiest ways to derail your fat loss efforts is choosing less than ideal foods to eat when eating out at a restaurant. If you keep these few criteria in mind while choosing what to order you will have no problems eating a sensible meal when dining out.

1. If you are ordering a salad, be sure to get a low fat or fat free dressing. Ideally you would request this salad dressing on the side of the salad so that you can use only as much as you want. Excess salad dressing will add unnecessary calories to the meal.
2. Include protein with every meal that you eat
3. Make sure this protein is baked or grilled, not fried or breaded
4. Stay away from any buttery or creamy sauces that restaurants like to top meats with
5. When choosing what carbohydrate to eat, again pick ones that are low in fat and not topped or made with butter or creamy sauces. Grilled vegetables are a great choice since they are low in calories, high in fiber and quite filling.

You are probably thinking that finding a selection on the menu at a restaurant that fits all of these criteria will be nearly impossible. It would be very hard, but you can easily solve this problem by asking the waiter to have your meal prepared the way you want it. Don’t be afraid to make special requests for your meal. I have rarely found a waiter that isn’t happy to accommodate my requests.

Have fun!

Robert

Alcohol and Diet

Many of you may not realize that there is a very easy way to make big progress in your health and fitness—eliminate alcoholic beverages from your diet. Some of you may already know that alcohol is full of empty calories, and by “empty calories”, I mean calories that aren’t useful for the functions of the body but still have to be worked off just like useful calories.

Here is some less widely known information about alcoholic drinks: A shot of alcohol contains about 100 calories. So, lets put a night of drinking into perspective. If you have 6 shots of alcohol during a night of drinking that is 600 calories. Margaritas have significantly more calories than shots. A typical margarita has 300 calories. If you have 6 margaritas, that is 1800 calories! A woman that weighs about 130 pounds and exercises 5 times per week burns about 1700 calories over the course of a day. Depending on the drink you choose to imbibe during a night of drinking, you will have consumed between 30%-105% of your daily needed calories by the end of the night.

The following is a list of the other effects of a night of drinking:

1. In addition to having ingested many extra calories, since the drinks were consumed right before going to bed, very few of the calories will be used as fuel in the near future and instead will be stored as fat.
2. The next effect of consuming alcohol at night is the disruption of your normal sleep cycles. Since you don’t sleep well after a night of drinking, your body doesn’t repair itself as well as a normal night’s sleep.
3. Drinking alcohol dehydrates your body as well as depletes your body of vitamins and minerals that it needs to function. Until your body is rehydrated and supplied with the needed vitamins and minerals, it will not process food correctly. The process of rehydrating and replenishing your body with the needed vitamins and minerals takes a day or more.
4. Drinking alcohol slows your metabolism. The more you drink, the worse the effects are.
5. Many studies have shown that consuming more than three drinks in one sitting will halt all muscle repair for many days. This means that the muscles that you worked out earlier in the day will not repair themselves well, resulting in little strength and muscle gains from the day’s workout.

All of these side effects of a night of drinking add up to halt any weight loss for a number of days and possibly lead to weight gain. My suggestion to those that do drink is to cut down on the number of drinks you take in during one sitting and stick with drinks that are sugar free so that the calorie content is lower. Some people only drink one or two drinks at night to “ease the tension” and those people probably are wondering if all of these effects apply to them as well—the answer is YES. Obviously the effects aren’t as sever, but they are still there slowing/stopping your fitness progress. The moral of this story is, enjoy the company of your friends and your surroundings without drinking alcohol so that you can reach your goal of a healthier, sexier body.

Robert

Robert's Meatball Recipe

The recipe includes the following ingredients:

• 2 pounds of 96% lean ground beef
• ~ 1/2 pint of egg whites
• 1/2 cup of oatmeal...
• 4 oz of tomato paste

Mix the ingredients thoroughly in a mixing bowl. This recipe should make about 10 meatballs at 4oz each for the ladies and 5 meatballs at 8oz. Divide the mix up into the appropriate size meat balls and cook on a cookie sheet. Preheat the oven to 375deg. Cook the meatballs at 375deg for 24 minutes. If you want the meat balls to be a little juicier, add more egg whites to the mix and a little less oatmeal.

One meat ball will satisfy the protein requirements for one meal if you are eating 5 times each day. You can also substitute 99% lean ground turkey meat for the lean ground beef. It is important that you use the leanest ground beef. When you use the fattier meat, you add a huge amount of unneeded calories to the meal.

Robert

Bonking it NOT what some of you think it is...

So the other day in class, a couple of you “bonked.” While the definitions for the word range from hitting your head to sexual intercourse, the definition I’m referring to it as follows: (from Wikipedia because it’s easier to copy and paste than writing the same thing with different words): Bonk describes a condition caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles, which manifests itself by precipitous fatigue and loss of energy. If we look at the hit-your-head definition...the word bonk in this case means to hit a wall. So basically, the bonk refers to that catastrophic moment when there’s suddenly nothing left in the tank; when the legs turn to jelly, and you are DONE!

The simple explanation for bonk is that long-endurance exercise depletes the body’s store of glycogen, which produces the energy required to maintain performance. When the glycogen depletes entirely, the body has no more fuel and instead burns fat, resulting in a surge of fatigue and a performance collapse. That’s the simple version anyway... (see below for a link to a longer version).

You can cure milder instances of the bonk with brief rest and eating or drinking food or fluids containing carbohydrates. “Carbs” is not a bad word. You need them! They are your fuel! To ensure your glycogen levels are high when come to class, eat some carbs. You’ve probably heard the term “carb loading”? (if not, a quick Internet search will provide you additional information). Carb loading maximizes the storage of glycogen (or energy) in your muscles. You clearly don’t need to carb load for class, but you do need energy!

Eat before you come to class. You need fuel!

Maybe Robert will chime in here about carbs and breakfast (your most important meal of the day!)...and why you need to eat!

If you want to read more on bonking, more than you ever wanted to know can be found here: http://tunedintocycling.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/cycling-nutrition-the-bonk/

I hope that helps...

Bill