Nutrition Tip of the Week no. 8

Tip #8
Fiber Facts
by Dr. John Berardi

Shoot for about 40-50g of mixed fiber per day, but no more. The absolute lower limit is 20g per day. Your main fiber sources should be (in order of importance): vegetables, beans, nuts, fruit, and grains (like oatmeal). If you eat 1 oz of mixed nuts, 1 apple, 2 cups of kidney beans, and 2 cups of mixed vegetables each day, you’ll be getting 41g of fiber. Also, a small amount of supplemental fiber is okay. You can get soluble fiber from psyllium, guar gum, and apple pectin, and insoluble fiber from flax seeds.

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This tip is sponsored by Precision Nutrition – our pick for the best nutrition and supplement resource currently available. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want — guaranteed.

Order Precision Nutrition now and get $50 off!

To get an idea of what Precision Nutrition could do for you, click here

Look out for another nutrition tip next week.

Nothing much of note!

Nothing much to report. Went swimming today. Didn’t want to, but I went anyway. I was rewarded by a no-icicles-floating-in-the-water pool, which made a nice change. Was late again but managed 16 lengths in 20 minutes. It’s worth remembering that on my first attempt around 10 days ago I could only rustle up 16 lengths in 30 minutes!

Also, today was the first of my week 2 toning workouts. I’ve written to Self to ask for permission to upload the pictures from the workout but haven’t heard back yet. To up the intensity this week, the exercises were performed as supersets on day 1 (today). That’s 2 sets of 15 reps of 5 supersets. Day 2, which will be on Friday, will be the same as last week: 2 sets of 20 reps of 10 exercises. The exercises in each superset used the same muscle groups (mostly) so the muscles were pre-tired on the first exercise before doing the second one. For example a squat followed by a calf raise, then a short rest before repeating the superset.

Anyway, exercise is all on schedule and going to plan. Bit lax on the diet this evening, though. Chinese take-away. Ordered a relatively healthy meal, but then spoilt it by having spare ribs too. Oh well. Will have to be on my best behaviour for the rest of the week.

Back into the Swing

Yesterday marked the end of a week back as a good little blubberbegone. I’d gained 4.6 pounds as of last Monday, and by Sunday I’d dropped 3.8 of them. I’m back counting points again which does seem to work better for me. That three-week plateau happened when I switched to core, but that could have been on the cards anyway, there’s no way of knowing. Still, it’s nice to be able to eat chocolate pudding again. For any of my readers in the UK, Cadbury’s Highlites Chocolate Mousse is only 1 WW point per pot and tastes fabulous.

I did all the workouts on my schedule last week, other than Monday’s pilates, which I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anyway, for a total of 5 hours and 40 minutes and 24 WW bonus points. I also got to try out my new Tae Bo Contact set, complete with blow-up Billy’s bag. It was quite fun, and a heart-pumping workout as always, but there was a bit of resistance work thrown in, not just cardio. That’s OK while I’m doing light-resistance endurance weights twice a week, but I wouldn’t be able to use it on my days off when I’m doing Turbulence Training since I’d need those days off for optimal recovery. I’d still recommend Tae Bo Gold for complete beginners as there’s a separate instructional section breaking down all the moves.

An Amazing Transformation

Today I would like to celebrate somebody else’s blubberbegone journey. Becca took part in the Precision Nutrition 16-week Challenge. She was one of 340+ people who signed up and one of only 40 or so who submitted final stats and pics. She’s a finalist in her age group and way ahead on the votes. But she is already a winner in my opinion.

She stuck with the challenge through good times and bad, achieving amazing changes in weight, body composition, and fitness. She kept a challenge log throughout (which is where I first came across her) and just reading some of her workouts made my eyes water!

But most importantly, I think, she was a constant inspiration to all those of us who were struggling with the challenge alongside her. She would constantly offer motivation, support, and words of advice on our own logs, particularly when we were a bit down and needed it most. And despite my own withdrawal from the challenge a couple of months ago, I have followed her progress on and off.

I am so proud of her for what she has achieved and incredibly happy for her in reaching her goals and transforming her body and her life. Congratulations Becca. Check out the before and after pics:

To read Becca’s challenge log, click here.
To find out more about Precision Nutrition, click here.

Doing it when you just don’t wanna

I really didn’t want to go swimming today. I was stiff and tired and sore. And it was cold. But I put my cozzie on under my work clothes, like I always do and took my swim stuff to work. (I couldn’t get them in the boot of my car this morning – it was frozen shut).

Come lunchtime, I figured, I’ll go, do 10 lengths then see how I feel. If I’m still stiff and sore, I’ll get out without feeling guilty about not even trying. So I did. And of course, I carried on after my 10 lengths. So I guess the moral of the story is not too cop out too easily, give it a shot and just make a start.

As it happens, I was a little late for the session, which is only 30 minutes long anyway. The leisure centre is attached to a school and is only open to the public between 12.30 and 1 during the week, which works quite well if you’re trying to fit some exercise into your lunch hour. So I did 20 minutes and managed 16 lengths. If I were to extrapolate, that’d be 24 in 30 minutes, up from 20 last time. But I’ll wait till I actually do 24 lengths in 30 minutes before I rest on my laurels. I also did it in 2-length blocks, like in my mini-goal number 2, but it wasn’t the full 30 minutes, so I won’t count it this time. I’d been doing it all wrong, starting with backstroke to warm up then doing freestyle. Then I needed to rest because I was so puffed. This time I started with freestyle and the backstroke was my recovery length, meaning I needed much less time to recover after every 2 lengths. My goal for next time is to do the full 30 minutes like this, then start building up to my mini-goal number 3 – 30 minutes freestyle. That one might take a bit longer to achieve.

Anyhow, so far this week, I’m right on schedule exercise-wise, and feeling much more positive about myself because of it. I also have a confession to make: I did sneak a peak at the scales on Monday morning. Just on 15 stone. And I couldn’t resist going back to weighing myself daily. The good news is that I’ve gradually been going down each day. I was 14 stone 12 this morning (208 pounds). I’m hoping by Sunday, my official weigh-day, that I will have undone a good chunk of the damage of the last two weeks.

Not much else to tell you today. Check in tomorrow to read about an inspirational young woman and her amazing body transformation. ‘night all.

Nutrition Tip of the Week no. 7

Tip #7
Eat Fat, Lose Fat
by Dr. John Berardi

To lose fat, sometimes you have to eat fat. Monounsaturated fats and certain polyunsaturates actually speed up the metabolic rate. Lipid researchers believe that the best of the fat burning bunch are the highly unsaturated omega 3s called EPA and DHA. A diet supplemented with omega 3-rich fish oil promotes losses of body fat with simultaneous gains in lean mass.

SEE ALSO:
This tip is sponsored by Precision Nutrition – our pick for the best nutrition and supplement resource currently available. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want — guaranteed.

Order Precision Nutrition now and get $50 off!

Look out for another nutrition tip next week.

Mini goals and rubber bands

I went swimming at lunch time again today – the second time. And I’ve already crossed off my first mini-goal. I did 20 lengths (500 m) in 30 minutes. I did the first 5 lengths without stopping to rest!!! A bit of an improvement over last time. There is such an amazingly steep learning curve with swimming; it’s incredible just how quickly you improve. Of course, it was all downhill from that point on. My swimming mini-goal number 2 was to swim for 30 minutes in minimum 2-length blocks, without having to stop after every length. Who knows, maybe on Friday…? 

On arriving home this evening I even had enough energy to do my scheduled resistance workout. It’s the month 2 workout from the Self 2005 Challenge. 2005 was the year I started collecting Self workouts, so I decided to start at the beginning and I will be working my way through the Self 05, 06, and 07 Challenges over the next year, each Challenge month being interspersed with a 4-week Turbulence Training period. By which time, the 2008 Challenge will be available.  I was hoping to be able to post a link to the workout, but I can’t find it archived anywhere. But for loads of other great workouts, the vast majority of which can be performed anywhere, visit Self magazine’s website.

Anyway, it’s a 10-move resistance band workout, to be done twice a week, once with 2 sets of 15 reps and once with 2 sets of 20 reps and up to 45 seconds rest between sets. You can increase the challenge in different ways over the month, but I’ll write about those as and when I do them. This kind of workout improves your muscle endurance. It uses lower resistance and higher reps than the more hard-core workouts like Turbulence Training.

In other news, I wrote down everything I ate today, and wasn’t even tempted by the birthday chocolates in the communal kitchen at work. Let’s hope this continues in the run up to the Christmas glutton-fest!

It’s a New Dawn

In the words of the great Nina Simone: It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, for me, and I’m feeeeling good. I have put the disappointments of the last week or two behind me and started a new week, a new month, and a new workout schedule. I have just finished my first sweat-inducing workout in quite a while and I feel fantastic. Very inspired to re-start afresh.

This month is an endurance month with more cardio and less intense, lower resistance, higher reps weight training. My workout plan looks like this:

Monday	30 mins pilates, 30 mins Self 05 Challenge (S05C) month 2 Cardio workout 1
Tuesday	30 mins swim, 30 mins S05C total body toning workout
Wednesday	30 mins pilates, 30 mins Tae Bo
Thursday	30 mins S05C Cardio workout 2
Friday	30 mins swim, 30 mins S05C toning workout
Saturday	60 mins pilates
Sunday	40 mins Tae Bo

I didn’t do my pilates today as it was a colleagues leaving do at lunchtime and we all went out. But I’m going to try and do a 30-minute workout at lunchtime 4 days a week. There are a couple more lunches between now and Christmas, but I’ll take them as they come.

I didn’t weigh myself this morning. I couldn’t bear to. I will try to resist until Sunday, my official weigh day, and hopefully by then I will have recouped some of my losses, or gains, even. I’ve planned my menus for the week and will be cooking, or assembling, everything fresh. Had a piece of cake today – I didn’t even enjoy it but I ate it all. I couldn’t find my food diary this morning, but I’ve got it now. I’m over for today, points-wise… off to a good start! But I will be writing everything down again from now on and hope this helps keep me on track. I’ll also try and check in with you more frequently than I’ve been managing the last couple of weeks now that the shock of being back in the workforce has more or less passed.

Motivation Meltdown

It’s been a pretty crappy week this week. I have returned to my gob-stuffing, indolent ways and gained around 4 pounds. I weighed in this morning just above the 15 stone mark. I can’t believe I’m undoing all the hard work and don’t seem to be able to stop.I haven’t been meal planning, I haven’t been cooking, I’ve been ordering in, eating out, noshing on junk, and barely exercising.

 Two tiny blips of light this week: I did a quick pilates workout in my lunch hour on Wednesday and have left the mat in a cupboard in my office so I can do that more often. And I tried out the local pool near where I work on Thursday and got in a half-hour swim. I will try and do that a couple of times a week from now on and improve on my 400m in 30 minutes. Much of that time was spent puffing and panting at the ends of the pool, but I alternated back stroke with freestyle to allow myself to catch my breath a bit. One of the little old ladies in the changing room had told me that 16 lengths of the 25 m pool was a quarter of a mile, which I hadn’t really thought of before, so I was determined to make my 16. Short-term goal number 1: try and do 20 lengths in 30 minutes; number 2: build up stamina to do the whole lot in 50 m blocks, without having to stop after every 25; goal number 3: do 30 minutes all freestyle.

 We’re away this weekend, down with the in-laws, and it’ll be all Sunday roasts and pub grub. But Monday will be a fresh start for me. A new week of planned healthy meals and a new exercise plan. I may manage a TT workout Sunday evening, depending what time we get back, but it won’t be a full TT 4-week programme, so I’ll just have to wait till next time to cross that off my 101 in 1001 to-do list. Since we’re away, I won’t be able to weigh myself on Sunday, so there’ll be no reading this week. As you can imagine, I’m devastated about that. Not. Catch up with you all after the weekend. Have a good one. ‘night all.

Nutrition Tip of the Week no. 6

Eek, I’ve just realised I forgot last week’s nutrition tip. So here it is, and none the worse for wear for being a little late.

Tip #6
The Organic Debate
by Dr. John Berardi

The average person should consume two pieces of fruit and three servings of vegetables per day as a minimum. Athletes probably need even more – I recommend 10-15 servings per day for each of my athletes. Expert often spend too much time arguing about organic vs. regular fruits and veggies. I agree that raw, organic fruits and vegetables are best since they have a higher micronutrient count, but any fruits and veggies are better than none! Get sufficient fruits and vegetables in your diet before worrying about whether they’re organic or not. Once you’ve done that, worry on.

SEE ALSO:
This tip is sponsored by Precision Nutrition – our pick for the best nutrition and supplement resource currently available. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want — guaranteed.

Order Precision Nutrition now and get $50 off!

Look out for another nutrition tip next week.