Parrillo Pancake Comparison Chart

Calories – How High Can You Go?

In the same way a tablespoon measures volume, a “calorie” measures energy, specifically the amount of energy stored in carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Most reducing diets are based on restricting the amount of calories, typically to 1,200 calories a day or under. That’s a sub-par requirement, particularly for women. Here’s why: An average woman’s basal metabolic rate (BMR) is 1,200 calories a day. BMR refers to the minimum number of calories required by the body over a 24-hour period just to breathe, to pump blood through the circulatory system, and to drive all the cellular processes that support life. It doesn’t include the energy needed to do other things like move around or exercise. So you see: most diets are too low to provide enough energy to sustain vital functions, let alone other activities. Thus, the metabolism downshifts greatly – for two reasons.

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September 2010 Tips and Tidbits

If you think you can get into contest condition simply by lowering your caloric intake, think again! To burn bodyfat and maintain muscle size, you have to build your metabolism, a feat which cannot be accomplished just by eating less. In fact, eating less usually decreases your metabolism. Aerobic activity is one of the best methods of increasing your metabolic rate. In addition to increasing metabolism, aerobics also facilitate the removal of toxins such as carbon dioxide and other waste products that are the byproducts of dieting. You can see why it is so important to do plenty of aerobics. We suggest 45 minutes to an hour of aerobics before breakfast and the same amount some time after your last meal of the day.

Training Tip

of the month:

The Essential Elements of Good Form,

A Five Part Series

Element #3: Bring your opposing muscles into play. Always strive to make the exercise harder by actively pulling with the antagonistic muscle group during the lowering or negative portion of the exercise. This technique stimulates more muscle fibers for greater growth.

In addition, keep the working muscles in a constant state of tension throughout the range of motion. This action is another way to provide maximum muscle fiber stimulation. The constant tension also improves your neuromuscular

pathways.

Question

of the month:

Question: My calves need help! What can I do?

Answer: The best calf routines seem to be the ones in which the calves are worked two days in a row, followed by a day of rest. In the first workout, emphasize soleus work, using seated calf raises as your core exercises. The next workout, stress your gastrocnemius. Standing calf raises will be your core exercise. So for your first calf workout, start with seated calf raises. Do two to four sets of seated calf raises with 100 reps each time. Yes, 100 reps! Perform “shit squats” and calf stretches between each set. To further press your soleus, do toe presses with your legs bent. Go for as many reps and sets as you can. Stretch your calves hard between sets. Make your calves burn like never before! The next time you work your calves, start with standing calf raises. Do four sets of this exercise, going for 20 to 30 reps and pyramiding up in weight each set. Finish off your calf routine with some toe presses on a leg press machine, doing as many reps and sets as you can.

News & Discoveries

In Fitness & Nutrition

Fast-Acting Carbs May Hasten Vision Loss Over Time

Consuming higher-than-average amounts of carbohydrates that cause blood sugar levels to spike and fall rapidly could be a risk factor for central vision loss with aging. Scientists supported by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and grants reported the findings this year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The researchers analyzed dietary intake and other data from more than 4,000 men and women aged 55 to 80 participating in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study. Diets high in carbohydrates that are quickly digested and absorbed, resulting in a rapid rise in blood sugar levels, are considered high-glycemic-index diets. Examples of such “fast carb” foods are white bread, rice, potatoes and pasta, and also sugars and corn syrups. Carbohydrates leading to a more gradual rise and fall in blood sugar levels comprise low-glycemic-index diets. Such “slow carb” foods include whole-grain versions of bread, rice and pasta.

Central vision loss is one of the first signs of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease that is one of the leading causes of blindness among the elderly. Consuming a diet high in fast carbs is also suspected of being involved in the vision loss that sometimes occurs in people with diabetes. The researchers theorize that the type of damage to eye tissue produced by fast carbs could be similar in both AMD and diabetic eye disease.

Quick Tip of the Month

Hot late summer day? How about some Parrillo Ice Kreem™ with Contest Brownie™  Chunks! Just bake a batch of Parrillo Contest Brownies™ and let them cool in the pan. Remove brownies from the pan and cut into cubes, about ½” thick. Then start a batch of chocolate or vanilla Protein Ice Kreem™ in your ice cream maker, following the directions on the container, and then add the brownie pieces to the ice cream maker at the time specified by the ice cream maker’s instructions. Enjoy!

- By Rosalie Marion Bliss, Oct. 2007, Agricultural Research Service, USDA

Dominique’s

Time Cruncher

ÚWant to cut down on the cook time for brown rice or wild rice? Try soaking your rice overnight. Usually brown rice takes about 45 minutes to cook, but when you soak your rice beforehand, it only takes about 20 minutes to cook. In a pan with a lid, add water to your rice according to the package’s instructions and put in the refrigerator for at least 7 hours. To cook, bring to a boil, turn the heat down and cover, let simmer for 20 min. or until rice is tender.

Calories – How High Can You Go?

You go Girl! Want a big bench? Square up your nutrition… Bored to tears…Football fundamentals…Building a bigger gas tank

Vic Steele,

I am going to get back into fitness – not that I was ever really into it. My husband is a big fan of yours and he is fit and lean. I am fat and overweight. I want to do this on my own. I hate training with my husband. I find him overbearing and too critical. I tried the local fat girl facility, but while my husband expects too much, the trainers at this sissy spa expect too little so I never make any gains – there is a lot of talk about ‘self esteem’ and ‘being alright with being overweight’ and ‘positive self image’ at the sissy spa. I AM NOT alright with being 50 pounds overweight. BTW my husband has a whole cabinet full of Parrillo supplements and we have a full gym in our two car garage.

Linda, Flagstaff

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Protein Primer

Proteins are found in all cells and tissues and are required for the structure and function of every part of the body. And of special interest to bodybuilders, muscles are made of protein.

Proteins are chain-like molecules, and the links of protein chains are called amino acids. About 20 different amino acids occur in human proteins. Twelve of these can be made within the body. The other eight are called “essential amino acids”  because they cannot be made by the body; therefore, it is essential that they be obtained from the diet. The proteins you eat as food are not directly incorporated into your body tissues. Instead, the protein chains are digested to yield short fragments (peptides) and individual amino acids which are absorbed into the bloodstream. The individual amino acids then serve as building blocks your body uses to build its own proteins. If any one of the amino acids is deficient, your body can’t make new protein molecules. They all have to be there at the same time.

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Train hard, train often and above all else, train smart!

By Duke Nukem

The Parrillo philosophy of physical training is multidimensional: there are a lot of components and these components need to be put in play and executed simultaneously. To further complicate an already complex approach, approximately every four weeks the lifting and cardio needs to be changed to avoid stagnation. The Parrillo approach is so sophisticated and effective that stagnation and inertia are actually anticipated ahead of time and significant revisions are made to the training template on a predetermined basis.

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Episode 42: A leg to stand on

By Ron Harris

Having been training now for over a quarter-century and in a lot of different gyms, there is still one common sight that never ceases to disappoint me. So many times I will see a guy with an upper body that’s anywhere from better than average to highly impressive, but below the waist it seems he’s hardly trained his legs at all. The old joke used to be that in cases like these, there was always the legal danger of the upper body suing the legs for lack of support.

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Lishia Dean – Rising Fitness Competitor

Fitness competitions and female bodybuilding have had a rough recent past. Back in the ancient days, bodybuilding and Fitness were the only female competitive formats. Female bodybuilding was born in 1980 and was extremely popular for the next decade. Starting in 1990 bodybuilding promoters began noting an alarming decline in audience attendance. This drop in paying customers was directly proportional to the ever-increasing masculinity of professional women bodybuilders.

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Crazed exercises taught by incompetent personal trainers… Protein differences…why big biceps equate to lousy lats!

Vic,

You mentioned that you periodically train at commercial gyms – you must go crazy watching these no-nothing personal trainers put regular folks through their paces. I myself get a kick out of watching the blind leading the blind. Is it me or has the art of personal training gone backwards over the past few years? Some of the stuff I see taught absolutely defies logic. It seems to me the PTs I see either baby their clients or try and kill them.

Ron, Reno

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Antioxidant Recovery

By Cliff Sheats

Are you an exerciser or athlete who gets frequent colds and infections? If so, it may be time to pay more attention to antioxidant recovery.

In general terms, recovery is the process of regeneration that takes place in the aftermath of a workout. To appreciate its importance, consider what happens inside your body as a consequence of intense exercise: Energy-giving glycogen stores are depleted; muscle protein is dismantled; microscopic tears in muscle fibers occur; energy-producing compounds are lost from cells; fluid and electrolytes dwindle; disease-causing free radicals proliferate.

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