Ultra High Energy Diets For Athletes

Recently with Michael Phelps winning more gold medals than any in history, his diet has become big news.  But eating 12,000 calories per day is not a new idea.  It’s been used by Parrillo athletes for years and has created performances and victories like no other diet plan can.

If you’re an intense athlete or even just looking to lose weight (fat) increasing the right type of calories is the way to go…

Eating For Muscle

Parrillo Performance
(800) 344-3404

Have you noticed how people in the gym where you train don’t make much progress? The reasons are not all that complicated, either they are not training right or they are not eating right. It doesn’t take magic or a miracle to build muscle but it does take correct training and eating. We could argue for years about how many sets and reps or how much weight to use or if you should do your inclines at 30 degrees or 40 degrees, but the bottom line on training is to train hard every time. While there is a science to it, the basics are simple, train real hard, use a variety of exercises, sets and reps. Most Parrillo Press readers are people who understand this idea and do a fair job of it. Don’t worry so much about over-training as more often than not people under-train, they do not work hard enough or long enough to stimulate growth. Concern yourself with training harder, not training less. And concern yourself with improving your recovery rather than cutting back on amount of exercise. The problems associated with muscle growth often relate to improper eating, the kind that is insufficient to support recovery and growth. Folks tend to not eat right and not eat enough. At Parrillo Performance we have dedicated the last two decades to developing and refining the art and science of performance eating.

I typically work with people who need to eat more and when they do they suddenly make great gains. They discover they are not the ‘hard gainers’ they thought they were after all. You can’t gain muscle without eating enough calories to support growth. Start by cleaning up your diet. People typically take in more calories than they expend and because they are relatively sedentary they store excess calories as bodyfat. Weed out saturated fat first and foremost then crank back on the refined carbs and sugar but replace these lost calories with ‘clean’ calories. To gain quality muscle you need to train like a madman and consume more calories than you expend. The issue is what should we eat to supply those calories and does it make a difference? Fat should be limited to 5-10% of our diet and when you do this will knock a lot of calories out of your diet. Fat is used to supply energy but cannot be converted to muscle or glycogen so any excess calories provided by fat can only be stored as body fat. For those looking to add some size I would recommend you increase your calories by 300-500 per day. Weight train intensely, perform aerobics on a regular basis, eat right and the bodyweight you gain will be muscle. Don’t under-eat and don’t overeat!

You might notice that as you add muscle your metabolic rate increases. Muscle is very active tissue and uses a lot of calories every day, even at rest. The more muscle you have the higher your metabolic rate. For a muscular person to fuel growth you have to eat more. After cranking back on dietary fat let’s then intake at least one and a half grams of protein per pound of body weight daily. A 200-pound bodybuilder would intake 300-grams each day to achieve a 1:1 protein to pounds ratio. Good food sources for lean protein include skinless chicken breast, skinless turkey breast, egg whites, and fish. Most bodybuilders find it impossible to eat as much protein as they need and use a protein supplement. Our Hi-Protein Powder^TM and Optimized Whey Protein^TM are excellent protein product with two scoops of Optimized Whey^TM providing 33 grams of the finest quality protein on the market and a superb profile of essential amino acids, with only four carb grams and zero fat.
To get started, eat three meals daily and drink a protein shake one to three times a day, in between meals. Is there a better way to intake muscle-building protein? Your carbohydrate foods should include both starchy and fibrous carbohydrates. High quality starches include potatoes, rice, corn, and beans. Fibrous vegetables include salad greens, broccoli, green beans, and so on. Fiber and protein are the constants of the Parrillo approach to performance eating. Starch is modulated up or down to trigger muscle gain (bulking) or fat loss (cutting). The Parrillo Performance Nutrition Manual goes into exhaustive detail explaining which foods to eat and how to combine them appropriately at meals. Meal frequency is a hugely important component of our performance eating philosophy. It works best to eat frequently so your muscles will always have a ready supply of nutrients to support growth. Try eating five or six meals a day. Each solid food meal should include a protein source, a starch and a fiber.

If you’re wondering how to include a good fiber source with breakfast, try oatmeal. While primarily a starch, it also supplies a lot of fiber and is perfectly acceptable for the serious performance eater. Bodybuilders, in my experience, eat more oatmeal than any other identifiable group. Supplements are a very effective way to support growth. We offer a wide variety of products and choosing among them is sometimes perplexing. The most widely used are Optimized Whey Protein^TM, Hi-Protein Powder^TM, Pro-Carb^TM, 50-50 Plus^TM, CapTri®, and the Parrillo Bars^TM. CapTri® is an interesting supplement that can be used to bulk up or rip up. CapTri® is a special type of dietary fat that follows a different metabolic pathway than conventional fat. While conventional fat is preferentially stored as body fat, especially during times of caloric surplus, CapTri® has very little tendency to be stored as body fat. CapTri® is rapidly converted to ketones that are used as fuel to supply energy for your training. It also spares protein and carbohydrates thereby allowing spared nutrients to be used to fuel muscular growth and hasten recovery.

If you are naturally thin and want to gain size, clean carbohydrates would be the best choice to supply extra calories. Carbohydrates cause your body to produce insulin, a powerful anabolic hormone. The problem with insulin is that it can easily promote fat if used in excess. Pro-Carb Formula^TM is a medium to short-chain starch that provides a very favorable insulin profile. If you need a carbohydrate supplement, this is an excellent choice. 50-50 Plus^TM is 20 grams of protein and 17 grams of carbohydrate per serving. This combination of nutrients has been shown to be very effective at supporting muscular growth, especially when used immediately after training. If you have money for only one supplement consider one of our protein powders. If you need to gain quality size then consider 50-50 Plus^TM. There is no single right answer to the dilemma of dieting and diet details should be customized in each individual circumstance. Consult your Parrillo Nutrition Manual for the basic commandments of performance eating as the Manual goes into great detail about how to construct a diet to meet your specific needs. And if you still have questions, give us a call. We’re here to help.

The Parrillo Sports Nutrition Bars^TM, Energy Bars^TM and Protein Bars^TM are all excellent formulations; each with a slightly different profile and each provide an excellent combination of protein, carbohydrates and CapTri®. They are convenient: you don’t need to make a meal or mix a drink to get clean nutrients in a hurry. Just put one in your gym bag, attaché case, purse, pocket, desk or glove compartment and you have a precisely formulated muscle snack whenever you need it. Bars are another way to continually flood the muscles with nutrients, provide the calories needed to support muscle growth and keep you in positive nitrogen balance and away from catabolism. Don’t forget Creatine Monohydrate. Creatine makes your muscles bigger and stronger in a many different ways. It does not supply calories instead it enters muscle cells and acts as an energy donor to supply ATP, the fuel used to power muscle contractions. Creatine has been shown to increase strength as well as high intensity exercise endurance. Also, it attracts water into the muscle cells and this makes them noticeably bigger. 70% of first time Creatine users experience a muscular weight gain of between 3-10 pounds within the first month or two of using it. Strength gains of 10-15% are common. We have the best Creatine available so call our 800-number and experience the magic of Creatine Monohydrate for yourself.

Good luck until next month!

Parrillo Performance
(800) 344-3404

Diet to Lose Fat and Stay Lean

People used to believe that the way to lose weight is just to eat less.  And sure enough, if you consume less calories than you expend then you’ll lose weight. But whether the weight you lose is muscle or fat depends on how you do it. Just like a certain diet helps you stay lean while you’re gaining muscle, the proper diet will helpyou hold onto your muscle while you’re losing fat. We believe that proper nutrition is the foundation of body-building success.  When it comes to fat loss, there are no miracles or shortcuts. It takes a good lean diet and plenty of aerobic exercise. We’ve developed an approach to dieting we call “building your metabolism.” Instead of starving yourself, give your body all the nutrients and calories it needs to be healthy.

Your metabolic rate is your body’s rate of energy expenditure, in calories per hour (1). Your body is constantly consuming energy to maintain itself and fuel activities. When you drastically reduce calories your body thinks it’s starving, so it slows down your metabolic rate to save fuel. You actually lose more muscle than fat during low calorie diets. And since muscular tissue burns more calories per hour than fat tissue, if you lose muscle mass your metabolic rate automatically slows down. Paradoxically, drastically cutting calories actually promotes fat storage by increasing the activity of a fat storage enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (2). When your body’s starving it wants to hold on to all the fat it can, to try and ensure its survival. Your body fat stores represent an energy reserve to keep you alive until the famine passes.  So during a low calorie diet you do lose weight, but most of it is muscle and water. And in the process your metabolism slows down and your fat storage systems are cranked up.

So when you resume normal caloric consumption you gain back the weight you lost, if not more. The difference is you lost mostly muscle and you gain back mostly fat, so the net result of your diet is that you’re fatter than when you started. This is why low calorie diets are not effective. So what do you do? How can you achieve an energy deficit without losing muscle and activating your fat storage systems? By feeding your body the right combinations of foods, at the right times, you can shift your metabolism into an anabolic, fat-burning mode. That’s what the Parrillo Performance Nutrition Program is all about. By speeding up your metabolism you can achieve an energy deficit without cutting calories. As you know, different foods have different effects on your body. Foods like cheeseburgers and french fries tend to make you fat. On the other hand, it’s hard to get fat eating rice and fish.

Scientists call this “food efficiency” – the calories consumed of a particular food divided by the resulting weight gain (3). The higher the food efficiency, the more that food contributes to weight gain. Foods with a low food efficiency are more prone to be burned for energy instead of being converted to bodyweight. CapTri® is a special kind of fat called a medium chain triglyceride.  CapTri® harnesses the energy density of fat but is not stored as bodyfat (4). The molecular structure of CapTri® results in it being metabolized differently than conventional fats. Instead of being transported to fat depots like regular fats, CapTri® is transported directly to the liver and is immediately burned to produce energy (4, 5). As a result, CapTri® has a lower food efficiency than regular fats (3, 5).  When conventional dietary fats are replaced with lipids like CapTri®,test animals stay much leaner (6,7). Probably the most amazing thing is that lipids like CapTri® also have a lower food efficiency than carbohydrates (3, 8). This means that it’s harder for your body to convert CapTri® into fat than it is to store excess carbohydrates as fat. Bodybuilders use CapTri® while dieting because it has a lower food efficiency than carbohydrates and conventional fats (3, 6, 7, 8).CapTri® is burned rapidly in the liver (4, 5) and some of the energy is released as body heat in a process known as thermogenesis. Thethermogenic effect is probably the most important reason why CapTri® has such a low food efficiency (5, 7, 9, 10). Instead of being stored as fat, excess calories from CapTri® are converted to body heat, and this means you burn more calories per hour. This explains why calories from CapTri®contribute less to fat stores than an equivalent number of calories from conventional fats or carbohydrates(3, 6, 7, 8).

Scientific studies have shown that when lipids like CapTri® are used in place of carbohydrates,body fat stores are lower (3, 8). And less carbohydrates are converted into fat, even in the presence of insulin (8). Insulin is an anabolic hormone which is released from the pancreas in response to an increase in blood glucose (sugar). Insulin causes cells to absorb glucose and amino acids, thereby stimulating growth. Unfortunately, insulin also causes fat cells to absorb glucose and fatty acids, stimulating fat storage. Fat storage enzymes are less active when lipids like CapTri® are added to the diet, even under conditions of insulin stimulation (8). Bodybuilders have used low-carb diets for years. When you reduce carbs you in turn reduce insulin(remember, insulin promotes fat storage) and activate the carnitine shuttle. The carnitine shuttle is a transport system which moves fatty acids inside mitochondria – the furnaces inside cells where foods are burned for energy.

Carbohydrate metabolism generates a by-product called malonyl-CoA, which inhibits the carnitine shuttle. This is why not much body fat is burned for energy as long as carbohydrate fuel is available. During low carb diets no malonyl-CoA is produced so the carnitine shuttle is activated.The body shifts into a fat-burning mode. Glucagon is another hormone, also produced by the pancreas, but with the opposite actions of insulin. After you eat a big carbohydrate meal your body releases insulin which causes cells to absorb glucose. Some of the glucose is used for energy and the excess is stored as glycogen and fat. As the blood glucose level goes down, the insulin level goes down too. After your cells run out of glucose, glucagon is released as a signal to begin burning fat. The problem with the old low-carb diets is that you don’t have much energy and your metabolism slows down because you’re not consuming enough calories.You’re really not consuming any fuels that your body likes to use for energy. In the new low-carb strategy, you use CapTri® in place of starchy carbs. This results in decreased insulin production and in-creased glucagon release. The carnitine shuttle is active and fat metabolism proceeds at a maximal rate. The calories from CapTri®provide the energy you need to keep training hard. Also, by substituting CapTri® for an equivalent number of calories from carbohydrates you avoid the slow-down in metabolic rate which inevitably results from calorie-restricted diets.

Since CapTri® has a lower food efficiency than carbohydrates, this means your calories will be burned instead of being stored as fat. CapTri® is the most highly refined, ultra purified MCT on the market. The formulation of CapTri® was specifically designed for people who want to be as lean as possible. CapTri® is available exclusively from Parrillo Performance. So if you’re looking for a good source of calories to provide energy while dieting, try CapTri®.  And do your aerobics.

Parrillo Performance
(800) 344-3404

References1. Guyton, Textbook of MedicalPhysiology, p. 952. Published byW.B. Saunders, 1976.

2. Kern et al, The effects of weightloss on the activity and expression ofadipose tissue lipoprotein lipase in very obese humans. New Engl.J. Med. 322: 1053 (1990).

3. Crozier, Bois-Joyeux, Chanez,Girard, and Peret, Metabolic effectsinduced by long-term feeding of medium chain triglycerides in therat. Metabolism 36: 807-814 (1987).

4. Babayan, Medium chain triglyc-erides and structured lipids. Lipids22: 417-420 (1987).

5. Bach and Babayan, Medium chaintriglycerides: an update. Am. J. Clin.Nutr. 36:950-962 (1982).

6. Geliebter, Torbay, Bracco,Hashim, and Van Itallie, Overfeedingwith medium chain triglyceride diet results in diminished deposition offat. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 37: 1-4 (1983).

7. Baba, Bracco, and Hashim, En-hanced thermogenesis and diminisheddeposition of fat in response to overfeeding with diet containingmedium chain triglyceride. Am. J.Clin. Nutr. 35: 678-682 (1982).

8. Lavau and Hashim, Effect of me-dium chain triglyceride on lipogenesisand body fat in the rat. J. Nutr. 108: 613-620 (1978).

9. Hill, Peters, Yang, Sharp, Kaler,Abumrad, and Greene, Thermogen-esis in humans during overfeeding with medium chain triglycerides.Metabolism 38: 641-648 (1989).

10. Seaton, Welle, Warenko, andCampbell, Thermic effect of mediumchain and long chain triglycerides in man. Am. J. Clin.Nutr. 44: 630-634 (1986).

Gaining Muscle and Staying Lean: A Common Sense Approach

Are you training hard but not putting on enough muscle? The answer is simple: eat more calories.The problem is how do you eat plenty of calories to make muscle without getting fat at the same time? Whether you gain muscle or fat depends largely on what foods you eat. While too many calories from any food can make you fat, some foods have much more tendency to make you fat than others. To prove it to yourself, just pull out 1000 calories of rice and chicken from your diet and replace it with 1000 calories of cheeseburgers and french fries and see what happens.

You have to learn to structure your diet so that you supply calories from foods that don’t make you fat. There are different kinds of calories. Some foods make you fat and some foods just naturally make you lean.  Youhave to learn to structure your diet so that you supply calories from foods that don’t make you fat. Your worst enemies are fatty foods and simple sugars. Conventional dietary fats are very prone to be stored as bodyfat. After being digested, these fats are transported to fat depots and stored. Simple sugars and other refined carbohydrates are released into the bloodstream more rapidly than they can be used for energy or converted to glycogen. This elicits a large insulin release which in turn causes the excess sugar to be converted to fat. On the other hand, excess calories from protein and unrefined complex carbohydrates have less tendency to be stored as fat.

Good lean protein sources include skinless chicken breast, skinless turkey breast, fish, and egg whites.  Good sources of starchy carbs are beans, rice, potatoes, peas, corn,and oatmeal. We also recommend you eat a lot of fibrous vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, carrots,broccoli, green beans, and asparagus. And here’s where CapTri® fits in.  CapTri® provides 8.3 calories per gram – twice the caloric density of protein or carbohydrates. But instead of being stored as body fat CapTri® is immediately burned to release energy (1). Whereas conventional fats are stored in body fat depots, CapTri® is transported directly to the liver where it is converted into energy (1). If eating regular food is like throwing a log on the fire, then eating CapTri® is like pouring gasoline on the fire.This makes CapTri® an ideal energy source for bodybuilders and other athletes – it allows you to consume a ton of calories without getting fat. The replacement of conventional dietary fats with lipids like CapTri®results in much less body fat (2,3).This is not so surprising since CapTri® is immediately burned for energy while regular fats are just stored as body fat. The amazing thing is that diets containing lipids like CapTri® result in less fat gain than even low-fat diets (2,3). In other words, CapTri® results in less fat gain than carbohydrates. And if your weight goes up, and it’s not fat, then it must be lean mass.

To understand this you have to know something about carbohydrate metabolism. Carbohydrates are released into the bloodstream as glucose and this stimulates the pancreas to release insulin. Insulin in turn causes cells to absorb glucose and amino acids, supporting growth. For this reason many people consider insulin to be the most powerful anabolic (growth-promoting) hormone.  However, insulin and glucose also promote fat accumulation by increasing storage of fatty acids in fat cells. So the same hormone which promotes growth also promotes fat storage. If carbohydrates are released into the bloodstream faster than they can be used for energy and to replace glycogen, the excess will be stored as fat.

The enzymes that make new bodyfat and convert glucose into fat are less active if lipids like CapTri®are included in the diet. Insulin normally stimulates these fat-storing enzymes to store any excess calories as fat. The amazing thing is that when lipids like CapTri®are included in the diet these fat-making enzymes are less active-even in the presence of insulin (2).This suggests that CapTri® may permit you to derive the anabolic effect of insulin while avoiding its fat-promoting effects. Could this be the reason athletes on our diet experience increased muscularity with decreased body fat? The anti-catabolic properties of CapTri® are another good reason to include it in your mass building diet.

Studies show that lipids like CapTri® spare body protein (7).Structured lipids, which contain medium chain fatty acids, improve nitrogen balance and are believed to increase weight by protein retention whereas conventional fats contribute to weight gain by increasing body fat (7, 8). Medium chain triglycerides like CapTri®increase protein synthesis in the liver more so than conventional fats or glucose (7). Also, after glycogen stores have been depleted the branched chain amino acids leucine, isoleucine, and valine are oxidized as fuel in the muscles. In the liver, CapTri® is converted into ketone bodies which are released into the bloodstream and used as fuel (1). “Skeletal muscle can readily burn ketone bodies for fuel and may spare the oxidation of branched chain amino acids and reduce skeletal muscle protein catabolism,” (6). The sparing of BCAA would leave these amino acids available to build muscles instead of being burned as fuel.  CapTri® is a special lipid called a medium chain triglyceride which is purified from coconut oil by fractional distillation. This is the same way that jet fuel is purified from crude oil. CapTri® has a different molecular structure than regular fats and this results in it being immediately burned for energy instead of being stored as body fat(1).

In CapTri®, all of the harmful long chain fats have been removed, leaving only a pure energy source which is absorbed and metabolized as rapidly as glucose (1). CapTri®is burned so fast that it doesn’t have a chance to be stored as fat. To derive the maximum benefit from CapTri®, or any other supplement, use it in conjunction with the proper diet. The Parrillo Performance Nutrition Program, by John Parrillo, describes the ultimate diet for bodybuilders. How to eat to gain muscle and lose fat.Proper nutrition is the foundation of bodybuilding success. We provide the information you need tomake your effort in the gym pay off- big time. What sets us apart is our program is based on sound, basic principles of healthy nutrition.

With Parrillo, food comes first,then supplements. We find that basic nutrition gets better results than high-tech hype. We’re here to show you how to get big. Now. CapTri® is the most highly re-fined, ultrapurified MCT on the market. The formulation of CapTri® was specifically designed for people who want to be as lean as possible. CapTri® is available exclusively from Parrillo Performance. If you need to go up in calories to put on more muscle, try CapTri®.

Parrillo Performance
(800) 344-3404

References

1. Bach and Babayan, Medium chaintriglycerides: an update. Am. J. Clin.Nutr. 36:950-962 (1982).

2. Lavau and Hashim, Effect of medium chain triglyceride on lipogenesis and body fat in the rat. J. Nutr. 108: 613-620(1978).

3. Crozier, Bois-Joyeux, Chanez,Girard, and Peret, Metabolic effectsinduced by long- term feeding of medium chaintriglycerides in the rat. Metabolism36: 807-814 (1987).

4. Seaton, Welle, Warenko, andCampbell, Thermic effect of me-dium chain and long chain triglycerides in man. Am.J. Clin. Nutr. 44: 630-634 (1986).

5. Hill, Peters, Yang, Sharp, Kaler,Abumrad, and Greene, Thermogen-esis in humans during overfeeding with mediumchain triglycerides. Metabolism 38:641-648 (1989).

6. Babayan, Medium chain triglyc-erides and structured lipids. Lipids22: 417-420 (1987).

7. Record, Kolpek, and Rapp, Longchain versus medium chain lengthtriglycerides – a review of metabolism and clinical use. Nutr.Clin. Prac. 1:129-135 (1986).

8. Kennedy, Structured lipids: fatsof the future. Food Technology, Nov.1991, p. 76-83