Parrillo Pudding Comparison Chart

Parrillo Pancake Comparison Chart

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?

Parrillo Brownie Mix Comparison

Parrillo Cake Mix vs. Regular

Parrillo Frosting Comparison

Parrillo Tips and Tidbits July 2010

nutrition Tip of the month:

It’s not who diets the hardest, it’s who diets the smartest: Some people try to lose too much fat too quickly by making drastic dietary changes. Your body is like a thermostat: it does not respond well to severe change of any kind. If you drastically lower your caloric intake, your body begins hoarding fat and slowing its metabolic rate to conserve energy. Soon, you feel bad (you have no energy) and look terrible (you store fat and lose mass). Sure, you may lose some bodyfat, but you also lose a lot of muscle mass, not to mention your sanity, your spouse, and perhaps your job! Rather than making a quantum leap from off-season dieting to pre-contest starvation, we encourage bodybuilders to gradually modify their off-season diet while simultaneously increasing the time and intensity of their aerobics. By doing so, you give your body time to adjust so it can continue to burn bodyfat and maintain muscle mass.

Read more

Parrillo Certified Personal Training Structuring the weekly training template In this day and age, TIME is our most precious commodity

by Duke Nukem

Typically, the first question a new client asks of a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainers is, “How do I fit in training when I am working long hours and have lots of outside responsibilities and commitments? I can’t spend two hours a day in the gym.” Any Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer (PCPT) will be quick to point out transformative fitness does not need to take a lot of time if the time spent is well spent. In Parrillo World, when we train, we train all out: cardio and weight training are done with gut-busting intensity. Better to spend thirty minutes using blistering intensity than to pretend train for two hours, engaging in halfhearted training, interspersed with lots of socializing and talking with other gym members. If you work hard and work smart you can get by with way less, particularly if you make it a point to not socialize during workouts. As one fabled IFBB professional once noted, “When I train, I feel as if I am in a battle with my own body. I am not at the gym to hit on women or shuck and jive with the other fellows. I might say a few words to my training partner about how I want him to spot me on the next set. Other than that, don’t come over and try and strike up a conversation with me while I’m training. You’ll get the cold shoulder. If you want to talk with me save it for after the workout.” In every single workout maintain tight concentration and become completely focused; that way you’ll get the most return for your time investment.

Read more

Tips and Tidbits June 2010

Training Tip of the month:

The Essential Elements of Good Form,

A Five Part Series

Element #1: Proper alignment of the muscles prior to exercise

This means correct positioning of the muscle or muscle groups to be worked—before you even begin the exercise. A case in point is the bench press. Most lifters use the strength of their delts to push through this exercise. The ultimate result is a great set of delts but flat upper pecs. To work the pecs, you must press your shoulders down and back into the bench while thrusting your chest forward. This subtle change in positioning puts the mechanical advantage on the pecs, placing emphasis where it belongs. The Parrillo Training Manual discusses the proper setup for 41 basic bodybuilding exercises (found in Ch. 4.) Be sure to pay close attention to each exercise description.

nutrition Tip of the month:

Practice proper food combining: Each meal in The Parrillo Nutrition Program includes a lean protein source such as egg whites, white meat chicken or turkey or fish; one or two starchy carbohydrates such as brown rice, oatmeal, potatoes, sweet potatoes or corn; and one or two fibrous carbohydrates such as broccoli, cauliflower, green beans or salad vegetables. This combination of foods at each meal has two important benefits. It slows digestion for consistent energy levels and increased endurance throughout the day and it provides a constant supply of nutrients so your body can maintain its energy, repair, and growth status. Avoid refined and simple carbohydrates such as pasta, bread and sugars. These foods are released into the body too quickly, overloading metabolic processes. Unable to be burned rapidly enough, the extra calories from these carbohydrates are easily converted to body fat.

Question of the month:

Question: What are some of the benefits of stretching during workouts?

Answer: Stretching has incredible benefits when integrated into a weight training program. The stretching I use is very specialized—a method I developed just for bodybuilders, called “fascial stretching,” a term I coined and defined. Combined with weight training, it multiplies the results!

• Your muscle size increases when stretching is a regular part of your training program. Stretching also gives the muscle better shape, with more separation.

• Stretching elicits responses in muscle groups that have reached sticking points in training.

• Done consistently, stretching also makes you stronger. You can raise your golgi tendon reflex threshold by regularly stretching your muscles, tendons and ligaments. As a result, you’ll be able to handle more weight with ever-increasing intensity.

• Stretching makes your body more flexible, giving your muscles and the joints they connect, greater range of motion. Stretching also helps prevent muscle soreness and promotes better recovery.

News & Discoveries In Fitness & Nutrition

Baby’s Obesity Risk: What’s Mom’s Influence?

Aspiring moms may be advised to achieve a healthy weight before they become pregnant, and to gain only the recommended amount of weight during their pregnancy. Now ongoing studies by Agricultural Research Service-funded investigator Kartik Shankar and colleagues could provide new insights into those recommendations. Shankar is taking a new, closer look at how influences that occur in the womb—and perhaps during the first few months of life—might affect development of a child’s ability to regulate his or her weight later in life.

In fact, the child’s body-weight-regulating mechanisms might be permanently altered by maternal signals associated with the mother’s own overweight, according to Shankar. Such maternal programming of the unborn child could increase the risk that the child would become an overweight or obese adult and would have a higher risk of obesity-related afflictions. Shankar looked at weight gains among rat pups whose dads were lean and whose mothers, called “dams,” were either lean or overweight (from overfeeding) before conception and throughout pregnancy.

All offspring were of normal weight at birth and at weaning. However, when the weaned offspring were given free access to an unlimited amount of high-fat rations, the offspring of overweight dams showed remarkable sensitivity to the high-fat rations. They gained significantly more weight, and more of that weight as fat mass, than did the offspring of lean dams. The study strongly suggests that exposure to the mother’s obesity while in the womb results in programming of the offspring’s metabolism and body-weight-control mechanisms. The dams’ obesity alone was sufficient to significantly increase the pups’ susceptibility to obesity.

Quick Tip of the month:

Broccoli Coins: Don’t overlook broccoli stalks!

Did you know that broccoli stalks are edible and taste just as good as the florets? All you need to do after you trim off the florets is peel any tough areas on the outer skin with a vegetable peeler, then slice into ¼ inch thick “coins”, and cook them right along with the florets. Get more for your money with less waste!

- By Marcia Wood, March 2010, Agricultural Research Service, USDA

Dominique’s Time Cruncher

ÚHere’s a quick vinaigrette to add flavor to your steamed veggies like broccoli, green beans, asparagus or brussels sprouts. In a small bowl, whisk together: ¼ cup balsamic vinegar, 1 clove minced garlic, 1 tsp. ground mustard (optional), a pinch of salt and black pepper, then whisk in ¾ cup CapTri® MCT Oil. Add a few tablespoons to steamed veggies and toss. Keep the leftover vinaigrette in the refrigerator, whisking well before using.

Maximum Mass through Supplement Synergy

Results cubed: Elite bodybuilders and professional athletes are making astounding gains in lean body mass by combining creatine monohydrate with whey protein powder and simultaneously supplementing with CapTri®. This three way combination has been described as “supplement synergy” by nutritional guru John Parrillo. Science is starting to catch up with Parrillo’s long held contention that when it comes to building muscle mass, heavy resistance training “supported” by creatine, whey and CapTri® make for an unsurpassable combination. Combining these three unique supplements creates results that far exceed gains garnered taking any one of these potent supplements individually. In a research paper published in The International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 36 weight-training men took whey and creatine in a supervised control group. Every participant increased lean muscle mass “to a significant degree.” The group’s collective bench press poundage soared. It just reconfirmed what elite bodybuilders have known for a decade: if you are seeking to add lean muscle mass, cutting-edge Parrillo style nutrition, combined with bar-bending power training is the best possible method. Intense training and disciplined eating needs to be augmented with specific supplements, picked to enhance a serious effort: the effort could be directed towards becoming as lean as possible or the supplements could be selected to augment a mass building effort. If you are an athlete or competitive bodybuilder, if you are a serious fitness type seeking to add muscle mass, then the Whey-Creatine-CapTri® combination will amplify any serious effort to a dramatic degree.

Parrillo Whey powder™ & Creatine Monohydrate™;

Made from the finest ingredients available:

A lot of supplement makers are cutting corners in tight times. At Parrillo Performance Products results still matter and corners aren’t cut. Elite athletes use our products because of the purity and the potency. Those that incorporate John’s innovative training and nutritional strategies make radical progress. Parrillo offers a no nonsense approach for those intent on building muscle mass: consume two Optimized Whey™ protein shakes per day, take upwards of 5 to 10 grams of potent Parrillo Creatine Monohydrate™ and use CapTri® to boost the clean calorie intake. Eat big but eat clean; train hard and train heavy, use target supplementation to accelerate progress. Please don’t neglect (or drop altogether) aerobics during a mass-building phase. Too many trainees cut out cardio in the mistaken belief that aerobic exercise interferes with muscle size gains. Cardio exercise, handled correctly, keeps the metabolism revved and the appetite kicking. Cardio makes you far fitter and far more able to take longer, harder and more frequent Parrillo-style high intensity workouts. Keep the cardio cranking and the body weight gains will be muscle gains. A serious mass-building effort should last for eight to twelve weeks at a minimum and should be attacked in a methodical fashion. Each week eat more clean calories, each week kick up the training poundage. Constant cardio keeps the metabolism from becoming sluggish. Each week use the whey-creatine-CapTri® combination to kick everything up to the next level.

Supplementing the food-based multiple-meal eating plan:

John Parrillo once famously said, “Food is the greatest supplement ever invented.” Lean protein, fiber carbohydrates, starch carbs and potent nutritional supplements form the backbone of the Parrillo nutritional game plan. Food forms the foundation, the nutritional base. The bad news is that the Parrillo Nutritional Program is strict: you eat only “approved” foods. The good news is, assuming you don’t stray from the food selections, you are allowed and encouraged to eat a lot of these approved foods. Lots of clean calories are spread out over the course of the day, 5 to 8 meals are eaten each day. A meal is consumed every 2-3 waking hours and the metabolism has to “rev up” in order to digest the hard-to-digest lean proteins and the hard-to-digest fibrous carbs. A classical “Parrillo meal” consists of a serving of lean protein, a serving or two of fibrous carbohydrates and a serving of starchy carbohydrates. The human body will produce heat during the protein and fiber digestive process. The resultant body heat is called the thermic effect of feeding (TEF). Some foods are easy to digest and don’t create a lot of body heat; these foods have a predisposition to end up partitioned into body fat storage. Other foods are difficult to digest and the body heats up to a dramatic degree to deal with the digestive effort. The hard-to-digest foods are preferentially used to build muscle or power activity. Obviously a bodybuilder seeking to become as lean and muscular as possible will bias their food consumption towards the nutrient-dense, hard-to-digest foods while avoiding the easy-to-digest foods that preferentially end up stored as excess body fat.

Building the metabolism:

The metabolic rate is the rate of energy expenditure and has several components: the basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the body’s rate of energy expenditure while at rest; the thermic effect of feeding (TEF) is related to how hard or how easy it is to digest a specific food; this is sometimes called “diet-induced thermogenesis.” The TEF is defined as “the increase in energy expenditure caused by eating certain foods.” The thermic effect of activity (TEA) is how many calories are expended during a particular
activity.

• In the Parrillo Nutrition Program meals are eaten every 2-3 waking hours. Each time a Parrillo Meal is eaten the metabolism must accelerate in order to aid the digestive process. Only approved foods are eaten.

• Creatine Monohydrate™ allows for longer and harder workouts and allows extra, growth producing reps. Research suggests that depleting phosphocreatine reserves serves as a muscle growth stimulator. Creatine supplementation can play a major role in “muscle force” production and allows for much more intense muscular contractions. Creatine supplementation enables the hard training athlete to push or pull extra growth-inducing repetitions.

• Muscle tissue needs protein to grow. The body needs protein to recover from the trauma associated with intense weight training. Whey protein is an extremely efficient protein delivery system. Whey
protein delivers its protein payload quickly and this quick availability is used to the bodybuilder’s
advantage.

• CapTri® provides calories needed to ensure muscle growth. Impossible to end up stored as body fat, CapTri® calories are used to build muscle or provide energy. Elite bodybuilders will take thousands of CapTri® calories per day. CapTri® calories ensure “positive nitrogen balance,” a highly desirable metabolic state.  Unless we take in more calories than we expend on a consistent daily basis, no muscle growth is possible.

Why Whey?

Whey protein is loaded with branch-chain amino acids: valine, isoleuine and leucine. These particular amino acids promote muscle healing and speed up muscular recovery. The quicker you recover from a training session the more sessions you can squeeze in over the course of the training week. Whey protein makes an ideal post-workout drink because whey protein is quickly available. After an intense, endorphin-producing weight training session, nutrients are transported to muscles at an accelerated rate. By drinking an Optimized Whey™ protein shake immediately after training (33 grams of protein, no sugar or fat, only four carbs) the body “up takes” the healing protein in an
accelerated fashion.

Because of the low number of carbs in Optimized Whey™, elite bodybuilders drink a Parrillo whey shake immediately upon awaking in the morning. Cardio exercise has the optimal effect if it is done before the first meal of the day. Morning cardio presents a terrific opportunity to melt off body fat. Glycogen stores are at their lowest levels after sleeping all night. If an intense aerobic session is done first thing in the morning, before eating breakfast, the body, deprived of glycogen, will burn stored body fat in glycogen’s absence. Drinking a whey protein shake containing only four carbs will not disrupt the low glycogen, post-sleep state.

Creatine Monohydrate:

When Creatine Monohydrate hit the commercial marketplace in 1991 the public went crazy for the stuff. Creatine zoomed to the top of nutritional product sales charts and stayed there for the next decade. Creatine Monohydrate still is one of the best selling nutritional products in the world. The reason is simple: the stuff works. Creatine Monohydrate is taken five to six times a day for a week during the initial “loading phase.” You saturate your system with CM for an initial ramp-up and after the loading phase is complete, cut back to one or two grams per day for the remainder of the creatine cycle. The post loading phase is called the “maintenance phase.”

Inside a muscle cell creatine helps produce and circulate adenosine triphosphate. ATP is a molecular fuel that powers muscular contractions. Creatine supplementation increases levels of a high energy compound called creatine phosphate. The more ATP available to cells, the longer, harder and heavier you can work out. Creatine assists in the manufacture of contractile proteins within muscle fiber and creatine supplementation postpones exercise fatigue. Studies have shown that when creatine levels fall off within a working muscle, complete fatigue occurs quickly. Keeping muscles pumped full of creatine phosphate  has proven to be a tremendous strategy for adding muscle mass. Clinical studies have repeatedly shown amazing increases in muscle mass within weight trained control groups taking creatine. Parrillo Creatine Monohydrate™ is potent and concentrated and not diluted with chemically-drenched fillers.

Pump up the volume with CapTri®:

Want to pump up the mass-building volume further yet? Combine creatine monohydrate with whey protein and then add CapTri® to the supplemental mix. It is critical for the muscle builder seeking to build mass to “stay anabolic.” You cannot recover, session to session, unless your nutrition is perfect. You will not be able to stand up to the cumulative pounding of upwards of six weight sessions per week, along with four to six weekly cardio sessions per week, unless your nutrition is perfect. In the Parrillo approach, the studied consumption of regular food is the nutritional foundation. On top of the rock solid food foundation (eating only approved foods) we add supplementation. The supplementation depends on the situation. Supplements are not designed to replace regular food; supplements are designed to “supplement” a rock-solid multiple meal eating schedule. CapTri® is used with each food meal in some manner or fashion as it “ups” the clean calories. CapTri® supplementation ensures the individual stays anabolic instead of “going catabolic.” When a hardcore trainee is overworked and underfed the body will break down and actually start cannibalizing its own muscle tissue in order to ward off starvation. The antidote to catabolism is calories. CapTri® offers a dense source of calories that are impossible to end up compartmentalized as body fat.

Solving the mass-building puzzle:

CapTri® provides the clean calories needed to recover from intense weight training. In order to build new muscle we need extra calories to grow. We also need lots of supplemental amino acids. That’s where Optimized Whey™ comes into play. We recommend those serious about building mass to consume a minimum of one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day: some students of John’s will take 2+ grams of protein per day! If you weigh 150 you would need to consume at least 150 grams of high quality protein each day. It can be difficult to eat that much protein. Supplemental protein shakes make hitting daily protein requirements a snap. CapTri® contains 120 calories per tablespoon and elite bodybuilders use it both for adding mass (tablespoons of CapTri® are sprinkled over food meals) in the off season to replace reduced starch calories. Parrillo Creatine Monohydrate™ rounds out this supplemental triangle. Creatine supplementation drenches the body with ATP and allows for longer and more intense muscular contractions. Science has shown the intense weight training and creatine supplementation can actually increase fiber diameter of individual contractile proteins within a muscle cross-section. Radical gains in size and strength are a foregone conclusion for those smart enough to use this three way combination. Cut corners and potential results will be compromised. Eat right and train hard and attain supplemental synergy through the combining of these three potent Parrillo
supplements.

Parrillo Optimized Whey™ – Creatine Monohydrate™ – CapTri®
Supplementation schedule
Meal 1	5am	Upon arising: Optimized Whey™ shake
Meal 2	6am	First food meal – add one tbs of CapTri® + 5 grams CM
Meal 3	9am	Supplement meal: Parrillo Pudding™, Parrillo Protein Bar™
Meal 4	12 noon	Second food meal – 1 tbs CapTri®
Meal 5	3pm	Supplement meal: Parrillo Bar™, Parrillo Muffin™
Meal 6	6pm	Post workout: Optimized Whey™ shake
Meal 7	9pm	Third food meal: 2 tbs of CapTri® + 5 grams CM

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