Tips and Tidbits – March, 2010

Training Tip of the Month:

Keep training heavy while losing fat: Muscles are very plastic, which means they adapt to whatever level of stress placed on them. Muscles hypertrophy (grow) in response to a heavy training stimulus. If you keep using the same weight, soon the muscle will get as big and strong as it needs to be to withstand that level of stress, and muscle growth will cease. Then it’s time to increase the weight, to force the muscle to grow even bigger. If you eliminate your heavy sets and start doing a lot of reps to burn fat, your muscles will shrink. Strive to keep training as heavy as possible even as you diet down for a contest to provide the stimulus needed for muscle hypertrophy. Weight training for high reps just isn’t a very effective way to burn fat. Lifting is fueled mainly by burning carbohydrate from muscle glycogen. Aerobic exercise is effective for fat loss because it burns more calories than you ever could by lifting weights and a higher proportion of those calories are derived from body fat. So while losing fat, keep training heavy but do more aerobics. Aerobics burn fat while you are doing them. Heavy weight training increases the metabolism as your body recovers from the workout.

Nutrition Tip of the Month:

Be sure to use the correct combination of supplements: When used intelligently and consistently, supplements provide extra nutrients your body can use for building its own metabolism. Supplements help you surpass frustrating sticking points so you can continue to improve and reach new limits. They are especially important for the hard training bodybuilder whose recovery ability is pushed to the limit. Of course, supplements are not magic pills and powders that work all by themselves:  they are quality nutrients that help your body build its metabolism and repair mechanisms. When you eat properly and train intensely, supplements provide that extra push needed in obtaining your fitness goals.

Question of the Month:

Question: How many calories should I consume?

Answer: This is one of the toughest questions to answer, because it’s a very individual thing, deteremined by your lean body mass, activity level and genetics. There are mathematical formulas you can use to estimate your maintenance requirements, but they don’t work reliably. The easiest way to handle this is simply to start weighing your food and use the Food Composition Guide in the Nutrition Manual to calculate how many calories you normally consume. Keep a food journal listing everything you eat. After a week, average your daily calorie intake and this will give you a good idea of how many calories you need to maintain your present lean body mass. You can adjust this up or down by 300-500 calories per day depending on whether you want to gain or lose weight. As your muslce mass increases, your metabolic rate increases as well, so you’ll need to slowly and continually adjust your calories upward, known as “building your metabolism.”

News & Discoveries

In Fitness & Nutrition

In Chocolate, More Cocoa Means Higher Antioxidant Capacity

Cocoa powder contains more beneficial antioxidants than other chocolate products, but processing decreases their contents. Those are the results of a study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their cooperators interested in the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and procyanidin levels of six chocolate and cocoa products: natural (unsweetened) cocoa powders, Dutch processed (alkalinized) cocoa powders, unsweetened baking chocolates, semi-sweet chocolate baking chips, dark chocolates, and milk chocolates.

Chocolate and cocoa powder are derived from beans that contain hefty quantities of natural antioxidants called flavonoids. The researchers found natural cocoa contains the highest capacity of the antioxidant procyanidin. Antioxidants are thought to be effective in helping to prevent cancer, heart disease, and stroke.

The researchers found natural cocoa powders contained the highest levels of TAC and procyanidins, which were found to be the dominant antioxidant in chocolates. Milk chocolates, which contain the least amount of cocoa solids, had the lowest TAC and procyanidin levels. Baking chocolates contained fewer procyanidins, because they contained more fat (50-60 percent) than natural cocoa. Alkalinization, used to reduce the acidity and raise the pH of cocoa, such as Dutch chocolates, was found to markedly reduce procyanidin content. Researchers concluded that chocolates containing higher amounts of cocoa ingredients have higher procyanidin contents, therefore, higher antioxidant capacities.

- Jim Core, April 4, 2005, Agricultural Research Service, USDA

Quick Tip of the Month:

Tired of eating plain chicken breasts for lunch or dinner? Try using some different spice rubs on your chicken and other meats! You can use spice rubs when grilling, baking, pan roasting, and sautéing. Spice rubs can be as simple as a few tablespoons of herbs like thyme, rosemary, and tarragon combined with ground pepper, or more complex, such as a Cajun spice rub with many spices and herbs mixed together. Check out the Performance Press archives on www.parrillo.com for the Moroccan Rub recipe on page 17 of the May ‘06 issue.

Dominique’s Time Cruncher

Brownies on a diet? That’s right! Finally there’s a Protein Brownie! Now you can enjoy delicious chocolate brownies in just 2 – 2½ minutes, even if you’re preparing for a contest! Satisfy your chocolate cravings without breaking your diet, by baking up a batch of our easy-to-make microwavable Contest Brownie Mix™!