Dieting and a Healthy Diet

First things first, understand that even if you workout in a gym, no matter how hard you train, you simply cannot out-train a lousy diet. Many times I have seen people finish a grueling training session, only to start talking about the creamy pasta dinner they are cooking later. It seems as though the notion of health and fitness can sometimes be left at the gym. Losing fat and weight is as easy as thinking of it as if you want to lose weight then the amount of calories that go into your diet must be less then the amount of calories that you burn throughout the day. If you think about it one unhealthy meal can consist of 1000 calories and you only burn about 400 calories running for 30 minutes (these are all relative numbers). Point is it would take an insane amount of exercise to burn all of the excess calories of an unhealthy diet. It then would make more sense to limit the amount of calories in your diet and this used in conjunction with exercising will give you the best results when trying to lose weight. This is not to be confused with starving yourself. I will talk about why this does not work later in this essay. In addition if you are trying to lose weight at the same time trying to build muscle or gain strength starving yourself will force your body to break down its muscle for energy instead of burning fat because muscle is easier for your body to break down.

            One of the things that needs to be done to start off a good diet is to eliminate excess fats, salt and sugar from your diet. This means no more fast food, processed foods, sodas, cookies, chips and deep fried foods. These items have no nutritional value and are what many people call empty calories. This means that they hold no nutritional value for your body and have no benefit in them. A very important habit to pick up is to gain a understanding on nutrition and also to learn to read food labels and always do so. (I will post another essay detailing nutrition facts) If you are starting off then this will be pretty hard at first especially when people around you are eating these kinds of food and offering it to you. You should replace these unhealthy food with vegetables and fruits. Try to balance what kinds of vegetables and fruits you eat to maximize the amount of nutrients and vitamins you get. Also your body needs fat and you should get these fat from sources such as a handful of nuts or flaxseed (also take supplements of fish oil-will talk about the benefits of this in my Nutrients post). Another things that people sometimes start doing when starting a new diet is to start a food journal to help keep track of what they eat during the day and also find a calorie counter (will find a link a few counters when I have time).

Another healthy way to maintain a good diet is to eat five-six small meals per day instead of eating three or four large meals a day. Really I try to eat every 3 hours. This also requires some planning. Eating every three hours keeps the blood sugar/insulin levels stable throughout the day, controls cravings, prevents binging, reduces fat storage and keeps the metabolism burning hot. 
Since you hear the word "metabolism" quite frequently in conjunction with nutrition, let's take a quick look at what it means. Basically, "metabolism" is the rate at which your body burns through food. When you hear that someone has a "fast metabolism," this simply means that the person's body is efficiently using the calories derived from food whether active or at rest. 
Here is the thing; eating frequently makes you burn more calories. On the contrary, missing meals immediately slows the metabolism, triggers the body's starvation response and thus sounds the death knell for fat burning. In addition to me the most important meal of the six is my breakfast. Because my body has more or less been starving for about eight hours it need to be replenished. Breakfast should include complex carbohydrates and clean protein. Essentially, complex carbohydrates provide energy and the proteins ensures that the body has material readily available for rebuilding tissues. On of the first things I do every morning is to either drink a protein shake or drink one or two eggs. In addition I will either mix my protein in milk or if not eat a few spoonful of cottage cheese. Lastly I make a wrap that consists of a whole wheat tortilla, spinach, avocado, and a few slices of thinly sliced turkey breast.  Also another thing people misunderstand is that your body does metabolize and require energy even when you sleep (about 50 calories per hour). Because of this I would eat 45 to 60 minutes before bed. Usually eating 1-1.5 cups of cottage cheese (2% fat or less) or casein powder protein to fight late night hunger cravings and give my body some slow digesting casein protein to breakdown and use during the night; it's void of sugar, low carb (lactose) and high protein, plus it's got calcium which can help you sleep. No, it won't get stored as fat! 
Your body does not just turn off your digestive system at night people! If calories are controlled during the day and exercise is intense enough, you will process and use foods like this even at night.

            Another important factor in maintaining or losing weight is to know the importance of carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates are those found in refined sugar, honey and fruit juice. This type of sugar will provide quick energy but will also let you down just as quickly. 
Sugars significantly disrupts proper insulin metabolism ultimately causing fatigue and promoting fat storage. This cycle is certainly not something that you want to encourage. The bulk of your carbohydrate consumption should come from slowly digesting complex carbohydrates. This means eating whole grain foods when you need to and food such as oats, brown rice, and legumes. Eliminate “white” foods such as white flour and bread form your body. Also one of the best ways to lose fat is to reduce the amount of carbs from ones diet. This does not mean that you should completely eliminate carbs from your diet and especially if you are starting off and your body is used to a high amount of carbs. If you're not eating enough carbohydrates, your body will start breaking down precious muscle tissue for glucose. Unfortunately, your body cannot use fats for glucose.

-As of right now I think this post/essay is incomplete and will revise, change and add a few more things as I have time. I will also add a section that shows my daily diet and suggestions on meals throughout the day. 

Myths About Losing Fat

Fat Targeting Exercise -Of all myths about losing fat, this is the one I hate the most because so many companies use this myth to convince uninformed people to spend millions of dollars on their useless machines. Just turn on the TV late at night and you are sure see a commercial about some product such as an "Ab Machine."

So how can you get rid of the unwanted fat on your stomach, hips, thighs, or chest? Through Cardio and a healthy diet!  The body decides how it will distribute the fat over your body, all you can do to get rid of love-handles or large thighs is to reduce your total body fat by doing more aerobic/cardio exercise and by eating less.  It is not possible to do spot-removal of fat. The myth that you can remove fat in focused areas by doing special exercises is not new. Its just not possible to focus fat removal on a particular area, surgery is the only way to do spot-removal of fat deposits. Doing a set of crunches doesn't burn the fat around the stomach. However, walking for 60 minutes burns the fat throughout the entire body, including the stomach. Also, following a proper nutrition plan helps reduce the fat around the stomach and throughout the entire body.

Starvation Diets Are The Best Way To Lose Fat-Following a starvation diet usually results in a long term gain in fat. In the beginning of the diet, some fat is lost, but as soon as the person goes back to their regular diet, most of the fat is gained back.

In some cases, more fat is gained than lost following a starvation diet, as a result of a slowdown of the metabolism. Also, during a starvation diet, plenty of muscle is lost and energy is greatly decreased, making it quite difficult to train.

All Calories Are Created Equal-When following a bulking diet or trying to count calories, most trainees consume any kind of food in high quantities, whether healthy or unhealthy, just so to pile up the calories and gain weight. They don't realize that most unhealthy foods contain empty calories and have minimal nutritional value. Also, the large quantities of unhealthy food add mostly fat weight instead of muscle, and can lead to many problems, such as heart disease.

Supplements Can Replace A Good Diet-Supplements can never replace a good diet. They are made to add to a good diet, not replace it. The body prefers whole foods and they are actually absorbed better than supplements. Combining a good diet with supplements is recommended and will provide the best results.

Eating Any Food At Night Is Bad-This is also another myth that annoys the hell out of me and that I hear from many people. It is important to eat at night before going to sleep, so the body has the needed nutrients throughout the long sleeping period. Usully when you sleep your body will burn about 50 calories per hour. Eating high fat foods is definitely bad and should be completely avoided. However, consuming protein-rich foods that contain a slight bit of fat and foods with complex carbs is highly recommended, as it helps the body recover and restore its energy reserves. 

As I can remember more myths and misconceptions I will periodically post more!

Best way to lose weight?

     Ok this is a very very highly asked question and there are many ways to go around doing this. First I would  like to point out that the two beset ways to lose weight of course is to one exercise, and two eating right. Many people argue that one is better then the other but I believe that a really a combination of the two is the best way to go at it and realistically is the only way to live a healthy lifestyle. I was at about 205 pounds a year ago (am 5"8) and I was overly overweight so the first thing I had to do to get back in athletic shape was to first lose all that extra weight. I can tell you that following a healthy diet and exercising every day in a smart way does work and I am now currently 145 pounds. 

For this post I will mainly focus on what kind of exercise is best for losing weight and will talk about diets and eating right in another one. The first misconception I believe people have when trying to lose weight and exercising is that they can do it any number of ways such as walking or lifting weights. Ok these exercises do burn calories but not enough for you to lose a significant amount of weight. If you are seriously trying to lose a significant amount of weight, there really is only one way to do this and it is through cardio workouts. 

     Cardiovascular exercise ("Cardio" for short) is simply exercise that elevates your heartrate for an extended period of time and its more important for your general health than lifting weights. There is a lot of confusion about cardio, its really quite simple.  Lets start with the basics.  My definition of cardio is that it elevates your heart rate to 50%-85% of your maximum and keep it there for at least 20 minutes.   What is your maximum?  Depends on your goal, your age, and your health. A chart and information on heart rate can be found on this site: click here. There are many forms of cardio that can be done and really the best way to do it is to mix in different forms of cardio to make it more exciting and you will be less bored with your workouts and at the same time it will make your body work out different parts. 

If you are a just starting to do cardio it will be vary draining on you but be persistence and remember that it requires a the least 20 minutes of your heart beating above normal. If that means walking, jogging, cycling or swimming then do it. For advanced sports training, there are other types of cardiovascular workouts which involve high intensity interval training that will improve conditioning and endurance but I will talk about that in another post. For overweight or beginners dont be to bummed out that you can barely do 20 minutes of running and if you really cant then do it for as long as you possibly can then jog the rest of the way. DO NOT STOP. Work at it everyday and over time you will build your stamina and at the same time as your losing weight you will find it easier to go at it for longer amount of time and harder. 

There are many forms of cardio and I will briefly talk about a few.

-Biking-One of the best forms of cardio I believe for people who are currently out of shape and want to get back in shape. This is because you can get your hear rate up and for a long period of time with out putting to much stress on your lower body that exercises such as running would have on it. Stationary bikes work fine but after your body is well off enough to jog/run I would switch to doing that.

-Swimming-Also an excellent form of cardio especially for older, people who have injuries, and people who are overweight. This is because it puts less physical stress on your body. The only danger I would advice is that when swimming people often find it much harder to keep a steady pace which will push their heart rate up for at least 20 minutes and rests in between can decrease the heart rate a lote.

-Running-I believe that this is the top form of cardio but should be done carefully. If you are overweight I would advice to not start of with running but do some biking or swimming first. When you feel like you have built up enough stamina and your body is ready to then start jogging. Every important always remember to stretch out before running. Beginners should start off with jogging at a pace where there heart rate is elevated and after a few weeks you will start to realize that it will take a much harder pace to get your heart rate up as you get into better shape. Adjust your pace accordingly and make sure you are running for at least 20 minute.

-Other-There are many many other forms of cardio workouts and many lists can be found online but I have listed my top three which are easy to do and highly effective. 

Getting Things Started

       To start off this blog I would like to talk about what made me and encouraged me to make this blog. I have always been every interested in my health and performance since I was a child. This was because I was pushed as a child to do many sports and because of this, it demanded that I take good care of my body. Sadly as a child, I now realize that I had many misconceptions and had the wrong information on nutrition, dieting, strength and conditioning, and overall a healthy lifestyle. Recently I have started to become very interested in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and because this sport demands that my body be in its top shape and more, I have spent hours researching on nutrition, dieting, workouts that maximize strength and conditioning and even what kinds of supplements to take. I want to make it easier for anyone who is trying to get ready for a sporting event weather it be an intense sport such as MMA or just casually. Not only will I post information for athletes, I will also post information for people who are either trying to lose weight or just trying to maintain a healthy weight. In addition this blog will have information on how to just live an overall healthy lifestyle. I will try to point out the many myths and misconception on training, nutrition/supplements, and dieting that are so prevalent and that I grew up believing. Most of my post will be targeted towards MMA athletes but because this sport takes so many disciplines into account, and requires a healthy body, it can be applied to almost anyone who overall just wants to become healthier.