As discussed earlier this week, there are many different diets out there and many different people telling you what to do when it comes to "eating right" to obtain the body that you want (be it healthy, lean, fast, efficient, muscular, etc.).  There are good reasons that they tell you these things but it really does get confusing.  So "KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID" and do the one thing that we know works… EAT OFTEN, about every 3 to 3 1/2 hours, or you’ll look like this at work and in your workouts…

Travis’s Dog, Laila, after going too long without food!

(Have you ever felt like this???)

Try to include in each meal a mix of natural complex carbohydrates, fiber, protein, and essential fats.  This means a starchy complex carbohydrate (like rice or fruit), a fibrous carbohydrate (vegetable), and a lean protein (fish, chicken, Turkey, Tofu).  Frequent fueling maintains a high metabolism and it decreases the amount of food you actually eat during a day or week or month.  Give it a try!

Now for some strategy:

Frequent fueling is a simple and effective way to be lean and healthy, but you’ll have to do a little planning ahead, that’s all…

First, be sure you have fresh food available at all times.

• Stock the fridge at home and/or work with chopped veggies (that you chop fresh every Sunday and put into baggies) and some humus for a dip (you can buy good humus at Trader Joe’s)
• Keep a jar of unsalted almonds and dried fruit beneath your desk
• Every week stock a desk drawer with a couple bananas, apples and/or seedless grapes
• And, though it’s not fresh, a good whey protein powder from Athlon Elite mixes in well with a piece of fruit as an excellent and very simple mid-afternoon meal

Use your Sundays to do a little food prepping (it will ultimately save a ton of time during the week, and it’s fun to do a little fresh cooking on Sunday’s with the family):

• Barbeque a bunch of chicken and/or turkey breasts, lean steak or pork fillets and bag-up  into multiple zip-loc baggies
• Make a big pot of soup or chili (you can use left over meat from the barbeque) and pour into multiple Tupperware dishes
• Make a big pot of brown rice and scoop some into your chili bowls or store separately in Tupperware containers
• Boil a dozen eggs and store them in a bowl in your fridge to pick at all week long (they make great mid-afternoon snacks with a piece of fruit)

When you do cook in the evenings during the week make a little extra and prep yourself lunches and mid-afternoon meals with that food:

• Buy some Tupperware containers that have separate compartments so you can keep your "entrees" separate
• When you clean-up after making dinner divide the left-overs up into these Tupperware lunch containers and stack in the fridge ready to use

 Finally, there are many "fairly healthy" frozen foods that you can buy and use for meals, take a trip to Costco or your local Supermarket and buy:

• Frozen teriyaki chicken bowls
• Lean Cuisine dinners
• Frozen "healthy" burritos (try to get ones that are not stuffed with cheese and refried beans)
• (Costco is great for this, they have pretty good frozen foods and you can buy a box of 12 or more!)

Once you’ve prepped using some of the strategies from above all you have to do now is… EAT!

Eat regularly every 3 to 3 1/2 hours.  Set an alarm if you have to, JUST EAT!

As mentioned above, try to include in each meal a mix of natural complex carbohydrates, fiber, protein, and essential fats, avoid or minimize simple sugars and hydrogenated fats, and get your meals from a variety of sources all found in the perimeter of the supermarket (not down the isles).

I have one thing that you can do to make your diet healthier,  turn up your metabolism and torch more body fat.  And it’s not controversial…

You see, I was thinking this weekend about nutrition and what "eating better" means.  I hear the two word phrase all the time… Athlon Elite members are always asking me about "eating better," nutritionists are always telling me about "eating better,"  my girlfriend says I should "eat better."  But when I do some research into "eating better" I get many, many different ideas of what "eating better" really is.  Some "experts" say we should eat more protein and less carbs, some "experts" say saturated fat should be cut out of our diet, then another "expert" says saturated fat is good in our diet as it is the building block of many of our hormones, then I see all kinds of books written on how different bodies should eat different diets… what kind of body do I have… I thought mine was human???

The Typical Food Pyramid

(our government recommends this one)

A Different Pyramid

(many physicians recommend this one)

The Paleolithic Diet

(Becoming popular with "Wellness" Advocates)

I continually here from people about how hard it is for them to "eat better" because they don’t exactly know "what is better."  And if you’re anything like me, you’ll try so hard to figure out what’s "exactly right" that you’ll get lost in the details and ultimately give up in failure ("analysis paralysis").

The fact is, there is no "exactly right" to "eating better."  My friend and trainer Dave Brown, who has spent the last 8 years of his life studying this stuff with a bachelors and masters degree in nutrition, sums it up perfectly when he says there is "no perfect nutrition," there is only "best-guess nutrition."  After years of his own research he’s realized that human physiology is such a complex subject it is pretty much impossible to "perfectly" isolate and research, thus any nutrition recommendations that come out of research are "best-guess" recommendations at best.

So does this mean we should give up… throw in the towel and drink more sodas and eat McDonald’s for lunch everyday? No. There is one very definite "best-guess" nutrition practice that will make you healthier, more energetic and burn more body fat…  eat more frequent meals.

"Frequently fueling" your machine will keep it running smoothly throughout the day and through the week.  By Fueling your body frequently, ideally every 3 – 3 1/2 hours, you send a continuous supply of vital nutrients into your body.  Metabolism, by definition, simply means "the speed with which your body burns through food."  To boost metabolism, to become one of those people who can eat anything and not get fat, it’s essential that you put lots of food through the "food burning machine" with consistent regularity.

This strategy is the second step in our six-step Burn program, a program designed to turn-up your internal furnace and "torch" body fat.  If you fuel the machine more frequently you’ll do two things: one, you’ll keep a higher metabolism as you’ll balance hormones and burn a ton of energy digesting it, and two, you’ll eat less.  Yes!  You will eat less.  One of the biggest reasons for over-eating is going too long since your last "fueling" (food intake).

So, if you want what most people do, (a toned/chissled, energetic, fat burning machine), start eating more meals throughout the day.  It really works!

Check back later this week for tips and strategies on how to effectively do this simple, one-step nutritional plan and start feeling better and "torching body fat" right away.

For those of you who haven’t removed my email address from your spam list and hence did not receive my email about Dara here’s a repeat of some of her information as well as a good discussion on it:

– She’s 41 years old – a generation older than most of her competitors. She broke her first of 3 world records in 1982 and was medaling in her first Olympics in 1984…before many of her competitors this year were even born.

–She’s a mother – and still has maybe the most impressive abs I’ve ever seen on a women.

–She will go to the Beijing Olympics as the oldest ever member of the U.S. swim team.

–She’s medaled in four Olympic competitions… and Beijing will be the fifth because she’s favored to at least medal, and possibly win the 50-meter freestyle.

–She owns nine Olympic medals

–Last year in Germany, she swam the 50-meter freestyle in 23.82 seconds, breaking the American record and making her one of only five women to swim it faster than 24 seconds!

–She’s considered to have the purest most efficient swimming stroke… of any woman in the world.

–Shes absolutely, positively, incredibly, amazingly fit!…

And this is what I’d like to talk about…

You might be surprised by some of the successful strategies she’s now using in her training for elite competition (now that she’s mature)!!  For one, when she swam competitively in college she used to swim about 65,000 yards a week.  She now swims around 25,000.  So, she’s decreased her training time in the water by 62% and yet is faster and more efficient.  How could that be… train less and perform better?

Well, "Torres’s innovations for keeping her body in top shape, (as she advances deeper into middle age), are almost entirely out of the pool,"  states Elizabeth Weil of the New York Times.  In addition to the two hours per day of massage and "resistance stretching" with two separate trainers, the weekly chiropractic visits and a host of other nutritionists and chefs ensuring that she’s performing at her absolute best, she performs weight training 60 to 90 minutes, four days per week, with a personal trainer.  The focus of that training is on balanced, dynamic lifting movements that stimulate the nervous system.  Her trainer, Andy O’brien explains, “the idea is not to isolate muscle groups but to get muscles contracting together in the right sequences.”  (sound familiar?… like Athlon Elite’s motto of "Train Movements, Not Muscles" ??)

Athletes like Torres are starting to bring into mainstream attention the fact that "training smarter, not harder" is a better recipe for success.  Whether you want to lose 12 pounds of bodyfat like Craig Stewart demonstrated here last week or win the Olympics in Beijing, a short focused workout plan for 3-4 days per week with built in recovery strategies is far better than killing yourself in the gym (or pool in Torres’s case) twice per day everyday.  It’s about getting the body’s systems to work together to achieve optimum adaptations, and then creating a strategy to achieve optimum recovery.  If you haven’t experienced how we do this at Athlon Elite get a free training consultation and sample workout today to see if you’re exercise program is smart or just hard. (click here)

More on Dara…

After her personal training sessions and a quick recovery meal (hopefully someday to include Fluid Recovery), she heads off to a two-hour long stretching and body working session where two separate "stretching trainers" work on her body.  Torres puts as much time – and money – into her recovery as she does her training (and in fact she doesn’t separate the two… her recovery is her training).  This "recovery concept" is key and starts with nutrition.  This is something that we at Athlon Elite have subscribed to from the beginning.  Often, the reason an athlete doesn’t perform well is not because they didn’t train enough… but because they trained too much and didn’t recover.  The nutrition part starts immediately in the 30 minutes after your workout.  The body is craving sugar with the right amount of protein to kick-start the recovery process.  Get it right… and you’ll perform at 100% the next day.  Get it wrong… and well you know what it’s like to have a bad day!

Recovery also includes sound stretching, massage, days-off of training and of course a good night’s sleep (7-9 hours).  You can bet Torres focuses hard on all of these as well.  Get your free consult today at Athlon Elite and have a trainer put together a smart recovery plan for you. (Click here to learn how)

Just a reminder that there is still particulate matter and "Carcinogenic" compounds lurking due to the fires.  Without being glib, it is not the best idea to exercise excessively in the smoke so pay attention and get inside when it is real bad.  Think about how it must feel to be fighting these fires (THANKS to the Brave teams fighting these massive fires):

From Brushfire CRC:

Finally, in a smoke filled environment such as under some bushfire conditions, exposure to carbon monoxide and other smoke compounds may also compromise fire fighter work output. For instance, previous research has shown that exposure to carbon monoxide may lead to dizziness, nausea and impaired judgement, whilst other smoke compounds may reduce lung function, reducing the value of air that can be inhaled and exhaled.

Stay healthy, hydrated and particulate free!  Spartans train hard and smart!

There’s a 1000 words, eh?!!

Spartan of the Week honors are back online and this week’s honor can only go to Craig Stewart, a man that has endured the highest level of our Burn Program for the last month and now has the results to prove it!!  (and that’s after starting at our lowest level four months ago!)

Craig was a little disappointed earlier this week when he stepped on the scales with his trainer Travis and it showed the same weight as when he started.  Travis told him not to be disappointed and just wait until the results from the body composition (fat) test were in.  Sure enough Travis was right…  later that day he calculated Craig’s body fat to be down 12 pounds and his muscle mass up 12 pounds.  An even trade.

How many of you would like to trade 12 pounds of your body fat for muscle?!!!  That’s awesome and shows you what hard work and dedication to both your Athlon Elite workout plan and your supplement program will get you here.  Just look at the intensity on his face!

Great work Craig, you’re definitely a Spartan Warrior!

Lots of information out there about nutrition and supplements.  The biggest topics receiving multiple expert opinions revolves around intermittent fasting and the avoidance of processed sugars and grains.  Check out Robb Wolf’s site as well as the infamous Art DeVany or Modern Forager for more specific information.

We have already beat into your head the value of some type of recovery supplement within 30 minutes of completing your workout.  We like Fluid!  Now we want to knock you silly with making some changes to your diet.  Think about what you are eating, when you are eating it and why you are eating it???

Live like a Spartan, train like a Spartan and eat like a Spartan.  Garbage in will get ya garbage out………

232 years ago a few absolute studs, 57 to be exact (though only 56 signatures were on the document because New York had not yet been accepted as an official colony), stepped-up to the plate and drafted and signed a document that told the British to stuff it… that we wanted freedom and independence!

That decision gave birth to the greatest nation on earth!

This was an incredibly couragious act and we want you to celebrate it with a little courage as well with Athlon Elite’s special July 4th 2008 workout…

The 232!

Don’t worry you don’t have to fight the Royal Navy or the Redcoats… just put forth a valiant effort in the following exercise program of 232 repetitions (and leave a "little" on the battlefield if necessary).

"The 232"

• 29 Blast-strap Push-ups
  
• 29 Ball Slams
  
• 29 Jump Squats
  
• 29 Hammer Swings (each side)
  
• 29 Overhead Squats (ladies use 30 lb. bar, men use 55 lbs.)
  
• 29 Jumping Pull-ups
  
• 29 Burpees
  
• 29 LIttle Bigs (12 lb. med ball)

and to make sure that the program is well rounded… finish with:

• 56 Box Jumps (one for each signature on the Declaration of Independence)

Athlon Elite is open for regular hours on Saturday, July 5th so sign-up and come in!