Issue 45

Do you have questions about exercise or nutrition? Let grrlAthlete help you find the answer you’ve been looking for. Feel free contact us at grrl@grrlAthlete.com (or just hit reply to one of our newsletters), if we don’t have the answer, we’ll find someone who does.

Content

·        New! The grrlAthlete.com Training Log

·        How to Prepare Your Weekly Nutrition Plan

·        Plyo Confusion

1 – How a grrlAthlete Trains

The new training log featuring on grrlAthlete.com shows you the workouts of one of our star pupils! In this “grrl Athlete’s” training log, you’ll be able to read how she improved her 5 km race time, decreased her body fat, and gained the strength to do a chin-up. The set-by-set training log will follow her workouts for 24 weeks and will be updated on a weekly basis.

The training log will also offer you a sneak peak at our upcoming workout e-book called Turbulence Training for Women which is based on these highly successful workouts. Stay tuned for a future article on Turbulence Training, the most efficient and effective way to lose fat fast.

You can see the first week of the training log at: http://grrlathlete.com/Workout-Journal.html

If anyone else wants to post their training log on grrlAthlete.com, or if you have questions about the workouts, let us know at grrl@grrlathlete.com.

2 – How to Prepare Your Weekly Nutrition Plan

 
Nutrition is the most important factor, outside of motivation and consistency, in a fat loss program. You could be using the best workout in the world (i.e. Turbulence Training), but you won’t lose fat if you are eating according to the “Supersize Me” diet.

So if your current nutritional plan is preventing you from losing fat, then it's time for you to start working on building better eating habits. This can be as simple as committing to one small nutritional improvement per day (such as replacing your lunchtime soda with water) and one large nutritional change per week (such as setting aside time on a Sunday to prepare a weekly menu and meals).

But you need to have a plan to make this work, just like how you have a plan for your workouts. Your nutrition plan should include the contents of every meal, as well as your grocery list for the week. This will enable you to have meal alternatives for nights when you might need to be running from one event to the other with no time or healthy snack alternatives when you are on the road between meetings.

It's important that you make your plan something you can follow. If you are currently eating 7 meals per week at the golden arches, it wouldn't be realistic to plan to replace those meals with carrot sticks and tofu this week. A better plan would be to substitute a couple of those meals with healthier sandwich options and then work on improving things even more in the following weeks.

So here's a three-step guideline on building a better nutrition plan:

1)     Prepare a weekly menu. Outline each meal and snack for every day of the upcoming week. Take into account the possibilities that you might work late or get invited out to lunch. The more options you have and preparations you make, the better you will be able to stick to your fat loss plan.

2)     From your menu plan, you'll now know what foods and ingredients you need to make it through the week. Make your grocery list and stick to it (see mine below). Grocery shopping is your first opportunity to break some bad nutritional habits. You can't eat chips, cookies, or cakes if you don't have them in the house – so don't buy them and you'll avoid any future temptation. 

3)     Prepare the meals or prepare the ingredients so that making the actual meal doesn't take a lot of time. Like shopping, it's best to do all of these preparations at one time (such as on a Sunday or another day off).

A grrlAthlete.com-approved shopping list includes:

Fruits

·        Apples

·        Oranges

·        Blueberries

·        Melon

·        Peaches

·        Grapefruit

·        Raspberries

Vegetables

·        Peppers (red, yellow, green, & orange),

·        Spinach

·        Asparagus

·        Broccoli

·        Snow Peas

·        Mushrooms

·        Frozen mixed vegetables

·        Tomato sauce

Protein Sources

·        Chicken breasts

·        Turkey breasts

·        Salmon fillets

·        Lean beef

·        Skim milk

·        Low-fat, low-sugar yogurt

Carbohydrates

·        Oat bread

·        Oatmeal (no sugar added)

·        Whole-wheat pasta

Other

·        Green tea

·        Fish Oils

·        Unsalted, (& sometimes dry roasted), nuts such as Almonds, Walnuts, and Cashews

You'll notice that most of these foods come without a food label. Most of the foods that you should avoid come in a bag or a box. Building a shopping list that contains very few bagged or boxed items is something to aim for.

But when you do purchase something with a label, make sure to avoid two of the unhealthiest ingredients created by man. You might have heard of these two ingredients. They are strongly associated with obesity and other lifestyle-diseases (such as diabetes).

1)     High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)

2)     Hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil (the sources of trans-fatty acids)

Some people think that “delicious” and “healthy” are two words that can’t be used to describe the same meal. If you are one of those people, then I promise you that your opinion is going to change, thanks to Gourmet Nutrition.

Dr. John Berardi is one of the most popular fitness professionals in North America. Having just finished up his Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario, Dr. B has stepped up his efforts to bring healthy, delicious eating to the masses and has created a fantastic new e-book called, “Gourmet Nutrition”.

In this book full of recipes and nutrition tips, Dr. B gets a little help from another Johnny Ph.D., Dr. John Williams from Texas. Together these guys bring you a nutrition book that you’ll use every day for years, rather than one that will end up collecting dust in your garage. Their book is full of honest, no-nonsense nutrition advice for people committed to getting the body they want, athletes looking to achieve peak performance, and everyone looking to improve their health through nutrition.

"Being that I'm an active graduate student on-the-run, having a cookbook that offers time-friendly, nutritionally-superior recipes is imperative for success with my academics and my athletic goals. Thank you for creating such a wonderful resource! I'm looking forward to savoring those Apple Cobbler Protein Bars after my next work-out (they're on page 171, and look so good... everyone HAS TO try them!).

Cassandra E. Forsythe, MSc, PhD candidate in Nutrition

The Gourmet Nutrition e-book includes:

·        Recipes to keep your taste buds alive and your body looking great

·        Cooking tips so you can save time while impressing others with your culinary skills

·        Nutrition strategies so you can build the body you want and keep it for life

It also teaches you:

·        What exactly you need in your kitchen, and what you must not have, if you're to succeed -- from foods, appliances and utensils, right down to the spices.

·        A 6 step system for building your kitchen anew – even if it’s in need of the most dramatic of overhauls!

·        100 perfect meals, quick and easy meals as well as 5-star, impress-your-friends meals. How about healthy Chicago deep dish pizza or striped bass with artichokes and asparagus?

·        Meal categorization according to the best time of day to eat the meals. How about a post workout shake, followed an hour later by our healthy Hawaiian pizza. Then, later in the evening, sit down for our pecan-crusted salmon.

·        17 food preparation tips, making you a culinary dynamo in no time. No more fingertips in your vegetable medley!

·        25 food facts and strategies, tips that help you make sense of the nutritional recommendations you read about often (from us, even) but don’t quite understand fully

·        The absolute best fruits, the best vegetables, the best grains, the best times to eat, and more!

Simply put, everyone should have this e-book. And the authors have completely removed the risk to you by giving you a 100% Money-Back Guarantee. So if you're sick of eating healthy food that tastes like bark, check this e-book out.

To order, click here  

3 – Plyo Confusion!

Lately, the term plyometrics has been turning up a lot in fitness magazines. Unfortunately, its most often being suggested as a way to “Turbo Charge” your workouts.

Plyometrics is a term used to describe a group of exercises that are typically explosive and high velocity in nature. A good example would be stepping off a 12 inch box then landing and jumping high into the air, as quickly as possible.

If you are trying to decide whether or not to include plyometrics in your workout program, please remember the golden rule of designing an exercise program - Make sure the exercises you pick help you reach the goal you are striving for!

Plyometrics are an excellent form of exercise for developing explosive power. They are also very advanced exercises and should only be performed with the assistance of a certified strength and conditioning coach. Too much volume or incorrect form in these exercises could cause injuries.

For this reason we only recommend the addition of plyometrics into your workout program if you have been taught the proper form and if the goal of your workout program is to help you develop explosive power.

If your goal is to lose fat and/or gain muscle, plyometrics are probably not the most ideal exercises. Quite frankly, other exercises could be substituted for plyometrics that would give better results, leading to a more efficient use of time!

Be careful of what you read in magazines (and on websites for that matter). They are a great place to find new exercises to add to your workout, and adding variety to your workout is often a good idea. Just remember to apply some common sense. Ask yourself if the exercise will help you reach your current goals. If the answer is yes, try it out; if the answer is no, then save if for later when your goals are different. If you are ever unsure, then ask us at: grrl@grrlathlete.com.

To learn about the grrlAthlete.com approach to plyometric training, please read out two part article on training female athletes.

Part 1 – http://grrlathlete.com/soccer-conditioning1

Part 2 – http://grrlathlete.com/ultimate-weight-loss