5 Foods to Fuel Your Workout

FROM iVIL­LAGE

Before we begin, there’s one thing you need to know: The best food to eat before a work­out depends on when you’re going to eat it.

If you’re an early riser who goes to the gym on the way to work, you won’t have enough time between leav­ing home and arriv­ing at the gym to really digest a full break­fast. Your pre-workout snack is going to have to be really light. On the other hand, if you’re work­ing out in the mid­dle of the after­noon, your work­out is going to be fueled by your choices at lunch and you’ll have a cou­ple of hours to digest your food before hit­ting the gym. That means a dif­fer­ent pre-workout meal from the one you might choose if you were scroung­ing around the kitchen at 5:30 a.m. on the way to the track.

The closer to your work­out, the more you want to focus on eat­ing car­bo­hy­drates rather than fat or pro­tein. Car­bo­hy­drates are digested in the small intestines, whereas fat and pro­tein are bro­ken down in the stom­ach. This means cramp­ing and indi­ges­tion are more likely when you work out with a belly full of fat– or protein-rich foods.

The rule is this: The less time until the work­out, the less you should eat. This makes sense: It takes time to digest food, so you don’t want to scarf down a huge break­fast right before get­ting on the tread­mill. Those plan­ning to run the marathon on Sun­day usu­ally eat a huge din­ner on Sat­ur­day night. But those plan­ning to go for a three-mile jog at 5:30 a.m. may be fine with just an orange eaten about 20 min­utes before.

With that in mind, I’ve pre­pared a list of my five favorite all-around pre-workout snacks. These work just fine whether you’re an early-morning exer­ciser and need some­thing light or you’re about to head out for a work­out in the late after­noon and are just look­ing for a lit­tle extra energy to com­bat the 3 p.m. crash.

With a smear
This is one of my favorite snacks, period. I take some hearts of cel­ery and fill in the groove with some organic almond but­ter or peanut but­ter. This snack really trav­els well in Tup­per­ware and makes a ter­rific pre-workout snack. Why? The cel­ery has fiber and nutri­ents (includ­ing cal­cium and vit­a­min A) and a ridicu­lously low 6 calo­ries per medium stalk. The nut but­ter has pro­tein and fat. The over­all calo­ries are low, and this really fills you up with­out slow­ing you down, pro­vid­ing great “slow-release” energy for a ter­rific workout.

The dou­ble A
Sim­ply put, an apple with almonds. The apple is the per­fect food for a pre-exercise snack. The sugar load is mod­er­ate, it con­tains valu­able pectin fiber which slows the entrance of that sugar into the blood­stream, and it’s a nutri­tional pow­er­house con­tain­ing vit­a­mins, min­er­als and antiox­i­dants. Com­bine it with about a dozen almonds, which add some fat and pro­tein. They’ll fur­ther slow the entrance of the sugar into the blood­stream for sus­tained energy and keep hunger away.

Whey to go
Whey pro­tein is my favorite kind of pro­tein pow­der. Not only is it extremely high-quality, bioavail­able pro­tein; it sup­ports the immune sys­tem by pro­vid­ing the build­ing blocks for glu­tathione, arguably the body’s most impor­tant antiox­i­dant. And stud­ies indi­cate that whey pro­tein may boost weight loss efforts. Accord­ing to one French study, eat­ing whey before exer­cise sup­ports fat burn­ing and may help with gain­ing or main­tain­ing lean body mass. I sug­gest a whey pro­tein shake made with either water alone or with frozen berries. The berries add fiber, nutri­ents and some extra car­bo­hy­drates, and make for a more deli­cious drink.

Berry cheesy
Here’s a tid­bit of info that you might enjoy: In my book The 150 Health­i­est Foods on the Planet, I asked 16 nutri­tion experts to con­tribute lists of their 10 favorite healthy foods. Berries, espe­cially blue­ber­ries, made the list of more experts than any other food. Berries are loaded with phy­tonu­tri­ents, antiox­i­dants and fiber, and are low in sugar. Mix a bowl of berries with a piece of string cheese for the per­fect pre-workout snack. The string cheese has 8 grams of pro­tein, some fat to keep hunger at bay and only about 80 calo­ries. And it’s an excel­lent source of calcium.

TG: too good
The ini­tials of this snack stand for turkey and grapes. It’s a per­fect match of pro­tein, carbs and low calo­ries to take the edge off your hunger and prime your exer­cise pump. Four small slices of deli-packaged turkey con­tain only 87 calo­ries but give you more than 14 grams of pro­tein, plus some of the cancer-fighting min­eral sele­nium to boot. A cup of grapes adds some carbs to the mix together with phy­to­chem­i­cals. Go for fresh turkey when­ever pos­si­ble as the pack­aged kind is high in sodium, and choose red or pur­ple grapes because they have more antioxidants.

Obvi­ously there are other choices besides my five favorites. In a pinch, I’ll use a pro­tein bar, though you’ll want to watch the sugar con­tent and look out for the pres­ence of trans-fatty acids. One of my favorites is Atkins Advan­tage, though there are oth­ers you may like as well. Hard-boiled eggs are another secret weapon in the search for portable pro­tein that com­bines nicely with a lit­tle fruit (such as an apple).

Remem­ber: What you eat after the work­out is even more impor­tant than what you eat before it. That’s when your mus­cles are hun­gry and your depleted glyco­gen (mus­cle sugar) stores need replac­ing. The “golden hour” after the work­out is the time when those mus­cles soak up nutri­ents most effec­tively. Choose what you eat after the work­out with just as much care as you choose that pre-workout snack.

Reviewed by Ger­a­lyn Coop­er­smith, M.A., CSCS

6 Tips to Build a Weight-Loss Diet

FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Your body needs fuel to exer­cise, and the source of that fuel is food. That’s why some peo­ple report feel­ing hun­grier when they start to work out. If you’re try­ing to lose weight, this could be counterproductive—unless you find the right bal­ance of healthy, fill­ing foods.

The typ­i­cal Amer­i­can diet is loaded with refined or sim­ple car­bo­hy­drates such as white flours, rices, and pas­tas, and pas­tries, sodas, and other sug­ary foods and drinks. These carbs, which lack the fiber found in com­plex carbs (whole grains, fruits, and veg­gies), are metab­o­lized by your body quickly. So while you may feel rar­ing to go after eat­ing them, that energy boost will soon be fol­lowed by a major energy slump, mak­ing it hard to give your all dur­ing your workouts.

In addi­tion, if many of the foods you eat are metab­o­lized quickly, you’ll find your­self feel­ing hun­gry more often, which could mean more snack­ing and a higher calo­rie intake. To keep from eat­ing back all the calo­ries you’ve burned, stick to a diet based on these six science-backed components.

1. Fiber

Eat at least 20 grams of fiber per day from whole grains, fruits, and veg­eta­bles. Fiber helps keep you feel­ing full longer—a big ben­e­fit when you’re try­ing to lose weight. A 2009 study from Brigham Young Uni­ver­sity Col­lege of Health and Human Per­for­mance demon­strated that women who ate more fiber sig­nif­i­cantly low­ered their risk of gain­ing weight and fat. Each gram of fiber eaten cor­re­lated to ½ pound less body weight. The researchers sus­pect that the higher fiber intake led to a reduc­tion in total calo­ries over time.

2. Cal­cium & Vit­a­min D

Strive for three serv­ings of cal­cium– and vit­a­min D-rich foods a day. These nutri­ents often occur together in foods, espe­cially dairy.
Cal­cium and vit­a­min D work together in your body, pri­mar­ily to strengthen your bones. But if the lat­est research is any indi­ca­tion, both of these nutri­ents may flex some mus­cle in your weight loss suc­cess. Dairy foods are the prime source of cal­cium and vit­a­min D in the diet. In a recent study from Johns Hop­kins Bloomberg School of Pub­lic Health, col­lege stu­dents who came clos­est to meet­ing the three-a-day dairy require­ment while eat­ing an oth­er­wise healthy diet weighed less, gained less, and actu­ally lost belly fat, com­pared with stu­dents who con­sumed lit­tle or no dairy.

More­over, vit­a­min D by itself may play a role in weight con­trol. Extra body fat holds on to vit­a­min D so that the body can’t use it. This per­ceived defi­ciency inter­feres with the action of the hor­mone lep­tin, whose job is to tell your brain that you’re full. And if you can’t rec­og­nize when you’re sati­ated, you’re more likely to overeat.

You may also want to con­sider a vit­a­min D sup­ple­ment. The lat­est research sug­gests that this nutri­ent may be a fac­tor in pro­tect­ing you from every­thing from heart dis­ease to mem­ory loss and even chronic pain. Evi­dence is mount­ing that we need more than the cur­rent rec­om­mended intakes, espe­cially as we age, because older skin pro­duces less vit­a­min D (and sun­screens block the body’s abil­ity to use sun­light to pro­duce this vit­a­min). That’s why the lead­ing experts in vit­a­min D research are now rec­om­mend­ing a daily sup­ple­ment of 1,000 IU of vit­a­min D—the kind most read­ily used by the body.

Daily Rec­om­mended Cal­cium Intake
Men and women ages 19–50: 1,000 mil­ligrams
Men and women age 51+: 1,200 milligrams

Daily Rec­om­mended Vit­a­min D Intake
Men and women ages 19–50: 200 IU
Men and women ages 51–70: 400 IU
Men and women age 71+: 600 IU

3. Good Fats

These include monoun­sat­u­rated fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids, found in oils, nuts, avo­ca­dos, cer­tain fish—and yes, even choco­late! Eat three to four serv­ings daily.

A recent study pub­lished in the jour­nal Appetite shows how these fats—besides being good for your heart—can help you feel fuller longer after meals. The study par­tic­i­pants with a higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids (more than 1,300 mil­ligrams a day, either from foods or from sup­ple­ments) reported feel­ing less hun­gry right after their meals, as well as 2 hours later, com­pared with a lower omega-3 intake (less than 260 mil­ligrams a day). Less hunger means less munch­ing and an eas­ier time keep­ing calo­ries in check.

More spe­cific research has been done on wal­nuts, a good source of monoun­sat­u­rated fats. An Aus­tralian study had par­tic­i­pants fol­low a healthy low-fat diet, either with wal­nuts or with­out. Both groups ate the same num­ber of calo­ries and lost approx­i­mately the same amount of weight at 6 months. But dur­ing the next 6 months of the year long study, the walnut-eaters con­tin­ued to lose weight and body fat, while the other group stopped losing—even though they were still fol­low­ing the same diet.

4. Pro­tein

Aim for three serv­ings of lean pro­tein (such as fish, white meat chicken and turkey, pork loin chops, and lean beef sir­loin) per day. In addi­tion to being an essen­tial nutri­ent, pro­tein helps to keep you feel­ing full longer, which is a big ben­e­fit when you’re try­ing to lose weight. In a small 2009 study, par­tic­i­pants who ate a higher-protein break­fast were more sati­ated after­ward (and took in fewer calo­ries at lunch) than those who ate a low-protein breakfast.

5. Water

Stud­ies from Stan­ford Pre­ven­tion Research Cen­ter sug­gest that water helps pro­mote weight loss in two ways. First, drink­ing more water—at least 4 cups per day—was linked to a 5-pound weight loss over the course of a year. Accord­ing to the researchers, this amount of water increases the amount of energy or calo­ries your body burns. Sec­ond, sub­sti­tut­ing water for sug­ary drinks—sodas, sports drinks, fla­vored drinks, and sweet­ened milks, cof­fees, and teas—resulted in even more weight loss. The exact num­ber of pounds lost depended on how many sug­ary drinks were con­sumed in the first place, and how many were replaced with water.

Still don’t think you can give up your sodas and mochac­ci­nos? Then con­sider this: It’s been shown that when peo­ple con­sume a cer­tain amount of calo­ries, they’re more hun­gry and more likely to overeat at their next meal when those calo­ries are in liq­uid rather than in solid form. Trans­la­tion: If you eat a 200-calorie snack, you’ll be more sat­is­fied after­ward and eat less later than if you drink a 200-calorie bev­er­age. So fre­quently drink­ing calorie-dense bev­er­ages could increase both your hunger and your calo­rie intake through­out the day.

6. Green Tea

Sip at least 3 cups of green tea every day. Cat­e­chins, the antiox­i­dants found in high amounts in green tea, have been shown to be help­ful in pro­mot­ing weight loss, specif­i­cally belly fat. If caf­feine is a con­cern, decaf tea is an option. Some decaf­feina­tion processes, how­ever, can lower the antiox­i­dant con­tent so you might want to have an extra cup or two.

In a study at the USDA Human Nutri­tion Research Cen­ter on Aging at Tufts Uni­ver­sity, par­tic­i­pants who drank the equiv­a­lent of 3 cups of green tea a day lost twice as much weight as those not drink­ing tea. The tea-drinking group also lost sig­nif­i­cantly more belly fat than the non-tea drinkers.

If you like cit­rus, the news gets bet­ter. Replac­ing some of the tea brew­ing water with cit­rus juice, such as lemon, lime, orange, or grape­fruit, allows your body to use more of the tea’s cat­e­chins. You can drink your green tea freshly brewed for a warm­ing hot drink, or chill it after brew­ing for a refresh­ing cold drink.

Excerpted from Walk Off Weight by Michele Stan­ten (Rodale, 2010).

Recipe of the Week: Tropical Cucumber Salad

Vari­ety is the spice of life. So every Fri­day — or almost every Fri­day — we share a healthy recipe to help keep your menu excit­ing and nutri­tious. If you have a healthy recipe that you’d like to share with the group, we’d LOVE to fea­ture it on the blog, and give you credit! Email your healthy recipes to: lauren@​bc4​c.​com.

Today’s recipe is brought to you by Eat­ing Well and com­bines cucum­ber, avo­cado and mango with a salty-sweet dress­ing for a taste of the trop­ics — per­fect for a warm sum­mer evening!

INGREDIENTS

• 3–5 tea­spoons fish sauce, (see Shop­ping Tip below)
• 1 tea­spoon freshly grated lime zest, plus more for garnish
• 2 table­spoons lime juice
• 1 table­spoon canola oil
• 2 tea­spoons light brown sugar
• 1 tea­spoon rice vinegar
• 1/4 tea­spoon crushed red pepper
• 1 medium Eng­lish cucum­ber, cut into 3/4-inch dice
• 1 avo­cado, cut into 3/4-inch dice
• 1 mango, cut into 3/4-inch dice (see Kitchen Tip below)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

PREPARATION
Whisk fish sauce to taste, lime zest, lime juice, oil, brown sugar, vine­gar and crushed red pep­per in a large bowl until com­bined. Add cucum­ber, avo­cado, mango and cilantro; gen­tly toss to coat. Serve gar­nished with lime zest, if desired.

TIPS & NOTES
Make Ahead Tip: Cover and refrig­er­ate for up to 1 hour.

Shop­ping Tip: Fish sauce is a pun­gent South­east Asian condi­ment; find it in large super­mar­kets and Asian markets.

Kitchen Tip: To peel and cut a mango:

1. Slice both ends off the mango, reveal­ing the long, slen­der seed inside. Set the fruit upright on a work sur­face and remove the skin with a sharp knife.
2. With the seed per­pen­dic­u­lar to you, slice the fruit from both sides of the seed, yield­ing two large pieces.
3. Turn the seed par­al­lel to you and slice the two smaller pieces of fruit from each side.
4. Cut the fruit into the desired shape.

NUTRITION
Per serv­ing: 169 calo­ries; 11 g fat ( 1 g sat , 7 g mono ); 0 mg cho­les­terol; 18 g car­bo­hy­drates; 2 g added sug­ars; 3 g pro­tein; 5 g fiber; 178 mg sodium; 342 mg potassium.

Nutri­tion Bonus: Vit­a­min C (45% daily value), Vit­a­min A (15% dv).

Car­bo­hy­drate Serv­ings: 1

Exchanges: 1 veg­etable, 1/2 fruit, 2 fat

Recipe credit: Eat­ing Well

Protein: Your Muscle’s Building Blocks

This is a re-post from June 2010. Please enjoy the 22 com­ments from last June… and add your own com­ment today!

BY TRACY

You always hear us say that you need to eat pro­tein with every meal, but have you ever asked your­self why? If you are look­ing for a quick snack it seems that there are always car­bo­hy­drates lay­ing around or hang­ing in the snack machine, but how often can you find a piece of grilled chicken to nib­ble on?

The main rea­son you need pro­tein is because your mus­cles are made up of pro­tein, and to build, main­tain or repair them, you need to eat pro­tein. It is a good source of energy and is con­sid­ered one of the build­ing blocks of your body.

Another rea­son we ask you to eat pro­tein with every meal is because peo­ple who eat foods with high pro­tein feel full longer and expe­ri­ence fewer crav­ings. A daily intake of 1.5 grams of pro­tein per kilo­gram of body weight is con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient, and if you eat meat you are most likely get­ting more than enough pro­tein. If you fol­low a veg­e­tar­ian or vegan diet, you should pay close atten­tion to ensure you are con­sum­ing enough plant pro­tein (and the right kinds!) since most plant foods are lower in pro­tein than ani­mal prod­ucts are.

If you are look­ing for pro­tein in sources other than ani­mal prod­ucts (mean­ing meat) you can get a lit­tle extra pro­tein by eat­ing the following:

• Nuts
• Peanut But­ter
• Greek Yogurt
• Cot­tage Cheese
• Soy
• Legumes such as green lentils, chick­peas and gar­banzo beans
• Eggs

Remem­ber, you don’t need to eat an 8-oz steak every day, just remem­ber to eat a lit­tle bit of pro­tein with every meal or snack.

IMAGE CREDIT: Edupics​.com

Log and Blog!

Con­grat­u­la­tions! You’ve com­pleted Day 1 of June boot camp. Only 15 (or 24 depend­ing how you’re count­ing) days to go…

Make the most of this month by fol­low­ing two sim­ple rules:
Log and Blog!

Log: You’ve prob­a­bly heard it hun­dreds of times: write your goals down. But do you know why this step is so impor­tant? When you put pen to paper — or fin­gers to key­board — you turn your thoughts into some­thing tan­gi­ble. That’s why we strongly encour­age you to use your log books. It’s part of the boot camp pro­gram because it works. Use your log books daily to keep track of your nutri­tional and fit­ness goals and accom­plish­ments. You will quickly see how the act of writ­ing these things down helps keep you moti­vated. Now you can down­load and print just the pages you need (print page 11 to track your meals)…

Down­load and print log book (PDF)

Blog: Have you ever heard that work­ing out in a group is one of the best ways to stay moti­vated? It’s true! Hav­ing peo­ple there along­side you to share in your expe­ri­ence and encour­age you along the way is often­times the dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful exer­cise plan and one that tends to fiz­zle out over time. Share in your chal­lenges and your suc­cesses with your fel­low BC4Cers, and be sup­port­ive of their efforts as well by check­ing this blog after every workout.

You can also stay in touch with your fel­low BC4Cers via our Face­book page. Go ahead… go there and Like us today!

Read on to learn more about your log books…

We at BC4C would like you all to take a few moments and con­sider where and how you are get­ting the food you eat today.

• Do you plan to grab break­fast while hang­ing out your car window?
• Do you plan on grab­bing a hand­ful of M&M’s from your co-worker’s desk and call it a mid-morning snack?
• Do you plan to stand in line for lunch and order the fastest item that can be prepared?
• And do you plan to eat what ever is left on your child’s plate and con­sider your din­ner taken care of?

When we were in school we were forced to do a num­ber of sim­ple cal­cu­la­tions in order for us to add and sub­tract like sec­ond nature; the same prin­ci­pal applies for our nutri­tion journals.

We asked you to main­tain a jour­nal this month to keep track of how and what you eat — forc­ing you to refo­cus on your nutrition.

Log­ging your meals — though tedious like math — will help you devote some time and energy to plan out where and what you eat. We ask you to eat five meals a day — not three meals and two snacks — because each time you eat you should use it as an oppor­tu­nity to get in the nutri­ents you need. The five meals you eat should be the vehi­cles for you to obtain your 9 serv­ings of grains, 4 serv­ings of veg­eta­bles, 3 serv­ings of fruit, 2 serv­ings of dairy, and 5 serv­ings of pro­tein the USDA rec­om­mends we eat every day.

While using a nutri­tion jour­nal, we hope that when you walk out the door every morn­ing, you do so with a plan of how you will get the nutri­ents you need to stay active and healthy — which will even­tu­ally become sec­ond nature.

Remem­ber, print page 11 to track your meals…

Down­load and print log book (PDF)

Tell us how you’re doing on Day 1. Leave a com­ment by click­ing the “Com­ments” link at the top of this post.