The Awesome'st....

Lately I've noticed that at some point I started sounding like one of those meatheads that only uses about 3 different adjectives to describe everything: awesome, kick ass, and sweet (not my personal use). Mine happened to be awesome, beautiful, and nice with an heavy emphasis on the "n" and "i" of nice. So, I've started working on it. But it lead me to what are some of the things that I think are pretty awesome.

Design your own protein literally you get to choose your own concoction.

Vitamin D is a pretty cool little vitamin. There seems to be new research coming out on the benefits of extra intake all the time.

Meatcards.com What else can I say. It's simply awesome. Business cards made of beef.

Possibly the funniest video I've ever seen. Also one of the best uses of a stability ball that I've seen.

I also have to give massive props out to my pal Zach. We've been working together on and off for about a year now and he's shown up every time ready to do what's necessary to be his best. I'm really impressed with this kid. In the last year Zach has taken off a considerable amount of fat while still gaining twenty pounds. We didn't do body fat testing so there's no real way to know how much muscle he's gained. The best part is, he is now the fastest kid on his football team and still one of the biggest. So of all the receivers and backs he's now moved to the top and playing fullback and linebacker.

One of many things Zach's been doing this year to get faster and stronger.

And that's pretty good considering that last year he was just a big kid that moved okay, a good linemen on his 7th grade football team, and he was also only about the 2nd or 3rd fastest of all the linemen. So of the slow kids he was one of the fastest. He also couldn't do one single leg squat, or a pullup, and could maybe get 2 good pushups in. Pretty crazy. Now, just the other day he rack pulled 265x6reps on his last set. His single leg strength is great and can do pullups on the spot.

That's what happens when you show up, work and listen. He also has a great dad that really cares about what his kid is getting from athletics but doesn't push anything on him. Zach has worked hard, it shows physically and I have no doubt he's gonna really make some plays this year.

My Top 3 Keys to Fat Loss and Health

What if I told you there were 3 simple tips that could very quickly change everything about your body? You're health, fitness, and performances. If you were to only concentrate on these three your body would...

• become a calorie burning machine
• You'd see fat drop like crazy
• You'd keep more muscle during cuts
• You'd build more muscle during gains while also acquiring less fat
• Would lead to a very noticeable difference in your training and competition.
• Reduce your risk of diabetes
• Increase your IGF-1 and testosterone levels (anabolic hormones: healthy fat burners)
  

You may think that only concentrating on three things would be way too simplified. Nutrition is very complicated and multifaceted, so that just cannot be. Well you be correct. But I was thinking of this last night, and trying to think how simple I could make nutrition for the average person on a very general scale (which is very hard for me because I typically like to throw way too much out there).

This is what i came up with. Focus on:

1. Fiber
If each and every US citizen was getting 40-60g of fiber a day our obesity problem would be close to ZERO. In fact many other health issue would dissipate as well. Hardly anyone would be even close to overweight though. Now this is quite a bit of fiber and on average I don't get this much in a day. But the point is, increasing your fiber is going to make dramatic changes. By no means am I refering to cereal bars and fiber supplements. Even though fiber supplements have there place, it would be much better to get a good mix of soluble and insoluble fiber from whole food sources like vegetables, fruit, and certain grains (oats and/or quinoa are both great).

Adequate amounts of fiber will slow the speed at which carbohydrates/sugar can be digested and enter your blood stream. Making sure that you have a steady state of energy circulating throughout your day. This will also drastically reduce your chances for late onset of diabetes, of which is the next big epidemic. Diabetes will probably kill more people in the next 15-30 years than cancer. That is what the high carb low fat diet is doing to America.
Also getting all those micronutrients from the plant sources is incredibly good for you. For your skin, bones, everything. You'll look and feel a ton better. 

Choosing good carbohydrate sources is key here.

2. Protein
Getting enough protein is essential, and commonly under appreciated. This, along with the other two is what holds people back much of the time. Please just for a second try and step out of your dogmatic thoughts and follow me for a bit.

First of all protein can have a similar affect as fiber. Your body is going to have to work hard at digesting it, so it's going to slow absorption down a bit. This is great, because that means metabolism is going to have to ignite and work that much harder. Increasing thermogenisis (body temp) slightly which in turn will allow you to burn more fat. And the slowing of absorption keeps the body's blood sugar/carbohydrate levels at a more constant or steady state throughout the day.

Then getting protein often and throughout the day (every 2-4 hours at least) is going to increase your body's natural production of testosterone and IGF-1 levels. These are your anabolic hormones which means they attribute to burning fat and gaining muscle. So if you are in a negative energy balance you are going to lose fat eating protein in this way, you'll also lose less muscle. Remember muscle is metabolic so it burns calories and we want to keep as much as we can. If you are in a positive energy balance you are going to gain muscle eating this way, and will put on less fat.

Females, do not worry about bulking or getting "man(ish)" as I hear so often. It doesn't happen or work like that. Girls need to produce testosterone also, and each and every girl in the world already does. It would take tons upon tons of time and work, while eating tons of food and probably getting supplemental hormone help to get a girl to look "manish". 

Girls that eat protein with every meal, often throughout the day, and lift heavy stuff are sexy as hell. Embrace it.

3. Water

Water is possibly your most valuable tool. What do you need? One big bottle to fill full of the stuff. Then every time you finish it go refill it immediately. 

How much? the daily recommendation of 64oz doesn't really work. It's only going to work for some people, and those people are going to weigh approximately 120lbs and not live very active lifestyles and are not trying to change their bodies in any way. So outside of those people lets get a system that'll work for you. How about AT LEAST 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water per day, that does not include the water you will take in during meals or workouts.Really in my humble opinion that is still borderline. You're just not going to drink too much water (it is possible but it's just a crazy amount of water that you would need to drink and you'd be hurting terrible before you even got close). 

Proper hydration is absolutely pivotal for performance, for fat loss, and for general health. 

It keeps your muscles operating efficiently and with strength, keeps the organs running perfectly, helps your body get rid of toxins. Being well hydrated drastically reduces your risk of injury, lets the liver function efficiently instead of having to help the kidneys out when you are not hydrated which will allow you to process more fat. It helps keep you from tiring quickly, helps to satiate you so you're less likely to overeat, then also keeps your blood sugar more consistent rather than up and down peaks and valleys that are unhealthy and lead to late onset of diabetes due to the overproduction of insulin and pancreatic activity. 

Your liver is a filter and it processes the fat in your body. Everything we eat, all the processed junk and all, it gets filtered out through the liver. If the body is not hydrated the kidneys don't do well and the liver helps them out, taking away from its main job. We only get one liver so it's not like the air filter in your car that you can replace when it gets gross, so we need to liver functioning properly. This means staying hydrated for one and getting good amounts of whole foods that wont have tons of the 'nasty stuff' in them. 

Fat is also holds some of our toxins. It is possible that your body is actually holding onto fat just because you're so full of stuff it doesn't like. This is where the hydration comes in again.

1 Month Challenge

Try these out for one month. Commit and you'll see what I'm talking about. The water will making you feel like you have to go the bathroom about every 15 min, and the fiber might make you wonder a bit, but believe me just these three will have dramatic benefits to anyone. Like I said 'commit' yourself to these, and you'll find exactly what I'm talking about.

You think you know big? Amounts

Alright, yesterday I went into an aggressive way to gain muscle for high school age male athletes. Now, the principles still hold true, but I left out some important info. Mostly how much of everything. So here you go.

Protein:

As with anything else it always depends. But most people should be getting between .08-1.2g of protein per lb of body mass. This is a very general scale and should be taken that way. Most athletes that hit this are going to be getting just enough. If you want to grow hard and fast eat more than 1.2g/lb of body mass. Some people get upwards to 3g/lb of body mass. Divide that up among your meals and you'll be fine.

Example: Lets say you weigh 170lb and you want to eat 240g of protein per day. You're eating 6 meals a day, that means you need 40g of protein/meal. By the way 1lb of chicken has around 18g of protein.

Carbohydrates: For the high school age this is more of a type and timing issue than an amount.

• Before and after a workout you want quick carbs to use during your workout and to replenish your stores that you just burnt, and also to begin the recovery process. This should be 1-1.5 hours before and up to 2 hours after, and include carb sources like rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, and liquids.
  
• The rest of the day your carbs should be coming in the form of low glycemic, highly nutritious foods. These would include most fruits and all vegetables, oats, quinoa, amoran, stuff like that. The rest of the day should not have any breads, pastas, rice, or other sugary type foods.
  
• By the way the glycemic index and the glycemic load of whole wheat breads and pastas are almost the same and the same goes for brown rice and white rice, so substituting these doesn't work like you might think it will.

Fruits and Vegetables: How much??

• Tons!! Load them on. Eat as many of these as you want and for those that choke them down you need to eat as many as you can.
• Fruit: 7-15 servings is good. Sound like a lot, well it is, and you need a lot cause you want to grow. Especially fleshy fruits like most 'berries'. Dark fruits are great, but you're not going to hurt yourself getting fruit (especially in high school). Avocados are a superfood as well and should be in everyones diet. You need so many of these because this needs to make up a large portion of your carbohydrate intake throughout the day.
  
• Vegetables: 5-12 servings is good. Just about all are good, especially green leafy ones. Broccoli is a superfood without doubt so you can't go wrong there, unless you are covering it with crap, like 10 layers of velvetta cheese. Asparagus is also good, and for more than just making you pee smell funny.
  

Fat: Source is key but you have to have it. Especially if you're trying to gain muscle.

This is a subject that has mislead dieters and many so call 'nutritionists' for a long time for some reason. You have to have fat in your diet (no matter who you are). Fat and Protein are actually the only two essential macronutrients, which means your body could not survive without them (by the way there are three macronutrients: protein, carbohydrate, fat). And yes I just said that your body can survive without carbs, but that is not the topic nor would you want to live that way.

Our bodies use the fat from our diets for tons of stuff other than burning it for energy. It is where we derive our hormones for one. Does that interest you? It should, since that can make the difference in you growing or not. We actually use cholesterol to make testosterone so it is important to get that in the diet as well.

But most importantly is if we are getting enough EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) these are the good fats, and they cannot be produced by the body so we need to get them from our diets. The problem is hardly anyone gets close to even the minimum amount that we need and their health, goals, and life are suffering from it.

EFA's would be EPA, DHA, CLA, and ALA. EPA and DHA are typically associated with cold water fish and fish oil capsules. CLA is actually associated with beef but is the concentration is much higher in grass fed beef than grain fed beef. ALA is actually a plant based fatty acid, but it has very potent antioxidant power, so much that taking too much can negatively affect your body.

You need these in your body, they will help decrease chronic inflamation, help with recovery, keep your brain and other organs operating great, improve your tissue qualities, and pretty much solve and prevent any disease you hear about regularly. They are quite incredible, but most people are not even close. You should be close to 1:1 on good fat to bad fat in your diet but I've heard reports of diets being 1:12 and other reports at 1:50-70. Now that's bad, really bad, but that's the common numbers in our population. Especially in the midwest where you're just not going to get a good quality, fresh, wild, cold water fish. 

So, how much fat do you need? If you are eating a ton of animal protein you are probably getting enough fat. But loading up on EFA's is going to improve everything you are doing even further. Sorry had to put the answer at the end so you'd dig through all that other crap first. It's good for you.

• Most people need at least 900mg of some type of DHA/EPA source everyday. This would solve tons of problems, especially in the long term.
  
• With athletics and sports we want to be as healthy as possible to live, train, and compete at our top level. This means getting all the nutrients you need during the day, of which FAT is included.
  
• Sources: Salmon, Tuna, Mackeral, Sardines, Cod, and also Flax seed

By the way, I eat tons of fat and get still take 1800 mg of DHA/EPA daily, along with some ALA in the form of capsules and flax seed.