Category: Diet

Posted on

Why Whey? 2013

Whey protein concentrate is one of the most popular food supplements for putting on muscle and losing body fat for bodybuilders, athletes and fitness enthusiasts alike.  I personally have seen and felt the many benefits of incorporating whey.  But why is it so good for us?  Below are 10 reasons why whey is a beneficial supplement that should be part of your diet.

  1. Whey contains all the essential amino acids needed for muscle growth and repair. It can contain as much as 7 grams of BCAAs per serving too.
  2. Whey has one of the highest amounts of leucine with 8 g per 100g (an important amino acid that has been shown to increase protein synthesis and minimise muscle break down). The amount to maintain muscle mass is around 1-3 grams daily.  Ori Hofmekler (the warrior diet creator) suggests that at least 8 grams of leucine daily will optimize its anabolic effects; this equates to around 3-4 servings of whey protein concentrate a day.
  3. Whey protein has minimal amounts of lactose compared to milk so it can be a healthy alternative for people who suffer from milk, casein or lactose intolerance. I personally cannot drink milk for that very reason but can easily digest whey.
  4. Whey protein can help control and optimise insulin secretion which means better use of nutrients, increased energy levels, increased fat loss and improved appetite control.
  5. Whey protein contains immunoglobulins which are basically antibodies that can be used to keep our immune systems strong and healthy so we can fight against bacteria, viruses or even cancer cells.
  6. Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant that is formed from a combination of three amino acids found abundantly in whey protein; cysteine, glycine and glutamine.  This can help your body defend against free radical damage and eliminate toxins.
  7. Whey protein is a cost effective way of meeting your protein needs to gain muscle mass. I personally need at least 1.5-2 grams of high quality protein per kilo of lean body mass a day to recover and grow from my training.  This would be nearly impossible to reach with a whole food diet, especially since I am blood type A with limited abilities to digest meat- so 4 servings of whey with one serving of meat a day allows me to hit my protein target.
  8. Sarcopenia is a term given to people who suffer from a decline in hormonal out-put and muscle mass after a certain age. Whey protein concentrate in conjunction with a resistance training programme can improve muscle size, strength and body fat loss as we get older.
  9. Research published in the ”International Dairy Journal”  suggests that supplementation with whey protein has important health benefits such as reducing high blood pressure, the chances of having a stroke and heart disease.
  10. The good news is that whey protein supplementation and all its benefits can be utilised by both males and females of any age!

Although this is not a complete list of all the benefits whey can provide us with you can see why whey can be an important player in helping us achieve our health and fitness goals.  So if your training and dieting are on point and progress has plateaued consider whey as a way forward!

Posted on

My blueprint for getting lean! 2013

I get a lot of questions about how to lose weight or get lean for competitions so I thought I would share my main dietary and training philosophies here.

Step 1:  Find out your blood type.

Step 2:  Go to Peter D Adamo’s website and complete the questionnaire on which diet protocol would suit you better- Blood Type or Genotype.

Step 3:  Do some reading.  Depending on what diet protocol it suggests for you, purchase the book or get it out at your local library.  If it’s blood type you have a selection of beneficial foods based on your unique blood work.  Your blood type is either O, A, B or AB.  If it is the genotype you will need to know your blood type and complete further questions and body measurements.

Step 4:  Adjust macronutrient ratios.  Now that you have the right food choices for your body you need to consider your protein, carb and fat ratios. If you store body fat easily, increase protein (make sure you are having at least 1-2 grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass-maybe even more if you are really carb sensitive), cut out grains or use sparingly and replace with more vegetables and low glycaemic fruits from your beneficial food list (definitely cut out bread, pasta and other wheat products).  Do not cut out fat-your body needs it.  Use the beneficial choices from your unique food list.  Drink at least 2-3 litres of water.

Step 5:  Adjust meal frequency.   Again this will depend on you.  Some people need to eat every 2-3 hours.  Others would do better if they stretched meals further apart.  Breakfast for me is not the most important meal of the day and it may not be for you! I personally do better on eating close to nothing all day with a large meal at night.   There are a number of different “fasting” protocols out there that I have tried.  For me the Warrior Diet is the best.  Others like Lean Gains by Martin Berkhan, Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon have worked for many people when the traditional small frequent meals didn’t work.

Step 6: Make sure that you are meeting all your nutritional needs. Make sure that from your lists you choose a variety of foods to get a range of nutrients to support health, growth and recovery. Supplements may need to be incorporated (with each blood type/ genotype diet protocol there is a unique beneficial supplement list too).  Often people have suggested to me that these diets are restrictive; I have found it to be the total opposite as I have tried numerous foods that I would never have given a second thought.

Step 6:  Do some weight training 2-4 times per week using compound exercises like, squats, dead lifts (trap bar deadlift if you can’t squat or deadlift), chins, rows, some forms of pressing and a few isolation exercises for the smaller body parts. Add in some form of cardio if it doesn’t impede on your weight training and suits your body type- for example Type O’s who are endomorphic may benefit more from cardio than a hard gainer who is Type A.   Personally, I am a Blood type A, non- secretor, Explorer genotype.    I have found that I can get leaner faster when I stick to my beneficial food lists, train body parts twice over an 8 day period using the exercises mentioned above with no cardio.   My favourite writers on weight training are Casey Butt; creator of Weightrainer.net, Steve Holman; editor of Iron man magazine, Stuart Mc Roberts of hard gainer fame, Doug Brignole and Paul Burke.

Step 7:  Remember to keep an open mind and realise that you are a unique individual.  Adjust these diet and training ideas to suit you- there are other variables like somatotypes, hormone levels, recovery ability, motivation, time and financial considerations.  Realise too that a paradigm shift in thinking may be all it takes to transform your body-don’t get trapped into thinking there is only one way to achieve your fat loss goals or that following some genetic freak or drug users advice online or in a magazine is what you need to do.

Step 8: Enjoy the process of learning about your body so that you can make the body composition changes you want in a balanced, healthy and sustainable manner.   There you have it my blueprint for getting lean!

Posted on

Reduced meals for fat loss 2013

At the end of 2006 I began using a diet protocol based on the “The Warrior Diet” that involved under eating during the day and over eating at night.  It involved 6-7 meals spread evenly throughout the day with most of the calories eaten in one main meal at night.  Along with eating for my blood type (see: eating in line with your blood-type) it finally helped me to achieve the necessary leanness for bodybuilding competition.  Although it has been effective for me in the past I wanted to see if I could make dieting easier and to see if I could beat my previous best in terms of conditioning this year.  Like they say, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, so I needed to keep learning and experimenting to keep progressing…….

So this year I decided to change things up.  From my experience using the Warrior Diet I had always found that I never felt like breakfast and I only really had it because I was scared that if I didn’t I would go into a catabolic state.   I decided to research this further and found some positive research supporting the idea of missing breakfast.  This led me to find Martin Berkhan’s website on (IF) intermittent fasting- (leangains.com) which is fasting 16 hours and eating 2-3 meals within an 8 hour window.   I decided to try this methodology with some minor adjustments to suit my lifestyle and goals; what followed was quite a revelation for me.  Immediately I found that I had more energy and began losing body fat at a faster rate than I had ever done before.  In less than one month without feeling hungry or losing any strength I have gone from 68.6 kg (1st February) to 64 kg by the 22nd February!  I normally lose anywhere between .25 and .5 kg per week so this has been exciting in the fact that; one, body fat loss has seemed effortless and two, it seemed like I wasn’t on a strict diet.  The jury is still out on whether I can gain muscle on this protocol so I will discuss my findings in a later article after I have tried manipulating macronutrient ratios and my training regime over a longer period of time.  Anyway, here is my current eating plan that I used over February this year;

First meal is around 10-11am, second meal is around 2-3 pm and final meal is around 6-7pm just after training.

Meal 1: 1-2 whey protein shakes+ can of lentils and carrot.

(40-65 grams of protein & 350-450 calories)

Meal 2: 2 x whey protein shakes with 8 caps of fish oil.

(50 grams of protein & 350 calories)

Meal 3: lamb or beef stir fry with heaps of veges!

(60-100 grams of protein and 1000 calories)

Although this goes against everything we normally think would be an ideal dietary plan for a bodybuilder my experience is that sometimes you need to go “outside of the box” to find ways to keep improving and move forward if the “normal” approach just isn’t doing it for you.   I am not saying this way of eating would work for everyone, however there may be others out there that have struggled to make progress with a traditional approach and find this way of eating to be right up their alley.  If you do decide to give this diet methodology a go ease yourself into it and make sure you are getting enough macro and micronutrients from your diet and supplementation so you can still train hard and function normally outside the gym.  At the end of the day if you try something a little different and it works for you then it doesn’t really matter whether it is the “norm” or not don’t you think?

Posted on

Pre-contest Prep 2013

Lat spread versus the best in the southern                                      hemisphere

It is only two weeks out from the NABBA/WFF Christchurch competition I am entering this year so I thought I would share my food and training log for the last week I have just completed to give you an idea of how I have been prepping for it.  The good thing is my strength is up on last year in all exercises which reflects my focus more on myofibrillar (muscle fibre) growth compared to working primarily on sarcoplasmic(muscle fluid) growth. (Whether this translates in a better look is another thing J). Posing practise is on days I train so rest days are for REST. I had been intermittent fasting 16 hours with an 8 hour eating window with only 3-4 meals, but after my body fat loss stalled I decided to revert back to the Warrior Diet (under eating and over eating at night). Straight away I saw progress!

DATE BW All weights are in kilos.  
Fri 26/4 63.4 Full body workout

1. Squat:  100x5, 140x5,120x6

2. Romanian D-lift: 100x10

3. 1-leg curl: 36x14,7

4. seated calf raise:  stackx25

5. chins: 20x10,5 BWx10

6. DB fly press: 41.5x10, 30x11,7

7. High Pull: 80x10,5

8. face pull: 45x11,11

9. reverse curl: 50x6,4

10. push downs: 40x11,10

 Meals

1. 60g unflavoured whey with natvia*5 tabs spirulina

2. 2 raw carrots with lemon juice and 240g lentils

3. 60g unflavoured whey with natvia*+5g glutamine

4. 180g lamb, head of broccoli, 500g green beans, whole onion, 3 cloves garlic, 2 courgettes, 2 carrots, seasoning(10g fish oil), 5g ghee

 

Supps: B-12, 300-450g magnesium, milk thistle, rhodiola rosea, 10g fish oil, NO supplement before training.
Sat

27/4

 Rest day Meals

1. 30g unflavoured whey with natvia*5 tabs spirulina

2. 30g unflavoured whey with natvia*(10g fish oil)

3.  2 raw carrots with lemon juice/ or 240g lentils

4. 30g unflavoured whey with natvia*+5g glutamine

5. 180g lamb, head of broccoli, 500g green beans, whole onion, 3 cloves garlic, 2 courgettes, 2 carrots, seasoning(10g fish oil), 5g ghee

6. 30g unflavoured whey with natvia*+5g glutamine

 

Supps: B-12, 300-450g magnesium, milk thistle, rhodiola rosea, 10g fish oil
Sun

28/4

 62.4 Upper body

1. DB row: 57x13, 45x13

2. DB fly press:  45x5, 30x13

3. Cable row: 75x12,8,5

4. DB decline press 35x15,10,10

5. Omni-cable raise: 12x16,10,10,8

6. Omni DB row: 35x13,12,11

 Meals

Same as day before except 180g monkfish with meal 5 instead of lamb.

 

Supps: B-12, 300-450g magnesium, milk thistle, rhodiola rosea, 10g fish oil, NO supplement before training.

 
Mon

29/4

 62.4 Rest day Same as day before except 180g lamb with meal 5 instead of monkfish.

 

Supps: B-12, 300-450g magnesium, milk thistle, rhodiola rosea, 10g fish oil
Tues

30/4

 62.6 Lower body

1. Deadlift:100x5,140x5,180x3,140x10

2. BB Hack squat: 120x11

3. 1-Leg curl: 40x11,7

4. calf raise: stack+35 x16,11

5. DB curl 26x8

6. Reverse curl 40x17,11

7. DB pullover ext: 45x8

8. Omni tri-pushdowns: 40x9,9

 Same as day before except 180g monkfish with meal 5 instead of lamb.

 

Supps: B-12, 300-450g magnesium, milk thistle, rhodiola rosea, 10g fish oil, NO supplement before training.

 
Wed

1 /5

 62.2 Rest day Same as day before.

 
Thurs2/5 62.6 Upper body

1. Cable row: 95x5, 85x5, 70x6

2. Omni DB fly press: 41.5x9,30x12,7

3. DB row: 57x14, 45x14

4. Decline Bench: 100x7, 90x6

5. Omni DB row: 35x17,12,11

6. Omni-cable raise: 12x10,10,8,6

 

 Same as day before except 180g lamb with meal 5 instead of monkfish.

 

Supps: B-12, 300-450g magnesium, milk thistle, rhodiola rosea, 10g fish oil, NO supplement before training.
Fri

3/5

 62.6 Rest day Same as day before except 2 rice cakes with meal 5.

*natvia is a natural sweetener containing stevia and erythritol.

This diet and training programme will carry on through until competition day. So:

Sat          4/5: Lower body

Mon      6/5: Upper Body

Wed      8/5: Lower Body

Fri           10/5: Upper Body

Sun        12/5: Lower Body

Tue        14/5: Upper Body

Thu        16/5: Lower Body

SATURDAY=competition!

 

The only changes diet wise will be rice cakes or lentils added when I look a little flat.  In the last week I will begin water loading: Wednesday and Thursday I will have 5 litres of water, Friday 4 litres and sip water when thirsty on the day (Drug free bodybuilders should never restrict water intake leading up to a show!)  I season my main food meal at night with my favourite spices and salt right up until show; just have a little less on Friday night before the comp.

So that’s my prep for 2013!  As you can see it is a pretty simple training and diet regime that has served me well in the past.  If you decide to take the plunge and compete find what works for you, believe in your training and diet, stick to the plan and give it your best!

Posted on

Why I say NO to cardio 2013

 

Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against Cardio.  Cardiovascular or aerobic exercise has been proven by research over the years to be a beneficial way of improving your health and well-being.  In fact in New Zealand we recommend performing a minimum of 30 minutes of physical activity every day to maintain good health. There are many forms of cardio to suit your own preferences and if you enjoy it I say go for it- It will do so many positive things for you!  I also want you to consider that performing “Cardio” is not always necessary in reaching your health and fitness goals. It is obviously clear that if you want to be a marathon runner you will need to run, but if you are like me; a natural bodybuilder- does performing traditional cardio make a lot of sense?  Everyone does it right?  Well for me the answer is NO.
Before I tell you why I want to give you an insight into how the idea of getting rid of cardio evolved for me.  The first time I considered dropping cardio from my pre-contest bodybuilding phase was back in 2005, I had just competed in my last show of the year and was preparing students for a triathlon as part of their NCEA course at school. I had not achieved the level of leanness I wanted to during the shows, even with cardio, and thought I would do some extra training with the kids to see if it would augment fat loss and my weight training.  What happened was a huge surprise!  I gained body fat, lost strength and felt terrible.  Now you may be thinking that I was doing too much, but apart from 3 weight training sessions and 6 half hour cardio sessions- that was it.  In 2006 I competed in bodybuilding again and was unhappy with my results even with all the hard work I put in- I just wasn’t lean enough.

I decided that next time I competed I would follow the lifestyle recommendations offered by Peter D’Adamo for Blood type A and reduce the amount of exercise to lower cortisol levels. I also began to see my weight training sessions as more meditative than intense to further balance the stress created by weight training.  Excessive and prolonged cortisol levels within the body have clearly been shown to promote increased body fat levels through several different mechanisms. Also as a PE teacher I often tell my students that they need to train specifically for their sport.  How is cardio anywhere like a bodybuilding competition? You may be only up onstage for 10 minutes max and during that time you are posing as hard as possible, so it made sense to drop cardio and focus on weight training, diet and posing to improve my ability to get lean for competitions.
In 2008, along with some diet modifications I performed no traditional cardio. Instead I began using “rest-pause training” during weight training sessions and found I lost fat faster and achieved a level of leanness I was unable to achieve before with cardio. The other huge benefits were that I had more energy to put into my weight training (I only trained 3-4 times per week); I stayed stronger, recovered a lot faster between workouts and felt a million times better!

Since 2008 I have done no traditional cardio before a bodybuilding show; all I do is:

  • Weight training 3-4 times per week with sessions lasting less than 45 minutes.
  • Make sure my diet is on point (for me that is high protein, no processed carbohydrates, plenty of fresh vegetables, lots of good fats and whey protein so my macronutrients ratios are right for me to lose body fat and gain/maintain muscle).
  • Use a pre-workout supplement.
  • Posing practice for around 15-30 minutes on non-training days, slightly more as competition gets closer.

I have to say for some people this may not be enough exercise for them physically or emotionally before a bodybuilding contest but I have found training smarter for me, not harder has given me better results.  Also, genetics and other variables can influence how much you can train in terms of weight training and whether cardio ruins or augments your efforts in the gym.  For example Peter D’Adamo recommends that Blood type O’s generally benefit from more exercise as it reduces stress and lowers cortisol levels for them.
In any case you need to be aware that there are many different ways to achieve your health and fitness goals, just make sure you don’t blindly follow what others do and find what works best for you.  That is why I say NO to cardio!