I never say I’m on a diet because I’m not. I just choose to eat healthy as much as I can. This meal plan is intended for people who want to eat healthier to sustain proper muscle mass and have more energy. What a lot of folks don’t know is that very acidic foods slow down your metabolism and have excess amounts of fats and sodium that cause you to keep a lot of fluids and store fat that your body doesn’t need. READ MY EARLIER BLOG ON ACIDIC FOODS….
I’m making this meal plan for a couple friends of mine, who don’t work out a whole lot, but want to stick to a healthy eating plan. I eat like this on days that I don’t train which is 1 or 2 days a week but anyways… here we go.
This meal plan consists of 5-portioned meals a day. You will eat every 3 hours. This sounds crazy, but the portions are reasonable and keep your body full along with the proper amount of carbohydrates to have energy throughout your day. This meal plan is a 12 hour eating plan. This will be assuming you’re up for 16 hours a day giving you 8hour sleep.
*hydration: drink between 16oz of fluids every 2 hours. YES THIS IS 8lbs of fluids but your body will flush it out every 20-45minutes depending on your bladder/metabolism. Hydration is a key factor in keeping your body hydrated so that you are never thirsty and lack energy to do your work/daily living. Your body will acclimate to this change over a week. This might seem like a lot, but your body will look healthier just from being properly hydrated. DO IT! If you feel that your body cannot take in 1lb of fluids every 2 hours, try 10-12oz for a week or two and then go up to 16oz every 2 hours.
*I will drink 1 cup of milk, 1-2 cups of tea, 1 cup of coffee/iced coffee, 1-2cups of any fruit juice in a typical day. The rest of my hydration is water. I drink about 3-4 sodas a week, but 1-2 of them are diet sodas.
*supplements:
1 multi-vitamin pill everyday. Any brand will do.
3 (1000mg) of fish oil pills everyday. Take 1 pill every 4-5hours.
These two supplements will keep your brain, heart, joints and skin healthy. Sometimes we don’t get the required vitamins & minerals that we need from our regular meal plans, so when we don’t, taking these 2 supplements are good for your either way.
Example:
Wake up @8am:
Small bowl of cereal with 1 banana or handful of strawberries cut up into bowl.
*preferred cereal: total, total raisin bran, basic 4, frosted flakes, frosted mini-wheats
mid day snack 11am:
handful of nuts (ex. Cashews, almonds, peanuts, almonds)
handful of fruit (ex. Watermelon, honeydew, a big apple/pear/orange, grapes, grapefruit)
2 slices of whole wheat bread with butter.
Lunch 2pm:
On a given plate, splits the plate into 3 portions.
Handful of rice or brown rice
Palm size of vegetables (broccoli, carrots, peas, corn, snap peas, bell peppers, spinach)
Palm size of meat (choose from steak, pork, chicken, beef or oxtail (kare kare..haha)
*try not to eat the fat on the meat, but if it’s a very small amount of fat, like on a tri tip, then don’t worry*
afternoon snack 5pm
1 small bag of sun chips, kettle chips, or baked chips. (try to avoid any bag of chips containing MSG (monosodium glutamate). MSG causes you to feel hungrier than you really are and eat more)
1 yogurt cup or gogurt
Dinner 8pm
Stir fry with one of the following (chicken or beef) and 2 or 3 of the following (asparagus, onions/green onions, cucumbers, celery, carrots, cabbage, sprouts)
Handful of rice or brown rice.
**Eating like this is great for people who want to stick a healthy eating plan. These meals give you the right amount of energy/calories throughout the day to keep you feeling full and energetic throughout your day instead of eating fast foods or high fatty foods that leave your feeling tired an hour after ingesting the food.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Maltodextrin & Caffeine
WHAT IS MALTODEXTRIN?Maltodextrin is a form of sugar. It is a actually a hydrolysate of starch, generally from potato starch, and is used in many energy boosting products, meal replacements, weight gainers and often as a type of filler in liquid sports drinks. Being a man made, altered form of sugar, it is actually quite a complex molecule, unlike simple sugars such as dextrose. Rated against the glycemic index maltodextrin shows a much slower release than typical sugar into the blood stream as glucose and so makes it a perfect choice for sustained liquid energy. In simple terms, all ingested carbohydrate enters our blood stream as glucose, where it is either used for energy, stored as glycogen in muscle cells or converted into triglycerides and stored as body fat. (this is why when people consume too many sugars especially high fructose corn syrup, along with a lot of juices & sweet foods, your body cannot use up all of those sugars for energy at one time so they're then converted into glycogen and converted into fat for storage)
Only so much energy can be used up in a certain unit of time and only so much glucose can be stored within muscle cells until they are full. And so if a carbohydrate enters our system very fast and in a large quantity, our bodies release insulin to deposit the excess energy as stored fat to be used at a later time. If we can slow the release of the carbohydrate down this makes it much easier for the body to deal with, having small regular releases of copable amounts of glucose entering the system over a period of time. This stabilizes our energy levels, blood sugar levels and lowers the risk of gaining body fat. Typically a slow releasing carbohydrate such as maltodextrin can sustain energy release for a number of hours, fueling good workouts and feelings of fullness and good positive energy.
This is why maltodextrin, being liquid, is clearly a better choice for the majority of good sports supplements rather than fast releasing high glycemic carbohydrates often found in cheap weight gainers or poorly processed proteins. The exception to this is often in good creatine transport systems where the main ingredient is dextose a fast release carbohydrate, however the reason for this is to force creatine into the muscle cell as fast as possible. Of course these type of drinks should generally be avoided if the goal is to reduce bodyfat levels.
HOW MUCH SHOULD I USE AND WHEN?Maltodextrin is used in varying amounts depending upon the goal wishing to be achieved. Often from as little as 10g in some meal replacements, which is less than a small apple, to 100g in some weight gainers. Regarding the release speed of carbohydrates, many companies now add fiber and a little essential fatty acids to the formula, both adding to the slowing of stomach digestion of the carbohydrate.
Maltodextrin tends to be the main constituent of most energy drinks and rehydration sports drinks. Usually finding a dose of between 50 - 100g a serving cited to be used before, during and after training. Of course this dosing schedule is individualised depending upon the result required. These formulas often contain small amounts of dextrose for a fast release of energy, a little fructose to resupply liver glycogen fast and often mineral salts such as sodium and potassium to aid the body to rehydrate - very important factor in most sports especially those cardiovascular based.
Maltodextrin can be bought at GNC/Vitamin World in supplements, but personally, I receive my maltodextrin from Monster energy drinks and AMP energy drinks. I sip on these before I work out and during my workout. For me, I train at the gym 2hours at a time so my body needs those sugars(carbs) for energy to burn during my workouts. And caffeine helps lower my RPE(rate of percieved exertion), basically increasing my tolerance for pain and exertion while I'm working out. This means that I can push myself harder during my training than normal. In my fundamentals of exercise training class a couple years ago, I read many articles from sports physiologists and studies showing that caffeine before workouts/exercise do help in mental alertness but also lower the RPE for a given person.
*1.4 - 2.3 g of caffeine per lb of body weight is recommended based on these studies*
Only so much energy can be used up in a certain unit of time and only so much glucose can be stored within muscle cells until they are full. And so if a carbohydrate enters our system very fast and in a large quantity, our bodies release insulin to deposit the excess energy as stored fat to be used at a later time. If we can slow the release of the carbohydrate down this makes it much easier for the body to deal with, having small regular releases of copable amounts of glucose entering the system over a period of time. This stabilizes our energy levels, blood sugar levels and lowers the risk of gaining body fat. Typically a slow releasing carbohydrate such as maltodextrin can sustain energy release for a number of hours, fueling good workouts and feelings of fullness and good positive energy.
This is why maltodextrin, being liquid, is clearly a better choice for the majority of good sports supplements rather than fast releasing high glycemic carbohydrates often found in cheap weight gainers or poorly processed proteins. The exception to this is often in good creatine transport systems where the main ingredient is dextose a fast release carbohydrate, however the reason for this is to force creatine into the muscle cell as fast as possible. Of course these type of drinks should generally be avoided if the goal is to reduce bodyfat levels.
HOW MUCH SHOULD I USE AND WHEN?Maltodextrin is used in varying amounts depending upon the goal wishing to be achieved. Often from as little as 10g in some meal replacements, which is less than a small apple, to 100g in some weight gainers. Regarding the release speed of carbohydrates, many companies now add fiber and a little essential fatty acids to the formula, both adding to the slowing of stomach digestion of the carbohydrate.
Maltodextrin tends to be the main constituent of most energy drinks and rehydration sports drinks. Usually finding a dose of between 50 - 100g a serving cited to be used before, during and after training. Of course this dosing schedule is individualised depending upon the result required. These formulas often contain small amounts of dextrose for a fast release of energy, a little fructose to resupply liver glycogen fast and often mineral salts such as sodium and potassium to aid the body to rehydrate - very important factor in most sports especially those cardiovascular based.
Maltodextrin can be bought at GNC/Vitamin World in supplements, but personally, I receive my maltodextrin from Monster energy drinks and AMP energy drinks. I sip on these before I work out and during my workout. For me, I train at the gym 2hours at a time so my body needs those sugars(carbs) for energy to burn during my workouts. And caffeine helps lower my RPE(rate of percieved exertion), basically increasing my tolerance for pain and exertion while I'm working out. This means that I can push myself harder during my training than normal. In my fundamentals of exercise training class a couple years ago, I read many articles from sports physiologists and studies showing that caffeine before workouts/exercise do help in mental alertness but also lower the RPE for a given person.
*1.4 - 2.3 g of caffeine per lb of body weight is recommended based on these studies*
Monday, June 21, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Life is good and everything is fine. Having more good times than bad, better days than boring days. Everyday since graduation has been a progressive or fun day for me. I am single, no debt, saving up for santa barbara in 2 weeks, possible san diego trip in July again, and then SEOUL!!! I can't wait to go up there and be with my Capoeira CDO (cordao de ouro) FAM BAM! I can't wait to experience the korean culture out there! Xango, Berinjela, Prea e possibly Sapo and I will be getting into a lot of trouble out there! I have to get my passport ready! Anyways, I've been too busy to blog anything lately. Haven't really watched TV at all for the past 3 months because of school, capoeira, babysitting, hangin out with the homies..and working 5 nights a week. haha. I've been teaching myself portuguese for 2 weeks now at barnes & Noble just sitting there for a few hours 4-5x a week. Last week I went to San Diego for the Capoeira Mandinga event so this weekend I'm getting right back into things. haha. Time for capoeira class in Vallejo!
-TCHAU!
-TCHAU!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
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