Ben Asked:

What should I eat after a workout?

Thanks for the question Ben.

Well, there are a couple ways you can go about this.  It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish physically with your workout.  If you are trying to build lean muscle and lose weight, I would say to have a mixture between protein and complex carbs.  If you are trying to pack on more muscle, I would say to eat more protein foods than carb foods.  You should have something to eat at least 30 minutes after your workout, your body will absorb the nutrients better.  Although I would not really find something to eat, but more something to drink.  You have a small window of opportunity to replenish your body with protein and complex carbs, and sometimes food just takes to long to break down.  But liquid forms are great.  I would get a whey protein powder to drink right after a workout if I was you.  Whey protein will help promote either a toned looking body or a muscular looking body.

I hope that answers your question.

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Here are four different foods that are great for your fitness:

Let’s start if off right! 

Beef – I used to love watching those beef commercials, “Beef, its whats for dinner.”  I loved it!  Even though the commercials were awesome, red meat has gotten a pretty bad rap over the years, but did you know that beef is 20% leaner than it was 10 years ago.  And if you eat grass-fed beef, it can actually help lower your cholesterol.  There is so many benefits to eating beef.  Beef highly contains amino-acids, which are great for building muscle.  A 3-ounce steak provides over 10% of your daily intake for some nutrients.  Including B6 and B12, protein, phosphorus, niacin, selenium, and riboflavin.  Beef also includes a healthy dose of zinc and iron.  But with any type of food, do not over do it.  You can have a 3-ounce steak around 3-4 times a week.  Look For steaks that are less in fat, like rounds steaks or top sirloin steaks, filet mignons are also low in fat and super good.

Oatmeal – Breakfast is for champions!  And Oatmeal is a great breakfast.  The wonderful thing about oatmeal, is that it is quick and easy to make.  Plus you can add other incredible foods to it.  Like blueberries, raspberries, bananas, and strawberries..the list goes on and on.  Oatmeal is not only good for your heart, but it is also good for weight loss.  Oatmeal is rich with soluble fiber, with helps lower you cholesterol.  When picking oatmeal, make sure that you get normal oatmeal.  Oatmeal packets usually have a lot of added sugars in them.  Look for quick oats in the big tubs.

“100%” Whole-Wheat Bread – The reason I emphasized “100%,” is because only true whole wheat bread have 100% on it.  So make sure to buy 100% whole-wheat or whole-grain bread.  Whole-wheat bread is great for giving you energy, and it does not spike your energy levels like white bread does.  White bread cause your body to store fat, whole-wheat bread does not.  Whole-wheat bread will also help you feel full longer.

Salmon – You probably love or hate it, but it is still one of the best foods you can eat for fitness.  3-ounces of salmon provide you with 20-grams of protein! And why is protein so important?  Because it helps speed up your metabolism 3-4 times faster than carbs or fat, plus it helps fill you up.  Salmon is also rich in Omega-3′s, which are fatty acids that help clean your arteries.  Salmon is like the superman food.  It is great for muscle building and for keep your heart healthy.

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The first and most important thing to do is to keep up with your workout routine.  This will help you continue to burn calories and keep your metabolism running.  If you fail to do your workout routine, you might pack on some unwanted pounds that you will have to work off later.  It’s better to keep the weight off now then trying to burn it all off all over again.

Eat before the parties.  This is important, because many people go to parties with an empty stomach, and guess what they fill there stomachs with at the party.  Yep…egg nog, chocolates, fudge, candy, fried foods, cookies, and many other unhealthy foods.  So do yourself a favor and eat before you go to a Christmas party.

Eat small portions.  This will help your metabolism run at a consistent rate.  Do not bog your system down with big and heavy meals, but eat smaller portions throughout the day.  Try eating slower too, let your body have time to tell your brain that you are full, do not stuff yourself quickly.

So Hopefully these few tips can help you and remind you to look at the overall goal. To keep your weight off during the holiday seasons.

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If you look on the front of the book, you will see the title, “The Abs Diet,” but you will see a little tag line underneath the title, is says “The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life.”  Let me tell you my opinion, David Zinczenko is trying to sell a book, he has been selling a magazines for many years so he is going to try to catch your eye with popular terms like “the abs diet,” and “six-week plan to flatten your stomach.”  Even though David is trying to sell his product with eye-catching terms, the diet plan should sale itself.

I really enjoyed learning about The Abs Diet.  The Abs Diet teaches you how to eat healthy, and it does a good job breaking everything down and making it into an achievable plan.  The nutrition side of it all actually reminds me of the South Beach Diet, but what the South Beach Diet Lacks (a workout plan), The Abs Diet provides.  Not only does The Abs Diet teach the importance of proteins, carbs, and fat, but also it also teaches you the importance of a workout routine, and actually provides you with one.

I feel that the nutrition plan is easy to follow, and even though you might not get six-pack abs like it says in six weeks, this is definitely a workout and nutrition plan that will get you on the right track.  There are some great recipes and a whole section of workouts that focus on your whole core.  The Abs Diet also does a good job in teaching people about the muscles that make up your core. Many people lack the knowledge of muscles that make up their core.

I approve of The Abs Diet.  Follow the nutrition plan, and include the core workouts to your normal workout routine, and you should see some great results.

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Lets face it, parties and family gatherings are fun…well at least parties are.  But when you mix fun with delicious food, then you have a recipe for a weight loss disaster.  So you need to switch up your game plan a little bit, most the year you are probably focusing on how to lose weight, but during the holiday season you need to focus on how to not gain weight.  Weight management!  The holidays are way to fun to dismiss, and it will only cause you frustration and disappointment if you decide not to eat these delicious foods.  You main goal should be to keep your weight stable through these times.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are strong enough to get through the holiday season and still lose weight, then go for it!!  But the average person usually throws all their discipline away during the holiday season, and binges on eggnog, turkey, mash potatoes, and pie.  I am trying to give the average person a new way to look at things, a strategy to their Holiday Eating.

Here are a few Holiday Eating tips:

1. Continue to workout.  Okay, so the first tip has nothing to do with eating, but this is very important, you need to stay active during this time of the season.  Resist the urge to go into hibernation.
2. Don’t Starve Yourself.  What I mean by these is…do not starve yourself before you go to a party or a family dinner.  Make sure to eat little snacks before you arrive to the party to help curb your cravings.  Eating small snacks can help you from cutting loose.
3. Portions.  Eat rational portions, you do not need to fill your plate up so full it needs a wide load sign to get through the crowd.  Your stomach is not meant to eat that much food.
4. Eat Slowly.  Allow your body to know it has eaten food.  So many times we inhale the first plate of food, and then after the second or third serving our bodies finally catch up, and we feel terrible.  Eating slowly will help your body know when it is full and when you need to stop eating.
5. Know The Consequences.  You know that 5 to 8 pounds you have been working to get off all year, well if you gain it all back,  you will have to lose it all over again the next year.  It is a terrible cycle to get in.

Hopefully these Holiday Eating Tips can prevent you from gaining weight during the holiday season.

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There is nothing wrong with wanting defined abs, but here is the problem…exercise companies know you want sexy abs, and they will try to suck you in with their infomercials and their “promises.”  I am tired of seeing all the gimmicks on TV that promise you 6 PACK ABS, with as little as 10 minutes a day.  No abs machine is going to get you six pack abs.  You can strengthen your core, but it takes a lot more than just abs workouts to achieve six pack abs.

You cannot target fat loss to one specific area on your body, it is very important to do abdominal workouts (which we will talk about), but it cannot be the only thing you do.  You need to incorporate cardiovascular training, weight lifting, and interval training.  You need to turn your body into a fat burning machine, and you do that by raising your lean muscle mass, because muscles burns fat.  You also need to have a healthy diet, there are certain foods that can help you get your sexy flat abs, like foods with protein, and foods that are either whole grain or whole wheat.  But let get to some of the reasons why strong flat abs are important, other than just looking good.

Yes, great looking abs go further than just skin deep, it’s not all about looking good.  There are many health benefits to strengthening your core that will help you live a long and healthy life.  If you are experiencing back pain, most the time it is because of the baggage you are carrying up front.  Your back is supporting all that weight called your belly, or beer belly.  Strengthening your abs will also help you with everyday activities.  Just think about all the movements we do, twisting, bending, pushing, and pulling, we engage our core far more than we realize, and if we had a strong core than we would be less likely to injure ourselves.  Belly fat has also been related to heart disease, the fat that surrounds our midsections is said to be the most dangerous fat for our hearts.

When you training your body and you come to your abdominal workouts, it is important to find an abs routine that will target each section of your abdominal region.  Target these abdominal regions:

• Rectus Abdominis

• Transverse Abdominis

• External Obliques

• Internal Obliques

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Weight Watchers has a good heart, they try to provide people with a way to lose weight, where they can still eat good meals through out their day.  They try to curb people’s cravings and find foods that are filling for the person to eat.  Their point system is a good idea, if a person has the desire and discipline to live a healthy lifestyle.

Although Weight Watchers has been around for awhile, there has been a lot of people who get weary of the point system and stop doing the weight loss program.  A lot of those people gain all their weight back because they get tired of doing the math.  Plus another problem to the Weight Watchers diet is the flawed point system.  The point system is easily taken advantage of.  People skip meals throughout their day in order to eat something that is not healthy for them later on, and still fall under their points limit.  This is very dangerous to do, because eating fewer meals and unhealthy meals throughout your day can actually help destroy you metabolism.

Now it is not Weight Watchers fault that people are taking advantage of their point system, but they definitely provide a loophole in the system.  Weight Watchers has been trying to address this issue and feel like they have done so with their new “Momentum System.”  Weight Watchers also provides a lot of information on their website such as recipes, success stories, and a marketplace, and also has fitness and exercise routines to help people live a healthy lifestyle.

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The principle behind the South Beach Diet is that bad fats and carbohydrates can actually make you hungrier by spiking your blood sugar levels, which is why you gain weight.  By eliminating those bad fats and carbohydrates, you will feel more full and live a healthier lifestyle.

As I mentioned before there are 3 phases to the South Beach Diet.

The First Phase – You pretty much eat normal size portions of food, but you will eliminate all carbohydrates.  This will probably be the toughest phase, to get through, because a lot of your really good foods have carbohydrates in them.  This strict first phase lasts for two weeks, and in this two weeks, you will eat lean meats.  Turkey, chicken, shellfish are all accepted in this first stage, some selected vegetables, nuts and low fat cheese are also accepted in this first phase of the South Beach Diet.

The Second Phase – The first thing you need to know about the second phase is, you decided when it’s over.  The second phase starts introducing more foods into the mix, foods that have better fat and good carbohydrates.  You will not lose as much weight as you did in the first week, but you should continue to see a small weight loss every week.  You continue Phase Two of the South Beach Diet until you reach your desired weight.

The Third Phase – The Idea behind Phase 3 of the South Beach Diet, is that Phase 3 lasts the rest of your life.  You have learned in the first two phases what is good for you and what is bad for you.  The third phase is the maintaining stage; you just want to maintain your desired weight.  If you begin to put on more pounds, then simply do the first phase again, and return to your healthy lifestyle of eating.

Here’s my take…I actually do not mind this diet, it actually teaches you some very good principles in what you should and should not be eating.  The other great thing about the South Beach Diet is that you can live the rest of your life sticking to this diet, unlike the Atkins Diet.  The only problem I have with the South Beach Diet is that it fails to get people to workout.  If you were able to match this diet with a healthy workout plan, you could really speed up your metabolism, and see some great results.  Sometimes when people lose weight just from a diet change, they become lazy, and look at it as an excuse not to workout.  So match the South Beach Diet with a good workout plan and you should be good to go.

Always consult your doctor before entering into a diet or a workout plan.

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The Atkins Diet in short, has you eliminate pretty much all carbohydrates for the first part of the plan.  So that means no pasta, no vegetables, no bread, no fruit, and no juice.  Later on in the program you start to introduce carbohydrates back into your diet.  The theory of the Atkins Diet, is that by dramatically reducing carbohydrates, which your body usually burns first, it will skip burning carbohydrates and go straight to burning fat, resulting in weight loss.

So does the Atkins Diet work?  Yes, it actually does work.  But if the Atkins Diet works, why is there so much controversy over it?  Let me tell you why I do not like the Atkins Diet.  The Atkins Diet is great for short-term weight loss, but bad for a lifetime of health.  By eliminating foods with carbohydrates, you are limiting yourself to all the wonderful nutrients that help your body.  With the Atkins Diet you pretty much only eat foods with protein, which includes steak, chicken, eggs, bacon, and turkey, and even though this sounds great, they are also high in saturated fat.  So even though you might lose 20 to 30 pounds, you will actually be doing damage to yourself in the long run.

Another thing that bugs me about the Atkins Diet and all popular diets is that the diets are focused on overweight people, who are already lazy and not physically active.  Even though you might lose a whole bunch of weight doing the Atkins Diet, most people never learn how to overcome their laziness, and since the Atkins Diet is almost impossible to maintain longterm, most people gain their weight back and sometimes even more weight then when they started.

Your body craves fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and nutrients, so it is not smart to deprive your body of those needs.  Obviously there are health benefits to losing weight, which the Atkins Diet can help with.  But even though you will get some benefits to losing weight, it does not meanyou will be a healthy person, or have a healthy life.

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