The Fitness Mantra: Nutrition, Nutrition, Nutrition

Location, location, location.  This mantra is chanted and drilled into every Real Estate Agent’s brain as the number rule of real estate.  The sale of the house, the value of the property, all depends on the location of the property.  Let’s put it into a fitness perspective.  Trainers and Nutritionist are taught that body development, health and energy all depend on nutrition.  Taking into account what you put into your body and the results you see all focus on your nutrition, what you eat. 

I am a firm believer in “you are what you eat”. I ate massive amounts of carbs (pasta, bread, pasta, bread, you get the idea) to the point where my stomach looked like that of a Hawaiian Sweet Roll.  Some may disagree and say that because of my natural small size that that is farfetched.  However, I am here to say that my biscuit belly theory is indeed fact.  When I began taking what I ate more seriously— watching my carb intake, cutting out sugar, low sodium, more leafy green veggies—my stomach began to go down.  I no longer saw what looked to be another life form in my midsection, but I saw a flat stomach, and, dare I say, abs! 

Many people think if you lift enough weights and do enough cardio, the results will show and instantly have the body they’ve always wanted.  Without nutrition being at the core of your fitness regimen, you will end up looking the same as you started.  It goes without saying that nutrition plays a major role in your body’s progression and its overall state.  In order to be healthy you have to eat healthy.  It does not seem possible to eat hamburgers and hotdogs and expect six pack abs overnight.  Your body takes time to develop and has to be fed foods that will aid in its growth.  Below is a food guide that will help curb your food cravings into healthier food choices:

Instead Of:                                                          Eat Instead:                               

Chocolate                                                 Nuts, veggies, fruits

Sugar                                                        Fruit, eggs, nuts, spinach, cranberries, raisins, sweet potato

Carbs (bread, pasta)                                Fish, beans, nuts, high protein meat    

Greasy food                                              Milk, cheese, leafy green veggies

Salty food                                                 Milk, nuts, seeds, fish

Nutrition can be easy but it needs to be drilled into our head, almost chanted, for us to understand its importance.  Just like that of the Real Estate Agent’s mantra location, location, location, your body and overall health depends on your nutrition.  You can work out 6 days a week for 2 hours.  You will see your body change slightly, however, it’s nothing compared to when nutrition is firmly at the center and becomes the factor of restructuring your body.  When it comes to fitness and you are seeking results, just think nutrition, nutrition, nutrition.

Boosting Your Immune System

Any time someone sneezes or coughs, I instantly get tensed.  I think of the many germ particles floating in the air, looking for the perfect body to camp out and make a new home.  As hard as I try to shield them, they move too fast, even for me.  The moment their “owner” pushes them out of their body, they are released and no running or rolling the window down can save you from them.  That is why it is imperative to boost your immune system to ward off any illnesses seeking to disrupt your spring and summer-time vacation plans.  Essentially, your immune system acts as a protector against germs so that your body will not shut down.  Incorporating healthy eating choices into your diet and generally understanding your body and how your immune system works allows you to develop a more conscious and healthy lifestyle.

We inhale thousands upon thousands of germs each day.  Take a moment to think about that.  Each time you breathe, you are breathing in millions of germs surrounding you, just floating around in the air without a care in the world.  Knowing this, it makes sense to prep your body for illnesses attempting to attack it.  That's why we boost our immune system.  The same way a company gives out incentives to its employers to boost or strengthen the morale within the workplace so that everyone is happy and on the same page, is the same way our immune systems are boosted.  We want our immune system strengthened so that when germs (bacteria and viruses) attempt to enter our body and shut it down, it will serve as a blocker against them.

Ways to boost your immune system:

1. Drink water - we want to flush out the toxins from our bodies.  The way to do that is staying hydrated.  Another benefit is it helps digest food.  A strong digestive system allows nutrition to distribute adequately.
2. Eat smart, eat healthy - eating gobs of hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, pizza, and drinking soda sounds like a good time, and it's an even better time for those germs to slip in and take over because your immune system is not receiving any nutrients from these types of foods.  Citrus fruits loaded with Vitamin C, foods rich in protein (chicken, fish, turkey, lean cuts of beef), quinoa, black beans, spinach, lemon, ginger, garlic, broccoli, kale, sweet potatoes, all are better alternatives for boosting your immune system.
3. Adequate amounts of sleep - it goes without saying; if you do not get enough sleep, your body will shut down on you.  It needs rest to refuel energy levels so that you can do what you did the day before 10 x's better the next day. 
4. Proper hygiene - it is simple; wash your hands, use hand sanitizer, brush your teeth, wash your hair, face and body.  Period.
5. Check-ups - it is necessary to make sure your vitals are still vital and your ticker is still ticking. 
6. Exercise - this one is my favorite, naturally.  Maintaining a consistent workout plan throughout your week strengthens your body, while your blood is able to flow easier and pumps rapidly.

In order to stay healthy, we have to be healthy.  Learn how to take care of your body and protect yourself. 

How To Eat On The Go

Eating on the go has never been a favorite of mine.  I like to sit comfortably and enjoy my meal, tasting every ingredient and savoring every morsel, like the French do.  However, I constantly stay on the go.  Whether I’m running from one meeting to the next at work, going to the gym, volunteering with youth organizations, church, going to the gym, the grocery store, writer’s workshop meetings, book clubs, going to the gym (there’s a pattern here), I have to have food with me wherever I go.  I’m timed and scheduled to eat every 2-3 hours, 5-6 meals per day.  I cannot afford to skip a meal.  This is mostly important when I am in competition prep.  That is why I pack and prep my meals Sunday evenings for the entire week.  

Meal prepping saves time throughout the week.  No matter your profession, corporate, in the field, etc., having your meals prepared ahead of time and stored in ready-to-go containers makes eating on the go painless.  Now, when I say meal prep, I do not mean prepping pasta or any other heavy foods that will essentially drag your energy levels down because of the amount of carbs.  Since I am a competitor, I eat clean and my meals consist of foods that aid in muscle gain, muscle retention and boosts energy.  So, the million dollar question; how do you meal prep?  Think of your basic healthy eating needs:

·         Protein – chicken breast, turkey breast, fish (tuna, salmon, tilapia), egg whites, lean ground beef, protein shakes

·         Carbohydrates – sweet potato, brown rice, quinoa, squash, oatmeal, black beans, strawberries, melon, apple, orange, yogurt (greek or fat-free)

·         Vegetables – broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, carrots, spinach, kale, celery, artichoke, green beans, green peppers, cucumber

Seems a little simple, right?  It gets even better.  Now, think of the meals you eat throughout the day.  I do not encourage anyone to eat 5-6 meals a day, especially if you are not a competitor.  This can be a lot of food for a non-competitor to consume.  I suggest focusing on breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between.  If you are on the road to a healthy, clean-eating lifestyle, which I strongly encourage for everyone, you want to plan your meals accordingly.  This is just a breakdown of how I go about the thought process for prepping my meals:

·         Breakfast – I boil a dozen eggs, eating one or two within the day. I also have my oats for oatmeal.

·         Lunch – I usually like to eat tuna with fat free mayonnaise (it’s not for everybody and definitely an acquired taste) with spinach.  I also have lean turkey breast on hand as an alternate on other days to eat with a whole wheat wrap.

·         Dinner – One week I may prep chicken breast or fish because it is easier to take out of the package and line on cookie sheet and bake in the oven.  I eat that with asparagus spears, broccoli or kale spinach, alternating and switching up meals within the week, along with brown rice or quinoa.

·         Snacks – My snacks consists of assorted nuts, and by assorted I mean almonds or walnuts, plain greek yogurt with fruit, celery (I have to have a dip such as cookie butter or almond butter to eat this) and fruit (strawberries, apple, orange).

When you package everything together, meal prepping can be one of the easiest things you can do for getting your week started.  If you live an active lifestyle, such as I do, where you have to have food ready at a moment’s notice, having your meals prepped can make your week run much smoother.  It is about finding balance and what works for you.  Making healthier eating choices as opposed to unhealthy not only does produces positive results for your health but makes you feel good that the meals you are eating on the go do not consist of fast food, bad fats, and heavy, loaded carbs.  Competing has taught me how to master meal prepping, and I know there are others out there that have busy lifestyles that could benefit from meal prep as well.  Try it out and see what it can do for you.

Bored Eaters

I'm bored. I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. All my friends are busy and I am, essentially, stuck at home, alone. What to do?  Plop on the couch, watch trash T.V. or a good movie and eat, eat, eat.  Pizza sounds good, salty, buttery popcorn is always good, cookies are a great sugary treat, and how about washing it down with a thick milk shake or a soda.  Funny thing is, I’m not really all that hungry…
Sounds typical, right?  Nothing else to do except sit around and eat.  You’re not hungry, you’re just vegetating (no pun intended).  When you're bored you instinctively become what's called a "bored-eater". You fall into this rut where you have nothing to do and you're at home with an abundance of unhealthy foods and snacks.  They’re accessible and available for massive consumption because, let’s face it, you made it that way by purchasing them.  So what are the reasons behind bored eating?  I am naturally inquisitive (notice how I said inquisitive and not nosy), so I asked a few people and came up with a few good reasons:

1.      Nothing to do – this is clearly obvious.  If you have nothing to do and nowhere to go, of course you are going to eat.  We sit at home in front of the television or behind a computer and automatically feel as if we have to snack.  Solution: get up and do something active.  Exercising at the gym or the park is a great way to stay healthy and in shape. 

2.      Everyone else is doing it – sigh; “when in Rome do as the Romans”.  I used to think it was ok to drink beer when I was in social circles because I wanted to “break the ice”, so to speak, and seem relatively interesting instead of the bored one of the group.  Solution: do not give into the temptation of eating unhealthy just to fit in.  If you are bored and you resort to bad eating habits in social circles just to relate, you may want to look at those circles a little closer.

3.      Depression – I hate to hear people say they eat because they are depressed.  You are in an unhappy state of mind, you are trying to deal with your emotions and in the process, searching for something to soothe or comfort you.  What’s more comforting than chips, cookies, or pizza, things that taste good and will seemingly recharge your neurons?  It is easy to turn to junk food when you’re in an emotional state because it won’t turn on you.  Or will it?  When you fall into bad food patterns it seems harder to get out of them.  Solution: observe the pattern you are creating when in an emotional state of mind and turning to food to cope.  The overeating inevitably leads to weight gain and, undeniably, holding onto that emotion.  It is better to deal with the emotion than to associate it with bad eating choices.

4.      It’s time to eat – I find it funny when people throw time under the bus.  “Time isn’t on my side”; “time is moving too fast”; “I never have enough time”; “the time is now”; “it’s time to eat”.  Time is innocent.  We use time as an excuse for so many things and do not realize if we use it correctly, it can benefit us.  Solution: listen to your body and ask yourself “is it really time to eat or am I just eating because I have nothing else to do right now?”.  There’s nothing wrong with eating at specific times. Body builders and athletes have to do this all the time for muscle growth and retention.  But eating on a schedule and eating at a specific time just because there’s nothing else to do at that time are completely different. 

There are more reasons why people are classified as bored eaters.  I found these to be the most interesting.  There should be no reason a person should eat unhealthy due to boredom.  There are many methods of removing yourself from that bored state of mind, it is a matter of finding what works for you.

The Bored Eater

I'm bored. I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. All my friends are busy and I am, essentially, stuck at home, alone. What to do?  Plop on the couch, watch trash T.V. or a good movie and eat, eat, eat.  Pizza sounds good, salty, buttery popcorn is always good, cookies are a great sugary treat, and how about washing it down with a thick milk shake or a soda.  Funny thing is, I’m not really all that hungry…

Sounds typical, right?  Nothing else to do except sit around and eat.  You’re not hungry, you’re just vegetating (no pun intended).  When you're bored you instinctively become what's called a "bored-eater". You fall into this rut where you have nothing to do and you're at home with an abundance of unhealthy foods and snacks.  They’re accessible and available for massive consumption because, let’s face it, you made it that way by purchasing them.  So what’s the reason(s) behind this?  Why eat poorly when you’re bored? Why become a bored-eater?   

I cannot tell a lie, I am guilty of this.  I have done this many times in the past.  I bought the junk food and planned to consume as much of it when I had the time.  When I’m at home watching trash on T.V. or a movie seems as good a time as any to pig out.  The truly sad part about it is I may not even be hungry but because the food is there and my brain says it wouldn’t hurt to eat that quart of cookie dough ice cream I bought on sale for $2.50 (regular price $3.25) I chow down, and in that moment I’m fulfilled.  Not only did I come up on a steal of deal but it’s my favorite ice cream and it’s comforting me.  So then I tell myself, I’m not bored anymore and my imaginary hunger pangs that were never there in the first place are gone.  And this becomes a vicious cycle.  Buy the junk, eat the junk, repeat. 

This pattern had to stop.  If I was going to be more health conscious I needed to think more health conscious.  I had to redo my entire thought process.  Whenever I knew I would be home with nothing to do (because honestly, you have days that are not completely filled and you have down time to yourself) I planned it out.  I stopped buying the junk.  No more ice cream.  Period.  It was my weakness.  I gave it up for Lent one year and I haven’t looked back since.  No pizza unless I’m eating it as a cheat meal.  Hot dogs (Nathans; I’m from New York and there’s no better hot dog in the world) completely off the grocery list.  Chips (unless it’s low sodium and 40% less fat) I cannot purchase.  Fruit (bananas, apples, oranges), nuts (almonds, walnuts), fish (yes, I consider it a snack…tuna, hello?), protein shakes (whey protein), and smoothies (fruit and veggie based not juice based, please) are mainly what I snack on.  And I have a schedule.  I eat every 3 hours.  I eat small meals and snacks in between.  This is to keep me from overeating and feeling as if I need to eat.

It’s simple, if you don’t make it available you won’t eat it.  Moreover, if you reprogram your way of thinking about food—healthy vs. non-healthy, hungry vs. not hungry—your choices and your lifestyle will change immensely.  Worked for me! 

The Joys of Being an Ectomorph; My Body Type

As I've stated in earlier posts, I am an ectomorph.  I was not made known of this until I started taking fitness more seriously and got into fitness modeling.  At that point, it was important to learn my body. I couldn't figure out why I could not gain weight or keep muscle, no matter how much I ate, how much I lifted, and how much I prayed for the weight gain (exaggerating).  I dismissed it and said it must be genetic, so I better eat all I can now because when I get older it is not going to be the same.  This was easy to do, but being that I was now competing and showing off my body against other females who could pack on more muscle in a day than I could in a month made me more alert and wanting to know more about my body and what I needed to do to gain size.

The basics: an ectomorph body type is lean/skinny, less muscle mass, small bones and joints, high metabolism, and essentially, everyone hates you because you are this way.  Maybe not so much the latter, but not much of a stretch.  Because your body is already lean you have sort of an edge in the competition, but not by much.  You still have to gain and maintain muscle mass.  This is probably the hardest part. 


Because our bodies naturally burn a lot of calories and our metabolism is high, ectomorphs are advised to keep cardio training at a minimum.  Cardio is still essential, but it can include certain types of cardio workouts such as circuit training or HIIT style (kettle bell swings, push ups, sprints, etc.).  These should be kept to at least 30 minutes. Workouts such as dead lift, lateral pulls, jump squats with the bar, dumbbell curls, calf raisers, bench press, squats (the list goes on and on) are vital in muscle growth, in addition to eating the right nutrients and supplement intake (amino acid, protein shake, creatin).  Some are against ectomorphs taking supplements because our bodies do not need it.  However, if you are in a sport like body building or just want to gain it is essential in getting them into your system because of how it works consistently with your workouts and dieting.  At least for me it does.

One other challenge I continued running into was eating.  I did not know what to eat, how to eat, when to eat, etc.  All I knew was that I had to eat properly because my brain has been trained that when your body feasts on improper eating habits (fried fatty foods, high sodium, high glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose...sugar) it will suffer and the end results, at least the ones I've seen in my family, are not good.  My mother suffers from high blood pressure which has resulted in her having multiple strokes.  I saw this and immediately wanted to change my eating habits and maintain an active, healthy lifestyle.  Everything comes with a price.  Literally.  The price of organic vs. non organic is about $5, and that is not an exaggeration from the stores I shop at.  Or taking organic out of the equation, a box of cookies at $2.50 vs. a bag of kale chips at $5.60.  Seriously, if you don't grow your own foods you're liable to go broke if you live on a budget and trying to eat healthy.  This is a sacrifice I was willing to make for competing.  The key to remember for ectomorphs is we can essentially eat what we want, in moderation of course, but smart and healthy.  Breaking up large meals into smaller portion sized meals throughout the day is beneficial.

 

At the end of the day, ectomorphs are rare and unique in true form.  While our bodies, for the most part, appear lean and lanky, there are tricks of the trade to learn in order to even out our body, and by that I mean shaping it into a form that suits us.  My form consists of tightness and definition, one that I am proud to say took hard work to develop, so naturally I cannot go back to the way I was just to start over again.