Captain Ahab’s BodyBlog

By following the “Holy Trinity of Fitness” as I call them you will be able to achieve not only your fitness goals but also quite possibly even your fitness dreams.
The members that make up the “Holy Trinity” are nutrition, weightlifting & cardio AND in that order.
It all starts with a great not good but great nutrition program which means you must eat 5 to 6 small, protein rich, low (high glycemic) fat, low (bad) fat meals per day of which 2 to 3 of these meals can and are recommended to be in the form of protein shakes.
This routine has you eating something every 2 ½ to 3 hours all day long and what this does is cause your metabolism (digestive system etc.) to kick into high gear so that it can process the foods you have taken in and get ready for what you have trained it to know is the next meal which is on its way shortly.
None of the food you’re eating will be stored as fat as long as you are working out with weights and/or doing cardio. In fact if you are doing cardio properly your body will pull its energy needs from your fat stores and not replace any of the fat because of your new nutrition program.
You can find all of the nutrition information at the Body for Life website and the only hard part about their nutrition program is remembering to eat as often as you should. Where some weight loss programs cause you to be hungry much of the time this does just the opposite, which I believe, is the better of the two options.
As a side note BFL builds in one “cheat” day a week during their 12-week program where if you have any unfulfilled cravings or wish to indulge in anything and everything that is full of calories sugar and fat, go for it. They have factored in that people have lives and many times there are anniversary dinners, birthday parties, office get-togethers etc where you are faced with poor choices if you are on a weight loss program so by factoring in a cheat day you can attend and eat as if you were not on a weight loss regime and not feel any guilt whatsoever. The only thing is that starting the nest morning you are back on your 5 to 6 meals per day until your next cheat day.
Next comes weightlifting. The only way that you will be able to shape your body and get that great V-taper that both men and women like is to lift weights and lift them correctly so that you are able to work each of the target muscles that you need to work. I believe that you should lift weights at least 4 times per week for about one hour per session. You can work upper body one day and lower body the next or at another time or you can do one or two body parts per sessions so that each muscle group gets a workout at least once per week.
After that and only after lifting weights comes cardio.
Cardio needs to be done with a purpose rather than just going for a walk on a treadmill or pedaling a bike while reading a magazine or some other type of reading material. I have always felt that if you can read while doing cardio then you are not pushing yourself hard enough to cause changes to occur in your body. Cardio should either be done directly after lifting weights or on a day of its own for at least 20 minutes but working up to 30 then 45 and finally one hour per session.

On almost every list of good carbs you see a recommendation that brown rice should be used in place of white rice and just in case you might be wondering why you should quit using good old Uncle Ben’s or whatever equivalent you use I thought that I would answer that little question.
Brown rice is the exact same rice that is used for white rice, but the protective coating called bran is removed. The reason behind removing the coating and leaving behind the white rice has to do with providing a product that gives us quicker cooking times and also making a product that is visually fluffier and more delicate in texture once cooked. The cost associated with making it quicker to cook and better to look at is that we end up with a much less nutritious product because many valuable nutrients are lost once the bran is stripped away.
Brown rice is significantly higher in fiber than white rice and getting enough fiber is something that is both helpful and something that is missing from most North American diets.
Brown rice also contains higher levels of vitamins, minerals and many other “good things” such as vitamins B and E, calcium, protein, phosphorus, riboflavin and iron.
It used to be that brown rice was only available in health food stores but with the growing awareness of the nutrient value among other things brown rice is fast becoming more mainstream and is available in almost every grocery store. Brown rice now even comes in long grain, medium grain, short grain and basmati forms, which can fit in perfectly with whatever type of cooking you like to do and what types of white rice you wish to replace.
The downside to brown rice and something that you should be very aware of is that with the bran coating still intact it can go bad or rancid much more quickly than white rice. In that case I would caution you to buy only what you feel you would use within a month or at the most two months, and to be safe I would suggest storing it in a tightly sealed container and keep the container in a cool, dark place or as some people do, store it in the fridge.