shannan 
"Each of us has within ourselves, a spirit, an energy, a superhero that is screaming to be revealed. The art of physique perfection, our sport, our journey, our discipline... bodybuilding... is a means of expressing that inner being."
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Archive for October, 2008
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
green bean hearts of palm salad
Ingredients
1/4 cup white-wine vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons sugar or sugar substitute
2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill leaves
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and sliced crosswise
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 1/2 pounds asparagus, trimmed, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 pound green beans, trimmed, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 (7 or 8 ounce) can hearts of palm , rinsed, drained, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 medium vine-ripened tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 small head iceberg lettuce, thinly sliced
Directions
In a large bowl, whisk together vinegar, oil, sugar, and dill. Add cucumbers and onion, season with salt and pepper, and toss until well combined; set aside.
Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Add salt and return water to a boil. Prepare an ice-water bath; set aside. Place asparagus in boiling water; cook until just tender, 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer asparagus to ice-water bath for 1 minute, remove and pat dry; transfer to cucumber mixture. Add beans to the boiling water, and cook until just tender, 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer beans to the ice-water bath for 1 minute, remove and pat dry. Transfer beans to cucumber mixture along with hearts of palm, tomatoes, and lettuce. Season with salt and pepper; toss until well combined.
sweet potato pancakes
4 oz sweet potato
4 egg whites
1 scoop protein powder (flavor of your choice)
splenda, cinnamon to taste
1 banana
3 tbsp peanut butter
MIX all ingredients, spray pan with pam and allow to heat. Once heated, pour a large spoonful of the batter into the pan and cook on both sides until cooked throughout.
Continue until batter is gone!
delicious and great early morning, post workout meal! 
Chicken and Artichoke Hearts
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken beast, cut into 2-inch chunks
Coarse salt and ground pepper to taste
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 cup red-wine vinegar
1 red bell pepper, ribs and seeds removed, cut into 1/2-inch strips
1 package (10 ounces) frozen artichoke hearts, thawed and halved
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled - Optional*
Directions
-Heat oil in a large skillet over high heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper; add to skillet, and brown on all sides, about 10 minutes.
-Reduce heat to medium; add garlic, oregano, and crushed red pepper to skillet. Cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add vinegar; cook, scraping up browned bits from bottom of skillet with a wooden spoon, until liquid has evaporated, 1 to 2 minutes.
-Add 2 cups water to skillet, and simmer over medium heat 10 minutes. Add bell pepper and artichoke hearts; simmer until chicken is tender and liquid has thickened, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in feta cheese, if you are using,
and season with salt and pepper as desired, and serve.
Posted in Training
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
With Halloween rapidly approaching, and little snack size candies haunting the isles of every grocery store, take a minute and look at the havoc that sugar can take on your weightloss goals!
Believe it or not, sugar is a big contributor to weight gain. To keep it simple, if your body is running on sugar, it is not burning fat for fuel. It really is that simple.
The calories and total grams of "bad carbohydrates" from foods high in sugar add up more quickly than those from yams, beans, oats, veggies, and other natural carbohydrates because:
a.) Sugar is a very concentrated source of carbohydrate - so it’s easier to eat more calories. b.) Sugar has a very pleasant taste - it is easily overeaten out of enjoyment and often used for comfort.
c.) Sugar keeps bad company. Many foods high in sugar are also high in fats, such as pastries, cookies, ice cream, and other sweets.
d.) Sugar is often consumed as beverages - sodas, juices, punch, etc - which contains a lot of calories in a very little volume. A large soda, for example, can contain more than 300 calories alone!
I’m not saying you can never eat sugar; trust me, my world wouldn’t rotate without a bite of chocolate every now and again! But treats are just that, treats, and they should be eaten sparingly on occasion.
But an occasional indulgence shouldn’t completely derail your nutrition program, either mentally or physically. Besides I don’t advocate complete elimination of any food group, sweets included. So to see where treats can fit into your plan, you’ve got to analyze what they are made of.
Most sweets and desserts are high in calories and heavy on carbs and fat. Ice cream, chocolate bars, frozen yogurt, pudding, and other dairy-based treats have some protein in them for milk or nuts, in addition to fat and carbohydrates. Treats such as hard candy, sorbet, donuts, and muffins are pretty much straight, simple carbohydrates. Processed baked goods such as cakes, pies, and cookies contain plenty of carbs, maybe a little protein and a bunch of trans fat to ensure a longer shelf life.
Dessert isn’t the only place you’ll find a ton of sugar: Many condiments, sauces, and dips contain added sugar, as well as many breads, cereals, crackers, and dressings. So before you glop on the barbecue sauce or ketchup, read the label carefully to see how many sugar calories you’re getting per serving.
Of course, sugar will not always be listed as “sugar” on the label. That would be way to easy, right! Usually it hides out under one of these aliases:
- maltodextrose
- dextrose
- sucrose
- fructose
- high-fructose corn syrup
- malt syrup
- corn syrup
- molasses
- maple sugar
- levulose
- lactose
- honey
- galactose
- and glucose
So look out for the sneaky little sugars. Here are a few tips to help you deal with the sugar cravings:
- Wait it out! Sometimes cravings are emotionally driven, and you may be eating sweets in reaction to your emotions. Before you dig into the donut box, stop, recognize your craving, and ask yourself out loud if it is worth the few minutes of pleasure instead of achieving the body you want and can enjoy 24 hours a day.
- Eat more often. You might crave sugar if you haven’t eaten a balanced meal or snack because your blood sugar may be low. Your body knows the fastest way to get its blood sugar back up is to get some simple carbs in there, so it tells you to crave sugar-and you do! That’s just another reason we have you eating balanced meals throughout the day!
- Break the habit! If you always have dessert with dinner or get a treat every day from the vending machine at 4pm, recognize that pattern, and break it! Do something completely different, such as taking a walk or calling a friend instead of hitting the vending machine.
- And, last but not least, give in and have a bite! Before you get too excited, I want it to be loud and clear that I’m not giving you permission to binge! Share a dessert, have a mini size chocolate bar, or a small cookie. Be sure to go out and have it in order to keep the temptation of leftovers out of the house!
Also, be really careful with the sugar substitutes. In many “sugar-free” foods, the sugar has been replaced by either sugar alcohols or synthetic products. Sugar alcohols are not technically sugar, but they still contain calories from carbohydrates and are not calorie free. The alcohol in these sweeteners attracts water into the gut and can cause abdominal discomfort and bloating. My personal favorite when it comes to sugar replacements is Sweete. It is made from the Rubia plant and it 100% natural. You can find it at www.sweete.biz! Or there is just plain old Stevia.
In summary, a diet lower in sugars and higher in complex natural carbohydrates, fiber, and protein is almost always lower in calories, higher in energy, and higher in vitamins and minerals.
These above factors, working together, contribute to a lower rate of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and tooth decay… and you absolutely will achieve much better fat loss results.
It’s okay to eat a little sugar as a treat, but do so in moderation… and be aware and on the look-out for "hidden" sugars that you typically eat each day. They certainly add up and could very well be one of the reasons you’re not achieving the best possible results in the shortest amount of time.
Posted in Training
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
(HealthDay News) — New research shows that overeating triggers a metabolic response normally dormant in the hypothalamus region of the brain, even when a person hasn’t gained weight.
“We discovered a very general disease pathway in the hypothalamus, a structure in the middle part of the brain which functions to regulate appetite, feeding behavior, energy and therefore body-weight balance and metabolic processes,” said Dr. Dongsheng Cai, senior author of a paper published in the Oct. 3 issue of Cell that details the findings.
“Persistent stimuli from excessive amount of calories can trigger this response before the overt onset of obesity, and this response when induced can promote overeating, contributing to increased levels of caloric overconsumption,” Cai added. “So, this process can be like a vicious cycle.”
Although the study was conducted in mice, the authors believe the findings will also apply to humans.
Suppressing the pathway might be a potent weapon in the war to fight the burgeoning epidemic of overweight and obesity and its attendant problems, including heart disease and even cancer.
Two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese; one-third are obese.
Current efforts to combat obesity — namely dieting and exercise — are rarely effective and certainly are not long-lasting.
“Exercise and diet may correct abnormal brain regulation [but] long-term food control is very difficult,” said Cai, an assistant professor of physiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We don’t understand why. . . The first important thing to understand is how the dysregulation of the brain is processed. The study we just did provides a new pathway. It’s the opening of a new direction.”
Until recently, researchers didn’t know that the hypothalamus was important for how energy processing is conducted in the body.
“The brain is receiving more and more attention from the field . . . but nobody knows whether and how the hypothalamus could be responsible for the increasing occurrence of energy imbalance and obesity under today’s environment typical of overnutrition,” Cai explained.
Prior research had shown that eating too much triggered inflammatory responses in muscles, liver and other metabolic tissues, changes that underlie the development of type 2 diabetes. So the IKKb/NF-kB pathway had already been identified as a crucial player in these processes.
But it wasn’t known if the same pathway was at work in the central nervous system.
In studying the brains of mice, Cai and his colleagues found that a high-fat or high-sugar diet did indeed increase the activity of this pathway in the brain as well. Similarly, the pathway is active in the brains of mice predisposed to obesity.
Once awakened, the pathway induces insulin resistance and dysfunctions of other hormones engaged with weight control and appetite.
While chronic inflammation was once thought to be a result of obesity, it now appears to promote it as well.
Posted in Training
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
Here is a post written by a guy by the name of Michael that I came across online just the other day and I thought it was interesting. Figured I’d share it with you all too—
Carbohydrates are addictive–
You think carbohydrates aren’t addictive? You think it’s easy to give them up? You don’t think it possible that people might prefer carbs to life? Think again.
A story appeared in the online version of Time Magazine last year that I read when it came out, put aside to blog about later, then got sidetracked. A reader sent me a link to it a few days ago, which brought it back to the front of my mind.
The article discusses a study being done in Germany using a carb-restricted diet to fight cancer. In pre-WWII days, a German scientist, Otto Warburg, received a Nobel Prize for his work in sussing out the fact that cancer cells don’t generate energy the same way that normal cells do. Cancer cells get their energy, not like normal cells, from the mitochondrial oxidation of fat, but from glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose withing the cytoplasm (the liquid part of the cell). This different metabolism of cancer cells that sets them apart from normal cells is called the Warburg effect. Warburg thought until his dying day that this difference is what causes cancer, and although it is true that people with elevated levels of insulin and glucose do develop more cancers, most scientists in the field don’t believe that the Warburg effect is the driving force behind the development of cancer.
But it stands to reason that it can be used to treat cancer that is already growing. Since cancers can’t really get nourishment from anything but glucose, it stands to reason that cutting off this supply would, at the very least, slow down tumor growth, especially in aggressive, fast-growing cancers requiring a lot of glucose to fuel their rapid growth.
Thomas Seyfried (the same Thomas Seyfried mentioned in the article) has shown that ketogenic diets in animals and humans can stop malignant brain tumors. There is no reason to believe they wouldn’t work in humans as well.
A group in Germany is looking at such diets in a small pilot study. Patients are only admitted to the study when all standard therapies - chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, etc. - have failed and they have basically been sent home to die. In fact, a few were so far gone that they died within the first week of starting the study. You couldn’t ask for a study group more destined for failure, but, according to the Times article…
The good news is that for five patients who were able to endure three months of carb-free eating, the results were positive: the patients stayed alive, their physical condition stabilized or improved and their tumors slowed or stopped growing, or shrunk.
If you understand the Warburg effect and the metabolism of cancer cells, it’s easy to see why this therapy works, even in patients who at at death’s door. Since the cancers can use only glucose, and since glucose is made in the cancer cells slowly and inefficiently, the cancer cells have to rely on outside glucose to provide nourishment for their rapid growth and replication. People on very-low-carb diets produce ketones, which take the place of glucose in other cells that can use these ketones for fuel. But cancer cells can’t use the ketones since ketones have to be burned in the mitochondria, which are dysfunctional in cancer cells. If you can keep blood sugar low, then growth of the cancer cells may be held in check long enough for the body’s own previously overwhelmed immune system to rally and beat the vulnerable cancer back.
Now, given all this, if you had a big cancer eating you alive and you were offered a chance for salvation by doing nothing more than following a low-carb diet, would you take it? I certainly would. But, not everyone does. I was stunned to read the comments of Dr. Melanie Schmidt, one of the researchers, about people dropping out of the study. [Some] dropped out because they found it hard to stick to the no-sweets diet: “We didn’t expect this to be such a big problem, but a considerable number of patients left the study because they were unable or unwilling to renounce soft drinks, chocolate and so on.”
Let me see if I’ve got this right. A lifesaving therapy is offered to patients who have undergone the misery of radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and surgery, and who are beyond hope, and this therapy requires nothing more than eating a lot of butter, meat, cream, cheese, etc. while avoiding most carbohydrates. And a considerable number” drop out because they can’t give up carbs? I say it again. And you don’t think carbs are addictive?
As a coda to this post, I’ve got to tell you that MD at this very moment is rolling out a fondant that she made a couple of days ago. She was dragooned into making the birthday cake for our granddaughter whose party is tomorrow. The kid doesn’t want a store-bought birthday cake, she wants a custom-made cake by her Nanny, which has become a tradition. She wants a Razor (a Swat Kat) cake, so MD is having to free-hand it. Although she’s never made a fondant before, she figured that would be the easiest way to frost and decorate the cake she has in mind. I wandered over to get a cup of coffee and pulled off a tiny piece of the stuff and popped in my mouth just to see what it tasted like. Her fondant is made with powdered sugar, corn syrup, and lard (not the vegetable shortening called for in the recipe), and it is good beyond belief. I’m sitting here writing this post, and after a tiny, tiny piece (maybe 3/4 inch by 1/2 inch by 1/8 inch) of fondant, I am obsessing over how easy it would be to walk the 10 feet to where it is and start throwing it down by the handfuls. So, yes, carbs are addictive. Especially the carb-fat combo.
Lest you get the wrong idea, our granddaughter’s parents keep her on a kid’s version of the low-carb diet most of the time. The cake is a once a year deal. Thank God.
Posted in Training
Friday, October 10th, 2008
SMART STARBUCKS CHOICES
I KNOW HOW MANY OF US LOVE OUR COFFEE… HERE IS A QUICK GUIDE TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR COFFEE STARBUCKS CHOICES…
DO be picky and specify “nonfat” milk.
DON’T order the special fancy seasonal coffee drink, just ‘cuz it’s only available for a limited time. We know it sounds good, but do you REALLY need eggnog in your coffee?
DO dress up your drink with a shot of sugar-free syrup. It’s calorie-free. Be creative!
DON’T feel silly asking for a “Skinny Latte”. Sure, it sounds a little prissy, but it’s worth it!
DO stick to the Grande, Tall, or the frequently overlooked Short. Save that ginormous Vent i for coffee emergencies only.
DON’T ever get whipped cream on a beverage there. Ever. It’ll add around 80 calories and 8g fat (POINTS® value 2*) to your order. Sometimes MORE.
DO your research beforehand, so you know what you’re getting into. Look, we’ve made it easy for you. Maybe print a copy of our guide, and keep it in your glove compartment?
DON’T be afraid to special order. Create your own beverages using whatever guilt-free ingredients you can rattle off. “Nonfat”, “sugar-free”, and “light” are all words that should be in your SB vocabulary.
These drinks get the OKAY…
Pike Place Roast
PER SERVING (Grande): 5 calories, 0g fat, 10mg sodium, 0g carbs, 0g fiber, 0g sugars, 1g protein — POINTS® value 0*
In a rush? Feel like being super-low-key? Saunter up to the counter, ask for a Pike Place, and you’ll have a lovely coffee blend in, like, 15 seconds. So you can skip waiting in line with the herd of people and sweeten your coffee all by yourself (stick to nonfat milk a nd Splenda!). Feeling adventurous? Skip the Pike and ask for the flavor of the week. Oooh, look at you trying new things!
Skinny Latte
PER SERVING (Grande): 130 calories, 0g fat, 150mg sodium, 19g carbs, 0g fiber, 18g sugars, 13g protein — POINTS® value 3*
Where were we before the Skinny Latte? We were standing over by the sugar and cream, shaking an empty pitcher, and crying, “Why are they always out of nonfat milk?” This way is SO much more dignified and, not to mention, SUPER-DELICIOUS. Plus you can order your Skinny flavored without adding any calories or fat — choose from Vanilla, Hazelnut, Caramel, and Cinnamon Dolce. SWEET!
Caffè Misto (with Nonfat Milk)
PER SERVING (Grande): 70 calories, 0g fat, 90mg sodium, 10g carbs, 0g fiber, 10g sugars, 7g protein — POINTS® value 1*
Ah! Another light ‘n classy option — freshly brewed coffee mixed with frothy steamed milk. Known in international circles as Café Au Lait or Café Con Leche, it’s known in our circle as a must-have morning coffee option.
Frappuccino Light Blended Coffee, All Varieties
PER SERVING (Grande): 110 - 210 calories, 0.5 - 4.5g fat, 180 - 260mg sodium, 20 - 42g carbs, 2 - 4g fiber, 13 - 32g sugars, 5 - 6g protein — POINTS® value 2 - 4*
The regular Coffee and Espresso versions clock in with just 110 - 130 calories and a POINTS® v alue of 2* each. But there are about a bazillion different flavored ones, many of ‘em well worth the extra calories if you’re craving a real treat. A few we’re impressed with are the Caramel (160 calories, POINTS® value 3*), the Cinnamon Dolce (140 calories, POINTS® value 2*), and (drumroll, please!) the Pumpkin Spice (150 calories, POINTS® value 2* ).
Tazo Tea
PER SERVING (Grande): 0 calories, 0g fat, 0mg sodium, 0g carbs, 0g fiber, 0g sugars, 0g protein — POINTS® value 0*
Choose from Black, Green, and Herbal Infusions. It’s simple, it’s classic!
Posted in Training
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