Keep the flame burning...

How do we keep the fat burning flame burning? How do we get it to "burn hotter"?

Although exercise is the tool necessary for building muscle and manipulating fat-burning hormones, we have to keep metabolism up as well as prevent muscle breakdown!

So here is a quick snack to have after your workout that offers protein and some good low glycemic carbohydrates to help push the protein into your muscles. Remember, we want to keep metabolism high with quality foods and be sure to have fruits/vegetables with each meal. 

The recipe is pretty simple. First chop an apple into 1/4 inch cubes. Generally I cut the apple into 1/8 segments, then lay the apple on the side, cut that in half length wise and then chop. 

Add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon to the apples, along with a 1/2 packet of Splenda. Then add 1 cup of yogurt or cottage cheese. 


This comes out to 

• 200 calories 
• 0-g of fat
• 38-g of carbohydrates
• 11-g of protein 
• 5-g of fiber

Now 200 calories is sufficient if you're on a 1500-1600 calorie diet. This works for most women but guys will need a bit more, especially if you lifted fairly heavy. 

Guys can add a serving of vanilla protein powder. This will change the nutritional profile of the meal to the following:

• 322 calories
• 42-g of carbohydrates
• 34-g of protein
• 2.1-g of fat
• 6-g of fiber

Other options include any of the oatmeal recipes from Gourmet Nutrition. 

Some of these recipes include Banana Cream Pie Oatmeal, Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal, Chai Blueberry Oatmeal, or the Apple Walnut Oatmeal. Each of these have between 500-600 calories for a large serving and 250-300 calories for a small serving. Also, these take about 10 minutes to make. Then once you really start to make them, you can begin to streamline the process and it will take even less time.


If you've got the book already, then you know how awesome these recipes are! If you don't, well then I would suggest ordering one ASAP!


Overall, these past 2 days in the Hi-5 FitCamp have been great. The group is really working hard and pushing each other. The newbies are pushing hard and have fit in quite well with the rest of the group. 


Keep up the great work and keep pushing to be your best every day!

Recovery Nutrition: What happens after exercise?

Our primary goals in the Hi-5 FitCamp are to A) Lose fat, and B) Gain muscle.

We've got the exercise part down. Everybody in the class has gotten stronger. Everybody in the class is using a pretty significant weight and most are actually using more weight than they thought they EVER would!

But what should we be eating after our class to ensure that we are moving closer to our goals?

To figure this out, we need to know what happens in our bodies as a result of exercise. Here are the Cliff-Notes on post exercise physiology.

1. The harder the exercise, the increased oxygen requirement following exercise (high fat use during this period: work harder, burn more fat!!)
2. Muscle carbohydrates are decreased because they were used for energy during exercise.
3. Elevated hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine increase metabolism (increase in fat burning again!)
4. Increased glucagon releases fat to be used as fuel

All of these things seem very exciting and are probably getting your hopes up. You're thinking "with all this fat burning going on, why should I eat?" After all at this point it probably seems that you shouldn't eat anything to keep the "fat-flame" burning.

But remember our second goal: Gain muscle. If you'll remember, most of you are quite sore on a regular basis following our workouts. Researchers think that this is mainly due to muscle trauma and breakdown. So we need to repair it. But what do we repair it with?

We need to eat something after exercise to begin rebuilding muscle. We need a some protein, some carbohydrates and it better have some vitamins in it too. The ratio for best recovery is 3:1 carbs:protein. There is a certain product that some may not think of but is actually a GREAT recovery beverage. It is:

Chocolate milk.

This has about 30-g of carbohydrates, and 8-10 g of protein. So there we meet our 3:1 ratio. It is full of vitamins and minerals and high quality protein which will allow our muscles to rebuild. In addition, protein takes longer to breakdown and thus increases our metabolism further. Not by a large amount, but by a significant amount that makes it better to have for a snack than carbs only.

Also, drinks are often digested quicker and absorbed faster than solid food because there is minimal mechanical metabolism, or breakdown that must occur. Therefore it gets into our blood stream quicker than just eating something.

Other options would be a fruit smoothie with 1/2 cup of yogurt, or even a powdered recovery drink such as Accelerade which has a 4:1 ratio. Still great, but chocolate milk might be your fastest, least expensive and best "bang-for-the-buck" recovery benefit.

So treat yourself to a nice glass of cold chocolate milk after morning workouts and enjoy your nice reward while knowing you are doing everything you can to burn fat and feed your muscle!!

Have a great weekend!