Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

Will I Get Bulky Muscles from Judo? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

Judo will not make you look fat. Exercise doesn’t necessarily equate to bulky muscles for women. The Fitness Nerd explains why.

Hi Fitness Nerd,

I started taking judo a couple of months ago because I really enjoy doing it rather than using it as a way to keep fit. While I don’t mind gaining a bit of muscle tone, I’m worried about bulking up as I’m a very small female who is a good weight and thick chunky muscles would just make me look fat. Is there anyway I can encourage my muscles to remain small but defined rather than grow big through diet? - Sophie

Sophie, you can relax. The chances of you “bulking up” and looking like a female version of Arnold Schwarzenegger are pretty slim. In fact, I’d say they are close to zero. There are three main reasons for this:

1. Women Don’t Have The Hormones for Huge Muscles

First, most women don’t have the hormonal environment necessary to put on massive amounts of muscle.  Adding muscle requires testosterone — and while women do have some testosterone — they typically don’t have enough to build the freaky muscles that you see on most bodybuilders — male or female. Yes, there are exceptions (and typically they involve the use of anabolic steroids or unusual male hormone levels in women ), but these are quite rare. So unless you have an atypical endocrine system for your gender or are on the testosterone patch, I wouldn’t sweat it for one minute.

2. Body Weight Training Doesn’t Maximize Muscle Mass

Second, judo is an activity that doesn’t involve the introduction of non-body-weight resistance. Building muscle requires consistently overloading the muscles with a progressive amount of weight during weight and resistance training.  This process of overloading the muscles is what builds muscle mass. With judo, you are basically training yourself against your own weight (or against someone else’s in some cases)– which more or less is fairly consistent. While this can certainly build strength, balance and co-ordination (and some muscle mass), it’s typically not enough to add lots of muscle. But again, even if you were pumping iron heavy daily, you’d probably be pretty pleased with the results. So maybe you should try it.

What it will do, is challenge a lot of stabilizer muscles that you might not normally use in your everyday activities, as well as burn some extra calories, which can help you strip off body fat. When people experience a “firming” of their muscles, it’s usually do primarily to a loss in body fat. You can have muscle, but if it’s wrapped in fat, it will seem soft and “jiggly.” Lose the fat, and suddely that lean, gorgeous muscle underneath starts to shine.

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SoLo Low-Glycemic Nutrition Bars | Energy and Protein Bar Reviews

The endorsements for SoLo Nutrition Bars from athletes are impressive, but how does this low-glycemic nutrition bar hold up in the taste and nutrition department? 

SoLo Bar Rating

Scale: 1-5 (1 Being Worst and 5 Being Best)

Flavor: 4
Texture: 3
Nutritional Profile: 4.5
Overall Rating: 3.8

Would You Eat It Again? Yes.

Price: $1.99

I’ve had box of SoLo Nutrition Bars sitting in my panty for a couple of months now.

My plan was to include them next round of head-to-head energy and protein bar reviews (which I still plan on doing), but then a week ago before my usual 5K run, I needed a quick pick-me-up.  A protein shake just wasn’t cutting it, so I decided to dig in early and try out one of the SoLo Bars.  Afterall, if they are good enough for Paul Tichelaar, member of the Canadian Olympic Triathalon Team, I figured they’d be fine for my measly little 3.1 mile run.

So I gave in, broke the seal on the box, and grabbed a Chocolate Charger.
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Who Is SoLo Nutrition?

SoLo Nutrition Bars are manufactured and marketed by SoLo GI Nutrition in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  According to the company’s website, SoLo GI Nutrition is planning on developing a series of low-GI specialty performance foods and snacks, with SoLo Nutrition Bars being the first of these products.

SoLo Nutrition Bars: High Performance Nutrition?

SoLo’s unique claim to fame is that unlike many energy bars, the SoLo bars are formulated to reduce glycemic load on the body. Glycemic load is a measure of how a carbohydrate raises blood glucose (blood sugar) levels.

While this might seem like a marketing hook, there are actually some very solid, practical nutritional reasons why you might want to choose a nutrition and energy bar that minimizes blood glucose spikes. While blood glucose spikes can deliver a quick burst of power, rapid increases in blood sugar levels also have a tendency to cause energy crashes later on — exactly not the thing you want to happen during any type of endurance activity, like running, biking or even working out at the gym.

The manufacturers of SoLo Energy Bars claim that their particular low-glycemic nutrition bars are formulated to have minimal impact on blood sugar levels, providing more sustained energy to power your performance, exercise or endurance activity. They call this “Controlled Energy Response”, which is really just marketese for “slow-burning carbs.”

What you need to understand is that most energy and nutrition bars are extremely high in simple sugars, which make them suitable for post-workout nutrition when insulin sensitivity is increased and the body can more effectively utilize carbohydrates.

However, the high sugar content doesn’t make them as well suited as a pre-workout snack, when complex carbohydrates are the preferred source of sustained energy. And most energy bars are also too high in simple sugars to make them a smart choice for in-between meal snacking at the office. In fact, some “nutrition” bars are so high in sugar, that you’d be just as well off to grab a Snickers bar.

SoLo claims that their nutrition bars cause blood sugar to rise more slowly than the average energy bar, and those levels are sustained for longer periods of time.

According to SoLo’s literature, the first rise in blood sugar with a SoLo Bar occurs over a period of about 60 minutes, and then begins to trail off gradually over 180 minutes.  This is much less pronounced than the spike you see with high-sugar, high-glycemic energy bars, where the initial blood sugar spike takes place in a very short window — typically within 30-40 minutes of ingesting the bar, and then drops back to pre-consumption levels within 60-90 minutes.

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What Are MUFAs? | Ask the Fitness Nerd

What’s a MUFA? The Fitness Nerd explains what this funny acronym means and why MUFAs are suddenly the rage among dieters.

Dear Fitness Nerd:

What are MUFAs? I keep hearing people talk about them, but I still haven’t quite figured out what they are. I know they are a type of fat, but I thought fats were unhealthy and should be avoided. Are they a supplement of some type like CLA? - Kayla R, (West Hollywood, CA)

MUFAs are an acronym for a “monounsaturated fatty acids” — a class of healthy fats found in foods like nuts and seeds, avocados, olives and certain vegetable oils. MUFAs are not typically taken as a supplement (as Conjugated linoleic acid or CLA often is), since they are plentiful in foods. 

MUFAs have gotten a lot of attention recently for three reasons:

1. MUFAs may help you lose weight.

There is some evidence that people who regularly consume MUFAs have lower body fat levels and are more successful at dropping body fat and weight than people who are on low-fat, carbohydrate rich diets.

This research flies in the face of  the conventional-wisdom that drove the low-fat craze of the 80s and 90s, which advised people to reduce their fat consumption as much as possible in order to lose weight, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of stroke, high-blood pressure and heart disease. The latest research actually suggests that diets which are higher in healthy fats like MUFAs may be more effective at weight-control than low-fat diets.

2. MUFAs may reduce the risk of disease.

A growing body of research shows that MUFAs may not only help people lose fat, but that they also have protective properties that may lower the risk of developing certain diseases, including Type II Diabetes, heart disease, stroke and possibly certain types of cancers. MUFAs are also part of The Portfolio Diet, which is an approach to eating that combines MUFAs with other cholesterol-lowering foods like soy, plant sterols and soluble fiber from things like oatmeal and may reduce blood cholesterol-levels as effectively as prescription statin drugs.

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Avocado Oil | Healthy Food of the Day

Avocados Aren’t Just For Guacamole Anymore. The Next Time You Reach for a Healthy Fat, Think Avocado Oil.

When you think of avocados, you typically think of guacamole. Or, if you are me, you think of Kriste at the office who (in her own words) is “totally obsessed” with avocados and will eat them sliced, diced or on the “half-shell” when given the chance.

Once shunned because of their high fat content, avocados have been elevated to fitness food chic over the past few years, thanks to a growing body of research showing that eating more healthy fats from things like avocados, nuts and olive oil doesn’t necessarily translate into more body fat. In fact, studies have shown exactly the opposite: People who eat healthy fats seem to actually be less fat, have lower bad cholesterol levels and triglycerides and are less prone to heart disease and developing certain kinds of cancers.

And that’s great news for avocado lovers, since not only are avocados filled with healthy fats, but they are also loaded with fiber and vitamins and minerals. And, of course, they taste fantastic on everything from healthy tacos to sandwiches to straight out of the shell, like my friend Kriste prefers.

But what most people don’t realize is that avocados can also be pressed to make a delicious, mild vegetable oil that’s among nature’s richest sources of healthy, monounsaturated fatty acids (also known as MUFAs).  Even better, if you’re getting bored with the usual olive oil on your salads and crave something a little different, you might consider swapping in some avocado oil.

What Is Avocado Oil and Avocado Oil Extraction?

Avocado oil is pressed or extracted from either the fresh flesh or dried pulp of avocados. 

The best culinary grade avocado oil is produced by cold-pressing the oil from the fresh flesh of avocados, in a manner similar to how cold pressed olive oil is produced.  Avocado oil can also be extracted from the dehydrated pulp of avocados, either through pressing or chemical/solvent extraction (which is typically employed for avocado oil used as a base in cosmetics.)

The vegetable oil in culinary avocado oil typically comes in one of two forms: refined or unrefined.

Refined avocado oils will have a lighter color and a more mild flavor with a very high smoke point that makes it ideal not only for salads, but especially for light frying or sautéing.

The unrefined versions of avocado oil will be more cloudy, have a deeper green color and a deeper, more intense avocado flavor. Because unrefined avocado oils have more solids in them, they also have lower smoking points than refined avocado oils. This makes them ideal for salad dressings where a more intense flavor is desired or around other uses that don’t involve heating the oil — for instance as a dip for bread or as a finishing oil vegetables.  

Avocado oil has a mild, subtle scent that some people have described as similar to artichokes and celery, with the rich, persistent flavor — not surprisingly — of avocados. Again, the less refined the oil is, the more intense and deep the avocado flavor will be.

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