Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

Five Healthy Breakfast Ideas from Answer Fitness®

A healthy breakfast can help you stay energized during the day and keep the pounds off. Try one of these healthy breakfast ideas to jump start your day.

Why make time to eat breakfast?

Because it makes good fitness sense.

Research indicates that people who regularly eat breakfast may have less body fat and are less likely to overeat during the rest of the day. More importantly, when they lose weight, they tend to keep it off longer. 

Two studies in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association support this.

While they were funded by cereal companies, the science has been peer reviewed and seems solid: People who it breakfast have more success with weight loss over the long haul.

If the thought of trying to wrangle up a healthy meal in the morning causes you to shudder, relax. Regardless of your schedule or prowess in the kitchen, try one or more of these five breakfast ideas to get your morning off to a healthy start:

Healthy Breakfast Idea #1: Oatmeal

Oatmeal is a power food that belongs in every healthy pantry.

Inexpensive (a large container of oats will cost you less than $3), loaded with heart-healthy soluble fiber and plenty of complex carbs, oats are one of your best breakfast bets.  On their own, they can be bland, but dressed up with cinnamon, a touch of honey, dried or fresh fruit, or even a scoop of whey protein powder, they become something that transcends their humble reputation.

If you don’t care for the consistency, try Scottish Oats (which are grainier and have more texture) or provide a little crunch by adding chopped walnuts, pecans or sliced almonds.

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Weight Training Basics: Making Sense of Weight, Repetitions and Sets

Learn the fundamentals of weight, reps, sets and form before you pick up the dumbbells.

Adding weight training into your workout isn’t as difficult as it seems. Understanding the four basic principles of weight training is a good start, but what about all of this talk about weight, reps, sets and form?

Understanding Weight, Repetitions and Sets

There are four basic terms you need to understand, because you will hear them frequently in the context of weight training.

Once you understand them, you’ll finally be ready to hit the weights with confidence and purpose:

1. Weight or Resistance
   This is the amount of weight that you lift or move during weight training. Choosing the right amount of weight is critical and it will vary based on your goals (that “specificity” thing again.) It will also have a direct impact on the amount of repetitions your perform. Repetitions and weight are tied so closely together, that it’s best to discuss them in relation to one another.
2. Repetitions
   Repetitions indicate the number of times you move a given weight during a specific exercise. So if you are doing bicep curls with a dumbbell, and you curl the weight twelve times in a row, you’ve performed twelve repetitions (also called “reps.”)  Determining how many repetitions you should perform is really a function of your goals as well as the amount of weight you choose to use. In general, you will want to perform as many reps with good form as the particular muscle you are training will allow before you cannot perform another rep. Obviously, the amount of weight you choose has a direct impact on the amount of repetitions you perform. The higher the weight, the less reps you’ll be able to perform.
3. Sets
   Sets are simply a grouping of repetitions for the same exercise seperated by a brief rest period. So let’s say you performed 12 repetitions of dumbell bicep curls, rested for two minutes, and performed 12 more repetitions of the same exercise. You will have performed two sets. Simple, huh?
4. Form
   Form means you perform a given exercise properly, with attention to the positioning of your body, your posture, the correct movement during the exercise and proper breathing techniques.  Practicing good form ensures that you thoroughly work the muscles through their intended range-of-motion and do so with minimal risk of injury.

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Specificity (Principles of Weight Training) | Fitness and Exercise Glossary

Specificity is one of the four principles of weight training.  Specificity means that you train your muscles and choose your exercises, weight, reps and sets with a specific goal in mind.

These goals typically fall into one of four groups:

1. strength
2. size (hypertrophy)
3. endurance
4. power

Depending on the goal, the nature of the exercise you choose, the weight, the amount of reps and sets, and the pace at which you perform them will vary.

For example, training for strength typically involves using a heavier weight that causes the muscle to fail at between one and four reps, while endurance training uses a lighter weight that causes failure at 15 to 20 reps.

Also see: principles of weight training

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Wolfgang Puck All-Natural No-Stick Cooking Spray | Healthy Food of the Day

Love the flavor of butter, but not the saturated fat and calories that come along with it? Try these butter-flavored non-stick cooking sprays.

The next time you’re in the baking isle at the grocery store, check out Wolfgang Puck’s Butter-flavored All-Natural No-Stick Cooking Spray.

I always keep at least one can of this around (usually right on top of my range) for those times when I need to add a little butter flavor to a dish or need some healthy fat to make the perfect omelette or frittata.

Why butter-flavored canola oil?

First, canola oil contains heart-healthy Omega 3s, is high in healthy unsaturated fats (93 percent), is free of cholesterol and trans fat, and has the lowest saturated fat (7 percent) of any common cooking oil.

Also, because the oil is in a spray form, you tend to use less of it than when it’s liquid. So a 1/3 second spray (0.25 grams) of non-stick cooking oil, for all practical purposes, has zero calories and zero fat.

Obviously, the longer you spray it, the more calories you add, but even if you sprayed it for 6 seconds (which is quite a bit of time), you’d still only be adding around 46 calories and 4 grams of fat to your dish.

The oil also tastes great and contains natural butter flavor (no artificial flavorings which you may find in other “butter” flavored sprays), so it adds a nice richness to your food.

But you don’t need to limit your use of non-stick cooking sprays to coating your pan when making egg-white omelettes. There are dozens of other interesting uses, including:

• sauteing, stir frying and grilling (spray it right on steaks and salmon filets for a little butter flavor and GREAT grilll marks)
• basting and browning meats, poultry and fish
• use it as a finishing oil on veggies (spray it on just before serving.)
• toast, english muffins, whole-grain bagels and high-fiber muffins (give ‘em a quick spray for tasty butter flavor and add a sprinkling of sea or kosher salt to amp things up)
• eggs - a great finish to “canola” fried eggs
• Popcorn — my personal favorite.  Coat microwave or air-popped popped corn with a couple quick sprays of non-stick cooking spray and salt and pepper – or even better, a little seasoned salt. This makes amazing, tasty, and buttery,  popcorn without the usual fat and calories.

If your grocer doesn’t carry Wolfgang’s no-stick cooking spray, don’t fret. There are a number  of other natural non-stick cooking spray options, including, Mazola Pure Cooking Spray and  All-Natural PAM® Butter Flavored non-stick spray, as well as organic options like Spectrum Naturals Non-Stick Organic Olive Oil Spray.

So the next time your tempted to reach for the butter, consider instead reaching for the butter-flavored non-stick spray. Your waist-line will thank you … and so will your heart.

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The Skinny on Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats | Nutrition 101

The right combination of carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats is critical to reaching your diet and fitness goals. Learn how it all comes together on your plate.

You’ll often hear myself or fitness and nutrition experts discuss the importance of “balanced-meals” to people who are trying to stay fit and in-shape. But what is a balanced diet? And why is it so critical?

A balanced diet simply means that you provide your body with all of the basic nutrients that it needs to provide you with energy each day, as well as to repair and build tissue.

Even if you laid in bed all day, your body still requires around 1200 calories just to fuel basic functions like breathing, digestion, cellular repair and even thinking. The more active you, the more calories you need.

But calories alone are only part of the picture.

Your body also requires amino acids from protein and lipids from dietary fat to maintain, regenerate or repair tissue, whether that’s skeletal muscle, connective tissue, skin, or nervous tissue.

Protein, carbohydrates and fats are often referred to as “macro-nutrients” because your body needs large amounts of them to perform basic cellular functions.

“Micro-nutrients”, on the other hand, are things like vitamins and minerals, which your body uses in smaller amounts to maintain healthy, functioning cells, tissues and organs.

Let’s take a closer look at each macro-nutrient and the role it plays in remaining healthy and fit.
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Low-Fat Homemade Vanilla-Orange Granola | Healthy Recipes from Answer Fitness®

Want an economical, low-fat and low-sugar homemade granola recipe? Try this homemade orange granola and be prepared to be blown away.

Oats are considered a fitness power food, and granola is a tasty way to get your daily oats. The problem is that most granola recipes are loaded with sugar. You could buy a low-fat or low-sugar prepackaged granola at the store, something like a Bear Naked Granola, but at nearly $6 a bag, it’s more economical to make your own.

This particular recipe uses freshly squeezed orange juice and a touch of honey to naturally sweeten the granola. There is no processed or brown sugar added. 

The sugar content is minimal in this recipe and it uses no oil, so the granola is about as pure and close-to-the-earth as it gets. The only fats are the healthy kinds from walnuts, almonds, pecans and flax meal. And the coconut, although high in saturated fat, is plentiful in medium- and short-chain fats, which the body burns more readily for energy.

Best of all, this particular granola recipe is wicked easy to make.  If you aren’t crazy about nuts, you can substitute dried fruit like raisins, dried cherries, blueberries, cranberries or even dried apple slices or banana chips. Add these after the granola has been cooked and cooled.

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How Often Should I Workout? | Fitness Tips

Workout frequency is highly individual. Learn how to find your perfect schedule and avoid over training.

How often you should work out is really a matter of your current fitness level, the types of exercises you are performing, the intensity of your workouts, and how much time you actually have available to spend in the gym.

Current Fitness Level

Your current fitness level is one of the primary factors used to determine workout frequency.

Beginners will typically need more recovery time between workouts than more advanced trainees, bodybuilders or well-conditioned athletes or runners.  Nearly everyone has experienced one of those workouts where you “over did” it and couldn’t move for three days. While this can happen at all levels of fitness, it’s more common among beginners who are still gauging their strength, stamina and recovery ability.

The body also makes certain adaptations with training over time that may shorten the required recovery time. So while some people can go heavy in the gym every day, others may need to take a break every-other-day.  

As a general rule of thumb, a good training frequency for someone who is new to the gym, or returning after a lengthy break, is three resistance workouts a week lasting between 45 and 60 minutes. This will allow you to work each major muscle group with at least one exercise and give yourself 48 hours for recovery between workouts.

This full-body workout is ideal because it helps build a solid foundation for later, more advanced training; encourages overall core development; discourages the development of muscle imbalances that can accompany “split routines”; and may burn more calories after training.

And by the way, this is actually also an excellent workout for an advanced trainee. The difference is they will work with heavier weights and may do more total sets for each exercise than a person who is less-experienced in the gym.

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