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Herbs and Spices: The Secret Spice To Clean Eating | Fitness Food

Learn how picking the right herbs and spices can make eating clean go from dull to delicious 

Healthy, whole foods get a bad rap when it comes to flavor.

“Eating clean” often gets associated with eating “bland” — especially among fitness buffs, bodybuilders and athletes who think that a good “training diet” consists of meal-after-repetitive-meal of oatmeal, boiled chicken breast, yams, steamed broccoli and green side salads with some kind of fat-free liquid on top that calls itself “dressing.”

The good news is that there is actually a simple solution to making clean eating not just tolerable, but enjoyable — and it’s as close as your grocer’s baking isle: Herbs and spices.

Herbs and Spices: The Key To Making Clean Eating Enjoyable

Any cook worth their salt knows that a recipe or dish isn’t complete until it’s been seasoned.

“Seasoning” could simply mean adding some salt and ground pepper, but more often than not, it includes the use of all kinds of other herbs or spices to either layer additional flavor on top of a food, enhance or complement an existing flavor, or provide a contrast.

While it’s pretty hard to screw up a dish or recipe by adding the wrong herb or spice, it does pay to know your seasonings ahead of time to avoid some funky combinations that might send that brown rice to your dog’s bowl, versus your plate.

Herbs and Spices: Not Just For Flavor, But Also Healthy 

Herbs and spices also have an additional role in healthy, clean eating beyond simply seasoning foods, recipes or dishes.

Nearly all herbs and spices have very high concentrations of healthy phytochemicals and antioxidants. Scientists believe that these naturally-occurring plant compounds work together in the body to protect tissues and cells from damage and may help prevent diseases like cancer and heart disease. 

When you combine herbs and spices with other antioxidant-rich foods like fruits and vegetables, their protective properties may be enhanced even more, similar to The Portfolio Diet approach to cholesterol-reduction observed by researchers like David Jenkins at the University of Toronto.

Just how much antioxidant punch do certain herbs and spice have? Plenty.  

In fact, oregano, that ubiquitous herb found in nearly every batch of pizza or spaghetti sauce is one of nature’s most concentrated sources of antioxidants, having four times more antioxidants than blueberries. Just one tablespoon of dried oregano has the antioxidant content of a large apple.

Herbs and spices can also have beneficial medicinal uses, in addition to simply making your food taste better.

For instance, ginger aids digestion and can calm nausea and even alleviate motion sickness. Fennel and juniper berries can help with fat digestion, and cinnamon has been shown to help reduce cholesterol and increase insulin sensitivity, helping people better digest sugar. It also may lessen the symptoms of certain inflammatory diseases like arthritis.

So herbs and spices don’t just make your food taste better, they’re good for you as well.

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What’s The Best Time to Drink Protein Shakes? Ask The Fitness Nerd

When should you drink a protein shake? Today we tackle the question of what’s the best time to reach for that protein shake.

Dear Fitness Nerd:

I’ve read a lot about the benefits of protein shakes, especially when it comes to building muscle and becoming leaner. But I’ve seen conflicting advice on when the best time is to drink protein shakes, and how often I should be consuming them. Some people say right before you workout, others say immediately following your workout, and some people seem to drink them 3-4 times a day or more. I’m confused. Can you help clear this up? Thanks. Sarah M. (Albany, NY)

Sarah,

This is a great question.  

The first thing to realize is that protein shakes are intended to be supplemental to your regular whole meals — not replacements for whole meals. So if you view it that way, you should typically be consuming no more than 2-3 shakes a day on your workout days, and 1-2 (if any) protein shakes on your non-workout days.

In general, the two most critical times for drinking a protein shake are:

1. First thing in the morning
2. Immediately following your resistance or weight training workout.

Why first thing in the morning?

Well, when you wake up, you have essentially been in a fasted state for the past seven to eight hours. That means you’ve had no protein during this time and you are at risk for becoming catabolic (meaning you’ll start to break down muscle for fuel.) By drinking a protein shake with some simple carbs (like orange juice or a banana blended in) as soon as you wake up, you can stop this muscle breakdown dead in its tracks and put yourself back in “positive nitrogen balance” — a fancy term that simply means you have more protein available for your body than what it is using for fuel or excreting.

The second key window of opportunity for drinking a protein shake is immediately following your resistance or weight training workout.

During this 30-60 minute post-workout window, your muscles are like sponges and take up nutrients — including protein — very quickly as part of the repair and recovery process. Your body also utilizes carbohydrates more efficiently during this period, due to increased insulin sensitivity, so drinking your protein shake with some simple carbs can help the body more efficient absorb amino acids and utilize them for ongoing tissue repair and growth.

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The Portfolio Diet: Lower Cholesterol Without Statin Drugs?

Find out whether the Portfolio Diet can help you lower cholesterol naturally through diet  … without Statin drugs.

Could dramatically lowering your cholesterol simply be a matter of eating the right combination of foods?

Dr. David J.A. Jenkins thinks so.  And if his research is right, it might actually be possible to cut cholesterol significantly just by eating the right foods, in the right combinations.

Jenkins, a nutrition and metabolism expert at the University of Toronto and the “Father” of the gylycemic index, calls it the “The Portfolio Diet” and the concept is actually quite straightforward: By combining a variety of foods that have been shown to lower cholesterol on their own, it may be possible to lower serum cholesterol naturally without resorting to prescription statin drugs.   

Besides having profound public health consequences, this approach to eating and cholesterol control also promises to lower the cost of treating high cholesterol, potentially saving millions in prescription drug costs and health issues that arise from the side-effects of prescription statin drugs.

The Portfolio Diet: The Sum Is Greater Than The Parts?

For more than a decade, researchers have known that certain foods like oatmeal and soy can help lower blood cholesterol levels. However, until recently these foods have been viewed more or less independently of each other.

Dr. Jenkins decided to take a look at how combining a variety of foods that have been shown to reduce cholesterol might collectively work together, providing more bang for your buck.  

Jenkins’ study took a look at forty-six healthy, middle-aged adults who had high cholesterol. The subjects were divided into three groups:

1.  One group was placed on a whole-grain and low-fat dairy diet that was low in saturated fats;
2.  The second group followed the same diet, but also took a lovastatin, a cholesterol-reducing statin drug;
3.  The third group ate a diet high in plant sterols, ”sticky” fiber, soy and almonds.   

All groups experienced a reduction in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), and not surprisingly, the statin group experienced the most dramatic drop — a 30.9 percent reduction.

However, what did surprise researchers was the reductions seen in the porfolio diet group, which experienced a 28.9 percent reduction in fasting blood cholesterol levels, making it nearly as effective at cutting cholesterol as prescription statin drugs.

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Interval Training (HIIT) | Get Leaner with Less Cardio?

Can Interval Training help you strip off body fat faster? Learn how adding High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your cardio routine can reap big rewards in strength, power and fat loss.

When most people think of cardio, they think of endless hours on a treadmill, elliptical machine, stair stepper or jogging. But unless you enjoy distance or long-duration cardio (for example, if you are training for a marathon or are a running enthusiast) , many gym-goers dread climbing on that hamster wheel each day in the hopes of burning off that 400 calories and maybe losing a little body fat along the way.

But what if there was a way to burn nearly the same amount of calories in 30 minutes that you do in 60 minutes, stimulate fat burning after your cardio is complete, boost your stamina and endurance, and actually increase lean muscle in the process?

There may be.

It’s called Interval Training — also known as “High Intensity Interval Training” or “HIIT“, for short — and it uses periods of high-intensity cardio coupled with lower-intensity recovery periods in succession to shave time off your cardio workout and possibly more fat off your midsection than long duration cardio. And even more promising, Interval Training seems to do a better job than long-duration cardio of preserving lean tissue (muscle) while still burning fat.

Interval Training: What Is It?

Simply put, Interval Training is a method of cardiovascular training that has you perform the same amount of total work that you would perform in a longer session of cardio, but in a much shorter period of time by increasing the intensity of your workout.  

Interval Training is considered an advanced form of training and is popular with everyone from elite Olympic and professional athletes to body builders, fitness enthusiasts and recreational runners.  While the technique is advanced, it can be successfully modified to work for beginners as well, provided you are in good health and are free of any cardiovascular disorders that could make the routine unsafe.

Interval Training relies on the principle of rest and recovery to allow your body to do more work in less time. By alternating higher-intensity activity with short rest and recovery periods, you are able to cumulatively do more work in less time. And more work translates into more calories burned in a 30 minute session of cardio than if you did the same duration of cardio at a lower intensity.

Examples of Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training can be applied to nearly any cardiovascular activity, whether that’s walking, running, rollerblading or biking.

For example, if you are fit and regularly walk as part of your exercise routine, you might incorporate short periods (between 1-2 minutes) of jogging into your walk between lower-intensity periods of walking. If you are less fit, you might simply walk faster for a few minutes, allow yourself to recover and than repeat the higher intensity walking. If you are more highly conditioned, you might add in sprints to your daily run or treadmill work.

The Benefits of High Intensity Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training has a number of benefits that make it an effective addition to your existing cardiovascular training. These benefits include:

• Burning more calories in less time
• Improved cardiovascular endurance
• Possible increases in whole body fat burning (fat oxidation) versus solid-state cardio
• Reduced risk of Metabolic Syndrome
• Decreased muscle catabolism/increases in lean muscle mass
• Improvements in arterial elasticity
• Reduced boredom with your current cardio routine

Let’s take a closer look at each of these potential benefits, including some of the research behind them.

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Why Workout Routines for Toning Fail | Fitness Tips

If your fitness goal is to get a ‘toned body’, you’ve probably been doing all the wrong things with your workout routine. Learn what “toned” really means and how you can achieve it.

It’s almost impossible to pick up a fitness magazine and not find a reference to “toning your abs”, “toning your butt” or “toning your legs or thighs.”

But I’m going to let you in on one of the best kept secrets in fitness: There really is no such thing as “toning” or being “toned” — at least in the sense of what people normally associate with ”toned muscle” or a ”toned body.”  

There is a concept in anatomy and physiology called residual muscle contraction or tonus, but it refers to the continuous and partial contraction of a muscle to help stabilize posture and balance. It has nothing to do with the outward appearance of your body or whether you have tight glutes and washboard abs. You can be out of shape and struggle to climb a flight of stairs and still have muscle tonus.

So what’s the story? What is this “toning” that everyone is always talking about?

How the “Toned Body” Myth Got Started

At some point years ago, fitness writers, personal trainers and people who really ought to know better started using the term “toned” to describe individuals with high muscle mass to low body fat ratios. Instead of saying that an athlete, fitness model or highly-in-shape person was “lean and muscular” they started saying the person was “toned.”

Why this happened isn’t exactly clear. My theory is that the words “muscle” and “muscular” are scary and intimidating for some people, especially to many women who have been conditioned to run as fast as they can from the dreaded “M-Word.” The seemingly endless stream of articles online and in major fitness magazines instructing women how not to ”bulk up” and avoid become “muscular” via workout routines for “toning” is a major contributor to this myth.

So fitness writers and trainers started to use “toned” as a way of describing being muscular, without actually saying the word “muscular.” It seemed innocent enough, and it allowed them to not have to get into big, long, involved and uncomfortable discussions with their clients about why they should top obsessing on becoming too “bulky.”

You Can’t Diet or Treadmill Your Way to “Toned”

The problem is, to get a body that fits most people’s definition of “toned”, you have to weight train. And you generally have to go heavy. And you need to put on muscle mass. And you’ll have to drop your body fat ratio.  That’s the secret. Those four things. And it doesn’t matter whether you are a male or a female. It applies equally regardless of gender.

This may seem like an issue of semantics and a little thing, but it’s not. The problem is that “toned” has become a euphemism for “lean and muscular”, yet most people don’t realize that. They think “toned” is something you achieve by dieting, doing endless bouts of cardio and maybe occasionally doing some pilates or high-rep, low-weight resistance training.

So by obscuring what “toning” really means, we’ve doomed all kinds of people to pursuing toning workout routines that will likely never allow them to achieve their fitness, physique or body-shaping goals. They’ll continue to avoid any kind of serious weight training, go too light on the resistance, focus on high reps that only improve muscle endurance (not size or shape),  put way too much time and attention on ”functional” exercises and try to stair-step their way to a “toned” body.

And when it doesn’t work, they’ll go seek out the newest “30 Minute Body Toning Workout” and get right back on the hamster wheel again, only to be frustrated in three weeks when nothing has changed.  Maybe that’s how you sell fitness magazines and personal training sessions, but I’d prefer to think we’re in the business of helping people succeed, not just pushing services or content.

There’s A Whole ‘Lotta Toning Going On

So how pervasive is this term or concept of “toning?”

It’s probably one of the most frequently asked questions in the Diet and Fitness section of Yahoo Answers — especially among women (although I do see some men using it.) Typically, it will come in the form of a question like: “How can I get toned without becoming bulky?” or “Does anyone have any toning exercises that won’t make me put on muscle.”

Of course, if they hadn’t been sold the “myth of toning” and understood exactly what that term really meant, their questions would be absurd.

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Skim Milk | Healthy Food of the Day

Learn how adding skim milk to your diet can help you build muscle, strengthen bones and maybe even lose some body fat along the way.

“Milk - it does a body good” has a new meaning for people looking to add muscle, stave-off bone loss and reduce body fat.

A flurry of research — albeit, mostly funded by the dairy industry — over the past few years has suggested that including skim milk or fat-free milk into your diet can actually help you lose weight. But aside from the weight loss claims (which we’ll take a look at later), there are additional reasons that including skim milk in your diet can keep you fit, trim and healthy.

What is Skim Milk?

Skim milk is whole milk from dairy cows that has most or all of it’s fat removed. 

Traditionally, this was done by letting milk settle, and then “skimming” the fat off the top of the milk. What is left is the protein-rich, low-fat liquid below the layer of fat. In modern milk processing, the de-fatting process is done with centrifuges (basically the milk is spun around inside a big stainless steel tank and the fat is separated and drained off.)

Skim milk (also labeled as “fat-free milk” or “non-fat” milk) generally has less than 0.5 percent milk fat. Low-fat, semi-skimmed milk or “1% milk” has between 1 and 2 percent fat. For comparisons sake, whole cows milk has around 3.5 percent fat, or 7.9 grams of fat (4.6 grams of which are the “bad” saturated type of fat) in a 1 cup (16 oz) serving. In terms of calories, whole milk weighs in at 147 calories, in comparison to the 91 calories in skim milk.

Clearly choosing skim milk over whole or even 2% milk makes the most sense from a fat and calorie perspective.

But what about the difference in nutrition between skim milk and whole milk? Does the skimming process remove any nutrients?
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Fish Oil | Benefits and Side Effects from Answer Fitness

Hooked on The Idea of Taking Fish Oil Supplements? Before You Start, Learn About the Benefits and Potential Side Effects.

Fish oil is on a roll.

It’s difficult to open up a health or fitness magazine, browse the Internet or turn on the TV without seeing yet another piece on this “wonder” supplement. The health claims made in the media and online are often as amazing as the idea that we can distill down the oil of hundreds of fish into a single capsule: Reduce heart disease! Prevent cancer! Stave off depression! Stop arthritis! Improve your mood!

Not since Linus Pauling published his work on the benefits of Vitamin C (which has come under increased scrutiny by scientists in the past few decades), has there been so much buzz around a single supplement.

So before we dig into some of the possible benefits (and the potential side effects) of fish oil, let’s take a look at how we got here in the first place.

A Brief History of Fish Oil

The whole fish oil story started with a simple observation: People who had diets high in certain types of fatty, cold-water fish appeared to have lower rates of heart disease than other populations who ate less fish. The traditional Japanese diet, for example, contains large amounts of fish, as do certain Norwegian and arctic populations (like the Inuit.)

Scientists were intrigued enough with this correlation that they started to conduct studies to see if whether including more cold-water fish in the diets of people who don’t normally eat fish, could produce a similar benefit. Their results, while not conclusive, did find a strong correlation between the consumption of certain fats contained in fish, and decreased risk for certain form of heart disease. 

So what’s so great about fish?

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