One of the best ways to prevent your body from tapping into muscle stores for energy while “fasting” overnight is to take in a moderate amount of protein shortly before going to bed. The most ideal choice(s) should contain casein protein – such as a shake with casein powder protein, or if you are also trying to lose fat, a simple glass of low-fat milk! Casein is a long acting protein that will help to repair and recover your muscles after weight training or endurance activity while you sleep.

Glutamine is the most common protein in the human body, concentrated primarily in muscle tissue. This high muscular concentration is an indication of the importance of glutamine in maintaining and developing muscle.
Glutamine is produced by the body and found in our diet as well. Under normal circumstances, your body produces enough glutamine to meet its needs and supplementation is not necessary. But glutamine is depleted during times of extreme physical stress such as when weight lifting and endurance training, as well as when fighting a muscle-wasting disease such as cancer or AIDS, or healing from an injury. In circumstances such as this glutamine supplementation is highly recommended.
During and after weight training and endurance activities, muscular glutamine drops significantly. This is when the recovery period begins, and any athlete knows that the recovery period is just as important as the workout itself. Your body immediately starts regenerating its muscular stores of glutamine during this time and supplementation with glutamine will allow the recovery period to be shorter. A shorter recovery period means a faster return to your weightlifting or endurance activity – which means getting better faster.
During your consistent training periods, I recommend that you consume about 4500 mg. per day. On your workout days take your glutamine within 15 minutes of finishing and then another serving about 2 hours later.

Vegetables are one of the most overlooked components of sports nutrition. Many athletes are rigorous about their protein and complex carbohydrate consumption, but lax about eating a sufficient quantity and variety of vegetables. Athletes should strive to take in five or six servings every day.
To meet your needs, include more than one serving at a meal. Not only do vegetables provide nutrients that other protein and carbohydrate foods may lack, but they also provide bulk and fiber, helping your body more efficiently process protein which is necessary for muscle and tendon healing and repair.

Don’t speak down to yourself!! Have you ever caught yourself saying things like:

“I’ll never be able to lose this weight.”
“I’m an idiot for giving in to the Mallomars.”
“I supposed to be overweight. My whole family is.”
“These snacks are my favorite. I can’t resist them.”
“I’m starving”.
“I could eat a horse.”

Speaking negatively to yourself and beating yourself up does not make sense and will certainly not lead to the kind of behavior you want.
What you say to yourself can affect you in much the same way as statements made by others.
Over the next day or so, try to catch yourself speaking down to yourself or saying something like “I HAVE to have those Mallomars”!! Everytime you realize that you used some kind of language of failure write it in your journal. You may surprise yourself! Watch for Part II tomorrow.

Keep your personal environment(s) clean. In other words, don’t keep those foods around your house or office that trigger you. A trigger food is a food that you just can’t resist, and once you start, you can’t stop. We all have our own personal triggers…some people are triggered by sweet/creamy snacks like ice cream or pudding; some by anything chocolate; some by salty crunchy snacks and so on. You know who you are!
The only real solution to not giving in to your trigger foods is not to have them around in the first place. If they are not so easily accessible you can’t eat them! Trying to keep those foods around because you think you have to “learn to have willpower” is setting yourself up for failure. Keep snacks around that you enjoy but won’t trigger you into overeating.
I don’t believe in willpower and I don’t believe in torturing yourself. Willpower is too inconsistent. One day you are strong, the next day not so much. So do yourself a big favor and rid your environment of all of your personal trigger foods. If you have kids keep around snacks that they like but that don’t trigger you. In other words if you are a sweet snacker, keep around the salty crunchy stuff or any snacks you know with certainty you can walk away from.

Hope you all had a good weekend…. but now it’s time to get yourself together and get back on track!
List 3 things, in the areas of nutrition, exercise and water, that you are absolutely committed to doing over the next week to give you a positive result!!! List one for each area.
For example:
Nutrition: I am absolutely committed to cutting out my high calorie coffee drink for 5 days this week, and replacing it with regular coffee and low-fat milk.
Exercise: I am absolutely committed to doing five 30 minute cardio sessions
Water: I am absolutely committed to drinking 2 liters of cold water everyday. (If you haven’t seen my previous posts about water – 1 gallon of cold water every day will increase your metabolism and help you to burn up to 12 additional lbs. a year.)

Triggers!!

Triggers are cues that signal you to eat. There are 3 kinds of triggers:

1. External cues – sights, sounds, touches, tastes and smells
2. Mental cues – feeling, sights, sounds, tastes and smells that you create in your head
3. Physical cues – physically begin hungry

Physical cues are real hunger and should be followed with eating a comfortable amount of healthful, nourishing food. External cues and mental cues are triggers that aren’t real.

This is why keeping a food diary is so important! The awareness that it creates will pull you out of autopilot and help you correctly identify those unnecessary eating triggers. Your food diary is your strongest awareness tool. You can either keep your food diary in your journal or go online. There are numerous calorie counter/food diaries out there. Try to pick one that also allows you to record notes on how and what you were feeling when you made certain choices.

CHANGES FOR SUCCESS – by Donna Mincieli, RD
After you eat you experience the consequences of eating. Positive consequences (great taste) will tend to cause you to repeat the behavior because humans are always looking for ways to gain pleasure. Negative consequences (gaining fat) will tend to cause you not to repeat the behavior because humans are always looking for ways to avoid pain.

But, consequences that happen right after the behavior (great taste) have more power than delayed consequences (gained fat).

But what would happen if a glob of fat the size and shape of a doughnut would stick out of your hips or stomach immediately after you ate it. Do you think this would affect your behavior a little? It definitely would!

This is why it is absolutely critical that you bring the negative consequences of overeating vividly into the present. To help you with this visual exercise, take 1 day’s worth of your usual snack foods, place them in a large baggie, and try to imagine all of the contents, in their current shapes and sizes, going straight to where your problem spots – your abs, hips, thighs, grandma arms, etc.!

Now, take out your journal and record: How did this make you feel?

By the way, scientifically speaking, it only takes about 6-10 hours after overeating for those extra calories to end up in your fat cells, thus expanding them. I don’t know about you but that’s immediate enough for me!!

During the cold weather months, it’s easy for our bodies to get tricked into dehydration as the cooling effect of the air masks our fluid loss during running. This can be compounded by the layers of clothes we usually wear during our winter runs. Being dehydrated can decrease our running performance as much as 15% by causing fatigue, headaches, decreased coordination and muscle cramping! So even in the winter time it is important that we maintain a state of hydration.

Don’t wait until you are thirsty to start drinking. Even in this cold weather we should all be shooting for a daily minimum of 64 oz. of water a day – even if you are not thirsty (if you are also trying to lose fat I would recommend that you increase your water consumption up to 1 gallon per day (128 oz.)). Everyday, everytime you urinate, your flow should be a clear to pale yellow color. This is especially important in the few days leading up to your long runs.

On your long run days consume about 16 oz. of water for every hour that you will be running. But make sure that you finish your water consumption at least an hour before you start your run – just to prevent the need for bathroom runs during training.
During your long runs, carry water with you. A general rule of thumb for water consumption is 4 to 6 oz. for every 20 minutes spent running. If you sweat a lot or run at least an 8 minute mile, 8 oz. per 20 minutes may be more appropriate. Sports drinks like Gatorade are not necessary until you are running for 75-90 minutes or more.
After the run, get in another 16 oz., preferably within the first 30-45 minutes. Part of that 16 oz. can consist of a cup of hot tea if it was a particularly frigid day!

The expanding waistline… the spare tire… the pot belly… the loss of size and definition in your arms and the shrunken chest…
And for women –the bigger hips… the pooch belly… general flabbiness in your arms and legs. Oh, and yes…that nasty cellulite.
If you are over the age of 35 you’ve noticed it by now.
The scale is going up and your clothes are getting tighter. You may be feeling weaker and less energetic, and let’s hope you have not yet heard your doctor mention the word “Lipitor”.
You’re thinking, “what’s going on! Why is this happening to me?” I’m not eating more than usual.”
The reason it is happening is because of age- related muscle loss. What made our bodies beautiful and healthy in our youth was our MUSCLE!!
Whether you realized it or not, your body was optimally muscled when you were in your late teens and early twenties. As a result of having more muscle, you were stronger, more energetic and healthier – no concerns yet about high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, etc.
Also, it was easier to stay lean and defined because muscle is also highly metabolic!! In other words, the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism is. Having more muscle is the reason that it was so much easier to stay lean back then.
But unfortunately, as we age our muscles start to shrink. Women will start to lose their muscle at about the age of 16 and men at 23 – as soon as we stop growing. It starts off very slowly but picks up as the years go on. The average muscle loss over the course of our lives is ½ lb. a year, or 5 lbs. a decade. This results in: an average fat gain of 10 lbs. of fat a decade; a deterioration of our health; a reduction of strength, coordination, balance, energy and stamina; and, METABOLISM IS REDUCED making it ever so difficult to maintain a lean, firm, hard and defined body!!
The only way to replace and rebuild lost muscle and maintain it for life is through consistent strength training exercise (weightlifting)! Adding back this muscle will improve many aspects of your health, increase strength, coordination, energy and stamina, and bring your metabolism back to where it was years ago – which in turn will make it easier to lose fat! And who doesn’t want to lose fat!