Sometimes athletes gather together and feast on copious amounts of bread and pasta: it’s an All-You-Can-Eat Carb Dinner. This is so that they can load up on carbohydrates, or in other words, carb-load.

Carb-loading means increasing the amount of glycogen (by eating carbohydrates) in the body that helps people to endure a longer and more intense amount of physical activity before hitting “the wall”. Glycogen is stored glucose (sugar). It is the body’s first-line energy source for harder physical efforts and keeping specific bodily systems (the brain, red blood cells, the kidney) running efficiently daily.

Contrary to popular belief that extra carbs need to be consumed before exercise, the body can actually restore its own glycogen storage for physical output that does not exceed 90 minutes. All you need is a protein-rich snack after your workout to aid the glycogen refueling process. Keep in mind that the body does not rely solely on carbs for energy; it also uses up stored fats. However, consuming protein immediately (within an hour) of exercise has been shown in studies to promote increases in lean body mass, strength, muscle enlargement, and decreases in body fat. An ideal supplement should contain a source of protein that provides at least 3 grams of leucine (amino acid in most protein-rich food and beverages). Carb intake that is not consumed directly after workouts will generate insulin rushes, which then promotes fat storage since glycogen storage is full. The insulin will then lock fat inside fat cells. On the other hand, protein synthesis is actually more effective when insulin is present. Thus, combining carbs with protein will help build muscle most effectively. Furthermore, timing protein intake (for post-exercise) will increase muscle mass much more than periodic smaller doses of protein at any other time.

So how do you know if carb-loading is for you? Carb-loading is only necessary for exercise that lasts for 90 minutes or more. It is not restricted to any sport, as long as it reaches that time minimum. Popular as this method of dietary training is for marathons and triathlons, carb-loading can also be useful for weightlifting sessions, but conditionally so. One study shows that carb-loading before weight lifting increases the amount that athletes were able to lift before hitting “the wall”. However, another study shows that there was no difference in lifters’ power output post carb-loading, possibly because the participants weren’t lifting for long enough to reach exhaustion. Therefore, carb-loading should only be done for strength/weight training and weight lifting if the session will continue over upwards of 90 minutes and exhaustion is anticipated. Otherwise, shorter sessions will not require, or benefit from consumption of additional carbohydrates.

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• Body Building: developing the body through exercise and diet specifically for competitive physique exhibition

  • Body builders develop an exercise regimen and diet solely for the purpose of muscle growth and aesthetics. They focus on consuming the ideal ratios of macronutrients. Macronutrients are the major food groups that humans consume in the largest quantities and which provide energy to fuel the body. They are: carbohydrates, protein, and fats. Body builders focus on training to progressively overload the muscles so that maximal muscle mass can be gained.

• Weight lifting: there are two competitive areas of lifting: power lifting, and Olympic weight lifting.

  • weight lifting is the sport of the snatch and the clean & jerk, but in everyday language, it means the lifting of weights. In Olympic weight lifting, the bar must be moved at high speed.

  • Powerlifting is lifting maximal weight in three different lifts: the bench, the squat, and the deadlift.

• Strength training: the use of weight resistance to tear, repair, and build muscles over time.  The goal is not to gain muscle mass or to lift as much weight as possible; it’s simply to get stronger. Any style of training can be used for this purpose. Different methods are weight training, body-weight exercises, and use of machines.

• Weight training: a type of strength training that uses weights rather than elastic. It’s what one would do in the gym.

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Source: iTunes Store

When it comes to losing weight, it’s all about a mathematical equation. You have to burn more than you eat. It’s simple but it can be complicated when you can’t keep track of what you eat. It’s not practical (or cool-looking) to carry around a food journal. That’s why food tracking apps are so beneficial – you always have them on you. Best of all – most of them are free!

So whether you need to track what you’re eating or just want to gain some more nutritional info, I highly recommended getting an app!

1.  MyPlate Calorie Tracker

This app is perfect for general calorie tracking. It was designed from LIVESTRONG.com, Lance Armstrong’s health and fitness website. Its best features are its simple design and its integration with the website for support groups, forums, and more! It’s easy to add physical tasks and food to get a glance at your eating to exercise ratio.

2. MyFitnessPal

This app’s biggest advantage is that it has the largest food database out of all iPhone calorie apps with over 3,000,000 foods! This includes meals at popular restaurants. You can also enter ingredients and serving sizes for your own recipes and then save them as meals to avoid wasting time entering the same dinners in time after time. It’s super easy to adjust portion sizes and edit your food diary. The app allows you to track exercise, graph your results and even scan a barcode for easy food entry!

3.40·30·30

Most apps track the amount of calories but what about the composition of your total consumption? This app ensures that you track not just your nutrition – but also the balance of nutrition. It can quickly and efficiently calculate the percent of protein, carbs and fats in each meal! Several popular diets recommend that your eating should consist of 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat! These quantities of macronutrient groups are essential to building muscle and losing fat!

It doesn’t really matter what app you decide to download – what matters is that you become more conscious of what you eat and how much. These apps are extremely beneficial and easy to use! There are #NoMoreExcuses!

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During the day:

• Wake up at the same time every day, whether that’s 5:30 or 8:30. This ritual will help maintain your circadian rhythms and make it more likely you’ll fall asleep at the same time every night, too. Do not be one of those people who allows bedtime and awakening time to drift.

• As soon as you wake up, “get into some sort of daylight situation really quickly, even if it’s just stepping out on a balcony,” suggests sleep expert Joyce Walsleben, R.N., Ph.D. Bright light suppresses the production of melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone in your brain

• Exercise can promote good sleep. Vigorous exercise should be taken in the morning or late afternoon. A relaxing exercise can be done before bed to help initiate a restful night’s sleep

• If you need to make up for a few lost hours, opt for a daytime nap rather than sleeping late. This strategy allows you to pay off your sleep debt without disturbing your natural sleep-wake rhythm, which often backfires in insomnia and throws you off for days.

Before bed:

• Establish a regular relaxing bedtime routine. Do it every night. With time your body will see that these actions are a sign that it is soon time to sleep and your brain will trigger the release of sleep inducing hormones.

• Enjoy a nice herbal tea before bed, but avoid stimulants such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. While alcohol is well known to speed the onset of sleep, it disrupts sleep in the second half as the body begins to metabolize the alcohol, causing arousal.

• Associate your bed with sleep. Be sure to fully reserve the bedroom for rest, sleep and sex. Other activities must be done elsewhere. It’s not a good idea to use your bed to watch TV, listen to the radio, or read.

• Try to avoid emotionally upsetting conversations and activities before trying to go to sleep. Don’t dwell on, or bring your problems to bed.

• Put your phone and laptop away before bed. The glow from the LCD screens tamper with the mind’s ability to  produce the proper hormones for sleep and relaxation.

Throughout the night:

• Sleep is greatly affected by the how hot or cold you are during the night. The ideal temperature for sleep is 69 degrees fahrenheit. Knowing this, try and find a balance between clothes and bed covers. Ensure room is well ventilated with proper airflow to remove fumes and used air.

• Although 8 hours of sleep is recommended, each person is different. Find your own magic sleep number for how much time you need to commit to rest and stick to it. Quality sleep is always better than quantity.

• Noise has an incredibly bad effect on your heart and waking up many times during the night puts your body under a lot of stress. Try and keep your room quiet by wearing some earplugs. You can get earplugs that only cancel out certain sounds so that you can still hear your alarm or a baby monitor on your bedside table.

• Ensure that at night your sleeping area is dark, yet that there is adequate exposure to natural light for when the morning comes. Light exposure helps maintain a healthy sleep-wake cycle.

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You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. But it’s not so simple. Being hydrated is complicated, so I’ll boil it down.

Without water, we would die in about 3 days. In a state of dehydration, we start to age, and we egg on illness. It’s easy to become dehydrated because we lose water every minute just by sweating and going to the bathroom. For the average person, keeping hydrated is essential for overall bodily health and function. For athletes, hydration is imperative for peak performance; a lack of proper hydration can result in tired or cramped muscles, heat exhaustion, poor coordination, and a compromised ability to cool down body temperature.

Our bodies have 4 ways of regulating our bodily fluid reserves to help keep us balanced: hormones ADH (antidiuretic hormone) and aldosterone, the thirst mechanism, and our nervous system. The first three are what you should know more about. The body produces the hormones ADH and aldosterone when its body fluid reserves are low. These hormones work in ways that increase blood pressure so that more water and ions can be reabsorbed by the kidney. This process attempts to conserve sodium and potassium. When deregulated, ADH and aldosterone contribute to cardiovascular, and the latter to kidney (renal) disease.

Two ways humans can become dehydrated are through the loss of fluids and the loss of electrolytes. Electrolytes, when dissolved in fluid, tend to break apart into their component ions. The body’s 7 main electrolytes are sodium, calcium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, phosphate, and bicarbonate. An example of body function when it’s in a deficit of electrolytes is muscle weakness or cramping due to a deficiency of calcium, potassium, and sodium. On the other hand, too much sodium can cause high blood pressure. So how does one regulate electrolyte balance? Through a balanced diet. Food that is naturally high in electrolytes are fruits and vegetables, salt and sugar, nuts, bread, milk, fruit, rice, potatoes, and soups. Of course, there are many more, just a quick google search away.

For athletes and people who exercise regularly, this is important: contrary to what sports drink marketers claim, the body doesn’t require additional electrolytes from drinks like Gatorade for at least 1.5 hours. Average electrolyte loss rates by sweat from running or biking are about 1 gram per hour for sodium, and 0.2 grams per hour for potassium, which is less than one third of what the body holds.  However, the body can typically restore electrolyte loss for up to 1.5 to 3 hours! It is not recommended that athletes attempt to completely restore their electrolyte stores post-exercise.

If you’re concerned about your electrolyte intake, check out this link to see which foods you might want to add to your diet. Remember: start slowly, not all at once.

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1. Do your research – If you know where you’re going, check out their website ahead of time. Most restaurants have menus and nutritional information guides online. You might be surprised that what you initially thought was healthy might be high in sugars or full of empty calories. Explore the menu for healthy choices and what fits your eating regimen. If that restaurant has nothing you are interested in eating, suggest another place to go! Lastly, decide what you are getting before you go and when you get there, don’t even look at the menu! This will help you avoid making any last minute unhealthy choices!

2. Don’t be cheap – Most meals come with something on the side. Upgrade to a side salad instead of fries. Don’t use money as an excuse to eat unhealthy. The healthy side might cost an extra dollar, but it saves you peace of mind.

3. Don’t go out starving – Eating a small meal before you go out will reduce your hunger. It will make you less likely to splurge on a indulgent food item or larger portion size. Try eating a cup of broccoli and drinking some water about an hour or so before you leave. You’ll be less hungry and instead of ordering a full meal you can get a half serving or an appetizer instead.

4. Don’t be a wimp – Speak up and ask the waitress exactly how the food is cooked. If you are ordering a chicken entree, there are a million ways they can cook it! Inquire about the cooking method – poached, fried, grilled, baked? If the waitress gives you an answer you don’t like ask if you could get it prepared another way!

So next time you get a text from a buddy, don’t freak out! A healthy lifestyle is exactly that – a lifestyle. You can’t stop going out but you can make the right decisions. Let us know if you have any other tips for dining out or if these have helped you #PushYourLimits!

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• Routine: If you create a routine of working out, it is more likely you won’t fall off track. Waking up 30 minutes earlier will make sure that it fits in your daily schedule, instead of getting distracted by other errands that may come up later on in the day.
• Good start to the day: Exercising is a great way to start your day. You feel energized, and will be more alert than your coffee chugger coworkers when you arrive at work!
• Exercise harder: Research has shown that you don’t have the same amount of energy later in the day then what you had in the morning. Therefore you won’t work out as long as hard as you would earlier.

I choose to see it like this: I either wake up 30 minutes earlier and feel great throughout the day, or I can sleep those extra 30 minutes, and miss the extra boost of energy and satisfaction.

To make it as easy as possible to get up, I make sure I have all the ingredients to my favorite smoothie the night before so that I have something to look forward to. All it takes is a half hour doing my in-home exercise routine to give me that extra energy boost!

When do you prefer to work out?

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Stretching before and after a workout is very important, but no matter how much you stretch, you probably aren’t massaging out all the tight knots in your muscles. The foam roller is versatile; you can use it for almost every part of your body. For those who have sore backs and shoulders, foam rolling can get out the kinks. For runners, it can be especially helpful for the legs. Common problems in runners are shin splints and IT (iliotibial) band pain. Rolling the foam roller under the calf muscles can help to loosen those muscles and prevent shin splints. For the IT (iliotibial) bands, the band that runs on the outside of the leg from the hip to just below the knee, will find that the foam roller works wonders and will help keep your muscles refreshed for more frequent runs. Besides what’s been mentioned, there are a myriad of other uses for the foam roller.

Regular use of a foam roller can have the following benefits, and much more:

• Prevent common injuries: Exercise-related injuries often arise from the muscles being too tight. By keeping a regular routine of foam rolling, you ensure that tight muscles do not become trigger points for injury. Foam rolling before exercise can help decrease the likelihood of injury during exercise, and post-workout foam rolling can help loosen up the muscles you used, and help you recover faster for your next workout.

• Helps ease stress: If your muscles are wound up, using a foam roller can help get rid of the built-up tension. Even if there aren’t specific muscle groups that you want to target with the  roller, an all-over body routine can help you relax. This is incredibly useful for those who’ve been sitting at a desk for a long period of time.

• Maintains flexibility: Stretching before and after workouts will help maintain flexibility, but not as well as a foam roller will. Using a foam roller regularly can help improve your joints’ range of motion.

• Reduces soreness and cramps: The foam roller helps to reduce lactic acid build-up in the muscles which otherwise causes soreness and cramps.

Most gyms will be equipped with a range of different foam rollers, and you can purchase one online or in most sports stores. It may hurt a little upon starting out, but will feel like a comfortable massage once you get used to it.

Try some exercises to start yourself off! Here are some for: the legs, hip-flexors, and arms.

 If you still aren’t convinced, here’s my personal testimonial: Of all the times I went to physical therapy for knee pain, and after all my experiences with shin splints, the foam roller is the only thing to which I owe my ability to run without pain.

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Photo Credit: alittlewit.files.wordpress.com

There are probably more condiment containers in your fridge right now than fresh groceries. We love them because they have a long shelf life and are perfect for adding flavor to any dish! With the addition of a condiment, we can customize any dish to exactly what we want. We can add sweetness or spiciness to just about anything. Unfortunately, there are some condiments that can derail you from achieving your fitness goals. Being informed about which condiments will help or hurt can make all the difference in your results.

Ketchup with its sweet and tangy taste is the king of the condiments. It might not be high in calories, however quantity and ingredients are the big problem. We love squeezing out huge portions of it, multiplying the serving size and racking up the calories and sugar. A great substitution for ketchup is salsa. It’s super easy to make and has fresh ingredients. You can also add spice with jalapeno peppers!

Mayo is a popular spread for sandwiches because we love the creamy texture. Although flavorful, it’s super high in fat. Try switching from mayo to hummus. Hummus is made with chickpeas that are high in healthy fats, protein, and fibre. Hummus is also great because it mimics the creamy texture of mayo.

Nothing tastes better than adding flavor to a boring and bland salad, however Ranch dressing is not the way to go! It’s a heavy hitter high in both fats and sugars. Sub it out with prepared mustard. It’s low in calories and high in flavor . It packs a powerful punch meaning you don’t need as much which helps control portions. Add some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and you’ve got a tasty and healthy salad dressing.

Going to a barbeque? Skip the sugary BBQ sauce! Instead try some hot sauce on your burger or steak sandwich. Similar to mustard, hot sauce is flavorful so you don’t need a lot of it! Not a hot sauce fan? Try a fresh salsa recipe instead!

Another creamy condiment we love is sour cream. It’s perfect for fajitas or on a baked potato, however it has a lot of fat. A great alternative is guacamole. Guacamole is made from avocados, which are a superfood that contain healthy fats that help build muscle. It’s really easy to make and has a cool smooth texture just like sour cream!

Try out some of these other healthy condiments:

• Pesto
• Honey (use instead of refined sugar)
• Horseradish (powerful antioxidant)

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The OctaSlider’s unique slide and glide motion creates intensified resistance by allowing greater ranges of motion that engage all 8 muscle groups delivering faster results in less time.

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