Sunday, February 17, 2013
Meal 3. Banana Bread
Recipe borrowed from http://theshiksa.com/2012/06/13/greek-yogurt-banana-nut-bread/
INGREDIENTS
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 1/4 cup applesauce
- 3 very ripe bananas, mashed (1 lb.)
- 1 cup Greek yogurt (whole, 2% or nonfat)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp salt
- Dash of cloves
- Dash of nutmeg
- 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
- Nonstick cooking oil spray
YOU WILL ALSO NEED
- Electric mixer, large mixing bowl, medium mixing bowl, small mixing bowl, spatula, 2 medium loaf pans (8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches each)
Total Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes
Servings: 16
Kosher Key: Dairy
Bake: 44-55 min at 325. Turn once in the oven
Bake: 44-55 min at 325. Turn once in the oven
Read more at http://theshiksa.com/2012/06/13/greek-yogurt-banana-nut-bread/#EyWz8Ghv7h8b1GCI.99
Athletes Know
I can't tell you how aggravated I get every. single. time. I see the latest and greatest diet fads. All of these things (pills, diet plans, and other supplements) that claim they are the easy way to lose weight and keep it off.
NEWS FLASH!
There is NO easy way to lose weight and get your dream body. Athletic bodies are at the top of the fitness pyramid, and because fit is becoming the new skinny in our society I believe the general population strives to have "the athlete physic". Well...
If you want to look like an athlete, you're going to have to work like one!
To be truly fit you HAVE to hit the weight room. Here is a typical workout.
Now, I might add that this is not the kind of workout that someone with a LARGE amount of weight to lose. This is for the people with a few extra pounds that they want to get off and keep off. The Olympic Lifts (Hang clean and squat) may see a little outrageous but they are lifts that will make you stronger and therefore more toned. In other words build muscle lose fat. I believe Jillian Michaels and the Cross Fit gurus would agree with me.
NEWS FLASH!
There is NO easy way to lose weight and get your dream body. Athletic bodies are at the top of the fitness pyramid, and because fit is becoming the new skinny in our society I believe the general population strives to have "the athlete physic". Well...
If you want to look like an athlete, you're going to have to work like one!
To be truly fit you HAVE to hit the weight room. Here is a typical workout.
Cardio (Conditioning):
15-30 mins of cardio... (And I don't mean level 1 on the elliptical or reading while you pedal a bike.)
There should be sweat dripping off of you when you're done.
Example.
10 sets of different ladder drills (1 foot in, 2 feet in, Speed skaters, Ali-Shuffle...Etc)
AND 5 sets of 1 minute hurdles
AND 2 rounds of 10 tempo sprints to half court or 20-meters with 10-20 sec rest time between sprints.
These exercises burn your unwanted fat and increase your energy.
Lift:
Hang clean (4 sets of 4 reps.)
Front squat (4 sets of 4 reps.)
Front pull downs (3 sets of 8 reps.)
DB Bench press (3 sets of 8 reps.)
Calf raises (3 sets of 30 reps.)
Medicine ball slams (3 sets of 10 reps. 12-15lbs balls.)
Core:
Using the same med ball, do the following twice.
30 seconds of MB twists.
30 seconds of MB toe touches.
30 seconds leg lifts.
30 seconds butterfly kicks.
1 minute bridge with knees bent.
Total, it should take a minimum of one hour and 30 minutes.
(I will compare this to the workouts on women's body building bible.) But here is some motivation to understand why we must work out.
Now, I might add that this is not the kind of workout that someone with a LARGE amount of weight to lose. This is for the people with a few extra pounds that they want to get off and keep off. The Olympic Lifts (Hang clean and squat) may see a little outrageous but they are lifts that will make you stronger and therefore more toned. In other words build muscle lose fat. I believe Jillian Michaels and the Cross Fit gurus would agree with me.
The Biggest Loser Rules
I feel like the Biggest Loser trainers have proven over and over that their methods work. I am going to start putting up my own workout plans soon, and I will talk about my experience with exercise. But until then I want to go through Bob Harpers rules.
1. I completely agree with but often forget about. Apparently this makes you feel your fullness faster. According to the Biggest Looser program your brian does not tell you that you are full until about 5-10 min after you are actually full so that is why people over eat.
2. Like I said we DON'T think about what we drink enough.
3 & 4. ;) hate to say I told you so!
7,8 & 9. These are somethings I will research more. They are quiet interesting.
10-20. These are all things that starting this week I PERSONALLY will research by committing to following these rules as part of what I will give up for lent! Im very excited.
Carb diets... What?
I attended a nutritional meeting that our Illinois Wesleyan University Athletic Department sponsored for all of the sports teams. Since this meeting was supposed to be geared just to the volleyball players I was VERY hopeful that I would be getting a good amount of useful information. But in reality all I learned was that our school likes to waste money on things.
The old woman was probably very knowledgeable, but her presentation was terrible and A LOT of her facts were flawed. She preached a diet plan that included CARBS, CARBS, CARBS! At first I was excited because bread and pasta are some of my favorite foods in the world, but then she said that carbs should make up 2/3 of your plate.... Thats when I knew she was bat-sh&* crazy. This simply make no sense. She brought out processed and sugary foods ( I mean Mini-wheats... really?!), and said they would be good foods for us to eat.
The only good piece of information we got was when I asked her what she thought of the Paleo Diet and like me she said she disagreed with it. She said that what we shouldn't be completely cutting whole food groups out of our diets. She said that what we should watch for is "bio-engineered" wheat. According to her, scientists found a way to make wheat ready for harvest faster, in order to meet high demands, and in doing so the wheat is shorter and more compacted when its harvest. This is the where the "gluten-free" craze came from, because many people are allergic to that.
Other interesting facts:
She also told us that anything with Nutrition Facts on the back is FDA related but that Supplement Facts are not regulated at all. I found this interesting because I had never noticed a difference before.
She also said that 40% of female athletes at IWU binge drink. (But then countered that statistic just two slides later by saying most females will have at least 4 drinks a week... that is not binge drinking by any means.) Though I have no idea where she got these statistics I still find them interesting.
My conclusion:
Carbs are important for your diet and should be a part of most meals that you eat BUT there are good carbs and bad carbs. For example fruits and veggies are carbs! And you should never eat any bread unless it is whole wheat.
Also the amount of carbs you should eat should directly correlate with how much working out you do. In season we athletes absolutely must eat more carbs but off season we should be more careful.
The old woman was probably very knowledgeable, but her presentation was terrible and A LOT of her facts were flawed. She preached a diet plan that included CARBS, CARBS, CARBS! At first I was excited because bread and pasta are some of my favorite foods in the world, but then she said that carbs should make up 2/3 of your plate.... Thats when I knew she was bat-sh&* crazy. This simply make no sense. She brought out processed and sugary foods ( I mean Mini-wheats... really?!), and said they would be good foods for us to eat.
The only good piece of information we got was when I asked her what she thought of the Paleo Diet and like me she said she disagreed with it. She said that what we shouldn't be completely cutting whole food groups out of our diets. She said that what we should watch for is "bio-engineered" wheat. According to her, scientists found a way to make wheat ready for harvest faster, in order to meet high demands, and in doing so the wheat is shorter and more compacted when its harvest. This is the where the "gluten-free" craze came from, because many people are allergic to that.
Other interesting facts:
She also told us that anything with Nutrition Facts on the back is FDA related but that Supplement Facts are not regulated at all. I found this interesting because I had never noticed a difference before.
She also said that 40% of female athletes at IWU binge drink. (But then countered that statistic just two slides later by saying most females will have at least 4 drinks a week... that is not binge drinking by any means.) Though I have no idea where she got these statistics I still find them interesting.
My conclusion:
Carbs are important for your diet and should be a part of most meals that you eat BUT there are good carbs and bad carbs. For example fruits and veggies are carbs! And you should never eat any bread unless it is whole wheat.
Also the amount of carbs you should eat should directly correlate with how much working out you do. In season we athletes absolutely must eat more carbs but off season we should be more careful.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Meal 2
(The picture was taken before they went into the oven.)
Since this week I am researching bread here is my favorite snack or quick meal. True to college kid fashion this is a 10$ meal tops and it takes less than ten minutes to make.
All of the ingredients are pictured above:
English muffin (whole wheat)
pizza sauce spread
mozzarella cheese
Preheat the oven to 350 and put them in for about 8 minutes.
and....Presto!! Healthy pizza in just minutes.
The Meat-a-tarian
While I was at Subway one time I found myself behind a strange gentleman who called himself a "Meat-a-tarian"(like the opposite of a vegetarian). He would only eat meat, cheese, and bread. Never any veggies or even lettuce on his sandwich. So naturally he and I all argued about how unhealthy his life style is for about a half-hour. By the end of it I distinctly remember calling him a caveman. Only a few months later the Paleo Diet became mainstream and the main point of the diet is eating, "foods from the food groups that our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have thrived on during the Paleolithic era, or Stone Age.Learn More...". So essentially a caveman diet. And while some swear by this method and the Cross Fit workouts do seem to work, I find many problems with it.
First, since the average age that "our ancestors" lived to was about 30-years-old, why then would eating like them give you a long healthy life? Personally I think that the logic behind this entire diet is flawed. But there is a lot of research backing the diet and so I will dissect it for bits and pieces that I think might be true. I'll start with meat.
Before freshman year volleyball season started our head coach Kim, a Paleo believer, laid out a diet for us that was a version of Paleo. She preached moderation. Limit your bread in take, don't eat anything fried and always get your meat grilled, were some of the rules we had to follow. I understood most of the rules and I did not argue of course, but there was one rule that I simply could not follow and that was no bacon! But thank god, at the start of my sophomore year her rule changed. She said that as she looked into it more, bacon can actually be the best thing to eat in the morning because the protein fuels your body for the rest of the day.
I also talked to our trainer recently about the topic of meat. His entire job revolves around eating healthy and staying active, and when I asked him what he thought about bacon he said, "Delicious, I love it." He also had no problems with the meat and said that as long as you are an active person your body will absorb the protein as energy and burn off the fat.
Protein is also what makes you feel full after you eat, and so you wont snack or pig out later.
So my conclusion is that meat is an essential part of our diets. I think that meat of all kinds is good for you, BUT IN MODERATION. Being a meat-a-tarian is a bad idea and I will stand by that. I agree with the Paleo method on this one but there are many things that I will always disagree with and next week I will research bread.
Here are some other articles I looked at this week that helped me come to this conclusion.
http://www.lifesupplemented.org/articles/healthy_diet/benefits_of_lean_meat.htm
First, since the average age that "our ancestors" lived to was about 30-years-old, why then would eating like them give you a long healthy life? Personally I think that the logic behind this entire diet is flawed. But there is a lot of research backing the diet and so I will dissect it for bits and pieces that I think might be true. I'll start with meat.
Before freshman year volleyball season started our head coach Kim, a Paleo believer, laid out a diet for us that was a version of Paleo. She preached moderation. Limit your bread in take, don't eat anything fried and always get your meat grilled, were some of the rules we had to follow. I understood most of the rules and I did not argue of course, but there was one rule that I simply could not follow and that was no bacon! But thank god, at the start of my sophomore year her rule changed. She said that as she looked into it more, bacon can actually be the best thing to eat in the morning because the protein fuels your body for the rest of the day.
I also talked to our trainer recently about the topic of meat. His entire job revolves around eating healthy and staying active, and when I asked him what he thought about bacon he said, "Delicious, I love it." He also had no problems with the meat and said that as long as you are an active person your body will absorb the protein as energy and burn off the fat.
Protein is also what makes you feel full after you eat, and so you wont snack or pig out later.
So my conclusion is that meat is an essential part of our diets. I think that meat of all kinds is good for you, BUT IN MODERATION. Being a meat-a-tarian is a bad idea and I will stand by that. I agree with the Paleo method on this one but there are many things that I will always disagree with and next week I will research bread.
Here are some other articles I looked at this week that helped me come to this conclusion.
http://www.lifesupplemented.org/articles/healthy_diet/benefits_of_lean_meat.htm
http://www.helpguide.org/life/healthy_diet_fats.htm
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