Nutrition Reports

Just about nutrition info

Latest Posts

Cycling Nutrition You Need To Make The Most Of Your Training

Cycling Fitness training will only be effective if you supply your body with the right kind of cycling nutrition. It is important to eat healthy meals, but there is a whole world of nutrition products that can make a big difference, if chosen carefully.

Before starting a long cycle training session, or road ride, you need to build up a good reserve of complex carbohydrates, which have the benefit of being metabolised slowly. As a result your energy reserves will stay at a safe level throughout the ride. Now these carbs can come from regular foodstuffs like potatoes and pasta, but there are some sophisticated complex carb powders and supplements available.

As the calories are used up during the ride, they need to be replaced quickly and in good time, so carrying a stock of energy gels and bars, and electrolyte energy drinks, is vital for even energy levels all the way to the end.
Calories and Carbs that are burnt off can be quickly replaced by good quality Energy Bars. Energy Gels are a more fast acting, and effective, approach to energy replacement, and are a staple of professional cyclists. It is important to realise, however, that these carbohydrate gels dont work unless accompanied by a lot of extra water so for a 1.4 oz gel you need to take in an extra 500ml of water for the carbs to be absorbed as intended.

A great deal of liquid is used up in a strenuous ride, so hydration is a key area that cant be neglected. Plain water is an important and under-appreciated drink that clearly has many benefits. But this isnt enough to keep up all levels, so it should be partnered with electrolyte drinks. These isotonic drinks can come in the familiar form of the famous brand name bottles, or a self-mixed powdered drink tuned to your particular needs. Just keep replacing liquids throughout the session, to save running out of reserves at the wrong moment.

And after the session is over, it doesnt help if you dont make adequate provision for recovery. So, once refreshed, you need to take in plenty of complex carbohydrates to boost your glycogen levels. Again get this from pasta and the like, or your complex carb powder mix. If it was a particularly strenuous ride, a boost of protein is needed to rebuild and recover muscles. Natural foods or protein mix drinks can do this job for you, with some help from protein bars.

Faced with these ever present concerns, it is important to come up with a well-designed cycling training program, with help from a qualified coach. If you cant access people of that level, there are lots of expert programs, books and DVDs on sale, to lead you on the right path. So that is quite a collection of products that you need to arm yourself with, to make a hard cycling session or ride have a great effect on your body. Neglect these areas, and you can do quite a bit of harm to yourself so it is definitely worth the effort.

How To Build Muscle Lose Fat Today From Scratch

It is commonly believed that if you add too much muscle quickly, you will add fat at the same time. That occurs in the muscle gaining process. It is inevitable and you have to know and agree with that if you want to gain muscle mass. Calories are a must and the more the better if you want to gain bigger muscle mass to your body. For the extra calories, you can’t direct where they go, some of them will go for growing your muscle, some won’t. And the left calories would generate fat.

If you want to make your body shape changes in a short period of time, you should focus on gaining muscle mass in a period of time and then focus on losing additional body fat in another period of time.

In order to slash your extra fat, you have to increase your metabolic rate. Muscle level controls your metabolic rate. So getting muscle mass first is good for dropping your fat. For this reason, build a bulking phase of muscle is a good start.

Based on what we get here, your goal of gaining weight should be: gain small amount of fat and big amount of muscle as you can. In this step, your main purpose is to not rid of fat completely but to get them as little as possible.

It can be accomplished by three ways.

Count the exact additional calories you need.

Instead of talking about “optimal nutrition”, we are going to talk about “super nutrition” here. Getting extra calories is needed to make your muscles larger, but eating as much as you can of random foods beyond what you need to make your muscle tissue larger will cause you to gain more fat than you should.

15 to 20 percent of extra calories of your daily needs are a good point for your muscle growth. If your calorie intake is in this range, you don’t need any more calories.

Be careful your nutrition sources.

Most of the extra food should be in the form of lean proteins, carbohydrates that are high in fiber and unsaturated, healthy fats. Don’t just eat everything you like. You should eat something good for you. Such like eating lean meat and high fiber carbohydrates for stabilizing your blood sugar level and stay away from high amount of saturated fats.

Start your cardio sessions.

Cardio workout is less important for build bulk muscle, but it will help you gain less fat. You don’t need to go overboard, it is just an additional workout. Just keep cardio workout high strength and short. 10 to 20 minutes long workouts are perfect type for keeping from losing muscle mass.

Once you’ve gained big muscle mass that you are pleased, and then it’s time to switch to fat loss exercises and focus on that to help you drop extra body fat and keep your muscle mass level. You will gain muscle and fat at the same time. It is an inevitable truth. The best course of action is just to keep the fat gain at a minimum instead of attempting to avoid it altogether.

Nutrition for Athletes Should Include Live Enzymes

When looking for the best nutrition for athletes, understand that live enzymes are not nutrients resembling vitamins and minerals. They are catalysts, which appear as biochemical agents combining two compounds so they can react with each other, while the enzyme itself remains intact.

The relevance of live enzymes, notably in nutrition for athletes, cannot be over-inflated, “In short, virtually nothing happens in the body without the help of enzymes”, says Ellen W. Cutler, co-author of ‘Micro Miracles’. Live enzymes are frequently mentioned in discussions surrounding nutrition for athletes, but what are they, why does anyone need them, and where do people uncover them?

Enzymes are not nutrients like protein, vitamins, minerals, or carbohydrates, but they are catalysts for the chemical reactions that make those nutrients work in the body. While there are 1,300 distinct variations of live enzymes that help the body function, the most common are digestive enzymes. Equally fundamental are metabolic enzymes that are important to burning fat and generating energy.

Metabolic enzymes originate in five different areas of the body, the stomach, liver, salivary glands, the wall of the small intestine, and the pancreas. Since energy is fundamental to build muscle, to sustain a natural weight loss routine or to stay physically fit, metabolic enzymes play a central role in appropriate nutrition for athletes.

It is quite clear that digestive enzymes are crucial live enzymes, too. If your body does not have an adequate amount, the organs switch functions. The liver and the pancreas from producing metabolic enzymes, so tasks like converting fat into energy are given a lower priority. That is not beneficial for an athlete requiring nutrition to burn fat and spark energy. Live enzymes help deliver essential nutrition for athletes to most effectively burn fat and produce energy.

According to Joseph Brasco, M.D., Gastroenterologist at the Center of Colon and Digestive Diseases in Huntsville, Alabama, “Because the pancreas and liver need energy to produce enzymes, the resulting drain renders the organs temporarily unable to perform their functions of detoxification, blood sugar control and fat burning”. So, lacking those healthy, digestive, live enzymes and metabolic enzymes, you feel lethargic, tend to get fat, and you could even endure mood swings.

To understand why live enzymes are critical in nutrition for athletes, you should know the description of enzymes from ‘The Nutrition Almanac-4th Edition’ (1996 McGraw Hill, Gayla J. Kirschmann and John D. Kirschmann), “The active chemicals in the digestive juices which cause the chemical breakdown of foods are called enzymes, combinations of amino acids that are capable of inducing chemical changes in other substances”.

Fortunately, live enzymes are now relatively easy to come by in concentrated whole foods that deliver absolutely natural nutrition for athletes. Some of the ultimate concentrated whole foods and health drinks with live enzymes are offered only online. Teeming with effective antioxidants that can be readily assimilated by the body, these formulas deliver a brilliant regenerating effect on the liver and pancreas, as well as the adrenals, reproductive glands, nervous system and kidneys.

To acquire the correct digestive juices that change nutrients into energy, explore the Internet for online health food stores that suggest nutrition for athletes with live enzymes from whole foods. Look for natural whole foods and health drinks that are made from real fruits, herbs and other plants. Feeding the body the nutrients it needs with live enzymes helps it to absorb those nutrients more productively and perform at optimal levels over the long haul.

Using Nutrition to Prevent or Eliminate Illness

Most everyone knows that before drugs existed, most healing was done with herbs and misguided medical theories. Herbs and food were the medicine of past times. In a natural nutrition book, I recently read this quote, “If doctors don’t learn nutrition, nutritionists will become doctors.” This quote shows the importance of nutrition and the power it has to prevent or eliminate illness.

If you are sick or have certain body conditions that are creating pain, then you need to consider learning enough nutrition to help yourself eliminate that sickness or pain. Learning some the basic principles of nutrition is not hard. It just takes a little effort in finding the right nutritional course that teaches practical ways of applying nutrition.

Most illnesses and resulting deaths occur because of inflammation. Inflammation occurs at the beginning of a disease and it is just a slight irritation that you might feel. Many times you just ignore this irritation, which then turns into a slight inflammation. As the inflammation feeds on itself it gets bigger and bigger eventually causing a disease that a doctor can detect. Once a doctor can detect a disease, it is well established in your body.

Applying practical nutrition stops the beginning of inflammation. This prevents the formation of disease. If disease is developing or well established, nutrition can reverse these conditions. One area that nutrition can not heal or cure is when inflammation has caused a disease that has permanently destroyed cells and tissue. But the body has amazing recovering abilities so one cannot always say “the body can not recover.”

Inflammation comes from excess acid in your body. This acid is created from the foods you eat. Eating certain foods leave an acid residue in your cells that then travel into the liquid surrounding your cells – lymph liquid. In the lymph liquid, this acid can damage cells and tissue and in doing so starts the inflammation process.

A good natural anti-inflammatory to use daily is MSM. MSM travels throughout your body reducing inflammation and stopping the beginnings of disease. Using 2000 – 4000 mg of MSM is not uncommon.

Acid in the body is neutralized by minerals. The actual way minerals are created by food and used in your body to stop the destructive effects of acids is taught in nutrition. There are 5 major key minerals that you must concentrate on when you consider what foods to eat. These minerals are responsible for the majority of chemical reactions that occur in your body, which provide you with natural health.

Learning natural nutrition is now possible online. In the past it was difficult to learn nutrition without going to school. Finding courses in practical nutrition can be difficult but what you and most people need is to learn is nutrition that you can put into practice. Understanding nutrition can give you the natural methods that you need to deal with any body discomfort or disease. It gives you the tools and techniques that you need to apply to keep you healthy for a long time. Find the time, find the course, find the health that you need.

Honeydew Fun Facts & Nutrition

Honeydew is a variety of muskmelon, considered the sweetest of all melons. They’re also called winter melons because they’re harvested late in the season, peaking during late summer, fall and winter, though honeydew is available almost the whole year round. Most of our U.S. honeydews come from Arizona, Texas or California with imported melons from Mexico taking up the slack during winter months.

Where did Honeydew originally come from?

No one is exactly sure the origin of honeydew but Persia is named the likely humble beginnings for this succulent melon. Columbus carried honeydew seeds to America and now it’s one of our favorite melons behind watermelon and cantaloupe.

How To Pick A Honeydew Melon:

Things you want to look for when picking out a perfectly ripe melon are no bruises, soft areas or cracks. Don’t bother shaking or hitting it, that won’t tell you anything. Sniff the stem end (which should be somewhat smooth): if you can smell it, then it’s ripe. Also, a ripe melon should be somewhat firm, if it’s a little soft that’s ok but if it’s very soft, put it back, it’s overripe.

Honeydew Nutrition:

Like other melons, honeydews contain a large amount of water and are happily quite low in calories. Additionally, they’re fat-free and cholesterol free. They’re also a great source of Vitamin C and potassium.

How To Store Honeydew Melon:

You can refrigerate cut honeydew in a covered container for up to three days. Make sure to keep it covered though, as the smell can mix with other foods thanks to its wonderful aromatic properties.

Want to keep that sweet taste of summer with you all year? No problem, you can easily freeze honeydew. Just slice it up, freeze it on a cookie sheet and place in freezer baggies. You can also add syrup or sugar if you like.

Some Honeydew Serving Suggestions:

Before cutting into it, it’s best to wash your melon with soap and water because honeydew is grown on the ground and can make contact with fertilizer and other contaminants you don’t want to ingest.

Serve it barely chilled. If it’s been stored in the refrigerator, remove it from the fridge 15-20 minutes before serving. You can put it in a fruit salad, whip it up into a frothy cool summer drink or drizzle lemon on top to add tang to the melon’s natural sweetness. A clever serving idea is to use a half-cut melon as a serving bowl, perfect for yogurt, cottage cheese or even ice cream if you’re feeling mildly decadent.