Protein: A Guide to your needs.

If you want to build muscle or lose weight, there's nothing more important you can add to your diet than protein. But the concept of "protein" can be confusing, even to me, and I'm a nutritionist. Between all those pro and con news reports, the protein-boosting supplements, and the myths you hear at the gym, it's tough to figure out the truth. That's why we're stepping into the ring: to help you separate protein fact from protein fiction, once and for all.

How much protein does the average guy need?
Depends on whether you work out or not and how strenuous your workouts actually are. Your average desk-bound male requires just 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day.

But exercise can nearly double those requirements. For endurance athletes, Peter Lemon, a professor of exercise nutrition at the University of Western Ontario, recommends getting between 0.5 and 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight. "For strength athletes, those numbers are even higher--generally between 0.7 and 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight," he says. If you've been shooting for a gram of protein per pound of body weight--or more--you're overdoing it. Your body won't be able to process those extra calories, and they'll ultimately end up as just one thing: fat.

Will cutting carbs help my muscles grow faster?
Short answer: no. As effective as high-protein diets are for losing weight, you still need carbs and fat for maximum muscle growth. Your body uses carbs for energy during exercise. If your cache of carbs is low, your body will use protein as an alternate fuel source, and your muscles won't grow as much as they would if you were feeding them a cocktail of protein and carbs. As for the fat, it's vital for the production of muscle-building testosterone. (Studies show that guys who eat higher-fat diets also have higher testosterone levels.)

Could eating too much protein be dangerous?
There's research suggesting that too much protein can leave you dehydrated and may increase your risk for gout, kidney stones, and osteoporosis, as well as some forms of cancer. But studies have also shown that too much of anything, from vitamins to water, can be bad for your health. The bottom line? Excess carbs and fat are still associated with health risks, but the success of high-protein diets is no excuse to scarf down a whole pig or an entire side of beef. Keep your appetite in check, though, and a high-protein diet should not negatively impact your health.

Should I consider taking a protein supplement?
Yes--if you aren't getting the amount of protein your body requires based on your activity level. You can check nutrition labels and add up grams of protein on your own, or just remember the numbers 1, 5, 10, 15, 25 to roughly estimate protein intake. (That's 1 gram of protein for every serving of fruit and vegetables, 5 for every egg or handful of nuts you eat, 10 for every cup of milk or yogurt, 15 for every cup of beans or half-cup of cottage cheese, and 25 for every 3-4 ounce serving of meat.)

When's the best time to drink a protein shake?
Although it can vary by brand, most experts recommend taking protein in two servings: one an hour or so before your workout to tank off your body's energy reserves, and another dose immediately after you work out to help repair muscle damage and fuel the growth of new muscles.

Which is the better protein supplement: whey or casein?
Surprisingly, blending both types of protein together and taking them as a mixture may provide better benefits than taking either one alone. French researchers recently discovered that casein supplies a much steadier stream of amino acids to the body--much like a complex carbohydrate, which breaks down slowly in the body. Whey, on the other hand, is absorbed more quickly and provides a more immediate supply of amino acids to the body (much like a simple carbohydrate). It makes sense then that a combination of whey and casein would supply the body with the maximum dose of amino acids needed for both immediate and long-term muscle growth. (Can't find a blend you like? Buy your favorite whey and casein supplements and mix 'em together.)

Is there any benefit to getting protein from bars or shakes instead of whole foods?
No. Shakes and protein bars might make it easier to meet your daily protein requirements, but in the end, high-protein foods like meat, eggs, peanut butter, and nuts may actually be more satisfying because they have higher fat content and take longer to digest than shakes or bars.

What happens if I don't get all the protein I need? Will my muscles shrink?
Absolutely not. If you're eating an appropriate amount of protein in general, an occasional low-protein day will not affect muscle growth. The only reasons muscles would get smaller are from lack of use, injury, or severe calorie restriction.

Correct technique for hard jabs, crosses, hooks, and uppercuts

1) The most important punch in boxing! The jab! The jab is thrown with the lead hand. Begin with the knees slightly bent, feet staggered, chin down, and hands raised by the sides of your face (start from this basic fighting position before throwing any punch). Push off your back foot and snap the jab out quickly. The lead foot will slide forward slightly before impact. For maximum power, twist your arm in a corkscrew motion before landing.

2) The power punch! The straight ( right or left ) hand, it starts from the face and follows an imaginary straight line directly into the target. Drive and pivot from the rear foot, rotating the hips forcefully as your body weight shifts toward the front foot. Extend your right arm toward the target, snapping your wrist downward. On impact, the palm is down and the knuckles up.

3) The hook. Shift your weight toward the rear leg as you rotate forcefully to that side and pivot inward on the ball of your front foot. At the same time, whip the lead arm toward the target in an L shape (the elbow should be bent about 90 degrees). Turn your hips into the punch. You can angle your hand one of two ways: vertically, so your palm faces you on impact, or horizontally, so the palm faces the floor

4) Uppercut. Shift your weight to the hip on the side of the rear leg. Dip that side's shoulder as you crouch down a bit. Next, with the palm up and the arm bent 90 degrees, forcefully rotate toward the side of your lead leg and push off the ball of your back foot, driving the punch upward (aim for the chin of your imaginary opponent). On impact, your palm should face your chest.

The Lunchtime Workout: Cardio & Weights in 30 minutes or less!

If you have time to conquer rogue planets from your swimming pool, you definitely have time to fit in a quick workout!

"I don't have time to exercise." Probably the most oft used excuse of all time when people are explaining their lack of working out. And I believe them! Sort of. While it is true that we all have the same 24 hours to dole out and some of us will dedicate a few of those to working out no matter what, I do understand that everyone is busy and that we tend to do what we enjoy first. It just so happens that I lovelovelove working out. But some people lovelovelove knitting or bird watching or, inexplicably, WWF wrestling.

But unlike WWF, exercising is good for your health and so you ought to find some time to do it, even if it isn't your fave activity. For some people this means combining fitness with something they already love like dancing or rock climbing or - hey! - even video games! But others are more of the just-swallow-the-bitter-pill-and-get-it-over-with mindset. My husband is one of these people. He doesn't hate exercising but his first love Ultimate Frisbee isn't easily done on a daily basis (or even a weekly basis here after the first snow). So the other day he asked me to design a 30-minutes or less workout he could squeeze in during his lunch hour and still have time to shower, get back to the office and, you know, eat something. Oh and he wanted it to involve both weights and cardio using only basic equipment and with a minimum of studying.

The latter qualification ruled out renowned shortie workouts like CrossFit and the Monkey Bar Gym as both have a pretty sharp learning curve at the beginning. And so I made him a circuit. It hits all the major body parts and gets in some short bursts of high intensity cardio and thanks to supersets, your heart rate should stay up the entire time - not a bad bang for your workout buck! The Gym Buddies and I tested it out last week and all of us were quite sore afterward (although, weirdly, in different places: for me it was my inner things, Gym Buddy Krista was all about her butt, Allison felt it in her quads and Megan was just "tight.")

So if you need a quickie workout - especially handy this time of year! - I present to you:

The Gym Buddy Lunch Workout a.k.a. The Leg Killer
(Or brunch, if you're like us and can't get out of the house before 10 a.m.)

2 minute warm-up jogging/ellipticizing/biking/random flailing

Chest press w/ dumbbells alternating with flys (dumbbells) - 2 sets of each, 8-12 reps
Box jumps or step ups on weight bench for 1 minute (box jumps mean jumping on and off the bench with both feet at the same time, step ups are just stepping on and off the bench. The former is the tougher option.)

Upright rows alternating with deadlifts (barbell) - 2 sets of each, 8-12 reps
Sprint on treadmill for 1 minute (try setting it at level 8 or 9)

Arnold shoulder presses alternating with lateral raises (dumbbells) - 2 sets of each, 8-12 reps
Hindu squats for 1 minute (a Hindu squat means squatting low enough that your fingers brush the ground and your butt almost hits your heels. Do them as fast as you can.)

Bicep curls alternating with hammer curls (dumbbells) - 2 sets of each, 8-12 reps
Jumping rope for 1 minute

Tricep overheads alternating with pushdowns (dumbbell & cable machine) - 2 sets of each, 8-12 reps
Steep incline walk on the treadmill 1 minute

Cool down on treadmill: Easy run for the remaining time (we finished with about 8 minutes to spare.)

Which kind of workout do you prefer: short and intense or longer and slower? What's your go-to workout when you have 30 minutes or less? Anyone offended by people stepping on the weight benches??

With Glee

Does this woman (second picture) look happy? As in "As they shouted out with ..."? Yep, looks that way to me too. This is Linda, the runner up in the corporate fat loss contest I wrote about a few times over the past several months. Remember Darell? http://45yearold6pack.blogspot.com/2009/10/next-level-update-on-darell.html

Well, Linda wasn't too far behind Darell in body fat percentage lost at the end of the three month contest, and she was a good margin ahead of everyone but Darell. What made this achievement even more extraordinary was that she did it with almost no exercise. She attended a few of the classes I taught, but maybe only got in a dozen or fewer workouts over the entire three months, if even that. So that gave me the opportunity to basically stratify the results of simply implementing the nutrition improvements (which she nailed with precision and consistency) in the fat loss equation.

The bottom line? It's what I've said more times than I can count. If you want to get fit, exercise. If you want to be lean, clean up your eating (composition and volume).

As for exrecise, over the past few months, Linda has since made a commitment that is as firm as her new muscles, as you can see from the more recent picture. I'm very proud of her and thrilled to be a part of her process. She's now in two of my weekly classes so I regularly trot her out as inspiration for fellow students. She's a great sport about it and a great example of what you can accomplish when you finally get serious.

**********

Earlier this afternoon I was holed up in the bedroom wrapping presents for my kids and watching three shows on my computer (Hulu.com) I'd heard good things about but hadn't yet had a chance to check out: Modern Family, Cougar Town and Glee. Who needs cable?

What To Do With A Large Rack (And I'm not talking about weights)

(Dear Dad, you are going to want to stop reading here. Seriously. Actually all men will probably want to skip this one.)

Now that Jon and Kate are finally divorced (the 8 went with Kate - I'm guessing the Judge was a Dr. Suess fan), the country can now focus its collective attention on more important matters. Like my boobs. That's right, I just told everyone to stare at my chest. Being a very modest person I'd normally never say such a thing except that a) I need advice and b) I feel like everyone pretty much is anyhow.

Having lived 90% of my life having nothing even glance-worthy much less stareable on the top half of my body, I always find myself in an odd place when I'm nursing. See, when you're pregnant your knockers get humongous but nobody pays them much mind because your tummy is getting all the attention with its crazy limb-producing shenanigans. But now that my stomach has downgraded to Deflated Sharpei, my new rack has taken center stage. And it is formidable.

On one hand - or two hands rather as that is what Gym Buddy Lisseth used to feel me up as she exclaimed at the top of her lungs, "Boobs look good on you!" (something only one of the female Gym Buddies can get away with) - it is awesome to finally have some curves. And since, as we've previously discussed, my hips are here to stay for the milking duration, it's kinda nice to have some jugs - in the literal dairy sense - to balance out my bottom half.

The problem is that I am not used to being big chested. I am learning that there are things a girl has to do to wrangle those doggies. How do you normally well-endowed women do it?! For instance, a cute Nike top that looked perfectly decent pre-baby made quite a spectacle in my TurboKick class. The modest v-neck had somehow mutated to a va-va-voom v-neck, something I had failed to notice as I hadn't bothered to jump up and down in front of a mirror before leaving the house. (Note to self: in the future always jump up and down in front of a mirror before going out in public.) It only took about 5 seconds into the warm up before I was wishing sports bras came in turtleneck styles. (A sports-bra Dickie!) There was much tugging and adjusting, not to mention a near miss with a black eye. I think I'm sticking with t-shirts from here on out.

Another big-boob consideration besides the slutification of every top you own (and also the front hem is annoyingly two inches shorter than the back) is the sports bra problem. As any woman will tell you, an a-cup chest can get away with wearing crappy-but-oh-so-adorable sports bras but anything bigger needs more than a $10 Target bra. One technique is to double-bag, layering one (or more) bras over the other until maximum compression is achieved. This can work but it's not terribly comfortable especially on your shoulders, not to mention the added laundry. Your other alternative is to just hold 'em down with your hands - you laugh but I have seen more than one female Gym Buddy use this technique.

Enter KAOS Technical Clothing Systems to the rescue with their superhero sports bra! They offered to let me test drive their new RFI sport bra* and I figured my girls could definitely give it a run for its money. Sadly the running part didn't go so well. While the bra held up great during my 30-minute leg blasting circuit (more on that workout to come!) it let me down (hee!) on my run. Thanks to the smart placement of the seams on the shoulder straps - on your back rather than right on the top of your shoulder - it is the perfect lifting bra. Doesn't dig in at all no matter how many barbells you balance across your shoulders. (Ha - listen to me talk! In my case it was barbell, singular.) But to get the support I needed for my laps around the track, I would still need to double-bag.

What to do? I have heard from large-chested girlfriends that the Enell is the go-to sports bra. While it is about as ugly as they come - I'm pretty sure this is what my Grandma wore in the 40's (shiny!) - it definitely looks as if it knows its way around a jiggly part. It's the school marm of bras, strict but effective. It's also $64.00. That's a big chunk of change for a girl who once bought 3 sports bras on clearance for $2. It might be worth the money if I were planning on spending the rest of my life lactating but as soon as the Jelly Bean weans, well, let's just say I won't be needing the Enell anymore.

So ladies help me out! What's your sports bra solution? What shirt do you wear to keep your PiYo from going porno? Anyone else seriously irritated by the shoulder seams in sports bras? And how many times can you write the word bra before it starts looking funny and you can't remember how to spell it anymore?

UPDATE: The lovely (and small-tata'ed, by her own admission) MizFit is reviewing the same sports bra today! AND they gave her one to giveaway (what up with that, KAOS? I want to give one away!) so if you want to try out the KAOS - and according to the Miz, it is the *perfect* bra for small girls - head on over to her site and enter the contest!

*Legal stuff: KAOS sent me a free bra to try out. I was not paid by them or any other company for this post. Nor do I have any relationship with Enell.

Can the Wii Really Make You Fit?

Tetris. Mortal Kombat. All 300 incarnations of Super Mario Brothers. And my personal favorite Bubble Bobble. I grew up playing video games. Even in college, my roommates and I played hours and hours of Simba The Lion King (not kidding) trying to get the wee lion cub out of the hands of the catty hyenas by, naturally, jumping on giraffe heads. In our defense, only one out of the four of us had a car and there was a lot of snow. So anyhow, I get that video games are fun. But what I don't understand is how they can make you fit.

According to the Nintendo Wii currently presiding at my parent's house, I'm 86 years old. Me!! It told me, the girl who can do Scorpion Pose much less the wussy Tree Pose on the test, that I have bad balance! At any rate, I suppose it would explain why I'm so crotchety about all this dang blasted 'lectrical whosits all the kiddos are so infatuated with these days. When I was a kid we didn't have all this fancy pants motion stuff. Solitaire was good enough for me and by golly it'll be good enough for my kids. (Walks up hill both ways, shoes made out of cardboard and paper bags full of poop in lieu of soccer balls, blah, blah, blah.)

Yeah, right.

Santa is bringing a Wii to our house in less than a week and I'm actually really excited because I have it on good authority that the big guy is also bringing Dance Dance Revolution and I freaking love that game with the fervor of a thousand nerds. But part of the reasoning in allowing the Wii to follow us home was that it's so cold here that the snot freezes inside your nose (yes, truly, and yes, it's very uncomfortable) and so our Tazmanian devils could use something to burn off some energy indoors. You know, to take the place of all the exercise they're not getting at school anymore.

But I am dubious about the ability of the electronic wunderkind to provide a real workout. Sure it's fun and yeah I've got my heart rate up a bit doing DDR and nunchuck boxing but can a video game provide a real workout? Like a real make-you-so-sore-you-have-to-lower-yourself-onto-the-toilet-with-both-hands workout?

My first doubts crept in when my sister demonstrated the Wii jogging "game." For those of you uninitiated, you just run in place. Seriously. On a little white square. I laughed derisively until I realized that the treadmill is only one conveyor belt up from that. So then I tried a weight training game which should have been titled All the Moves You Can Do While Keeping One Foot on a Little White Square (i.e. squats and lunges). Last up was the Yoga game which ended badly after I screamed at the TV that it was ruining my vinyasa with its chirpy red dot and I have not just good but superior balance thankyouverymuch.

I was not impressed. Not only was it not that fun - running on a two-foot square is only exciting if you're in prison - but I didn't feel worked out. Where was the sweat in my eyes? The obnoxious 80's heavy metal? The guy making sex noises on the weight bench?? It also seemed like there wasn't a lot of room for growth in most of the games. And I stuck to my crabby guns for almost two years now. Until I had a new infant to care for and my three boys switched into full-on destruction mode.

So now I need to know: Can the Wii really provide a well rounded workout for kids? For adults? Or is it just Fitness Lite? Can a Wii really make you fit?? What games do you guys recommend?

Helping Yourself

Last night I had a singularly bizzarre, yet surprisingly uplifting experience. A friend of mine had a little too much to drink and is a hurting pup this morning. About 11pm last night, he was feeling very little pain but I was as uncomfortable as a guy with a sunburn wearing a burlap suit. He took the time to come find me and hang with me, making all the difference in the world. In between, he was in need of a little assistance that I was able to provide, which I would describe simply as, well, messy.



I called to check on him this morning, and he was licking his wounds, but also feeling badly about what he thought I'd had to endure as a result. While the truth was that my little "task" was a gift sent to me at just the right moment. It allowed me to take the focus off of myself, attend to a simple, clear priority that benefitted someone I cared about, and was the definitive symbolic conclusion to a night I was ready to have concluded.

A sense of peace followed.

So I wanted him to know he deserves not my forgiveness, but my thanks.

Feel better, Buddy.

"You can search the whole universe and not find a single being more worthy of love than yourself."
- Buddha