Matt Hank

I give my clients advice about their diet and exercise, but they always ask me what a typical meal for me is like.  So here is a typical lunch (I have the luxury to eat at home every day so I can make some good stuff).

What’s in it:

1. Organic chicken – Trader Joes
2. Steamed brown rice – Trader Joes
3. Organic black beans – Trader Joes
4. Avocado w/ sea salt – Farmers market
5. Organic baby carrots – Trader Joes
6. Broccoli – Farmers market

Train Hard-Train Smart
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If you’re looking to put on size – muscle mass – than you need be eating plenty of calories throughout the day. However, there is this myth that you must consume endless amounts of protein in your diet to gain muscle mass.  This is simply not true.  Yes, you should consume an adequate amount of protein in your diet if you looking to gain size, but it is equally (if not more) important to consume quality carbohydrates throughout the day.  You should be planning your diet around consuming whole wheat/sprouted breads, pastas, fruits/veggies, beans, rice, and other nutrient dense carbs.  Be careful with over consumption of protein, your body can only handle so much.  You will either store excess protein as fat or put extra stress on your body to get rid of it.

These statements are made with the assumption that someone who is looking to gain size is training extremely hard, which is taxing to the body.  If you are having one intense workout or multiple workouts during the day with the goal of putting on muscle mass, your body needs extra fuel to grow.

Train Hard-Train Smart,
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Every time I meet with a new client, they are always looking for the miracle diet that will help them shed pounds. They read about these ridiculous diets in a magazine or hear about it on TV and want to replicate them in some fashion. However, my first nutrition tip is pretty standard – Increase the amount of produce in your diet.

I challenge my clients to consume some type of produce (fruit and veggies) with every meal. For breakfast, it may be a piece of fruit, fruit smoothie, or greens foods mix shake. For lunch and dinner, it can be a salad, steamed veggies, piece of fruit, or grilled veggies just to name a few options. I do encourage raw produce as opposed to cooked produce, but when starting out the main thing is just being conscious to add produce to every meal.

If a client can accomplish this first task to increase the amount of produce (hopefully raw) in their diet, then we can start to move onto more specific recommendations.

Train Hard-Train Smart
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I recently started taking digestive enzymes with my lunch and dinner – Check out more info about the supplement. The only other supplement I have been taking consistently is a green foods powder (here’s an example). Supplementing your diet with digestive enzymes appears to be beneficial for a few different reasons. When foods are cooked and processed it kills part of the enzyme content within that specific food. The pancreases has to release lots of enzymes to digest this cooked food. As a result, it leaves many individual with enzyme deficiets, which is said to cause occasional fatigue, minor pain, or moodiness. Digestive enzymes transform foods into small units that can be absorbed and used more effectively in your body.

I will keep you updated as to how effective these digestive enzymes are and if I start to notice a difference within my body.

Train Hard-Train Smart
www.asap-pt.com

Water is necessary for life, and extremely important for sports performance – It aids in energy metabolism.  Consuming the proper amount of water during the day (the conservative approach across the board is 8 glasses a day) will help detoxify and eliminate wastes in the body.

The easiest way to determine if you are dehydrated is to watch the color of your urine – it should be light in color otherwise this may be a sign of dehydration.  Dehydration can make one feel tired or groggy or have a headache.  If left untreated it can cause “serious health problems with blood pressure, circulation, kidney function, immune system function, and digestive disorders.”

Tap Water
In all most all major cities (especially southern California where must people reading this blog are from) you should avoid tap water because it usually contains toxic substances such as fluoride and chlorine.  Water can also be inundated with “other chemicals including algaecides, oxidants, and pH inhibitors.”  Also, the plumbing around most major cities can be corroded or welded using lead materials.  If so, these chemicals can get into your tap water and into your body when you consume it.

Distilled Water
Distilled water is highly acidic and should also be avoided. Most individuals are already high acidic, so drinking distilled water compounds the problem.  Without getting into too much depth – distilled water is a hypotonic solution.  This means that when you consume distilled water you can actually “leach beneficial minerals out of your bloodstream and out of your body.”

Source: Mercola, Joseph. Total Health. Illinois: Mercola.com, 2003

Quality water to drink!

Train Hard-Train Smart
www.asap-pt.com

It is extremely important to check the source of your meat so you know how it was raised before you put it in your body.

Beef

Cattle’s natural biological diet would consist of only grass. However, farmers are now feeding their cattle unnatural diets such as corn and grains. Cows are not designed to consume these larges amounts of grains, even though this is what they’re being feed. To offset the negative effects of feeding cows grains (the negative effects include deadly bacteria in their stomach) farmers are giving their cattle large amounts of antibiotics. In addition, farmers want to make a profit quickly by raising and selling their cattle as fast as possible so they have decided to shoot up their cows with steroids.

Solution – 100% grass fed beef. This ensures that the cattle were raised on their natural diet and free of antibiotics. “Populations that eat a diet rich in fresh, natural red meat show far lower levels of high cholesterol and cancer, among other diseases.”

Chicken

Most chickens sold at the grocery store or served at a restaurant are raised in cages where they can barely move. Because that is an unhealthy way to live, farmers have to give their chickens large amounts of antibiotics (sounds familiar). Not only that, they also shoot up their chickens with steroids to get them on the market faster and make them taste “juicer”. (I guess A-Rod is not the only one who is on the Juice!)

Solution – Purchase free-range and certified organic chicken. Look out for restaurants that also serve organic chicken.

Source: Mercola, Joseph. Total Health. Illinois: Mercola.com, 2003

Train Hard-Train Smart,
www.asap-pt.com

I would think most fitness professionals agree that it benefits all individuals to increase the amount of raw foods in your diet. Specifically I tell my clientele to increase the amount of raw produce in their diets. Raw produce is very nutrient dense (filled with vitamins, minerals, and other phytonutrients), compared to veggies that are cooked. It is hard to increase the amount of raw meats in your diet, unless you decide to have sushi for every meal. However, you should be careful not to overcook your meats because that can alter the protein content and create a carcinogenic effect in overcooked meats. Eating a diet high in raw foods, or live foods as some may call it, would theoretically require less calories per day because foods that are not cook are more nutrient dense. Here is an example: If you decide to have a salad for lunch loaded with veggies it may be 400 calories (let’s also say there is dressing on the salad). You would get more nutritional value out of this meal compared to a grilled chicken sandwich and fries which could be a 900 calories (depending on portion size of course). By eating more raw foods, you will be able to cut your calories and still receive the proper amount of nutrients.

Cooking food may actually destroy the nutritional components – such as certain vitamins can be destroyed, it can alter fats and carbohydrates, and even destroy protein effecting how much we can absorb from cooked meats. Simply put: Cooking food either alters or diminishes the nutrients that we can absorb within that food.

Don’t try to drastically change your entire diet off the bat, instead one place I would start with is adding more raw produce to your diet.

Train Hard-Train Smart
www.asap-pt.com