Fitness Thoughts

I love reading on the treadmill or elliptical at the gym.  It seems to make the seconds and minutes zoom by therefore increasing my actual productivity more so than music and the subtitles to CNN/ESPN.  The thing is the books I desire to read are paperbacks which do not want to stay open on their own accord.  Nerveracking.  So I decided to save that reading for more stationary times and pulled out the only hardback book I own with large print that doesn't have anything to do with art, crochet, or knitting: Chef MD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine by John La Puma, M.D.  I got this for a great deal at Food Lion in their book bin.  What's sad about that is this Food Lion is right next door to Books-A-Million that I have never bought a book from.  Any who, I've had it for over a year and hadn't actually cracked it open.  The only reason I even had it readily available is that it managed to escape my trip to 2nd and Charles last weekend.

First things first, this man loves food.  I mean seriously.  I am going to steal his television tagline of, "The fountain of youth starts in the kitchen."  He shared that doctors aren't really taught about nutrition in medical school which I already knew thanks to Michael Baisden.  A woman was on his show once talking about how she changed her diet not at the behest of her doctor but of an older gentleman at the grocery store who suggested she cut out meat and dairy from her diet to see if it helped her high blood pressure and diabetes.  She said that within six months both her blood pressure and glucose levels had stabilized and eventually she no longer needed medication to control them.  This encouraged her to find out more about nutrition.  This stuck with me because she was adamant in her insistence that diet was the most important part of beating the main disease culprits that are the bane of the Black community.  Now that this guy has already confirmed what I've heard before, I'm definitely getting into his book now.

Here are some nuggets he had that are just too good not to share.  For the folks who have to have their fix of fast food, grab a fistful of almonds within twenty minutes of ordering.  Apparently the antioxidants in the almonds begin to block the artery-stiffening and inflammatory effect of the saturated and trans fats in the fast food.  Bet you didn't know that.  I sure didn't.

Now I have been giving starches a hard time in my diet...this guy is working on redeeming them.  Apparently there are different types of starch and one of them is called resistant starch which can be your fat burning friend.  Eating more foods high in resistant starch cause you to burn more fat throughout the day because you use the fat before you can store it.  Examples of those are types of beans/legumes like lentils, peas, soybeans, and beans.  Since edamame is a form of soybean, those should count, right?  I love those things!  I do partake in the Vegetarian Ruprict from Moe's Southwest Grill.  I think it is mostly healthy with the black beans, grilled peppers, olives, cucumbers, pico de galo, and onions I get piled high on it.  Just ignore the super starchy tortilla chips and sodium laden cheese sauce they slather all over it.  That's why I eat those with a protein shake.  I am of the opinion that if you balance everything out (starch to protein ratio), you won't store it as fat.  This has a basis in some nutrition reading I did some time ago.  I am going to be on the lookout in this book to see what Dr. La Puma has to say about it.  Those Rupricts are hella hard to give up.

I'll give more little nuggets from this book as I go along.  I am reading and rereading for thorough understanding and memory.  Best of all, the darn thing stays open and flat while I work out.

Something else I have decided to do is to add green tea to my diet.  A cup in the morning, a cup after work and a cup before bed.  Decaffeinated, of course.  I have some organic green tea I just bought.  I read ahead in the ChefMD book to see what he thought about green tea and it seems I'm good to go!  Some things I learned:

Black tea, green tea, white tea, and oolong tea all come from the same plant.  They are all prepared differently which lends itself to the different tastes and health benefits (and apparently colors).

It helps protect you from having a heart attack and stroke and may help in delaying the onset of cancer.   I wonder if Lipton counts too.

Tea has no carbs, fat, protein, or calories...like water (bitter water, bleh!  I just tried some Honest Tea Green Tea and I honestly added a whole lemon to it to make it drinkable).  It does have catechins which are flavonoids (which are apparently good for you).  Green and white tea have more than black and oolong tea.  Black tea and oolong have their own types of flavonoids.
Flavonoid:  Usually colorful plant chemicals with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer effects; there are over five thousand of them.  They belong to the polyphenol family. 
Polyphenol:  Chemicals such as flavonoids and tannins, responsible for the coloring and protection of some plants and that fight heart disease and cancer.

A downside to this book is the need to constantly search for definitions because he just throws these words around willy nilly.  The upside is his index is pretty comprehensive and makes it easy to find the definitions of these obscure words he throws around.  I just added the definitions here to save you a Google search. 

Independent of this book, I read somewhere (the result of a Google search) that green tea contributed to fat burning which is what had initially peaked my interest in it.  Well, I'm going to start on Monday after I stock up on lemons.

No workout this weekend!  I'm a little achy (which is good) and I intend to work even harder next week.  Pain = progress.  I can visually see a difference around my middle but I have a long way to go still.  If it doesn't rain tomorrow I will take a few laps through the neighborhood and if it is raining I guess I'll attack my elliptical.