Don't Destroy your Salad

I love salads.  All my friends will vouch for me on that one.  There's nothing like finishing up a delicious entree then finishing off the meal with some greens.  I bet many of you will agree that salads are delicious.  And they're healthy too, right?  I mean all those vegetables in one place, it's like the holy grail of bodily nutrients.  But hold on.  I'm here to tell you that your salad might not be as healthy as you think.  You may be accidentally creating a meal that's got a lot of unseen unhealthy elements to it.  Here's a few tips to make sure that your salad is liberated and can do your body the good it deserves.

No Dressing:  Ah!  Madness!  No dressing on a salad?  That doesn't sound too good, does it?  Hold on a minute.  I eat my salads plain every single day, and I can promise you not one of them is ever dry, bland, or distasteful in any way, shape or form.  What's my secret?  I use very juicy vegetables!  Every one of my salads is piled high with juicy yellow peppers, red beans and chickpeas, cucumbers, and my favorite, tomatoes.  Mix those around a little bit and your salad will take on a natural dressing that is actually quite tasty.  And once you pop a bite into your mouth and crunch into a fresh and juicy grape tomato, you'd never know there was no dressing.  I suggest you guys give it a try!

But why do I prefer not to dress my salad?  Well I'll tell you a little something.  That pile of ranch on top of your salad probably has at least twice the calories as the actual salad itself, along with a lot of artificial ingredients, sugars, saturated fats, and things of the like.  In my opinion it's a LOT of calories you don't need.  In fact only two tablespoons of traditional ranch has about 150 calories, and I see lots of people put on two to three times that amount.  That's just ridiculous.  The natural flavors of the vegetables are masked, and any sort of nutrient benefit from the salad is being overshadowed by the shear caloric weight of the ranch.  This goes with all sorts of dressings, just read the nutrition labels.  Thousand Island, italian, you name it, a lot of it will most likely be more than you bargained for.

But don't despair you dressing addicts.  Salad dressing is not inherently bad, and there are a lot of very healthy alternatives.  Let's discuss a few, and how they can make your salad absolutely delicious without adding many calories or other undesirables.

Salsa:  Yes, that spicy, chunky, juicy, delicious tomato paste with peppers and beans.  Salsa is VERY low in calories (10-20 calories for two tablespoons) and VERY flavorful.  It can add a lot of character to any salad, and there are hundreds of varieties to choose from.  In fact you can usually have your salad as spicy or sweet as you like with salsa.  It's a great alternative that I highly suggest.  Just watch out for the sodium, it tends to be pretty high in salsa, but 1-2 servings won't kill you.

Mustard:  Same deal here, high amounts of flavor for low caloric density.  Dijon and yellow mustard both can really give those greens a big kick, and will only add a few extra calories to the dish.  It's all about amount of flavor for very little cost.  Try it out!

Healthy oils:  There's been studies that have proven that many nutrients in salad are FAT SOLUABLE.  So you can kiss those low fat, high fructose corn syrup dressings goodbye.  In fact low fat dressings can actually be worse for you than their traditional counterparts.  But if you want great flavor and a lot of healthy, unsaturated fats to fully absorb nutrients from your bowl of veggies, I suggest either olive oil, or balsamic vinaigrette.  Both are delcious and high in healthy fats which will do nothing but good for your body.  Don't go overboard on the olive oil though, it's still high in caloric density, so measure out your portions.

Meats:  I love me some salmon.  And chicken.  And shrimp.  And anything of the like.  And what an amazing way to make your salad more enjoyable!  Stick some lean protein in there, make sure it's fresh and moist, and I guarantee you will NOT miss dressing for one second.  That is if you decide to have it plain.  I would also suggest trying any of the above dressing styles with meat, especially if you're looking to get some more protein in your diet.  Again though, don't go overboard, and make sure that the meat is lean, fresh, and juicy.  My all time favorite is a salmon salad, though shrimp and chicken are close seconds.

Portioned Traditional Dressing:  Like I said before, the salad dressings you're used to aren't inherently bad!  The shear amount of them is sometimes what kills you.  If you want that ranch, go for it!  Absolutely!  But take the time to measure out the serving size.  Heck, try half the serving size, and see if you can get by on it.  Sometimes if you just take a little more time to appreciate the flavors of the food, you'll realize you didn't need so much dressing to begin with.

It's up to you, but I'd suggest experimenting.  Try it plain, like me, and load it up with some juicy veggies.  Then try some salsa, see if you like the kick.  Then try the mustard, then some healthy oil.  The same old thing gets boring anyway, right?

Dress lightly, love those greens, and good luck!

Counting Calories, Easy As Pie!

I'm one who believes that if you eat a healthy, nutrient rich meal for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a couple snacks, a calorie balance should follow pretty effortlessly (at least when compared to a processed food diet.)  However you should never just assume that you're consuming the correct number of calories to lose, maintain, or gain weight.  Guess work here usually leads to wrong answers, unfortunately.

So how do you go about counting calories?  It seems like a pretty daunting task at first thought, I mean I'm willing to bet a lot of stuff you eat you either won't remember the serving size you had, or plain won't know the nutritional information of the food.  Plus, it's not going to be easy to add up all those calories in your head, and you'd definitely lose any little piece of paper you tried to write it down on.  If only there was a system that would easily keep track of your calories, and might also let you know exactly how many calories were in each food you eat.  If only!

Oh wait, we live in the 21st century.  There are hundreds of programs that will count your calories for you, and most of these programs have a little search bar where you can type in any sort of food you ate, and it'll bring up the nutritional information for that food (or a similar one) so you can write it down.  It's like a little heavenly gift!  And these programs will make sure you stay right on track for caloric intake.  Here are a few of my favorite calorie counters:

Livestrong.com calorie counting app.

I use this one every single day.  I have it on my iPhone, and I can almost guarantee it's my most utilized app.  In this app you can search a database of thousands upon thousands of foods, all complete with nutritional information, enter what serving size you had, and it will automatically enter the correct number of calories into your daily total.  You can also do custom entries if it doesn't happen to have your food but you know the nutritional information anyway.  You can also enter your caloric goal for the day, and it'll tell you how close you are to it.

This app also can keep track of calories burned, and has an equally large list of exercises/activities and how many calories each one burns per minute.  Pretty darn nifty.  I'd highly recommend this app, it's helped me out for months.

Online Calorie Counters:

These are the same deal as the app, with a few more foods to choose from, and a bigger screen to work on.  These websites are incredibly numerous, so I see no excuse for not trying them out.  Such Websites include CalorieKing.com, TheCaloriecounter.com, livestrong.com, everydayhealth.com, the list goes on.  All offer that neat little search bar and a huge lists of foods with all the nutrition information you could ever need.  Don't be blind to what your food contains.  Try one of these out today.  

Again I personally recommend livestrong.com, they seem to be the most easy to use and have the most free features.

Automatic Diet Creators:

One of the more interesting websites I've come across regarding diets and calories is a site called Swoleme.com.  This website will generate a diet for you based on your desired macros (ratios of carbs/protein/fat that are optimal for your goals.)  Macros can be tricky to figure out, and while theoretically it's only the number of calories at the end of the day that will determine whether you lose weight or not, having the right ratio balance could definitely speed up the process.

This website can generate a diet for you based on how many calories you'd like to eat in how many meals.  Not sure about how many you need to eat?  No problem!  Swoleme has a calorie calculator that you can enter your height, weight, age, and activity level into to find out how many calories you'd need to eat to maintain your weight, lose some weight, or bulk up a little.  And based on my calculations, it's numbers for me are right on the money.  

This website shows you macro graphs, tells you what they mean, and what these particular macros are optimal for.  Probably one of the best calorie/diet related websites out there in my opinion.  Try it out now!

A little example of what Swoleme looks like.

I'll put a link at the bottom of the article.

So now it's your turn.  Download an app, try out one of those websites, or do a little research and find a site that works even better for you than one I mentioned.  And if you find one, please come back to this article and post it in the comments section, I'd really like to see what you found. 

There's really no limit to how helpful these programs can be.  Keep counting, keep eating, and good luck!

Swoleme.com Diet Generator

(http://swole.me/?sandbox=1&num_meals=4&meal0=bagel*2%2Cegg*4%2Cprotein_powder*1%2Cone_perc_milk*2&meal1=pasta*12%2Colive_oil*1&meal2=tuna*8%2Csliced_bread*4%2Cone_perc_milk*2%2Cprotein_powder*1&meal3=chicken_breast*8%2Csliced_bread*4%2Csausage*4)

Food Worship #2: The Tomato

It's hard for me to imagine a food with as many benefits as the humble tomato.  Is is a fruit?  A vegetable?  Something else?  I'll tell you what it really is, A SUPERFOOD!

I absolutely love tomatoes.  I chomp into whole ones like apples, and I pop cherry tomatoes like grapes.  At the salad bar at school, I'll finish my dinner, and my salad, then I'll head back to the salad bar and grab a good five or six more cherry tomatoes just to finish off that great meal I just had.  They are undeniable one of my favorite foods of all time, and will always be a staple in my diet.

I implore you to try to fit more tomatoes into your diet.  There are so many reasons to love them, and at the end of this article I plan to reveal a secret about tomatoes that I bet will convince you to have a few more in your salad today.

Tomato Benefits:

Tomatoes are extremely nutrient rich.  They are very high in beta carotene, a nutrient that helps keep you healthy by keeping that immune system running top notch.  It'll also keep your skin healthy, as well as other inner body tissues.  This decreases risk of infection and will help to fight off any new bugs you might come in contact with this winter.

Tomatoes have large amounts of Vitamin E and C, which will help keep your heart in great condition.  In fact consuming a few more tomatoes may help in decreasing your risk for heart disease, and might also decrease blood pressure.  Believe me, you really want your heart to stay healthy.  I know I want mine to stay ticking away, considering I demand so much of it in the gym every day.

Vitamin C will also help you to absorb other nutrients from your meal more effectively.  So basically, tomatoes not only help your body, they help those other foods you've eaten to help your body.  That's a win-win situation if I've ever seen one.

Guys, tomatoes are one of the best foods you can eat if you want to keep your prostate healthy.  And believe me, you DEFINITELY WANT that.  Tomatoes can help stave off prostate cancer (as well as other kinds of cancer).  Not many foods can claim to be so proactive in preventing cancerous growths as tomatoes can.  Eat a few more and feel a little better about your future.

Tomatoes taste amazing and are also very low in sugar and simple, starchy carbs.  This means they are low on the GI scale, and will not spike your insulin levels very much at all.  In fact, Tomatoes, like sweet potatoes, can help regulate your blood sugar, and keep your metabolism running quickly and efficiently.

Tomatoes are also very high in fiber.  That'll keep your digestive tract healthy.  And all of those gym rats on a bulk, a high fiber diet in compliment with your high protein meals will keep you from putting on excess fat because it slows digestion and allows your body to more easily metabolize the food you've eaten.  Lean muscle, that's what I'm talking about.

To finish up, tomatoes are very low in sodium, high in chromium, and contain no saturated fat.

Phew!!!!!  That's a good food, if there ever was one.

But I promised you a special secret about tomatoes.  We all know a good sized tomato is about the size of a large apple.  The apple will have around 100-150 calories.  The tomato?  Only 30!!!!!  Wow!  Talk about a healthy, filling snack that will barely even register on your daily calorie count.  Even cherry tomatoes only have about one calorie per tomato.  That's just plain awesome in my book, and definitely puts them on the podium to be worshipped as the super food they are.

I plan on posting a bunch of tomato related recipes at a later time.

Bite into a few, and try not get any on your shirt.  Good luck!

Water: The Critical Liquid

Ok, buckle up, here comes an article that I guarantee will be one of the most important in this entire blog.

It's time to talk about water, and it's importance.  Yeah you've all heard the fun facts, that humans are 72.8% water, and that while you can live for weeks without food, you can only live at most around 10 days without water.  Here's a nifty little chart from survivaltopic.com that shows the predicted survival rates for dehydrated people at various temperatures:

How Long Can You Live Without Water?

Max Daily Temperature	Number of Days in the Shade
	No Water	1 Quart .95 Liter	2 Quarts 1.90 Liters	4 Quarts 3.79 Liters	10 Quarts 9.46 Liters	20 Quarts 18.93 Liters
120 F / 48.9 C	2 days	2	2	2.5	3	4.5
110 F / 43.3 C	3	3	3.5	4	5	7
100 F / 37.8 C	5	5.5	6	7	9.5	13.5
90 F / 32.2 C	7	8	9	10.5	15	23
80 F / 26.7 C	9	10	11	13	19	29
70 F / 21.1 C	10	11	12	14	20.5	32
60 F / 15.6 C	10	11	12	14	21	32
50 F / 10.0 C	10	11	12	14.5	21	32

Kinda scary eh?  What you don't realize is how incredibly, amazingly, fantastically, undeniably CRUCIAL water is to all bodily functions.  There's no if's, ands, or buts about it, your body runs off the stuff.  Without water, your body can't function, your blood can't flow, your muscles can't move, and your brain can't do a darn thing.

But if you're not in the middle of the Sahara, I'm willing to bet you're getting sufficient water to carry on throughout your day.  If you're thirsty, you have a drink, and go on your merry way.  It's simple, right?  Eh...not so much.  Most people nowadays are not drinking the recommended amount of water.  For men, it's recommended to consume around 12-13cups (3.3L) of fluids a day.  For women, that figure is about 9 cups.  That's a lot of water!  Mind you, most people do get water intake from sources outside liquid in a glass, however if it requires chewing, the amount of water you're taking in won't end up being too significant.

That leaves the majority of that fluid intake up to the actual liquids you drink.  When's the last time you can remember drinking 3.3L of fluid of water in one day?  Keep in mind that eight glasses of water is around 2L.  And that's a LOT of water.  Also, this is just a baseline number.  If you do any sort of exercise, you should be drinking a decent amount more than this.  10-15 glasses of water a day for an active, average sized male.  Wow.

So we've come to the conclusion that if you're like most people, on an average day you drink less than the recommended serving of water.  That may not seem like too big a deal, you always get through your day, right?  It's never posed too much of an issue.  Now comes my job, trying to convince you to drink more by explaining how a few more sips of that refreshing clear liquid could do you more good than you could realize.

Here's just a few of the hundreds of benefits of drinking more water:

Increased energy:  Many studies have shown that increasing your water intake throughout the day will cut down fatigue.  I can personally vouch for this, after increasing my intake by about 5 glasses I've noticed much more energy, and a feel a LOT better in the afternoon.

Brain Function:  Your brain is just like the rest of your body, made up of various tissues.  These tissues are 85% water.  If you become even slightly dehydrated, be prepared to notice a decrease in thinking ability/clear-headedness.  Can't remember the name of that dude you met at the grocery store?  Should've had a glass of water that morning...

Gym Performance:  This one seems like a given.  Your muscles need LOTS of water to function.  Losing 2% of your bodily water will decrease your gym performance by 15-20%.  Blood becomes thicker, oxygen doesn't flow as easily, and everything becomes slow, tired, and stiff.  Drink more water and you may hit that new PR sooner than you think!

Muscle Mass:  Muscles need nutrients to grow.  Guess how they get those nutrients?  You got it, water.  Water keeps nutrients flowing into your muscles, so they can recover after a workout and grow larger and denser than they were before.

Fat Burning:  According to an article on webmd.com, water can help increase your metabolic rate.  One study showed that after 17 ounces of water (around 2 glasses) of water increased metabolic rate by about 30% for two hours.  That's pretty significant, and could definitely help in any weight loss goals.

Feel full, eat less:  My last article dealt with this.  If you drink a full glass of water before and during every meal, your risk of over eating is drastically reduced.  That much water takes up a good bit of space in your stomach, so you'll feel full faster.  This is a must try if you're cutting back on calories and miss that full feeling after every meal.

Healthy kidneys:  Water keeps those kidneys in tip-top condition and will help flush toxins out of the body.

Insulin levels:  Water does not spike your blood insulin, so if you drink a glass and feel full for a while your rate of fat oxidation will remain higher than it would for flavored drinks.

I could go on for hours, but I'd like to discuss one final point.  Some people just don't really like water, and how bland it is.  I'm one of those people, and I find it hard to drink a lot of it.  One glass is fine.  15?  No thanks.  But there's good news.  Any sort of liquid will count toward your daily water intake.  Sure it has to be filtered by your body first to remove the other stuff dissolved in it, but it'll still keep you hydrated.  That means you can have that cup of coffee, or that mountain dew, and still enjoy the benefits of an increased daily water intake.  No, it's not quite as good as the plain stuff, and I would suggest still getting a glass of water down with every meal.  But hey, it's a start.

Does 15 glasses a day sound a little daunting?  It did to me.  But just like eating healthy, start SLOWLY.  Add a glass in the morning when you get up.  Just one.  Then when you've gotten used to that extra bit of liquid, add another.  Your body will soon become accustomed to the increased liquid intake, and you'll start to feel those oh-so-amazing benefits.  I highly suggest you try this method.

Keep on chugging, stay hydrated, and good luck!