Average Guys Guide #8

Avoiding Stupid New Years Resolutions

We are at the second most dangerous time of year, New Years. During this time many people, including tons of folks who should know better, make ridiculous resolutions for the new year. Often these resolution come in the form of promises of diet and exercise. I am here to tell you that if you have been doing the Average guys eating and exercise plan, to avoid the impulse to jump into something radically different in hopes of some fast transformation into a leaner and more muscular you. Now, if you have been going along and think you would like to step it up a notch thats fine, just wait a week or two after Jan 1, to make sure its not some passing fancy that you will abandon. Its way too easy a trap to fall into. Right now your total time commitment to exercise is about 90 minutes a week, max. Your eating guidelines are quite flexible. Many, however, have probably already gotten complacent. Rather than jump into something completely different, tighten up on what you are already doing. Examine your diet, are still eating the recommended amount of meat, vegetables and fruits? Are you still eating breakfast everyday? What about your workouts, are you still adding weight when the exercises get too easy? Are you still faithfully working out twice a week every week? Are you still doing any conditioning work? If you can answer yes to all of these questions, then you are ready to step up to the next level if you wish. If you are not doing all of these, and haven't been able to keep up with the basics, why would you make an even larger commitment? Yes, its bloody hard to resist the sirens call of all the advertising and marketing out there. Remember tho', all these people really care about reducing, is the money in your wallet. If you really feel compelled to spend money and try something new then let me recommend going to your favorite used book store and buying either A Week in the Zone or Mastering the Zone . For people that have trouble with my eating recommendations due to their lack of sufficient structure, these are a good way to go. Next time I'll address how to take your training a new direction.

Strawberry Catfish

Not Having made any culinary contributions is a while, I offer up this upscale, down home dish. For those of you who are familiar with catfish, this will - I'm willing to bet, become one of your favorite ways to enjoy this wonderful fish. For those who have not yet enjoyed catfish, what a wonderful introduction this will be. The recipe originally used cornmeal and white flour to bread the fish, after several substitutions, I settled on almond meal and whole wheat flour. For those who are fastidious with their carbs, you can use just almond flour, or mix almond flour and carb quick mix. My Favorite oil for frying catfish is rendered bacon drippings, but a cooking grade of olive oil also works just fine. No need to waste good, expensive, extra virgin olive oil here.

Serves 4
2 Lbs Catfish
3 tbsp soy sauce
4oz Strawberry Jam - I use polaner all fruit
2 tbsp hot sauce
2 tsp horseradish
4oz red wine vinegar
2 oz marinara sauce
1 tsp crushed garlic
6oz Whole Wheat Flour
6oz Almond Meal
1 tbsp Cajun Seasoning
oil for cooking - about half a cup
Salt and pepper

Place catfish in large shallow dish, season with salt, pepper, and hot sauce on both sides. Cover and place in fridge for at least one hour, upto over night. In sauce pan combine Jam, vinegar, soy sauce, horseradish, marinara, and garlic. Simmer over med low heat till jam has melted and sauce is warm. Combine flour, almond meal, and cajun seasoning in shallow plate. Heat cooking oil in heavy skillet to med high heat. Dredge fish pieces in flour mixture, coating evenly, and place in skillet. Saute the fish until brown on both sides and fish is done. Drain fish when done. To serve, divide sauce onto 4 plates and top with fish. Garnish with extra strawberries if you have them.

Average guys guide to getting thru Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season.

Step 1, eat enough protein.
Step 2, continue with your work outs.

Thats it. Despite all the ranting, raving, hand wringing and self pity that goes around this time of year, my advice to you is have a good time. Yup, you heard me; eat too much, drink too much, stay out too late, dance with your wife, flirt with the secretarty, have a good time. If you do nothing else but make sure you eat a healthy serving of protein at every holiday event you attend, and keep with your twice weekly workouts, you'll be fine come January 2. Maybe you'll have gained a pound or two, maybe not. As long as you keep lifting, at least part of it will be muscle. Come the frist of the year when things calm down, and you retrun to a normal eating pattern, and keep with the lifting, any extra fat will take care of itself with no extra effort from you. Plus you'll have the bonus of having added a bit of muscle in the process. If for some reason you have to go somewhere that may not have much protein, or you just want to keeep things in check, chug down a protien shake before you leave home. Water, ice and protein powder in a blender, gulp, go, party on dude!.

Prof. Tietbohl where are you?

What do you call a bus load of Epidemiologist at the bottom of the ocean? A good start. With the recent release of the diet and cancer report, we are going to be bombarded with meaningless data. In the words of my college psychology professor, Prof. Tietbohl, correlation never, never, never, never,never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, equals causation. NEVER! Now that I've gotten that off my chest, lets addrress the issue of relative vs absolute risk. I have read all about how processed and red meat raises your risk of cancer by 15%. Sounds scary, like they want you to believe that eating this way gives you a 15% chance of getting cancer. Such is not the case. It raises your chances by 15%, but they don't say a 15% increase of what, do they. According to the report, red and processed meats are convincingly linked the colorectal cancer. According to the CDC's latest data available for the U.S., your chances of developing colorectal cancer are 0.05%. Add 12 ounces a week of red and processed meats, and you increase your risk by 15%. Your risk is now, drum roll please, 0.058%. (I rounded the numbers.) All of the news and media outlets will however focus on the relative risk, ignoring how small the actual risks are. This will provide fodder for the folks pushing the politically correct diet agenda. Mean while, I'll be having a ribeye and drinking Jack Daniels.

clue bat

Sometimes we all need to be smacked back into reality. Despite good intentions, and knowing better, most of us will do things, that after coming back to reality, will cause us to scratch our heads and go, "WTF was I thinking?". My most recent post prior to this one, is one of those things. At the time I started down that happy path, it all seemed so logical. I even lost weight. Must be a good thing right? Sometimes too much knowledge is worse than not enough. When I read things, especially new studies, or different twists on old ideas, my mind goes off on these tangents and starts coming up with ways to improve or alter what I'm doing to incorporate this new information. Sometimes these things can take weeks to play out. This latest episode was relatively short lived. In the case of nutrition, Pareto's principle still holds true. All the complicated answers and formulas and ideas and all the new and novel plans, still come down to the basics. Get enough protein. Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables everyday. Minimize refined sugar and sweeteners. Be active. It really is that simple. For reasons I can't understand, I, like countless others, seek to make it so much more. The hardest thing about all of it is to keep it simple. Is it because we live in a world of such startling complexity that simple answers seem so unacceptable?

Part Time Low Carb

I'm not exactly sure how this came about. I had done some reading about Intermittent fasting and various implementations of cyclical ketogenic diets, and this idea began to form in my brain. This idea was borne of a combination of my boredom as a cook with preparing meat and veggies and not getting to flex my culinary muscles on some of the worlds great cuisines and dishes that I once took such pride in creating, and this nagging feeling that there was such a great variety of new things that were out of my reach due to the restriction of eating a carb controlled diet. While I no longer make my living cooking for others, In my heart of hearts, I still think of myself as a chef. Now I am fully aware that for some, this approach will lead to disaster. For others, it just may be the thing that keeps them from going off the track into a binge. The concept is brutally simple. Eat a very low carb diet every other day. On the opposite days, eat three meals of what ever you want. When I say very low carb, I mean less than thirty grams carb total, including fiber, sugar alcohols, etc. When I say three meals, that means three meals. If, like me, you normally eat a mid-afternoon snack on low carb days, you can have a snack on your off days as well. Your off days are not an excuse to go face down in the buffet and gorge all day. I just means you don't have to watch your carbs on those days. If you want dessert, fine, have it with your meal. For me the addition of grits or biscuits to my morning eggs on some days has been a little slice of heaven. I still don't eat much sugar, and end up getting plenty of fat and protein, mostly because thats how I like to eat. Over the past couple of weeks while experimenting with this I have with out trying, lost an inch off my waist, and 5 lbs on the scale. Nether of which was the goal. I was really shooting for maintenance. I have as a matter of course, lifted weights mostly on my "off" diet days, and I still don't do cardio. Posted below are two recent days of what I've eaten.

LC DAY
3 eggs
3 slices bacon
Coffee with cream and splenda

Grilled steak
Leafy greens
Peppers
Onions
Oil/Vinegar
Provolone cheese

Handful Almonds

Parmesan Coated Tilapia
Roasted Broccoli and Cauliflower


Off day
2 eggs
scrapple
biscuit with fresh pumpkin butter
coffee with cream and splenda

Turkey Sub with the works
Diet soda

Apple
Mixed nuts

Saltimbocca Romana
roasted potatoes
bread
Olive oil
tossed salad
Wine
zabaione
(yes, I cook like this)

Average Guy's Guide #6

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

Ok, so for those of you who are waiting with baited breath, all two of you, for the next installment into the average guys guide your wait is over.

The question I here from my meat space participants who have been my guinea pigs, most often is, "How strong is strong enough?" Well, the most straight forward answer I can find is the tables at EXRX.net For the purposes of this series the only two of the exercises listed that we are going to concern ourselves with are the over head press and dead lift. The combination of these exercises provide for a very good assessment of total body strength. You goal should be to achieve the "novice" levels of strength. According to the authors of these charts, the level of strength associated with novice is sufficient to support vigorous fitness activity. So in my estimation, that is strong enough for an average guy. This is not strong enough for competitive lifters, or bodybuilders, but hey, all we're trying to do here is be strong enough to be healthy, fit, and not too fat. Right? So far I've had you do a body weight, and an intro routine. Nether of which included the dead lift. A stiff leg dead lift yes, but that is not the one we are concerned with. The dead lift is the most basic exercise there is, and one of, if not the most useful. It involves your whole body, and working up to novice levels of strength in this exercise will pay dividends for years to come. We will not however be doing any one rep max lifts, nor will we ever work this exercise to failure. Start with a weight you can lift with confidence and slowly add weight. It will get hard soon enough. Starting with this next routine we are going to be working a split routine. Not a bodybuilders body part split, we are just going to divide the exercises into two different workouts, each done once a week.

Workout A
DeadLift 2 sets of 8 reps
Overhead press 2 sets of 8 reps
Curls(optional) 2 sets of 8 reps
A brisk walk or other conditioning work

Workout B
Split Squat 2 sets of 8 reps
Bent Over Row 2 sets of 8 reps
Push Ups/Bench Press 2 x max reps/2 sets of 8 reps
Hammer work

Continue using this routine until you reach novice levels of strength as defined by the charts at Exrx.net. Do a warm up set or two prior to the work sets. This is a tried and proven program that has been used before by many many trainees to achieve strength levels much higher than we are shooting for here. You can find numerous variations of this routine in books and on the Internet. The reason you see this routine in so many places is quite simple, it works. Don't be put off by its simplicity, worked hard, this is a beast. Yes, it is enough volume. Until you have built a solid foundation of strength you will do yourself more harm then good by doing extra work. Leave the advanced routines to the advanced trainees. To sum it up, lift hard, eat well, get enough sleep, recover between workouts. Simple ? Yes. Easy? No.