Protein (Part 3)

2019-04-172019-04-17 by Steph

protein, supplement, whey, powder, shaker

Before read Part 3, be sure you read Part 1 and Part 2 .

Protein supplements

In training program, there is always a nutritional plan because to build muscle lifting weights isn’t enough. The good quantity of protein in relation to your bodyweight is an extremely important element. But as you’ve noticed, it’s difficult to eat enough protein without eating too much fat. Protein supplements are a solution.

Protein supplements can increase protein intake without increasing the fat’s amount in your body and ease protein intake several times a day. Eating several times a day is essential for a bodybuilder and having tips to make it easier is appreciated.

There is an incredible variety of protein supplements and they really have a dessert’s taste. What’s interesting is that they’re more and more rich in nutrients with vitamins and minerals and in macronutrients with proteins and carbohydrates. Find a protein supplement that meets your nutritional needs and tastes can be a help in your nutritional plan.

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As there is an incredible amount of protein supplement, there are several things to check to help you choose. First, reading the label is important because there are some that really contain too much carbohydrate. It’s good to know that carbohydrate improve the conversion of food protein to muscle protein but an excess of carbohydrate creates an excess of calories which prevents your body from easily burning fat. Therefore, it’s necessary to count the number of carbohydrate on the label.

Second, protein supplement that is consumed pure, without a meal or without carbohydrate, isn’t metabolized effectively. Research shows that for the protein to be used for protein synthesis, it must be consumed with calories, especially those from carbohydrate. Otherwise protein and used as energy production.

On the other hand, if you’re on a low carbohydrate diet and you increase your protein intake for energy (to compensate the lack of carbohydrates), it may be a good idea.

Third, the protein source of protein supplements comes from 3 foods :

Milk protein (whey, milk protein concentrate and caseinate)
Egg protein
Soy protein

All these proteins are of high quality. For the moment, no scientific studies show that there is one protein better than the other. Protein supplements made from milk and eggs are the most popular among bodybuilders. Soy protein has a specificity because it can reduce serum cholesterol rate in some people. This may be advisable for people with cholesterol problems but it’s careful because it’s possible to find a lot of GMOs in soy.

It’s important to remember that protein supplements aren’t created to be the only source of food protein. A balanced diet consisting of whole foods is essential for a healthy diet and building muscles.

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-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here.

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Protein (Part 2)

2019-04-102019-04-10 by Steph

protein, foods, greek, yogurt, cottage, cheese, eggs, steak, chicken, turkey, breast, tuna, peanut, butter, quinoa, mixed, nuts, edamame, green, peas, wheat, germ,

If you didn’t read Part 1, click here .

An egg is an excellent source of protein and its protein is so good that the egg is used as a basis of comparison to evaluate the protein quality of other foods. The egg has an arbitrary value of a « perfect » 100% :

Food	Protein rating
Eggs (whole)	100
Fish	70
Lean beef	69
Cow’s milk	60
Brown rice	57
White rice	56
Soybeans	47
Whole-grain wheat	44
Peanuts	43
Dry beans	34
White potatoes	34

In the table, there is the value of whole eggs and it’s done on purpose. There is a fashion that consists only of eating the egg’s white because the yellow contains fat and cholesterol (which the egg’s white doesn’t have). The problem is that the egg’s yellow contains as much protein as the egg white and the majority of the vitamins and minerals of the egg.

In the table, you can see that rice, potatoes and beans give less usable protein than eggs and fish. It’s because that they have few essential amino acids. However, you can combine foods that have little useful protein so that the mix of all this gives you the amount of usable protein you need.

With this combination of feeds that have little usable protein, adding a complete protein food makes an excellent meal.

This combination of food with little usable protein is convenient because these are foods that are generally low in calories and fat, which is not the case for many complete protein foods. When you try to get as much muscle as possible with less fat, it helps a lot. You can also have fat-free protein with supplements.

In Part 1, I said that foods with little usable protein devoid of some essential amino acids, that’s why you have to have a special combination with food to make up for that lack. In « Diet for a small planet » by France Moore Lappe, the following combinations are recommended :

Grains plus Seeds

Breads with added seed meals
Breads with sesame or sunflower seed spread
Rice with sesame seeds

Grains plus Milk Products

Cereal with milk
Pasta with milk or cheese
Bread with milk or cheese

Grains plus legumes

Rice and beans
Wheat bread and baked beans
Corn soy or wheat-soy bread
Legume soup with bread

By remembering these food categories, you will be able to combine your foods to have the maximum protein available for use. You can also read a nutritional guide to know which of the 8 essential amino acids is missing in a food to be more precise, but with these food categories, it’s easier.

You just have to calculate the amount of protein you need per day, apply what you just read and reach your goals.

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-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here .

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Protein (Part 1)

2019-03-262019-03-26 by Steph

protein, food, chicken, bean, rice, avocado, beef, egg, bean, nut, milk

What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE. With my training, I’m interested in nutrition to stay in shape. I read some advices from Arnold Schwarzenegger and I learned some good stuff.

Your body uses protein to build, repair and maintain muscle tissue. Bodybuilders have a great knowledge of nutrition, especially the protein for building muscle. Since they want to consume much more muscle than the average person, they consume more protein than average.

Your body uses protein to build muscle only if all the necessary amino acids are available. The small problem is that your body doesn’t produce by itself all the necessary amino acids. Amino acids that your body can’t produce are called essential amino acids and fortunately they’re available in foods.

Proteins are made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen like other macronutrients, but proteins have one more element, nitrogen. Bodybuilders often explain that they have a positive or negative nitrogen balance, which means that they’re in an anabolic state (muscle gain) or in a catabolic state (loss of muscle).

Food and protein

There are foods called complete proteins, which means that they provide all the amino acids needed to create usable proteins. Milk, eggs, meat, fish and many vegetable products have complete proteins. Be careful because these foods don’t have the same amount of usable protein by weight. For example a food that contains 10 grams of protein, your body can use only 7 grams.

Here is a table that shows the amount of protein by weight and the protein’s amount used in your body as a percentage for the most common foods :

Food	% Protein by weight	% Net Protein Utilization
Eggs	12	94
Milk	4	82
Fish	18-25	80
Cheese	22-36	70
Brown rice	8	70
Meat and flowl	19-31	68
Soybean flour	42	61

(Whey is a byproduct of milk that contain much more protein than eggs)

This table tells us that an egg contains only 12% protein by weight. Despite this small percentage, an egg contains an amino acids balance that allows your body to use 94% of it. However, the table tells us that soy flour contains 42% protein by weight. But because of the amino acids composition, your body can use only 61%. This shows us that there is a difference between the protein’s amount in a food and the protein’s amount your body can use.

This is the end of Part 1.In Part 2, I show you that in cases where you don’t have complete protein foods, it’s possible to make combination of food to have the maximum protein used by your body.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here .

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Basic Nutrients

2019-03-242019-03-15 by Steph

nutrient, nutrition, carbohydrate, lipide, fat, oil, protein, macro, food

What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE. With my training, I’m interested in nutrition to stay in shape. I read some advices from Arnold Schwarzenegger and I learned some good stuff.

There are 3 basics nutrients called macronutrients :

Protein

A protein is made of different amino acids to provide the materials constituting the muscle tissue. A protein is also a component used in all body organs such as tendons, bones, skin structure and other bodily functions because all enzymes are proteins.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are fuel for energy. They’re made of different molecules more or less complex than those of sugar or starch.

Fats

Fats or oils contain the densest energy reserves.

Water

Water is an essential element. It make up about 72% of the muscle and most bodybuilders drink several liters of water a day.

There are several nutrients called micronutrients :

nutrient, nutrition, food, vitamin, mineral, fruit, vegetable, micro

Vitamins

Vitamins are essential chemical elements that allow several biochemical reactions.

Minerals

Minerals are essential for many vital functions of the body.

Essential amino acids

Amino acids are part of the protein that we receive from food.

Essential fatty acids

Essential acids are elements that we receive from plants or fish oils.

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-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here .

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Needs Of Bodybuilders

2019-03-242019-02-26 by Steph

bodybuilder, bodybuiling, food, nutrition, ronnie, coleman,

What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE. With my training, I’m interested in nutrition to stay in shape. I read a Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book « Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding » and I learned some good stuff.

Bodybuilders are unique athletes in the demands they have with their body. They want a maximum of muscle mass and a minimum of fat at the same time. For football, strongman or weightlifter athletes, they have a workout program to maximize the size and strength of the musles without worrying about reducing bodyfat. For boxing, wrestling or gymnastics athletes, they have a workout program that has allowed them to lose fat to be lean without really needing a diet to reduce bodyfat.

For bodybuilding competitions, bodybuilders must achieve a bodyfat level of 15-18% for women and 5-8% for men.

To learn constantly

bodybuilder, bodybuiling, food, nutrition, nutritionist, science

Bodybuilders have a small margin of error. They eat enough calories to grow muscles and they must be able to reduce their bodyfat by losing the minimum amount of muscle to be shredded. They can use aerobic exercise to burn the extra calories but it doesn’t have to deteriorate the strength training.

Bodybuidlers need to control calories by being careful to have enough protein to build and maintain muscles. Nutrition is complex and this science has a constant evolution. That’s why nutritionists teach us new things every day.

Fortunately, there are basic principles of nutrition that are implanted and mastering these fundamentals is essential for a bodybuilder to fully utilize his/her genetic potential for his/her physical development.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here .

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Nutrition

2019-03-242019-02-21 by Steph

Training stimulate muscle growth. To have an effective training, it’s necessary that your body has the sufficient amount of energy and enough raw materials. The role of nutrition is to carry this energy and these raw materials.

The function of nutrition is to learn how to stay lean, mean and muscular. With nutrition we learn how much food to eat in order to have the best results possible. This allows you to study the basic nutrients and calculate the amount you need. This also includes studying protein, vitamin, mineral and other supplements.

Learning nutrition allows you to be more muscular. It improves your health and improves your immune system to be able to do all your training sessions without being sick (cold for example). Good nutrition has other advantages, such as improving our recovery after training with very heavyweights, having a beautiful healthy skin, having excellent internal organs and the list is long.

Precious

For a bodybuilder, the basic of nutrition are as precious as the basic principles of training. Exercices requires energy and the amount of nutrients you eat is essential to having the body you want.

During the Arnold Classic, athletes are interviewed after their appearance on stage. At the question « What do you feel was the most important factor that helped you get in such tremendous shape for this contest ? », athletes don’t respond that it’s thanks to bench press, squat or muscle isolation. In the majortiy of cases, they explain that they improve their nutrition or their supplement to gain muscle, lose fat and be able to train with maximum energy until the competition’s day.

It’s important to say that advance in nutrition and supplements are the main reason why we’re seeing athletes with this excellent level today. Attention, progress has improved the training with the years but training has not been revolutionized as nutrition. Training and nutrition are complementary because it’s impossible to create a champion only with good nutrition. It’s essential that athletes have an intensive training, a good mental attitude and a good knowledge of nutrition.

In the past, bodybuilders approached nutrition on instinct, seat-of-the-pants basis. In a first phase, they were building muscle and getting big, but not really ripped. In a second phase, they were getting thinner (like Harnold Poole or Vince Gironda) but they were getting small. They hadn’t found the trick yet to stay big and getting ripped at the same time.

Nutrition’s fundamental are quite simple. In fact, I can’t say that it’s simple because each body is unique. It’s important to study these basic principles to apply them to your training, to understand the needs of your body and to see how your body reacts to different diets to gain or lose weight. There is always this instinctive aspect but with this nutritive knowledge, it’s easier to adjust the quantity to have the body that you want.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here.

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Manage Your Lipids

2019-03-242019-01-09 by Steph

What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE !!! I watched a Jamcore DZ’s video and I learned some good stuff.

Lipids help with brain function and hormones production like testosterone. Lipids are also the element that is the most energetic : 1gr of lipid is 9kcal while 1gr of protein or carbohydrate is 4kcal.

Lipids create the fat of living beings, which is why we most often use the word « fat ». There is 4 fat’s type :

Harmful fat – These are transformed fatty acids like partially hydrogenated oils. We find them everywhere, that’s why it’s important to have an ingredients label on foods.
Bad fat – These are saturated fatty acids
Neutral fat – These are monounsaturated fatty acids and they’re very beneficial for health.
Good fat – These are polyunsaturated fatty acids that are very beneficial. There are 2 families, omega 3 and omega 6. If your body has too much omega 6, it creats health problems.

Type

Harmful fat

It’s fatty acids that are partially hydrogenated oils that are, for example, in Nutella, candy, cookie, fast food and all pastries. It’s advisable to eat them moderately otherwise they create health problems. And unfortunately the majority of people consume this type of fat too much.

Bad fat

It’s fatty acids that are, for example, in butter, beef, cheese, coconut oil and cold cuts. Overeating this type of fat increases the insulin resistance that can cause diabetes. It also decrease the ability of your body to use this type of fat as energy.

But be careful because not all foods that contain this type of fat are equal. Take the example of coconut oil. Coconut oil is full of lauric acid which has excellent antibacterial and digestive properties for the body. This coconut oil is very rich in MCT (Medium Chain Triglyceride) whick is convenient to use to be shreddedd because it helps the fat’s oxydation and keep your muscle mass.

Fatty acids that are in bad fat have an important role in the testosterone’s production, that why it’s recommended to consume it in average quantitiy.

Neutral fat

It’s fatty acids that are, for example, in olive oil, almond oil, macadamia nut, brazilian nut, avocado and oleic sunflower oil. It’s important to diferentiate between oleic sunflower oil and classic sunflower oil. Classic sunflower oil has a lot of omega 6 and this create a lot of inflammation and other health problems. On the other hand, oleic sunflower oil contains oleic acid. Oleic acid has properties that control cholesterol levels by lowering your bad cholesterol and boosting your good cholesterol. Oleic acid is also good for the memory.

Good fat

It’s essential fatty acids, which means these are fats aren’t produced by your body. That’s why they’re important to consume. A deficiency of these good fats will create health problems. There are 2 families : Omega 3 and Omega 6.

Omega 3 : The source of omega 3 are fatty fish like sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon and tuna. There are also plant sources such as flaxseed, chia seeds, brussels sprouts, walnuts. It’s recommended to consume the animal source because they’re richer in omega 3 than vegetable sources (unless your eat huge amount of grain).

Omega 6 : The source of omega 6 are, for example, classic sunflower oil or soybean. All these foods with too much omega 6 are too present in the supermarkets. Omega 6 creates a lot of inflammation problem in your body, while Omega 3 decrease inflammation.

Consumption

According to scientists, there is a ratio for having a healthy body. This ratio is :

-4/1 so 4 = omega 6 and 1 = omega 3
Or 1/1 so 1 = omega 6 and 1 = omega 3

The majority of people consume 20/1 so 20 = omega 6 and 1 = omega 3. That’s why a lot of people have health problems.

Lipids consumption is related to body weight. For exemple, take a person who weighs 85kg and who is beginner/intermediate :

To gain mass, it’s 0.9gr to 1gr per kilo of bodyweigth so 0.9 x 85 = 76.5 and 1 x 85 = 85. Which means between 76.5 and 85gr of lipids per day.

To be shredded, it’s 0.5 to 0.8gr per kilo of bodyweight so 0.5 x 85 = 42.5 and 0.8 x 85 = 68. Which means between 42.5 and 68 of lipids per day.

Now, take a person who weighs 100kg and who is a pro :

To gain mass, it’s 1gr to 1.5gr per kilo of bodyweight so 0.9 x 100 = 100 and 1.2 x 100 = 120. Which means between 100 and 120gr of lipids per day.

To be shredded, it’s 0.9 to 1.5gr per kilo of bodyweight so 0.9 x 100 = 90 and 1.5 x 100 = 150. Which means between 90 ans 150gr of lipids per day. A pro can take 150gr of lipid because he decreases carbohydrates.

These amount of lipids are to be divided between 4-5 meals a day for ease of digestion.

To be shredded, it’s really important to consider MCT

You have to pay attention to MCT (Medium Chain Triglyceride) because it increase your thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is what turns calories into heat and increases your metabolism to burn more fat. MCT helps you to be shredded by keeping your muscles mass as much possible.

It’s recommended to take 2 teaspoons of MCT per day, otherwise you will poop everywhere.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here.

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