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      05-21-2013, 11:47 AM   #78
tony20009
Major General
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Drives: BMW 335i - Coupe
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Washington, DC

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In General:
  • 6 small meals a day to prevent your body from wanting to store excess calories as fat
  • 20-30 minutes of aerobics and/or plyometrics (at the greatest intensity your can healthily handle) to ensure you burn more calories than you consume. I suggest jumping rope and plyohops around an indoor circuit (indoors because you'll look ridiculous doing them, but if you don't' mind that, do them outside).
  • lifting weights to build additional muscle mass because muscles burn fat. Building your thighs and glutes will get you the most return in this regard as they are the largest muscles.
    • Have a lifting partner. This should be someone who will both spot for you as well as push you to fully exhaust your muscles. I use a personal trainer. He designs my routines as well as pushes me to excel, makes sure I always use proper form and develop the right "muscle memory," and the tracks my progress. Many of the routines and suggestions you'll find in various men's fitness magazines are good, but they aren't meant for everyone at every stage in the lifting process. Some are right for beginners, some are right for advanced lifters, and some are for folks in between. If you don't know the difference, seek a trainer first so you don't hurt yourself.
  • Full regimen of ab and back exercises -- high reps and little or no added weight -- so that when the fat is finally gone, you'll look amazing rather than just good. High reps and no weight so as not to build mass into your abs lest you look like a power lifter rather than a gymnast.

Diet (the noun, not the verb): for great abs, this matters more than all the others.
  • Eat only healthy, high value foods.
  • Drink only water (unless you are drinking natural fruit juices with no added sugar -- OJ you squeeze yourself is just fine, for example), and be sure to drink 64 oz (or as close as you can get to it) a day.
  • Do not eat cheap carbs such as white rice, white sugar, white potatoes, candy (although, if you have to have one, a candy bar right before or during your workouts won't hurt), any liquids containing high fructose syrup, etc.
  • Focus your proteins around fish, chicken and turkey, each prepared in a healthy way: baked, microwaved, broiled, grilled, poached, or roasted, never fried.
  • Eat a high quality carb and protein meal 30-45 minutes before any lifting so your muscles have the fuel they need to do the lifting. I do oatmeal with dried fruit and brown sugar, along with a small (3-4 oz) piece of microwaved salmon

Other:
  • Learn to use a microwave oven. For anything that doesn't need to be browned, the m-wave is great. Try cooking a 6-8 oz piece of salmon (ideally it's relatively even in thickness throughout) at 50% power for 4-5 minutes. (assumes a 1000 watt m-wave oven -- less time for more watts and more time for fewer watts. Don't change the power level.) You can zap it in additional 30 second increments at 50% power if it needs more cooking, but eventually you'll find the right cooking time. Apply the same principle to anything else you want to cook in the microwave oven. I tend to do fish and seafood in it most often because they never really need to be browned, they just need heat. Other things I find work well in the m-wave are scallops, other fish, chicken, veggies, and bacon, though until you reach your goal, you should probably not eat bacon.
  • About the things that taste great but that you shouldn't eat, such as butter and bacon. You don't have to give them up. You just have to be aware of how much fat you are consuming if/when you eat them. If you aren't going to be carefully counting/measuring your caloric intake, just don't eat stuff like that, and you'll be fine. However, recognizing that a healthy diet needs to have fat in it, there's nothing wrong with letting that fat come from butter and bacon.

    For example, if your nutritionist has determined that two tablespoons of fat is your ideal fat intake per day, then if you are careful about your consumption, you can let those two tablespoons come from butter. Let's say you had oatmeal for breakfast, fresh fruit for mid morning snack, rabbit food for lunch, more fruit and some nuts for midday snack, and now it's time for dinner. You've been essentially fat free (except for the nuts, and assuming your portion sizes were appropriate) all day, so you can enjoy some bacon sprinkled on your halibut for dinner and maybe even put a pat of butter on your steamed broccoli. Or you may opt to have a fruit and cheese plate for dessert.

    The trick to using bacon, which is an amazingly good flavoring item, regardless of what kind of animal it comes from, is to cook it and drain the fat from it, and pat it dry with a paper towel before you mix it in with whatever you are eating. Once you've cooked and drained and dried it, bacon is then mostly protein rather than mostly fat, but don't be deluded, there's still more fat there than in an equivalent portion of fish or chicken, it's just that the ratio has shifted from 80% fat/20% protein to 60% protein to 40% fat, which is why it still makes a good flavor enhancer. After all, among meats, the flavor is in the fat. (Remember, bacon is the belly section of an animal. We most often think of it as coming from a pig, but cows, sheep, goats, rabbits, etc. all have bellies, and thus you can use the bacon from any of these animals. And unlike you, dear OP, they aren't doing all this so they can have a six pack, so there's fat on their bellies.)
  • Learn how to cook with some vegetarian, protein alternatives. My favorite is TVP (textured vegetable protein) and below is my favorite recipe using it. I use it as a ground beef replacement. I reconstitute it in either beef or mushroom broth and use it in my spaghetti sauce.
Start with two to three jars your favorite brand of jarred sauce, add one large, fresh, diced/chopped onion (if you like bites of onion, chop, if you just want the flavor depth, dice, but don't leave it out), two stalks of thinly sliced celery, bell pepper, tomatoes, salt, brown sugar, 1 clove/quart, hot peppers (use less if you don't like spicy, use more if you do, but don't leave them out altogether), thyme, rosemary, oregano, (I use fresh, dried will work just fine also), 1 cup or so of sliced mushrooms (any kind will do so long as they aren't the white button ones, unless you just love those white button ones, in which case use them). Add in the reconstituted TVP, stir to combine everything well, and simmer on low for 1.5 hours at least. I tend to let it go for about 1 hour covered and then partially covered for 1.5 hours or so to let the excess water evaporate. I add garlic also, but as I like the flavor of garlic, I add it about 15 minutes before I'm ready to stop simmering. If you like just a hint of garlic, add it earlier, or even at the very start, but note that the earlier you add it, the more of it you'll need in order to get any flavor of garlic. If I'm adding it at the start of cooking, I add about 5 or 6 cloves. If I'm doing it at the end, 2 cloves. Diced in either case.

(If you want to reduce the simmering time, you don't have to reconstitute the TVP. But reconstituting it gives you an opportunity to add another layer of flavor to the dish. But the fact remains that your sauce will have more than enough water in it to reconstitute the TVP without you doing so in advance.)
  • Red meats: if you are going to eat red meat -- beef, lamb/goat, duck, etc. -- you have to stick with the lean cuts. Unfortunately, the lean cuts aren't often the most tasty using the cooking techniques that minimize the fat consumption. Braising is the best technique for cooking the leanest cuts because those cuts are usually the toughest parts of the animal. Braising is a low and slow cooking method and it produces amazingly good tasting food from very inexpensive cuts of meat. Unfortunately, when you braise, you can't separate the fat from the lean, so it's all in there. What this means is that you end up having to eat expensive cuts when you are going for red meat, typically the tenderloin and breast areas. If you can afford it, no problem; have a Filet Mignon every once in a while. If the price is somewhat prohibitive, you'll have to braise but eat one portion and freeze the rest in single serving packages so you can have a bit of it every couple to three weeks. (Believe me, eating right costs a good deal more than not eating right, I don't know why, it makes no sense seeing as healthy food has less processing, fewer additives, etc.)

  • Shopping for food: You are lucky here insomuch as Spring is in full swing. Find local farms where you can buy your foods fresh. Learn to pickle, freeze and can foods so you'll have high quality, high flavor ingredients come Winter. Pickling is an especially useful skill for it lets you make all sorts of relishes that are great on any meat/fish/poultry you decide to cook, as well as being a fine supplement to veggies.

  • Zest is best: The zest of any citrus makes a great flavor additive to meat, fish, poultry and veggies, while adding nothing in the way of fat or sugar. So if you eat an orange, don't toss the rind away. Zest it over your poached flounder add it to your brown and wild rice mix. Or sprinkle it onto your PB&J sandwich. Or mix it with a teaspoon of melted dark chocolate into which you'll dip your freshly picked strawberries.


Well, that's enough for now. That should get you started. If nothing else, I hope you've gleaned that discipline is also something you need if you want a washboard to wear as well as to have in the laundry room.
__________________
Cheers,
Tony

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'07, e92 335i, Sparkling Graphite, Coral Leather, Aluminum, 6-speed

Last edited by tony20009; 05-24-2013 at 01:35 PM.. Reason: parenthetical comment re: TVP
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