All about Calories

The Truth About Calories. What is a calorie? A calorie is considered in scientific terms one unit of energy. This energy is used to walk, talk, breath, sleep, stretch or run. All activities burn calories. The human body exerts its energy by using calories it receives from food. Thus when we speak of calories we associate the term with dieting and weight loss.
In general terms, foods contain calories. We may see them described in other terms such as a carbohydrate, a fat and a protein. These terms are measured in units called grams. So the basic building block of each gram is a defined number of calories.
1 gram of carbohydrates contain four (4) calories h
1 gram of protein contains four (4) calories
1 gram of fat contains nine (9) calories

While you eat, food is broken down inside of your stomach and metabolized into your blood stream. It is either used and burned up efficiently through activity or stored in our cells and fat cells are created. A total of 3,500 stored calories equal one (1) pound of body fat. Tus, in order to lose that one-pound of fat, we have to burn up 3,500 calories per exercise to remove it. It sounds a little easier than it looks on paper.
Your body will need to a certain amount of calories in order to maintain itself properly. The act of breathing, walking, running, sleeping and talking all burn a certain amount of calories. This rate is called the Basal Metabolism Rate or (BMR) as it is known. It is calculated differently for both men and women. When your body is at rest it does not burn as many calories as when it is exercising
Physical activities such as jogging, walking, and skiing also help burn calories. The more physical exercise you get, the more calories you will burn. Thus you are keeping your body in shape by eating right and working off the excess calories through exercise. Thus, exercise in general helps to keep your metabolism rate higher and continues to burn fat long after the exercising is done. It will also help your body burn excess fat efficiently at rest.
If you are looking to start losing some of those extra pounds, remember each pound is 3,500 calories that you must burn in order to lose one pound of fat. You will want to first consult a physician as with starting any new diet or exercise program.

Quick Tips

Quick Tips

Eat early and eat often (every 2.5-3 hours)

Starting the day off with breakfast followed by 4-5 other meals will keep your body fueled. By eating consistently over the course of the day you will have increased energy, will be more likely to make healthy choices, and will avoid eating the majority of your calories in the evening. Between-meal snacks are a good thing. "Spoiling your dinner," as many of us were warned against when we were younger, simply means you won't overeat. And eating every 2.5-3 hours keeps your blood sugar levels consistent. Snacks should contain protein, high-fiber carbs, and good fats. A protein shake or higher-protein meal-replacement bar are great options.

Spices Add Flavor

Spices such as oregano and parsley are a great way to get flavour without adding a lot of calories. Spice blends made specifically for seafood, salads, or meat make it convenient to add flavor.

Staying Hydrated

Stay hydrated -- and nothing is better for this than water. Staying hydrated goes a long way toward preventing the process of connective tissues around our muscles and joints drying up over time. It also improves your muscle tissue and flexibility.

Try to have a combo of carbohydrate, protein, and healthy fat at each of your meals.

Every time you eat you should have a combination of minimally processed carbs (whole grains, fruits, and veggies), a lean protein, and a healthy fat. By doing this you will control your appetite and your energy levels. By eating these 3 components every 3 hours, your body will be a well-fueled machine. Just remember: 3 in 3! Whether you want to lose weight or gain muscle mass, if you go for extended periods of time (4-5 hours or more) your body starts to go into starvation mode. Your body will start to breakdown muscle and hold onto fat! Eating more often will turn your body into a metabolic, lean machine!

Exercise is important at all stages of life.

To state the obvious! Exercise helps all the different systems in your body operate at their highest potential for the stage of life you are in. We were never meant to be sedentary all day.

Flaxseed or Fish Oil

Everyone should have a bottle of flaxseed oil and fish oil in your refrigerator. They body can convert flaxseed oil into omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, much like fish oil. A tablespoon or two of either a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, is all you need, and it can go into a shake or on top of oatmeal.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

There are no fast ways to lose weight. There are no magic pills or powders that will help you build muscle faster than proper nutrition and exercise. Check out the Resources section at coreperformance.com and sign up for the Sports Performance Journal. This journal will give you weekly updates of the most recent research and general information on training, rehab, and nutrition.

Less Legs

With regard to eating protein -- between 0.6 and 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day -- remember: "The less legs the better." Fish, for instance, is preferable to chicken, and chicken is preferable to meat. All are good, provided they are not fried or marinated in fat, and assuming you remove the skin and get as lean a cut as you can.

Old-fashioned Oats

Cereals generally provide only modest nutritional value, and are often loaded with sugar and calories. Old-fashioned oats is a great choice.

Power Food

Salmon is a great power food. It is a better source of protein than most meats, and is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids, which have heart disease-reducing properties.

Serving Sizes

A good rule of thumb is that a piece of fish or meat should be about the size of a deck of cards, and a serving of starches (rice or pasta, for example) should be no bigger than the size of a fist. By eating smaller amounts more often, you give your body a chance to digest and get all of the nutrients from the food.

Effective Dieting with Nuts

Nuts are a great component to an effective diet. They are high in fat, but positive fat, which is critical to good health. Nuts also provide protein and fiber. A quarter-cup serving of nuts, combined with a glass of fat-free milk, is a great snack. Nuts also make a nutritious topping for salads and main courses. Almonds, cashews, pecans, and macadamias have the most nutritional value.

Eat breakfast everyday!

If you skip breakfast you are not doing yourself a favour. When you wake up in the morning, you wake up in a fasted state. If you do not eat, your body will continue to break down your fuel stores (glycogen) and muscle (not fat) for energy. Your metabolic rate will also be running in a lower gear. You will eat more of your calories toward the end of the day and continue to get hungrier as the day goes on. Start your day off right with breakfast and continue to eat mini-meals every 2.5-3 hours after that.

Avoid foods with high fructose corn syrup.

High fructose corn syrup is a very concentrated sweetener. It can really pack a calorie punch with just a small amount. High fructose corn syrup is found in many foods we commonly eat: BBQ sauce, tomato sauce, sodas, fruit drinks, and other processed foods. Check out the ingredients. If it has high fructose corn syrup, try to find an alternative without it. Sometimes it is harder to find common foods without high fructose corn syrup.

Benefits of Fiber

Try to consume a lot of fiber. Fiber improves your body's digestive function, regulates blood sugar levels, and promotes long-term cardiovascular health. It's found in oatmeal and green, leafy vegetables as well as in bottled form. It is found mostly in carbohydrates, which is another reason not to deprive yourself of carbs. When choosing grains and carbohydrate rich snacks, make sure that there is 3g of fiber per serving.

Colourful Salad

The more colour to your salad the better. Salads with leafy spinach and romaine lettuce tend to be more colourful than those made predominantly with iceberg lettuce. Stay away from potato salad and other creamy side dishes.

Supplementation for Triathletes

At USN we are continually developing an Endurance Sports range specific for those who require maximal performance throughout sustained intense physical exertion. The range focuses on products that improve your performance, energy and recovery. The variety of products offers unrivalled nutritional supplementation for every individual athletes need.

The USN Endurance Sport range offers 2 fantastic products to be used during training or competition. Endurosport gives the ultimate in carbohydrate supply for pre sport, during and recovery phases of exertion, it delivers vital nutrients that boost your endurance, recovery and overall performance. If you prefer a lighter sports drink then Cytopower is our sports fuel packed with electrolytes that enable enhanced tolerance of exercise, increased performance and shortened recovery times. It can be mixed specific to individual needs to form a Hypertonic or Isotonic solution.

As most athletes will know, the initial 30 – 45 minutes after exercise is paramount, it is during this time you can make a massive difference in your recovery (as well as laying the foundations for your next training session). A rapid and readily available supply of carbohydrates post training will help replace exhausted stores in the muscles, and help prevent muscles tissue breakdown. Recovery Excell offers a combination of carbs and fast acting proteins that help energy recovery and tissue repair.


Protein for the Triathlete
Protein supplementation can be the missing link in ensuring ultimate human performance in endurance sports such as triathlon, duathon and ironman. The “protein shake” is often perceived as something beneficial to those wanting to build muscle or bulk up… but in all actuality is essential for a healthy lifestyle and should be a key aspect of every athletes nutrition.

Protein is the structural core of the human body and is at work in every single cell. It performs many essential functions in the body such as aiding the transportation of nutrients, oxygen and nitrogen, as well as its function in helping tissue regeneration and growth. But for the endurance athlete protein has key benefits in helping enhance energy recovery post exercise, improve muscle tissue regeneration reducing the onset of injury and potentially OTS, improve muscular endurance and even act as a fuel preventing breakdown of muscles tissue.

Our variety of protein based supplements offer a solution to every endurance athletes needs. The range Includes great daily use proteins such as Pure Protein IGF and 100% Whey Protein that help you maintain a healthy and strong body with enhanced muscle recovery and reduced soreness between training sessions. Muscle Fuel STS provides a sustained and continual release of protein to help recovery as well as containing a range of essential vitamin and minerals. It can be used any time of day, and as a boost to your energy intake too. Finally we have Pure Protein Fuel RTD, our high protein, reduced Carbohydrate, low fat drink that is ideal for during or after your workout.

USN is committed to educate the benefits of protein supplementation in endurance sport and dispelling the common myths normally associated. Our proteins are of the highest quality in both source and blend which lends our products to be market leading in flavour and content. Don’t just take our word for it, listen to what the real athletes have to say….

Nutrition Tips for Vegetarian Athletes

If you don’t eat meat, it can take a bit more planning to get adequate protein for muscle building and sports training. Vegetarians must take extra care to avoid deficiencies of iron, zinc, and B12, which can hurt exercise and strength training performance.
The following tips will help vegetarians who want to get the most from strength training programs.

How to Get Adequate Protein in Your Diet

The current protein recommendations for optimal muscle building in a strength athlete is 1.6 to 1.7 gram protein per kilogram of body weight (0.73 grams per pound). For a 200-pound athlete, that is a total of 145 to 154 grams of protein a day. There is no scientific evidence that more than 2.0 grams of protein per kg of body weight has any additional benefit in muscle strength or size.
You can get enough protein by including plenty of low-fat dairy products and protein-rich plant sources, like soy, in your diet.
The following protein sources may work for vegetarians:
Milk, 8 oz, 8 grams
Tofu, 3 oz, 15 grams
Yogurt, 8 oz, 8 grams
Cheese, 3 oz, 21 grams
Peanut butter, 2 tbsp, 8 grams

How to Get Adequate Iron in Your Diet

Heme iron is a type of easily absorbed iron that is found in animal protein. If you eat fish or chicken, you will get this type of iron, but if you eat no meat, you will need to find other sources of iron. Our bodies don't absorb non-heme iron –- the kind found in vegetables -– as easily as the iron that comes from animal foods. Non-meat eaters, especially female athletes, must pay attention to their dietary iron needs. Good sources of non-heme include wholegrain cereals, leafy green vegetables, figs, lentils and kidney beans, and some dried fruits.

How to Get Adequate Vitamin C in Your Diet

Vitamin C in fruits, vegetables, and other foods help vegetarians absorb non-heme iron from other foods, so it’s a good idea to eat a combination of foods at each meal. Consider eating citrus fruits with an iron-fortified wholegrain cereal or have a citrus fruit juice with beans.

How to Get Adequate B12

Because vitamin B12 is available only from animal products, it is one of the most common nutrients missing from the diets of vegetarian athletes. To get enough B12 (you require only a small amount-2.4 micrograms-per day) try to eat B12-fortified foods like soymilk, and cereal. You can also get enough B12 if you consume eggs, cheese, milk or yogurt.

Avoid Foods That Interfere with Iron Absorption

Some foods contain substances that block the absorption of iron in the intestine. Coffee, whole grains, bran, legumes, and spinach all interfere with iron absorption and should be combined with vitamin C to increase iron absorption.

Talk To Your Doctor About Supplements

Although dietary supplements should not be used to make up for a poor diet, there are times when they can help prevent some deficiencies. Ideally, you should discuss the use of any supplements with your healthcare team.
All athletes are encouraged to eat a balanced diet that includes a wide variety of foods, but vegetarian athletes can rest assured that they don’t have to eat meat in order to get adequate nutrition for strength building. If you have concerns about your nutritional status, is is recommended that you talk with your doctor or a registered sports nutritionist to review you eating plan and make recommendations.

Foods and your Hormones

Now this is what I actually want to speak to you all about, as people do not realize that foods can affect their hormones. When we are trying to gain lean mass or even drop body fat, there is one hormone you do not want too much of, and that is ESTROGEN. Estrogen is your female hormone and also one of our most potent fat storing hormones (apart from insulin), so we do not want to increase it by the types of foods we eat.

1. Wheat / estrogen

Wheat as we all know is what bread is made from, but what you might not know, is that it increases estrogen. So if you are a woman that carries heavily on the thighs, or even a male that carries body fat like that (so your typical pear shape), you should avoid wheat as much as possible. Rather eat rye bread, rice or potatoes.

2. Animal fat / cholesterol

If you are trying to get rid of the dreaded abdominal fat (so apple shape), then animal fat is your down fall. Cut out butter, fatty meat, chocolates, too much cheese, cream sauce etc, and rather substitute with avo, peanut butter, nuts, protein bars, ect but make sure that it is only 1 portion of fat you get in per meal (1/5 avo, 2 tbs peanut butter, 30 – 50g nuts, 3 tbs lite mayo, and so on)

3. Fruits / liver

One second last food substance I want to share with you is fruit. We are told to eat 5-8 fruits / veggies per day. The vegetables I agree with, but the fruit? If you are struggling to drop body fat, then that might be the other reason you are not loosing. The reason is, fructose, one of the sugars found in fruit, gets stored in your liver. The liver can fill up with up to 3 kg of fructose and every time you go for an hour of fat burning, your liver will just release the fructose as energy and you will never get to burn any fat. Cut back on the fruit ! You might even have to cut the fruit down to once a week in order to drop body fat. Make sure to take a multivitamin-B supplement to make sure you are getting in enough vitamins, as this might not be balanced enough, but if you want to shift, you have to sacrifice a bit for a while, until you are where you want to be.

4. Sugars / insulin

People don’t know how bad sugar is for you when trying to drop body fat, or just in general. Sugar increases your blood sugar level at such a rapid rate that it makes your body release INSULIN. Insulin is one of our other potent fat storing hormones, so try and cut the sugars as much as possible, or totally. Substitute it with a sweetener or even fructose will be better (it is a slow release sugar, but don’t get too much of it in, as I mentioned above). For those that want to add more muscle, avoid sugar too, as it can be increasing your metabolism to the extent that you are finding it difficult to gain any muscle at all. To keep any hormone balanced, we also need at least 1 – 3 tbs of omega 3& 6 in your diet. If you have a stubborn body part like stomach or thighs, you will not get rid of that fat if you do not get in at least 1 tbs of cold press flax seed oil (EFA - omega 3&6) per day.

Eight Nutrition Tips to get in Shape

To achieve an enviable toned body, with the help of some basic nutritional knowledge, you could achieve your goals faster than you thought. Getting the right balance of food, exercise and dedication may seem a hard task but putting your mind to it is the first hurdle.
For starters, try following these eight essential nutritional tips

1. Eat more often!

That's right. By spacing out your meals to every 2.5 - 3 hours you will actually help yourself lose weight. Instead of eating 3 large meals a day, divide this into 6 smaller meals. Not only will the more regular flow of nutrients into your body help raise your metabolism (and burn more fat in the long-run), you will also feel less hungry.

2. Don't forget Breakfast!

Research has shown that people who miss breakfast find it harder to lose weight. Breakfast, in short, is the most important meal of the day and is essential for getting your metabolism firing. Let this be your biggest meal of the day - after all, you've starved yourself for at least 8 hours whilst sleeping.

3. Take your time

It can take up to 20 minutes for your brain to register that your stomach is full after you have finished eating. Don't rush your food and savour every mouthful. The more slowly you eat, the fuller you're going to feel.

4. Eat protein at every meal

Put simply, foods high in protein make you feel fuller quicker and for longer. Choose meats such as chicken, turkey, or low fat mince, or any type of fish. Protein is also essential for muscle growth and repair.

5. Cutting the calories

To lose a pound of bodyfat, you must burn the equivalent of 3500 calories- now how many packets of crisps is that? If you cut your daily calorie intake by 500 calories a day (about a chocolate bar and a bag of crisps), you'll be losing 1 pound a week. Do this for 3 months and you've lost almost a stone! You don't need to become a calorie counting junkie- just remove foods from your diet you don't really need (however tempting). Increasing the amount of cardiovascular exercise will also help burn the fat. Start of slow and build up - try running for 30 minutes 3 times a week and if you've got more energy, try longer/more regular intervals.

6. Carbs are good

As much as you may have heard about the infamous Atkins diet, carbohydrates are NOT the enemy. We need carbohydrates for energy whether for short burts or long-sustained energy sources. Without carbohydrates our bodies may find it hard to adjust to this inherent energy deficit. You may have heard of the glycemic index. Without going into too much detail, the GI is a ranking of foods based on their immediate effect on blood sugar levels. Higher GI foods (i.e. more sugary) are required after exercise to replenish drained sources and lower GI foods for the rest of the time. As a rule of thumb, stick to complex carbohydrates which take a long time to digest and have a more prolonged release of energy. Foods rich in complex carbohydrates include vegetables, whole grains, and beans.

7. Drink Enough Water

Water is a fundamental part of our lives. It is easy to forget how completely we depend on it. Aside from aiding in digestion and absorption of food, water regulates body temperature and blood circulation, carries nutrients and oxygen to cells, and removes toxins and other wastes. Among its other benefits, water plays a major part in weight loss. Since water contains no calories, it can serve as an appetite suppressant, and helps the body metabolize stored fat - it may possibly be one of the most significant factors in losing weight. If you find yourself getting hungry quickly, trying drinking a pint of water to curb your appetite.

8. Try not to eat before bed

If you're trying to lose weight, this is an excellent method to shift the pounds. Clearly our energy levels plummet whilst we sleep hence it is harder for our bodies to burn the excess calories eaten during the late evening. This is often a simple mistake 'dieters' make early on. Save your food for when you're awake!

USN - Ultimate Sports Nutrition Introduction

USN - ULTIMATE SPORTS NUTRITION

USN - is a leader in Sports Nutrition, Weight Loss and Endurance products and Bodybuilding Supplements.  USN have developed a range of nutritional supplements that draw on the world's leading scientific research to help consumers reach the ultimate in fitness levels and at the same time enjoy the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

USN's extensive range of products include Protein Shakes and Bars, Fat Burners, Meal Replacements, Creatine Monohydrate, Nitric Oxide NOS, amino acids, testosterone boosters, L-Glutamine & Endurance supplements. With USN's detailed articles, training programmes, diet plans and products will help you maintain and improve your health and fitness levels. Don't forget to have a look at their sporting heroes including Sacarens Rugby Union Squad, Gladiator Enigma(Jenny Pacey), Gladiator Doom(Wayne Gordon) and bodybuilder and Mr Universe 2009 Winner Dave Titterton; all of these athletes have excelled in their careers with the help of supplementation from USN.