Laimis Energy :: Personal Training

The Right Sets for Strength and Size

May 24

Posted by LAIMIS in CARDIO, CONSULTATION, CORE, EXERCISE, FAT, FITNESS, HEALTH, HEART, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, STRENGTH, TRAINING | No Comments

You’ve been told to listen to your body, learn its idiosyncrasies, embrace it like a friend. Don’t buy it. You can listen and learn, sure, but forget the friendly stuff. When it comes to muscle, you need to be less good buddy and more psychotic drill sergeant.

Keep your muscles off balance. When they get used to lifting a certain amount in a certain way (sound like your workout?), they stop growing. A weight-training program that never changes also creates strength imbalances; that’s unproductive and dangerous.

This doesn’t mean you have to master the incline behind-the-back modified Slovenian triceps windmill. Just do your usual exercises, but use different combinations of sets and repetitions.

What follows is a guide to different kinds of sets and how they produce different results. Plug this into your weight training-program and see the surprised—and supersized—reaction you get from your muscles.

Straight Sets

What they are: The usual—a number of repetitions followed by a rest period, then by one or more sets of the same exercise.

Why they’re useful: The rest periods and narrow focus of straight sets help add mass and build maximal strength. As long as you rest enough between sets (1 to 3 minutes), your muscle, or group of muscles, will work hard two, three, even five times in a workout.

How to use them: The start of your workout is the best time to do straight sets, regardless of your experience level. Your energy and focus are high at the start, so it’s the best time to execute difficult moves. Perform three straight sets of six to eight repetitions of a challenging exercise like the bench press, pullup, or squat; aim to do the same number of repetitions in each set, with either the same or increasing amounts of weight. Read the rest of this entry »

7 Stealth Health Foods

May 23

Posted by LAIMIS in CARBOHYDRATES, CONSULTATION, EAT THIS NOT THAT, FAMILY, FIBER, FITNESS, HEALTH, HEART, NUTRITION, PROTEIN, WATER | No Comments

Power up your diet by expanding your menu with the healthiest foods you can eat.

More Than Just a Plate of Veggies

Call ‘em Rodney Dangerfoods. They get no respect. Consider celery, the Bloody Mary swizzle stick. Or Kohlrabi, kale’s black sheep cousin, which sounds more like a throat-clearing than a root vegetable. These are just two of many underappreciated and under-eaten foods that can instantly improve your diet. Make a place for them on your plate, and you’ll gain a new respect for the health benefits they bestow—from lowering blood pressure to fighting belly fat. And the best part? You’ll discover just how delicious organic health food can be.

Celery

This water-loaded vegetable has a rep for being all crunch and no nutrition. But ditch that mindset: Celery contains stealth nutrients that heal.

Why It’s Healthy: “My patients who eat four sticks of celery a day have seen modest reductions in their blood pressure—about 6 points systolic and 3 points diastolic,” says Mark Houston, MD, director of the Hypertension Institute at St. Thomas Hospital, in Nashville. It’s possible that phytochemicals in celery, called phthalides, are responsible for this health boon. These compounds relax muscle tissue in artery walls and increase blood flow. And beyond the benefits to your BP, celery also fills you up—with hardly any calories.

Eat It: Try this low-carbohydrate, protein-packed recipe for a perfect snack any time of day.

In a bowl, mix a 4.5-ounce can of wild Alaskan salmon (rinsed and drained), 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, 1/4 cup of finely chopped onion, 1/4 cup of finely chopped apple, 2 tablespoons of fat-free mayonnaise, and some fresh ground pepper. Then spoon the mixture into celery stalks. (Think salmon salad on a log.) Makes 2 servings.

Per serving: 114 calories, 15 grams protein, 12 grams carbohydrates (3 grams fiber), 1 gram fat

Seaweed

While this algae is a popular health food in Japan, it rarely makes it into U.S. homes.

Why It’s Healthy: “Seaweeds are a great plant source of calcium,” says nutritionist and fitness expert Alan Aragon, contributing editor at Men’s Health. They’re also loaded with potassium, which is essential for maintaining healthy blood-pressure levels.

Eat It: In sushi, of course. You can also buy sheets of dried seaweed at Asian groceries, specialty health stores, or online at edenfoods.com. Use a coffee grinder to grind the sheets into a powder. Then use the powder as a healthy salt substitute that’s great for seasoning salads and soups. Read the rest of this entry »

Shed the Bear Belly

May 22

Posted by LAIMIS in CARBOHYDRATES, CARDIO, CONSULTATION, CORE, EXERCISE, FAMILY, FAT, FITNESS, HEALTH, INJURIES, MUSCLES, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, PROTEIN, STRENGTH, Stretching, TRAINING | No Comments

YOU MAY HAVE BEEN A BIT SLUGGISH (OR BEARISH) over the winter. After all, frigid weather is enough to make anyone want to hole up. But unlike grizzlies, men don’t emerge slimmer come spring. Indeed, all that extra time spent indoors subsisting on beer and Xbox tends to pack a couple of pounds on a guy. The kicker: Most of us never lose that weight. Here’s your exit strategy for leaving the cave leaner.

1. Start slowly
Many men try to pick up where they left off and immediately start slinging around heavy weights. The result: sore muscles, stressed joints, and a downward spiral of missed workouts.

Your move: If you were hibernating for most of the winter, begin with half the weight you lifted previously, and then increase your load by 10 percent a week, suggests Wunsch. This might sound tedious, but you’ll see the benefits add up quickly; within 8 weeks you’ll be stronger than you were before. Read the rest of this entry »

Prevention’s Healthy Food Awards

May 21

Posted by LAIMIS in CARBOHYDRATES, CONSULTATION, EAT THIS NOT THAT, FAMILY, FAT, FIBER, FITNESS, HEALTH, HEART, MUSCLES, NUTRILITE, NUTRITION, PROTEIN, SUGAR, WATER | No Comments

Convenient doesn’t have to mean unhealthy. Here, the 26 best packaged foods for your shopping cart.

Our Favorite Healthy Packaged Foods

If a stroll down the aisles of your supermarket is enough to make your head spin—So many boxes! So many claims! So many…options!—we get it. The rows are stacked with so many options that it can be downright stupefying. That’s why we decided to bring back our popular Healthy Food Awards. We know, just like you do, that many so-called health foods are sugar and salt bombs in disguise. But amid those bad-for-you foods are some stellar ones. And we found the absolute best of them.

We munched our way through 500 submissions and narrowed it down to these 26. Our criteria were strict (see next slide), the decisions were tough, but the verdicts are in.

Here, the 26 best, healthiest and most delicious packaged foods we could find. Because let’s be honest: Unless it tastes good, you’re not going to toss it in your grocery cart. You’ll probably want to load up on these, though. Download your printable shopping list here.

Healthiest Food Awards Criteria

—No more than 400 calories per (realistic) serving

—Less than 500 mg of sodium per serving

—No more than 10 g of added sugar

—Significant amounts of fiber, protein, and essential vitamins, where applicable

—Free of genetically modified ingredients

This year, we added “non-GMO” (genetically modified organisms) to our list of criteria for the first time. (Read about the GMO controversy here). Now, check out our (and now your) dream shopping cart!

Good Food Made Simple Unsweetened 100% Steel Cut Oats

(goodfoodmadesimple.com; $2.50-3.29)

Frozen…oatmeal? Yup, you read that right. Since steel cut oats typically take 30 minutes to prepare properly, we love this as the ultimate convenience food: It’s pre-cooked, flash-frozen, and can be defrosted in just 3 minutes. Plus, there are no preservatives or artificial flavors: just filtered water, whole grain oats, and sea salt. Spruce up yours with a spoonful of nut butter, a sprinkling of nuts, or chopped fresh fruit.

Eggland’s Best Organic Eggs

(egglandsbest.com; $4.40)

Eggs are a great source of protein and hard-to-get nutrients like choline and lutein, but some eggs are better than others, when it comes to the way the hens are treated and raised. Eggland’s Best come from hens that are fed organic vegetarian feed, and the eggs taste incomparably fresh. Read the rest of this entry »

14 Ways to Make Veggies Less Boring

May 18

Posted by LAIMIS in CARBOHYDRATES, CONSULTATION, EAT THIS NOT THAT, FAMILY, FIBER, FITNESS, HEALTH, NUTRITION, PROTEIN, SUGAR, WATER | No Comments

Tired of steamed side dishes or blah, been-there salads? Try these new ways to shop for and cook your less-than-favorite greens.

Revamp Your Veggies

We don’t need to tell you to eat more vegetables—there’s only about, oh, a few hundred health reasons to do so.

But unfortunately, some of the very chemicals that make vegetables so healthy are the same ones that cause many of us (and not just 5-year-olds) to shudder at the sight of steamed greens. In fact, as many as 30% of Americans are extrasensitive to the bitter taste of the chemicals in these vegetables—food experts call these people supertasters.

For others, it isn’t the taste but the lack thereof that makes them turn up their noses at vegetables. Many veggies pack a lot less flavor than they could, points out Tristan Millar, former director of marketing and business development for Frieda’s, the specialty produce marketer in Los Angeles. “American growers have focused on varieties that ship well and spoil slowly, and there’s been so little emphasis on taste.”

But with a little extra know-how at the grocery story or in front of the stove, you can rekindle your love affair with this essential food group. Here are 14 ideas to eat more vegetables and improve your health, starting with dinner tonight.

1. Buy the Babies

In some vegetables, flavors intensify as the plant matures, which is why the so-called baby versions have wider taste appeal with just as many health benefits. Experiment with baby artichokes, turnips, squashes, and carrots (the ones sold in bunches, with greens still attached—not those sold in plastic bags, which are simply regular carrots, trimmed down). You can find the babies at larger supermarkets, specialty grocers, and farmers’ markets; some, such as younger brussels sprouts, can even be bought frozen. Not only do many people find baby vegetables more flavorful and less bitter, but they prefer the texture too: Younger vegetables are more tender and require less cooking, says Barbara Klein, PhD, professor emerita of foods and nutrition at the University of Illinois. “And they’re sort of fun.” Read the rest of this entry »