Coach J's Diet and Nutrition Advice

Archive for the ‘Wellness’ Category

I saw a commercial today for Kashi Go-Lean cereal.  It was being promoted as breakfast protein that is equivalent to the protein in eggs.  

Hmmmm – the protein in Kashi cereal comes from Textured Soy Protein Concentrate.  Equal to the protein in eggs?  Not quite.  A cup of this cereal has 9 grams of inferior protein, 36 grams of carbohydrates, 12 grams of sugar (equivalent to 3 teaspoons).  And let’s be serious…who eats just one cup of cereal?!  As Firebreathers, we do not consume breakfast cereal (although if I HAD breakfast cereal in my house it would haunt me!!).  But because of the intensity of our training, it is important to examine the protein we consume as it is vital for preservation of all that lean muscle we are building. 

How do you know if the protein you are consuming is of the highest quality? One way is to determine the protein’s biological value (BV). The BV is a measure of a protein’s “usability.” The higher the BV, the greater the proportion of available protein that can be synthesized by the body’s cells. Higher BVs also indicate a greater amount of essential amino acids – those amino acids that the body cannot synthesize or convert on its own and must instead obtain from the diet.

When the BV of foods were first charted – before the invention of protein powders – whole eggs held the spot with the highest BV of 100.  (Therefore, based on the whole egg assigned value of 100, we have an index or a set of  standards by which we can compare the BV of all protein sources, as shown below.)

Biological Value (BV) Table of Protein Food Sources

Whey Protein Isolate = 159
Whey Protein Concentrate = 104
Eggs whole = 100
Eggs white = 88
Chicken / Turkey = 79
Fish = 70
Lean Beef = 69
Cow’s Milk = 60
Unpolished Rice = 59
Brown Rice = 57
Peanuts = 55
Whole Wheat = 49
Soy beans = 47

Where does whey protein come from?

Whey comes from milk protein. 20% of the protein in milk is comprised of whey and the other 80% is made up of casein. Casein is also available as a protein powder, but is less popular due to its lower BV. All whey protein isolates are 90 – 98% pure protein and contain less fat and lactose than concentrates. The whey protein concentrates contain about 70 -85% pure protein. For this reason the isolates are more expensive than the concentrates.

The lesson here: get more of the good protein! If you are not enjoying the gains (or losses) or if your performance has reached a plateau, look at your diet in light of the types of proteins you are consuming.

As always, post your meals and any questions to “Comments.”

This post contributed by Coach Lis.

This is a short, follow-up post to our previous article on sleep. As noted, sleep is a vital part of any fitness or wellness program. For athletes, it enables your body to repair muscles, triggers the production of human growth hormone and helps to balance the body’s neuro-muscular response system (which affects things like timing and explosiveness). So, in short, sleep is vital to athletic performance.

Let’s hear from those who have been journaling / posting their nightly hours of sleep. What have you observed? Have you noticed any changes in your performance at the box? What about outside the box? Any effects on hunger / eating?

And for those who aren’t posting their sleep (or their daily eating) … what’s holding you back?

The Firebreather coaching staff just posted a new 8-week challenge to all of us. I strongly recommend that in addition to journaling your daily workouts and meals,  you also make one additional journal entry each and every day. Log the number of hours of sleep you got the previous night. Get the most out of your challenge–make it a true learning experience! When it gets right down to it, don’t you really want every advantage you can get to help you (and your team) win?!!!

Contributed by Tin Man Skip

As always, please post your observations, questions, suggestions–and most importantly, your meals–to comments.

My energetic, ambitious wife once introduced me to the following idea:

“I’ll sleep when I die. For now, I’m going to get shit done.”

Some of you are nodding; some are groaning. How many of you have ever come to the box at Firebreather Fitness after a short night…on minimal sleep? What was your workout  that day? I’ll bet your timing was off. I’ll bet your endurance wasn’t what it should have been. I’ll also bet that if you were attempting an Olympic lift, your 1RM wasn’t as high as it should have been.

I confess: I used to come to the box in a sleep-deprived state two to three times a week. Hey, I’m a chronic night-owl (and a parent, business owner, author, blogger, entrepreneur). Like many of you, I wear several hats, and I do some of my best work after 11:30 p.m. For me, I’d stay up late Monday night, Tuesday night and Wednesday night… catching 4-6 hours of sleep, only to crash at 9:30 on Thursday night. I would chronically head into the weekend “tuckered out” and hoping for a couple of naps. What I’ve learned now is that I was really penalizing myself!

Robb Wolf says that sleep is incredibly important, only exceeded in importance by oxygen and water. He holds sleep as important or slightly more important than food!

The Washington Post hits the nail on the head, in my opinion, about sleep deprivation:

The newest study on obesity, from Columbia University, is just the latest to find that adults who sleep the least appear to be the most likely to gain weight and to become obese.

Other researchers have found that even mild sleep deprivation quickly disrupts normal levels of the recently discovered hormones ghrelin and leptin, which regulate appetite. In addition, studies show sleep-deprived people tend to develop problems regulating their blood sugar, which may put them at increased risk for diabetes.

Physiologic studies suggest that a sleep deficit may put the body into a state of high alert, increasing the production of stress hormones and driving up blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Moreover, people who are sleep-deprived have elevated levels of substances in the blood that indicate a heightened state of inflammation in the body, which has also recently emerged as a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.

Did you hear that? Sleep deprivation = inflammation and dispruption of proper maintenance of blood sugar = weight gain and disease.

As if that weren’t enough to send you sprinting to the mattress for a solid 8 to 10 hours of sleep, here’s what researchers at Stanford University found with regard to sleep and athletic performance:

The amount of sleep an athlete gets appears to have a large impact on sports performance. Cheri Mah of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory has been following the sleep patterns and athletic performance of Stanford athletes for years. Her research continues to show that getting more sleep leads to better sports performance for all types of athletes.

One study she authored, published in 2009, followed the Stanford University women’s tennis team for five weeks as they attempted to get 10 hours of sleep each night. Those who increased their sleep time ran faster sprints and hit more accurate tennis shots than while getting their usual amount of sleep. Mah’s research is some of the first to specifically look at the impact of extra hours of sleep on athletic performance and suggests that sleep is a significant factor in achieving peak athletic performance. This is particularly important for collegiate and professional athletes who have full schedules and often travel for games and competitions. Athletes can easily fail to get regular, consistent hours of sleep. This lack of sleep, or “sleep debt,” appears to have a negative effect on sports performance, as well as cognitive function, mood, and reaction time. Much of this can be avoided by making regular sleep as much of a priority for athletes as practicing their sport and eating right.

According to Mah, many of the athletes have set new personal bests and broken long-standing records while participating in these studies. Researchers speculate that deep sleep helps improve athletic performance because this is the time when growth hormone is released. Growth hormone stimulates muscle growth and repair, bone building and fat burning, and helps athletes recover. Studies show that sleep deprivation slows the release of growth hormone. Sleep is also necessary for learning a new skill, so this phase of sleep may be critical for some athletes. The amount of sleep an athlete gets appears to have a large impact on sports performance.

A quick summary:  sleep = growth hormone = muscle repair + recovery + growth!

So get your sleep.  And start logging your sleep here on the CoachJDietRx site–along with posting your meals daily!

Contributed by the Once-Sleep-Deprived Tin Man Skip