Nutrition

[Sleemie]

Need some advice on nutrition....I'm working out with weights and Kung Fu and I want some advice on eating properly in order to get enough energy to keep up with my routine, and enough nutrients to help regenerate my body from the breakdown caused by the workouts. What should my diet consist of? I know I need a good amount of protien, especially with lifting. Carbs tend to make me gain weight, or at the least keep me from burning off the extra flab, so I don't and won't do a lot of carbs. I don't believe in the old fashion belief that you need a bunch of carbs to give you energy for working out, I believe you can get that energy from other food sources. Anywho, I'd appreciate the advice.

[pvwingchun]

Are you practicing and internal or external art?

[Sleemie]

Hung Fut, which combines both, but you don't get involved in the internal stuff too deeply until later on in the system, so it's primarily external at this point.

[Serpent]

I've been messing around with this a lot lately. So far I've discovered the following:

Before training, eat more carbs than proteins and they will power you up to train. I hear what you say about carbs, but if you're working out properly and regularly and keeping the calories down, then a fair amount of carbs won't be a problem.

After training, eat high, simple proteins; fish, chicken, beans, etc. to feed muscles that have been worked.

At all times eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. They should always be fresh, and keep the veges as raw as possible.

Drink loads of water, at least two litres a day.

Stay away from sugars. Your body will convert carbs to glucose to feed your muscles and sugars like Coke, sweets, etc. do you no real good at all.

When you eat carbs, try not to eat protein and vice versa. Carbs + veges or proteins + veges.

This is working out pretty well for me. What do others think?

[popsider]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Serpent
[B]After training, eat high, simple proteins; fish, chicken, beans, etc. to feed muscles that have been worked.""

Good advice, I'd add take your protein as soon after training as you can, it is better in terms of absorbing it or getting it to the muscles or something - read this in a cycling magazine last week with reference to protein drinks, they were concerned with not losing muscle due to very long training rides. It's the latest research - apparently !

"At all times eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. They should always be fresh, and keep the veges as raw as possible."

And remember that non-organic may be full of chemicals.

"Drink loads of water, at least two litres a day."

Yes, good idea, stay hydrated it helps guard against injury too.

"Stay away from sugars. Your body will convert carbs to glucose to feed your muscles and sugars like Coke, sweets, etc. do you no real good at all."

Yes, you get sugar in fruit and other stuff anyway.

"When you eat carbs, try not to eat protein and vice versa. Carbs + veges or proteins + veges."

Not sure of the science behind this but I'm willing to take your word for it. Are there any nutritionists on this board ???

[Serpent]

We digest carns and proteins in a different way. When you eat the two together, neither digests at it's optimal level, therefore, keep them seperate to have the best results. That's how I understand it anyway. Try it and you will feel less bloated, even after a big meal.

Also, Wall's advice is good, but I don't necessarily agree with all the milk. I gave up milk completely and drink soy milk now. I feel good for it. The minerals and calcium, etc. in milk can't be assimilated because the ****genising and pastuerising process kills the enzymes that make it assimilable. (Is that a word?!)

Anyway, these are the things I have learned/experimented with. When it comes down to it, everybody is a bit different.

The best guidelines are:

Lots of fruit and vegies.
Protein after training, carbs before.
Lots of water.
No junk food or extra sugars.

At least, those are the guidelines that I try to follow.

[awakenwired]

All the advice sounds pretty good to me except for the Fruits thing. Fruits are pretty high in sugars. Which is one of the main things that should be avoided. They are high in lots of good things as well but I think there could be better alternatives to fruit to avoid all the excess sugar. I've read that most "White" vegetables should be avoided as well, such as califlower. (sp?), because they too are high in sugar, which to me is odd because the white veggies are the ones with the least amount of flavor.

Anyway I'm no nutritionist by any means, but there does seem to be some good logic behind it.

[popsider]

Is sugar harmful in itself, apart from to your teeth?

I thought the reason we avoided sugary snacks was because they generally had very little nutritional value, whereas fruit does have vitamins, roughage etc, along with the sugar ? In other words it isn't so much sugar we should be avoiding as foods which have sugar and not much else (sweets).

[Serpent]

OK, there's one fundamental difference to make clear here. There are different types of sugar. The white granulated stuff that you get for your tea and coffee is sucrose. It's a complex sugar. It's also found in sodas and sugary snacks and stuff and it's bad for you.

Fruit contains fructose, which is a very simple sugar, easily digested and turned into glucose for you body to use as fuel. Avoiding fruit due to sugar is very wrong, it's not bad sugar.

Donuts = no!
Fruit = yes!

[awakenwired]

That Sucrose/Fructose thing is a pretty good point. I realize there is good nutrition comming from fruit. But I always thought the sugar in it was in fact not all that great for you. Be it Sucrose, or Fructose. They both become glucose in the end. Which gives you a quick form of energy just like carbs, which is what I thought the person who started the thread was trying to avoid due to weight concerns.

Perhaps me suggesting avoidance was a bit over the top. I Never really meant total abstinence from fruit. Just kept to strict moderation. It was a good point though, and after reading it I wondered if my understanding of the two sugars we're inaccurate. I did a little digging, not too much though, and found this small page: http://www.diabetesworld.com/9907/QA.html It talks a little bit about the two different sugars. The differences, and the similarities.

Please bear in mind though, I'm not saying good things can't come from fruit too. Just like good things can come from breads and cereals. This is just my understanding of it though, and I realize it may very well be a flawed one. :)

[Justa Man]

-come from food that will spoil naturally. if you are consuming foods that have a shelf life, they are not natural. every other form of life on our planet does this.

-come from food that is eaten in it's most raw state. Cooking food destroys the inherent enzymes in the food, thereby making your body work harder to digest it. Cooking also mutates and destroys vitamins and minerals. every other form of life does this.

Raw fat should be a huge part of your diet. Avacados, coconut, nuts, seeds, eggs....
one serving of fat gives your body more calories that one serving of carbohydrate. so you eat the same amount, but get more energy from it. Fats are VITAL for a healthy brain and joints among other things.

All your food should be as close to organic as you can afford. Pesticides, herbacides, chemicals that increase shelf life, and chemicals that enhance taste are all toxic for the body, will run you down and will allow you to meet the reaper sooner than you may want.

If you'd like to learn more indepth check this site.....
http://www.karlloren.com/aajonus/

[Justa Man]

Living Disease-Free, An Interview With Aajonus Vonderplanitz
by Rae Bradbury

The medical profession is finally taking a closer look at alternative therapies for cancer and other diseases. Why? In spite of trillions of dollars in research and high-tech tools, medicine fails miserably. Diet is one factor being considered. Aajonus Vonderplanitz is someone to whom a few doctors are paying attention.

Aajonus was given 3 months to live after he was diagnosed and treated for the deadliest cancer Multiple Myeloma (cancers of the blood and borne). That was 29 years ago. Now, he looks at least 10 years younger than his age, 50, muscular, radiantly healthy, doesn't exercise and has the clearest beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen. He wrote a book entitled WE WANT TO LIVE that tells how he and thousands of others suffering from diseases reversed them with diet.

Unlike most nutritionists who focus on nutritional supplementation, Aajonus is one who thinks diet is everything acrd supplements are toxic when on air optimal diet. He considers that, in the long run supplements are just another drag on which the pharmaceutical industry gets rich and people get little. The foods he suggests make most medical doctors' hairs stand on end. But his suggestions reverse most diseases, consistently.

Rae Bradbury: What do you think is the most important nutrient?

Aajonus Vonderplanitz: That depends upon the disease, but quantity-wise fat is the most required nutrient for the human body.

RB.: What of all the warnings about the multitude of problems caused by excessive fat consumption?

A.V.: Raw fat is the key. Cooking, that is, heating fats above 96° F. causes toxic alterations, for instance lipid oxides and aflatoxins, which are carcinogenic. Cooked fats cannot exchange molecules properly. Consequently they often dry and harden over the years. An example: If the body forms, from cooked fats, an improper or incomplete lubricant to protect the arteries, the arteries become brittle after many years.

R.B.: You're saying that if we were to eat all of our fats raw we would not develop heart disease?

A.V.: Correct. We would not develop most forms of cancer, arthritis, rheumatism, and most diseases.

R.B.: Why are many people who eat cooked foods fairly healthy?

A.V.: A few people have mutated to utilize cooked foods. But many people nowadays have overactive glands. This means they have an over-abundance of hormones. These hormones are often utilized to replace the destroyed nutrients in cooked food. However, as people age, their glands become fatigued or toxic or hardened. Consequently, their glands don't produce enough hormones to carry on normal body functions much less to utilize hormones as replacements for destroyed nutrients. Then the live enzymes, unaltered fats, proteins and sugars in raw foods become paramount to health, reversing most diseases.

RB.: So, until people become unhealthy they can do fine on cooked foods?

A.V.: If they want to use their bodies as garbage dumps. It's a risk I would never take again.

RB.: Did you recover from Multiple Myeloma by eating predominately raw fat?

A.V.: Along with a lot of raw meats: beef, chicken, fish and bone marrow.

R.B.: Aren't you afraid of bacteria and parasites?

A.V.: Do you blame vultures for the carcass they eat?

RB.: No.

A.V.: Neither do I blame the bacteria and parasites for the decaying tissue that they eat. The cause of the decay is the problem. Bacteria, unless manmade, and parasites are a form of detoxification. They have a symbiotic relationship with the body toward better health.

R.B.: But people have died of bacterial food poisoning, haven't they?

A.V.: My experience says no. Example: because the vagus nerve to my stomach was severed and hydrochloric acid is not produced in my stomach, according to science and medicine, I am in the category of people in their 80's and 90's who they say are in danger of bacterial poisoning and parasitic invasion. Yet, I've been eating raw meats since September 1976 and never have had either bacterial poisoning or parasites. And I've eaten some pretty rotten meats to test the issue. Probably, the problem is some chemical, drug, preservative or pesticide in the food to which those people had an allergy that killed them. Then science and the medical professions point their fingers at the vultures. Again, the vultures do not create the carcass on which they feed.

R.B.: So eating the raw meat cured you of cancers?

A.V.: When I began eating it I began feeling better immediately. My body developed naturally, even without exercise.

R.B.: You said in your book that you had put your cancers in remission on a fruitarian/vegetarian diet.

A.V.: Yes, by eating tremendous amounts of raw fat. But I did not reverse it until I began eating raw meats and raw bone marrow.

R.B.: What kinds of raw fat and meat do you eat?

A.V.: Avocado, unsalted raw butter, raw cream, unsalted raw cheeses, coconuts, free-range eggs produced without hormones, oils pressed below 96° F., like olive, sunflower, peanut and flax (with high lignans). Raw meats that I eat are fish, chicken, turkey, lamb, beef, and sometimes the glands, for instance, liver. However, I eat bone marrow and glands only from organically fed animals.

R.B.: Why?

A.V.: If high amounts of pesticides and chemicals are in the feed, and/or if antibiotics, hormones and drugs are fed or injected into the animals, the bones and glands become toxic and these toxins damage the person who eats them.

R.B.: Why don't chemical toxins store in muscle meat?

A.V.: A little does but not enough to cause any problems, yet. Who knows what will happen in the next 10 years if we don't stop contaminating animals. For now, animals' bodies use fats to bind with toxins. Bone marrow and glands contain enormous quantities of fat to produce hormones, maintain resilience and protect themselves. So, most chemical toxins store in the bones and glands.

R.B.: Has this diet worked for others with Multiple Myeloma?

A.V.: Six out of seven. I will tell you of the latest. Three months ago Dora Hagerer, 67, called me from a clinic near San Diego where she had been receiving chemotherapy. Her hemoglobin was about 7 and her red cell count 15,000; she had had several transfusions. The doctors were sending her home to die. She heard about my program. I put her on a raw diet, including small portions of raw meat 4-5 times a day. Dora called me last week to tell me that she had gone to her doctor the week before for blood tests. The doctor called a few days later and asked her to repeat the tests. Dora asked, "Why?" The doctor told her that the lab had made a mistake, that her blood results came back normal. She had the tests redone and, again, they were normal. Do you know what the doctor said when she began to tell him about the diet?

R.B.: What?

A.V.: "I don't want to know what you are doing."

R.B.: Well, he would have to face his guilt.

A.V.: And the fact that his career is supposed to be creating health; that is the oath that he took. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he were to trim his life-style while he re-educates himself to help the body cure itself rather than attacking it with butchering surgeries, burning radiation, and poisoning drugs?

R.B.: Is Dora able to function now?

A.V.: She is feeling a lot stronger. I received this card from her today. She said, "I'm so happy that I'm recovering from this disease. It's hard to believe that this is possible after being told otherwise by everyone except you."

R.B.: That must feel really good.

A.V.: I experience great joy, sometimes to tears. But I'm not doing it directly. It's the raw food that gives her body the nutrients it needs, works with best and easiest. I am merely the secondary guide.

R.B.: Who's her primary guide?

A.V.: Her body through instinct. When a person eats the foods that I suggest when they are hungry for them, healing results are greater and quicker in most cases. If I were to define it further it might seem more complicated than it is. I've outlined it in the book within the story/testimonial section to make it accessible on emotional and intuitive levels.

R.B.: You did an excellent job of it. I was so enthralled I finished the book in one session. I didn't sleep until 5 a.m. that morning.

A.V.: Thank you. It took five years of rewrites. In fact, I was ready for another rewrite when the publisher said no, "You'll be rewriting this `til you die. Enough!"

R.B.: You do not exercise?

A.V.: Not in 18 years as of April 1997. My fingers dance over my computer keyboard, I roller-skate an average of once a month, I walk from room to room, from the house to car, and car to wherever. I've taken 4 yoga classes in 18 years. I carry my groceries 2-3 times a week. That's the extent of my exercise.

R.B.: But you look so fit and muscular, buffed.

A.V.: It is the product of the raw meat.

R.B.: Do all of your patients look like as fit as you without exercise?

A.V.: Most. I'm not against exercise. I was never well enough to be athletic as a child so it's something I do only if encouraged by someone. Exercise is important for people who have overactive glands, especially adrenals. If they don't burn the excess adrenaline with exercise they are likely to be irritable and volatile.

[Justa Man]

R.B.: For those who don't fancy exercise, how long would it take them on your diet to have the body they want without having to work at it?

A.V.: Different times per the individual. For example, normally a toxic woman between ages 23-33 requires 1 1/2-3 1/2 years on my raw diet to become healthy enough to have a naturally trim and muscular physic without exercising. But a toxic woman of the same age-range who has had children must add at least 1 year for each child she has had to reach that stage. And a toxic woman of the same age-range who has had a Caesarean section must add 2-5 years to achieve that stage.

R.B.: Having a child puts that much of a strain on a woman's body?

A.V.: It has been something I have observed for the last 21 years.

R.B.: But once she has achieved this state of natural trimness and muscularity, a woman does not have to worry ever again? In her entire life?

A.V.: As long as she maintains the raw diet, I would assume that would be true. I have only observed it for 21 years.

R.B.: How does one lose weight on your diet of high fats?

A.V.: More raw fats, then later, more raw meats. It is ironic, I know, but people overeat because they don't get the nutrients they need in cooked food. They don't process the cooked fats, proteins and sugars properly, so some store in the body as toxins. The body requires nutrients to cleanse them. When someone begins to eat only raw foods, especially plenty of raw fats and regularly raw meat, the old toxins are gradually cleansed away. One thirtysomething patient was 280 lbs. and was addicted to ice cream. I trusted her instincts, that she needed the cream. I gave her recipes to make raw ice cream from raw cream, fruit and unheated honey. She made one daily, eating up to a gallon a day. Within 5 months she had lost 140 lbs. and the craving for ice cream. After only 4 years on my raw diet, eating raw meat several times a day (most days), she maintained her weight at 125 lbs. without having to think about her weight, to this day.

R.B.: She must adore you.

A.V.: She adores her body and knows its the raw food. Who wouldn't after battling extreme overweight for 32 years.

R.B.: You're being terribly modest.

A.V.: Rae, I'm not going to let you put me on a pedestal. She appreciates me but she hasn't needed my help in 10 years.

R.B.: How long did you help her?

A.V.: About 24 months. As I said, I am only the secondary guide. Unlike the medical and pharmaceutical industries, I have devised a health approach on which people can depend on themselves for the rest of their lives. I would like humanity to get to a place where health is the norm as it was before cooking became the norm. Like all of those tribes who ate mainly raw foods, including raw meat, and never suffered diseases as we know them, not even tooth decay. '

R.B.: Do you really think that humanity, especially in this country, will give up their fast processed food for better health?

A.V.: You can have everything in the world, but if you don't have your health what can you enjoy and how deeply?

[Kempo Guy]

I'm no nutritionist, but I tend to keep things fairly simple when it comes to eating. I follow a modified "Body for Life" diet, as I've found this to work pretty well and it's easy to follow... for me.
To put it this way, I eat 5 - 6 meals a day. Each of these meals contain a combination of protein and carbs. With two of these meals I also eat some vegetables (either steamed or raw). I don't take many supplements except for multi-vitamins and Omega3, although on occasion I use MRP's such as Myoplex. Oh yeah, and drink lots of water (ten 8oz. cups a day)!

Of course, many people don't want to deal with a ton of meals in a single day but the above have worked pretty well for me. It keeps my energy level high throughout the day.

As a note, I train in martial arts about 4 - 5 times a week along with almost daily calisthenics and KB workouts.

Hope this helps,
KG

[TaoBoy]

Serpent is on the money!

And keep it simple. Don't go crazy over your diet.

FYI - The whole carbs w/o proteins thing makes sense in theory but no scientific proof exists. Another theory about eating fruits alone also sounds valid but again no scientific proof.

I'm not saying the theories aren't correct. Just try them out for youselves rather than blindly believing.

Use common sense!

[monkey mind]

I'm not a nutritionist but I just finished a class in sports nutrition. Lot's of good stuff has been mentioned already, especially about eating lots of fresh , organic fruits & veggies. A few other comments:

Essential fatty acids are just that - essential & fatty. Among the best sources of these fats are nuts & seeds: flax (especially for omega 3 fatty acids), pumpkin, and walnut are excellent sources. Salmon is also a great cource for omega 3. Olive oil is a good choice for fat as well. The kay, as with most things, is moderation. Fats shouldn't comprise more than 15-20% of your total caloric intake (1g of fat = 9 kCal).

"Carbs" is being used pretty loosely in this discussion. Grains, veggies, sugars, these are all carbs. Obviously not all carbs are created equal. Your best bet is to maximize complex carbs (whole grains, veggies, fruits) & minimize simple carbs (refined sugars). So saying don't eat carbs but eat lots of veggies doesn't make sense. Carbs are the body's preferred raw material for producing glycogen (fuel for muscles) It's good to have the bulk of your caloric intake consist of whole grains, veggies, & fruits. These will give you not just complex carbs (macronutrients) but lots of vitamins, minerals, etc. (micronutrients).

OK, the library computer is about to cut me off so I'll have to continue this in another post...

[monkey mind]

... and I'm back.

It's true that the body stores more water the higher one's intake of carbs is. This is one reason why low carb diets tend to yield rapid (but temporary) weight loss. The relationship among carbs, even good ones, energy levels, and weight gain is complex. Some of this has to do with the glycemic index of different foods (I'll elaborate if anyone's interested) but Serpent was righ on the money - if you're eating the right amount of carbs then weight gain, or fat gain, shouldn't be a problem.

Protein also is necessary but in moderation. It is not directly a fuel source - instead it helps build/repair tissue. This is obviously important, but I've been taught that any more than 15-20% of protein in the overall diet is not well assimilated by the body (1g of protein = 4 kCal). In fact, prolonged intake of high levels of protein is taxing on the liver.

And drink enough water so that your pee is clear & copious. OK, I'll stop there. I hate reading long posts but somehow always manage to write them. :) Train hard & eat smart everyone.