Food companies are genius marketers.  From the Lean Cuisine to “healthy” cereals to whole wheat pop tarts, these sneaky food companies are finding ways to make you believe that trashy food is clean.  Add that to the fact that their “healthy” food is delicious and you have a killer combo.  Well I’m going to set the record straight.

Avoid these sneaky foods:

1. Yogurt – Still pitched as a health food, yogurt has very little nutritional value unless you prefer for your body to operate on sugar.  The fruit that may be in some yogurts are also loaded with sugar, adding to the problem.  Sugar-free or light you say?  The light version of almost all yogurt brands use aspartame as a sweetener, which can cause immediate adverse affects in some (such as migraines) while causing more long-term health issues (such as various forms of cancer) in others.  There are also, many other ingredients that neither you nor I can pronounce or about which we can have an intelligentconversation.
2. Pre-packaged “healthy” meals – These supposed “healthy options might take the cake, no pun intended, when it comes to sneaky food.  Just because the name brand involves the words “lean” or “smart” does not mean that it lives up to either.  Let’s take a look at the the nutrition facts of a popular, supposedly healthy meal that involves that word “lean” in the brand name.  Calories – 268…pretty dang good for one meal if you weigh 100 pounds.  Fat – 4 grams…actually a good thing since the fats contained are probably not too clean.  Protein – 11 grams…a good amount for a small child.  Carbs – 47 grams…Good Lord!!  Check out Nutrition Quick Fix – Part 1 and Nutrition Quick Fix – Part 2 to see why these levels of carbs and protein are outrageous for a single meal.  We haven’t even mentioned how many preservatives are in these mystery meals.  Sufice it to say that if the world were hit by a meteor tomorrow, these prepackaged meals would stay in one piece without issue.  Take a look at the nutrition label of your favorite packaged “healthy” meal and try to pronounce each of the words listed in the ingredients.  Still want to eat it?
3. “Healthy” Cereals – While there are a variety of brands that claim to be healthy, most of them are processed and they are ALL high in carbs.  I’m certainly not against the consumption of carbs and neither should you, but in a bowl full of these “healthy” cereals, you’re consuming well over half of what your carb intake should be for the day.  Unless you are a bodybuilder in the off-season, you don’t want this many carbs in one sitting.  Even the cereals that claim to be high in protein typically have twice as many grams carbs as protein per serving.  High in protein compared to what?  A banana?

There are certainly more than three sneaky foods to stay away from but these are the main three that I see in diets of those who become frustrated that they can’t lose any body fat.  You’ll notice that all of them are processed and high in carbs.  Again, there’s no need to be afraid of carb consumption or get on the Atkins diet tomorrow, but carb management is a huge part of fat loss.

Eat whole foods.  Live the dream.

Ever stronger!!

In part one of our “Nutrition Quick Fix” series, we addressed carbs.  Too man carbs, even from clean sources, can keep you from achieving your fitness goals.   Hopefully you tabulated your current daily carb intake and adjusted it as recommended in part one.

In part two, I want to tell you about the power of protein.

Protein should be the cornerstone of any well-planned, well thought out fat-loss plan.  Protein is so important for many reasons such as being the most satiating macronutrient, but the most important for fat-loss are:

1. You MUST consume lots of protein (specific to your body of course) to maintain muscle mass as you lean out.  If you’re a woman reading this, you undoubtedly have “I don’t want to get bulky” thoughts running through your head right now.  But for every pound of muscle mass that you lose while trying to lose “weight” instead of “fat” your metabolism drops by about 100 calories per day.  That’s right; go eat some flesh!!
2. It takes twice as many calories to burn a gram of protein than it takes to burn a gram of fat or carbs.

So not only will you be burning more calories indirectly through increased muscle retention and maybe even muscle gain, you will also be burning more calories through digestion.  The former requires quite a bit more effort and training (muscle doesn’t grow on trees folks) while the former is pretty dang easy.  Eat some protein and then sit there.  Or stand there.  Or partake in your favorite past time.  Seriously.

Most of our clients are surprised by the amount of protein that we ask them to consume.  If they trust us and follow the plan they all come back with similar comments, “It’s crazy that you can eat this much food and still lose fat.”  A huge part of the reason you can be full and still lose fat on our nutrition system is because of the large amounts of good, clean protein that you will eat.

A Call to Action:  Add 50g of Quality Protein to your Diet

Do it.  Write down everything that you eat in a day on your current diet set-up (or lack there-of   and then calculate how many grams of protein you’ve consumed.  My guess is less than 100 grams.  By my calculation that’s enough protein only if you weigh 100-120 pounds.  If you weigh more than that as you read this, add 50g of quality protein to your diet.  You will be glad you did.

Ever stronger!!

Cut your carbs in half.  Seriously.  Tear that sandwich in half immediately.  Why?  I’m glad you asked.

As part of our membership package at I.T.S., we offer custom diet consulting that is specific to each person’s goals, fitness level, body fat level, etc…  We then adjust the set-up as needed.  Although they would love for me to hand them a cookie cutter meal plan that’s not specific to anyone (wink, wink), I would first ask them to maintain their current diet for three days, write down everything that they eat and bring it back for me to analyze and develop a plan.  I have since stopped this practice because inevitably their current set-up would look something like this:

• Breakfast – oatmeal and a piece or cup of fruit
• Snack – banana
• Lunch – Lean Cuisine
• Dinner – chicken breast and rice

If you’re a calorie counter, this set-up looks like a pretty decent fat loss plan.  But because total calories don’t tell the entire story, we use total daily macronutrient (grams carbs, fat and protein) intake.  Let’s take a look at it through the macronutrient lens.

• Breakfast
  • carbs – 79g
  • fat – 6g
  • protein – 10g
• Snack
  • carbs – 30g
• Lunch
  • carbs – 43g
  • fat – 5g
  • protein – 12g
• Dinner
  • carbs – 40
  • fat – 8g
  • protein – 40g
• Daily Totals:
  • Carbs – 192
  • Fat – 19
  • Protein – 62

Obviously carbs can be sneaky S.O.B’s.  Almost everything on the list is clean (no, Lean Cuisines are no clean!!).  Because carb sources such as fruit and oats are clean, people assume that they can consume them at their leisure.   Trust me on this one – the above diet has way too many carbs, clean or not, unless you are a bodybuilder in the off-season.

Consuming too many carbs is the #1 diet mistake that people make.  With that in mind, do yourself a favor – write down everything you eat that contains carbs.  This includes fruit!!  If your daily carb intake looks anything like the diet above, cut them in half IMMEDIATELY!!  You will thank me later

In my first ever blog post I want everyone to know about the people that helped me get to where I am today.  I could write a book on my parents and my wife, who have been the most influential people in my life, or sisters who have loved me through some ups and a whole lot of downs, or grandfather, Don, who has been the epitome of work ethic and integrity.  Since I don’t have room for that (and you don’t have time to read it) on a blog, I want to give credit to all of the people in the coaching world who have had an influence on me.

Coach Patik – My high school coach Grant Patik taught me what toughness really meant at a pretty young age.  I learned how to play basketball the right way under the direction of Coach Patik—play great defense and the rest is easy.  This gave me a chance to play at the college level as I was never a great scorer.

Coach Sather – Coach Paul Sather was my basketball coach my senior year of college.  I often think about what kind of player I would have been had he been at BHSU for all four years.  He reiterated what I had been missing in my life for the previous three years—God comes first.  Family comes second.  Education comes third.  Basketball comes fourth.  He also taught me the game in ways that I had never been taught before.  I could probably write a book on all the little details of basketball and life lessons that I learned from Coach.  The most important one probably being, “It’s not about you.  It’s about something a lot bigger than you.”

Coach Mannie – I have never known a man that was more passionate about what he did than Michigan State strength coach Ken Mannie.  The first time I met him was in the MSU weight room at 5:45 a.m. as he was just finishing up his workout.  The man showed up at the weight room at 4:30 every morning and was passionate and intense until he walked out the door at night.  One of my biggest regrets in life is not staying at MSU longer to learn from coach Mannie.

Vork – The main thing that I learned from MSU basketball/hockey strength coach Mike Vorkapich is how important it is to develop a relationship with your athletes.  Of all the strength coaches I’ve worked with, his athletes loved him like nothing I’ve ever seen.  He would put kids through some of the toughest workouts I’ve seen and every one of them wanted to work hard for him.

Coach Cotterman – UW strength coach Mike Cotterman taught me to think outside of the box.  He was great at developing programs that were not the most orthodox in the world but worked extremely well.  He is also a great strength coach for swimming and diving, something I knew absolutely nothing about before working at the University of Wyoming.

Donnie Sommer – I learned a lot of things from coach Sommer while at TCU but the one thing I took away that was more important than any other was not getting too tricky with your programs.  The old school methods have always worked and still do.  Especially in the generation of strength coaches that I am coming up with, it’s important to not get too cute with your strength and conditioning programs.

Dick Olin – Although Coach Olin should have probably been a standup comedian, he was a dang good football coach and a pleasure to work for.  Coach Olin probably molded my attitude in general more than anyone I’ve ever worked for.  Coach Olin always reminded me of the bigger picture, usually using his signature phrase, “Think good thoughts.  Say good things.”  The man also drank nasty decaf coffee all day everyday…yes even in 100 degree heat.  If you’re man enough to do that, you’re pretty kick-A in my book.

Zach Dechant – One of my best friends and one of the smartest strength coaches in the country, TCU strength coach Zach Dechant has been my largest overall influence as a coach.  A conversation I had with a University of Wyoming strength coach summed up how smart Zach truly is; “He really needs to go be a doctor or something.  He’s almost too smart to be a strength coach.”  Zach has taught me and is still teaching me to question everything about strength and conditioning.  Question every exercise, every method and every program.  Can it help your athletes/clients or not?  Is any method completely bad or good?  Is any training program complete?  Probably the most important thing that I learned from Zach is to completely obliterate the status quo.  A lot of time, blood, sweat and tears should go into every training program, every athlete, every client.  Read everything about training that you can get your hands on and then question it to see if it can help your athletes/clients.  Leave no stone unturned.

I know that I’ve thanked all of these people, probably more than once, but I honestly feel so blessed to have been influenced by all of these men.  I would not be 1% of the coach that I am now without their help and influence.  I’m miles ahead of where I was seven years ago before I met any of them.  I thank all of you so much for all you have done for me.